Andy draws our attention to this statement by Alex Callinicos (‘for the SWP Central Committee’):
as we put it in our ‘International Perspectives 2005’, ‘if the movements are most advanced in Latin America, the most important front in the struggle against US imperialism is in Iraq.’ It is the resistance in Iraq that is in the [...]
From the ‘found while looking for something else’ file.
In May 2003 the Iraq invasion had just been declared complete; nobody knew quite how bad things were going to get. So the chances are that Danish academic Per Mouritsen wasn’t thinking about Iraq when he wrote this:
Peasants of Piemonte or Bretagne did not begin to accept [...]
8 November 2006 – 2:28 pm
Written for the Socialist Society, 1992-3.
At present everyone from Baroness Thatcher to Socialist Outlook seems to agree on the subject of Serbia. Serbia has caused the break-up of Yugoslavia; Serb forces are committing war crimes in Bosnia; Serbia must be punished. Some socialists have put forward a dissenting view. Serbia, the last remnant of Yugoslavia, [...]
Chris has a point:
Whereas Britain pursues overseas expansion, England stays at home. The great statements asserting the rights and the dignity of the ordinary man – and it was the Englishman G.K. Chesterton who said there’s nothing ordinary about the ordinary man – are all English: Magna Carta, the Putney debates, Gray’s Elegy in a [...]
11 February 2006 – 10:13 pm
I agree with Michel Houellebecq, up to a point.
Atomised became a bestseller at home and abroad. It won the Prix Novembre, though it missed out on the Goncourt. The publication of Platform saw him prosecuted for incitement to racial hatred, after describing Islam as ‘the most idiotic religion’ in a promotional interview. (His exact words [...]
31 December 2005 – 8:36 pm
Thanks to Talk Politics, I’ve recently read – or at least glanced at – some remarks made by Hugo Chavez, Constitutional President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, on Christmas Eve 2005. Here’s the passage which has excited most comment (my translation).
I became a rebel and I dedicated myself to the true Christ – and [...]
14 December 2005 – 10:41 am
I read Francis Wheen warily, not knowing from paragraph to paragraph whether I’m going to agree or start swearing. I read young Oliver very warily indeed: most of what he writes is drivel and some of it’s repulsive. And I don’t read Aaro at all if I can possibly help it.
Wheen, Kamm, Aaronovitch: it’s an [...]
Nick Cohen is getting careless. On the Guardian Web site, a recent Cohen column with the uncompromising headline “Face up to the truth” is now prefixed with the following health warning:
The comment piece below was wrong to say that the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen was ‘delighted’ at the attack on the World Trade Centre, describing it [...]
Let us just take this issue of Iraq and expose it for a moment – frankly, the obscenity of these people saying it is concern for Iraq that drives them to terrorism. If it is concern for Iraq, why are they driving a car bomb into the middle of a group of children and killing [...]
[Some edits and additions in response to Robert's comments, 26/6 and 27/6]
In 1997 Francesco Cossiga was interviewed for a book called Una sparatoria tranquilla (mentioned back here). Cossiga was one of the leading figures of Italy’s old establishment – a former President of the Republic, a former Minister of the Interior, an unapologetic defender of [...]
The idea of a ‘just war’ has been around for a long time – since the fifth century, in fact, when it was formulated by St Augustine. One of the key criteria in judging whether a particular conflict can be considered ‘just’ is that war is not waged lightly: it has to be a ‘last [...]
I’d hate to disappoint Ros Taylor, so here are some thoughts about Peter Goldsmith and Iraq.
Following Brian Barder, I think we should drop the idea that Goldsmith changed his mind between the 7th and the 17th of March 2003. What Blair wanted from Goldsmith was never his own opinion about the legality of the invasion, [...]
I don’t think much of Johann Hari; I doubt that statement will surprise many people, and I’m not going to spend good blogging time on an anti-Hari rant. But I am going to say a few words about Johann’s column in today’s Independent – which you can read over at Hari’s Place – and its [...]
To whom it may concern:
What the Attorney General said (see also the full documents linked here and Brian Barder’s two prescient commentaries)
“…at the stinking heart of what remains of the British body politic”
A catechism for the unconvinced
Adrian Mitchell told you so
