Harry's Place

2004-06-22T03:47:00.000-07:00

NOTE TO READERS

Its exactly a year since we moved from this blog over to our Movable Type/Bloghouse site and to celebrate that anniversary... the blog has disappeared and we have lost all our material.

So apologies to those of you who were trying to reach us for the past day or two on the old site. We are still trying to work out exactly what has happened but it appears it is no coincidence that the disappearance happened exactly a year on. Bloghouse, who hosted the site, seem to have let their domain registration run out and all their sites have gone belly-up. Can the situation be retrieved? I have no idea at this stage but it doesn't look good. I'm sure there is a lesson here for bloggers........

So, what to do? Well until the situation is resolved we will have to blog here at our old home. Like an old house its rather dusty but the basics still work - we can post and it seems you can comment. However the links on the side are a year old and so several of them will be out of date and we will get round to fixing those sometime in the future if we have to stay here for a while.

If we can't get the bloghouse site up and running again we will have to make a decision about creating a new site. This has happened at the worst possible moment given some of the personal/work commitments myself and other regular bloggers have and so we have to take the easiest option which is this blog.

Don't pass this on to people yet as we are going to give Bloghouse some time to try and sort things out before we ask people to change their links.

Once again our apologies to regular readers and we hope normal service will be resumed soon. Somewhere...

2003-06-20T06:16:00.000-07:00

SIGN THE PETITION!

You know it makes sense.

2003-06-20T06:11:00.000-07:00

DON'T SAY YOU WEREN'T WARNED

The Jackboot of puritanism has reached our shores.

2003-06-20T03:21:00.000-07:00

GIVING THEM WHAT THEY WANT

For all the warts on British television, a year in America taught me just how lucky we are to have not just the BBC but also a range of diversely funded channels with different layers of public service ambitions and obligations. The lesson from America is that, if news and public affairs are left purely to the market, it will most likely give the government what it wants." Writes the BBC's John Willis in the Guardian.

Meanwhile Al Gore wants to do something about it.

Harry's Place - Real Blogging, Fair and Balanced - we blog, you decide.

2003-06-20T03:12:00.000-07:00

AMERICAN SOILDERS SPEAK OUT

A series of interviews with GI's in the Evening Standard which is extremely disturbing on a number of levels:

"We're more angry at the generals who are making these decisions and who never hit the ground, and who don't get shot at or have to look at the bloody bodies and the burnt-out bodies, and the dead babies and all that kinda stuff." Sgt Quinones added: "Most of these soldiers are in their early twenties and late teens. They've seen, in less than a month, more than any man should see in a whole lifetime. It's time for us to go home."

2003-06-19T14:59:00.000-07:00

WHAT THE WORLD THINKS OF AMERICA

I have been browsing some of the weblog reaction to the BBC programme on attitudes to the USA the other day and the results of their poll and once again the blogosphere manages to create a world of its own.

I can't be bothered linking to all the sites but they are the usual suspects and you can get a taste from Jeff Jarvis whose considered view is that "The BBC is anti-American in all sense of the word, not only because it is hostile to us but also because it is anti-matter to our matter; it is the great snot factory."

So what is so upsetting about the BBC (along with a dozen other broadcasters) asking people what they think of the USA?

The poll asks a whole range of question and gets roughly the kind of results you might expect: People like the USA a lot more then they like George Bush, there is broad support for the fight against terrorism but widespread opposition to the US attitude to global warming, we like American movies and music more than American food etc etc.

As well as the tv programme, the debate and the poll, the BBC also gave up some space on its website for a collection of emailed views. As always with these random opinions there is mixture of intelligent comment and utter stupidity (rather like weblogs perhaps?).

All of this is proof of some BBC bias against America. Yet all the BBC did of course was provide the questions - not the answers.

The reaction of American bloggers to all of this gives me an answer that is far more worrying than the predictably silly and ill-informed comments of anti-Americans:

It is a waste of time asking the world what they think about the USA if Americans really don't want to know.

I want to see America be successful in the war against terror, I want to see them intervene in humanitarian crisis and I want to see them play an important role in helping solve the many problems of the world. But to do that successfully as well as being strong and active, Americans needs to listen to what people think about their government and their approach - even when they disagree.

After all freedom of speech means little if no-one is listening.

2003-06-19T03:27:00.000-07:00

IRANIAN STUDENTS DESERVE OUR SUPPORT
Johann Hari appeals for greater support for the Iranian students and rightly criticises those on the left who are reluctant to back the democrats for fear of being on the same side as George Bush.

In response Chris Bertram thinks many western leftists may well be more interested in George Bush but doubts they are actually hostile to the Iranian democracy movement. I think he is right and this at least is an improvement on other recent liberation movements that the anti-American elements on the left have opposed. Chris also makes some other good points about how the left got the 1979 Iranian revolution so badly wrong.

And now a question? There are a lot of sites linking to Iranian weblogs and so on which is great for us to get insight into the struggle. But what about practical solidarity? Is there anything set up where we can give serious help to these people? I'd rather give my money to help Iranian democrats than bloggers on the scrounge wouldn't you? Any ideas?

Oh and here is a beautiful poem from Iranian Cyrus Mahan entitled A New Flag is Declared Read the brief bio at the bottom.

(Thanks Magnus)

2003-06-18T15:58:00.000-07:00

HELP WANTED!
It seems likely that I will be shortly introducing a talented political cartoonist to the blog, something which I suspect would be a first, certainly for a British weblog. Now the problem is that I have this talented chap offering his services but I have no way to post images here. I think I need to leave blogspot and move this site over to it's own server.

I will need nice, easy-to-use software that I can access anywhere in order to post to the blog. I have noticed a lot of people going over to Movable Type, but to be honest nearly all the sites now look very similar to each other which I think is a bit dull. I am sure there is a way of personalising MT but I guess you need to know quite a bit about template design which I don't. Just on the off chance that any regular reader happens to be a techy - could anyone offer a suggestion, or even better give me a hand? Drop me an email (the addy is on the left) if you think you can help.

2003-06-18T10:09:00.000-07:00

WE WILL NOT COMPLY!

Not content with banning smoking and criminalising beer drinking for 20-year-olds, American bureaucrats now want to ban lap dancing.

Do we want a society where we're so controlled that we cannot do anything at all? Do we want a society where people can't go out and enjoy themselves?," said Roger Diamond, a lawyer representing about 25 adult clubs in Los Angeles.

What he said.

Is this some policy the Americans picked up from their old pals in the Taliban?

Guys, if things carry on like this you might want to consider moving to the European Union where drinking, smoking and dancing, even on laps, is still allowed.

2003-06-18T07:47:00.000-07:00

IF ONLY ....
Tony Blair must be really wishing he was president of the USA now - according to a new poll one third of Americans think we actually have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

2003-06-18T07:13:00.000-07:00

THE JACKBOOT STUFF
Lot of trafffic looking for the material about the Jackbooted Eurocrats - you can go straight to the Eurosteria story here.

Or you can scroll down and join in the debate about libertarianism if you want.!

(Oh yes and well done Nick)

2003-06-18T03:47:00.000-07:00

LIBERTARIAN SOCIALISM?
As I suspected Samizdata, in the shape of David Carr, are none too happy at Paul Anderson describing his politics as 'democratic socialism with a libertarian punch'.

Carr writes: May I humbly suggest a clearer alternative to that meaningless bit of cant? How about:Vegetarian cooking with just a hint of roast beef?

Mr.Anderson has clearly not yet been advised that he can either be a socialist OR he can be a libertarian but he cannot possibly be both.

Paul can define what his 'libertarian punch' is himself but I think what we are seeing here is an attempt by right-wing libertarians to claim the term purely for their ultra-capitalist utopian vision of the future. Like all evangelical ideologues, right-wing libertarians are motivated by a strong desire to present themselves as the one true way. But the idea that the phrase libertarian is their property alone is just wishful thinking and not born out by the history of the term.

Many anarchists would desribe themselves as libertarians, sharing the Samizdata crowd's disdain for organised government. On the Marxist left there are the anarcho-communists and council-communists, who describe themselves as libertarians. There have long been people who use the term 'Libertarian Marxist' or 'Libertarian Socialist'. (see this list of random links)

The Samizdata people will of course explain at length how these ideological visions are incompatible with their version of libertarianism - and apart from a hostility to the state that protects our liberty, freedom and rights, they are right. They have little in common. But that still doesn’t mean there is one accepted definition of libertarianism.

David Carr's argument really is only about claiming the term not about whether socialists really pretend to have anything in common with turbo-Thatcherites - which they obviously don't.

An area in which David and Perry are right is that the phrase libertarian has something of a buzz about it at the moment, particularly in the world of weblogs. In the real world of course you are as likely to meet a right-wing libertarian purist as you are to bump into a Maoist (a political tendency they have quite a few things in common with).

Personally I would never use the term libertarian to describe my politics because even if I felt the needed to add a buzzword to my political outlook (which I don’t) I wouldn't choose one that has become associated with the militant minority on the far right of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party.

Nor does the ultra-left version of libertarianism, rooted as it is in anarchist opposition to the main parties of the labour movement in Europe, appeal much to me either. Let them both fight over the term - such battles over the rights to a political label are indicative of the fringe nature of the activists at hand here.

But perhaps what annoys the right-wing libertarians about people borrowing their title is that their ideas do have a use for the rest of us. Anyone serious about politics needs to constantly question how far the state should be involved in our lives. Also there are many people who would subscribe to social libertarianism (or lifestyle freedom) while not accepting the economic ideas of the libertarians. In contrast there are plenty of conservatives, like Margaret Thatcher, who reject lifestyle libertarianism but are quite attracted to radically de-regulated capitalism.

So people borrow bits they like from the libertarian outlook while not buying into the whole package as offered by the people at Samizdata. That process happens to all radical ideologies.

It is worth remembering when you come across the hardcore libertarian right in the 'blogosphere' that these people are a tiny extremist faction - interesting chaps as they might be.

I say good luck to them - if Samizdata's brand of fundamentalist anarcho-capitalism gains ground on the right, maybe in the Conservative Party, it can only benefit the democratic left. The British people have always shown disdain for zealots and dogmatists of any colour.

2003-06-17T17:37:00.000-07:00

MORE IRAN LINKS
For those still confused with as to why foreign intervention is not welcomed, needed or appropriate in Iranian people's struggle for freedom, Goudarz Eghtedari offers an insightful take in his op-ed piece published today in the Oregonian. It is re-published on the website Eyeranian - another useful resource.

Also here is an interesting weblog from Mojtaba Baakhtari, an Iranian doctor living in London.

Iran has a rich political history, especially on the left and despite the repression of the mullahs and before them the US-backed Shah regime, many organisations have survived. Broad Left has an extensive collection of links to communist, socialist and radical left parties of varying shades of red.

Other political resources can be found here. As for the people on the streets, the Student Movement Co-ordination Committee has their own website now - pay them a visit.

2003-06-17T16:06:00.000-07:00

GAUCHE

Tribune columnist Paul Anderson has a weblog presence entitled (provacatively for some) 'Gauche' and subtitled (annoyingly for some) democratic socialism with a libertarian punch.

Being an independent-minded socialist he doesn't follow Tribune's anti-war line or the tendency of many on the radical left to turn a blind eye to the Leninist control of the Stop the War Coalition:

Once the fighting kicked off, the protests collapsed. Part of the reason, no doubt, was that at least some onetime anti-war types decided that they had to support "our boys". But hunch tells me that rather more former-protesters decided that, once push came to shove, the choice between American imperialism kicking Saddam's ass and his vicious regime surviving was what the Yanks call a no-brainer. In other words, we didn't want it to come to this, but now it has. Or to put it yet another way, in Leninist-speak: Death to Saddam, long live democratic Iraq!

2003-06-17T10:08:00.000-07:00

CHAOS IN IRAQ
The American-led reconstruction effort in Iraq is "in chaos" and suffering from "a complete absence of strategic direction", a very senior British official in Baghdad has told The Daily Telegraph. The comments paint a grim picture of American incompetence and mismanagement as the Coalition Provisional Authority struggles to run post-Saddam Iraq. "This is the single most chaotic organisation I have ever worked for," the official said.

Interestingly the report says back in London, British ministers are said to be fed up with being "taken for granted".

This is a growing theme. The US military might be good at blasting their way across deserts but they are proving to be utterly useless when it comes to nation and confidence building.

On the same day Jack Straw made these comments to the BBC about the US and Iran: "Given the long history of Iran, they have to be allowed to sort out their opposition internally. The thing that would most derail the process toward the establishment of a better democracy in Iran would be suggestions that the opposition there was being orchestrated from outside, which happily so far it has not been."

Right, got you Jack.

Thanks to Matt for the link.

2003-06-17T08:53:00.000-07:00

IRANIAN BLOGGERS
Jeff Jarvis has a number of useful links to Iranian webloggers which will make for interesting reading in the coming weeks. Jeff has been posting and linking to Iranian bloggers for some time and encouraging others to do the same - good use of blog space.

2003-06-17T06:47:00.000-07:00

MORE LIES (AND A FEW LAUGHS)

Of course it is not just right-wing bloggers who are happy to circulate lies and misinformation. Right-wing newspapers do that too. British Spin exposes the predictable hostility and inaccuracy of the Tory press in London to the free choice of devolution being offered to the North of England.

Meanwhile I notice on Technorati that at least 30 blogs are running with the false 'EU blogging' story (see below). So far just two of them have bothered to link to the rebuttal here. It does make you wonder why they are so afraid of even the suggestion of accountability doesn't it?

Also: Nick Barlow makes some good comments on the europhobes: Yes, it's that wonderful time when they all gather in a circle to reinforce their prejudices based on the flimsiest of facts while screaming 'lalala we can't hear you!' at anyone who tries to stop them. Sometimes these circle jerks are known to summon up one of their patron saints (St Glenn Instapundit or St Andrew Milkyloads) to scatter down blessings and referrals upon them.

So, what's this one all about? Like many other right wing circle jerks this one is centred a whole new Euro-myth, giving them the chance to rail against 'our would be masters' in Brussels and bring out the old Stalin and Hitler comparisons. Look on the bright side, at least they haven't gone for the Paisleyite idea of branding anything related to the EU as the work of the Devil and/or the Antichrist (who may well also be the Pope).

And another thing: British Spin sums the whole matter up in three short paragraphs:

My position is simple. I demand the right to write factually incorrect, distorted articles which smear, abuse and damage others reputations without providing any opportunity of redress or coherent debate.

Further, I demand the right to be incoherent without vile irony attending, incomprehensible without contemptuous clarification and obnoxious without satirical reproof.

I demand my right to display my ignorance without fear of correction. This is the very essence of the internet. It is where I stand. I can do no other.

And yet another: Matthew Turner has some breaking news: "An organization that isn't the EU today didn't pass legislation that in any case wouldn't have made it illegal not to allow a right-to-reply on blogs."

The journey complete
Yep Nick Barlow was right in his prediction of the 'circle jerk'.

Instapundit is now posting the 'EU and the blogs' story, telling Fox News presenter Bill O'Reilly that "Your whining sounds a lot like what we’re hearing from those European bureaucrats who are trying to bring the Internet under control because it’s a threat to their position. Is that the company you want to keep?"

By tomorrow night this will be on Fox News with O'Reilly probably expressing surprise at himself for his support of an EU crackdown.

2003-06-17T03:41:00.000-07:00

EUROSTERIA
Dear oh dear, it just gets worse. Blogland is now up in arms about an alleged terrible European plot to force weblogs to give a right to reply to factual errors.

Maybe this is the issue that will finally get our friends on the other side of the pond to sit up and take notice of what's going on over here with the EU, says Au Currant.

