The Exodus incident of 1947

The often excellent blog of Adam Curtis on the BBC site has this on the boarding by the British of the Haganah (Israeli defence force) ship SS Exodus which was delivering supplies to Palestine, then blockaded by the Attlee government.

Any passing anthropologists out there should read this slightly earlier posting by Curtis on Afghanistan and the potential for the discipline to be misused.

A Taxi Driver writes...

Neil Clark (Cab 66, but believed to be an alias of Stephen Byers) comments:

Brown's greatest mistake was to underestimate just how leftwards public opinion had shifted on economic matters during the financial crisis. In 2008-9, people didn't just want speeches denouncing bankers' bonuses, they wanted to see bankers hanging from lamp-posts.

Reader, knowing Clark I think he means it. Saying something threatening half-seriously on twitter resulted in one Paul Chambers (not the long deceased jazz bassist) receiving a punitive fine. Just the kind of behaviour Clark occasionally objects to.

But there is more. In my edits of the Wikipedia article on Clark I was menaced by an editor, soon banned, going under the moniker of 'Citylightsgirl', who thought I was Oliver Kamm or a "close associate" of his. Alas the rest of this demented material has gone from the web, as has the article on Clark from Wikipedia itself, though a late version is preserved elsewhere.

Clark puts up the pretense of being a 'democratic socialist', but much of his writing, and all of the pieces by his wife Zsuzsanna Clark, suggest this is a sham. His comments on the election provided an irresistible opportunity to satirise their politics. Naturally I was rumbled, I had 'forgotten' to log out of Google, but Clark still appears to think Philip Cross is a pseudonym for a prominent person who is out for him. The truth is very prosaic. Clark may assume deceit if I claim never to have been a customer of Tiscali, the internet service provider. But it is a fact, though I know of a public figure who has.

At Shiraz Socialist

About the trial of Radovan Karadžić Jim Denham wrote a few days ago:

It will be interesting to see whether the “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” school of supposed “left-wingers” rally to the genocidal Karadzic, as they did to Milosevic. The loathsome Neil Clark, in the Morning Star (September 21 2009), for instance, listed 10 “leftist leaders who did not betray“, including “Some, such as Salvadore Allende and Slobodan Milosevic (who) ended up losing their lives on account of not sacrificing their principles…”

Clark is a particularly crass and disgusting power-worshipper who seems to get a kick out of glorifying mass murder and genocide. But the Morning Star is a quite widely-read publication supported by most British trade unions, regardless of their formal politics. Will the Star (with or without the sicko Clark) be defending Karadzic?

We wait and wonder. So far the latest hearings have only been referred to as part of a "World in Brief" item.

Update: OK, it is a newspaper with limited pagination, but this is equally brief.

Socialist Unity poster nauseates again

I commented here that the Socialist Unity blog sometimes has worthwhile articles when its authors are not defending dictatorships. This piece is a particularly blinkered example from the later category:

Today is the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the Peoples’ Republic of China. Shown here are just some of the thousands of people who will be celebrating in Tiananmen Square.

Relatives of the hundreds murdered by the regime in June 1989 are doubtless not so jubilant.

It was one of the great historical achievements of the Twentieth century to throw out the Japanese, and Western colonialists, and unite the country. The problems that faced China were staggering - and even today they struggle with poverty.

Mao deliberately created famine, glorified hard labour and blighted the country's civil society more thoroughly than Stalin did in the Soviet Union.

Modern China has achieved great things to become the world’s second largest economy, but it is still a developing country where rural areas have levels of development and poverty closer to Bangladesh than Germany.

It is easy to criticise China, but much of the criticism doesn’t take into account the historical context of their development, and the urgent requirement for economic growth as a precondition for social justice and progress. Nor do the critics acknowledge the degree to which the Communist Party of China is self-aware of the difficulties and negative aspects of Chinese society - but there are often no easy answers to solve problems overnight.

