Last week’s Jewish Chronicle ran a story on the Board of Deputees of British Jews’ new campaign to instigate a so-called “buycott” in which, British Jews are encouraged to buy Israeli-produced goods. This is a response to the boycott of Israeli goods that has been hanging around anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian campaigns since the early-2000s, but [...]
Interview by Dan Swain and Lorna Finlayson
Ted Honderich is Grote Professor Emeritus of Mind and Logic at University College London. Since 9/11 he has written several books on the subject of terrorism and war, most recently Humanity, Terrorism, Terrorist War, and has become a vocal advocate of the right of the Palestinians to a [...]
On Friday the London Review of Books will celebrate its 30th anniversary with a bumper length edition and the launch of the magazine’s online archive comprising no less than 30 million words in 12,000 essays by more than 2,000 contributors.
I started reading the LRB the year after I left university, while working in Hong Kong as a secondary school teacher. With no marking to do, few lessons to teach and no extra-curricula activities to oversee, my timetable might have been gratifyingly blank but for the school’s draconian (at least as it seemed to me at the time) working culture. Teachers, when not in the classroom, were forbidden from leaving their desks in the staffroom, much less the school, during working hours. It was bad form to turn off your computer or to use it to play videos or computer games (though such programmes were far beyond the capabilities of my laptop which wheezed whenever asked to load so much as a picture or the bright, gurning dragon school logo on the screensaver). ‘You have to appear to work at all times’ an experienced TEFL teacher had counselled me, ‘which is why I choose a desk at the back of the room. They can’t see the screen that way.’
But I couldn’t get my desk moved and with the Head of English seated behind me I had to be careful what I looked at. Too long surfing the BBC Sport’s website inevitably led to the questions like, ‘Hey what you doing?’ or ‘Hey, Lazy, you want do some marking?’
Mercifully at some point I stumbled upon the LRB’s website. It remains one of the best presented and easy to use sites on the net and, wondrously, it had no slow to load, easy to condemn, pictures. Reading the LRB I looked like I was working. Sometimes I even felt like I was, but not too often. Plus I learned stuff, stopped reading my father’s Spectator, made ill advised friendships with people like Salman and took my first steps towards apparently continuous, unemployability…
To mark 30 years of LRB, I spoke to Senior Editor, Paul Myerscough, about where the magazine stands politically, how significant political essays can be, whether he’d noticed any changes to government policy following articles written in the magazine, ‘snark’ and what happened to Christopher Hitchens.
Guest post by Tim Johnston
Following a turbulent week for Israel, Tim Johnston argues that the only path to peace is engagement with Hamas
Hamas, founded in 1987, was elected by the Palestinian people in January 2006 by a landslide. Almost immediately after the elections, they were forced out of power by the US, UK, EU and [...]
Walking through security at Portcullis House, the fabulously expensive building standing adjacent to the Houses of Parliament, is a bit like going through any airport anywhere in the world. But making your way through the spacious courtyard, past green trees and sun-dappled water features under the enormous sparkling glass dome towering overhead, you could be [...]
Guest Post by David Rosenberg
“To be a Jew means always being with the oppressed and never the oppressors”.
The author of these words was the Bundist Marek Edelman who has just died aged 90. He was one of the commanders of the ZOB – the Jewish Fighting Organisation that led the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943.
To [...]
The proms don’t normally get much in the way of political coverage. In fact the last time they did was about a year and a half ago when Margaret Hodge decided to make some stupid announcement about them not being inclusive enough, so it was a real joy to have such a politically charged concert [...]
The following is a message from the Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign:
An arrest warrant was issued at Friday’s court hearing against Sofiah MacLeod, Scottish PSC Secretary currently in Palestine witnessing Israel’s racist dispossesion of Palestinians. The warrant was cancelled shortly afterwards, however. Sofiah will bring her recent experiences of Israeli state-driven racism when she goes on [...]
Guest post by Jon Small
The latest character from Sacha Baron Cohen’s entourage of grotesques to hit the big screen is Brüno, the gay-as-a-lamp-post presenter of Austria’s number one fashion show, Funkyzeit. Brüno began life as a minor character in Baron Cohen’s television shows for Paramount Comedy and Channel 4’s Da Ali G Show. As with [...]