"Europe, this is Jackboot - I believe you've met before. Jackboot, please proceed to stomp all over freedom of speech. There you go, stomp stomp stomp. Good Jackboot," says Rachel Lucas. "We will not comply!" announce Samizdata.

Even liberal Jeff Jarvis joins in raging about "stinking European bureaucrats". who want to "tell us how to operate or what we have to link to or what to say or how to say it. That is simply undemocratic."

And it is also completely untrue.

Sorry to disappoint those who are excited about their impending oppression but the Council of Europe's Revised Draft Recommendation on the right of reply in the on-line media sadly makes not one single reference to weblogs. Not one. Not even a quick namedrop of Instapundit.

Sorry for those who fear censorship but there is not a single mention in the document of the right to reply to opinions. Not one. It is simply about correcting facts. It is about adapting to the online world a 1974 Council Resolution which does not go beyond granting a right of reply with respect of factual statements claimed to be inaccurate and that, as a consequence, the on-line dissemination of opinions and ideas falls outside the scope of this Recommendation; "

Therefore the draft recommendation suggests that if non-professional on-line media print factual errors about people or organisations, they should be obliged to give them the right to reply in the same way as any other media. What is wrong with that? Especially when the draft makes it clear that any policing of such rights should be according to the principle of 'self-regulation' - which is what blogs work by anyway.

So how did this alarmist story emerge then? Well, The orginal unammended draft report referred specifically to 'professional online media' but the ammended version deleted the term 'professional'.

So an alert online journalist Declan McCullaght got on the case and found a member of the European Council's Media Division to give him the quote that "Some online publications run by nonprofessionals can be very influential and therefore damaging to the reputation of other people" to explain the change.

I am frankly amazed that American bloggers who spend half their waking hours "fact checking the asses" of the New York Times would be against the idea that any media should publish corrections and I am even more amazed that they reject the idea that weblogs should be taken as seriously as any other media. It is published information - full stop.

But even if you object to running corrections of factual errors in principle there is still one other small matter - The Council of Europe has nothing to do with the European Union. Nothing at all. It is an entirely seperate organisation with over 45 member nations.

Oh yes and another minor detail. The Council of Europe has no powers to implement any laws whatsoever. It is not a legislative body. It has zero power.

Now I wonder how many weblogs will bother to voluntarily give me the right to reply to the hysterical euro-phobic scaremongering?

Care for a straight banana anyone?

2003-06-17T03:36:00.000-07:00

MULLAH'S SPEAK OUT

Iran's ruling clique have once again shown their inability to respond realistically to the post 7th century world by making two hilarious comments.

The first concerns the relative balance of power in the contemporary world. As US troops occupy two of Iran's neighbours, as Iran's nuclear programme continues to bring unwanted attention from everyone else and as students continue their nightly anti-regime protests Ayatollah Khamenie has stated "Despite their propoganda, the United States is on the verge of collapse and resembles a mountain of ice which is melting" Very interesting. I don't think I've seen a clearer example of the psychological phenomena known as projection in my life.

The second comment is from an unnamed regime spokesman who has commented on US support for the demonstrating students "their (the US) remarks are a blatent interference in Iran's internal affairs". Is this the same Islamic Republic of Iran which pronounced a death sentence on British novelist Salman Rusdie in 1989 ? Wasn't that an interference in Britain's affairs ?

The Iranian people already know that the regime is murderous and incapable of managing an economy. As they consider the most recent lies and hypocrisy they will draw their own conclusions.

2003-06-16T14:34:00.000-07:00

IT'S MAKE YOUR MIND UP TIME

It is sometimes hard to take seriously the pro-European slogan that Britain needs to be at the "heart of Europe" . After all throughout the history of our relationship with the evolving European Union we have almost always been on the edge, sometimes sniping, sometimes shouting loudly and often just sneaking off back across the channel with a nicely negotiated 'opt-out'.

A significant section of political opinion, particularly Conservative political opinion, has remained openly hostile to closer integration in Europe yet even among those who would reject the label 'Euro sceptic' , there has been a good deal of, well, scepticism.

The arrival of the single currency, the euro, brings a halt to this very British approach. There is no chance to fudge this issue for eternity. Sooner or later we are in or we are out of the euro zone. There is not going to be a dual-currency and the fact that some Tories are now raising the prospect of leaving the EU all togther shows that we are reaching the decisive moment.

The only chance of continuing to be on the sidelines is to opt for the Daily Telegraph's 'country membership' - getting what we can out of the single market while taking no responsibility for and getting no benefit from the wider social and political process. Besides being unacceptably selfish to our partners, that is clearly not an attractive proposal for the left being little more than a blatant attempt to ensure that the social benefits enjoyed by employees in Europe are kept well away from British workers. It simply hides an agenda to keep the poorer regions of the UK trapped in low-wage economies.

To most people on the democratic left then Europe has been a no-brainer. We are internationalists, we see much to be gained from integration and we like some of the alternative models on display in continental Europe. We don't think that helping post-fascist Portugal and Spain become fully fledged market democracies or assisting in Ireland's economic progress was a 'waste of money'. On the contrary.

But the recent disputes over the Iraq war have thrown a spanner in the works. I like to think of myself as a Euro-enthusiast but that enthusiasm was sorely tested by the French behaviour in the UN security council and the anti-American postures adopted. Some on the anti-war left now talk of the EU as a 'balwark' against the US, taking comfort from the prospect of a return to a bi-polar world - not a vision to inspire those of us who value a positive relationship with the US.

Mirroring and at the same time, encouraging, this view is a new aggressive anti-EU tone on the American right. They see the EU as a French vehicle that aims to compete with them in the battle for global hegemony. The American right have rather grown to the idea of a unipolar world where they are the undisputed leader. A blatant example of this thinking was shown by Anglo-American conservative weblogger Andrew Sullivan who recently penned an item charmingly entitled "The Euro Menace".

Sullivan warns tactically against the US being too blatant in its hostility to the EU project, less it weakens its influence over 'friendly governments' but says:

" At the same time, Americans need to wake up and understand the significance of this new rival to U.S. global power. No, it will not be a military threat. But it can be an enormous deadweight on U.S. power, as we saw earlier this year. And its anti-American timbre is unmistakable..... That's the current challenge to U.S. foreign policy: how to prevent the new European constitution from becoming a reality, how to woo and keep the loyalty of pro-American European governments and states, how to save new Europe from the stultifying and malign embrace of the old. It may, alas, be too late to prevent the worst. But better late than never.

Of course the European consitution as of little relevance to the US being an entirely internal European matter. I suspect that what Sullivan means is how to stop greater integration becoming a reality. Sullivan is showing the fear that many on the US right now have of a stronger, more united Europe, a fear that may have economic as well as political roots.

Should that worry the European left? Should we care that the US might see the EU as a rival? Well, unlike some, I certainly don't think we should aim for the EU to become a hostile opponent of the US nor should we wish to create that impression. But a Europe which is more powerful, more effective and more co-ordinated on the international stage should be something that progressives welcome - indeed it should be something that Americans who have whined about Europe "not taking its responsibilities" should also be pleased by. It is likely that in the future the EU may be able to reach where the USA does not wish, or cannot, go. On other occassions it may act in concert with the US and at times it may need to act diplomatically to impede ill-advised adventures from the US. If that frightens certain US right-wingers, well, let them be afraid.

What about Britain's 'special relationship' with the US? Anyone serious about their politics has to recognise the importance of a constructive and friendly rapport with the US. But as we have seen time and again, the relationship can often be a one-way street and even if we gain more than we lose from remaining close to the Americans, it would be foolish for us to put all our diplomatic eggs in one basket. The ability to have a foot in both camps as an extraordinary position which, despite the problems of the past year, remains one which ultimately Britain can really benefit from.

The anti-European critics on the American right and the British Euro-sceptics also share common ground in their view of the EU as being some kind of statist nightmare, where all enterprise will be stifled by excessive legislation and that nightmare of nightmares the welfare state. The libertarians even like to put pictures of Stalin imposed on the EU flag. We are warned across the blogs that the EU lacks the democracy and liberty of the 'Anglosphere'.

In which case the conservatives have to ask themselves why in the past two months the people of Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic - who have tasted democracy and liberty for little more than a decade and, unlike the critics have experience of real Stalinism, have voluntarily opted to join this illiberal horror house?

As Will Hutton put it recently : Those who do not have liberty, or have won it only recently, know the EU is their friend not their enemy. Warsaw and so many of the other cities of Eastern Europe are just two and half hours away by plane. It is a revelatory flight - and it is one that should be mandatory for every enemy of the EU.

And add to that Bucharest, Bratislava, Zagreb and many other cities where governments, businesses, trade unions and the population at large have had their eye on the European prize since their liberation from dictatorship. Back in 1989 we, along with the rest of Western Europe, promised to share a 'common European home' with the people's of the formerly communist East - how can we even think of betraying that commitment?

Yes there are problems with the EU structures. Yes, there is a tendency towards French-style 'institution building' and yes there are many other issues, such as Agricultural subsidies, that one could point to and see fault. But the left has never engaged with political or economic structures because we believe them to be perfect - after all we have spent decades working with the many flaws of the centralised British state and only now are we beginging to get results in reforming it. If we believe there are faults and even dangers in the EU project we owe it to ourselves and to the new states to remain in the middle of the battles fighting their and our corner.

Involvement with and reform of the EU should be the natural terrain of the left. The democratic left is and always has been made up of reformists, people who are convinced that political activity works and can deliver results. As one such reformist, Roy Hattersley puts it:

"There are only two possible European policy positions. One requires Britain to work away "at the heart of Europe" for policies that benefit Britain. The other follows a course so critical that it inevitably results in withdrawal. Tory logic can only lead to little England."

It still is a no-brainer isn't it?

2003-06-16T03:50:00.000-07:00

IRANIAN VOICES
Iran is becoming the big story and the BBC website has a nice collection of e-mails from Iranians. Elsewhere there is an interesting comment from Iranian blogger Hoder in reaction to George Bush's weekend statement of support for the demonstrators.

Hoder's suggestion that Bush keeps his mouth shut gets a mixed reaction from his readers but he raises an important issue. There is no doubt of course that the US wants change in Iran (don't we all?) and Bush was asked a straight question by a reporter and had to give an answer. But you would hope that the administration realises that associating too closely with the demonstrations gives the clerics the chance to paint their opponents as a 'fifth column' and a chance to try and turn the protests into a national sovereignty issue - which would clearly not be helpful.

2003-06-16T03:10:00.000-07:00

YES, YES AND YES
The Guardian says that John Prescott will provide referendums next year on regional devolution for the three northern regions.

2003-06-15T14:44:00.000-07:00

INFANTILE DISORDER

"Never in my life have I seen such a vociferous, poisoned bunch of people....they were like animals, they really showed their teeth, it was disgusting"

Not a description of the eating habits of the kebab-munching post-pub crowd but what passes for comradely debate in the Scottish Socialist Party.

I suppose the euphoria over the recent electoral success had to end sometime and suspect the pitfalls of constructing a political party composed of various sects who each consider themselves the only true representatives of the people are now showing themselves.

2003-06-15T13:58:00.000-07:00

THE ANTI-EUROPEANS
The pro-euro campaign Britain in Europe has a list of 60 'anti-European' organisations on its website and it makes for interesting reading.

As BiE point out it is a real alphabets soup, including the British Housewifes' League and the spectacularly-named All Party Alliance Against Brussels (which naturally has no party support) but what is more interesting are the harder ideological opponents of the EU. The Libertarian Alliance, which includes Samizdata blogger Brian Micklethwait and another blogger David Farrer are named and of course more mainstream Euro-sceptic and nationalist conservative organisations are also present on the list.

In the same camp on the EU issue are the Communist Party of Britain (and the Communist Party of Britain Marxist-Leninist), the (Trotskyist) Socialist Alliance and Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party - I can't describe how much I'm looking forward to the eventual referendum on the euro just to see these lot all sharing a platform with Nigel Lawson and everyone to the right of him.

Of course you can overplay the 'unholy alliance' angle. The ultra-left and the right are opposed to the EU for entirely different reasons. On the Red Pepper mailing list the other day one ultra-left contributor described the EU as being a 'neo-liberal capitalist club', yet the right are against the EU precisely because it isn't such a free-market paradise.

But sometimes the single issue is enough of a bond to cross the ideological divide. According to BiE, one member of the Libertarian Alliance, Dr Sean Gabb, has backed Scargill's party because "Mr Scargill is a patriot who has always campaigned against membership of the European Union”.

All in all it is a pretty effective piece of propaganda from the Britain in Europe people.

I mean if Nationalists, Conservatives, Libertarians, Trotskyists, Stalinists, Scargillites and Organised Housewifery are all opposed to the EU, is it not difficult to avoid concluding that Brussels must be doing something right?

2003-06-14T08:16:00.000-07:00

'THE IMPERIALISM OF HUMAN RIGHTS'
Interesting article from Eric Hobsbawm looking at the current American global reach in a historical context.

How is the world to confront - contain - the US? Some people, believing that they have not the power to confront the US, prefer to join it. More dangerous are those who hate the ideology behind the Pentagon, but support the US project on the grounds that it will eliminate some local and regional injustices. This may be called an imperialism of human rights. It has been encouraged by the failure of Europe in the Balkans in the 1990s. The division of opinion over the Iraq war showed there to be a minority of influential intellectuals who were prepared to back US intervention because they believed it necessary to have a force for ordering the world's ills.

There is a genuine case to be made that there are governments so bad that their disappearance will be a net gain for the world. But this can never justify the danger of creating a world power that is not interested in a world it does not understand, but is capable of intervening decisively with armed force whenever anybody does anything that Washington does not like.

There is a lot to say about Hobsbawm's article and it merits a more serious post than I have time for today. He makes some good points about the US's lack of colonial skills in Iraq but there are a number of criticisms I would also make of his arguments. Just for starters - I am not at all sure that America does not understand the world nor that it is not interested in it - Hobsbawm presents no evidence to support this assertion which appears to be contradicted by most recent evidence. If one rejects that assertion, does the imperialism of human rights really sound so bad?

Clearly Hobsbawm is right to note that the departure of the USSR has made it easier for the US to flex its muscles around the world but his analysis fails to make a single mention of the rise of an Islamic terrorism which has a global reach. Given that the US outlook to the world changed radically, fundamentally, as a result of a terrorist atrocity which awoke it to a global threat, this does seem to be a major aspect to ignore.

2003-06-14T01:22:00.000-07:00

IT'S STARTED

Iranian students have kick-started a protest in Tehran which has drawn in other sections of society. This is how revolutions start.

the last time I posted on the issue of Iran someone suggested that the planned Iranian general strike had been organised by the CIA. It is entirely possible that US agents are operating in Tehran in a similar way to the Iranian agents are operating in Iraq, but to fail to support the people of Iran as they attempt to bring freedom to their country because you suspect they might be receiving unspecified help from outside would be wrong and shortsighted. Any review of the history of revolution will show that representatives of outside interests are invariably present. The thing to remember is that outside interests can only organise coups. Popular revolutions are a different matter.

Revolutions come about because the ruling class cannot continue to rule in the old way and the ruled class do not want to be ruled in the old way. We will see how things develop in Iran but I am hopeful that a real resistance to the murderers is developing.

2003-06-14T00:52:00.000-07:00

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 2

Rod Liddle thinks that "Labour wants to keep Jeffrey Archer in jail because he is a hate figure from the days of Tory hegemony"

His evidence for that is "Archer is up for parole pretty soon, but he won't get it if David Blunkett and the Home Office have their way" According to Liddle Blunkett will deny Archer's parole and "an injustice will be perpetrated".

