The Politics of Dancing

PUTIN ALCOHOLISM AND DISSENT IN MODERN RUSSIA As the crisis in Ukraine has enfolded, fuelled as it has been by Putin’s ongoing campaign to destabilise the country, it has obscured another development taking place in the region, and that is the acceleration of the crackdown on opposition to president Putin in Russia itself. Ever since his re-election in 2012, and in particular the widespread protests against the electoral fraud that characterised that election, Putin has been steadily eliminating all possible sources of opposition. [1] The remaining few vehicles for dissent are being closed down or taken over, the law now so restrictive as to make any challenge to Putin’s authority impossible. Still there is another Russia. 1. There was always another Russia. As Nicholas 1 st sought to crush all internal opposition and strangle the nascent intelligentsia, as nihilist fanatics laid down the foundations of red terror and as Stalin exterminated two generations of the brighte...

YES MINISTER "If a chap tells you he's done nothing wrong you must trust a chap's word." On the 18th March Sir Mark Waller, responsible for oversight of the security services appeared before a committee of the House of Commons. I viewed the session recently on the Parliament Channel. Waller had been in the job 18 months when he heard about the Snowden revelations last summer. His initially response, he explained to the committee had been: "Crikey." Waller, looking twitchy, exuding a combination of affability and bemusement looked ill at ease. On reading of Snowden’s allegations Sir Mark said he had gone to see GCHQ to see if there was anything to them. He saw the deputy chief of the GCHQ and was satisfied the “allegations were without foundation.” There followed the following exchange on the committee:- ‘Vaz said: "And how did you satisfy yourself? It seems from your comment that you had a discussion with them." Waller replied: "Certai...

ON MY 500 th   POST  Six years ago I was working for the NHS, employed as a Dual Diagnosis Specialist   based in the local Social Services Community Mental health Team in Haringey, North London. It was a good office to work in and I liked everyone I worked with and particularly enjoyed the company of my immediate colleagues. Conversation in the office could be lively, though we were all broadly speaking of the left, differences of opinion did occur. One day my colleague Matt passed me an article in the Independent Newspaper written by the left wing ‘comedian’ Mark Steele. [1] The piece was an attack on the Catholic Church in general and the Pope in particular and Matt knew of my hostility to organised religion. Mr Steele’s comments however enraged me, for at a time when Islamist extremism posed the greatest threat to freedom of speech since the 19 th Century Mr Steele chose to present the Catholic Church as if it were it that presented the greater threat to ...

People reveal themselves unwittingly all the time. The choice of a particular word or phrase or a momentary exclamation before the internal censor cuts in can illuminate a person’s real belief systems like a flare lighting up no man’s land. Thus it was with Trevor Kavanagh, the Political Editor of The Sun, on a recent edition of the BBC programme The Daily Politics. Reflecting on the upcoming European elections he said that it would be a ‘disgrace’ if the Labour Party came first in the poll. ‘ Disgrace ,’ what a revealing word. He did not say he would be disappointed, which as a leading propagandist for the hard right Thatcherite wing of the Conservative Party, would make sense, but that it would be a disgrace. It reminded me of two quotes, one an apocryphal one from 1945, a Duchess, on hearing the result of the election remarked, “they have elected socialists! The people will not stand for it!” Or more famously Berthold Brecht: - ‘The people have lost the confidence of the go...

The Cancer At The Heart Of The Conservativism Ed Miliband’s decision early in March to effectively rule out a referendum on EU membership it is said put a smile on David Cameron’s face, albeit temporarily. The move, he believed, placed clear blue water between the parties. If it did put a smile on his face it tells you a great deal about how diminished a figure he now is and how circumscribed his political horizons have become. Go back in time a few years and you would find a Cameron horrified at being held hostage by the euro- sceptic right and forced to commit to an in-out EU referendum. Now he is grateful for whatever daylight he can find in his cramped prison cell. His predicament is the symptom of a disease that has been slowly killing the Tory party since the political assassination of Mrs Thatcher in 1989. Thatcher was never a political Conservative, she was a free Market liberal. Capturing the Conservative Party for her brand of Milton Friedman style capitalist...

John Pilger This week there were two articles in the Guardian’s ‘Comment is Free’ space, one by John Pilger, [1] the other by Volodymyr Ishchenko [2] respecting the situation in Ukraine. Reading both pieces one enters two very separate worlds. Pilger’s world a paranoid vision of an all-powerful evil American Empire, ably assisted by its European allies, that pulls strings that stretch across the planet, manipulating proxies from Taiwan to Tirana. The Ukraine being the latest theatre of the American struggle for world hegemony. It is a world view barely distinguishable from that of Alex Jones, renowned conspiracy theorist. [3] Thus we have John Pilger on the Maiden protests in Kiev and across the Ukraine. ‘In February, the US mounted one of its proxy "colour" coups against the elected government of Ukraine; the shock troops were fascists...’ Leaving aside the slur against the Maiden activists, -yes far right groups were involved, yet those from countries with...

David Cameron says he is evangelical about his Christian faith "Jesus created the big Society " Prime minister criticises some non-believers for failing to see that faith can give people a 'moral code' Evangelical Christianity has wrecked American political life introducing a level of public hypocrisy not seen since Caligula’s Rome. Across the world from the Indian sub-continent to Burma, from Thailand and Russia to Turkey and the Balkans religion has poisoned public life. Some states like Saudi Arabia have been turned into theocratic prisons. In Russia the Orthodox church cheers on Putin as he destroys civic society. Hostilities between faith groups tears societies apart across the planet, as Christians attack Muslims, Muslims murder Christians, Buddhists murder Muslims and everywhere turn their violence against non believers. Any possibility of a peaceful settlement in Palestine is blocked by religious fanatics on both sides, with Jewish settlers st...