Tariq Ali's Blog, page 13

Decay and Ruin in Mrs. Thatcher’s England

This interview with Tariq Ali was conducted by Die Presse in Vienna and appears in German in the paper’s Sunday edition.

What is Mrs Thatcher’s legacy?

Her legacy is clearly visible in the state of Britain today. It is essentially a story of decay and ruin: A small, post-imperial vassal state dependent on nostalgia and, more importantly, the United States to keep itself afloat. On the economy the Thatcherite model (astonishingly, still being praised by blind politicians in denial) was effectively the deindustrialization of the country, the purchase of working-class votes by squandering the monies that accrued from North sea oil and laying the foundations for a financialised economic model that exploded with the Wall Street crash of 2008. We live in a world where it is convenient to personalize politics. Thatcher obviously pushed through the measures required by capitalism with a raw and ruthless energy that was her very own. She was a great believer in appealing to the lowest common denominator, to the animal instincts that remain present in the psychological make-up of individuals regardless of their social origins. Another politician could have done exactly the same things as she did using a less charged rhetoric. A number of old Conservatives were not shy in stating that their party had been taken over by English ‘poujadistes.’ She almost came a cropper. Had the Falklands war gone differently which it might have done if Pinochet’s dictatorship (pushed by Washington) had not backed Britain.

She outmaneuvered the once powerful Mineworker’s Union, forcing it to call a strike on her terms and then destroyed the union and in the process broke the back of a once powerful British labor movement. She had referred to the striking miners as the ‘enemy within’. Even as she neutered the unions, she effectively destroyed the old Labour Party. Thatcher’s favorite Chancellor of the Exchequer and cabinet colleague, Nigel Lawson, while reviewing a book in the Financial Times noted admiringly that the tragedy for the Tories was that Thatcher’s real heir was Leader of the Opposition. Blair’s policies were little more than a continuation of her policies with better PR and an aggressive control of the media. Blair was less lucky with his wars. Iraq finished him off. He was exposed as a simple and straightforward liar. The Scottish writer, Tom Nairn, was accurate in his assessment: “Like other flotsam on the ‘no-alternative’ wave of the nineties, they think that the essence of ‘modernization’ is adjusting society to fit economic and technological advances. Which means serving such changes, via a machinery of collusion between government public relations, a compliant legal system and a servile press.’

With Murdoch dominating the press agenda thanks to Thatcher’s ‘generosity’, she sent her tank commanders to fire a few warning shots at the BBC. A reliable and appropriately named toady, Marmaduke Hussey, was catapulted on to the BBC board as chairman. His first task was to sack director general Alasdair Milne for “leftwing bias” and ‘not being one of us.’ Thatcher was livid that the BBC had permitted her to be grilled on the Falklands war on a live programme by an ordinary woman viewer from Bristol who successfully demolished the prime minister’s arguments. Hussey appointed a pliable Director-General in the shape of John Birt, a dalek without instincts or qualities, who transformed the BBC into the top-heavy managerial monster that it has become. When New Labour won, a New BBC was already in place. Blair and his spin doctors Campbell and Mandelson turned out to be even worse control freaks than Thatcher. Together with their subordinates, they regularly harassed producers complaining about what they perceived to be anti-government bias. Radio 4?s Today programme became a favourite Blairite target. Simultaneously they were crawling to Murdoch at regular intervals, hobnobbing regularly with the editors and staff of the Sun and happily inhaling the stench of the Murdoch stables.read more

Tariq Ali discusses the legacy of Margaret Thatcher on Democracy Now!

 

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has died at the age of 87. Thatcher was Britain’s first female prime minister, serving three terms in office. Known as the “Iron Lady,” Thatcher became synonymous with austerity economics as a close ally of President Ronald Reagan. She famously declared to critics of neoliberal capitalism that “there is no alternative.” Her long-running battle with striking British miners dealt a major blow to the union movement in Britain and ushered in a wave of privatizations. On foreign policy, Thatcher presided over the Falklands War with Argentina, provided critical support to the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and famously labeled Nelson Mandela a “terrorist” while backing South Africa’s apartheid regime. Tariq Ali discusses her legacy with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!