My understanding of the Archer parole issue is that Jeffrey decided to ignore the terms of his day-release conditions and ended up at Gillian Shepherd's cocktail party rather than being at home as he should have been. Liddle dismisses this as a "technicality" and states "choosing to spend it (freedom) drinking martinis with Gillian Shepherd is bizarre and perverse. But I'm not sure it should cost five months of a mans life" At the risk of sounding like a Daily Mail editorial I would like to point out that Archer was in an open prison and allowed to visit his family at home on day-release but seemingly that freedom wasn't enough for him and he decided unilaterally he needed the further freedom to attend parties with other Conservative Party members and decided to do so in contravention of his day-release conditions. In my opinion this sort of arrogance deserves to be rewarded by denying parole.

It also seems appropriate to deny parole when we remember the serious crimes for which Archer was originally jailed - perjury and perverting the course of justice. Ignoring Archer's breach of the day-release conditions, which is really another form of contempt for the law, would allow him to metaphorically thumb his nose at the whole criminal justice system and Blunkett cannot allow that if he is to be seen as a credible home secretary.

If even a small section of the right consider Archer to be either a political prisoner or a poster boy (TM - P. Cuthbertson 2003) they are in bigger trouble than they can imagine.

2003-06-13T07:01:00.000-07:00

STALINISM RETURNS- LIVE AND EXCLUSIVE TONIGHT!

Yes tonight is the big night! The Communist University opens in London with speeches and festivities and fraternal greetings. I'm afraid comrades that I won't be able to make it as the CIA were on the phone and they want me to draft some new ideas on how best to divide the anti-imperialist forces of progress and you know, what can you say when duty calls?

I suspect most readers will be otherwise engaged tonight as well. But if you want a taste of what you are going to miss out on then simply read Stop the War leader Andrew Murray's incredible piece - 'Unity our strength' from the Morning Star - it should give you a perfect flavour of the nostalgia-fest that kicks off tonight. (And for those of you who have heard of a chap by the name of Rajani Palme-Dutt the Murray piece is one for the tribute album).

Comrade Murray sees dark forces ranged against a powerful movement which "almost stopped the imperialist war". These forces of reaction are

1. The Daily Telegraph (of course)
2. Journalist Nick Cohen whose "whining may amount to nothing more than a protracted resignation letter from the left, following in the unsteady footsteps of his hero Christopher Hitchens",
3. The comedian Mark Thomas (who dared to criticise Murray's new friends in the Socialist Workers Party)
4. The New Statesman (who dared to print articles by Thomas and Cohen).

A true axis of evil. But comrade Murray knows what is behind this unprincipled cabal.

All this is predictable. To the politically experienced, it is as transparently the work of imperialists as the direct pro-war propaganda.
But the movement needs to be on guard against this period, when the level of mass mobilisation is inevitably loweer and the millions drawn into protest for the first time in the early part of the year can be disorientated and driven back into apathy. Every opportunity needs to be taken to avoid these provocations, consolidate the breadth of the movement locally and nationally and entrench both the movement and its demands for peace and democracy as a permanent element in political life.

There is only one possible response to this:

Long Live Comrade Murray! Hail the unbreakable alliance of Trotskyism-Stalinism-Islamism!

2003-06-13T03:09:00.000-07:00

DEFIANT IN THE FACE OF LOGIC
Excellent article in the New Statesman from Timothy Garton Ash about American-European identity issues.

Thus the lead story in the New Statesman last week was not entitled "How to stop Bush". It was entitled "How to stop America". I don't want to live in a Europe that is trying to build its identity by asking itself how to stop America. It's hopeless, because to define yourself against the US will not unite Europe - it will split it down the middle, as we saw over the Iraq war. It split governments, with France, Germany and Belgium on one side, and most of the rest on the other. It split public opinion, with most people against war and against Bush, but certainly not against America. To be European today is, whether we like it or not (and I do like it), to be deeply intertwined with America - culturally, socially, economically, intellectually, politically. Why cut off your nose to spite your face? Why define yourself by who you are against, rather than by what you are for?

I wonder if the New Statesman will take heed?

On a lighter but still significant note, Garton-Ash points out the interesting contradictions that exist in Europe today:There are two characteristic figures in Europe today: the deeply Europeanised anti-European and the deeply Americanised anti-American. We have all met him, the pinstriped Tory Eurosceptic who has a house in Tuscany, is an expert on French wines and knows a great deal more about Wagner operas than Chancellor Gerhard Schroder does. (This last may, admittedly, not be saying a great deal.) We have all met her, the ageing German anti-American peace campaigner, whose inspirations are Woodstock, Joan Baez and not the German Martin Luther but the American Martin Luther King. Except that each in turn would protest: "I'm not anti-European, I'm just against the Brussels Eurocratic vision of a federal superstate", and "I'm not anti-American, I'm just against the inhuman, warlike policies of that Texan cowboy in the White House."

Which reminds me of an incident that occured a couple of years ago when I was travelling in that complicated corner of Northern Europe where you are not quite sure whether you are in Belgium, the Netherlands or Germany and where France is just down the road.

I had stopped at a service station for a quick cup of coffee but when I saw the Wallace Arnold coach parked in front of the entrance my heart sank and I knew it was going to be a long wait. Sure enough inside the cafe were a coach-party of southern English pensioners touring Europe. I took my place in the queue and in front of me a gentleman from the Home Counties and his wife were struggling to pay for two cups of coffee and two cream cakes. The chap was looking at a till that merely said 7.80 and he was in battle with a pile of shrapnel in his hand that consisted of French Francs, Belgian Francs, Dutch Gilder and German Marks and a few pfennigs.

After a few minutes had passed with whispers of incomprehension from the English customers and impatient yet understanding smiles from the check-out girl (who this being Europe spoke English as one of her three or four languages) and fearing an even longer than expected wait for my coffee, I decided to intervene. We were in the Netherlands after all and so I filtered out the gilders for the gent and handed over his cash. Rather embarassed the couple muttered some thanks to me and turned to head for their seat.

"Not at all," I said, "I suppose I can see why they want the euro," I added. To which the grey-haired gent from the Home Counties turned on his heels, stared at me and barked:"NEVER, NEVER, NEVER!!"

I wonder how many times he voted in the Daily Mail's referendum?

2003-06-13T02:26:00.000-07:00

SAY YES TO A FEDERAL SUPERSTATE!

Stephen Pollard makes this observation about the cabinet re-shuffle: Well, here it is - made flesh. John Reid, MP for Hamilton North and Belshill is now Health Secretary. He is unable to have anything to do with health in his own constituency and country. But he is responsible for the NHS in England. The joys, and lunacy, of our devolution structures

It is of course the old West Lothian question rearing its head again. We also have the problem of the position of the Scottish and Welsh secretaries, whose roles appear to have been made redundant by devolving powers to the First Ministers in Scotland and Wales. To add to this we have the presence of Lord Falconer, a London-based lawyer, who appears to have some responsibility for Scottish and Welsh (and English regional?) affairs and who, of course, does not have any constituency at all.

The problem here is that we don't actually have any devolution structures as such. We are quite clearly in a transitional phase where partial power has been devolved to the national assembly in Wales and the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh, where as well as the West Lothian question, we still haven't solved the Northern Ireland conundrum and the 'English question' has not even begun to be dealt with.

Add into yesterday's mix the Milburn resignation in which, according to some reports, the reluctance of his family to move to the capital played a key role. The idea that a Northern politican could play an important role in governing the North is sadly not yet a possibility.

Of course we still have John Prescott's proposals for regional assemblies on the table, which would, at the very least, democratise the already existing regional development agencies but which appear to have little support outside of the North and which are fairly low on the government's list of priorities. The media hardly seem interested in the question of when we are going to have a referendum on constitutional change which may be just as important as the not-yet written European constitution.

It may be very British to bungle along like this and hope that somehow, 20 or 30 years down the line we have reached a point where we have a defined and understood relationship between the component parts of the UK and Westminister and between whatever the UK has become and whatever the EU has become. But I suspect these challenges may require a little more than the usual faith in our unwritten constitution and the ability of common-sense to prevail.

In my mind the logic of this whole process is that Britain should become in effect, if not name, a federal republic, with clearly defined responsibilities for the nations and regions and with a more limited co-ordinating role for the (federal) parliament and (federal) government in London. Conservatives and nationalists would disagree and no doubt so would many other people.

But would it not make sense at this stage, as a basic first step, to create a Constitutional Convention to begin to look at these issues and attempt to find a solution?

2003-06-13T01:55:00.000-07:00

SPAM AND SEPTIC TANKS
I get next to no spam in my email inbox during working hours but every time I log on in the morning I am reminded that size matters and that my credit card options are endless. Bizarrely I even get a daily offer of a radical approach to dealing with my septic tank - I kid you not. The fact that all this spam arrives during the night led me to the conclusion that the septic tank factor was important.

Now this has been confirmed, according to this Guardian report: The EU is to introduce laws to curb spamming in October, but the world's 150 most prolific junk mailers are all based around one town in Florida, where there are no anti-spamming laws.

2003-06-12T16:11:00.000-07:00

THE BATTLE OF IDEAS

George Monboit's new book The Age of Consent gets a sympathetic review from Johann Hari in the Independent.

I am looking forward to reading the book and as a taster Monboit himself provides a summary of his ideas on his own website.

Some might be surprised that Hari is broadly positive about Monboit's book but that is because both these commentators are often misunderstood. Hari was a supporter of armed revolution in Iraq and is an advocate of the US exporting of democracy but he has also spent a good deal of time demanding that his friends in the 'anti-globalisation' movement start coming up with some positive suggestions for change and transform themselves into a global justice movement and Hari is a man of the left.

Monboit's melodramatic style in the Guardian and his opposition to the US makes it easy to mistakenly lump him in with the Trotskyists and other ultra-left elements but remember that while he opposed a US-led war to liberate Iraq he was not against the idea of an international military intervention per se. That might make him a little opportunist or possibly naive but unlike many on the radical left he is a thinker. And he has responded directly to Hari's appeal for a constructive approach from the critics of globalisation. Indeed he uses the term global justice movement that Hari has pushed frequently.

I find a lot to disagree with in Monboit's writings but I am keen to read his book because he approaches the fundamental question about globalisation: Our task is not to overthrow globalisation, but to capture it, and to use it as a vehicle for humanity's first global democratic revolution. That makes Monboit a radical minority amongst the 'no-global' crowd and as you might have gathered I like radical minorities on the left.

Hari though does make some keen observations and criticisms in his review:

Firstly, Monbiot does not provide a mechanism for spreading democracy into nations living under totalitarianism. This is a big hole in his theory. His vision is one which is explicitly designed to hem in the USA; but it is an America committed to spreading the values of its own revolution which is the best hope for many peoples on earth to rid themselves of their dictators. A global democracy where most of the world is excluded by their own autocratic rulers is scarcely worth having. His notion that underground elections might be held in countries like Saudi Arabia and North Korea is plainly impractical, and his idea that the exiled community might vote on behalf of their oppressed countrymen is a poor alternative for actually seeking to spread democracy.

Secondly, his notion that class and (ultimately) global identities are superseding nationalism is, I am sure, mistaken. A "species awareness", a sense that, as humans, we are all in it together will inevitably have to overlap with, rather than replace, national identities. Monbiot's contention otherwise is one of the few places where the utopian charge against him will stick. Thirdly, the only point at which Monbiot strikes a false note is when he vaguely predicts that capitalism will ultimately be "destroyed". This smacks of him trying to retain his radical constituency rather than an offer a plausible prescription, especially given the fact that it follows his passionate and persuasive defence of the ability of regulated market-based trade to increase wealth in poor countries.

But these criticisms merely mark the fact that this is a weighty book which must be engaged with. At last, the global justice movement has found a vision as expansive and planet-wide as that of the American neoconservatives. Let the battle of ideas commence.

Indeed, let it commence. But will it?

This summer there are a whole series of left-wing 'schools' and 'universities' in London where the orthodoxies of early 20th century Marxism and Leninism, the dead propaganda of the cold war, will be parroted by the weary ideologues of the ultra-left. But I have yet to find any event for the divergent views of the heretical left, for people like Hari and Monboit and from differing perspectives John Lloyd and Nick Cohen to come face to face and discuss these much more pertinent issues.

Would it really be too difficult to organise? It certainly needs to be done and not just because it would be an entertaining debate. With the dreadful state of orthodox left thinking I am convinced that it is out of the clash of ideas between heretic thinkers that the seeds of a new radical left agenda can emerge - we need some sparks to fly.

.

2003-06-12T13:30:00.000-07:00

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

Trupti Patel has been found found not guilty of murdering her three children. Her defence was aided immesurably by expert medical evidence provided by Professor Michael Patten. As is well known in criminal cases the prosecution also call their own expert evidence in an attempt to back up their case.

In my experience it's perfectly possible to prove anything by coming up with an expert opinion. The trouble is science is just much more subjective than scientists like to think. It's also worth remembering that he who pays the piper calls the tune and that in the English courts it's still the norm to have two expert witnesses, each paid by a seperate party to the litigation.

The subjective nature of science when brought to the courtroom is the main reason I can't take seriously those who call for the return of capital punishment. It's just too easy to make mistakes in murder trials and there is no right of appeal when you are dead.

2003-06-12T13:11:00.000-07:00

SPLITTERS !

I don't know if Spectator journalist Aidan rankine has been visiting Harry's Place but his article in this weeks magazine is his own take on the topic du jour, that of the behaviour of the contemporary right aping that of the ultra-left. He dissects various factions of the Tory party and draws some interesting conclusions.

2003-06-12T08:07:00.000-07:00

THE GREATEST AMERICAN IS....

The BBC is running a poll on its website to vote for the Greatest American of all-time as part of an upcoming global debate about the USA's place in the world. And look whose winning?

Call me a humourless bastard, call me a conspiracy theorist, but this smells of one of those co-ordinated attempts to rig a vote with organised block voting - time for a bit of investigating. Still, if Homer wins, should at least be fun to watch the right-wing US bloggers get all het up about the latest BBC slur against their nation.

2003-06-12T05:30:00.000-07:00

FAMILY FIRST

Alan Milburn has quit as Health Minister for family reasons.Tom Happold's report on Guardian Unlimited ends like this:

Reacting to the suggestion that political commentators would be looking for ulterior motives behind Mr Milburn's decision, the MP replied: "I understand that and they are wrong. I understand that there will be motives suggested about this. There will be implications and there will be the wildest of conspiracy theories about this."

Mr Milburn added: "But it comes down to a simple thing - a personal choice."

Discussing his future, Mr Milburn said: "You get one shot in life with kids. You get one chance to see them grow up. I have not been there and I want to be there."
Describing the kind of life politicians lead, Mr Milburn added: "I think it's a crazy way of life and a mad way of life. People have different ways of dealing with it - but this was an intensely personal choice."

Knowing our media and our political elite I am sure there will be speculation about the 'real reasons' . But I hope for once Milburn's motives will be taken at face value. He was doing fine as a politician and he was trusted and highly-rated by Tony Blair. The reforms of the NHS may have tested his ability to carry the party with him but they have hardly begun. I don't have the inside story on this but there seems no pressing political reason for Milburn to go.

As a father with a time-consuming career myself I know exactly what Milburn is talking about and I am sure some of you do to - this will be an interesting test of how far Britain has come in accepting the difficulties fathers face in balancing their family commitments with their careers.

It is easy to cynically mock the 'spending more time with my family' explanation, because so many politicians have used it as an excuse in the past. But there is really nothing wrong with spending more time with your family is there? If we want our politicians to be 'in touch with ordinary people' why should we expect them to sacrifice those ordinary, but valuable, family experiences, to the demanding world of politics?

2003-06-11T14:49:00.000-07:00

THE STALINISTS AND TROTS OF THE NATIONAL REVIEW
A few posts ago I highlighted an interesting article from the National Post by Jeet Heer detailing the captivating journey from Trotskyism of some of the neo-conservatives.

