Tariq Ali's Blog, page 22

'You say you want a revolution'

Tariq Ali interviewed by Toby Manhire for the New Zealand Listener, March 19 2011

My last encounter with Tariq Ali did not go so well. I was comment editor at the Guardian newspaper, and had invited him to write on events in Pakistan. An email flew back. No. He certainly would not. The recent appearance in the paper of a piece by Pakistan's president, Asif Ali Zardari, had been a "disgrace", and he "would feel out of place on your pages these days". My effort at an explanatory, conciliatory response went unans–wered.

Nearly a year later, waiting on the line in New Zealand as his phone rings in north London, I'm a bit nervous. One of the most respected figures on the British left, he has since written a number of times for the paper, so that's repaired, but is he still furious? Ali roars with laughter at my jitteriness – he's not holding a grudge, but he hasn't changed his mind about Zardari. "The guy's a total crook and a rogue and a joke, and I just felt, if people like that want to get in the Western media, they should pay for it. It should be an advertisement."

Ali has never been one to pull punches. Politicians in Pakistan, his country of birth, come in for excoriating criticism. The country has suffered a succession of "wretched governments, corrupt, miserable, totally isolated from the needs of their people" – but in this they are far from alone.

Ali is a novelist, intellectual, historian, commentator, activist, polemicist, filmmaker, editor – well, how long have you got? It is as a speaker, however, that he comes to New Zealand this month, to deliver the 2011 Sir Douglas Robb lectures at the University of Auckland. He is unlikely to be Rodney Hide's idea of a jolly evening out, but Ali, author of more than 30 books in five decades, has become something of a living treasure among lefty thinkers the world over. Here is Noam Chomsky's emailed assessment: "Tariq Ali's incisive analyses of world affairs, and in particular his unrivalled insights into what has been happening in Pakistan, have been of inestimable value for those who hope to understand what is happening in the world. Enriched by deep historical knowledge and immersion in literary culture, and enlivened by brilliant writing, their contribution has been unique."

Ali's mane of thick black hair has become a mane of thick silver hair, but his speeches are as barnstorming as ever. The sentences emerge from his mouth print-ready. Today, however, as he talks from the study in his home in Highgate, his sonorous flow is interrupted by a booming cough. A product of the bitter British winter, presumably? No, it was brought on by the lecture last night, at Tate Modern, on Spinoza. "There were lots of questions at the end, so I've been talking too much."

One of Ali's Auckland lectures, he promises, will be "very dynamic indeed", focusing as it does on the string of recent Arab uprisings, from Tunisia, to Egypt, to Libya and beyond. "It's pretty amazing what's going on, actually," says Ali. "Nobody imagined that the domino effect would be so sensational. Now the Arab world is absolutely up in arms. All these imbecilic neocons who said, 'Oh, but the Arabs, the Muslims aren't interested in democracy', are looking very stupid, actually."

Ali says actually a lot. Filling out each of the word's four syllables, ac-tu-al-ly underlines an argument, a kind of coda, a there-you-have-it.

It's not just the neoconservatives who are left looking stupid, Ali reckons. So, too, are the liberal interventionists – aka the liberal hawks. These politicians and pundits, among them Tony Blair, Michael Ignatieff and Christopher Hitchens, argued, nominally from the left, that the benevolent state should be bold in foreign policy and take action beyond its borders. Emboldened by experience in the former Yugoslavia, they provided much of the intellectual ballast for the UK-US invasion of Iraq.

The 2011 Arab uprising explodes "one of the big arguments used during and after the war and occupation in Iraq, by lots of people who supported Blair", says Ali. "They would say in private, 'Oh, but we had to do it, Tariq, because there's no chance that the Iraqi people were capable of toppling Saddam.' That particular argument looks utterly stupid now, doesn't it?"read more

'Libya is another case of selective vigilantism by the west'

'Libya is another case of selective vigilantism by the west' by Tariq Ali for the Guardian, March 29 2011

The US-Nato intervention in Libya, with United Nations security council cover, is part of an orchestrated response to show support for the movement against one dictator in particular and by so doing to bring the Arab rebellions to an end by asserting western control, confiscating their impetus and spontaneity and trying to restore the status quo ante.

It is absurd to think that the reasons for bombing Tripoli or for the turkey shoot outside Benghazi are designed to protect civilians. This particular argument is designed to win support from the citizens of Euro-America and part of the Arab world. "Look at us," say Obama/Clinton and the EU satraps, "we're doing good. We're on the side of the people." The sheer cynicism is breathtaking. We're expected to believe that the leaders with bloody hands in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan are defending the people in Libya. The debased British and French media are capable of swallowing anything, but the fact that decent liberals still fall for this rubbish is depressing. Civil society is easily moved by some images and Gaddafi's brutality in sending his air force to bomb his people was the pretext that Washington utilised to bomb another Arab capital. Meanwhile, Obama's allies in the Arab world were hard at work promoting democracy.

