>Some of Sweden’s top writers demonstrate their style. Everything in this post is stolen without kind permission from the Highlights blog.
Abyss, Assma, Dire, Gauge, Ikaroz, Italy, Kaos, Polar, Pomac, Skil and Tiff2.
Abyss burning a black book.
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This article is based on John Mearsheimer‘s talk in Oslo, October 5th 2009. The personal rants are all mine, though. John doesn’t seem to be a man of swear words…
Huge thanks to John for sending me the speech, both in English and in Norwegian.
President Obama is a man of words, but is he a man of action? During his presidential campaign 2008 and since taking office, he made – and still makes – a lot of promises. Regarding U.S. policy in the Middle East he made it very clear that he was committed to settling the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. To do this he would get Israel to stop expanding its settlements in the occupied territories and – in the future – allow the Palestinians to have their own state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Also, he said that he – as opposed to George W. Bush – believed in diplomatic, serious negotiations with Iran, instead of military attacks and threats of economic sanctions.
However, this will probably never happen, since the Israel Lobby simply won’t allow such humane behaviour.
The Netanyahu government in Israel is opposed to giving the Palestinians their own state, and it is also deeply committed to expanding the settlements. No president will be allowed to play the hardball game with Israel, because the goal is to control the whole West Bank and the Gaza Strip, leaving the Arabs with small enclaves inside Israel – pretty much like a white-ruled South Africa. Read more about zionism here.
As for Iran, it is looked upon as an existential threat to the Jewish state, and the Israel Lobby and its supporters have no interest in talking to a regime who, they believe, wants to ”wipe Israel off the map” (fact is, Ahmadinejad never said that, read more about that in the Propaganda for war article).
Note that Israel is the only country in the world advocating war against Iran. Inside the U.S., there are only pro-Israel individuals and dito organizations who support using force in this case. In fact, there would be little talk about attacking Iran if Israel and the Lobby were not bitching about war all the time. And again: who are the ones in possession of nuclear weapons? Also read this article in The Economist.
Even though Israel constantly do things that the U.S. opposes, they still get more foreign aid – billions of dollars each year – than any other country. Every goddamn American president since 1967 has – in theory, in meek words – opposed settlement-building in the occupied territories, still Israel continues to break the rules. And they’re not being punished – they’re constantly being rewarded. Why is that? The answer: the enormous power of the Israel Lobby. America is completely impotent when it comes to dealing with Israel. Serious criticism of Israel is never heard of from American officials. It’s a joke, really.
Ok, Obama made it very clear that he would like to see a stop of any settlement activity, and that he’d like a Palestinian state. However, Netanyahu also made it very clear that he would not stop, and that he didn’t like the idea of a two-state solution. Who won? Israel, of course. This tiny country in a distant region continue to rule the giant U.S. colossus. Isn’t that strange?
John Mearsheimer:
Netanyahu not only refused to stop building 2500 housing units in the West Bank, but just to make it clear to Obama who was boss, in late June, he authorized the building of 300 new homes in the West Bank. Netanyahu refused to even countenance any limits on settlement building in East Jerusalem, which is supposed to be the capitol of a Palestinian state. In fact, Israel went ahead, despite American protests, and converted an old Arab hotel in East Jerusalem into a Jewish apartment building. The Israelis also expelled two Arab families from their homes that they had lived in for 50 years and issued tenders for 468 new apartments in East Jerusalem.
Obama meekly asked Israel to please ”restrain” itself while it continued colonizing the West Bank.
Talk is cheap.
Change?
Hope?
Yes we can?
No, you can’t. Not when it comes to Israel and the lobby.
The Israel Lobby’s influence is at its peak during the presidential campaigns. You won’t ever witness such a campaign without the mentioning if this tiny but powerful country.
After Obama had won the election he remained perfectly silent during the recent Gaza massacre. The whole world stood up and criticized Israel for its brutal assault, but Obama kept quiet. A few months later he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize…
I still wonder about all you naïve Obama worshippers who cried during his inaugural speech: when are you going to wake the fuck up?
When reading this, and since it’s such a sensitive subject just mentioning Jews, I think it’s of great importance that you recognize this: the Lobby is defined by its political agenda, not by ethnicity or religion. The Israel Lobby is not necessarily synonymous with Jewish-Americans. The Christian Zionists, for example, that work on Israel’s behalf, are not Jewish.
In other words: your shallow hate mongering about anti-Semitism does not compute.
To be continued…
EDIT:
Monday, 16 november 2009, The Independent publishes an interesting article entitled “Palestinian push for an independent state causes Israeli alarm“. Pretty much says it all…
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Since I like photos of endless, desolate roads and The Road so much, I once again give you a grim motherfucker of a Cormac McCarthy quote from hell. Or something like that.
