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Monday, April 5th, 2004
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1:58a - [BLOG-LIKE POSTING] Slovenia and Laibach
Dragan Antulov--SHWI’s most prominent Croatian poster--has recently provided his readership with links to an English-language weblog from Slovenia, The Glory of Carniola. I’m rather unnaturally excited about this news, mainly because since I was 10 I’ve had an unnaturally strong interest in Slovenia. You can blame the 1990 article in National Geographic on Yugoslavia, then still a united state. The Socialist Republic of Slovenia wasn’t the focus of the article by any means, being explored by the writers mainly as an exemplar of political pluralism (the Slovenian Communist party had opened up to become more a traditional political party in a democratic framework) and as a highly economically developed region (there was one fetching photo of two Slovenian technicians working behind a circuitry board). I cheered Slovenia as it almost bloodlessly won its independence from the disintegrating Yugoslav federation, and have followed its struggles and successes thereafter.
I don’t think that my fondness for Laibach comes from this Slovenophilia. I first remember reading about Laibach in my copy of the Rough Guide to Rock Music, which painted a fascinating portrait of a rock group that was also a performance group, and which incidentally had a hugely disproportionate effect on the culture of its nation of origin. That fascinated me profoundly, not least because I wanted--and, I admit, still want in a more restrained fashion--to leave a similarly profound and broad influence. It was a chance link to this music video for "Tanz mit Laibach" which got me excited about that group, making me order their latest album and download some more Laibach mp3s.
I warn my readers in advance that this will be a thematically incoherent posting. It will deal with the history of a small European nation, come late to the community of nations. It will explore the flexible frontiers of that nebulous concept "Europe," either encompassing the Slovenes again after a half-century’s lacuna or expanding to include Slovenia for the first time. It will explore the question of Slovenia’s relationships with its neighbours and their changing dynamics, particularly in relationship to the former Yugoslavia. It will explore the ways in which Laibach has reinforced, or contradicted, Slovenia's historical trajectory over the past quarter-century. Perhaps Slovenia's particular experience, taken generally and taken through the prism of Laibach, has some broader resonance, relating perhaps to central Europeans' contributions to the greater European Union? One could convincingly argue that Slovenia's relatively long history of integration with western Europe, its historical and cultural similarities with Austria in particular, and its wealth, situate it as a prototype for the other seven central and northern European countries joining the European Union in a month's time.
( First, some historical background on the often overlooked Slovenes. )
( For Slovenia to have a future, it needed to be included within Yugoslavia. )
( Slovenia, in the 1980s, began to look towards central Europe, and away from Yugoslavia. )
( Laibach was skeptical of Slovenia’s exclusive orientations towards first Yugoslavia, then central Europe. )
current mood: bloggish
current music: Laibach, "Tanz Mit Laibach" (7 comments |comment on this)
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10:33a - [BRIEF NOTE] A Quick Foray into Google Bombing
I'm just linking to this, because of this. How about you do it, too?
UPDATE (3:55 PM) : Edited because of this. You'd think that I'd know how Google operated.
current mood: subversive
current music: Laibach, "Anti-Semitism" (2 comments |comment on this)
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7:45p - [BRIEF NOTE] The Current Iraqi Situation
It looks like al-Sadr isn't going to renounce violence. It apparently doesn't matter that a large majority of Shi'ites don't want an Islamic state, or that the large non-Shi'ite populations would resist being subordinated to a Shi'ite state and in so doing destroy Iraq, or that the indiscriminate use of violence to achieve narrow political goals is immoral.
All this comes down, in the end, to the fact that al-Sadr--like so many other clerics, of whatever faith--is fascinated by the totalitarian impulse latent in all religions. If a particular interpretation of a particular religion offers the only path to divine salvation, surely it's entirely legitimate to use whatever force is necessary to promote it? (This, incidentally, is why ecumenicism and secularism are Good Things for religion: Making any religion an oppressive ideology is a good way to kill it, in the end.)
I've written on Bonoboland about how, in the vacuum left by the removal of Saddam and the Ba'ath, religious conservatives newly unfettered are using their freedom of action to oppress anyone who doesn't behave according to their practices. For women, for instance, the fall of Saddam has led to the imposition of the hijab and the implementation of misogynistic family law.
This hijacking of private religion into a tool of mass oppression isn't unique to Iraq, of course. It's a common practice everywhere. We see it with those people who would force French Muslim women to wear the hijab, or deny Algerian women any legitimate place as actors in their society, or veto a just peace settlement in Sri Lanka, or marginalize non-neo-traditionalist Hindus in Indian society, or maintain a stifling cultural conservatism in Québec, or support fascism.
Just an hour ago, I visited the blog Healing Iraq. There, the author made an interesting statement:
Iraqis know very well who those 'pious' people are. They are gangsters, rapists, murderers, thieves, kidnappers, looters, and criminals. They are only using religion as cover. I can't even dream of what would happen if those people were left to make trouble on our streets that way without punishment. I believe that it's now time for Al-Sadr to experience a very bad accident soon. We will be sorry for him I assure you, "Oh poor fellow, what a terrible misfortune, what a great loss" we would say to each other knowingly. It's scenes like these that make me sometimes wonder to myself if Saddam wasn't justified in assassinating all those clerics. Get that new Mukhabarat working.
You know, as someone committed to the rule of law, liberalism, and democracy, I should disapprove of that. I really should.
current mood: grimly expectant
current music: The Mediæval Bæbes, "Averil" (10 comments |comment on this)
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