October
3 ,
2003
Noted
Critic of U.S. Foreign Policy to Speak at MHC
| 
Tariq
Ali |
Tariq Ali, author
of Bush in Babylon and The Clash of Fundamentalisms, will speak
at Mount Holyoke as part of a 12-city U.S. tour Thursday, October
16, at 7:30 pm in Gamble Auditorium. The event is free, open
to the public, and fully accessible.
Ali is a writer and filmmaker, a long-time political activist and campaigner,
and an influential--and controversial--commentator on the current situation
in the Middle East and South Asia. He has written over a dozen books on world
history and politics, including the best seller The Clash of Fundamentalisms,
five novels, and scripts for both stage and screen. The first novel in the Islam
Quintet, Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree, was awarded the Archbishop San Clemente
del Instituto Rosalia de Castro Prize for Best Foreign Language Fiction and published
in Spain in 1994. Ali's The Book of Saladin has been translated into several
languages.
In November, Ali will publish Bush in Babylon: Recolonizing Iraq. According to
Ali's publisher, Verso, the forthcoming book is "a devastating critique
of America's military occupation of Iraq, by one of the leaders of the
global antiwar movement, Tariq Ali. Eschewing the liberal option of hand-wringing
and the fashionable lurch to the right by some former leftists, Bush in Babylon
will stand apart from the morass of sycophantic books now being presented as
serious analysis by mainstream publishers."
"Detailing the longstanding imperial ambitions of key figures in the Bush
administration and how war profiteers close to Bush are cashing in," a
Verso press release continues, "Bush in Babylon is unique in moving beyond
the corporate looting by the U.S. military government to offer the reader an
expert and in-depth analysis of the extent of resistance to the U.S. occupation
in Iraq. The sum is a characteristically revealing blend of politics, history,
and culture proposing that the U.S. war on Iraq marks a historical shift in imperial
occupation and resistance that will mark the whole of the twenty-first century."
Ali's visit is sponsored by the politics department.
The
counter is
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