Tariq Ali will be speaking at UQ on 30 May - details here. Whether you love or hate him, few would disagree that Tariq is a compelling speaker as well as an incisive political analyst. For a taste of Tariq live, you can read this interview, and I’d strongly recommend the new Scribe title Speaking of Empire and Resistance: conversations with Tariq Ali.
Update: Don’t despair if you live in Sydney - Tariq is speaking at the Town Hall on the 27th of May.
I saw Ali speak in Sydney in 2003 (i think it was!?!). Anyway, he is a good. I had just read _Clash of the Fundamentalisms_ and I was impressed with his delivery.
I also like Ali’s work. Going to go Mark?
With bells on. I saw him at the Powerhouse Ideas Festival in Brisbane in 03 and he’s a great speaker.
Yep, he’s in Sydney Town Hall next week, and even Flutey is thinking of going.
Have you got a link to the Sydney Ali talk, Chris - be happy to post it.
here tis:
Tariq Ali, in conversation with Peter Thompson
Cheers, Chris.
Who hates him?
I read Clash of Fundamentalisms before 20010911 and was underwhelmed by his breathless alarmism. It only took the subsequent declaration of a Global War on Terror to convince me that it was I who was the berk living with my head in the clouds.
Who hates him?
RWDBs and Bushies everywhere.
Oh them. I thought you meant somebody from the reality-based community. My mistake.
I too am a fan.
I’m enjoying his Islamic quintet. Read the first three but not the latest. Interesting time slices into Islamic culture, mores,philosophy and attitudes to various Islamic “infidels”. I can’t think of the correlative Islamic expression.
Um, I like to think of myself as reality based and although I always enjoy reading or listening to Tariq Ali, I also find his ideas at times still imbued with a touch of the kind of the ultra-left moralism I associate with the Trotskyist group he once belonged to (don’t ask me to quote chapter and verse). There, I’ve said it.
Back in the 60s Tariq published the Trot paper The Black Dwarf, which famously first published the words to “Street Fighting Man” after Mick wrote it following a Vietnam demonstration in ‘68. I hear he has a new book, “Street Fighting Days”, or some such, which will be interesting no doubt.
Re these days, I doubt that you could find a position more remote from Trot adventurism than Tariq’s position on international intervention of force (i.e. basically there should not be any, cos it doesn’t work).
That’s right - it’s the other Trot, Hitchens, is the one to worry about
And Wolfowitz and Kristol.
Incientally, for those who didn’t catch George Galloway’s star turn on Capital Hill this week, he took out Hitch on the way, responding to his question:
“You’re a drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjay.”
More on that tomorrow!
I’m as disappointed in Christopher Hitchens as the next lefty. I loved his demolition of Mother Teresa and even of Princess Diana (though I was somewhat partial to Diana). I loved the defence of smoking he wrote for Vanity Fair (though i am not a smoker). But since 9/11 it’s been all downhill, though the seeds were becoming apparent pre 9/11. Maybe the seeds were there in his Trotyskyism? or is that a kind of political determinism?
I think, suzoz, he’s a captive of social prestige within the Beltway. Probably started when he began writing for Vanity Fair.
There’s an earlier post with a link to a good article on Hitchens here.
His book on Clinton was a cracker too!
Still tossing it up cs
I appreciate your neutral stand, of course, Mr Flute.