Reviews

Why conspiracy theories sell

Thomas Carolan looks at the politics behind the Da vinci code “What crudeness, insolence, nastiness! A shop for miracles, a business office trafficking in grace.... But best of all is the papal blessing broadcast to Lourdes by — radio. The paltry miracles of the Gospels side by side with the radiotelephone! And what could be more absurd and disgusting than the union of proud technology with the sorcery of the Roman chief druid? Indeed, the thinking of mankind is bogged down in its own excrement.” Leon Trotsky, 1935 The Catholic Church, not too surprisingly, does not like The Da Vinci Code. It...

A left dressed in feathers from Cold War hawks

Tom Unterrainer reviews Anti-Totalitarianism: The Left-Wing case for a Neoconservative Foreign Policy, by Oliver Kamm “Intervention in Iraq was not strictly a ‘humanitarian war’: it was an anti-totalitarian war. It was a war in the cause of liberty.” Oliver Kamm’s work, characterised by this statement, is an energetic and closely argued polemical “left-wing” justification for Bush and Blair’s war on Iraq. His starting point is the historical precedence of opposition to fascism and the emergence and support for “collective security”. The “left” Kamm supports is the British Labour Party and its...

The Da Vinci Code - chill out, eh?

This is my dissenting view on this article in the new issue of Solidarity - a damnation of The Da Vinci Code for promoting conspiracy theories.

The writer reckons the reason that so many people like The Da Vinci Code is because they believe (or want to believe) that it is true, and that this is a...

But is this progress?

Ira Berkovic reviews Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the rise of raunch culture, by Ariel Levy JENNA Jameson, apparently the world’s most famous porn star, recently had her autobiography How to Make Love like a Porn Star advertised with an enormous billboard featuring her semi-naked self in New York’s Times Square. Whatever you think about Times Square, advertising, Jenna Jameson or porn, you can’t deny that it was significant. Pornography — seedy, illicit, marginal, surely? — being not only advertised but celebrated in the glitzy neon heartland of mainstream consumer capitalism. Seem weird...

For open borders

Cathy Nugent reviews “Deportation is Freedom, the Orwellian World of Immigration Controls” by Steve Cohen (Jessica Kingsley) This is an extended, angry, rational and forceful polemic against current, past and future immigration control. It is a radical argument against all immigration control. A point worth reiterating as many who are on the left admit to supporting some border restrictions. (George Galloway has in the recent past endorsed a “points system” for immigration. Respect opposes the worse excesses of current policy, yet does not say it opposes all immigration control.). Those on the...

Deportation is Freedom

A review of Deportation is Freedom, the Orwellian World of Immigration Controls by Steve Cohen (Jessica Kingsley)

This is an extended, angry, rational and forceful polemic against current, past and future immigration control. It is a radical argument against all immigration control. A point worth...

God, the Devil, and Darwin

God, the Devil, and Darwin: a critique of intelligent design theory by Niall Shanks (Foreward by Richard Dawkins) Oxford University Press. Last December, a US federal judge ruled against the teaching of so-called ‘intelligent design’ in schools – at the end of the biggest public trial, in effect, of Darwinism since the infamous Scopes ‘Monkey Trial’ in the 1920s. But ‘intelligent design’ (ID) has not, and will not, go away, either in the United States or in Britain. Already, in the UK, there are schools which teach religious alternatives to Darwinism; and with the government-led growth in...

The Phoenix Marxist and Labour Movement Archive

As Leon Trotsky once wrote, the revolutionary party is the memory of the working class. It is, it must be, also the memory of the Marxist movement itself. Documents, newspapers, reminiscences, carbon copies are the repositories of this memory. The AWL has over the years accumulated a considerable amount of such material, and not only of our own tendency, over the last four decades. We have decided to organise and augment this material, and to make it available to scholars of the movement and others. We are setting up a Phoenix Marxist and Labour Movement Archive. We appeal to comrades and...

From the Asian left

Dan Katz looks at the social and political background to Tariq Mehmood’s novel While there is light (Carcanet press) Contempory discussion of the politics of Asian “experience” in Britain is dominated by the issues such as the hijab, jihad and 7/7. So it is good to remember a time, not too long ago, when youth from Muslim backgrounds were better known for militant struggle against racism and fascism. While there is light is roughly based around the case of the Bradford 12. Tariq Mehmood, was one of the key defendants in the Bradford 12 trial. On 11 July 1981 he had played a role in organising...

Capitalism is rubbish!

Bruce Robinson reviews Gone Tomorrow — The Hidden Life of Garbage by Heather Rogers, (The New Press, 2005) In the USA, the most wasteful society in the world, each person throws out two-thirds of a ton of rubbish each year. The US Department of Agriculture calculated that 27% of total food production in the US is wasted each year, though one academic thinks the real figure may be as high as 50%. Heather Rogers writes: “Every day a phantasmagoric rush of spent, used and broken riches flows through our homes, offices and car, and from there is burnt, dumped at sea, or more often buried under a...

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