Andrew Blackman
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"Political comment"
Troy Davis is almost certainly innocent, but he is still scheduled to be executed at 7pm EST today (midnight UK time). There is no physical evidence against him – he was convicted of murder purely on the testimony of witnesses, seven of whom have since recanted their testimony. Several said they were coerced by [...]
I live in Haringay, the same borough as Tottenham, where the riots started that have since spread across London. If you take the 41 bus from the corner of my street, you’ll be in Tottenham in 15 minutes or so. But Crouch End, where I live, is a middle-class enclave, popular with families, full [...]
I like it when fiction writers have something to say about the world. I mean the real world, beyond the world of books. Junot Diaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, wrote an excellent article in the Boston Review recently about natural disasters, focusing particularly on the earthquake in Haiti. [...]
Was saddened this week to hear of the death of peace activist Brian Haw. There are not too many people in these times who live completely honest lives. We may have our opinions about the way we’d like things to be, but we hide them, or express them timidly.
Rather than speaking generally, [...]
This weekend marks the 50th birthday of Amnesty International, an organisation I’ve been a member of since I was a teenager. It started with Peter Benenson (right) being outraged at the imprisonment of a couple of Portuguese students for raising their wine glasses in a toast to freedom, and now has over 3 million members [...]
Read an interesting article by George Marshall in the New Internationalist recently about cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 80%, a seemingly impossible task until you realise that this would only mean returning to the levels of 1972.
I was quite amazed when I read that. 1972 is not long ago. I don’t quite remember [...]
Was astonished by a recent snippet from Christian Aid:
Christian Aid has criticised a record high of US$4.4 billion in World Bank funding for coal power stations – a 40-fold increase over the past five years.
I can’t believe that at a time when we are facing the need for urgent action to avoid disastrous [...]
I was just going through some old magazines and came across a fascinating article in New Scientist – web version here. It describes how chimpanzees were observed carrying around the bodies of dead infants for weeks or even months.
In many ways, their mothers treated the corpses as though they were still alive: [...]
Greenpeace recently held a competition to design a more appropriate logo for BP, a company responsible for massive environmental destruction. I like the winning entry – here’s the explanation from the designer, Laurent Hunziker:
The silhouette shape comes from a very moving picture I saw of this poor bird in panic, glued in oil… [...]
It’s sad to see that the budget for Public Lending Right is being cut by the new Tory/LibDem government. It’s a worthwhile scheme that provides income to writers. OK, at six pence per loan it’s not a huge amount, but every little helps. It’s sad that having spent billions on wars and bank bailouts, [...]
Recent Comments
- Kommunal ekosocialism | Svensson on “Social Ecology and Communalism” by Murray Bookchin
- Andrew Blackman on “Tail of the Blue Bird” by Nii Ayikwei Parkes
- Kwadwo on “Tail of the Blue Bird” by Nii Ayikwei Parkes
- Kwadwo on On the Holloway Road – free sample
- Andrew Blackman on “The Sense of an Ending” by Julian Barnes
