Mid-weeking
Iran:
Jew-ish:
This song has been in my head all week. Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson's great song "We almost lost Detroit", from a 1990 London live show.
- Ahmad Shamlou, the Great Poet of Liberty (1925-2005), at La Guillotine.
- Dave O: A Holocaust denier and Muslim convert writes
- Leszek Kolakowski: a round up of obituaries of this great man, at Poumista, to add to TNC's and Martin's third one here.
- Loads more at Poumista: Blog notes (some great links, including to me); Anti-fascism: liberal and militant (I've got a vested interest there too, because I more or less wrote it); Stalin's nemesis; Marie Syrkin and the young Noam Chomsky; Brian Pearce on John Cornford (relevant to this).
- Liam suprises me by siding with the Eaglefish against the Ditchkins in a post relevant to this one.
- I have added some comments to the Left Luggage post on class and culture. I also re-read their response to Andy Newman's half-insightful half-obtuse analysis of the anti-war movement (on which see also Mod). Left Luggage correctly note that essentially the Stop the War movement was a middle class movement with no relevance to most people's lives. And the Patrick Fitzgerald punk song popped into my head:
- Kind of related: the rise of the poorgeoisie (h/t Jogo)
Jew-ish:
- Havana Nagila: Yiddish-Latino fusion from Roberto Rodriguez.
- Hasidic bhangra?
The Black Hebrews of the Negev. - Two posts by Dan at The Third Estate on Poland, Lithuania and historical memory. They're not long, but they're deep and I haven't digested them yet: How much should we remember?, Lithuania- new myths and old.
- The CST antisemitic discourse report and the EISCA Nazi card report: Dave Rich at ZWord and at the CST, and Winston Pickett of EISCA.
- Diedonne thinks the Joos killed Michael Jackson.
- David Aaronovitch on conspiracy theories and boycotts.
- Talking of boycotts, I've been following the interesting debate between Anti-German Translation and Slack Andy the anarchist on the boycotters Naomi Klein and Ken Loach. Start here, and carry on.
- On the myths about housing that fuel the rise of the BNP.
- Adam Holland digs the dirt on the Ron Paul cabal, the so-called the Campaign for Liberty.
- Barry Marcus calls the Tories on their involvement with the far-right European Conservative and Reformist Group and its dodgy Polish chair Michal Kaminski. Via JC/Guardian. More from Raincoat Optimist: 1,2,3.
- Adam Holland describes the goings on even further to the right in the European parliament.
- The Chavez family dynasty, via Stark.
- So Gaza was disproportionate? Geoffrey Alderman with a different slant on the Israel/Sri Lanka comparison.
- Marcus Dysch on India's security barrier.
- Richard continues his lovely My Lewisham series with Manor Park.
This song has been in my head all week. Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson's great song "We almost lost Detroit", from a 1990 London live show.
Comments
I think with the anti-war movement there is a tendency to use hindsight to explain away, in fairly simple terms, why it ceased to be significant.
It is something that the Left is very good at, explaining away fault, rationalizing missed chances.
What might have been better is, to take a few pointers along the way (Mick Rix resigning, Mark Steel's point) and look critical at the *leadership* and what obvious mistakes were made, not to excuse it or dismiss the problems, but make a stab at understanding what might have been and how not to fuck it up so conspicuously next time.