The Saudis entered Bahrain where the population is being tyrannised and large-scale arrests are taking place. Not much of this is being reported on al-Jazeera. I wonder why? The station seems to have been curbed somewhat and brought into line with the politics of its funders.

All this with active US support. The despot in Yemen, loathed by a majority of his people continues to kill them every day. Not even an arms embargo, let alone a "no-fly zone" has been imposed on him. Libya is yet another case of selective vigilantism by the US and its attack dogs in the west.

They can rely on the French as well. Sarkozy was desperate to do something. Unable to save his friend Ben Ali in Tunisia, he's decided to help get rid of Gaddafi. The British always oblige and in this case, having shored up the Libyan regime for the last two decades, they're making sure they're on the right side so as not to miss out on the division of the spoils. What might they get?

The divisions on this entire operation within the American politico-military elite have meant there is no clear goal. Obama and his European satraps talk of regime change. The generals resist and say that isn't part of their picture. The US state department is busy preparing a new government composed of English-speaking Libyan collaborators. We will now never know how long Gaddafi's crumbling and weakened army would have held together in the face of strong opposition. The reason he lost support within his armed forces was precisely because he ordered them to shoot their own people. Now he speaks of imperialism's desire to topple him and take the oil and even many who despise him can see that it's true. A new Karzai is on the way.read more

Tariq Ali: From Cairo to Madison

From Cairo to Madison: The Arab Revolution and a World in Motion

Join renowned author Tariq Ali at Brooklyn's Galapagos Art Space for a discussion of the global implications of the revolts shaking North Africa and the Middle East.

This is a free event open to the public—doors at 7pm, talk at 8pm.

Brought to you by Haymarket Books and Verso Books.

Tuesday May 17th

7.00pm – 10.00pm

Galapagos Art Space

16 Main Street, DUMBO

Brooklyn, NY 11201

United States

'Close New Zealand's foreign ministry'

Tariq Ali interviewed by Michael Field for Stuff, March 21 2011

Leftwing author, academic and radical Tariq Ali is filling Auckland lecture halls with his views of the world. Stuff's Michael Field met him for coffee and his views on New Zealand.

Intellectual Tariq Ali – the striking fellow the Rolling Stones wrote Street Fighting Man in honour of – sees no reason to soften a message in deference to his hosts.

"New Zealand is not a country one thinks of greatly when one doesn't live here," he says, sitting on the terrace at Auckland's Old Government House ("surprisingly modest for the British"), before giving a deep laugh.

New Zealand has no foreign policy but is simply a vassal of the United States, he says, and there is no point in having a standing army.

He wonders why Maori don't play cricket and cannot figure why the Chinese are into kitsch.

Ali, 66, was born and raised in British India, now part of Pakistan, before moving to Oxford in 1965. In the anti-Vietnam War era, he became a writer, activist, academic and a leading intellectual.

His popularity is undiminished; a University of Auckland lecture series this week has ended up using three lecture theatres at a time.

New Zealand, he says, was a large farm for England and the Empire, now it is the same for China. Much else remains the same.

"Politically, psychologically and mentally the Australian and New Zealand elites are firmly attached to the United States…

"Essentially there is no such thing as a New Zealand foreign policy."

New Zealand, like Australia and Britain, were vassal states of the US.

Close the foreign ministry, he says.

"You could save money and have little offices in American embassies all over the world."

No one much cares what New Zealand – or the "small north European power" of Britain – thinks on global issues anyway.

Surely, New Zealand has to pull its weight internationally?

"How can you pull something you don't have; you don't have any weight at all, you are a small country…."

No one believes anyone is planning on invading:

"I think smaller countries should reduce military expenditure to a bare minimum…. No one is going to mess with you, which is why you don't need a standing army; you don't need to send troops or Iraq and Afghanistan."

In Europe public opinion was 65 to 80 percent opposed to the Afghanistan war and the same was probably true here.read more

'New hope for left-wing crusader'

Tariq Ali interviewed by Geoff Cumming for the New Zealand Herald, March 19 2011

Revolution is in the air, again. Veterans of the 60s protest movement in the West and the democratic uprisings which fractured the Soviet Union are toasting the amazing scenes in the Middle East, where protests against dictatorships in Egypt and Tunisia ignited a fuse which promises to spread through the Arab world.

