The Politics of Dancing

August is supposed famously to be ‘the silly season.’ A dearth of real news leading to a plethora of trivial, shallow and sometimes downright silly news stories. This season only ever really existed in the parochial news world of the 1950’s and 60’s. In an age of 24 rolling news there is no silly season. However this August has made a nonsense of the whole idea of a flat news period with disaster enfolding across the Middle East as fascist Islamist insurgents operating from Libya to Syria and Iraq seek to impose a 7 th century caliphate, this alongside the destruction in Gaza and the collapse of Egyptian democracy. Now Russian forces are invading Ukraine as Putin sees the crisis in Iraq providing ideal cover for his move against his southern neighbour. Nearer to home Scotland threatens to break away and the Conservative party is imploding once more over Europe. The scandal of the monstrous scale of child sexual abuse is exposed in Rotherham further eroding the legitimacy of the po...

‘Philosophers stretch the meaning of words until they retain scarcely anything of their original sense. They give the name of "God" to some vague abstraction which they have created for themselves; having done so they can pose before all the world as deists, as believers of God, and they can even boast that they have recognized a higher, purer concept of God, notwithstanding that their God is not nothing more than an insubstantial shadow and no longer the mighty personality of religious doctrines.’ --Sigmund Freud (from The Future of an Illusion) The 1980’s and 90’s saw an explosion in the self-help 12-Step ‘recovery’ movement. Everything from eating disorders, to love and sex ‘addiction,’ advocates claimed could be effectively addressed by regularly attending meetings devoted to the 12-Step philosophy. At the core of this philosophy lies a religious/spiritual [1] outlook that posits a belief in a ‘higher power’ to arrest – adherents do not believe in cure – there...

WATCH OUT FOR JERKING KNEES After an atrocity like the murder of US journalist James Foley don’t necessarily  expect calm considered judgement from me. Likewise don’t expect calm and considered judgement from politicians. I would have a three month moratorium on any legislation affecting civil liberties after any terrorist atrocity. For already the knees are jerking , with both Boris Johnson and David Davies calling for British Citizenship to withdrawn from anyone fighting in Iraq or Syria with Johnson going even further, with his usual populist rhetoric, calling for the presumption of innocence to be shredded, along, one presumes with his cavalier election promises. He calls for a “swift and minor change” to the law so there was a “rebuttable presumption” that those visiting war areas without notifying the authorities had done so for a terrorist purpose.’ [1] Boris Johnson Whenever he sees a top over it he goes  Now as I have said elsewhere   I am no...

THE GOD OF THE DESERT A question: If there is a universal god, a master of the universe who created billions upon billions of stars and billions of galaxies, who created matter and all things material, why is he* so obsessed with a Bronze Age culture in the Levant and Mesopotamia? Not only that but he seems also surprisingly preoccupied with, what one can only call trivia. That is the minutia of sex, the undesirability of pork or eating shellfish. If he chooses to go into that kind of obsessive detail why no mention of the proper use of chopsticks, the permissibility of cuddling up to keep warm in an igloo, fishing on a frozen lake or how to handle  the endless daylight of the Sabbath in Siberia? Nope, China, the Polar Regions, or for that matter the whole of North, South or Central America have no interest for him. Nor did the preceding generations born century after century after century in this same desert area or in the Siberian tundra or on the plains of North Amer...

THE CRIMES OF MONOTHEISM ‘Man makes religion, religion does not make man…‘The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo…Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.' Karl Marx, Cr...

1. The mornings have suddenly become chilly and there is a definite autumnal feel in the air. Whilst the Notting Hill Carnival comes early this year, it is to be held this coming Sunday and Monday 24th – 25 th . As carnival invariably marks the end of summer, this all feels rather depressing. Just weeks away from the Scottish Referendum, which could represent a change at least as significant as the breakup of Yugoslavia. Everyone I talk to about it is remarkably sanguine, they just don’t believe it will happen. In my heart of hearts I don’t either, so we all could be in for a seismic shock. Whatever the result Britain will increasingly become a more federalised society. From my perspective I believe that Scottish Independence would be a disaster for the UK whilst a more federal structure would represent a progressive development. I am not blind to the arguments of the nationalists, they make a few telling points, not least the injustice of a left leaning Scotland being consta...

CHURCHILL, CATHOLICISM AND THE BETRAYAL OF SPANISH DEMOCRACY  Papa Spy: Love, Faith, and Betrayal in Wartime Spain By Jimmy Burns ,  2009, Walker and Company By 1936 it was obvious that Germany presented a threat to British interests and was a possible future adversary. It was also obvious that in any conflict with Germany that a pro-Axis Spain would represent a considerable threat to those same interests, not least to the security of Gibraltar. It followed that a democratic, pro allied, Spain would represent a considerable asset in any forthcoming struggle. Despite this the British establishment either openly backed Franco and the Fascist Falange, themselves armed and supported by the Germans and Italians, or cried neutrality whilst holding Franco’s coat. This betrayal of their wider strategic interests by the English ruling classes, not to mention the interests of the Spanish people, occurred as a consequence of their sheer malign opposition, not only, as conv...

Hack Attack, Nick Davies, Chatto and Windus 2014. Famously we live in the age of ‘celebrity’, which the Oxford English dictionary describes as: ‘the state of being well known.’ That about sums up the current phenomenon of celebrity, you do not have to be particularly proficient at anything, needing no particular talent, – it can be an advantage though is not essential, – you merely have to be well known, famous, the possessor of ‘well-knowness.’  Famous for being famous will do to have the tabloid tag ‘celebrity’ hung around your neck. For the tabloids need a constant supply of celebrities from which to produce ‘ news ,’ - preferably disasters, - crimes and misdemeanours, sexual scandal, drug taking or just plain bad luck, to feed the appetite of a public that had lost all sense of what it was appropriate to consume in a newspaper. The parents of dead children, a soap star who had an abortion, the parents of ‘celebrities,’ the aging singer with Alzheimer’s, nothing was off...

Two articles in the Guardian this week on Monday and Tuesday respectively. On Monday Owen Jones addressed the growing trend of anti-Semitic attacks and hostility to Jews in general. The other a piece by Lindsey German addressing the issue of the left’s silence on the terrible violence of ISIS, the so called Islamic State, amongst others. Owen Jones Owen’s piece consists of a number central threads. a)       Anti-Semitism exists and is a bad thing. b)       Criticising Israel does not make you anti-Semitic c)        That those protesting the latest Israeli assault on Gaza are being smeared as anti-Semites d)       That those who accuse the protestors of being indifferent to atrocities committed by ISIS, or Basher Assad are guilty of “whataboutary.” Since the article so often lacks coherence this is the best that I can do by way of a summary. The gist of the ar...