Freedom of speech won't feed my children?

Something is rotten in the state of _____.

"Good evening, London. Allow me first to apologize for this interruption. I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of every day routine- the security of the familiar, the tranquility of repetition. I enjoy them as much as any bloke. But in the spirit of commemoration, thereby those important events of the past usually associated with someone's death or the end of some awful bloody struggle, a celebration of a nice holiday, I thought we could mark this November the 5th, a day that is sadly no longer remembered, by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a little chat. There are of course those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now, orders are being shouted into telephones, and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent. Last night I sought to end that silence. Last night I destroyed the Old Bailey, to remind this country of what it has forgotten. More than four hundred years ago a great citizen wished to embed the fifth of November forever in our memory. His hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words, they are perspectives. So if you've seen nothing, if the crimes of this government remain unknown to you then I would suggest you allow the fifth of November to pass unmarked. But if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek, then I ask you to stand beside me one year from tonight, outside the gates of Parliament, and together we shall give them a fifth of November that shall never, ever be forgot."

Spectres of the past

Bosnia's long shadow over British foreign policy,

Neocons and their critics

1. Check out the following links here and here on the buzzword which apparently shaped the Bush years. An interesting piece why the world may really need these liars.

2. You can also ignore it (aka the politics of Strauss, Wolfowitz and the rest) and simply read a more proactive op-ed :)

Demagogues?

The Economist's blog "Democracy in America" on the ghost haunting Europe and her younger sibling.

Why Nostromo matters

Some perspectives on Joseph Conrad's novel:

The Absent Narrative Review

Yale Review

Conrad's Nostromo and the Third World

The Winter of His Discontent

Drinking coffee is short of pain
Unless the student is dreaming of mutiny
Stuck-up and snooty; spiteful and vain
Noblemen and servant; alas, under our scrutiny

The coach is passing
- The culprit blubbered and whined
The disciple sprang open
-The assassin is kneeling; helpless and blind

The gun was held by a nervous, tiny hand
-The killer shed many tears, be-mourning his land
-A shot, a noise
the fragile sissy finally falls
-A sob and a howl,
in unity, brotherhood crawls

Agents of empire, chasing the truth
Their swords and guns, hidden as sleuth
Vestiges of horses, leaving pain and despair
Humanity?
The king in the story did not really care

Swindles of constraint
Resistance – elapsed!
A tempest as brute as unforgiving
seeding new men

Who isn’t misled?

living pestilence
feudal castration
fortified villages
a vain fabrication

The sinuous army advances through landscapes
Of poverty and destitution
Scrunching and squashing
Seeking retribution
For the bequeathed crown
Darkly gleaming chariots with no brakes

The last one standing is a mischievous loner
whose self-neglect and feverish will
destroyed in rage his heavenly owner
saved grace, despite sheer maenadic thrill

too late it was though; alone he surrendered
aristocracy blossomed, the flowers decayed

in a prison he spent days of dementia
until a priest came to him and declared:
“Dazzled cuckoo, you just wait for a death’s man!”
and so it happened…revenge of the laird!

Disguised as fellow sinner, in tattered old cloth
she came to him, consoling them both

The gift was conserved salacity
His teeth in the stockings, serving the plan
he finally erupted, torpid with alacrity
ceased to be a fighter
became a decomposed man

In the court of imposture
where Nausea is ruling
occupied by cringers and arcane plotters alike
Civilized hordes!
decency seldom is blooming
the dykes not staking the Reich

the monarch’s scribe declares victory
his sycophants’ cheers
equal a brawl
the king’s deepest pride; terror as remedy
does not foresee
his infinite fall

a final paradox though, in the mould of the converted
– the priest is speaking, alone and deserted

“Oh Brothers! How bleak is life?
The king has cake,
though where’s the bread?
I was mistaken, for after all this strife
I dare to say, death’s mask is white, not red”

Zone

Book Review: A Zone united by infinite sorrow - Mathias Énard’s take on the legacy of bloodshed in and around the Mediterranean

Our business in the field of fight is not to question, but to prove our might.

