Arbeit Macht Frei sign: the logic of desecration
THERE was – from Indira Gandhi’s point of view, anyway – obvious security justification for Operation Blue Star. Sikh militants were hoarding arms in the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the holiest site of all for adherents to that religion. So one day in 1984, India’s prime minister ordered the army to move in. Hundreds perished [...]
At least Eton has still got a playing field
JUST a footnote on Gordon Brown’s ‘playing fields of Eton’ jibe at David Cameron last week, which the rightwing press is advancing as evidence of some sort of return to class war on the part of New Labour. The irony here is that at least Eton as still got playing fields; that is more than [...]
Joe Glenton: ordinary soldiers must be heard
IT TOOK a bollocking administered in person by Billy Bragg to teach me the lesson, but these days I know better than to make the automatic assumption that anyone serving in the armed forces is necessarily a braindead reactionary. At a small business meeting in London attended by some prominent lefties about a decade or [...]
Victory to the Taliban? Open thread
SO THERE I was, trying to initiate a sensible discussion on the Edlington ‘Devil Brothers’ case, and somehow the issue in the comments box becomes … the Taliban. Not quite sure how that happened, but remarks from Paddy Garcia have – quite rightly – attracted flack from elsewhere: I have no quarrel with the Taliban, [...]
BNP vote: the racism of desperation
THE white working class forms the principle electoral base of the British National Party, according to a YouGov survey commissioned by the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight. A large chunk of the left is going to hate these findings. You see, such a thing really, really should not be happening. We all know that fascism represents the [...]
Ornette Coleman, Charlie Haden tickets
I’M OFF to Lisbon for a couple of days to, er, watch a building being opened. I may or may not post, depending on whether I can work out how to use the office laptop at the airport. Meanwhile, a short commercial interlude. Because my mate Jerry couldn’t make it, I have one ticket spare [...]
Euroelections: projections from France
According to French TV: UMP 28% PS 17% Greens 16% MODEM (Bayrou) 8.5% Front National 6.5% Front de Gauche (Parti Communiste Français) 6.3% Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (Bescancenot) 5% Libertas (de Villiers) 5% Lutte Ouvriere 1.3% That’s a bit of a let down for the NPA. Anybody know if 5% gets ‘em an MEP? Hat tip: [...]
The danger of talking shit about fascism
SITTING on my bookshelf unread is the paperback edition of Jonah Goldberg’s ‘Liberal Fascism’, which according to the coverline is a ‘No.1 New York Times bestseller’. At the risk of injustice to a work that I have admittedly not yet been arsed to plough through, I suspect that it takes a certain kind of talent [...]
Coal not dole: Arthur Scargill was right to fight
I KEEP glancing up at the large plasma television screen in the newspaper office where I work, which is permanently tuned to BBC News 24. Prominent among the usual parade of talking heads on the channel this morning have been faces from the politics of quite another time. Although the sound is left on mute [...]
