Thinking

Mao: Crazy or not so Crazy? Discuss.

Monthly Review has one of those articles on its webiste that makes you sit up and take notice. It’s title: Did Mao Really Kill Millions in the Great Leap Forward? My immediate response: well, yes, he did. But I think…
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I almost agreed with David Cameron!

I had a real shock just now. Read a BBC News story about David Cameron talking shit, and actually found myself agreeing with part of it. (Well, at first I admit I was distracted by wondering how the man’s forehead…
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In-Dependence from Bondage

This book seems worth reading. It looks at the work of Claude McKay and Michael Manley, an interesting combination, and more broadly at the effects of globalization on the African diaspora. My only real view of Manley up to now…
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Getting better all the time…

I suppose now the Red Cross can be added to the list of dangerous subversives who deride the war in Iraq for their own crazy left-wing reasons. After all, they have released a report cataloguing the sheer horror of life…
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I’m too speechless to compose a title for this

This Islamophobia is astonishing! Well, really, I shouldn’t be astonished given the generally fucked up state of the nation, but I am. Manal Omar went swimming in an Islamic-style swimsuit, something she has done all over the world, but it…
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Guardian Books

I should read this more often. It actually has some interesting stuff. This week there’s Paulo Coelho on the Seven Deadly Sins, and some interesting pieces on writers I haven’t heard of but would like to try, like political fiction…
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Absolutely mindless

I think Lord Acton was wrong: power doesn’t corrupt. It lobotomises. Consider Michel Platini, for example. Gifted footballer, intelligent analyst of the game, articulate opponent of Lennart Johansson when campaigning to be UEFA President, complete moron as soon as he’s…
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Fortress Europe

From United Against Racism comes this list of 8,855 refugees who have died throughout Fortress Europe since 1993. The amount of drowning, suicide, murder and starvation on this list is overwhelming. Yet the only time the newspapers write about these…
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Financing Terrorism

This is a bit old, but I wanted to make note of it so I can find it again later. From Narco News: Chiquita admits making payments to Colombian death squads. Oh, and also this from ABC News: US has…
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