Partly pre-empting my next post – which is going to start with a bit of post-dormancy navel-gazing about what I’ve been doing while I haven’t been blogging – here’s a Web site I’ve just set up:
It’s for my book More work! Less pay!, which is out very shortly. It’s coming out in a prohibitively expensive [...]
More news on my book. I handed over the corrected proofs this morning, together with an index. Compiling the index was easier than I’d thought it would be, but still not exactly fun; it was one of those tasks that leaves you looking round for the next chunk of mental hard labour for several days [...]
My book: an announcement and a question.
I’m quite excited about my book. Or should I say, my book – for lo, that’s an actual link to a page where you can, apparently, pre-order it, with free UK delivery and everything. And here’s the publisher’s page about the book, and here’s what it says there:
‘More work! [...]
Nick Cohen in Standpoint (via):
a significant part of British Islam has been caught up in a theocratic version of the faith that is anti-feminist, anti-homosexual, anti-democratic and has difficulties with Jews, to put the case for the prosecution mildly. Needless to add, the first and foremost victims of the lure of conspiracy theory and the [...]
A quick post to register a rather striking piece of news (via), which didn’t seem to get much notice in the British media. First, here’s the complete text of a piece on torture from the January 2008 Washington Monthly:
According to the latest polls, two-thirds of the American public believes that torturing suspected terrorists to gain [...]
Socialist Unity has a notice for what looks like an interesting and important meeting:
Creating the Climate of Fear: Counter-Terrorism and Punishment without Trial
Friday March 14; 6.30-9.00 p.m, London Muslim Centre, 46 Whitechapel Road
Organised by Campaign Against Criminalising Communities, Centre for the Study of Terrorism
It’s a meeting about the proposed Counter-Terrorism Bill (the ‘42 days’ bill, [...]
I’ve written a book. The MS has just gone off to the publisher; it’s still got to be checked, copy-edited, re-checked, typeset, proof-read and probably several other stages I’ve forgotten about, and it probably won’t be out much before Christmas. But it’s a book, and it’s been written. By me.
It’s called ‘More work! Less pay!’ [...]
I’ve been away for a week & come back to a letter from my MP, Tony Lloyd. Who writes:
Whilst I do not think there should be a blanket policy for all Iraqis working for the UK Government, we need to give proper consideration to the many Iraqis whose lives are at risk. It is important [...]
There is “a fair amount of rewriting of history going on”, says Martin Kettle. (This post began life on CiF. I keep meaning to give up commenting there – it’s a singularly unrewarding occupation, apart from those rare occasions when the columnist you’re responding to actually reads the comments. Commenting on most CiF posts is [...]
Who’s with me?
We have to wake up. These forces of extremism based on a warped and wrong-headed misinterpretation of Islam aren’t fighting a conventional war but they are fighting one against us – and ‘us’ is not just the West, still less simply America and its allies. ‘Us’ is all those who believe in tolerance, [...]
There’s a point in some political arguments where opposition turns into personal antagonism, which itself is liable to turn into smouldering, resentful bitterness – normally I wouldn’t think anything of it, but seeing that he’s one of those people…. We’re lucky in this country – as compared with, say, the USA – that it’s very [...]
I hate it when my doctoral thesis gets topical. Here are some figures:
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981
333
282
277
190
103
33
81
92
169
460
1110
802
258
141
3
8
5
28
21
25
15
Take a moment to read across the rows and get a feel for the shape of the series. Row one starts pretty high – almost one of these things per day – then declines year on year, plummets to almost nothing in 1980 [...]
I used to live down the road from Marc Riley. I turned up at his flat a couple of times to buy In Tape releases, and once interviewed him (and Jim Khambatta) for a fanzine which I was vaguely thinking about putting together. (Somewhere I’ve got the answers Yeah Yeah Noh supplied to a questionnaire [...]
Like Dave, I’ve got a lot of time for some of the signatories to the Euston Manifesto. And, like Dave, there is no way in Hell I’m supporting it.
The problems start in item 1, which yokes together “We are committed to democratic norms, procedures and structures” with “We value the traditions and institutions, the legacy [...]
Ellis:
there is one dissenting voice on the blogger left. He believes he has located “a devastating case against Chomsky, focusing in particular on the Srebrenica massacre.”Yes, I mean you, Phil.
Well, I’m on to it, comrade. And I think we are are about to enter the exhilarating territory of a fraternal disagreement.
More soon.
Personal to ES: let’s [...]
A couple of Italian links.
Berlusconi to the US Congress, 28th February:
For my generation the United States represent a beacon of liberty and economic progress. I shall always thank the United States for saving my country from Fascism and Nazism, at the cost of so many American lives.
…
Allow me to conclude by sharing a brief story [...]
The first thing that has to be said about the “glorification of terrorism” law is that it’s appallingly ill-written legislation. Here it is, courtesy of ‘Unity’:
Encouragement of Terrorism (1) A person commits an offence if—
(a) he publishes a statement or causes another to publish a statement on his [...]
Here’s a curious coincidence (as predicted by Unity).
Passers-by stopped police officers to ask why the marchers were being allowed to carry banners threatening further suicide attacks in the city. One police officer replied: “Don’t worry. We are photographing them.“
Here’s Blair:
there is another point, on which the right hon. Gentleman touched. Let me explain why I [...]
