As this most memorable World Cup reaches its exciting end game, the ‘noble absence’ of the British establishment will have been no loss to the wider-watching world. Hopefully, it will have helped highlight their gross hypocrisy and the enduring crimes of the British state.
Rather than indulging drum-beating hawks like Carter, politicians, journalists and anyone else really concerned with understanding and challenging British militarism might find in such places much more useful information and critical direction.
As global protests continue against Donald Trump, what could be the nucleus of a promising new progressive movement, akin to Occupy, is being compromised by a faux liberal ‘resistance’. It’s been encouraging to see people act in a spirit of intuitive solidarity with Muslims in rejection of Trump’s discriminatory edicts. But, thanks to the liberal media’s veneration of Obama and […]
From Jan 16th: As Barack Obama approaches his last day in office, emotional liberals have been recording their tributes to the president and dark fears over what’s to come. There’s been hagiographic coverage of Obama’s farewell speech, and‘heartwarming’ pictures of his tenure. A succession of Hollywood names, from Tom Hanks to Samuel L Jackson, have been re-stating Obama’s ‘Yes We Can’ motif. In similar […]
Doesn’t the heart surge to hear crusading Western liberals warn of the ‘existential threat’ from Islamic State and the call for ‘dutiful military responses’? And all in the name of ‘our civilizational values’.
There’s been widespread grief and sympathy over the terrible killings in Paris. All very human and commendable. But, as Jonathan Cook asks, why the selective coverage, outrage and empathy? Were those innocents blown up a day before in Beirut by the, apparently, same Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) not worthy of the same humanity, the same demonstrations of global support? Those calling attention to the disparity are reminded […]
Befitting his own campaign for a new, healthy and open politics, Corbyn can only but welcome more critical scrutiny of a media that’s urged people to support ‘sensible’ New Labourism, kept readers in step with ‘neoliberal reality’ and waged such a campaign of hostility towards Corbyn himself. And remember, this is not just the right wing press, it’s the Guardian, Independent and others claiming to be serious about progressive change.
Decry Hamas, if you wish. But don’t say that Israel has the right to deny Palestinians their rightsbecause they elected a government you don’t like. That’s been Israel’s and its allies’ convenient and complicit excuse in the whole, posturing ‘peace process’. Stephen Fry’s words only give sustenance to that duplicitous pretext.
And the political fare on offer is all manufactured and presented to placate big business, to court corporate approval and to ensure that the ways in which we vent our dissatisfaction is safely-boundaried by QuestionTime-type ‘participation’.
claims over the sacrosanct status of ‘free speech’ and its expression as ‘satire’ cannot elide the more elementary issue of human consideration and social responsibility. As cartoonist Joe Sacco observes, Hebdo’s output is a “vapid way to use a pen.” One might also add, pernicious, vulgar and racist.
There’s an historic level of animosity right now towards Labour in Scotland. Many are simply seething. Many will never forgive them for siding with the ConDems and taking a leading part in the establishment’s Project Fear. Jones acknowledges much of this, but fails to concede his own negative part in that outcome.
