The Politics of Dancing

The Regressive Left and the Death of Satire Did you hear the one about.....   The motion before a ‘left wing’ conference proposing that Daesh be recognised as a legitimate anti-imperialist resistance movement? What about George Galloway, the Bernard Manning of the far left, attending an ‘anti-war’[sic] protest at the same time as tweeting support for the indiscriminate bombing being conducted by Putin in Syria? No, that one past you by, then what about ‘anti-war’ website that compared Daesh Jihadi fighters to members of the International Brigades, or the one about the Paris massacres being about France reaping the fruits of its imperialism? Admittedly the last was a particularly sick joke, though when it came to the slaughter of Charlie Hebdo staff no comment was too cruel or brutal for the ranks of the regressive left, indeed the sickest joke of all was the voice of self styled ‘progressive liberals’ providing apologia for the murder of cartoonists and the literal slaughter ...

What Value a Dead Syrian Child What is the current market value of an atrocity in Syria? The answer to this question depends of course on who committed it. Let me illustrate the point by highlighting the [fictional] case of Leila. Leila is a pretty, precocious seven-year-old Syrian girl. She is well liked and has shown a particular aptitude for mathematics, her teacher sees a bright future for her. Leila is dancing in the playground when a bomb destroys her school killing her and all the other children in the playground. First reports indicate that the school was destroyed in a coalition airstrike, the target being a nearby ISIS/Daesh training camp. There is much derision from the ant-war left when coalition sources say that they are investigating the incident and if there have been civilian casualties express deep regret. Leila, whose name and background are provided by her grieving parents, becomes a cause celebre for Stop the War and the anti-war [sic] movement. A pict...

  Coloured lights and candlelight are minor additions to any room, add a little tinsel and the room is transformed into a grotto. The celebration of light and of bright and shiny things speaks to something very deep in the psyche, something primitive even atavistic.  We feel a thrill as the light plays with shadows, glinting off tinsel, sometimes quivering, hit by a sudden draft, sometimes standing erect as guards outside the Winter Palace. Christmas is many things and long before it was subsumed into Christianity a mid-winter festival was a time to keep the gloom at bay with fire and dancing and chanting. Despite all the accumulated Christian symbolism Christmas still speaks to our pagan spirit. This year the darkness has felt more oppressive, beginning and ending as it has with mass murder in Paris. A year characterised by slaughter, and, when it came to the nature of the threat we face, by denial, deceit and dissembling. The bodies of the dead in the offices of...

'In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.' George Orwell To be political and on Twitter the day after the vote to extend air-strikes into Syria was to be greeted by a wave of hyperbole, sanctimonious finger pointing certainty, grotesque distortions and downright lies. A display of self-righteous hyperbole that would make a Free Presbyterian fire and brimstone preacher blush. You would have thought that Parliament had voted for a re-run of Dresden as the responsibility for mass slaughter was laid at the feet of MP’s who had supported the extension . This whipped up to a level that at times can only be characterized as hysteria.   Apologies to every innocent Syrian from everyone in Britain who has brain cells left. If there was an answer, it wasn't genocide #SyriaVote — pricey (@amyis_drunk) December 3, 2015     Hysteria moreover by people, who it is worth noting, could not even bother to protest outside the Syria...

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. First a reality check, we are already hitting Daesh from the air, what parliament is voting on today is merely extending air operations from Iraq to Syria. Daesh is already being attacked from the air in Syria by a coalition including Jordan, France and the United States. There is also the continued indiscriminate bombing by Assad now joined by the Russians. Whatever parliament decides today that bombing will continue. Should the House of Commons agree the RAF will represent a very small component of those forces striking Daesh in Syria. Our contribution will make a difference, but not a very significant one . Parliament is not voting on whether to ‘go to war’ or whether to fight Daesh or not, that decision has already been made. The importance of the vote today has taken on an importance out of all proportion to reality. Jeremy Corbyn Speaks at So Called Stop the War Rally. That said doing nothing...