Reactionary forces – ranging from brutal repression in Gaddafi's Libya to US-sanctioned Saudi troops in Bahrain – may stamp out dissent for now but, if the groundswell is genuine, for how long?

"It's not over yet," says Tariq Ali, the 60s militant-socialist turned writer, historian, film-maker and political commentator.

"The first round has gone to the people but who knows how many other rounds there are to go?"

The London-based Pakistani is here to deliver this year's Sir Douglas Robb lectures at Auckland University. Ali's presence is something of a coup for the university thanks to the flourishing of people-power in North Africa. The three lectures (the first was on Thursday night, the second is on Monday) dwell on current themes ranging from China's rise and the future of American imperialism to what the Arab reawakening may mean for the region's jihadist groups.

In person, the urbane 67-year-old seems far from the long-haired firebrand of legend who was vilified by British tabloids at the height of Vietnam War protests in London in 1968. He was dogged by Special Branch, racially abused and narrowly escaped beatings – and not just from right-wingers.

"The British were very backward in those days. They weren't used to people from ex-colonies coming and telling them what to do.

"I was told to go back to Asia. I said: 'But you were in my country for 150 years, I've only been here five minutes'."

The mane and droopy moustache were trimmed and the hair long ago turned a distinguished grey but, when Ali speaks, the language is as fearless as ever. Gaddafi is a "crazy dictator who has killed and bombed his own people". In Egypt, the Pentagon has "more or less put the Army in power".

The short-term prognosis for democracy in the Arab world is not promising. If Gaddafi regains control, it may encourage other dictators to ramp up repression, he says.

While the Obama administration has been very tough on Gaddafi, it makes no criticism of Saudi Arabia whose ruling family is "just as bad as Gaddafi" Ali says.

"There's Saudi Arabia sending soldiers to Bahrain, obviously with US support. It's that attitude which makes the US a laughing stock in the Arab world."

The uprisings have made the US, Britain and France very nervous, he says, worried for the dictatorships they prop up.

"It's almost as if they believed their own rubbish propaganda that Arabs and Muslims are not interested in democracy."

He says the opposite is the case.

"There's everything to hope for really. They're the most encouraging developments in the Arab world since the 1960s and 70s and it's now spreading to parts of Europe, with big demonstrations taking place in Zagreb [in Croatia]."

Of course, he's seen the ripple effect before – famously in '68 when, in the vanguard of demonstrations in London, he had connections to left-wing movements in Berlin and Paris. The Vietnam War was the catalyst for protest, but there were allied motivations: inequality and rebellion against political orthodoxy and repression.

The clamour for change was infectious. In the US, the civil rights movement drew strength from campus protests against the war. There were student uprisings in Argentina, Pakistan and Italy. In Czechoslovakia, democratic moves were quelled by Soviet tanks.

He says this year's uprisings have similar roots to the events of '68 – "people's desire to liberate themselves, for self-emancipation". But the better comparison is to the democracy campaigns which swept Europe in 1848. The '68 protests ultimately fizzled.

For change to last, key ingredients must be present – chiefly a constitution which is voted for, which enshrines democracy and guarantees basic rights including work, shelter and education. He points to South America – Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador – as a model for others.

As the struggle for democracy in the Third World takes centre stage, Ali sees huge irony in the apathy and consensus politics which have an iron grip in most western countries. He says western democracy has become a dictatorship of capitalism.

"I call it the hollowing out of democracy: whether you are Labour or Tory, centre left or centre right, Bush or Obama – it doesn't make any difference at all."

His latest book, The Obama Syndrome, argues that – far from the promise of a sea change in US foreign policy – the Obama Administration has been a case of more of the same.

He includes New Zealand among the compliant democracies, from Labour's embrace of neo-liberal economics in the 1980s to our continuing allegiance to the US. As the promo for his second lecture notes, New Zealand remains a loyal satrap (subordinate) of the US. We should, he says, be embracing China more fully.

"New Zealand and to an extent Australia are countries which refuse to accept their geography. They remain vassal states, first with Britain then with the United States. To me it's bizarre that New Zealand and Australia don't have their own flags."

The region escaped the worst of the global recession because of China's economic strength rather than US ties.

"I think the compulsory second language in Australia and New Zealand should be Chinese.

"New Zealand may have a free trade agreement with China but there's no doubt who determines New Zealand foreign policy. For New Zealand to have troops being killed in Afghanistan – what does that have to do with New Zealand?"

China's emergence – and what it means politically and economically – is the theme of Ali's third lecture, next Wednesday. Without giving too much away, it's safe to say he does not foresee it following in US footsteps as an imperialist power.

"What China proves is that capitalism does very well without democracy, thank you very much."

