tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1023809150725835717.post4223969127321535001..comments2023-11-05T01:05:38.453-08:00Comments on chespeak: When Malcolm X Came Calling to OxfordAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08922847649122074587noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1023809150725835717.post-50087520846751211182018-11-19T06:16:13.613-08:002018-11-19T06:16:13.613-08:00Christopher Lindsay writes from UK:
Dear Chekkutt...Christopher Lindsay writes from UK:<br /><br />Dear Chekkutty,<br /><br />It is such a thrill for me to read what you have drawn together. I have read some of Tony's stuff and heard a few anecdotes, but his political life and the ebb and flow of his allegiances were not part of the "family compartment" in Henry's discretely compartmentalised life. This is a great pity because several of us in his family could have engaged with pleasure, despite not being children of the ideals of the 60s. Only his sister was "right of Ghenghis Khan" which so infuriated him, as he saw her views to be received and not in the least considered, that politics was kept entirely outside the family discourse. <br /><br />I asked him two or three times about the Malcolm X debate, but you won far more from him with your e-mail correspondence. He had not even owned up to the dinner story when reminiscing with me, so thank you again for adding these extra dimensions.<br /><br />I share your sense that in 2016 we crossed some dreadful watershed. We enter a world in which digital media serves to re-enforce our existing prejudices and deny balanced reporting to generalist readers.<br /><br />In the financial world companies now meet less with investors and give less information about their activities, because they fear being sued in case they divulge some info that is later considered to be of financial significance "inside info". Men fear to be outspoke, or robust in their views, when in the presence of women in case they let slip a guarded remark. In UK we have all heard of members of the British Jewish and Polish community who say they can not help feeling/imagining a growing hostility and sense that they are unwelcome in the country. it seem it only takes a pinch something nasty to spoil the soup.<br /><br />My world is that of investment, and especially thinking how pension funds should invest to preserve and grow the capital of their members so there is enough to look after them in old age. But even the financial press is becoming harder access. The Financial Times no longer publishes a daily commodity report or bond report. The screens of Mayor Bloomberg which are universal on City desk and provide access to all manner of financial market data and news, cost £8,000-10,000 pa to rent and so even top financiers share one between two. Previously you could find out about the shipping world by buying a copy of Lloyd's List and now it must be subscribed to on line. Even for the rich capitalists access to information is getting more difficult and that data is coming from a single source, homogenised. This is a really bad, unhelpful development, which in my areas of expertise seems to be leading to "groupthink" and greater polarisation of views. <br /><br />It was strange that at the Centenary Celebrations of the end of WWI which were held at Compiegne and Paris and organised by Macron there were no members of the British Government or the Royal Family. At one event we saw Merkel and Macron sobbing in each others arms with Merkel laying her head on Macron's shoulder, at the great Review Macron had sixty world leaders including Trump and Putin, who gave Trump a cheeky thumbs up, but no British. I can't imagine that Britain refused to attend. I can't imagine that Brexit is more important than NATO or WWI. Every family in Britain, across Europe and also the Dominions were touched by the horror of that war and had the opportunity to ask themselves if the outcome was worth the sacrifice. So in this increasingly polarised world is definitely being made to feel out of Europe, punished by the EU for daring to resist political union, and also feel a sense that history is being denied and re-scripted without Britain.<br /><br />Yes. I would love to hear Henry's views opal of this.<br /><br />Best wishes for now,<br />Christopher <br /><br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08922847649122074587noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1023809150725835717.post-57959658699003477162018-11-19T05:42:57.932-08:002018-11-19T05:42:57.932-08:00Christopher Penn of BACSA writes from UK:
Dear Ch...Christopher Penn of BACSA writes from UK:<br /><br />Dear Chekkutty,<br /><br />Thank you so much for this fascinating blog. Some of it I already knew, but there was much that I did not. <br /><br />Henry and I used to meet occasionally in his London club, The Travellers, which was another place where he felt at home. I am not a member myself but many of my friends are and I would typify them as open-minded and citizens of the world like him; while, as always in a club, there are also some stuffy elements.<br /><br />I look forward to reading part 2.<br /><br />I am copying Henry’s niece Victoria who is now doing valuable work for BACSA on our website.<br /><br />With best wishes,<br /><br />Christopher<br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08922847649122074587noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1023809150725835717.post-3924540042418649462018-11-19T05:37:04.485-08:002018-11-19T05:37:04.485-08:00S Sircar writes on the British Raj India list:
I...S Sircar writes on the British Raj India list: <br /><br />It is the Nilgiri Hills Christian Memorials and the Malabar Christian Memorials on that page that are an added delight, in a world in which it looks as if all traces of these things are destined for destruction, and not solely by neglect, either (see the article itself). <br /><br />I wish there were a consolidated bibliography of items such as these. <br /><br />A few days ago, the BBC had an article on the grave of the author of "Pale Hands I Loved beside the Shalimar" somewhere in an overgrown churchyard in Madras-Chennai, with never a suggestion that money could be sent to BACSA to clear that churchyard up. <br /><br />Sanjay Sircar<br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08922847649122074587noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1023809150725835717.post-19083184915445072292018-11-17T05:43:26.546-08:002018-11-17T05:43:26.546-08:00Michael Stevenage writes from UK:
It is very inte...Michael Stevenage writes from UK:<br /><br />It is very interesting though his left of centre politics are not my cup of tea.<br /><br />Have you thought about writing a biography about him and include the high political dramas and if I may say so the melodramas of the late 1960’s, 1970’s and 1980’s. There will be a lot of material about this period. He is right about Corbyn though and I agree he will never be elected as Prime Minister of the UK. In 1969 I was studying at a local college and even there all the talk was of a socialist “uprising”. Sadly I never made it to University as I had to go out to work to support my family. <br /><br />Well, as you are aware nothing ever happened and the governments of those periods lurched from one economic crisis to another the pinnacle of foolishness being that disastrous Maastricht Treaty of 1992 that John Major signed us up to. On reflection most UK citizens were unaware of the consequences of that treaty and I am sure if they had known they would never have agreed to its premise. By the way my father once told me that there would never be a revolution in the UK as people were more interested in their shops and homes/ “castles”.<br /><br />By the way It is crunch time today for Mrs May in respect of the Draft EU Withdrawal Treaty (500 pages). A cabinet meeting is now in progress and should finish around 17:00 UK time. Personally I think it is a great betrayal ( and her own words) of the people who voted to leave the EU, I being one as it ties us to a Customs Union for the time being. It’s the Irish question again. One calls to mind that well-worn phrase of the “Tail wagging the dog”.<br /><br /> Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08922847649122074587noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1023809150725835717.post-84848994284286783452018-11-13T22:08:26.306-08:002018-11-13T22:08:26.306-08:00Continues from earlier comment post:
Der Weg de...Continues from earlier comment post: <br /><br /><br />Der Weg der neuern Bildung geht: <br />Von Humanität, <br />Durch Nationalität, <br />Zur Bestialität. <br /><br />(The road of modern education leads: From humanity, Through nationality, To barbarity.) <br /> <br />I’d like to unpack this sentence fragment further, since, of all of Kraus’s lines, it’s probably the one that has meant the most to me. An “infernal machine” is an explosive or destructive device constructed to deliberately cause harm; the German term, Teufelswerk (literally “devil’s work”), sharpens the Krausian paradox of the phrase “of humanity.” Kraus in this passage is evoking the Sorcerer’s Apprentice—the unintended unleashing of supernaturally destructive consequences. Although he’s talking about the modern newspaper, his critique applies, if anything, even better to contemporary techno-consumerism. For Kraus, the infernal thing about newspapers was their fraudulent coupling of Enlightenment ideals with a relentless and