Tariq Ali interviewed on BBC Persian’s “Hard Talk”

 

Tariq Ali appearing on BBC Persian’s Hard Talk programme

Tariq Ali: Hugo Chávez and Me

Tariq Ali for the Guardian, March 6th 2013

Once I asked whether he preferred enemies who hated him because they knew what he was doing or those who frothed and foamed out of ignorance. He laughed. The former was preferable, he explained, because they made him feel that he was on the right track. Hugo Chávez’s death did not come as a surprise, but that does not make it easier to accept. We have lost one of the political giants of the post-communist era. Venezuela, its elites mired in corruption on a huge scale, had been considered a secure outpost of Washington and, at the other extreme, the Socialist International. Few thought of the country before his victories. After 1999, every major media outlet of the west felt obliged to send a correspondent. Since they all said the same thing (the country was supposedly on the verge of a communist-style dictatorship) they would have been better advised to pool their resources.

I first met him in 2002, soon after the military coup instigated by Washington and Madrid had failed and subsequently on numerous occasions. He had asked to see me during the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. He inquired: “Why haven’t you been to Venezuela? Come soon.” I did. What appealed was his bluntness and courage. What often appeared as sheer impulsiveness had been carefully thought out and then, depending on the response, enlarged by spontaneous eruptions on his part. At a time when the world had fallen silent, when centre-left and centre-right had to struggle hard to find some differences and their politicians had become desiccated machine men obsessed with making money, Chávez lit up the political landscape.

He appeared as an indestructible ox, speaking for hours to his people in a warm, sonorous voice, a fiery eloquence that made it impossible to remain indifferent. His words had a stunning resonance. His speeches were littered with homilies, continental and national history, quotes from the 19th-century revolutionary leader and president of Venezuela Simón Bolívar, pronouncements on the state of the world and songs. “Our bourgeoisie are embarrassed that I sing in public. Do you mind?” he would ask the audience. The response was a resounding “No”. He would then ask them to join in the singing and mutter, “Louder, so they can hear us in the eastern part of the city.” Once before just such a rally he looked at me and said: “You look tired today. Will you last out the evening?” I replied: “It depends on how long you’re going to speak.” It would be a short speech, he promised. Under three hours.

The Bolívarians, as Chávez’s supporters were known, offered a political programme that challenged the Washington consensus: neo-liberalism at home and wars abroad. This was the prime reason for the vilification of Chávez that is sure to continue long after his death.

 

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‘Iranian Nights’ by Tariq Ali and Howard Brenton

This play, now available online, written by Tariq Ali and Howard Brenton and staged by the Royal Court theatre a few weeks after the fatwa on Salman Rushdie in 1989 has recently been denounced by Rushdie for being too critical of him. Viewers can judge for themselves.

Lincoln in His Lover’s Nightgown

Tariq Ali for London Review of Books, January 30th 2013

Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln is consciously restrictive, concentrating as it does on how the vote was manipulated and the 13th Amendment passed, but Mrs Lincoln is not exactly missing from the movie. So why didn’t the scriptwriter Tony Kushner, a staunch gay rights activist who ‘personally believe[s] that there is some reason to speculate that Lincoln might have been bisexual or gay’, include any of that speculation in the film? There is a great deal of circumstantial evidence to suggest that Lincoln slept with a number of men. In an interview with Gold Derby, Kushner said:

I wanted to write about a very specific moment and I chose this moment and I don’t feel that there’s any evidence at this particular moment that Lincoln was having sex with anybody… He seems to have not slept and taken no time off and during this period I think he was beginning to feel ground to a pulp by the war and by the pressures of his job. I find it difficult to believe that Lincoln was banging anybody.

Not very convincing. Especially when you consider that one of the men who shared Lincoln’s bed was his military aide and bodyguard, Captain David Derickson (in 1862-63, before the film begins). Kushner may find it difficult to believe that at the height of a political crisis ‘banging’ is not possible. But history and present times contradict such a narrow view.

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A Snapshot of Pakistan

Tariq Ali for London Review of Books, 7th February 2013

Pakistan is preparing for elections in May and June, and an all-party caretaker government will soon take over to supervise the process. Meanwhile, things continue as eventfully as usual. There has been yet another clash between the Supreme Court and the Zardari government; a previously obscure Muslim cleric returned from Canada to lead what he hoped would be a ‘million-strong’ anti-corruption march to Islamabad; and two factories in Lahore and Karachi have burned to a cinder with the workers still inside. Add to all this Sunni vigilantes regularly targeting and killing Shia; the Pakistani Taliban striking security targets; the military responding with indiscriminate killings; and the regular drone attacks, courtesy of Obama.