The other malaise of western democracies – apathy – is also linked to the entwinement of capitalism and state.

"People have a feeling that protest is useless because they've been defeated. Millions came out against the Iraq war – the largest demonstrations in history had no effect on the ruling elites at all. They went to war, they told lies, they got away with those lies."

As a consequence, protest has become limited to small groups on the left. "We have a political structure that's not vulnerable to protest and mass actions. Instead, western society has become characterised by mass consumerism, mass apathy and an obsession with celebrity. People are drowning in it."

But Ali agrees there's a cyclical nature to the struggle between socialism and capitalism, between radicalism and reactionism – and capitalism's excess may prove its weakness. Rising western living standards are, he says, founded on a house of cards.

"One reason people seem better off is they live off debt. Household debt in most of the western world has reached amazing levels. Three European countries – Iceland, Ireland and Greece – would have collapsed if they hadn't been bailed out by the European community. Others are teetering."

Therein lies hope that the west could learn from the uprisings in the Arab world. "Who knows, it may spread to western countries if the sticking plaster they have put on the [financial] crisis breaks.

"There's been a big march in Wisconsin defending trade union rights …"

Staying true to his beliefs

You might conclude Ali's star was charted from day one. His mother, the daughter of a leading conservative politician, joined the Communist Party the year he was born.

His grandmother, though far from a fellow traveller, knitted him a white sweater with a red hammer and sickle. His father was editor of the left-wing The Pakistan Times, the country's biggest circulation newspaper, until the military coup in 1949. Their home was a shrine to Stalin.

What's interesting about Ali is that he has remained consistent in his beliefs, despite long winters when his Marxist-socialist ideals appeared buried beneath the consumerist juggernaut of western capitalism.

The prolific writer, film-maker and father of three lives in artsy Highgate but retains his socialist ideals. "The world has changed but I've not abandoned my beliefs."

Close friends include Robin Blackburn and Perry Anderson from the 60s protest movement, whom he joined on the editorial board of New Left Review, which celebrated 50 years last year and which his partner, Susan Watkins, edits. But he remains bemused by how so many who stormed the barricades in the 60s went on to swell the capitalist ranks.

"I have lost some very close friends who went to the other side and just became part of the zeitgeist. To hear people you thought you knew become so hardcore in defending the war in Iraq, or the bombing of this or that …read more

Tariq Ali on The Obama Syndrome at Perth Writers Festival

SlowTV presents Tariq Ali's The Obama Syndrome lecture at Perth Writers Festival talk on March 7 2011

'Ali talks down the Obama era'

Tariq Ali interviewed by Mark Naglazas for the West Australian, March 1 2011

It was one of those moments that will live in the memory of all those who witnessed it, registering and resonating as powerfully as the Moon landing, the fall of the Berlin Wall, 9/11 and, for a younger generation, the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak.

We all knew that Americans would one day vote a black man into the White House but when Barack Hussein Obama put one hand on the Bible and recited the oath of office to become the 44th President of the United States, even those who had not voted for him understood the significance of the event for a nation built on the blood, sweat and tears of slaves.

There were cynics, of course, who tried to smear the 49-year-old Harvard graduate as an extremist with a sinister agenda and not a real American.

However, among the most articulate of the anti-Obama forces is not a Fox News Channel foot-soldier but Tariq Ali, the Pakistani-born British veteran activist and leading left-leaning intellectual who's been a thorn in the side of the American establishment ever since his days as a young leader of the Vietnam War protest.

Ali believes that far from being a break with the presidency of George W. Bush, which left thousands dead from the US-led occupation of Iraq and the biggest global financial crisis since the Great Depression, Obama is continuing those disastrous policies, despite his intoxicating campaign mantra "change we can believe in".

In his startling, persuasive new book, The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad, Ali argues that Obama was never going to be the messiah who would revitalise an ailing America and placate a nervous world. Rather, he sees Obama as a silver-tongued opportunist who has happily become a cog in the machinery of empire.

"Unable and unwilling to deliver any serious reforms, Obama has become a master of the sympathetic gesture, the understanding smile, the pained but friendly expression that always appeared to say 'Really, I agree and wish we could, but can't and it's not my fault', " Ali writes.

"The implication is always that the Washington system prevents any change that he could believe in. But the ring of truth is absent.

"Whether seriously considering escalating an unwinnable war, bailing out Wall Street, getting the insurance company lobbyist to write a new 'health care' bill or suggest nominations for the Cabinet and the Supreme Court, the mechanism he has deployed is always the same.

"A better option is put on the table for show, but not taken seriously. A worse option is rapidly binned. And a supposed compromise emerges."

