The Politics of Dancing

My thoughts turned to doing a conventional year closing letter, possibly encompassing my books of the year, or simply a few ‘closing thoughts,’ as the door is firmly closed on another passing year. Then I read Paul Mason’s article in the Guardian; http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/27/political-protest-networked-age-edward-snowden Had I listed my books of the year Mason’s, Why It’s Still Kicking Off Everywhere, would have featured highly. In an otherwise dismal period politically and socially it was a book that gave me a taste of that rare and dangerous commodity - hope. What Mason’s book demonstrates is that not only can rapacious global capitalism be resisted, more importantly, indeed much more important than hope, it reported where and how this was happening. Across the world from Turkey and Ukraine , from Bulgaria to South Korea , Brazil and Spain people have taken to the streets; defying governments of all political colours. [1] In Russia ...

Afghantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89 Rodric Braithwaite: Profile Books 2011 “Many of the women here conceal their faces under the chador- a primitive, medieval superstition; but parachutists are landing in the stadium too, and they are women too, who grew up in this country. The chador* and the parachute. You don’t have to be a prophet to foretell the victory of the parachute.”   Soviet youth advisor and journalist Vladimir Snegirev speaking in Afghanistan March 1982 During the Christmas period in 1979 I was a student in Worcester and one of my friends was an Afghan student studying agriculture. He was a passionate socialist and may even have been a member of the Afghan Communist Party, his name was Asker Olfat, and he hailed from Herat . He spent some of that Christmas holiday with me and my parents in Shropshire . It was Asker who explained to me the internecine struggles within the Communist party in Afghanistan and that the majority of the other ...

Laurie Penny Laurie Penny, a regular contributor to the Guardian is upset. She has been forced to address an issue she obviously would rather duck. This is the request by some Muslim student organisations that at events they organise they be allowed to segregate audiences along gender lines. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/22/this-isnt-feminism-its-islamophobia I have already written about this demand which seems to have finally pushed some woolly liberals into bestirring themselves to protest. This has infuriated Ms Penny, not least since others protesting about this ban hold reactionary views, some even, and here you will have to steady yourself for a moment, have been ‘white men!’  ‘I am infuriated by white men stirring up anti-Muslim prejudice to derail debate on western sexism.’ Speaking as one of white men who protested this attempt to facilitate such segregation according to Ms Penny I should have self censored, having no business whatsoe...

THE GHOST OF NATASHA ALEXANDROVA PREOBRAZHENSKY: A STORY FOR  CHRISTMAS “You too are an exile, I thought. You mourn for the broad open steppes where you have room to spread your icy wings. Here you feel stifled and constricted, like an eagle that cries and beats against the bars of its iron cage.” Mikhail Lermontov ‘My love had grown one with my soul; it became darker but did not go out.’ Mikhail Lermontov A Hero Of Our Time The reign of Nicholas 1 st, Tsar of Russia began in 1815 with the bloody crushing of the ‘Decembrists,’ idealistic young men who wished to install a constitutional monarchy and establish basic rights and freedoms. Nicholas’s reign continued as it began and Russia became frozen, an autocratic police state. However by the beginning by the 1840’s and 50’s there began the first stirrings of what was to become the Russian revolutionary movement. Whilst this story is fiction, such idealistic young people did exist. They perhaps now seem naïve...