On 15 January, the Supreme Court, having last year got rid of one prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, for contempt of court, ordered the arrest of his successor, Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, and 16 other men on charges of corruption linked to kickbacks handed out by the power companies contracted to supplement the country’s inadequate electricity supply. These so-called Rental Power Projects gave rise to the nickname ‘Raja Rental’ that Ashraf acquired when he was Zardari’s minister for water and power. After all, nine firms had received a government advance of 22 billion rupees so it was only fair that the minister and his officials be rewarded. It was a surprisingly honest report by the usually tame National Accountability Bureau (NAB), set up by General Musharraf in 1999 to investigate corruption, which led the Supreme Court to order last March that all the RPP contracts be declared null and void. The judges are now livid because they believe the NAB is deliberately dragging its feet.

The court’s actions provoked complaints from the NAB chairman, the retired naval chief Admiral Fasih Bokhari, who claimed that the NAB was still investigating the matter and asked the court to suspend hearings on the case, but to no avail. Ashraf still hasn’t beem arrested: according to the constitution the prime minister cannot be arrested without the approval of the speaker of the National Assembly, who can give his approval only if parliament is in session, which it isn’t. Meanwhile enormous pressure has been put on NAB staff to present a new report that doesn’t mention him. Two senior NAB officials have been suspended; one of them, Kamran Faisal, was found hanged in a government hostel in Islamabad. The police suggest suicide; others insist it was murder. The Supreme Court has now scheduled a hearing to investigate the affair.

Pro-government journalists accuse the Supreme Court of being part of a conspiracy with the military and the Canadian preacher, Tahirul Qadri, whose march on Islamabad attracted less than 50,000 protesters. Many of them are still camping out in the city in freezing temperatures, while the fiery preacher keeps warm in the special container that serves as his office. Government representatives met Qadri and said they agreed with him: poverty was bad and it was important to hold the elections on time. Whether the preacher will manage to set up an alliance of religious groups to contest the elections remains to be seen. The country’s oldest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, did not support the march.

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‘Ravi Shankar’s music was a world apart from the hippy culture that embraced it’

‘Ravi Shankar’s music was a world apart from the hippy culture that embraced it’ by Tariq Ali for The Guardian, December 12, 2012

Ravi Shankar was a virtuoso sitar player long before he became a cult for a drug-fuelled hippy generation that found the exquisite music he plucked from the strings a perfect accompaniment to the consumption of marijuana and LSD. Had technology been what it is now, plugged ears would have been listening to him all the way from London to Kathmandu.

The Beatles, who flirted with Indian mysticism for a while (provoking some delicious satire from Private Eye, which called the Maharishi “Veririchi Lotsamoney Yogi Bear”), became seriously fascinated by the sitar and George Harrison took lessons in Indian classical music. The results were limited, Norwegian Wood probably ahead of the others. Not to be left behind, Brian Jones experimented with the instrument as well in Paint It Black. The fad didn’t last too long. The Beatles and Stones moved on to other things. As with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan in later years, the “fusion” between west and east was only partially successful. But the positives should not be underestimated. The Beatles’ affair with Indian music helped project it to a global audience. There was rarely an empty seat at Shankar’s concerts in the United States and western Europe.

His Bengali parents had inculcated a love of music and culture while their boys were very young. Uday Shankar, the older brother, was a very fine classical dancer and choreographer. He had danced with Anna Pavlova in Paris during the 20s and he rarely compromised his art in order to please audiences unfamiliar with Kathakali and other classical Indian dances. The younger brother was the same in his own field.

“A raga,” Ravi Shankar explained to his illustrious fans in the west, “is a scientific, precise, subtle and aesthetic melodic form with its own peculiar ascending and descending movement consisting of either a full seven-note octave, or a series of six or five notes in a rising or falling structure called the Arohana and Avarohana. It is the subtle difference in the order of notes, an omission of a dissonant note, an emphasis on a particular note, the slide from one note to the other … that demarcate one raga from the other.”