ingenious pursuit of profit and power. With techno-consumerism, a humanist rhetoric of “empowerment” and “creativity” and “freedom” and “connection” and “democracy” abets the frank monopoly of the techno-titans; the new infernal machine seems increasingly to obey nothing but its own developmental logic, and it’s far more enslaving and addictive, and far more pandering to people’s worst impulses, than newspapers ever were. <br /><br />Best regards,<br />jayasankarAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08922847649122074587noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1023809150725835717.post-31266900263324401462018-11-13T22:07:15.498-08:002018-11-13T22:07:15.498-08:00Jayasankar writes from Switzerland:
The below st...Jayasankar writes from Switzerland: <br /><br />The below struck me as on the dot.<br /><br />“I am afraid that I do not at all share your enthusiasm. Firstly, Corbyn is a second-rater. Secondly, his ambition seems to be to take us back to the disastrous situation we were in during the 1970s and 80s, when the economy was in chaos and everyone seemed to be on strike. Today we have some of the highest growth and lowest unemployment in Europe. In answer to your last email, there is indeed a turn to the left but it is the activists who are turning, not the public. None of the opinion polls suggest that the public wants a far left government, and indeed they have only just elected a Tory one. When Marxist parties stand in elections they usually get under 5% of the vote and lose their deposit. Corbyn will have a brief honeymoon because he is a new face, but he is not at all a credible prime minister. Speaking personally I feel completely disenfranchised by the absence of a sensible centre-left party which reflects my views.”<br /><br />May is not going to be replaced by Corbyn. There is no new ideation there (not just Corbyn's fault, is the same with all these hyped new left movements - Americans now call their's "democratic socialism" as if changing the order of a phrase is an idea).It will most probably be a 'nutter'(as the English would say) like Boris Johnson or worst an UKIP/EDL semi-fascist type. (There is a Sangh Parivar parallel there - May (Vajpayee) to externally hosted Togadia (Nigel Farage) - they are yet to find their Amit Shah tho.<br /><br />Down with a flu, I read this blog in the middle of rereading ' The Kraus Project' (heavily recommended) which parallels Brownringg's skepticism of the trajectories of the day to that of the last century.<br /> <br />Kraus points to the parallel rise of mass industrialization and mass media and that of fascism. He implies direct causation to the cultural degradation by mass media which is contestable but is still an interesting parallel for today with the digital economy and digital+social media and the seemingly inexorable rise of the totally detestable. (Something like WhatsApp that was hacked together hardly a decade ago to remove SMS charges - look at its all pervasive impact on billions of people now...)<br /><br />A key factor for Kraus was that technology and modernization were diminishing the space that the imagination needed to thrive. Once the popular imagination has atrophied, the likelihood that technology will be misused hardens into a certainty.When the general catastrophe then arrived, in the form of the First World War, Kraus believed that was caused in large part by a failure of the Austrian imagination, which wasn’t strong to begin with, and which had been fatally enfeebled by the mass press, at a moment of unparalleled technological might. Not long after the war began, Kraus claimed that the very signature of our time is the threat our lack of imagination has come to pose: ‘in this time in which what people could no longer imagine is precisely what happens, and in which what they can no longer imagine has to happen, and if they could have imagined it, it wouldn’t have happened…’ “ Kraus exhorted his readers to think as hard as they could about their linguistic options. Doing so was, he believed, the best practice for ethical decision making. Because our deliberating over language usually takes place with neither the threat of punishment nor the prospect of gain hanging over it, it can teach us, in a uniquely unconstrained way, to hesitate, to have ‘scruples,’ and to be sensitive to nuance and thus to particularity. There was a time when these ideas resonated; more even than Kraus’s claims about journalism and the Great War, they’re what prompted critics to credit him with seeing, as one of them put it, ‘the connection between mistreated words and mistreated bodies.’<br /> <br />Continues in the next...<br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08922847649122074587noreply@blogger.com