I wonder what Dr Jung would have made of Radavan Karadzic and Dragan Dabic ?
Karadzic is the former Bosnian-Serb leader - also psychiatrist and poet - who is currently on trial in the Hague for war crimes committed in his own country during the 1990s, notably the massacre of 8 000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys outside Srebrenica.
Dragan Dabic was Karadzic's alter ego : an apparent mystic and practitioner of alternative medicine who lived - as a neighbour of international security personnel - in Belgrade until he was recognised and captured whilst travelling on a bus.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Publication Success of Carl Jung's Red Book
News that the Red Book has become an Amazon best-seller is testimony to the enduring power of Carl Jung's thought and writing. Edited by Sonu Shamdasani, who is the Philemon Professor of Jung History at University College London, the Red Book is an account of Carl Jung's midlife crisis or soul journey which provided much of the material for both re-appraisal and future work. Incidentally, Philemon was, for much of the time, Jung's imaginary or spiritual companion (depending on one's interpretation) in this journey.
Saturday, July 04, 2009
A TRUTH NOT UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED
Hollywood writer Seth Grahame-Smith has recently created a spoof zombie novel from Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice", which is to be turned in to a film.
It is with this cultural development in mind, that I now want to reflect on the current wrangle between Government ministers and the Conservative Party on the subject of homophobia, and, on the day of London's "Gay Pride", who is the least prejudiced.
However, it is not on gay issues that I want to focus here, but on political and wider societal prejudice towards single people (of whom novelist Ms Austen remained one) and the fact that not everyone is in want of either wife/husband or civil partner, for that matter.
The fact is that New Labour, being a deeply socially conservative party - and possibly more so than "David Cameron's Conservatives" - is deeply intolerant of single people (whether straight, gay, bisexual or undecided) - and this has set the tone for wider society.
Thus a few years ago, I was set upon by a married suburban couple who had "singled" me out as someone weaker than their combined might. Unfortunately for them, I'd spent most of my adult life in a tough inner urban neighbourhood and soon put pate to the pair.
Prior to this, the man had called me a "Lesbian" in a homophobic manner, although I could have assured him that I found his wife equally unattractive. Had I actually been gay, this attack might well have been deemed a criminal offense.
What I want, however, is a society in which the "pride and prejudice" of a couple of zombies like this - many of whom, albeit in more refined guise, occupy positions of power and authority - is made ridiculous, just like the gnashings of their B-Movie kin.
It is with this cultural development in mind, that I now want to reflect on the current wrangle between Government ministers and the Conservative Party on the subject of homophobia, and, on the day of London's "Gay Pride", who is the least prejudiced.
However, it is not on gay issues that I want to focus here, but on political and wider societal prejudice towards single people (of whom novelist Ms Austen remained one) and the fact that not everyone is in want of either wife/husband or civil partner, for that matter.
The fact is that New Labour, being a deeply socially conservative party - and possibly more so than "David Cameron's Conservatives" - is deeply intolerant of single people (whether straight, gay, bisexual or undecided) - and this has set the tone for wider society.
Thus a few years ago, I was set upon by a married suburban couple who had "singled" me out as someone weaker than their combined might. Unfortunately for them, I'd spent most of my adult life in a tough inner urban neighbourhood and soon put pate to the pair.
Prior to this, the man had called me a "Lesbian" in a homophobic manner, although I could have assured him that I found his wife equally unattractive. Had I actually been gay, this attack might well have been deemed a criminal offense.
What I want, however, is a society in which the "pride and prejudice" of a couple of zombies like this - many of whom, albeit in more refined guise, occupy positions of power and authority - is made ridiculous, just like the gnashings of their B-Movie kin.
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
NOT A VERY BRITISH COUP* !
Chavez** Jails Top Generals
It's a tough job being a high-ranking military official in Venezuela -- one minute you're running the show, the next minute you're being dragged into a prison cell with a gun to your temple. That was the case for Raul Isaias Baduel, the former army chief of the country who was ordered detained by President Hugo Chavez last month. Baduel is only the latest officer to be arrested on suspicion of planning a coup as the increasingly paranoid Chavez has thrown admirals and generals into prison as well. For Baduel, the move was a major reversal of fortune. In 2002, he led a paratrooper operation that successfully repelled a coup attempt against Chavez. But after retiring, Baduel became a critic of the Venezuelan president in 2007, taking Chavez to task over his efforts to expand his power and authority of the state. "Chavez does not have the support he thinks he has in the armed forces," Baduel, 53, told The New York Times.