Now, I imagined that a few modern-day 'third camp' Trots, such as these people in London might feel slightly embarassed by the linkage between the followers of Old Leon and their enemy George Bush but it never entered my head that a raving right-winger would be furious about the suggestion.

But Arnold Beichman is absolutely livid in this National Review article where he totally misses the point and blasts: "Now there is little new in conspiracy theories about American politics and politicians. And it's easy to shout "McCarthyism" at the York University academic as he describes pro-war intellectuals, like the historian Paul Berman as having "a Trotsky-tinged past" but there is something more sinister at work here: to rob the Coalition, which destroyed a terrorist haven and an inhuman dictatorship, of the moral victory it represents.

So if ex-Trots agree with you, it robs you of your moral victory? Sounds a familiar line of argument and as Stephen Schwarz, an ex-Trot turned military interventionist himself, points out in a well-argued reply to Beichman: Stalinists loved to describe Trotskyists as "sinister," and here Beichman does not disappoint. The real intent of Jeet Heer, according to him, was "something… sinister…: to rob the Coalition, which destroyed a terrorist haven and an inhuman dictatorship, of the moral victory it represents." This, presumably, was to be effected by associating Donald Rumsfeld with Trotsky at Kronstadt.

Well, I consider Beichman's intent more sinister: to exclude (Christopher) Hitchens and myself from consideration as reliable allies in the struggle against Islamist extremism, because we have yet to apologize for something I, for one, will never consider worthy of apology."

Schwarz's article is well-worth a read in full if you are interested in this whole thing of ex-Trot neo-cons (and I am fascinated by it) but on another level isn't it odd and slightly amusing to read, in one of America's leading conservative journals, people brandishing accusations of Kronstadt guilt and Stalinism around like student union lefties?

Strange times, strange times.

2003-06-11T08:18:00.000-07:00

SOUR GRAPE BLOGGERS
Bobbie of PolitX gets stuck into the boasting bloggers and one in particular. And on that note the ban on blogging about blogging is back in force.

2003-06-10T14:57:00.000-07:00

A RIGHT-WING LIBERTARIAN WRITES...
And while we are on the topic of political labels that people like to throw around as insults (yes it was you Matthew Tempest!) and while this week I am totally trashing my rule about not blogging about blogging, I can't avoid pointing out a brilliant piece from our genuinely libertarian friends at Samizdata.

Committed ideological libertarians, like committed Marxist-Leninists, know that everything, but everything, can be explained through the prism of their ideology. Now when I was a student and the liberatarians of the Federation of Conservative Students were at the peak of the Thatcherite Revolutionary tee-shirt madness, we commies used to have little jokes about how the FCS chaps would manage to explain everything, but everything, in relation to either a market stall or a corner shop.

So while we were demanding subsidised beer in the students union (served by unionised staff being paid a fair wage), they were insisting that the management of the bar given the autonomy to test prices in the market place - if the beer was too expensive, the customers will not come again and the bar staff will have to adjust their prices., they demanded.

But not even those retrospectively hilarious discussions can compete with Perry's piece on Why Blogging is not democratic:

But you, the reader, do not get a vote on what get written in the articles on Samizdata.net. You may agree with what an article says or you may utterly disagree, but what gets written does not depend on how popular those sentiments are. We write what we want to write.

Where you do get to choose is whether or not you decide to come back and read us again. Much as in an open market, I might decide to try and sell my fruits and meats to those who pass by, yet I cannot force them actually purchase any of my goods if they do not wish to. They cannot stop me offering for sale those things I think makes economic sense but if I am wrong about what the market wants or if others make a better offer, then the passers by will choose to shop with someone else......

Can I enter the spirit of this debate for a moment? I consider this blog to be produced by vanguard elements, carefully selected on the basis of their steely and tried and trusted commitment to the movement. It is not a popular, broad, democratic organ, but rather concise propaganda aimed at the level of the advanced worker, that key strata from which the revolutionary cadre will be drawn. Those who read this blog and turn away to more popular sources are rejecting the objective reality that we scientifically present and are in fact suffering from false consciousness........................

2003-06-10T12:31:00.000-07:00

A ZIONIST NEO-CON WRITES...
Christopher Hitchens has a point about the demonisation of Paul Wolfowitz in his Slate article today and suggests, in rather uncharacteristically coy fashion, that anti-semitism is at play.

This tendency has been noted here before in the British context, in particular relation to the New Statesman's 'outing' of suppposed British neo-cons and the Tam Dalyell outburst, and there is little doubt that there are sections of the anti-war movement that are playing on the supposedly sinister nature of the 'shadowy neo-con cabal'.

As others have noted there is nothing at all shadowy or secretive about the neo-cons at all. For crying out loud they are one of the most high-profile and successful political factions in the world's most powerful democracy and they are not particularly shy about it at all - in fact if anything they are, to use Stalin's old phrase, "dizzy with success" at the moment.

But I still can't get over the amount of times that supposedly intelligent left-wing anti-war people point to the Project for a New American Century with a knowing look, as though it were some secretive anti-democratic conspiracy that we have all fallen victim to.

Look, they even have their own website and make public all their documents. Read what it says on the label: The Project for the New American Century intends, through issue briefs, research papers, advocacy journalism, conferences, and seminars, to explain what American world leadership entails. It will also strive to rally support for a vigorous and principled policy of American international involvement and to stimulate useful public debate on foreign and defense policy and America's role in the world.

In other words it is what we in the UK would call a think tank. It happens to be one that has been very active and very successful at getting its agenda adopted and there happen to be Jewish people involved in it but so what? Since when has the left taken the view that the presence of Jewish individuals in an organisation makes the organisation Jewish?

The only time until recently that I have heard this sort of view was from drunken East European reactionaries who were trying to convince me that communism was a Jewish invention and so was international capitalism. It is a view that has some history in that part of the world but I never thought I would hear the echoes of that same argument from western left opinion.

I supported the armed overthrow of the Saddam regime but I am not a neo-con. As a socialist I obviously don't see radical free-market policies as the solution to all the world's ills and while I am more supportive of the neo-con international agenda I am wary of the zealotry in their approach. I would have liked to have seen the United Nations do the post-war work in Iraq not the bungling US military and I'd like to see George Bush lose the next election and be replaced by a progressive Democrat - hardly the Wolfowitz agenda.

Yet, purely it seems because of my position on the Iraq war, a British communist told me the other day that I had "swallowed neo-con and Zionist propaganda hook, line and sinker". Given that I have hardly made a comment here or anywhere else on Israel and Palestine, the comrade must be of the view that 'Zionists' were behind the Iraq war. Now either he really means Zionist, in which case some evidence needs to be made of Israel's involvement in the war and their incredible ability to pass legislation in Washington and win votes in the British parliament or in fact, as I suspect, he is simply using the old technique of calling Jews 'Zionists' in order to avoid the charge of anti-semitism.

It is happening all the time and we have even reached the stage where a columnist for the Guardian has to write an article entitled 'Note to the left - there is no all-powerful Jewish lobby' - an article which is full of examples of this worrying trend.

Lets be frank, all this talk about the PNAC conspiracy, people who make Freudien slips about 'Israelis in the US government' and all the things that Hitchens talks about in reference to Wolfowitz and that Aaronovitch recounts, do remind one of those people who babble on about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion don't they?

And lets not pretend that anti-semitism is something which has never had any influence on the left. Stalin's campaigns against the 'rootless cosmopolitians' and the 1950's Polish communist purges of the 'Zionists' were pretty blatant examples and there have always been furtive whisperers and nodders and winkers in all kinds of left organisations.

Yet never, never until these recent months, has such trading in anti-semitic stereotypes been used so frequently on the 'radical left' in western democracies. It remains, thankfully, a minority pass-time, but it is high time it was nipped in the bud.

2003-06-10T08:31:00.000-07:00

ARE YOU A WHORE OR A ZEALOT?

James Crabtree of VoxPolitics says that the recently published political map of weblogs tells us more about the linking policies of bloggers than their ideology. Given that the map is based on the kind of links that the blogs pick up he is clearly right.

After all Andrew Sullivan and Instapundit, who would both be on the hard right of the Tory Party are at the centre (!!!) of this map, while Matt Welch, a kind of contrarian liberal, features on the far right. As James says there are two types of linkers - zealots who link to their ideological pals and whores who either link to everyone or to people they like to criticise.

A look at this blog's links would have me clearly in the whore category and it is of course a term I became accustomed to hearing during the pre-war debate. But come to think of it, all British blogs link across the ideological divide so are we all whores now?

Reading Vox Politics also took me to this interesting article by James on the Left and Blogging.

The blogsphere is an example of Willard Quine's coherence theory of truth: that things are true if they agree - or appear to agree - with other things that are held to be true. Right-wing bloggers are thus creating their own world, in which their truth exists often without debate. And the same may be about to happen in the UK. The journalist Stephen Pollard, the only British political blogger on the left, notes: "There are plenty of new British political blogs. And they are all - all - on the right." But political blogging is in its infancy here. It remains up for grabs. Got a computer? Got a view? Get blogging. There is a war to be won.

Indeed. If Pollard is the only major blogger of the left (and he calls himself a neo-conservative remember and names Rumsfeld as his political hero) isn't it about time we lefties did something about this?

Watch this space.......

2003-06-10T08:10:00.000-07:00

EVERYONE HAPPY THEN?
So much analysis and comment about the Euro statement that a poor blogger (especially an agnostic on the euro) doesn't know where to start. Well, probably with British Spin, who as usual manages to cut through the crap and get to the nitty gritty:

So why is everyone so happy? Paradoxically, I suspect it's because they've both got what they don't want. The NO campaign don't want a referendum, but secretly they long for it, because they think they'd win. The YES campaign don't want a delay, but secretly the need one so they can get their campaign ready.

2003-06-10T04:13:00.000-07:00

THOSE THAT CAN...

Had a chuckle at this email from a reader in response to my post on the US bloggers who are getting carried away with their supposed scalping of the New York Times.

Remember the old jibe about teaching? "Those that can, do. Those that can't, teach"? As far as journalism is concerned perhaps it is a case of: "Those that can, do. Those who would like to, blog".

2003-06-10T03:10:00.000-07:00

BLACK IN THE UNION JACK?

ReFlag is a campaign to change the union jack flag by the year 2006 to greater reflect the diversity of the UK by including black in the flag. It has been launched by a chap in London called Nigel Turner.

The UK has come a long way in the last 50 years to creating a true multiracial society. It's time to wave the flag and celebrate the progress that's been made!

A number of countries around the globe have black in their flags to represent the colour of their people. It makes sense for the UK to have black and white in our flag, to represent the different races and cultures which make up the country at the beginning of the third millennium.

We haven't conquered racism, nor many other forms of prejudice, but by changing the nation's main emblem, we can reclaim the union flag from those who have hijacked it for their own ends, so that our flag reflects the diversity of the people of the UK.

The Scotsman gives the idea short shrift in an editorial today There is always a risk of patriotism shading into chauvinism. But Mr Turner is being ridiculously literal. Does anyone suggest that the Stars and Stripes is not representative of black Americans? Or that the new Rwandan flag, with its poignantly golden sun on a light blue background, should be condemned for failing to convey the skin colour of its people?

The spirit of a flag derives from the spirit of a nation. Americans used theirs as a symbol of freedom and defiance after 9/11. Whether the Union flag welcomes all comers has nothing to do with its colour.

Having just spent a few days back in Lancashire where the racist British National Party are making serious ground, I'd like to tell Mr. Turner that his silly idea will do absolutely nothing to tackle real racism. On the contrary it will play straight into the hands of the BNP and other racists.

If Mr.Turner has the time and energy to devote to updating the symbols of state perhaps he might be better served dealing with the appalling excuse for a national anthem we have to put up with?

2003-06-10T02:47:00.000-07:00

THE LOOTED TRUTH
David Aaronovitch reviews the lies and reality of the looting of the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad:

Furious, I conclude two things from all this. The first is the credulousness of many western academics and others who cannot conceive that a plausible and intelligent fellow-professional might have been an apparatchiks of a fascist regime and a propagandist for his own past. The second is that - these days - you cannot say anything too bad about the Yanks and not be believed.

Well unless you are the Guardian reporting the words of Paul Wolfowitz perhaps.

2003-06-09T10:03:00.000-07:00

IDEAS ABOVE THEIR (TECH CENTRAL) STATION?
Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit, likes his buzzwords and loves hyping blogging, so the breathless claims from some commentators that the 'blogosphere' brought down the New York Times editor has not surprisingly sent him and others OTT.

Buzzword of the day - horizontal knowledge. Now that might sound like the title of a porn film to you and me but to Reynolds it means the profound, ground-breaking awareness that: "As the world grows more interconnected, more and more people have access to knowledge and coordination. Yet we continue to underestimate the revolutionary potential of this simple fact."

In other words, we have more information about things and bloggers (hoorah!) have realised this while 'old media' or 'big media' (boo!) have yet to wake up to this radical, nay, revolutionary, change in our societies.

In particular the lefty slackers at the New York Times (boo! boo!) have paid the price of failing to realise that people know stuff now. But fear not, for whoever takes over the helm of the NYT can count on some free advise from the Pundit.

"As I've suggested in more detail here, it would be child's play to take RSS feeds from a number of weblogs, filter them to extract the references to stories in the Times, and then have an ombudsman look at those references to see if correction, amplification, or investigation is called for. A newspaper that did that (and it could just as easily be done by any major paper, not just the Times) would be enlisting a huge (and unpaid!) army of fact-checkers, and could fix mistakes within hours of their appearing, thus turning inside its competition and enhancing its reputation, all at very low cost."

In other words the New York Times and other papers should employ someone to read those very important and revolutionary weblogs (including perhaps Instapundit? You betchya) and then they would hopefully, finally, realise that lots of people now know about lots of things.

What a great job! Sitting around all day reading blogs and getting paid for it by someone else! I wonder where Mr Pundit got that idea from?

But wait a minute. Don't newspapers and other media organistions already get hundreds of emails a day from their readers? In fact I bet some even get letters and phone calls as well. When they make mistakes don't they nearly always find out and find out quickly from their readers?

Hasn't this already been happening for, well, several years now?

In fact here is a revolutionary question - why does someone complaining about a newspaper on a weblog have any more validity or importance than the ordinary reader who phones/writes/emails his complaint to the editorial department?

Whisper it in case he hears but perhaps weblogs that complain about the media all the time are really no more significant than good old Disgruntled of Western-Super-Mare?

2003-06-09T07:01:00.000-07:00

THE FIRST BLOGGING MINISTER?
American bloggers may still be basking in the glory of having helped forced a newspaper editor to have resigned but the British blogosphere might be just about to outdo our friends across the Atalantic for once.

According to the cannily informed British Spin (and the Sunday Times among others), our blogging MP could soon be a blogging minister.

2003-06-09T05:17:00.000-07:00

TROTTING AROUND THE MIDDLE EAST

Another interesting piece on the Trotskyite roots of some key Washington neo-conservatives in the National Post.

Jeet Heer traces neo-con thinking from the 'Third Camp' position of the revisionist US Trotskyist Max Schactman, who rejected the orthodox position of 'defending' the USSR by the novel method of calling for its overthrow. Instead he opted for outright hostility to the Soviet Union. Schactman ended up a leading figure in the hard-line cold warrior wing of the US labour movement and was a supporter of the Vietnam war.

It is an interesting article but it ommits one key component of Trotskyite thinking which I think is crucially also a central element of the neo-con appraoch.

One of Trotsky's many criticisms of Stalin was that he was not interested in 'exporting the revolution' . It was a view which looked a bit silly after 1945 but that didn't stop British and American Trots from continuing to spout the same line that Stalin was only interested in 'socialism in one country' even after the spread of Soviet state socialism to the whole of Eastern Europe (never mind the small matter of China).