The response of Harrison and Jones was not recorded, but even if they understood what he was saying it left no trace in their music or the lyrics. The raga did not dominate Sgt Pepper and as the radical music critic of the 70s Richard Merton pointed out in a startling intervention in the New Left Review of all places, the distinction of the Stones lay elsewhere. For him, Under My Thumb, Stupid Girl, Back Street Girl or Yesterday’s Papers were targeting sexual exploitation: “The enormous merit – and audacity – of the Stones is to have repeatedly and consistently defied what is a central taboo of the social system: mention of sexual inequality. They have done so in the most radical and unacceptable way possible: by celebrating it.” All that can be said on this front is that making love while listening to Under My Thumb might have been more pleasurable to some men. Women would undoubtedly have preferred the slow rising movement of the Arohana.

It was the great violinist of the western classical tradition, Yehudi Menuhin, who understood Shankar immediately and demonstrated this in a series of joint concerts. I was present at one of them. The occasion was affecting and enjoyable. How could it not be with these two virtuosos in command of the evening? It did not work for me on the musical level.

The origins of Indian classical music, not unlike their western counterparts, lie in the Vedas, the ancient Hindu scriptures of 2,000 years ago. The human voice deployed to recite the Vedas and later aid the temple dancers was paramount before any instruments emerged. During the medieval period the entry of Islam in the subcontinent brought with it a Persian tradition of poetry, painting and music that spread from Afghanistan southwards. Melody and rhythm, rather than harmony and counterpoint, dominated the music from the east.

The Indian tradition remained oral, each composition a gift from the guru to his pupil, and hereditary musical families still dominate classical music in south Asia. Shankar was both pleased and amused by his sudden rise to fame and iconic status in the west. His purist colleagues in India were disdainful. Not him. He spoke of how pleased he was by “the openness, willingness to learn and sincere enthusiasm of western audiences”. He meant this, of course, and it was true. But he also knew that the innate knowledge of south Asian music-lovers could not be easily reproduced elsewhere. An all-night open-air concert in lush surroundings on a summer night in Lahore or Delhi, Trivandrum or Dhaka, with the voice of divas competing with the instruments and reaching a crescendo as the dawn light intrudes and they combine for a finale, has no equivalent in the west. Here the constraints of time and money determine the length of a concert.

Indian classical music was born when time barely existed. It developed further within the structures of royal courts and a system of patronage where the ruler or the feudal master determined all. Satyajit Ray’s cinematic masterpiece The Music Room conveys the obsession and the flavour of that period. Much has changed in South Asia, of course, but all-night concerts still take place.

When I was introduced to Ravi Shankar in London after a concert in the early 60s, he looked at me and asked: “Well?”

“Not the same as in our part of the world,” was the only reply I could muster.

He laughed, a deep throaty laugh. “That it will never be.”

The Guardian

“Greek Democracy is in Tatters”

Tariq Ali interviewed by Kostas Pliakos for Counterpunch, November 15th, 2012

You have said that Europe is falling apart financially and that we should go back to the drachma. Do you insist on this view? This is a difficult dilemma; could the country survive without any similar moves in other European countries?

If Greece is to break free from the shackles of the Troika it will have no other option but to revert to its own currency. It won’t be worse than what is happening now. In fact it will be better because it will presage a return to reality and a break from total dependence on a currency over which the peripheral EU states have no control. A number of eastern European states who have preserved their own currency till now are better off than Greece, Spain, Ireland and Italy. The crisis is caused by the banking system supported by the core EU states. There are no signs of any structural reforms to rectify and rehaul the system. So the smaller countries suffer. Isn’t it better to swim out of the sewer into a less polluted stream.



Last year, before the elections, when you came to Greece, you spoke favorably of Syriza as a movement of change and resistance to “Merkelian doctrine.” Can such a thing be achieved within euro and this authoritative EU? How must Syriza get people prepared given the momentum it now has?