Ali is not sentimental about Obama's election, pointing out that there have been plenty of African-Americans close to the seat of power in the previous regime, including Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice.

"I'm glad it has happened because we can now move past this hurdle of getting a black man into the White House and evaluate a candidate not on who he is but what he does, " Ali tells me over the phone from his home in London ahead of his appearance at the Perth Writers Festival.

Ali says his greatest disappointment with the first two years of the Obama administration is not continuing Middle East adventurism and miscalculations, right up to the recent failure to support the protesters in Egypt, but his failure in the area of civil liberties.

"He told us that he would extend the war to Pakistan and escalate the war in Afghanistan so that wasn't a surprise. Some of my American friends who voted for him said 'Oh, Tariq, he has to say that in order to get elected.' That's rubbish. We heard that before from Tony Blair. He was always going to continue to wage war.

"What I was hoping was that he would pull back on the civil liberties front. I thought he would shut down Guantanamo Bay and end this process of detention without trial. His own supporters are disappointed with his inaction in this area."

However, Ali's pessimism about the Obama presidency dates back to well before the tumultuous election campaign, in which the relatively inexperienced one-term US senator from Illinois scored a resounding win.

"I was in the States before the election and friends told me 'Look, Tariq, it would be great to get rid of the Republicans for a while but don't have any illusions about this guy, he's a Chicago machine politician and that machine is one of the most ruthless', " he argues.read more

Tariq Ali speaks to Sarfraz Manzoor for the Guardian

Tariq Ali interviewed by Sarfraz Manzoor for the Guardian, March 7 2011 about his life in dissent, student protests and the Arab uprisings.

On the contemporary events in the Middle East, Ali says, "it restores sense of balance in this world. It's not all neoliberalism, it's not all money money money, its not all celebrity politics: here are millions of people taking their destiny in their own hands saying, 'In order to win all, you have to be prepared to sacrifice all.' That is what they're doing in the Arab world' … It really is the beginning of a phase that might take five or six years to happen but there is no doubt we are at a turning point …

It rejuvenates you when history is being made, people are out on the streets again, governments are being changed, dictators are are being toppled, students in Europe and workers are beginning to fight for their rights again … When we were young coming out Vietnam demonstrations, we used to get a real frisson when people would say 'there are veterans from the Spanish civil war of 1936,' and this band of oldies would come saying 'Spanish civil war veterans against the war' … I feel a bit like that now!"

'Haiti needs the world's support'

'Haiti needs the world's support,' an open letter to the Guardian signed by Tariq Ali and others, March 2 2011

Over the next few years, much of Haiti will be rebuilt and much of its economy restructured. In response to last year's earthquake an unprecedented amount of money has been promised for reconstruction. It's more important than ever before that Haiti be governed by an administration that reflects the true will and interests of its people, rather than the concerns of foreign governments and corporations.

In 2004, the US, France and Canada, in alliance with members of Haiti's business community and demobilised soldiers of the Haitian army, overthrew the last Haitian government to enjoy genuine popular support: the party that led this government, Fanmi Lavalas, was elected with around 75% of the vote. This past November, these same powers imposed and funded an illegitimate electoral process in Haiti, one that blocked the participation of Fanmi Lavalas. Only 23% of Haitian voters participated, scarcely a third of the proportion who voted in the last presidential election.

In recent weeks, the US and its proxies have brazenly interfered in the interpretation of this election's first round of results. The flawed November vote was not only inconclusive and unrepresentative, its outcome was also unlawful. If the second round of these elections goes ahead as planned on 20 March, it is now sure to result in the unconstitutional selection of a president with closer ties to the powers that sponsored and manipulated them than to the people meant to participate in them.

At the same time, the powers that dominate Haiti have facilitated the return of the former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier while discouraging the return of the twice-elected president (and Fanmi Lavalas leader) Jean-Bertrand Aristide. These powers, with their allies in the Haitian business community, have made it clear that they seek to delay Aristide's return until after 20 March. They will only allow Aristide to return after a suitably pliant new government has been installed, to preside over the imminent reconstruction process.

We the undersigned call on the Haitian government to make the security arrangements that will enable Aristide's immediate return, and we call on the international community to support rather than undermine these efforts. We call on the Haitian government to cancel the second-round vote scheduled for 20 March and to organise a new round of elections, without exclusions or interference, to take place as soon as possible.read more

A new beginning?: Tariq Ali speaks to Riz Khan about the Arab uprisings and The Obama Syndrome for Al Jazeera

Watch Tariq Ali on the "Riz Khan" show on Al Jazeera discussing how the changes sweeping the Middle East will affect American foreign policy and its relationship with the region, and The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad.