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“Things get pretty similar”
Johann Hari has a great eyewitness report from a Holocaust denial conference in southern California in 2003. Money quote: Another young delegate, Russ Gustavson, 22, from Portland, Oregon […] was good-looking and seemed rather charming – but then, in his disconcertingly mild-mannered and polite voice, he explained, “I’m on the far left – I’m a true socialist.” He admitted that
Sayyid Qutb: antiracist?
Naomi Klein caused a stir last August when she argued that Sayyid Qutb, “generally viewed as the intellectual architect of radical political Islam,” arrived at his dim view of America after encountering “what he later described as America’s ‘evil and fanatic racial discrimination.’” In this piece at TNR, Joseph Braude quotes Qutb on jazz: “this music that the savage bushmen
Free speech for Holocaust deniers
I’m all for it. And I’m 100 percent against the trial and conviction of David Irving in Austria. As Oliver Kamm writes today, “The proper policy with regard to malevolent falsehood is to expose it rather than suppress it. That is the task of historians rather than legislators or the judiciary.” But I’ve also been meaning to record this comment
Resign, Rumsfeld
I’m late in posting a link to the newly revealed Abu Ghraib photos, but link I must. Note the man with the words “I’m a Rapeist” [sic] scrawled on his buttocks. As Americans, we should all hang our heads in shame. And remember, many of those detained in Abu Ghraib were captured in random sweeps and believed to be innocent
Don’t touch that dial…
I’ve had no time at all for posts — a shame, since in the last few days I’ve seen: — the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra performing Shostakovich 7 at Carnegie Hall — the 20-piece chamber orchestra Alarm Will Sound performing Zappa, Varese, Cage, Derek Bermel (an old friend from high school) and several other composers at Zankel Hall — jazz bassist
Stanley Fish, anti-liberal
If you descended from Mars and read Stanley Fish’s Feb. 12 NYT op-ed on the cartoon controversy, you would have no idea that editors, cartoonists and all “blasphemers” had been threatened with grisly death by extremist Muslims from London to Karachi. Or that so-called “moderate” forces had called for the prosecution and punishment of those who offend their religious views.
“Music at the tonal crossroads”
On an impulse, the day before a major blizzard, I bought a ticket to hear the great soprano Dawn Upshaw and the pianist Richard Goode at Zankel Hall (classical/jazz/world music venue underneath Carnegie Hall). The program was ingenious: First Goode played three “Prelude and Fugue”s from Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, including the stunning C# minor from Book I; then the
The right to blasphemy
As Bill Weinberg has done at World War 4 Report, I am publishing the following statement in its entirety. I am not in full agreement, but I think Mahmood Ketabchi’s voice needs to be heard. — Sent by Mahmood Ketabchi, an exiled follower of the Worker Communist Party of Iran now living in New Jersey and active in support work