From Evil to Absurdity posted by Richard Seymour

The Evil of Banality

Hannah Arendt, according to Spike Magazine , "was, after Husserl, another Jew fucked by Heidegger." As the collected correspondence between the two most over-rated intellectuals of the 20th Century emerges, we learn just how banal two people can be when they know and love one another. You just don't write to your lover as if you're going to live forever in the public imagination and be accountable for what you write. On the other hand, if you're Abelard and Heloise , you have God breathing down your neck so you at least get the Latin right.

Telegraph Choking on its own Horseshit

Andrew Neil informs Evening Standard readers that the Daily Telegraph is likely to lose its libel case against George Galloway if it is forced to admit, as looks increasingly likely, that the documents it based its story on were possibly fake. They are likely to mount the defense that it was in the public interest to retail a bogus story since the source looked kind of credible at the time. Their stance over the Gilligan affair would tend to militate against such naked plea-bargaining:

"In fact, the BBC was in a slightly stronger position than the Telegraph since a respected source is clearly preferable to a dodgy document. But it was not good enough for the Telegraph, which took the BBC to task for broadcasting a story it could not prove to be true."

They might, however, have had a half-way decent defense if the article had been written by Con Coughlin , since wary readers know that everything he writes is some MI6 leaked confection of half-truths and fabrications. His latest revelation is that members of Iraq's "coalition government" claim to have found documentary evidence that proves Mohammed Atta was trained by Saddam Hussein in June 2001.

"[A] top secret memo written to Saddam Hussein, the then Iraqi president, by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service ... reports that Atta "displayed extraordinary effort" and demonstrated his ability to lead the team that would be "responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy"."

Not to be faulted for ambition, the documents also rehash the Niger-Uranium connection which Bush has just admitted was horseshit:

"The second part of the memo, which is headed "Niger Shipment", contains a report about an unspecified shipment - believed to be uranium - that it says has been transported to Iraq via Libya and Syria."

The source of the story appears to be Dr Ayad Allawai a stooge of US and British intelligence and member of the right-wing Iraqi National Accord, which was responsible for pushing fraudulent stories about Saddam's capacities on credulous media hacks like Judith Miller of the New York Times. He assures us that the story is accurate:

"We are uncovering evidence all the time of Saddam's involvement with al-Qaeda," he said. "But this is the most compelling piece of evidence that we have found so far. It shows that not only did Saddam have contacts with al-Qaeda, he had contact with those responsible for the September 11 attacks."

Translation:

"We are making stuff up all the time, but this time we've gone to the bother of forging another document so that idiots like you will take us seriously..."

The Dark Prince of Comedy

Not Richard Perle, but Bill Hicks has been very much in the news and reviews of late, on account of a new book coming out which posthumously collects his letters, lyrics and routines in one paperback volume this February 29th. It's called "Love All the People", a travesty of a title for a comedian whose finest moments were pure, refined, crystalline nuggets of loathing and rage. Nevertheless, you may now read about him courtesy of John Lahr , Bill Bailey & Spike Magazine . If you haven't witnessed the man's comedy, there's no way I can render it for you. Denis Leary does a good job of bastardising it, though.

"There ain't no one out there who’s a fuckin' threat to us, okay? They don't exist.
I'm talking now only of countries we don't arm first."
- Bill Hicks, Rant in E-Minor, ©1993.

How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered Francis Wheen

Francis Wheen has a new book out, and naturally enough, the effort itself makes a mockery of the author. I always think you're taking your reputation in your hands if you decide to make other people out to be nitwits, and Wheen doesn't disappoint. As per usual, he bangs on about the Kosovo intervention and how much more humane the liberal left was for supporting such a venture than the radical Left of John Pilger, Noam Chomsky et al. He has a few digs at market fundamentalists, New Age morons and Blairite bromides. But he subjects us to a blimpism or two of his own.

Namely, he smears Chomsky by rehashing some long discredited charges over Cambodia, stating that Chomsky "ridiculed" claims of mass atrocities by the Khmer Rouge, and "refused to believe" what was taking place. He cites as his two sources, Chomsky & Herman's Nation column "Distortions at 4th Hand" and their book, "After the Cataclysm" (1980). I've read both of these, incidentally, and it's not hard to see in what ways Wheen is falsifying.

I drew these passages of the book to Chomsky's attention, and he responded:

"It's intriguing that people who call themselves "liberals" are so infuriated when asked to tell the truth instead of to lie in support of the Holy State they worship, both by fabricating what they know to be false charges against official enemies, and denying what they know to be true charges about the blood on their own hands -- about which, I'm sure without reading, there is total silence in the book, despite his knowledge that we were comparing Cambodian crimes and US-UK-backed ongoing crimes then approaching genocide in East Timor that could easily have been stopped had people like him not been so utterly servile and cowardly, and in the article were making similar comparisons."

Additionally, just for fun, Wheen throws in a hallucinatory quote from Christopher Hitchens claiming that "progressives" were silent, or even would rather talk about the o-zone layer, when confronted with the question of whether the US should overthrow the Taliban. Apparently a plethora of best-selling books, packed debates, mass demonstrations and lengthy petitions counts as "silence".

Wheen is not as rambling and incoherent as Hitchens is these days, but his logic resonates with the standard liberal credulousness toward the state and toward power. The Kosovo war was humanitarian - how do we know this? Because those who waged the war say so. The attack on Afghanistan was about helping the people of Afghanistan - how do we know? Because those who launched the attack said so. Noam Chomsky 'ridiculed' claims of genocide coming out of Cambodia - how do we know? Because that has been the standard line from the New York Times to the Washington Post for the last twenty-five years. If Wheen had even bothered to read his cited sources completely, he would have seen how ridiculous those charges are. Christopher Hitchens, in a more lucid phase, summed these up quite adequately.

Finally, Conor Gearty has a few questions about the Hutton Report :

"If Gilligan's broadcast was so terrible, if the Blairs were having sleepless nights as a result of being accused of deceit, if the prime minister was shunned at home and abroad as a liar" then why didn't the PM just "sue for libel"?

Well! Sort of thing George Galloway would do, isn't it?