The idea was that it was the responsibility of the revolutionary centre (ie Moscow) to promote and support revolutions globally, possibly it seems with the use of force (old Leon was always a bit vague about this latter part, possibly because he spent his exile living on the grace of capitalist governments).

Now, are the neo-cons not taking the US as the centre of the democratic, global capitalist revolution? And are they not enthusiastically supporting the export of the revolution, on occassions by force? Are they not keenly hoping for strikes and uprisings in places like Iran.

In contrast their enemies on the right are the isolationist conservatives who are more content to follow a policy of 'democratic capitalism in one country' and to settle for a form of 'peaceful coexistence' with anti-democratic regimes?

(thanks to Chris for the link)

2003-06-07T04:14:00.000-07:00

MORE ON THE GUARDIAN...
"It has not been the best of weeks," writes the Guardian's Readers' Editor in an article which describes the reaction and their response to the paper's erroneous Wolffowitz report.

2003-06-07T01:04:00.000-07:00

BLEATING LIKE A SHEEP

Regular readers of Harry's Place seem to me to be the sort of people who want to know what alternative meaning their name has in old Scots (a variant of old English spoken throughout the Scottish lowlands by all social classes since the medieval period but which became increasingly confined to rural and working-class users after the departure of the Stuart court to London - in case you needed a primer) . Now they can find out, thanks to this place run by a poet and ex-schoolmate of mine, Roddy Lumsden.

Peter Cuthbertson - look away now !

2003-06-06T12:01:00.000-07:00

DOH !

This is an old story (but very funny) though seemingly mostly unreported in the UK.

2003-06-06T10:53:00.000-07:00

IRIS MURDOCH - POET OF THE PEOPLE

The personal books and papers belonging to English novelist Iris Murdoch who died in 1999 are being sold next week in London.

The papers are reported (by the Times in an unlinkable print friendly version) to contain a copy of Murdoch's "Sectarian Songs" in which the ex-communist writer left us her thoughts on the post-war division of the British left:

"The Petty Bourgeoise philistine/
He didn't know the Party line/
Although he struggled day and night/
He was a bleeding Trotskyite."

I think it shows great promise......

2003-06-06T08:10:00.000-07:00

DEFEND JOHN PRESCOTT!

I'm sorry but I can't take seriously the forced outrage of the media over John Prescott's V-sign gesture and the silly comments of 'disgust' from Lib Dem and Tory MP's.

As this BBC story reminds us it is, of course, not the first time Prescott has got himself in hot water with a gesture. But remember his approval rating actually went up when he gave some egg-chucking yob a clip around the ear and I think he is on to a winner again this time.

If the media really think that voters are going to be angered by a bloke waving a V-sign at a mocking crowd of photographers and journos they are kidding themselves big time. On the contrary - if politicians are unpopular in this country, they are certainly run a close second by the media.

The press have it in for Prescott and I think it is pretty clear why - he represents one of the most despised figures of all for the London elite - the blunt Northerner. Worse than that he is a blunt Yorkshireman - and in power.

You think I am exaggerating? Well, forget politics for a minute and ask yourself which cricketers have come in for the most stick over the years from the sports press? Geoffrey Boycott, Ray Illingworth and Fred Truman. Lancastrians fared little better when they were given a brief spell in charge as David Lloyd or Mike Atherton could tell you. It is the same in football - Yorkshireman Howard Wilkinson mocked as 'old school' for little other reason than his accent, North Easterners Bobby Robson and Kevin Keegan hounded as England managers for their supposed lack of tactical 'sophistication' (a phrase that has additional meaning when uttered by southerners about northerners). Contrast thier treatment with the crawly coverage of Londoner Terry Venables or Essex's Keith Fletcher.

Politics? Who are the two most despised PM's spokesman of all-time? Yorkshireman Bernard Ingham and Burnley fan Alistair Campbell without any doubt. Coincidence? Maybe. But look at the media's hate figures on the far left - compare the reaction to Dennis Skinner and Arthur Scargill over the years with the celebrity status bestowed on the likes of Red Ken, Tony Banks or even Islington's Jeremy Corbyn.

But Prescott will have his revenge.

If there is one legacy he can leave from his time as a minister it will be to give the North of England a chance to run its own affairs via regional government. Yorkshire, the North West and the North East, will be given referendums where they will be able to opt out of direct rule from Westminster. Personally I'd prefer a full parliament on the Scottish model for the whole of the North myself but Prescott's proposals are an excellent start.

Of course when London got its regional government it was given a warm welcome in the media whereas Prescott's plans to give the same for the North have been mocked by the London opinion-formers. No surprise there either - we are fine for comedy and sports events but we are never to be allowed to run things.

And that is what the whole of the media's dislike of John Prescott is about.

Just wait till we get the Guardian back to Manchester.

2003-06-06T06:53:00.000-07:00

THE GUARDIAN - A CORRECTION

In a recent post on the Guardian's Paul Wolfowitz quote, we suggested that the newspaper had simply removed the article without offering a retraction, correction or explanation. That is not the case. The Guardian has offered a correction in today's newspaper. Harry's Place apologises for any suggestion that Guardian Unlimited was not prepared to face up to the error it had made.

Also in the post on Salam Pax (June 6th) the term 'Guardian reading liberal' was used in the headline. Harry's Place accept that this is a derogatory phrase used by right-wing reactionaries and has no place on a weblog run by Guardian-reading, juice-bar lefties.

2003-06-06T05:33:00.000-07:00

THE AGE OF CYNICISM

A superb piece from Mick Hume in Spiked - which really is the best examination of what the WMD affair tells us about the state of the country.

Large numbers of people now tell pollsters that they do not believe the government's claims over WMD and, moreover, that they no longer believe what the government says about anything else. Is this a good thing for those who would like to see serious political change? Well, yes and no - and right now, probably more no than yes.......

This is not healthy critical questioning of those in authority, in pursuit of political change. It is based instead on cynicism and something akin to paranoia, reflecting a sense that we are powerless victims at the mercy of dark forces. The feeling is not just anti-politician, but anti-politics. It is not only that people don't believe the government, they don't believe in anything much at all.

Well worth a read.

2003-06-06T05:22:00.000-07:00

SALAM PAX - A GUARDIAN READING LIBERAL?

Everyone is raving about Salam Pax, the Baghdad blogger. He's been given a fortnightly column in the UK Guardian; he's been called 'brave' and 'courageous' for blogging his thoughts in a repressive state; and his blog has been described as 'far better than the stuff pumped out by the army of foreign correspondents' in Iraq.

Salam Pax is hailed as the genuine article, a real Iraqi voice among the millions of words written about Iraq over the past three months. In reality, Salam's rise to fame reveals more about liberals and their prejudices here in the West, than it does about postwar Iraq. Salam has effectively been adopted as 'one of us', a rational Western-sounding voice in irrational unWestern Iraq. Liberals love him because, more than anything, he reminds them of themselves.

So writes Brendan O'Neill in an article which might ruffle a few feathers and which in the Spiked tradition is designed to do just that.

I must admit I had similar thoughts to O'Neill when Salam Pax joined the Guardian, it did seem to be the perfect home for him. We still don't know much about Salam Pax but reading his material I had always assumed that he was an English or American-Iraqi who had returned home relatively recently - he has always sounded like a western liberal.

But where I am in total agreement with O'Neill is when he looks at why US conservative bloggers have adopted the Baghdad Blogger so enthusiastically despite his clear misgivings about the invasion of his country?

Even right-wing warbloggers, who normally attack anybody who disses Bush's warmongering, took Salam to their hearts. But again, this was driven less by any insight on Salam's part than by right-wing bloggers' own prejudices. They talk up Salam because they perceive him as giving a boost to the reputation of their beloved blogosphere. For such blogging-obsessed bloggers, what could be better than one-man-and-a-computer in the bombed-out city of Baghdad making an impact on the world?

I think he's got it spot on.

But it would be great if there were other Baghdad bloggers wouldn't it? It would be fascinating to read the views of a diversity of Iraqi opinion.

2003-06-06T03:23:00.000-07:00

SHOULD I MOVE ON?

I'm thinking of upping sticks to Movable Type as I am getting tired with the problems associated with blogspot. I'll have to pay for a host and other items but it sounds like a fair deal. I don't know much about MT though. Is it as easy and foolproof to use as blogger? Any feedback from others who have switched to MT (or other services for that matter) would be welcome.

2003-06-06T03:14:00.000-07:00

NEW ADDITION
A very impresive debut on the blogscene from Oliver Kamm, a former chairman of the Oxford University Labour Club - a much needed and welcome addition to the UK blogscene with the bonus of being that rarest of things - a nicely designed blogspot site.

2003-06-05T14:47:00.000-07:00

IS THE LEFT AFRAID OF MORALITY?

I’ve just finished reading William Woodruff’s ‘Beyond Nab End’, the sequel to his bestselling ‘The Road to Nab End’ – I thoroughly recommend both books to anyone seeking an antidote to the cynicism of our age. The first book is a moving account of Woodruff’s childhood as a Lancashire lad who grew up in the poverty of Blackburn in the wake of the First World War, the son of a weaving family. The follow-up continues his story as he moves to London and works in a foundry in the East End before, with a little help from sympathetic figures in or around the labour movement, he studies at night school and earns a scholarship to Oxford where his studies are interrupted by war.

One of the reasons why I adored these two books (and thanks Marcus for the first one!) was it took me back to some of the long conversations I enjoyed with people of Woodruff’s generation during my teenage years. Coming from a Lancashire (former) weaving town myself I had heard much about the struggles that went on during the depression years for the cotton industry – struggles in a collective sense and a personal and family context. As a young Labour Party member I spent hours talking to veteran Lancastrian socialists who cut their teeth politically in the 1930’s – men who took the temperance ‘pledge’, men who taught in Workers Education Association classes.

I heard of the men who died in Spain as volunteers and I spoke to men who fought against fascism and in defence of their country in the Second World War. I heard of the clubs and the socialist Sunday schools that organised picnics in the country and study groups. Those conversations shaped my political outlook and I like to think that the core principles I gleaned from those men remain with me now. Later, when I had chance to study the early years of the labour movement in Lancashire I read the newspaper reports of meetings attended by hundreds of workers discussing everything from pay deals to philosophy and all manner of international issues. Imagine trying to organise such meetings today.

Many of these men held religious beliefs, others took a godless but nonetheless deeply ethical socialism as their guide but together their confident class and community pride produced a generation of men and women who had a firm moral outlook allied with a genuine belief in the capacity of man to change the world for the better.

Although my home town was one of those to be dubbed ‘Little Moscow’ class warfare of the Marxist-Leninist kind never took root in Lancashire nor of course in many other working class communities in Britain – the militancy was always connected to a reformist agenda for realistic yet radical change.

It was that spirit of the labour movement which encouraged working men, like Woodruff, to educate and ‘better themselves’ while never forgetting their roots and never leaving their people behind. The collective struggles through the unions for pay and conditions and through the Labour Party for broader social benefits were allied to a commitment to give the next generation a chance to enjoy greater social mobility and those aims bore fruit with the 1945 Labour government. These roots are what still bind so many of us to the Labour Party no matter how often we may feel it’s governments have failed to live up to expectations.

It is easy to drift into a nostalgia for a lost era but I strongly belief that the spirit of those times needs to be refound by the modern left. What strikes me most in revisiting some of those conversations, prompted by Woodruff’s beautifully told accounts, is the pride of working people and the sense of morality of the men and women of those times. Morality is a word that brings smirks or surprised frowns when raised in conversation these days, largely because the term has been over-associated with sexual issues, but morality is of course, about much more than codes of sexual behaviour.

We in the wealthy west live in times where a strange form of hedonism or selfishness has gain hegemony, where making assessments about right and wrong is considered to be ‘judgmental’. We are told that other people’s behavior is none of our concern – if it is to be discussed it is in the abstract – rarely do people intervene to deal with problems in their communities. To its shame the left has allowed morality to become a term associated with Tories who blather about ‘Victorian Values’.

Of course, New Labour initially looked to ‘ethical socialism’ as a creed that could hold together its repackaged agenda but despite the occasional references to the idea in conference fringe-meetings and think-tank papers, the key task of reintroducing the moral dimension to local and national political life appears to me to have been sidelined by the day to day cut and thrust of politics and power.

But it is the idea that can reinvigorate the left and give it new purpose. The break up of working class communities and in many senses the break-up of the traditional working class itself have left many atomised, rootless and with no other goal in life then self-benefit. The state is expected to sort out the problems beyond our doorsteps, yet the state bodies (particularly at local level) are losing their legitimacy and therefore the ability to carry out their tasks effectively. Politicians are the ones who are supposed to deal with society’s many challenges, yet respect for politicians is at a low. In contrast to the active communities of the past we have handed over our responsibilities but we have little interest holding to account those who we have given the task to. Perhaps we should take our responsibilities back from them.

Yet to do so requires a political outlook which has vision and, dare I say it, a sense of morality. We need to abandon the cynicism that has gripped us and refind the ethical outlook and evangelical spirit that inspired movements for change in the past. There is no reason why scourges such as lingering poverty, drugs, violence, crime and prejudice cannot be dealt with by active citizens of vibrant communities. And how can we expect to tackle global challenges if we aren’t even interested in our own streets and squares?

If the left really does want change, if it believes in the ability of ordinary people to carry out that change then isn’t it about time we tried activating our towns and cities?

2003-06-05T08:26:00.000-07:00

SO WHAT HAPPENED TO THE GUARDIAN OIL STORY?

If you logged onto the Guardian website last night you would have seen the top, leading story of the day was the Pentagon's Paul Wolfowitz admitting that, yep, the Iraq war was indeed all about oil.

Oil was the main reason for military action against Iraq, a leading White House hawk has claimed, confirming the worst fears of those opposed to the US-led war. The US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz - who has already undermined Tony Blair's position over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by describing them as a "bureaucratic" excuse for war - has now gone further by claiming the real motive was that Iraq is "swimming" in oil.

Hot story no? Stop the presses, its a scoop, all your mates will be talking about this one in the morning. So why wasn't it front page lead in the paper this morning? Indeed why wasn't it in the paper at all?

The slight problem was it was complete bollocks.

Wolfowitz said nothing of the sort as a read of the official transcript of the relevant press conference would reveal. The blog Belgravia Dispatch had done the full works on the Guardian piece, Instapundit had picked it up and anyone with half an eye on the blogosphere knew the story was at the very best 'sexed-up' to use the phrase of the moment.

Now we don't need some New York Times agonising about this but surely the Guardian could offer an explanation of why they pulled this story? Log onto the URL of the old story and you simply get told this.

Sorry Guardian, this isn't good enough.

If you use the words of a senior US administration figure in order to embarass the Prime Minister of our country on a topic of major political significance and it turns out you have offered simply a shoddy piece of misrepresentation then an online correction is the least you can do isn't it?

It makes not the slightest difference that the story was on the website and not paper. The story is still circulating on Islamic websites and other media and you can bet the next time the US gets close to military action, those misquotes will be appearing all over the Internet.

But then I suspect that might be exactly what the journalist who wrote the piece was hoping for wasn't it?

(I loved the line that Wolfowitz's 'admission' was "confirming the worst fears of those opposed to the US-led war" - you must be joking. What 'fears'? They have been telling us it was all about oil for a year now. If he had confirmed that, the anti-war crowd would have been cracking open the champagne.)

This is the second time this week that the Guardian has had to back down after one of its Iraq war reports proved to be wrong.

Sexed-up? This is Viagra-spin.

2003-06-05T08:25:00.000-07:00

2003-06-05T07:50:00.000-07:00

BEST FOOT FORWARD

Thanks to Chris Bertram for pointing out this interesting piece by pro-globalisation writer Johan Norberg.