I just got a hold of some of the songs from the soundtrack composed by the master duo Nick Cave & Warren Ellis, and I’ll be damned if this film won’t do it for me. The songs are close to perfection. The book is close to perfection. But the trailer is not that good, actually. Hopefully there’ll be a lot more mysticism, ashes, darkness and melancholy involved. As for the mysticism aspect, one of the great things about the book is that you never know what really happened, what caused the apocalypse.
The horror! The horror!
When your dreams are of some world that never was or of some world that will never be and you are happy again then you will have given up. Do you understand? And you cant give up. I wont let you.
[…]
Things will be better when everybody’s gone.
They will?
Sure they will.
Better for who?
Everybody.
Everybody.
Sure. We’ll all be better off. We’ll all breathe easier.
That’s good to know.
Yes it is. When we’re all gone at last then there’ll be nobody here but death and his days will be numbered too. He’ll be out in the road with nothing to do and nobody to do it to. He’ll say: Where did everybody go? And that’s how it will be be. What’s wrong with that?[…]
Do you think that your fathers are watching? That they weigh you in their ledgerbook? Against what? There is no book and your fathers are dead in the ground.
[…]
Everything was covered in ash.
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I still return to The Road, now probably because the movie is just around the corner, but ever since I first read it in December 2006 (read more here) I’ve been reading bits and pieces over and over again. Just like one does with good poetry. The way that Cormac McCarthy deals with the love and the darkness of mankind just overwhelms me every time. There are many passages where the dialogue between the man and the boy is so sparse, yet so very tense. There is all the room in the world for long and intricate conversations, but there are none. Simply because they are getting ready to die in a world where everything is lost, where everything is ashes and darkness and hopelessness.
The mother of the boy chose suicide when she realized that this was the end, when she watched distant cities burn. This makes the tenderness and the love shared between father and son even more heartwrenching. The post apocalypse has never been better.
This excerpt, where the man and the boy meet up with a lone traveller, a very old and torn man, is a good example of how the atmosphere, the cold, wet, ashen landscape, slowly devours the human bodies, but cannot fully erase the human emotions. Mind over matter.
How long have you been on the road?
I was always on the road. You cant stay in one place.
How do you live?
I just keep going. I knew this was coming.
You knew it was coming?
Yeah. This or something like it. I always believed in it.
Did you try to get ready for it?
No. What would you do?
I dont know.
People were always getting ready for tomorrow. I didnt believe in that. Tomorrow wasnt getting ready for them. It didnt even know they were there.
I guess not.
Even if you knew what to do you wouldnt know what to do. You wouldnt know if you wanted to do it or not. Suppose you were the last one left? Suppose you did that to yourself?
Do you wish you would die?
No. But I might wish I had died. When you’re alive you’ve always got that ahead of you.
Or you might wish you’d never been born.
Well. Beggars cant be choosers.
You think that would be asking too much.
What’s done is done. Anyway, it’s foolish to ask for luxuries in times like these.
I guess so.
Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave. He lifted his head and looked across the fire at the boy. Then he looked at the man. The man could see his small eyes watching him in the firelight. God knows what those eyes saw. He got up to pile more wood on the fire and he raked the coals back from the dead leaves. The red sparks rose in a shudder and died in the blackness overhead. The old man drank the last of his coffee and set the bowl before him and leaned toward the heat with his hands out. The man watched him. How would you know if you were the last man on earth? he said.
I don’t guess you would know it. You’d just be it.
Nobody would know it.
It wouldnt make any difference. When you die it’s the same as if everybody else did too.
I guess God would know it. Is that it?
There is no God.
No?
There is no God and we are his prophets.
>Praise to Doom-Jon for spreading the gospel.
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When reading Michel Houellebecq‘s fantastic discussion of H.P. Lovecraft in Against the World, Against Life, I browsed the web for further information and thus stumbled upon one of the best articles ever written about one of my favourite authors. Of course, it was written by Houellebecq…
The link.
The text:
‘Perhaps one needs to have suffered a great deal in order to appreciate Lovecraft … ‘
Jacques BergierLife is painful and disappointing. It is useless, therefore, to write new, realistic novels. We generally know where we stand in relation to reality and don’t care to know any more. Humanity, such as it is, inspires only an attenuated curiosity in us. All those prodigiously refined notations, situations, anecdotes … All they do, once a book has been set aside, is reinforce the slight revulsion that is already adequately nourished by any one of our “real life” days.
