The Politics of Dancing

Blasphemy Laws - Because who needs freedom and human rights when the integrity of imaginary friends is at stake? George Galloway has been feeling, understandably, sorrow for himself. Only one MP, Caroline Lucas, offered him public support following the brutal assault he recently received in the street. Speaking on Radio 4’s The Week In Westminster he characterises this assault correctly as an attack on free speech. As he said on the programme, “what appals one man thrills and inspires another.” Elsewhere he has spoken of “an attack on dissent.”  I must now make a confession in that in the immediate aftermath of the assault I made light of the affair, cursing whoever assaulted him as being only likely to feed his martyr complex. Any violent attack on someone merely seeking to exercise their right to free speech must be deplored. I think though I was also heavily influence by the complete absence of free speech in Iran and increasingly in Russia, regimes for whom Galloway p...

The term fascist has been so over worked as to have become virtually useless as a description; in the last six months I have heard all the following described as ‘fascist: The National Union of Students, The Metropolitan Police, Ian Duncan Smith, The EDL, The Department of Work and Pensions, David Cameron, The Catholic Church, Rupert Murdoch and Peter Holobone MP. And yet, excepting those occasions when people use the term with deliberate and conscious dishonesty, there is a phenomenon, an attitude of mind, a tone of voice that is being described. It is a mindset of intolerance, ruthlessness, cavalier with other people’s needs or sensitivities. We need a word for this, ‘fascist’ simply will not do. There is however a character of person for whom the term immediately pops into ones head and which, despite the problems associated with the word, seems wholly apposite. One such is George Galloway. When he debated Galloway in New York Christopher Hitchens described looking into G...

American Republican Congressman Todd Aiken:   "It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors,[pregnancy resulting from rape] that's really rare," Akin replied. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let's assume that maybe that didn't work or something: [1] I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child." British ‘Respect’ MP George Galloway: “Let me tell you, I think that Julian Assange's personal sexual behaviour is something sordid, disgusting, and I condemn it. But even taken at its worst, the allegations made against him by the two women – and I'm not even going into their political connections, I'm going to leave that for others and for another day. I'm going to leave the fact that one, maybe both, of his accusers have the strangest of links to the strangest of people, organisations and states, ...