-Homer, the Iliad

Whilst the unrest in North Africa and the Middle East continues, social scientists and journalists keep on writing their first article drafts and chapters on those significant events. Indeed, the Arab Spring has become the conscience of the world. Soon there will be even more reports, blogs and tweets influencing public opinion and steering the discussions on the future of the volatile region. Maybe the newfound faith in liberal ideas will reignite the familiar debates about history’s end after the Cold War. The fall of the House of Mubarak, the Jasmine Revolution and the uprising against Qaddafi have shaken up the view that there is an inherent Arab or Muslim inclination to autocracy. But the belief in progress can always be shattered. The unclear standoff in Libya is just one concrete situation where the scales of fate swing between persistent hope and utter despair. 

Literature and fiction have always been dealing with human nature and the ambiguities of politics. Bearing in mind the upheavals of today, one should go two years back, when a French book had kept Europe’s feuilletons busy. The English translation is out now and could be read as a huge footnote to the current geopolitical wind of change. The young author Mathias Énard has written the last decades’ answer to the Iliad; a reflective tale of violence and tragedy set in present day Europe, encompassing everything you ever wanted to know about the history of warfare in the Mediterranean Basin, the titular Zone. 

The novel takes almost exclusively place in the head of a former French-Croat mercenary turned secret agent, who is travelling from Milan to Rome, carrying a suitcase with classified information about murders, false identities, massacres, collaborations and other shady materials. Francis Mirković, this anti-hero of the highly acclaimed novel, ponders upon his past and present and speculates about a possible future for a broken soul like him. The only way out: Selling the data to the Vatican, forgetting the yesteryear and starting a new life – somewhere.

Zone consists of anecdotic episodes, encyclopedic facts, essayistic excursions and even heartbreaking moments. It is written in just one ceaseless sentence from start to finish - yet it is still sufficiently arranged by punctuation. The novel is not about Francis’ journey but rather his thoughts; the architecture of a tormented mind. 

The reader gets a crash course on the history of violence starting with the Trojan War and ending with Guantanamo. In the course of over 500 pages one will look at the Mediterranean as an area which was baptized in fire and whose legacy still haunts and influences the Europe of today. Through the lens of Mirković, we are introduced to the Hobbesian idea that all history is a sequence of bloodbaths and that political conflict is in fact the root of many present-day challenges, whether it is illegal migration or the everlasting stalemate in the Holy Land.

The writer’s eloquence manifests itself through a variety of stylistic moves. At one point he masks as Scheherazade, weaving countless plots and counterplots together and then dissolving and reuniting them again with the ease of a gifted storyteller. After that he becomes a latter-day Homer, constructing deep lyrical passages through an accomplished usage of metaphors - only to be transformed later into something like literature’s Tarantino: using grotesque imagery and grim humor to underline the bizarre ways of war. 

Énard seems to strive towards the novelization of cinematic outputs such as Waltz with Bashir or No Man’s Land. Free of idealism, his portrayal of century-old carnage must appear as a surreal nightmare to the modern European or American reader without much recollection of war. Of course one can declare that Iraq and Afghanistan are our Vietnam; and recalling the victims of 9/11, the London bombings and other terrorist attacks may convince us that we are in a clear and present danger. But most people in the West merely watch hostilities on TV. Their Zone is the one of comfort; and it remains the task of books to bite the jovial reader, to create a readiness of mind to pick up the dirty bits, the trash-cans of history. 

The novel is a paradox since it manages to take the state of peace – a hero reflecting and musing during a voyage - and corrupt it (via recollections and memories) by almost all atrocities humanity had to endure in its ascent. Surprisingly, all these memories do add up to a very coherent and thrilling narrative. The endless sentence flies as time’s arrow and at the end, we are both impressed and partially scared of what is yet to come not only in the region but the whole world. Énard has navigated us through the story with stops in Cairo, Beirut, Algiers and many other places. With the benefit of hindsight, we know what happens there just today. How are we able to read of torture, executions and strife without bearing in mind the revolutionary events of early 2011; the protests in Tahrir Square and the Libyan uprising? 

