Workers' Liberty

If you’ve been listening to the Radio Four’s series, 1968, a selection of old radio news broadcasts from each day of that year, you will know that it has got quite exciting (as exciting as Radio Four gets), covering events and France over the last two months.

Chris Rock at the Hammersmith Apollo.

Amongst the shops selling Prada and Louis Vuitton on the Andrassy Utca in

"If we are to take meaningful political action, if we are to act morally... then we need to be able to determine what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false".

By John O'Mahony
The Al Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahri has (July 10th) threatened Prime Minister Gordon Brown with mass murder in Britain, in retaliation for the award of a knighthood to Salman Rushdie. The knighthood, al-Zawahri said, was an "insult" to Muslims. This once more expresses, and in its most brutish and blood-thirsty form, the paradoid intolerance that governs political Islam.

Joe Stevens reviews Uncomfortable Truths — the shadow of slave trading on contemporary art and design at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

By: Wadner Pierre - HaitiAnalysis.com

Port-au-Prince- On November 18, 2006 Haitian grassroots human rights organizations came together to found a coalition. CONODDH (National Coordination of Organizations Defending Human Rights) explains that it is a grouping of organizations all with deep experience working in the field of human rights.

Amina Saddiq tuned in to the Radio 4 Women’s Hour special on Poland.

Those of you who have never attended the annual Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival (held this year on 15-17 July) are missing a real treat, especially if you also like rolling in clover and staring up at the star-filled midnight sky.

By Joan Trevor

French comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala is in the headlines and has had to cut short his latest tour because of remarks he made about the recent Holocaust memorials. The ceremonies marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz he called “remembrance pornography”.

Unfortunately, this event has been cancelled

Ethical fashion shows at the London College of Fashion

Two shows: 2.30 pm and 6.30 pm, Friday 25 February

at LCF, 20 John Prince’s Street, Oxford Circus

To highlight the abuse of garment workers

By Dan Katz

The Home Secretary, David Blunkett, is considering abolishing Britain’s absurd blasphemy laws when legislating for a new offence of incitement to religious hatred. By so doing Blunkett hopes to split those opposed to the new incitement law.

Comedy with Mark Thomas and Simon Munnery, followed by live music. Organised by No Sweat. Entrance: minimum of £5. Proceeds to Basra Unemployed Workers' Centre. More.

an exhibition at the Museum of Immigration and Diversity

Tucked away in Spitalfields, east London, is one of the capital's least known attractions. 19 Princelet Street is an old house which serves as a living monument to London's extraordinary tradition as a destination and sometime haven for refugees.

from Rachel Bird

Dear Friends,

I work with a group called the Ilisu Dam Campaign Refugee Project; a community led organisation that was created to emphasise the role that UK foreign investment has to play in forcing people to flee their countries.

We would very much like to invite you and any friends, family or colleagues to a party / cultural event that we are holding at 7pm on 18th December at the Halkevi Community Centre on the Stoke Newington Road in Hackney. There will be performances of poetry, reading, music and dance from members of various communities, including Somalis, Kurds, Afghans, Colombians and Nigerians.

By Rosalind Robson

"Tender cruelty" is how one writer described the work of American photographer Walker Evans. That description is the starting point for the "Cruel and Tender" exhibition now showing at the Tate Modern (until 7 September). The sub-title of the exhibition is "the real in the twentieth century photograph." It is not then an over-view of realism in photography or of twentieth century photography. But it is an exhibition which explores those themes.

Esther Leslie’s article on Walter Benjamin (‘Tragedy, Progress and Struggle’ WL66) is welcome and I hope, along with her, that his work can be rescued from the academics who have done him to death in recent the years. There are, however, a number of problems with Benjamin’s work, some of them quite fundamental, that Esther Leslie’s article doesn’t touch on. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the opportunity to read her book yet, so if any of the points I now raise are discussed there then I offer my apologies in advance.

I was appalled by much of the nonsense Jim Denham treated us to in his article about Elvis Presley (WL42). He seems to have little grasp on the Marxist theory of ideology and to be determined not only to live in the 1950s himself, but to drag the rest of us back there too.