I support SYRIZA. It is the most important breakthrough for the Left in Europe. One may disagree on certain tactics, but, in general, the strategic political thrust has been to united all the progressive forces in the country against a corrupt, extreme-Centre. I think the time has now come to come forward with a political and economic plan to convince the country that the EU’s authoritarianism is strangulating Greece with the help of local collaborators. The scenes in parliament a few days ago were a disgrace. The leaders of the extreme-Centre trying to force MPs to vote on a document that none of them had time to read! And this is democracy. I can’t see this government lasting too long. And in these conditions the ‘Democratic Left’ abstained. Not even strong enough to vote against the punishments being inflicted on the Greek people. They will pay a price for backing the extreme Centre and capitulating to the threats of Merkel, Hollande and co.

SYRIZA has some of the best Greek economists on their side. They have visited Argentina and other South American republics which have shown that change is possible. Now we need a manifesto that spells all this out for Greece. There are alternatives. It requires courage to argue for and implement them.



You urge people and the political leaders to socialize the means of production. This leads straight to a huge conflict. Do you believe that the left (meaning both people and their leaders) is psychologically ready today for such a conflict?

Exactly the same arguments were used by the Right in Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina. The Greek Left has suffered a great deal historically and not all the legacies were positive. The anti-dictatorship left, with the exception of the Communists, coalesced in PASOK. Many courageous intellectuals, exhausted by their past, now settled to a more comfortable existence and gradually began to defend capitalism. The fall of the Soviet Union accelerated this evolution and made them all neo-liberals. Psychology is not unimportant but this is a time when a sharply-defined radical politics must transcend fear. If socialization of the utilities that help to make life bearable for the majority is necessary (and I think it is) then it should be argued for against the depredations and corruptions of privatization.



What must be the Left’s role today?

To unite against the enemy. To refrain from fighting each other. To build the broadest possible united front against the collaborators who put the interests of bankers before those of their own people. That is the first and most important task. Sectarianism is always useless but in these times is a crime and not just in Greece, though sectarianism with Greek characteristics is never a pleasant sight.

I am sure you are aware of the Lagarde list case and the “adventures” of the journalist who revealed it. What conclusions can be drawn from all this about Greece’s political system and freedom of the media?

Greek democracy is in tatters. Sometimes collaborators can be even worse than those on whose behalf they are acting because the fear the reaction from below in their own country. Samaris and Venizelos are desperate men who cannot admit that they have failed. Though everybody, including the German mother and the French weakling, can see it very clearly.

In only a month’s time Greece saw protesters being tortured, a journalist being arrested because he said the truth, three journalist being fired from public TV because they criticized the government, several immigrants being beaten by the modern Freicorps, two homosexuals being beaten as well in the center of Athens, a kiss between gays in a British TV series being cut in public television, Christians and Neo-Nazis insulting and bullying actors and spectators of a theatrical play. Mr Ali: Neo-Nazis, according to polls, have reached 14%. Does this scare you? Is the political system partly responsible for the rise of extremism and nazism?

I follow all this from afar. Political, cultural, social and economic backwardness are always intertwined, becoming more and more extreme as their failures become more obvious.

How must we respond to the rise of neo-Nazism?

By arguing for a radical alternative to the present system, by doing everything possible to unite the Left and beyond it a united front of all anti-fascist forces. Golden Dawn is actually a pock-marked sunset. It is their links with the special police and the Ministry of Interior that is even more unsettling, reminding us of the murder of Lambrakis. The same types that carried out that act and were the shock-troops of the dictatorship are assembling again, this time under the benign gaze of the extreme Centre.



I believe you agree –and if you don’t, I am ready to hear your arguments – that today’s politicians have handed over their powers to the globalised capital. How can they take back these powers –that is if they can at all and if they are interested in? What is the role of politicians in a globalized economy?

Mainstream politicians everywhere are the indentured servants of the financial system. They have to be defeated as in South America. And building regional alliances in the years ahead is important. Why not a Balkan Confederation that strengthens each country and speaks in a common voice against the EU bureaucracy.read more

Tariq Ali speaks to Democracy Now about the European Union’s Nobel Peace Prize

The European Union was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this year for its historic role in uniting the continent. Committee chair Thorbjoern Jagland praised the EU for transforming Europe “from a continent of wars to a continent of peace.” The selection surprised many as it comes at a time when much of Europe is facing an economic crisis that threatens the EU’s future. Tariq Ali spoke to Democracy Now about the award and the state of the European Union.

To see the interview visit the Democracy Now website.