Sometimes, fact becomes fiction. Then again, imagination turns out to be a more credible account of politics than a claim for objective truth. At one point, we read in Zone that Beirut isn’t actually haunted by a memory and loss, but rather a “dance of oblivion that only state-controlled memory allows.” In search of destiny in an absurd world, everything could be thus permitted. Such are the thoughts of Francis Mirković and who in the world would assert that this phrase has not spooked or poisoned his or her thoughts?

This pessimism is just one lesson we may draw from the novel. In addition to the actual content, there are many unwritten and hidden lines of melancholy along with the author’s inherent admiration of the area between Gibraltar and the Levant. The fictitious world of the Zone brings out civilization's dark side. But the greyish reality of the Mediterranean is not 100% adequately described by Énard's impressive, yet at times too apocalyptic prose. 

It isn’t just a graveyard, or how a Serbian poet has put it, a ‘blue tomb’. This Sea has harboured countless treasures; historians, political scientists and writers shouldn’t forget to remember this diverse legacy. Isn’t it a mosaic, a maritime fresco of fluctuation;  spanning a scope from the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World over the stunning spheres of Al-Andalus to the humanistic accomplishments born in the Renaissance era? Not only butchers and criminals, but also seafarers, merchants and explorers crossed the shores of this space. 

Yes, it may be filled with blood and tears. But lovers’ voices and friendship’s laughter still cause an echo which rectifies the gloomy notion that the Med is a vessel of sorrow.  

Zone is as much an (anti)-war novel as Full Metal Jacket is an (anti)-war movie. To measure it with the ordinary tools of a critic would mean to neglect the opportunity of going down the rabbit hole. Énard even presents a zone within the zone when Francis is reading a book by a (non-existent) writer about the Lebanese Civil War. This isn’t only a postmodern trick, since the subject of this episode is not a senseless massacre but rather love; albeit in its dark and doleful shape. 

In addition, the book contains an unequivocal warning against fascism. The author’s residence is Barcelona, a republican stronghold during the Spanish Civil War and later target of General Franco’s revenge. But ironically, Mirković is musing for a long time about the fascist cult hero Millan Astray, especially in the beginning of the novel, when he is reminded of this Spanish military leader by the very city where he starts his journey – Milan. The will to power and the will to serve and die for a cause are omnipresent ideas which always float over Francis’ actions and beliefs, and implicitly guide Zone’s other relevant passages.

The young boy has a state-legitimized torturer as father, a fanatic nationalist as mother, a full-blown fascist as best friend and a war criminal as hero. The adolescent has grown to serve and to kill. And the grown-up we see is nothing short of a monster…but he is our monster, from Milan to Roma, and he is our guide from the times of Achilles to Operation Enduring Freedom. We ponder about Guantanamo with his mind, we watch him debating morals and ethics of freedom fighters and we feel his unconscious desire for redemption. 

We may not be able to fully understand, let alone forgive him. But we also feel certain empathy, maybe even sympathy, since Énard directs his writing not only at persons and events but looks at the bigger picture where the book’s ostensive amorality actually comes from. The true gem of Zone is the novel’s vicinity to the type of thinking which ties isolated episodes into a more structural framework. Mirković is a character but he is also a symbol; a symbol for the thousands of young, angry men who have stirred up world history for ages. His ambience is the spatial time of the Mediterranean, an endlessly flowing stream of consciousness.

The reader is able to think of this history as a faceless and indifferent force, yet Mirković takes its parsimony or plenty as somehow planned, implicitly blaming fate for his life and still bravely accepting this verdict. Moreover, the novel leaves a certain tolerance for free will and the possibility of a choice. Some scenes suggest that nothing has to remain exactly as it is. And the reality in the Maghreb proves the writer of fiction right. Or at least, change lies within the realms of the possible. Exit Francis, the man who still loves a woman and who is not blindly following force anymore.  

This book is raising important questions about violence and the origins of conflict. But it doesn’t seek to proselytize. For the answers, look into your own zone. And think about it next time you see a revolt live on TV, because every revolution and every peace treaty are in the end, nothing more than some forking paths in a garden.