Source The Daily Beast/New York Times
* A very good Brit drama of the later 1980s which, in looking forward to a radical Labour Government also looked back to the 1970s
** A politician of whom former London Mayor Ken "Trotsky" Livingstone is something of admirer. Perhaps Mr Livingstone needs a more domestic focus again.
It's a tough job being a high-ranking military official in Venezuela -- one minute you're running the show, the next minute you're being dragged into a prison cell with a gun to your temple. That was the case for Raul Isaias Baduel, the former army chief of the country who was ordered detained by President Hugo Chavez last month. Baduel is only the latest officer to be arrested on suspicion of planning a coup as the increasingly paranoid Chavez has thrown admirals and generals into prison as well. For Baduel, the move was a major reversal of fortune. In 2002, he led a paratrooper operation that successfully repelled a coup attempt against Chavez. But after retiring, Baduel became a critic of the Venezuelan president in 2007, taking Chavez to task over his efforts to expand his power and authority of the state. "Chavez does not have the support he thinks he has in the armed forces," Baduel, 53, told The New York Times.
Source The Daily Beast/New York Times
* A very good Brit drama of the later 1980s which, in looking forward to a radical Labour Government also looked back to the 1970s
** A politician of whom former London Mayor Ken "Trotsky" Livingstone is something of admirer. Perhaps Mr Livingstone needs a more domestic focus again.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
NEVER HAD IT SO BAD OR GOOD
The death of Sid Vicious in early February 1979 was remembered in both The Observer and on Radio 4 this week. In the newspaper's "Music Monthly", the Sex Pistol member is described by John Savage as "punk's ultimate nihilistic icon", and by a friend from contemporary girl band, called "The Slits", as someone who wet the bed at night with almost "pure Newcastle Brown" urine. Before his own untimely death from a heroine overdose, Sid Vicious (real name John Beverley) had accidentally stabbed and killed his girl friend, Nancy Spungeon.
In a previous edition of The Observer (Main Section), the columnist Peter Oborne described the second half of the 1970s as an "interregnum" between a 30 year period of post-war consensus politics from 1945 to the mid-1970s, and the arrival of Thatcherism and then New Labour. This "interregnum" was, I recall, an extremely difficult time for many people whose economic situation and prospects were at best uncertain, and, at worst, in terminal decline. The rise of Punk Rock co-incided with this period, and struck a cord with many young people, including me.
I was largely rescued from a bad bout of depression and an equally strong sense of personal fatality, by a better than expected set of "O Levels" (the exams which preceded GCSEs) in 1978. Thus my own "Winter of Discontent" had become something of a glorious Autumn by 1979 when I "won" a place to read English Language and Literature at Oxford. Nevertheless, it took me some time - perhaps another generation even - to overcome the sense of guilt which came with this achievement.
Yet the personal legacy of Punk Rock and my Oxford eduction has been, in reality, closely allied. I remain to this day skeptical of both the "power structures" that operate withing society and the intellectual constructs which go with these. Thus I have never been able to buy into the New Labour Project, for instance, as something itself born of a too comfortable alliance between "Children of the 6os" like Tony Blair, 1980s student politics and the dreaded brood of Think Tanks to which these have given rise. Roll on the next Interregnum.
In a previous edition of The Observer (Main Section), the columnist Peter Oborne described the second half of the 1970s as an "interregnum" between a 30 year period of post-war consensus politics from 1945 to the mid-1970s, and the arrival of Thatcherism and then New Labour. This "interregnum" was, I recall, an extremely difficult time for many people whose economic situation and prospects were at best uncertain, and, at worst, in terminal decline. The rise of Punk Rock co-incided with this period, and struck a cord with many young people, including me.
I was largely rescued from a bad bout of depression and an equally strong sense of personal fatality, by a better than expected set of "O Levels" (the exams which preceded GCSEs) in 1978. Thus my own "Winter of Discontent" had become something of a glorious Autumn by 1979 when I "won" a place to read English Language and Literature at Oxford. Nevertheless, it took me some time - perhaps another generation even - to overcome the sense of guilt which came with this achievement.
Yet the personal legacy of Punk Rock and my Oxford eduction has been, in reality, closely allied. I remain to this day skeptical of both the "power structures" that operate withing society and the intellectual constructs which go with these. Thus I have never been able to buy into the New Labour Project, for instance, as something itself born of a too comfortable alliance between "Children of the 6os" like Tony Blair, 1980s student politics and the dreaded brood of Think Tanks to which these have given rise. Roll on the next Interregnum.
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