The government couldn’t move him. In the end only cancer could. A symbol of peace and freedom, an icon of the anti-war movement and a picture of stalwart self-sacrifice for the cause of right. Regardless of what anyone on the left thought of his tactics, I don’t think anyone could argue that he gave anything [...]
As the Labour leadership contest enters its final leg, party members will be receiving their ballots in the post today. But while the national media is zooming in on a two-horse race between the two Milibands – one the candidate of continuity, the other of modest change – The Third Estate talks to Diane Abbott, [...]
Ok, false alarm, it’s not quite breaking news. People have known this for years. But I think, following today’s little outburst in The Independent, it’s worth reiterating. Julie Burchill is an idiot. Quite why a paper which is, by and large, aimed at intelligent, liberal minded progressives, chooses to print the journalistic equivalent of an [...]
There’s an excellent piece by Andy Newman on Socialist Unity about why Afghanistan could prove to be a bigger defeat for America than Vietnam. The key point is his identification of Iraq and Afghanistan as being part of the same conflict. It’s easy to forget about Iraq with the media’s eye so focussed on Afghanistan. [...]
In the 1960s and 70s, two ultra leftist groups, the Weathermen in the USA, and the Red Army Faction in West Germany, used the same slogan to clarify the motivation for their violent response to the US invasion of Vietnam: ‘bringing the war home.’ There are two movements we can describe as ‘bringing the war [...]
Ok, perhaps he’s not wrong about everything, but Reuben wrote an article yesterday with which I have several significant disagreements. My main problem with his assertions stem from this cringe-worthy little paragraph: In places like Cambridge – where they grabbed a seat last time – they seemed to get the vote of those who treated [...]
I will always remember where I was when I heard that Britain and America had invaded Iraq. I was eighteen years old, sitting in the car, on my way to school. And I will always remember how I felt that day. I felt betrayed, disillusioned, disheartened that all the might we had mobilised in the [...]
Barack Obama received his much debated Nobel Peace Prize in Norway today. One has to wonder exactly what part of sending 30,000 additional troops into a destitute nation, which has been occupied by the world’s greatest superpower for the last eight years, constitutes peace. Obama himself recognised the irony of receiving the prize whilst his [...]
Michael Moore says absolutely everything that needs to be said on Obama’s decision to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. Hat tip here goes to Leon on Pickled Politics. Sunny, writing on the same website, makes some good points, but I continue to believe his support for the war and for the additional troops is [...]
Earlier this month, Reuben wrote an article examining the media’s newfound war-weariness and how, owing to the fact that almost every major newspaper backed the invasion of Afghanistan, it can only express itself in impotent calls for better equipment. Now of course, the Iraq war was much more divisive. Many journalists were critical of the [...]