The article began as a commemoration of 'glorious rule' over sixty years. The article's author, Andy Newman, digs deeper in the comments section. He makes the following claim at comment 24: "At no time has China ever had anything comparable to Stalin’s great terror". And this at no.30:

What would be the social function of an “opposition party” in China, where the leading role of the CPC is embodied in the functioning of government? As of course you know, there are several independent political parties in China, represented in the Peoples’s Congress, and who have access to think tanks etc. These are similar to the old “bloc parties” in East Germany.

So that is alright then. Newman behaved in a crass way two months ago over the Gary McKinnon case, and looks like alienating his readers again.

Does the BBC have a liberal bias?

About time someone took apart the BBC has a 'liberal bias' argument, which Mehdi Hasan does in this week's New Statesman. Responding to a piece on Peter Hitchens' blog, Hasan issued a challenge to him, Hasan has now deconstructed Hitchens' posting.

By the way, Hitchens original article in the Statesman is here.

Just fancy that!

Peter Hitchens, referring to people who have used his unpleasant nickname, gave this response in a 2005 Guardian interview:

I don't like being called 'bonkers' and I think to some extent it demeans people who use phrases like that. But I take comfort from the fact that most totalitarian regimes tend to classify their opponents as mentally disordered.

And lock them up too, but Hitchens, in at least the form he was quoted, failed to make the distinction.

On Monday, Hitchens headed an entry on his blog: "The growing need for medical tests to determine which side politicians are on." Having spent years trying to label New Labour figures as marxist, it is not surprising he fails to recognise Michael Gove's reasons for admiring Tony Blair as consistent with a Conservative viewpoint, and to see it as being a disorder. Blair once had to deny being a neo-conservative himself, a label Gove happily accepts.

So what kind of regime would be likely to meet Peter Hitchens' "need?"

Catherine Bennett hits the nail...

One recent particularly telling entry on the Lenin's Tomb blog concerned the threat to the continued publication of The Observer newspaper. Apparently, Richard Seymour considers its closure would not be much of a loss because of the journalists it employs and its demographics, which display a bias towards high earners. One could be mischievous and suggest the reference to its journalists does not allow for the defence of any 'capitalist' newspaper which might be under threat now or in the future. Those newspapers at the top end of the market tend to be the least unreadable, regardless of their politics.

My most incendiary reader (numerous clues in the drop-down lists on the right) will doubtless be surprised that I have had very mixed feelings about Nick Cohen's columns for some years. Usually though, the mouse button is pressed on the link to his articles. One Observer columnist who is invariably readable is Catherine Bennett, who this week writes on John Cleese's recent divorce settlement. Bennett is right to mock Michael Winner's snobbery about Alyce Faye Eichelberger Cleese's former residence in a London council flat ("Perhaps he worries that she will spend all the money on scratch cards and pizza"), and quite rightly choose to highlight Cleese's rather chauvinist response to his ex-wife ("I got off lightly. Think what I’d have had to pay Alyce if she had contributed anything to the relationship"). Cleese seems to have lost any connection to the real world: "At least I will know in future if I go out with a lady they will not be after me for my money." He is still worth about £10 million.

Catherine Bennett concludes:

The tale of Mr Cleese and Ms Eichelberger makes Woody Allen look like a really brilliant advertisement for psychotherapy.

Non, c'est moi.

Favourite Blogs

If polls in such things had any real credibility (Clark managed to win his category on a mere 26%, 1,100 votes or so, in the poll for 2007) mine would be:

1. Dave's Part
2. Harpymarx
3. Shiraz Socialist
4. Stroppyblog
5. Adam MacQueen
6. Normblog
7. Oliver Kamm
8. Harry's Place

Other blogs I read, are not really recommendable, though Socialist Unity manages to avoid being an apologist for dictatorships some of the time, Lenin's Tomb contains the odd nugget and Peter Hitchens is worth it for the entertainment value.

The most ridiculous for me, no he is merely appalling, is surely this gent from deepest County Durham.