As Chris says it is a shame the article is published for the right-wing audience of the Spectator and not for left-leaning readers who need to do a bit more thinking about exactly what is happening with globalisation.

Certainly Norberg's enthusiasm for globalisation expressed through his look at Vietnam is very persuasive and those who call for a boycott of Nike might want to consider that the multinational is offering three times the minimum wage in Vietnam.

Likewise those who regret the 'opening up' of socialist countries to the global market might want to consider these facts: Since 1990, when the Vietnamese communists began to liberalise the economy, exports of coffee, rice, clothes and footwear have surged, the economy has doubled, and poverty has been halved.

AS Norberg says: The European Left used to listen to the Vietnamese communists when they brought only misery and starvation to their population. Shouldn’t they listen to the Vietnamese now, when they have found a way to improve people’s lives? The party officials have been convinced by Nike that ruthless multinational capitalists are better than the state at providing workers with high wages and a good and healthy workplace. How long will it take for our own anticapitalists to learn that lesson?

2003-06-05T05:31:00.000-07:00

WHY DO THE SHERMANS IGNORE US?

I’m breaking my rule about not ‘blogging on blogs’ again but Iain Murray asks a good question today:

Odd, isn't it, that the Leftist American blogs don't link to Leftist British blogs in the internationalist way that the right and libertarians do... Any ideas why? (I'd especially like to hear from comrades on the British left on this one).

Funny, I was wondering about this one just last night. It is true that my posts rarely get linked to by US blogs and I suspect the main reason is simply that I don’t venture into US domestic debates very often.

But that shouldn’t really count should it? Adding people to your blog list is basically, as Iain suggests, an act of support or solidarity. Samizdata, England’s Sword and other right/libertarian sites, pop up frequently on corresponding US blogs despite having UK-biased content.

Yet the left US blogs I have had some contact with such as Matt Welch, Jeff Jarvis, Matthew Yglesias have never bothered given me a spot on their blogrolls (not that I have ever asked mind).

In contrast when I set this blog up, UK conservatives such as Iain, Peter Cuthbertson and Pete Briffa happily gave me a plug and plenty of advise and encouragement. So is nationality more important than ideology when it comes to giving people a bit of a hand with their sites?

I suspect it is. Basically I think we just don’t register with the American sites. The big hitting US blogs spout on and on about the power and global potential of the medium yet they have shown next to no interest in giving a helping hand to the small Britblog scene – and I suppose why should they?

Sadly the result is that when UK media write about political weblogs they still refer to Instapundit and co rather than pay any attention to their own British sites – but that is surely a challenge to us to get ourselves better known isn't it?

I don’t write for the traffic (if I did I would post on gun control and anti-Americanism every day) but of course it is encouraging to get people visiting, reading and commenting, wherever they come from.

We have passed 40,000 visits here and while that is nothing compared with some sites, I am proud of the quality of readership that regularly visits. You can read too much into sitetracking data but the stats and the emails I have received from some quite senior figures in the UK media suggest that there is a nice niche audience out there. I have a few plans to try and widen the readership and changes will continue to be made in the future – as always your ideas are particularly welcome.

2003-06-05T03:52:00.000-07:00

FROM BAGHDAD TO BURNLEY

And this is what happens

2003-06-04T14:26:00.000-07:00

DEPRESSING

I don't usually buy Time Out, the London listings magazine, but did so last week. At the back of the magazine is Tania Glyde's column. The strapline asks "Bored of agony aunts ? Then try our ecstacy aunt" Reader, I did...

Someone called Annie from Holloway wrote to Ms Glyde. Annie explained:

"I am 28 and single and like everyone else these days work in the media. I keep meeting women who are on the game, and I keep thinking: I could do that. My career isn't really going anywhere, my body's ok, and these girls are making so much money ! What do you reckon ?"

How do you think Ms Glyde answered ? A warning to gullible greedy young women that disease and violence await ? No. A lighthearted piece of banter about the uselessness of media studies degrees. No. Wrong again. This is how she began:

"After a batch of really cruddy one night stands, you might well find yourself going home and thinking: I should be getting paid for this. And why not ?" Glyde doesn't list any of the numerous good reasons why not but instead explains without apparant fear of contradiction that "many marriages constitute prostitution, however prettily disguised". She goes on to point out that many women kept going on with their life in prostitution because of the money and asks "Why should society condemn an activity which enables this much expenditure, when all the media tells us to do is buy things ?".

Glyde appears to know what she's talking about aswell. She admits to a half-finished novel about being on the game. It hasn't been published but that's not a reflection of it's merit but because "the non-appearance of wedding rings at the end was a hurdle, for some, to taking it further, despite enjoying what they read. Which just goes how far we haven't come in honestly discussing what women really want, or like."

I would be interested if anyone has come across a finer example of cynicism and pathetic self-delusion. Anything that even approaches this heights attained in this 'advice' will be greatfully received and nominated for the Tania Glyde Prize.

2003-06-04T14:10:00.000-07:00

HAVE A SLUG ON US

Slugger O'Toole, the always interesting and widely respected blog on Northern Ireland is one year old. There is a brief review of the past year's best posts. If you have never visited Mick's blog then go and take a look.

2003-06-04T09:19:00.000-07:00

SILLY SEASON

If you happen to be the owner or a member of a far left group then summer time means just one thing - the annual political school. It is the highlight of the year for lefty students and the weary sectivists alike and there is no shortage of events to choose from.

They are called ‘schools’ or ‘universities’ in pretence of offering an academic standard of debate. In fact all that happens is that the party hacks churn out the party line all day and then everyone retires to the bar to gossip about other sectarians, recount exciting stories of adventures at AGM’s or suspense filled trade council votes.

For the younger members it is also a giant shagfest, with students and ‘young workers’ offered ‘free accommodation’ no doubt to ease the chances of what is euphemistically known in sect circles as ‘horizontal recruitment’. Comrade 18-30 would be the more accurate title for some of the activities that go on.

Basically unless you can organise a summer school you don’t count as a major league sect – so they are all at it. As mentioned previously the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain have reintroduced the old Communist University and to help muddy the waters the jesters of the Weekly Worker also have an event by the same name.

But by far the biggest (and most decadent) of these jamborees is Marxism 2003 organised by those lovely people, the Socialist Workers Party.

There are some intriguing topics for debate on the agenda. “A Marxism approach to international law” is offered by China Mieville, to which one is tempted to ask the novelist if a course in the basic structures of the English language might not be a better use of his time?

“How we won the vote” is the session that will be presented by ‘awarding-winning, campaigning journalist’ Paul Foot. Surely that depends on who is the ‘we’? After all comrade Foot hails from a distinguished family, his late father was Lord Caradon, the former colonial governor of Jamaica and Cyprus. ( I might attend this one as I am keen to know which Great Reform Act resulted in the British aristocracy ‘winning’ the vote?)

There is useful careers advice: George Galloway asks “What is the alternative to New Labour?” (better find out quickly Gorgeous) and shock, horror, there is even some salacious tabloid gossip – ‘Was Engels more than Marx’s partner?’.

All of which got me thinking. Why are we war-mongering, former hard-left, neo-neo-con bastards left out of all this fun in the sun? Why can’t we have our own summer school?

Even better, rather than us spout on about our own politics, why not invite a broad range of left opinion to address an agenda of our choosing?

We don’t have thousands of student’s direct debits to fund our school so it will have to be a one-day affair but here it is brothers and sisters, the recently agreed agenda for

REVISIONISM 2003

8:30am: Registration

9am: Round-table discussion – Playwright Harold Pinter of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic leads a debate among victims of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosova and asks ‘Are you sure your village was burned?’

10:30 am: PFI and Public Sector Reform: The Lessons of Liverpool – Peter Taafe and Derek Hatton take a fresh look at the 1980’s in Merseyside local government, in particular their pioneering private-finance initiatives. (Speakers from Swiss banks to be confirmed – advanced taxi bookings recommended for this event)

12:00: Lunch provided by ‘Juice Bar Lefties’

1:30: How the Iraqi Communist Party returned to life– Communist Andrew Murray, Chairman of the Stop the War Coalition looks at the events that allowed the Iraqi communists to re-emerge after decades of repression and explains the lessons that the left can learn from the successful overthrow of the Ba’athist regime that murdered thousands of his comrades.

3:00 pm The struggle for Human Rights in Saudia Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – George Galloway, MP, brings the insight gained from his extensive fundraising efforts in the region. (Event Sponsored by Dubai Duty Free Shopping World)

5:00 pm: Special video presentation: Enjoy once again Tony Benn’s moving televised interview with Saddam Hussein. Afterwards Tony will take questions, as long as they are lobbed gently under-arm and you bring some Quality Street chocolates along.

6:00 pm: Nick Griffin of the British National Party discusses his differences with the Socialist Workers Party over the War in Iraq, Israel, ‘The Jewish Lobby in Washington’ and Britain’s membership of the European Union (estimated duration, six seconds)

6:01: Celebrity Pass the Parcel – A little fun to end the day as our expert panel let their hair down with this parlour game sponsored by Hamas. Which layer of wrapping will trigger the explosive? Featuring: Abu Hamza, George Galloway MP, John Pilger and John McDonnell MP.

2003-06-04T05:14:00.000-07:00

IT'S KICKED OFF!

British Spin has fisked Stephen Pollard's column on the great fat-people-and-the-nhs debate. About time things livened up in sleepy post-war blogland wasn't it? And Spin doesn't hold back:

"Distorted facts, crocodile tears, and a solution that would make the people worse off. Bravura journalism, Stephen."

I find much to agree with in Spin's criticism but I do like Stephen's phrase 'juice bar lefties' - one for the collection.

2003-06-03T06:24:00.000-07:00

MASS DESTRUCTION
The anti-war movement are proving quite effective in their attempts to sully the achievements of the coaltion in Iraq and turn the fire on Tony Blair and his government. Apparently Blair has misled the world about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction - but has he? Interestingly even the anti-war movement accepted that Iraq had such weapons before the war and argued that it would be better to let the UN continue inspecting them - now they are pretending Saddam had nothing.

The anti-war movement have proved themselves time and time again to be hypocritical handwringers who have shown a cynical disregard for the real issues in Iraq. The best response to their sickening squealing over this issue has come from journalist Con Coughlin who has been on the ground in Iraq and pointed out in the Sunday Telegraph that the mass destruction that is being discovered in the grisly mass graves appears not to worry the flexible consciences of the anti-war brigade.

If this were Kosovo, the Government would be under fire for not having acted sooner to prevent the genocide. But this is Iraq, and the anti-war lobby appears to be far more interested in picking holes in the Government's justification for declaring war rather than conducting a sober assessment of the appalling acts of inhumanity that were conducted in Saddam's name over more than 30 years.

Forget the mass graves, what about the weapons of mass destruction? Having just returned from three weeks in post-liberation Iraq, I find it almost perverse that anyone should question the wisdom of removing Saddam from power.

So do I. But this is politics after all, pure and cynical Westminster politics.

It is Charles Kennedy and the old left united again hoping to score a few points off Tony Blair with the Tory press cheering them on. This has nothing to do with the rights and wrongs of liberating Iraq, it is about 'spin' and presentation about trying to catch people out. So much for perspective.

At a time when there are plenty of issues that need highlighting and dealing with urgently in Iraq this is the self-centred London media and their political pals at their very worst. It is truly sickening.

2003-06-03T05:19:00.000-07:00

FAT CHANCE

The front page of the Times carries an amazing story on the governments latest proposed reform of the health service. Under the proposals those who don't lead a healthy enough lifestyle will not be entitled to treatment. Those in the firing line initially are heavy smokers and those who don't take enough exercise, though how these conditions are defined and whether they might be extended is not clear.

Apparantly patients will be forced to sign contracts promising to eat sensibly, give up smoking etc in return for access to healthcare. This is a legal and moral minefield to say the least and throws up a number of questions:

1. Haven't fat people paid taxes to fund the NHS in exactly the same way as their slimmer counterparts. If this is the case why should they be denied access to healthcare ?

2. Overweight people and those who smoke tend not to live as long as those who are slimmer and don't smoke. They are actually much less of a "burden" than those who survive into their 70's, 80's and 90's and who often require frequent access state-funded healthcare. Should people who are over- fond of cream cakes and Marlboro Lights be penalised for living fast and dying young even when in purely economic terms they may well pay more in tax than they get out of the system in the form of healthcare.

3. The legal effect of such a patient-doctor agreement seems to me to be fraught with potential problems. Can a patient be forced to sign-away his rights to healthcare gauranteed by statute ? I can't see how it can be unless the whole rationale of the NHS is revisited and it's remit revised so that it is obliged only to offer healthcare to healthy people.

Having said all that I am more than aware aware that reform of the NHS is neccessary. I'm just not sure that these proposals are going in the right direction.

2003-05-28T13:17:00.000-07:00

PERMANENT REVOLUTION ?
I don't know who this guy is or how much influence he has in Washington but it does throw some light on the thoughts of the permanent revolutionists in the US who want a wholesale shake-up of the middle-east. He proposes a very tough policy indeed. This is what he says about those who take a softer line toward Syria and Iran:

"If we listen to the advocates of half measures and those who actually want to make deals with the tyrants we may yet find a path to defeat"
I suspect the strategy here is to shake-up the Mullah's rather than put them on notice that they are being targeted for overt action, I hope so anyway for a number of reasons.

What is clear is that the Iranian general strike called for 9th July in favour of democracy and a secular republic should be supported by all democrats and progressives in Europe and the US (sorry, no link - it's not had a lot of coverage in the Western media).

2003-05-26T03:59:00.000-07:00

OBSERVER WRITER DISCOVERS MEN DIFFERENT FROM WOMEN SHOCK

William Leith, reviewing a couple of books in the Observer finds that "We're all beginning to believe that men are essentially different from women". I don't know who he includes in the royal we but some of us have had an inkling about this for a while.

Leith spends most of his time reviewing a supposedly serious book written by someone called Simon Baron-Cohen (any relation to Ali G ?) which attempts to explore the essential differences between the sexes. According to the author he spent more than five years writing the book because "the topic was just too politically sensitive to complete in the 1990's"

Leith seems to share this craven fear of the middle-class Femocracy too. "The more you delve into the male mind the worse it looks. And the more you delve into the female brain the better it looks. When you take the lid off, the male brain looks really clunky - it is competitive, narrow and insecure" He goes on "The more you read the worse it looks for men. Women like to talk about emotions and relationships. Men like to talk about sport and traffic." Apparantly "women are better users of language. They use more words, make fewer errors, use longer sentences and more complex grammatical structures. Men pause more. Men stutter more."

I think some of these assumptions are questionable to say the least. My interest in discussing Arsenal's chances for the cup is limited. Does that mean I'm a girl ? Do women really use the English language better than men ? Is Margarate Drabble better than Shakespeare? Was Shakespeare able to write in "complex grammatical structures" in spite of his sex ?

What's really sad about this article is that Leith seems to believe that discussing relationships is in some way superior to talking about traffic. Both can be done with wit and style, both can be utterly dull and suicide-making. The sub-heading of this review states that the inescapable conclusion is that "All men are nerds". By this I assume Leith is alerting us to the propensity for the "male" brain to concentrate on detail and it's capacity for discerning spatial relationships which he at least refers to in his otherwise silly article. He presumably puts Michaelangelo, Da Vinci et al in the "nerds" category because of their single-minded pursuit of reflecting reality in forms different to the original. I suspect he would sneer "trainspotter" at their dedication. I'm almost certain he thinks the inventors of the jet engine, spinning-jenny or tumble-drier would have better used their time discussing their next-door neighbours relationship.

The sort of sad self-loathing displayed in this article is a good advert for banning any Polytechnic course with the word gender in it.

2003-05-24T15:18:00.000-07:00

CRAZY FOAMING EX-TROT ALERT !

