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| A political public that cares | Bernard Keenan Chomsky is right about the decline in human rights, but can they be resurrected in the service of progressive politics? Invited to the LSE last week to address the question of human rights in the 21st century, Noam Chomsky began with a simple answer – easy, there aren't any. In the bleak hour that followed, Chomsky listed example after example. He detailed the many ways in which powerful states are currently ignoring, if not actively undermining, the values laid down in various international human rights treaties.The statistics are hard to deny. While trillions of dollars have gone to rescuing collapsed markets in order to ensure that the bankers can still pay themselves bonuses, Amnesty International has recently reported the financial crisis has had a catastrophic impact on the world's poorest people. In the US, meanwhile, the recent healthcare debate has focused on or not healthcare should be rationed by the state, or by individual wealth as is currently the case. While liberal commentators may have universally condemned the actions of the Bush administration following 11 September 2001, Chomsky barely raised an eyebrow, pointing out that the use of torture overseas by US agencies has a long history. To him, human rights seem like a forgotten dream in the face of such lesser reported facts. Like the American philosopher John Dewey, Chomsky's fundamental faith in democratic ideals leads him to believe that people would not tolerate such injustices, if only they were able to hear about them.It's one thing to list the violations of human rights around the world, but it's quite another to claim people would care about them, if only they knew. Here in the UK we know that the Conservative party have pledged to repeal the Human Rights Act when in government, and that this may well be a popular move. Meanwhile a fringe party of the far right gains momentum and the left cannot decide if they should be exposed or censored (incidentally, Chomsky categorically states that they should not).So what arguments can be put forward against the erosion of rights? What basis do we have to assert that human beings have basic entitlements? These are serious political questions. If poverty is the biggest threat to global stability, then there is a particular challenge in explaining why so-called "rights" to economic and social entitlements should be considered "rights" at all. In an age when progressive politics is in disarray, split between a stubborn attachment to authoritarian Marxist economics; straightforward capitulation to bankrupted neoliberalism, or just slumped in a detached post-modern inertia; it is hard to find a simple answer to the question of why we should defend something as quaint as human rights.Chomsky's rhetorical approach is to refer to positive legal documents – the various UN human rights conventions that western states have signed up to, claimed to believe in, and then violated at every opportunity – as a means of highlighting the hypocrisy of western states' actions. But the value of this as a philosophical position is negligible – positive legal documents have no force beyond that with which they are enacted (or ignored, as the case may be).So where his talk in London last week was most instructive was while he was taking questions from the floor. As the director of the LSE looked on nervously, he described the radical changes he had witnessed during his 54 years of teaching at MIT. He pointed out that in his experience human rights and civil liberties have always been advanced by an aroused and organised public, refusing to remain subordinated to the interests of the powerful and taking direct actions to resist power.Even more fundamental to Chomsky's political philosophy is a belief in a shared moral understanding between human beings. His conviction that there is a scientific, empirical basis for how humans make moral judgements flies in the face of contemporary philosophy and economics. Postmodernism, identity politics, deconstruction, the idea that everything in the world is different – all of this, Chomsky asserts, has got to go.It's impossible to argue against Chomsky's empirical examples of just how bad the state of human rights is in the world today. But it's an entirely different thing to accept his argument that scientific certainties about universal rights, and wrongs, can be resurrected in the service of progressive politics – ultimately acting as an organising principle. It's a question that this generation, sooner or later, will have to confront.Human rightsPhilosophyPhilosophyCivil libertiesTortureBernard Keenanguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Writers reveal the 'Truth' about Austen's appeal Jane Austen remains a hot literary property. In "A Truth Universally Acknowledged," other writers explain why. rssfeeds.usatoday.com |
Children’s Books: When Elephants Dance A magician makes a comic and sinister mistake in this unsentimental, magical story. feeds.nytimes.com |
Tonight I'm a rock'n'roll scribe: Infernal moonshine of the spotless mind The first instalment in his series of literary adventures in rock'n'roll sees novelist Richard Milward indulging in booze, book readings and fighting like Bruce LeeIt's face-crunchingly cringeworthy how far some folk go to appear rock'n'roll. Rock'n'roll, after all, is an almighty religion, inspiring even the most timid of beasts to beat their chests and act silly after one too many lager shandies. While the messiahs of rock all seem to be cocksure, bonkers bagheads like Jim Morrison, Keith Richards, or Sid Vicious, many of its followers nowadays are merely tight-jeaned, boring bedroom-dwellers. The nearest most of them get to trippy, dippy self-destruction is accidentally tripping over their laptop cable on the way to the lav, or forgetting to save their latest Garbagebandâ„¢ masterpiss.If one of these sumptuous masterpisses happens to propel said bedroom-dweller on to the stage or into the spotlight, many of them feel the need to overcompensate for the years of reclusive knob-twiddling: they force themselves into sinking one or two more lager shandies than they're used to when they're out on the lash, desperately searching for a fight or a fling that might fling them trilby-first into the gossip columns or – better still – the hall of fame of rock'n'roll recklessness.I must own up to being a victim of this daft behaviour myself now and then, emerging from my one-bedroom