Now, here is Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937): “I am so beastly tired of mankind and the world that nothing can interest me unless it contains a couple of murders on each page or deals with the horrors unnameable and unaccountable that leer down from the external universes.” We need a supreme antidote against all forms of realism.
* * *
Those who love life do not read. Nor do they go to the movies, actually. No matter what might be said, access to the artistic universe is more or less entirely the preserve of those who are a little fed up with the world.
As for Lovecraft, he was more than a little fed up. In 1908 at the age of 18, he suffered what has been described as a “nervous breakdown” and plummeted into a lethargy that lasted about 10 years. At the age when his old classmates were hurriedly turning their backs on childhood and diving into life as into some marvellous, uncensored adventure, he cloistered himself at home, speaking only to his mother, refusing to get up all day, wandering about in a dressing gown all night.
What’s more, he wasn’t even writing.
What was he doing? Reading a little, maybe. We can’t even be sure of this. In fact, his biographers have had to admit they don’t know much at all, and that, judging from appearances – at least between the ages of 18 and 23 – he did absolutely nothing.
Then, between 1913 and 1918, very slowly, the situation improved. Gradually, he re-established contact with the human race. It was not easy. In May 1918 he wrote to Alfred Galpin: “I am only about half alive – a large part of my strength is consumed in sitting up or walking. My nervous system is a shattered wreck and I am absolutely bored and listless save when I come upon something which peculiarly interests me.”
It is definitely pointless to embark on a dramatic or psychological reconstruction. Because Lovecraft is a lucid, intelligent and sincere man. A kind of lethargic terror descended upon him as he turned 18 and he knew the reason for it perfectly well. In a 1920 letter he revisits his childhood at length. The little railway set whose cars were made of packing-cases, the coach house where he had set up his puppet theatre. And later, the garden he had designed, laying out each of its paths. It was irrigated by a system of canals that were his own handiwork, its ledges enclosed a small lawn at the centre of which stood a sundial. It was, he said, “the paradise of my adolescent years”.
Then comes this passage that concludes the letter: “Then I perceived with horror that I was growing too old for pleasure. Ruthless Time had set its fell claw upon me, and I was 17. Big boys do not play in toy houses and mock gardens, so I was obliged to turn over my world in sorrow to another and younger boy who dwelt across the lot from me. And since that time I have not delved in the earth or laid out paths and roads. There is too much wistful memory in such procedure, for the fleeting joy of childhood may never be recaptured. Adulthood is hell.”
Adulthood is hell. In the face of such a trenchant position, “moralists” today will utter vague opprobrious grumblings while waiting for a chance to strike with their obscene intimations. Perhaps Lovecraft actually could not become an adult; what is certain is that he did not want to. And given the values that govern the adult world, how can you argue with him? The reality principle, the pleasure principle, competitiveness, permanent challenges, sex and status – hardly reasons to rejoice.
Lovecraft, for his part, knew he had nothing to do with this world. And at each turn he played a losing hand. In theory and in practice. He lost his childhood; he also lost his faith. The world sickened him and he saw no reason to believe that by looking at things better they might appear differently. He saw religions as so many sugar-coated illusions made obsolete by the progress of science. At times, when in an exceptionally good mood, he would speak of the enchanted circle of religious belief, but it was a circle from which he felt banished, anyway.
Few beings have ever been so impregnated, pierced to the core, by the conviction of the absolute futility of human aspiration. The universe is nothing but a furtive arrangement of elementary particles. A figure in transition toward chaos. That is what will finally prevail. The human race will disappear. Other races in turn will appear and disappear. The skies will be glacial and empty, traversed by the feeble light of half-dead stars. These too will disappear. Everything will disappear. And human actions are as free and as stripped of meaning as the unfettered movement of the elementary particles. Good, evil, morality, sentiments? Pure “Victorian fictions”. All that exists is egotism. Cold, intact and radiant.
Lovecraft was well aware of the distinctly depressing nature of his conclusions. As he wrote in 1918, “all rationalism tends to minimalise the value and the importance of life, and to decrease the sum total of human happiness. In some cases the truth may cause suicidal or nearly suicidal depression.”
He remained steadfast in his materialism and atheism. In letter after letter he returned to his convictions with distinctly masochistic delectation.
Of course, life has no meaning. But neither does death. And this is another thing that curdles the blood when one discovers Lovecraft’s universe. The deaths of his heroes have no meaning. Death brings no appeasement. It in no way allows the story to conclude. Implacably, HPL destroys his characters, evoking only the dismemberment of marionettes. Indifferent to these pitiful vicissitudes, cosmic fear continues to expand. It swells and takes form. Great Cthulhu emerges from his slumber.
To be continued in this article…