Check out this article published in Arab News by former leading Trotskyist Tariq Ali. It's his take on the Iraq war for a Saudi-based audience. There's so much spittle on his lips I would recommend a closer look. In case the link is down I'll reproduce one of the choicer snippets.

"The existance of an independent Arab regime in Baghdad had always been an irritation to the Israeli military. With the installation of Republican zealots close to Likud in key positions in Washington, the elimination of a traditional adversary became an attractive immediate goal for Israel."

According to him Iraq was too "independent" to be allowed to exist by the Israeli army and their armed poodles, the USA . Hmmm...methinks independent has a different meaning in Tariq's dictionary.

I often wonder why people like Tariq Ali continue to churn out this sort of overblown sixth-form rhetoric long after their university years are over. Perhaps there are good Petrodollars in it...

2003-05-23T16:34:00.000-07:00

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GONE MAD?
Excellent piece in Spiked about the banning of competitive sports days in schools. This is an issue that has given much pleasure to the tabloid populists - the other night I saw Richard Littlejohn on Sky News, predictably lapping up this story and echoing the widely expressed view that "It is political correctness gone mad".

As Duleep Allirajah puts it in his article: "The notion that political correctness has gone mad is a strange anthropomorphism. The implication being that political correctness was once a perfectly sane and reasonable chap who only concerned himself with sensible pursuits, such as hounding Nazis and kiddie fiddlers. But then he suffered a breakdown, perhaps triggered by a humiliating sporting experience, and now Mr PC is a twitching, bulgy-eyed loon who has started stalking innocuous targets such as egg-and-spoon races. But in truth political correctness hasn't so much gone gaga as gone mainstream. The scrapping of competitive sports is the logical consequence of our therapeutic culture that assumes that children are vulnerable creatures whose self-esteem will be irreparably damaged by sporting failure.

I agree with this -- competition-free sport is as useful as alcohol-free beer. However I have some sympathy with one of the decisions of the Midlands headmistress who prompted this row - I can see the reasons for banning parents from sports days.

I once coached a junior football team and despite never having atttended a course in 'defeat counselling' had no problems in handling the impact of heavy losses on the egos of 14 year old kids. What I did have a problem with was bawling dads, either bollocking their kids and destroying their will to play the game or muttering about my team selection. The sight of grown men hurling abuse at someone who had voluntarily given up a Saturday morning to referee a kids match is truly disheartening for everyone involved.

If there is any emotional harm caused by youth sport it comes not from losing egg and spoon races but from the screwed up parents who vent their frustrations on their kids.

2003-05-23T15:27:00.000-07:00

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?
I've commented before on how the Trotskyite Socialist Workers Party insist on blaming global capitalism for everything from cruelty to animals to SARS. But this has to take the biscuit - yes, the oligarchs are to blame for West Ham's relegation from the Premier League!

I have two words that might help Roger Protz get a broader perspective on the failures of his team - Glenn Roeder.

The article is a predictable rant about how the 'people's game' has been 'hijacked' by big business and is all the worse for it. This is a widely held view in liberal circles including the so-called fans' movement. But when it comes to football I have to break completely with the old left attitudes. The fact is that what football needs is not less capitalism but much, much more of it.

The game has always been controlled by wealthy people, often succcessful local businessmen who fritter away their fortunes on the vain hope of glory for their team. It is a plaything of capitalists consumed by the working class. But there is no alternative. I doubt turning West Ham into a co-operatives or state run club would go down to well in the East End. The middle class activists of the fans movement demand a seat on the board for supporters. But it is not schoolteachers in the boardroom that is needed but good businessmen.

The problem is that football is an example of the worst run capitalist companies. It is an old cliche but it remains valid that people who have astutely and carefully built up their businesses for decades, discard all that knowledge and experience when they get hold of the reigns of a football club.

They forget things like market value and get involved in silly bidding wars for players. They forget basic precautionary steps to take before major investments and go heavily into debt on ground re-development plans and even transfer sprees. And they treat their customers like idiots, demanding more and more money from them while doing little in the way of market research and having almost no interest in customer satisfaction.

Amazingly when things go completely pear-shaped, the businesses rarely fold. Leicester City has written off around 50 million in debt by going into administration and then effectively 're-forming'. Other clubs are going down the same path. Aside from hitting creditors hard the result is that well-run clubs who avoid debt are punished for their prudence. Everyone demands 'ambition' from club chairmen and that means getting the cheque-book out. Those fans who demand the club 'invest' money are the first to chant 'sack the board' when clubs like Leeds find their anarchic approach has got them in hot water.

What football needs is simply sound management based on the basic laws of the market economy. My experience as a Burnley fan is that supporters will accept limitations on spending if the reasons are clearly explained and if they have confidence in the management of the club. So forget blaming Rupert Murdoch, who for all his faults, has piled so much cash into the game that some of the best players in the world have been attracted to play in England. Football needs all the capitalist bastards it can get.

2003-05-23T07:53:00.000-07:00

WILL THE REAL NEO-CONS PLEASE STAND UP?

Stephen Pollard has the goods on the New Statesman's list of Britain's top neo-cons which is even sillier than I imagined including the magazine's former editor John Lloyd as well as David Aaronovitch.

As Stephen puts it "Both of them are classic, straight down the line social democrats. The only thing they have in common with neocons - almost literally, the only thing - is that they supported the war in Iraq. But so did Anne Clwyd, so did Nick Cohen, and so did Christopher Hitchens"

It seems pretty clear that the term neo-conservative is being simply used as a term of abuse on the left to describe people whose views on terrorism and on Iraq, the reactionary left find hard to stomach.

Meanwhile, thanks to reader Gene Vitzer for providing a link to this Josh Marshall report in Forward on the recent gathering of Social Democrats USA and the debate they had with some old comrades who have become........neo-cons.

2003-05-23T03:09:00.000-07:00

WAS KARL MARX A LIBERTARIAN ?

The proposal to feed the children of the Scottish bourgeoisie at the expense of the working-class taxpayer, while unsuccessful in the Edinburgh Parliament, seems to have garnered reasonable support from generally left-leaning Scottish civil society.

Harry's Place posted on this issue recently and the post attracted a fair amount of comments (see I'll have the langoustine below).

The proposed scheme raises many questions. One which occurred to me was what would Karl Marx have made of it ?. Obviously any attempt to answer is pure speculation as Marx famously refused to write the cookbooks of the future and his writings on the role of the state before and after the revolution are contradictory and open to quoting out of context.

What is clear is that Marx operated in an intellectual and social world very different from our own. The mid-nineteenth century was an era in which the British working class was very busy. Not content with putting in long days at the mill some of the more active members set up the co-operative movement, the first building societies, workers educational associations and a whole host of lesser organisations which met the social and intellectual needs of the people. Some of these organisations still exist and some have been supplanted by aspects of the welfare state set up after the second world war.

The contrast with today's left is instructive. Most of the British (and international) left is more than content to let the state run the things which were previously in the hands of the people. The reasons for this shift is explained by the increasing complexity of providing social goods. Whatever the reason, the left seems to worship the state to the extent that it is happy for the state to feed it's children whether they are in economic need of such feeding or not.

Is it neccessarily a good thing to let the state run things which can be run by the people ? Marx and Engels were in favour of the withering away of the state. I'm tempted to agree that this withering away has much to recommend it and would probably be a good thing for the following reasons:

1. Having everything run on your behalf by the state does tend to encourage a certain submissive fatalistic mentality among recepients. This is never a good thing.

2. Civil society is much the poorer without a strong self-organising working class, as is the working class.

3. Social provision is in the hands of politicians rather than the people on the ground, who are more likely to be committed to whatever it is they are trying to do.

The long slow economic collapse of the Soviet Union should have alerted us to the perils of allowing the state to run everything, sadly not many on the left appear to have learned the lesson. I suspect one of the reasons for this is that the modern British left has not broken out of the post-war mindset which saw politics as a battle to attract funding, investment etc from the centralised state rather than discussing the production of wealth and it's distribution.

If the British left doesn't start seriously addressing the question of the role of the state and it's limitations it will remain a quaint echo of a post-war intellectual world which vanished 15 years ago. Useful as a protest vote but offering nothing for the future.

2003-05-20T09:29:00.000-07:00

SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS ARE NEO-CONS.....
David Aaronovitch takes a shot at the wretched New Statesman for their 'outing' of him as a neo-con.

Then this magazine called the New Statesman runs a big cover piece, revealing that not only am I a neocon, but - hell - I'm one of the biggest. "Well", I say, "I figure an outfit like that has got to have done its homework, so maybe they know something I don't. Perhaps I am a barmy, war-loving, big-business Zionist with a penchant for conspiracies. After all," I say, "look at my name."

"Dead giveaway," agrees Wolfie. "Welcome aboard".

Aaronovitch is, of course, referring to the frequently heard view that the neo-cons are a Jewish clique. This is becoming a recurring theme in any discussion about the still (to my mind) ill-defined group labelled as neo-conservatives. Of course it emerged most blatantly in the infamous Tam Dalyell 'cabal' comments and is sadly heard more from the left than anywhere else.

I suspect Stephen Pollard, who is proud to describe himself as a 'neo-con' would laugh at the idea that Aaro, a liberal, ex-Eurocommunist, broadly New Labour type could seriously be considered a convert to neo-conservatism simply because he took a sensible position over Iraq and isn't afraid to call a terrorist a terrorist. But I would like to know who else was 'outed' by the New Statesman?

I am not paying NS a pound to find out - not only because I am tight-fisted but also because I am not financing a publication that is a disgrace to its own history. After all this is a magazine that believes anti-Americanism is profitable so shifted its orientation to tap that market. I'm not going to help their unprincipled profit chasing. But if someone who does could put the list of the other 'outed Brit neo-cons' in the comments box or email me I would be very grateful.

2003-05-20T08:49:00.000-07:00

COMMUNIST UNIVERSITY RE-OPENS
It must be at least 15 years since the old Communist Party of Great Britain held its last annual summer discussion event, The Communist University, but now the political successors to the old deceased party have decided on a welcome relaunch, albeit with a scale-downed weekend version.

I think I might pop along and see some of the old comrades, there is a fair chance of a booze-up on the Saturday night and who knows maybe Dick Gaughan will sing some songs for us. I'll probably pick and choose which events to attend but this one looks a must: Party, class and revolutionary change - Andrew Murray on the dialectics of party and class in a world dominated by capitalist globalisation .

Wonder if Comrade Murray, who was head of the Stop the War Coalition and his comrades will be bother to ask themselves how this state of affairs came about?

The slogan for the event is 'question everything' - I wonder if they will?

2003-05-20T08:08:00.000-07:00

THE NEW SOCIAL DEMOCRATS?

I don't claim to know much about the Social Democrats USA but I was told in the past they were a semi-retired organisation of old lefties with no real political clout.

However reading this recently published statement of values and ideas for the American left, I was refreshed by the positive tone and the willingness to criticise the 'fake left' that has come in for plenty of attention on this weblog.

The statement comes out of a recent meeting that brought some well-known names on the US left together: The event's speakers included: Donna Brazile, Campaign Manager, Clinton-Gore 2000; Richard Bensinger consultant on organizing to international unions; Andrei Markovits, Visiting Professor, Harvard; Jeffrey Herf Professor, University of Maryland; Michael Allen, contributor to Renewal, a journal aligned with the Blair wing of the British Labour; Penn Kemble, Notesonline; Paul Berman, author, Terror and Liberalism; Saad Ibrahim Director, Ibn Khaldun Center, Cairo; and Joshua Muravchik, author, Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism.

Organizers of the event put forward a discussion paper that appears in full here. It stresses the importance of two themes that some on the left today consider incompatible: support for a strong labor movement, and vigorous US engagement on behalf of democracy abroad.

Richard Wilson, one of the organizers of the meeting, commented that "Any reactions to this statement should be interesting. As we note, a lot of effort is being put by both the right and the left today into wedging these two ideas apart."

I'd be interested in what our American readers make of all this.

2003-05-20T07:24:00.000-07:00

POVERTY OF THEORY

Ross Clark in today's Times gives vent to his spleen at Ian Duncan Smith's desire to reposition the Tories as "the party of the poor".

It is unsettling but entertaining to have a Tory trying to outflank Labour from the left but I suppose not totally unexpected (see IDS's earlier pledge of fee-free tertiary education ).

Clark appears to be a man of the right and his attack on the new direction the Tory's are taking is well-written but essentially what you'd expect any Conservative (without a position in IDS's organisation) to say. He contrasts the spirit of Smilesian self-improvement amongst the Nineteenth Century poor with the way, according to him, that poverty "became a source of group identity and pride" after the advent of the Labour movement. He goes on to explain the reasons he thinks poverty has such historical staying-power in our islands;

"The reason poverty persisted in Twentieth Century Britain was because there were so many organisations with a vested interest in maintaining the existence of this entity "the poor". Trade unions knew they owed their existence to a low paid monolithic workforce and so, in the decades of union power, low-paid is how their members remained".

Read that again if you like, I've quoted it accurately. One of the chief sources of poverty in Britain is the Labour movement and Trades Unionism. I've got news for you Mr Clark - poverty has many sources; unemployment in post-industrial areas, depressed prices for agricultural commodities, low-wage employment opportunities being just the first three that came to mind. To try to stitch-up the Trades Unions for the persistance of poverty in the Twentieth Century is astonishingly naive and betrays a worrying lack of understanding of how things work in the real economy not to mention the Unions.

Union leaders have actually been pretty successful in negotiating valuable material and other improvements for their members. Whether this was always in the long-term interests of the factory that employed them is really a different story from the one Clark wants to tell and one that I won't examine in this post. I'd also love to know how Union leaders kept the plans Clark says they had to keep the working class in poverty secret for so long.

The one thing on which Clark and I can agree is that it is not useful to define someone as suffering from "poverty" who is in receipt of 60% of the median income. The article correctly points out that this merely records differences in income and not poverty in any meaningful sense.

Right, I'm off to unionise some Welsh hill-farmers.......

2003-05-20T05:41:00.000-07:00

LOONY TUNES

Surely this must be against the Geneva Convention ?

2003-05-20T05:36:00.000-07:00

'BIG BONKER'

Wouldn't it just be easier to watch a porno film?

2003-05-20T03:14:00.000-07:00

A WORKERS' MP ON A WORKERS' WAGE
That is one of the better of Tommy Sheriden's Scottish Socialist Party's populist slogans - one that has survived their evolution from being the Scottish wing of the Militant tendency. But you won't catch Scotland's most famous left-wing MP signing up to it. According to George Galloway in an interesting profile in the Scotsman today: "As I told Tommy Sheridan once, I couldn’t live on three workers’ wages".

In fact he says he can't live on his annual income of £150,000.

2003-05-19T06:20:00.000-07:00

FREED TRADE MINISTER

Stephen Byers has become 'Stevie' Byers again it seems according to this interesting piece on free trade and the developing world in the Guardian.

"The way forward is through a regime of managed trade in which markets are slowly opened up and trade policy levers like subsidies and tariffs are used to help achieve development goals."

2003-05-19T03:06:00.000-07:00

SAY NO TO THE LONDON OLYMPICS

David Aaronovitch gives his backing to the government's support of a London Olympics bid. I don't.

I do think it would be great to have the world's top sporting event in the UK and I don't buy those stale stingy arguments that the money would be better spent on ____ (insert preferred single issue) than on such a magnificent occassion. But I can't agree with Aaronovitch when he reluctanctly says: "I have become reconciled to the fact that nowhere else in Britain would be awarded the games. It's London or nothing, and nothing comes of nothing."

Strange that Aaro's enthusiasm for the London Games comes from his enjoyment of the recent Commonwealth Games held in Manchester - an event widely praised from every perspective. That superbly organised and supported event in the heartland of British sport is one of the many arguments in favour of NOT putting on the Olympics in London.

