Howard Zinn 1922-2010

Saddened to read of the death of Howard Zinn. Daniel Ellsberg has a tribute.

Like many people the first time I came across mention of his name was when I saw Good Will Hunting, in the scene where Matt Damon’s character tells his counsellor played by Robin Williams that he should read Zinn’s A People’s History of The United States. I didn’t get round to reading it until about six years later. It’s a monumental, intensely moving and bracing work of committed political writing, concerned with bringing to light voices and struggles buried by official narratives of US history. If you haven’t read it I recommend you get a copy.

His A People’s History, which sold by the million, wasn’t a work designed for inclusion in an academic canon, but for ordinary people to get a sense of how what is presented as plain historical fact, a reality to be accepted, is but an image crafted and mobilised by ruling class institutions.

In The Politics of History, written some years previous he discusses his approach:

History can have another effect, however. Like memory, it can liberate us when the present seems an irrevocable fact of nature. Memory can remind us of possibilities that we have forgotten, and history can suggest to us alternatives that we would never otherwise consider. It can both warn and inspire. It can warn us that it is possible for a whole nation to be brainwashed, for “enlightened” and “educated” people to commit genocide, for a “democratic” country to maintain slavery, for oppressed to turn into oppressors, for “socialism” to be tyrannical” and “liberalism” to be imperialist, for whole peoples to be led to war like sheep. It can also show us that apparently powerless underlings can defeat their rulers, that men (for at least moments of time) can live like brothers, that man can make incredible sacrifices on behalf of a cause.

RIP.

We’re shirking our duty if we don’t ban women from writing for the Irish Independent

How many Irish women write voluntarily for a filthy right-wing propaganda rag with its glandular masculine effusions, without any form of coercion whether explicit or implicit? Just a minute while I do the sums. Okay, I’m ready: the answer is none.

Even those who claim to do it willingly are brainwashed. They conceal their true beliefs because they are bulldozed into it by a patchwork quilt of reasons, from social to familial to cockeyed religious grounds. Free will is a fig leaf when it comes to writing for the Irish Independent.

Irish women in Ireland, as in other countries, may tell themselves they choose to write for the Irish independent. They may even believe it. But a woman living in a tight-knit Irish community is under intense pressure to conform. Rebel, and she becomes an outcast.

So it is up to the host country to set the standard. It is not racist to want all women to be free. Forcing them to write for the Irish Independent, and sometimes drippy novels, is a form of fanaticism amounting to repression which we should not tolerate.

Far from protecting them, conditioning women to believe they must express right-wing views in public undermines their dignity.

Here in Ireland, our Government shirked the issue when it had an opportunity to show some leadership on this divisive ideological barrier between the writer and mainstream culture.

In 2008, a Wexford school asked for Department of Education guidelines on whether the Irish Independent was acceptable as part of the curriculum. The department left it up to individual schools.

This is not tolerance but cowardice, and duty shirked. We need policies on Irish women writing for right-wing hate mags, and we should formulate them now while we have a relatively small population of Irish women journalists. Anyone who opts to live here subsequently will be aware of the standards our society is setting.

We are paralysed by political correctness, however; horrified at the thought of our journalist community waving the censorship card, protesting against victimisation, or complaining about restrictions on their freedom of expression.

But the Irish Independent is the tyranny — not its prohibition. The Irish Independent, with its foul sexism, is a symbol of authoritarianism on the part of men and subjugation on the part of women.

The Irish Independent woman writer is also sending out a negative message, that either she or her family do not wish her to be a full member of society. This stance doesn’t just affect those who write for the paper, but anyone who comes into contact with a writer.

It takes France, with its well-defined sense of national identity and its significant journalist community, to address the dilemma. A cross-parliamentary body has recommended banning the expression of foul right-wing opinions in state buildings and on public transport. Inevitably, this is misrepresented as an erosion of human rights. On the contrary, I see it as reinforcing them.

France is not the only European country weighing up bans. The Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Italy all either have laws, or are considering legislation, against writing which rots the brain.

