Tariq Ali: Toward A New Radical Politics

Paige Austin, Mother Jones

Tariq Ali's books garner wildly emphatic reviews on Amazon.com, alternately adoring and scathing depending on the politics of the reviewer — the kind of polarzied reactions you'd expect for the editor of The New Left Review.

Born and raised in pre-partition Pakistan, Ali studied at Oxford, where he became a fierce opponent of the Vietnam War; later, he broadened his critique to condemn what he saw as American imperialism in much of the world, especially the Middle East and Latin America. Along the way, he faced Henry Kissinger in debate and became a lifelong friend of Edward Said.

Though a committed leftist, Ali has never been narrowly political in his work. He has published dozens of books in a nearly 40-year career, ranging from historical fiction — early Islam is his most frequent topic — to political essay. His most recent work, Bush in Babylon, took aim at the American invasion of Iraq, a war which he might call a new chapter in the intertwined histories of Western imperialism and Muslim extremism chronicled in his previous work, Clash of Fundamentalisms.

It was hardly surprising, given this background, that Ali was among several writers — including Noam Chomsky, Jose Saramago and Howard Zinn — who recently signed two letters supporting Palestinians and Lebanese in the face of what they called Israel’s campaign of “deliberate and systematic destruction.”

“Each provocation and counter-provocation is contested and preached over,” they wrote in the first, dated July 19. “But the subsequent arguments, accusations and vows, all serve as a distraction in order to divert world attention from a long-term military, economic and geographic practice whose political aim is nothing less than the liquidation of the Palestinian nation.”

As well as an editor of the NLR Ali is editorial director of the leftist publishing house Verso, and he's a frequent contributor to The Guardian, Counterpunch, and The London Review of Books. He recently talked with Mother Jones about his views on the war in Lebanon, the need for an Islamic Reformation, and the rise of Latin America’s new left.

Mother Jones: In the letter that you and several other writers published on July 19, you said the “liquidation of the Palestinian nation” is proceeding more rapidly these days. How long have you felt that the possibility of Palestinian statehood is gone?

Tariq Ali: I have felt that for some years, even before these latest Israeli actions. Once it became clear to the Palestinians that the Oslo accords were a farce and that no Israeli government was prepared to implement even the limited concessions they had promised in them, then it was only a matter of time. My view has always been that either the Palestinians get a fair and just state or you have a single-state solution — there is no third way in between these two. Now, curiously, the Israelis by their own action have made a single state the only possible thing.

Interview with John Sinclair

Interview by Dean Kuipers

From the LA City Beat

The poet, activist, and counterculture impresario on weed,
Black Panthers, and the death throes of America the Beautiful

American culture has closed up around John Sinclair. There's
just not enough freedom in it any more -- not enough free
time, not enough outrage, not enough difference between one
place and the next, not enough high culture or genuine
bohemia, not enough Sun Ra or Dylan. Anyone who didn't live
through his era -- or, more particularly, through his life
-- might not know what he's talking about. Poet, founder of
a 1960s arts collective called the Detroit Artists Workshop,
and manager of the proto-punk rock band MC5, Sinclair
co-founded the White Panther Party in 1968 after one of his
heroes, Black Panther Party leader Huey Newton, said in an
interview that the best thing white people could do to
support their struggle was to start such a thing. So he did.
And paid the price, serving a couple years of a
nine-and-a-half-to ten-year prison term for marijuana
distribution after police started swarming the group.

He was released after John Lennon and others put on a
concert in his defense, but that probably wouldn't happen
today. The White Panther Party credo of "rock 'n' roll,
dope, and fucking in the streets" is completely impossible
in a world where only millionaires are considered real
artists and Americans happily embrace domestic wiretapping
and corporate spook culture. Well, hell, it was impossible
back then, too. But the difference is: Sinclair and a
million other beautiful dreamers believed it.

"The Fidel Castro I Know"

Gabriel García Márquez

His fondness for words. His power of seduction. He hunts for a
problem wherever it is. The impelling force of inspiration is befits
his style. The breadth of his tastes is very well reflected in his
books. He gave up his cigars so as to have the moral authority to
fight smoking. He likes to prepare recipes with a sort of scientific
fervor. He keeps in excellent shape through several hours of daily
exercise and frequent swimming. Invincible patience. Strict
discipline. He's drawn toward the unexpected by the force of his
imagination. Learning to work is as important as learning to rest.

Fatigued by talking, he rests by talking. He writes well and likes to
do it. His greatest motivation in life is the emotion of risk. The
rostrum of an improviser seems to be his perfect ecological element.
When he starts speaking, his voice is always hard to hear and his
course is uncertain, but he takes advantage of anything to gain
ground, little by little, until he takes a kind of swipe and takes
possession of his audience. He's the inspiration: the irresistible
and dazzling state of grace only denied by those who lack the glory
to feel it. He's the quintessential anti-dogmatist.

He's been sufficiently talented to incorporate the ideas of José
Martí, his bedtime author, to a Marxist revolution's bloodstream. The
essence of his own thoughts lies perhaps in his certainty that
working with the masses means first of all taking care of
individuals.

Apocalypse No!

Juan Santos

From the beginning, this culture—civilization—
has been a culture of occupation. - Derrick Jensen

It's scripted: a tragedy whose end is embedded in its beginnings, an
unfolding logic whose conclusion is the inevitable result of its premises.

It's simple. And obvious. We find ourselves in the midst of the most
rapid mass extinction in Earth's history; we have the power to all-but
end life on Earth. We can do so with nuclear weapons, today, in Iran,
or simply by turning the ignition switch on our automobiles and
gliding over paved surfaces where nothing can live. A little more
carbon dioxide, just a little, will tip the scale - unleashing our
potential for matching the greatest mass extinction ever – the one
called The Great Dying.

Science has given us until roughly 2012 to take radical action to
change the course we're on. In the next six years, they tell us, we
will determine the fate of the Earth.
With the US and its white colonial puppet Israel on a nuclear
collision course with Iran and Syria, we may have less time than that.

250 million years ago 95% of all species died. Only one large land
animal was left. Carbon dioxide and methane – the two most deadly of
the greenhouse gases – were responsible. We can do it again. We've
followed the script, we know our lines, and we've reached the final scene.

For that reason, this is a most exciting juncture for the Armageddon
mongers among us.

That's most of who believe in the colonizer's religion, in the Beast,
the Great Tribulation, the Four Horsemen, the Seven Seals, and the
other visions of St. John the Apocalyptic, whose hallucinogenic
fantasies penetrated clearly into the essence, unveiling the
inevitable end, the direction this civilization must head and the end
it must reach.