There is nothing to suggest that the International Olympic Committee would reject out of hand any bid that came from a non-capital city ( remember Salt Lake, LA?) and scores of reasons why London is the last place we should be offering to the world. In this ludicrously over-centralised state of ours, London is now suffering from the effects of insisting on being the centre of everything. I have little time for the whingeing of Londoners about their transport system (how many other UK cities have publicly funded underground rail systems and such extensive regional train networks?) but if it is really so bad why the hell does the government want to invite the world to share it?

There is a long list of reasons why London does not deserve the honour of being our bidding city - the city is overcrowded, suffers from inflated property prices and already enjoys far too much favour from central government and is swimming in investment.

But the best reason against London is that there are so many other better places in the country. The England football team, temporarily freed from the misery of having to play at a half-full Wembley in front of half-interested crowd have lapped up playing at Sunderland, Leeds, Newcastle, Manchester and elsewhere. Yet the government has give the green light to the hugely over-priced New Wembley.

If the Games have the ability to transform cities and towns than lets take it to places that need transforming. Manchester's Olympic bid failed for several reasons - a major factor was that the government in London never gave it wholehearted support - now they are ready to put millions behind a bid for the capital. What a surprise.

Yet the city and the region around Manchester has plenty of space to build the facilities needed and crucially the North West has the added advantage of being the real heartland of British sport - with people who would revel in being visitied by sports fans from across the world. If the Olympics does have a boost on the local economy (a debatable point I am told) why not give a fillup to a region that needs it? Indeed the modern Olympic games involves so many events spread over such a large area that there is no reason why Yorkshire and the North East could not feature in a bid making it Northern Games.

Its too late - its not going to happen this time. The government has gone for London. Personally I think Northerners should take the same approach to this bid as London did to Manchester's -- ignore them, hope they fail and prepare for our turn. I hope the likes of Steve Cram, Bobby Charlton and other Northern sporting heroes won't give their backing to this bid. Say no to the London Olympics and build the Northern alternative!

2003-05-18T13:25:00.000-07:00

DOUBLE TROUBLE

A Saddamalike can be viewed here. And I got it from Tim Blair's blogspot which I'm also having trouble linking to. Apologies for the faulty link posted earlier, I blame Trotskyist wreckers.

2003-05-17T14:58:00.000-07:00

IN'S AND OUTS
I've tidied up the links a bit today and will do some more spring cleaning soon. I've added Au Currant, Natalie Solent, Samizdata, Laurence Krubner and Brendan O'Neill to the weblog list but I don't want one of those huge long blogrolls that just get ignored so I have had to axe a couple. 'Biased BBC' has gone along with Andrew Sullivan. I can't remember why either of them were ever there in the first place.

2003-05-17T14:25:00.000-07:00

CRASS

I'm reading The Road to Nab End by William Woodruff at the moment, a beautifully told account of his childhood growing up in one of the poorest of Lancashire's milltowns. What I like about the book (so far) is the way he describes a working class community and the misery of (real) poverty with humour but at the same time avoiding the sentimentalism that accompanies so much writing about the textile towns. Then I saw this .

Could there be anything more crass?

2003-05-17T13:04:00.000-07:00

FIVE THINGS I COULD HAVE BLOGGED ABOUT
I’ve been very busy with work recently and had to leave the blogging in the capable hands of the new partner in the firm. But there are a few things I would have liked to have blogged on – here is a brief run-down of them:

1. The reconstruction of Iraq is off to a terrible start. But at least Bush realised and sacked Jay Garner and his under-prepared team. The issue of development in Iraq can’t be left to drop off the radar like Afghanistan though and I don’t think it will. But I am still not interested in hearing complaints about reconstruction from people who demanded we left Saddam to continue his looting – they don’t have a leg to stand on anymore.

2. No weapons of mass destruction have been found yet. I still think it is early days but it must be starting to get worrying for the politicians now. The real danger of not finding WMD’s in Iraq is not the political consequences though. We know there were WMDs and if we don’t find them it means they went somewhere and we don’t know where they are – that is worrying. As far as I am concerned the mass graves are enough of a ‘smoking gun’ to justify the war on the terms I backed it. They are also damning evidence of the moral bankruptcy of the old approach of co-existence with dictatorships and the reactionaries who wanted to continue that cold war approach.

3. Should we go for it with the Euro or not? Call me a fence-sitter but is obviously an economic decision and I’m not an economist. Like an awful lot of people, I really don’t have any strong feelings one way or the other. But why does this debate have to become a debate about whether we should be in the EU or not? That argument was decided years ago. It is perfectly possible to be against a single currency while being ‘pro-Europe’ and it is also reasonable to be in favour of the euro while not buying into the Common Agricultural Policy. I suspect any referendum would avoid the real and probably quite dull economic issues. Meanwhile the No Campaign – like the anti-war campaign will bring the far left back into alliance with the far right. Of course this is not a reason in itself to vote in favour of the euro but it is another sign of the bankruptcy of the old left.

4. Are Foundation Hospitals a good idea? If they are why haven’t I heard/read a convincing case for them yet? Why do we need them? Of course we need reform of the public services including the NHS but the specific case for Foundations has not won me over yet. However after they have cried wolf about so many issues I find myself highly sceptical of the hard left/soft liberal claim this is ‘privatisation’.

5. Is Tony Blair becoming 'too Christian'? That’s his problem. As long as he keeps his beliefs personal and out of policy then I have no problem with having a believer in Number Ten. However with ‘Faith Schools’ he has crossed the line. I am with the fine people of the National Secular Society on this one.

2003-05-17T10:19:00.000-07:00

NO HYPE PLEASE, WE'RE BRITISH
One of the many irritatations of the US 'blogosphere' (as opposed to our own little UK/European bloghamlet) is the tendency to blog about blogging. I like reading US blogs that have something fresh to say about the news or politics but I press the back button as soon as I see an article about how blogs are changing the way we think about news, 'revolutionising journalism' etc etc.

However I am going to break my ban on addressing the issue for once.

Why does this hype annoy me/amuse me so much? Well firstly I can't escape the impression that the excitable kid is getting a bit carried away. Blogs are fun to create and run, blogs can be interesting to read and above all they can be a useful tool to discussion and finding articles you wouldn't otherwise have discovered. Full stop.

They aren't journalism - indeed to be quite frank we bloggers parasitically feed off traditional journalism don't we? Most of us have day-jobs and rarely have time to sit down and write a 1,000 word analysis. Instead we link to someone elses and add our own comments.

That makes blogs a useful democratic add-on to traditional media but the idea put around by the likes of the ultra-hyped and over-rated Instapundit and the pompous Andrew Sullivan that blogging presents a revolutionary challenge to what they calls 'big media' is just tosh.

Instapundit clearly loves his ego being messaged by his many media appearances which he always posts about and that tells you everything you need to know - big or old media matters, it has the kind of credibility and import that a link on another blog just can't match. Maybe the fools who give him money to blog haven't realised but Sullivan writes his best articles for real media who pay him properly. The scraps and leftovers go on the blog.

I'd carry on but to prove my point about how we need real media Brendan O'Neill, a teacher of online journalism and assistant editor of Spiked, has already said it all in this excellent article."I actually like blogs. Really I do. Some are funny, some alert me to interesting articles, some even say original things. But the biggest revolution since the birth of the printing press? Blog off," says O'Neill. He has his own blog here by the way which is worth a look.

I found O'Neill's piece via a link on Cinderella Blogafeller slagging this rather confused Spiked article by Bill Thompson which complains about the alleged power of libertarian US bloggers, what he calls (and I hope he is trying to be funny) the blogeoisie . I find lefties moaning about how popular right-wing US blogs nearly as dull as right-wing US blogs moaning about the liberal media. If you don't like it - challenge it. To be fair Thompson does have his own site and blog.

Thankfully there isn't much of this self-obsessed hype that O'Neill ciriticises from us Britblogs - we just tend to quietly go about our business with little or no attention paid to us by either the US uberbloggers or the UK real media.

OK, Reactionary Pete Briffa had a column in the Times the other week but that 'historic moment' wasn't followed by a series of posts about how Briffa is breaking down the traditional barriers to non-PC views in the mainstream media was it? Why? Probably because Peter knows we would rip the piss out of him if he even hinted at such nonsense - call it a 'check and balance'.

Yes there is a difference in size and influence between the UK and US blog scenes but I suspect there is also a cultural difference too. Americans feel much more comfortable selling themselves, they thrive on hype. On this side of the Atlantic we might overindulge in cynicism but we do have highly-tuned bullshit detectors.

2003-05-16T10:02:00.000-07:00

RIYADH BOMBINGS

This article from Lebanon's Daily Star speaks for itself.

2003-05-16T09:35:00.000-07:00

SMOKE WITHOUT FIRE ?

The British Medical Association want a total ban on smoking smoking in public. They include offices, factories, pubs and restaurants in their definition of public spaces and cite as support for their proposed measure the fact that 17000 children small children are hospitalised every year as a result of passive smoking.

A large-scale Californian survey, the results of which are published today in The British Medical Journal has shown that not everyone agrees that passive smoking is a as bad as the British Medical Association would like us to believe.

Wherever the scientific truth lies surely it would be more sensible for pubs and restaurants to decide their smoking policy themselves. Those which wanted to attract smokers would allow smoking while those which didn't wouldn't. Setting aside spaces in offices and factories for those who wanted to smoke would also seem to be a better solution than an outright ban. I'd be interested to know from our US readers how the total ban on public smoking in New York is going. I suspect it is being ignored on a large-scale and people's respect for the law is diminished.

I also want to know what thousands of small British children are doing in offices, factories and pubs.

2003-05-12T16:25:00.000-07:00

I'LL HAVE THE LANGOUSTINE

The Scottish Socialist Party have a campaign to provide free school dinners for all children in the state education system. They state that a poor diet kills people prematurely. I won't argue with that statement.

I do have a problem with extending free school meals from those who presently receive them (the children of the poor and unemployed) to every child in the state system. Unlike in the English home counties, where the middle classes send little Tarquin off to public school while the working classes are left to educate Tracy at the local Comprehensive, the Scottish middle-classes are, for historical reasons, generally perfectly happy to send their children to the local state school.

I have a number of questions I'd like The Scottish Socialist Party to answer: Why should middle-class children whose parents can well-afford to pay for school-meals be subsidised by the Scottish tax-payer ? How much money is this proposed plan going to cost ? Who came up with this stupid idea anyway ? The caption under the photograph on the link states "Our kids need free, nutritious school meals". The ones who need it get it already, those who don't shouldn't. Any extension would be a collossal waste of money.

2003-05-12T10:12:00.000-07:00

IT'S All ABOUT OIL

Seeing as oil is the natural resource du jour I thought these findings by Christian Aid might be of interest to readers. Christian Aid note that the discovery of oil in a third world country isn't neccessarily a good thing for the people of the country in which it's found for the simple reason that local elites tend to pocket the profits from the oil and then don't bother to encourage any other economic development. Having been involved in legal cases involving oil money in Nigeria and the Arab world I can only agree with their conclusions. In my experience without an accountable government, functioning civil society and widely-observed rule of law the discovery of oil (or any other natural resource) encourages corruption and graft.

It is not considered the done thing to say this in polite society (which is overwhelmingly behind the Drop the Debt campaign) but the problems of much of the world are less to do with the legacy of European imperialism than with the massive corruption endemic in many of the world's poorer countries. That's not to say that the legacy of imperialism is not a factor but it's not the whole story by a long way. The best example of a country which has successfully developed from third world to first world status is one with neither natural resources nor colonisation by Europeans - Japan.

If we are really interested in helping the developing world (and we should be for all sorts of reasons) we've got to drop the self-hating "guilt" which blames the failure of the third world solely on the first world and instead point the finger locally when it's appropriate to do so. It's what those who live in the third world have been doing for decades as they watch the economic performance and the living standards of their countries slip down the tables further every year.

2003-05-09T15:37:00.000-07:00

TROTS TALKING SENSE?

We are faced here with a political, moral, and intellectual collapse of the old left, and with the cumulative result that the “left” no longer knows quite what its own identity is. How and why has this happened?

Isn’t it that much of the left, or more accurately the pseudo-left, no longer defines itself positively, in terms of what it is for? No longer measures political organisations, classes and regimes by how they relate to what we ourselves fight for?

Instead, the “left” defines itself negatively, by what it is against. It is against capitalism. Against imperialism. Against America. It is on the side of whomever at any given moment is against them — on the side, even, of those who are worse. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was certainly worse.

Of course socialists could not have had any confidence in, or given support to, the US and Britain. But still less could we give anything like support to the quasi-fascist regime in Baghdad.

Again and again the post-USSR left — the pseudo-left, the fake left - lets itself be pushed by its antagonism to the dominant powers into supporting worse. If going for “the best” can sometimes be the enemy of going for the merely better, here opposition to the bad, to the enemy at home, to the immediate enemy, becomes, again and again, support for the worse overseas!

It happened in the Afghan war of 2001, when in antagonism to the Americans Socialist Worker let itself half-apologise for the Afghan Taliban regime’s treatment of women (6 October 2001).

Most terribly, it happened in 1999 with the Balkans war. Opposition to “imperialism” — to one imperialism — led the fake left to line up with the primitive Serbian imperialism at the point where it was trying to sweep Kosova clean of its Albanian population (90% of Kosovars).

Never mind the unproven charge that George Galloway took money from Saddam Hussein. Socialists, or even half-decent liberals, who do not feel embarrassed by the things George Galloway admits to, who do not feel shame at having had Tariq Aziz’s Christmas house guest on their anti-war platforms — those socialists have lost the plot. To call them socialists without some qualifying adjective like “fake” is now an abuse of language..

Regular readers may have gathered by now that I am not (and never have been) a big fan of the Trotskyite groups on the fringes of the British left. But sometimes you have to give credit where it is due. This powerful denunciation of the Defend George Galloway campaign and the majority of the Stop the War brigade comes from the publication Workers Liberty. It is worth reading it all. It is proof that not all of the marxist left has lost the plot.

2003-05-09T13:12:00.000-07:00

FIRST BLAST ON THE TRUMPET

Rosie Kane, newly-elected Trotskyist member of the Scottish Parliament for Glasgow and Geri Halliwellalike has stated in her acceptance speech that she hoped "parliament is going to become a bit like the Big Brother House, and people are going to watch it to see what's happening...they're going to be amazed at all the madness and craziness that's going to happen in there"

I thought the purpose of a parliament was to debate policy and pass laws for the benefit of the people but I'm obviously a product of my repressive oatcake-munching Calvinist background. I should get "with it" Scottish Socialist Party style and dig the madness and craziness...

2003-05-09T09:36:00.000-07:00

PEOPLE PAY FOR THAT STUFF?

Are American newspapers really so dull that people feel the need to pay webloggers to keep them entertained?

According to Andrew Sullivan, 4,500 people have given him cash as thanks for him exposing the communist conspiracy at the BBC and getting indignant at liberals the world over. Now he is trying to tempt his readers into forking out $20.00 for an email. Wierd.

2003-05-09T07:28:00.000-07:00

PEACE! PEACE!
"The world is living through a series of never-ending and incredibly quick changes. Shouting 'peace, peace' at a time when there is war around us, is like going to a hospital and shouting 'health! health!' " Giovanni Lindo Ferretti, Italian communist and punk rock singer explaining why he refused to provide a song for an anti-war CD.

2003-05-08T15:02:00.000-07:00

WELOVETHEWEEKLYWORKER.COM
"The bourgeoisie may not be ready at this point to resort to “pogroms” or “civil war” in Britain, but there are lesser weapons of a similar type in its arsenal. Hence the Galloway witch-hunt, straight out of the McCarthyite stable" Weekly Worker, May 8, 2003