One of my colleagues attended a media conference in Algiers last April, where post-graduate female students from the university acted as interpreters. These women, who were journalists, were asked not to write nasty material by the state broadcaster running the event, because it was felt they would send an anti-progressive signal to international delegates.

The young women complied, but were jeered at by men on the street as they walked empty-notebooked from the campus to the conference centre. Were they angered by these hecklers? On the contrary, their indignation was directed at the organiser for asking them to refrain from writing incendiary garbage, thereby laying them open to taunts.

This reaction highlights the duplicity at the heart of any discussion on the role of Irish Independent women writers. Women are indoctrinated by the dominant male element in their communities to believe free will is exercised when they write inane trash — instead they are controlled, censored and reduced to chattel status.

We are repeatedly fed the subterfuge that Irish women choose to write for the Irish Independent, finding it ‘liberating’. Implausibly, having a newspaper column is even described as a tool of female emancipation: they are set free from the shackles of their sexuality, or so the deception goes.

The sight of a woman writing for the Irish Independent dismays and saddens me, just as the image of a young girl tricked out like a Jordan-wannabe is disturbing. Any form of extremism has ominous undercurrents.

Some contend you can’t fight repression with a ban, and highlight the irony in such a move. They pontificate about incentivising women to stop writing such trash, without specifying how this might take place.

While we can’t force people to assimilate or integrate, we can frame laws and oblige citizens to abide by them. Many schools require children to read materials — the Irish Independent should not be allowed on the list. Currently, it is being produced as a way of testing the water in Ireland. If we accept it, the path is cleared for more nativist press coverage.

Such writing reduces a woman’s right to be a person, and dehumanises the writer. Yet the Koran only requires modest opinions– for men as well as women. The obligation on a woman to write inane garbage is a man-made one. Still, if it makes women feel any less victimised, I’d gladly have men’s hateful opinions banned as well.

Writing racist, neo-colonial trash in a right-wing rag are less an anti-western statement, more an anti-female one. Let’s use the law to protect all women in Ireland . . . journalist or otherwise.

Both Sides Now

Via the Angry Arab.

I Believe In The Gospels, And That Means Bullets

Catholic ‘control’ of schools exaggerated – The Irish Times – Thu, Jan 28, 2010

It is in this context that Catholic Schools Week gives us the fresh opportunity to acknowledge the contribution that Catholic primary and post-primary schools make to Irish society by inviting young people to model their lives on the values of Jesus Christ as found in the Gospels.

Last year marked a very successful beginning of an all-Ireland celebration of Catholic Schools Week and we hope this year to build on that foundation and continue to create a space where we can articulate the ethos and identity of Catholic schools.

‘The values of Jesus Christ as found in the Gospels’ me hole. Some of the biggest crooks and liars of this country went to Catholic schools. Especially to the exclusive Catholic schools for the rich, where they learned manipulative strategies for dominating people. Read the Murphy report: ‘the authorities in the Archdiocese of Dublin and the religious orders who were dealing with complaints of child sexual abuse were all very well educated people. Many had qualifications in canon law and quite a few also had qualifications in civil law. This makes their claims of ignorance very difficult to accept’. Just as those people were the products of the Catholic schools system, you can be damned sure that plenty of others who didn’t join religious orders have been educated to be adept at the same sort of crack in a secular context.

As for O’Reilly’s claim that the Catholic church does not ‘control’ schools. Perhaps the question should not be on the degree to which the Church intervenes in the running of schools day-to-day, but the amount of power concentrated in Catholic institutions by comparison with other schools. Apart from the matter of the Catholic fee-paying schools dedicated to the cultivation of a power elite, here’s a thought: take a look at new school buildings erected for non-Catholic institutions in the last 20 years and compare them with the schools already in existence that belong to Catholic schools. How do they compare in terms of available space, location in relation to where people live, play facilities, and so on. My bet is that they come off pretty badly. Opinions to the contrary welcomed.