The American Spy, Fifth Columnists, Anti-Semitism and the Churchill Roosevelt Correspondence Nineteen Weeks: America, Britain, and the Fateful Summer of 1940 Norman Moss, Houghton Mifflin; Reprint edition (9 Nov. 2004) Rendezvous at the Russian Tea Rooms: The Spyhunter, the Fashion Designer & the Man From Moscow, Paul Willetts; Constable (1 Oct. 2015). The ‘special relationship’ between the US and Great Britain is supposed to have reached its zenith in 1940, in the form of the correspondence between Roosevelt and Churchill. Both of these books deal with this period and both deal with the content of this correspondence, there however the similarities end, for both books could not be more different. Moss takes a cold clinical look at the transatlantic relationship during the nineteen weeks between the fall of France and the cancellation of Operation Sea Lion, the Germans planned invasion of southern England. He shines a light on US collusion with British covert ...

AUSTERITY AND THE ASSAULT ON THE PUBLIC LIBRARY SERVICE  Public libraries are beacons, they shine a light on the kind of society we live in; free for all to use, uncensored and open, warm places in which to read, research or just indulge in the sheer serendipity of dipping into books you would not buy but which turn out to be full of surprising insights or stimulating prose. The Joy of Serendipity  All civilised societies value literacy and learning, value books and engagement with books. Of course we now live in an age when information is much more readily available and books can be read on electronic devices capable of storing thousands of titles. However libraries have pretty much risen to the challenges of new technology, indeed the library is sometimes the only place where some people can gain access to the internet. But there are also the children’s sections in libraries, few things being more heartening than watching children discover books. And then there ...

PARIS AND SOCIAL MEDIA SOLIDARITY When natural, or manmade disaster, or terrorist atrocity strikes the reverberations are immediately felt on social media. We live in an age when our immediate shock, horror, anger, despair and depression can be immediately communicated to hundreds, even thousands of friends and strangers alike. Without pausing to reflect or consider raw emotion pours out onto Twitter timelines and Facebook pages. I have reacted in this way myself. Merely tweeting ‘bastards,’ providing some small outlet, a little therapeutic relief perhaps. Then as the initial reaction passes the desire to show support and solidarity becomes the pre-eminent emotion. Of course some will rush to the scene to help, give blood, and comfort the bereaved and injured. These however will always be a minority, most people caught up in the business of living, meeting the demands made by work, children and loved ones. So in the age of social media they chose to add a flag or symbol to the...

How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Accept the Bomb. I n the early 1980's I was an active supporter of CND. I marched, I protested, and in Easter 1983 I held hands to form a human chain linking the US nuclear bases in southern England. Human Chain Easter 1983 My support was not purely based upon a deep abhorrence of nuclear weapons, - what sane person doesn’t feel such abhorrence. No, I was as much concerned by the gung-ho attitude of the Reagan and Thatcher governments of the period. With all the talk of missile defence shields and ‘tactical’ devices you did not have to feel especially paranoid to think that, Reagan in particular, they were just mad enough to use them. So I don’t regret my involvement not even that we might have proved useful to Russian propagandists; ‘playing into the hands of…’   always a weak argument, particularly when moral issues are concerned. I have however changed my mind and I could no longer support CND. My abhorrence of these we...

This is a slightly amended review written for The Nour Festival Blog ALGERIANISM Patrick Altes Algerianism, if considered at all, in this country tends to be conceptualised as coming in a box marked pied noir, - often wrongly associated with the work of Albert Camus. The French rather than Algerian element taking precedence. This Exhibition however represents a confident exploration by Algerians seeking to explore their own complex identity, though the ghosts of French occupation, colonial presence and influence on Algerian culture is very much present as well.  Now of course the idea that Algeria and metropolitan France were as one was not only absurd but also camouflaged the reality of French imperialism, racism and brutality. That said the French presence in Algeria introduced a unique element into Algerian culture, and it is the ghost of this presence that haunts the pictures of Patrick Altes, a French artist, in which images of the past and present are fused t...