cave in Middlesbrough for a bevvy with square eyes, after staring at sheets of paper for days on end. While I enjoy guzzling pills and pilsner with the best of them, I also enjoy drinking cups of tea and not talking for three days on the bounce. It's part of the fun of being a self-made recluse/obsessive-compulsive novelist. Being from the north and being interested in rock'nroll can be a lethal combination. When I had my first novel accepted to be published, I was aware there was going to be a certain amount of time spent onstage or in the spotlight, and under no circumstances should anyone stand on a stage stone-cold sober. To limber myself for a performance (a reading, Q&A, or sitting in a lonely bookshop scribbling my own name), I provide myself with the following rider: at least five hours drinking time beforehand; an outlandish, psychedelic headdress (at the moment it's a multicoloured tower block); a Greggs pasty or two, for nourishment; and, ideally, a bit of friendly company.Most readings I've been to in the past are hushed, plush affairs, with nervy intellectuals numbing your bum – and sometimes they don't even have a bar. On the whole, trying to invoke the spirits of a legless literary past (say, Kerouac, Burroughs, Baudelaire) makes my performances a hell of a lot more entertaining for myself (and hopefully for the audience), although sometimes they're just hell. Sometimes I get myself in a right pickle. The other weekend, at the wondrous Crossing Border festival in the Netherlands (a festival that marries music and literature, like a raucous, art-rock piss-up in a library), there was quite a bit of put-on rock posturing on display. Me and Kevin Cummins (the All-Seeing Eye of Manchester and beyond) got in a bit of a scuffle with this band of namby-pamby Bambis called the Antlers, after inadvertently bamboozling some of their booze backstage. Two of them pounced on dear old Kevin, then proceeded to fanny out after a swift right hook from Cummins and some pincer-like neck grabbing and squawking from stickman Milward.I'm the greatest passive-aggressive fighter in the business, employing Bruce Lee's art of "fighting without fighting" with lots of shirt-tugging and idle hand gestures and name-calling. While the Antlers laughably threatened to "smash some bottles and shit", instead they went off to find the festival organisers and tell on us. Surely the more rock'n'roll option was to crack open their untouched bottle of vodka, and try to have a buzz with one of the world's greatest rock photographers, not to mention one of the Boro's skinniest novelists."It was all just handbags," proclaimed Pete "Sonic Boom" Kember, grinning away, Cannabis Cup-winning joint stuck betwixt his fingers.It seems as good a time as any to namedrop Sonic, since I was in Holland with the tantalising task of interviewing the Spacemen 3/Spectrum shaman on stage. That's why we were backstage – not to pilfer alcohol under the cover of fluorescent dressing-room striplights – but to wait for Pete and his girlfriend to turn up, in a room that happened to have THE ANTLERS and JULI ZEH & SLUT emblazoned on the outside.It's strange meeting your heroes, let alone limbering yourself up to interview them onstage two nights on the go. In a way, I felt nervous speaking to Pete between the events, for fear of running out of things to gabble about in front of the audience. Due to my self-made reclusive nature, I do have a habit of being a mumbling paranoiac at times. While drink is the perfect tool to drag someone out of their shell, it does have a habit of turning my skull into a bottomless black hole, and transforming my tongue into a slippery, incoherent mess. A lot like an actual oyster.It was difficult interviewing Sonic – not so much because he was stoned, and I was starstruck – but because booze, by its very nature, helps you forget things. In general, I don't mind speaking in public but, after converting all your continental munten tokens into booze, your mind can turn from an uninhibited wonderland to an uninhabitable wilderness.It's not very rock'n'roll, not being able to talk. Then again, it's not very rock and roll, beating your chest and acting silly. Drink can be a safety net for the socially awkward, or it can be a transcendent trampoline to the troposphere. Ultimately, it's the amnesiac properties of ethanol that make put-on rock posturing pointless – after all, what's the use in trying to impress your mates with desperate recklessness when no one's going to remember it in the morning? If I really had balls, I'd start going onstage stone-cold sober, but then I'd probably be even more timid and tongue-tied and, worst of all, I'd remember all about it in the morning.Rock'n'roll play acting: it's enough to make you want to smash some bottles and shit.Pop and rockguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
In praise of… the Que reader Ten years ago two Cambridge professors, Sir Richard Friend and Henning Sirringhaus, decided to venture into business together. The world-class experts in electronics joined up to form Plastic Logic – a fresh venture that focused on a new idea: electronic books. While the public has taken a long time to warm to the concept, the intervening decade meant there was plenty at stake when the company finally unveiled its first product, the Que, at last week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Fortunately, it immediately proved a success and stood out as one of the few truly innovative technologies on display. Simple to use, easy to read and light as a feather, the Que's e-ink screen looks and works like touch-sensitive paper – and feels more powerful than competitors like Amazon's Kindle. It is not without its problems – including the speed limitations of e-ink, which make it feel like an early 1990s computer, and a high price tag of at least £400 – but the Que marks a significant advance, nonetheless. While it isn't clear how long Plastic Logic will be a leader in ebooks – particularly since Apple looks set to unveil its own competing device at the end of this month – it is exciting to see a British company at the vanguard of innovation once again. The company might be headquartered in the heart of Silicon Valley, and it is not yet clear when the ebook will be launched in the UK, but it is heartening to see that the spirit that drove the UK's technology industry to new heights in the 1980s is still very much alive.Consumer Electronics Show (CES)EbooksGadgetsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |