The Politics of Dancing

Just Some of The Apologies That Never Came… From Iain Duncan Smith for consistently misleading the public about the progress of Universal Credit and regularly feeding the press inaccurate information about welfare recipients, ( See ONS ). George Osborne for failing to meet any of his economic targets. Boris Johnson for breaking his promise not to stand for Parliament whilst still Mayor of London. All those who marched with placards saying ‘Don’t bomb Iraq’ [sic]. [1] Who, if their advice had been followed, would have witnessed the fall of Kobane and the continuing genocide of Yazidis and Christians. Sepp Blatter’s mea culpa, along with his resignation, for finally destroying what very little credibility FIFA had left. The Rot on The Left Exposed For me a two moments of stomach churning realisation of just how rotten the far left had become. In October, after considerable pressure on Turkey had failed to yield results, the US decided, in the face of Turkish ...

Military campaigns fail for many reasons. Many factors can come into play. The inability to re-supply, inferior firepower, or simply an opponent’s superior tactical strategy. One reason that campaigns fail is however more psychological than military, it is when commanders and leaders become mesmerised by symbols, by the idea that the capture or annihilation of a particular place will somehow magically confer victory. This obsession can drive even great generals insane, as against all logic or practical strategic concerns they throw ever greater resources, particularly the lives of the men they command, into the capture or destruction of the symbolic objective. For Napoleon the obsession was Moscow, the capture of which he thought would bring Russian defeat and victory for the Grand Army. The prize of Moscow dazzled him preventing him from seeing that whilst a Russian army still remained intact in the field Russia would never surrender. Not a mistake he would normally have made. ...

T his Christmas seems to have arrived in unseemly haste. It does not feel like a year since I last wrote something for the Christmas period. It’s been a bleak year what with the rise of ISIS, the Russian annexation of Crimea and invasion of Eastern Ukraine. Whilst in Syria a combination of the vile Assad dictatorship and the equally vile Islamists continue to tear that country apart. Everywhere Islamist violence is inflicted upon the innocent and vulnerable. From Boko Haram, committing mass murder and kidnapping Nigerian schoolgirls to the Pakistani Taliban slaughtering children in their classrooms.  Above all as been the grotesque 8 th  Century barbarism of IS [Daesh]. Particularly horrible has been the mass rape and enslavement of Yazidi women. Where is the western outrage over this? Where are the Western feminists, so outraged by an inappropriate shirt and yet silent over this terrible crime in Iraq?  

If there was ever a tale for our time it is surely the case of @ShamiWitness. This pro-IS Twitter account was responsible for propagandising for IS on an industrial scale, pouring out tweets defending beheadings, slavery and the war unleashed against the Shia, Yazidi and Kurdish communities. ‘ The account's influence cannot be underestimated. The International Centre for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence (ICSR) pointed to ShamiWitness as the single greatest "influencer" on militant jihadist Twitter, around whom foreign fighters and their fans would cluster. "We found that of all the Twitter accounts that Western foreign fighters followed, he was by far the most important, popular, and influential one, with more than 60 percent of the foreign fighters in our sample following, re-tweeting, and/or mentioning him," ICSR director Peter Neumann told VICE News.’ [1] Now the keyboard warrior has been ‘outed’ by a British television channel and...

The above picture I find truly horrible, literally nightmarish. It haunted me for a considerable time after I first saw it on Twitter. But what does it depict? The very nature of the picture seems too horrible to be real. It has appeared numerous times, most recently here, and is said to depict Yazidi sex slaves. But does it?  I have sought to establish the veracity of this picture with some difficulty, however finally someone on Twitter informed me that the women were Iranian and they are shown enacting scenes related to the battle of Karbala, a regular pageant known as the ceremony of Arbaeen. I did find the picture above when I googled ‘The religious ceremony of Arbaeen,’ but as it appeared with pictures quite clearly not related to the ceremony it proved nothing.  The picture however is very similar to this one, taken by Wissam al-Saliby, identified as being part of contemporary Karbala celebrations.  Wissam al-Saliby When you click on this ...

One element of the 1930’s that is not perhaps fully grasped is that for many British people it was a time of growing affluence and prosperity, particularly in the south of England and midlands, where the new industries such as motor car production provided good wages for those making things that catered for a new and growing middle class. For civil servants, doctors, middle managers amongst others having a motor car had become a realistic ambition, and many took to the roads. Whilst London, the biggest city in the world, provided ample opportunity to relieve middle class Londoners, and those from the recently constructed suburbs, of their newly acquired surplus income. But Britain, particularly England was not one country in the 1930’s, for beside this growing affluence were whole areas of northern England where unemployment, abject poverty and destitution were commonplace. Wigan was just one such area, there were a great many more. The key thing to remember about the depress...

A Boys Own Adventure?   " Recently, as a result of events in Iraq, some have called for powers to seize people’s passports at the border and to leave people stranded if they’ve been foolish enough to go on some ridiculous Boy’s Own adventure. " Shami Chakrabarti, Director of the Human Rights Organisation, Liberty. I want to start with, what Martin Amis called, a thought experiment. I want you to imagine an organisation established in the US and Canada, let us call it Aryan State. It’s an outfit that has already kidnapped a number of Imams, human rights workers and journalists. Several of these prisoners have been beheaded in the most savage way imaginable, video made of the event which was then posted on social media. Further decapitations are threatened unless the security services back off. The groups programme, the establishment of a state for Aryans only, no Muslims, Jews or people of colour, has attracted the attention of white supremacists across the world. Fr...

UKIP, Lee Rigby and Free Speech.  ‘Lord Pearson of Rannoch, who led UKIP during the last general election, is to be reported to the speaker of the upper house, Lady D’Souza, after he suggested that the Qur’an had inspired Rigby’s killers.’ [1] The UKIP peer had said this in a speech:- “My lords, are the government aware that Fusilier Rigby’s murderers quoted 22 verses of the Qur’an to justify their atrocity? Therefore, is the prime minister accurate or helpful when he describes it as a betrayal of Islam? Since the vast majority of Muslims are our peace-loving friends, should we not encourage them to address the violence in the Qur’an – and indeed in the life and the example of Muhammad?” [2] Labour MP Khalid Mahmood stated, “Obviously he hasn’t read the Qur’an. Islam is about submission to the Almighty. It is not about war against anybody else.” He added: “I find it absolutely offensive that this guy is still able to say this.” [3] Mr Mahmood is obviously a stran...

In 1937 when he was fighting on the Aragon front for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War George Orwell had a Nationalist soldier in his sights. However the man had just visited the latrine and was in the process of hitching up his pants, this small detail made a difference to Orwell and he did not pull the trigger. Was Orwell right? For the man who survived as a result of Orwell’s decision may have been a hardened fascist responsible for some atrocity against Republican prisoners, he may have gone on to kill some of Orwell’s own comrades. Yet I suspect that many will sympathise with Orwell’s decision. What it provides is a cameo, a little glimpse of humanity amidst the hideous barbarism of war.  Later during the Second World War Orwell was cheered by the news of the sinking of a German U boat, he then went on to reflect that he has been made happy by the deaths of several dozen healthy young men. Amongst the multitude crimes of war is the fact that it coarsens human ...

A Fable For Our Time It was the opinion poll on the Thursday before the general election that woke the country up, showing that the Penguin now had an eight point lead. There had been straws in the wind prior to that, particularly the now famous Question Time appearance when the Penguin had squawked his belief that the country needed to become truly an island again. An island surrounded by a sea stocked plentifully with fish that belonged to us all. The audience had been given copies of the Penguin’s statement, but even at this stage some claimed to be able to understand penguin. They had greeted every squawk with rapturous applause. In the weeks that followed the Penguin momentum built, everywhere you saw Penguin posters, Penguin button badges or stickers. The ubiquitous Penguin seemed to dominate TV and press coverage of the election, though for all the coverage it was difficult to establish what the Penguin actually stood for beyond a love of the fact that we were an islan...

The reasons that Daesh is ultimately doomed to fail are multiple, they are military, psychological, ideological and political.  IS has control of large swathes of Syria and Iraq and in late June the group declared it had created a caliphate, or ‘Islamic state.’Its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, runs a ‘state’ that is larger than Lebanon or Israel. The US Central Intelligence Agency believes IS may have up to 31,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria including tens of thousands of fighters from at least 90 different countries. Capturing oil and gas fields and the second largest city in Iraq it is by far and away the richest terrorist group that has ever existed. Its hard-core fighters from Afghanistan and Chechnya are amongst the fiercest in the world. It has at its disposal captured sophisticated American weaponry from the Iraqi Army, including M1 Abrams Battle Tanks.  Yet with all this going for it ultimately IS, or to use the Arabic term Daesh, is doomed.  Abu Bakr al-Bag...

On the Hunger for Respect and Approval   “All the positions I took only served to make people whom I liked and admired like and admire me, and did not save a single Jew.” W H Auden The desire to be approved of is one of the most corrosive of human desires, for a writer it is fatal. For the majority of my life, certainly in my professional career in addictions offending and mental health, I never felt very driven by a desire to be liked or to gain the approval of others. Confident in my own abilities and with a clear sense of what I was doing, if others thought well of me all well and good, if not too bad. Of course that is not to say that there were not times that I did not enjoy being on the receiving end of the approval of others, even times when it might have influenced my behaviour; but I did not court it. When it comes to my writing however, particularly when I write about politics and current affairs I find a nagging sense in me of wanting approval. One of the re...