Nick Cohen was on Start the Week this morning defending his book. My copy has not arrived yet because I think Amazon has buggered it up somehow. Last week I keenly read the extract in the Observer though and found a great deal to agree with. I’m glad he’s written this book as it is reassuring to those of us who, though we believe we are coming from the left, feel uncomfortable with certain tendencies of the left in the turbulent times we now live in. It sounds as though most of his targets thoroughly deserve the skewering they receive. I would stop short of saying I feel vindicated because I’m still very much a fence sitter as regards the war in Iraq. As some of you may know I’ve been flirting with the Hitchens/ Amis/ Euston Manifesto position for some time, but political cowardice has stopped me from making a decision either way. In that respect I bet I’m just like many in the parliamentary labour party, who deep down feel a similar ambivalence. Who’s set of ghastly statistics is one supposed to believe? Throughout the Iraq war I have hardly wavered in my support of this Labour government.
One criticism of Cohen’s book is that he fails to address the position of the mainstream left who opposed the war i.e. Robin Cook, Clare Short etc. Robin Cook in particular came out of the whole debacle with dignity and his presence in British politics is sawly missed. I think I’ll save the rest of my rant for the pub (mainly because I can’t be bothered to get it down here), and for other bloggers to rehearse (I think I’m a bit behind the ‘blogosphere’ on this one, and besides, nobody reads this anyway), but I’m looking forward to reading what will no doubt be a refreshing polemic.
The fast approaching world cup means requisite singing of the national anthems and crass displays of nationalism are just around the corner. This prompted me to check out this site. http://www.national-anthems.net/ It’s been said many times by many people before but I don’t mind reiterating; the British national anthem is such an embarrassing piece of crap. All national anthems are inherently ridiculous but ours really takes the biscuit on a number of levels. How I wish I were Russian or German! Such wonderful pieces of music. That our miserable little excuse of a tune is supposed to be rousing is a joke and the lyrics are just shameful.
What ever your views regarding the royal family, (personally I would get rid of them all in an instant) I think its high time we had some sort of sustained campaign to get rid of the anthem and replace it with, well, pretty much anything else would be better. This is a matter of aesthetics as much as anything else. When the current monarch finally pops her clogs in ooh I don’t know 2031 or something, is anyone going to give a toss about a by then octogenarian Charles the dissident water-colour enthusiast? Is anyone going to want to sing ‘God save our gracious King’ about that befuddled old git?
A good start for the campaign would be the axing of the nightly rendition of the anthem after the Shipping forecast on radio 4. This is of particular annoyance, you know how it is; you’re just drifting off to sleep having been transported afloat through the shipping lanes of the northern hemisphere when all of a sudden you’re rudely awakened by that drum roll of doom, your semi-conscious arm stretches out to switch off the radio knocking over a glass of water in the process, but by now its too late, it’s already entered your consciousness and a whole day is ruined. Perhaps we can build on the momentum gathered by the recent cutting of the UK theme at the beginning of the day on radio 4, though by the responses on some of the forums radio 4 listeners aren’t exactly the most progressive bunch. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/reports/misc/uktheme_20052401.shtml Well sod the lot of them! The revolution starts here.
I’m thinking of starting a website with a petition devoted to this very cause – radio 4 would be a much better place without this shit at the end of every evening. If I achieve this one thing my life will have been worth it. At the very least it’ll annoy a lot of people. A casual look on google doesn’t reveal anything quite like it yet. There seems quite a well organised movement to replace ‘God Save the Queen’ with something specifically for England and ‘the English’, though this seems equally abhorrent to me. http://anthem4england.co.uk/ And then there is the, er, Australian republican movement… and I remember Billy Bragg expressing a similar sentiment recently. At any rate I believe the writing is on the wall. Who’s with me?
In other news I’ve completed my MA. Well the end of the taught classes anyway. Hooray! I would like to be able to say with some style and aplomb but towards the end I was just hanging on in really. It seems it’s not enough to just turn up to each seminar with a modicum of enthusiasm every week, eventually some actual work is involved. I’m looking forward to doing my dissertation now as it allows for more freedom in what I want to talk about and will hopefully represent a summation of everything I’ve learned in terms of theory and methodology. I may write about it on here a little as I think some of its themes may be of interest to the non-specialist. Something to look forward to eh?
Just watched ‘This world’ on the BBC and as is often the case with documentaries that expose human rights violations I feel angered and powerless by the experience. It was about Azerbaijan – one of those extraordinary Central Asian countries we hear about very infrequently, unless it’s from a comedian doing some sort of hapless foreigner character.
It followed the experiences of two young activists trying to bring about a peaceful revolution in the lead up to the elections in November 2005. These two likable young men, Murad and Emin, were inspired by similar peaceful movements in Serbia, Georgia and most recently the Ukraine. They even appropriated the colour orange in the hope of galvanising popular opinion against the government. The film showed just how difficult it was in a state under such a regime to make any sort of protest whatsoever. In what to my somewhat naive mind seemed on the surface to be a relatively developed country, dissent against the authoritarian government would not be tolerated even on a small scale. The police were, and still are, sanctioned to use brutal force against even the slightest hint of dissent. The sense of frustration that these men experienced was palpable. The fascistic leanings of the Azerbaijan government would seem obvious to any impartial observer. This film seemed to suggest that harassment and fear tactics were authorized by the party in order to mobilize the people into stage-managed pro-government rallies presided over by meat-headed thugs with megaphones. Songs about the ‘blessed homeland of Azerbaijan’ were sung with a distinct lack of enthusiasm by these poor souls as they dutifully trundled along the parade route.
Sadly, even though the European Council, the body responsible for regulating and overseeing a fair electoral process condemned the election last year, (which as this film showed was clearly rigged in the governments favour), the United States government still supports the regime and the fake result. So the opposition in Azerbaijan have a serious problem in that, unlike the instigators of the revolutions in the aforementioned countries that they wanted to emulate, the West by and large does not look favourably on their cause. Surprise surprise, the West is willing to turn a blind eye to human rights abuses when oil and the ‘War on Terror’ are concerned.
After the European body announced their findings on the result the Government capitulated to foreign pressure and allowed the opposition party and its supporters to demonstrate for a meager ‘two hours’. This rally was attended by an estimated 30 thousand people and was deemed a success despite it having to come to an end so abruptly. With the eyes of the worlds press momentarily on Azerbaijan there was at last some cause for optimism. One of the results was the organisation of a further demo to build upon the momentum they had gathered. Unfortunately the worlds press were not present at the next one and the Azerbaijan authorities came down hard upon the crowds. The film captured shocking footage of savage beatings as the police broke up the crowd and tore down placards and banners for freedom. One step forward two steps back it seems.
One could not help but feel a profound sense of sympathy for Murad as, in the immediate aftermath of these awful events, he declared to the camera that “this is no longer about just freedom, human rights and democracy; this is about justice for the people – Justice for Azerbaijan”. So I write this post to express my solidarity with the opposition movement in that country, and in praise of an excellent and informative film.
This film and recent events in Nepal have made me think about democracy in general. On the day in which‘the worlds two most powerful men’ (George W Bush and Hu Jintao) met in the US, it has really struck home to me that fair democratic systems are the real anomalies in the world, and not so-called ‘rogue states’. Stating the obvious perhaps but still. Are the liberal Western European powers the only things even close to fair and representative democracies the world has? Or is it all just a sham and a swindle?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/this_world/4908406.stm