SAME OLD, SAME OLD
It's good to be back.Well actually, no, it's pretty poor actually. I'm back at work, there's another war going on and my lifetime of married bliss will now be accompanied by a lifetime of crusty lips having been generously donated the herpes virus by some f*cker I paid to eat and be merry at my wedding a fortnight ago. Not that I'm bitter.
But wars and cold sores aside, good to see that some things never change.
Whilst I was away in the land of Calvados, the Drink-Soaked Trots continued to churn out quality articles, throwing my plan to cut down on blogging once I got back well and truly out of the window. Ba$tards.
Elsewhere, Michael Ignatieff wrote another well-considered piece on the role Canada could play in the current crisis whilst Eric Lee seems to have given a good account of his reasons why the Left should be supporting Israel in his debate with the AWL's Sean Matgamna (transcript here - although it would be interesting to hear Matgamna's side of the story as well).
With the escalation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, Terry Glavin found it "hard to tell the fascists from the pacifists". I had the same problem looking at these photos from the
Perhaps not unexpectedly, the usual suspects came out in full support of the fascists, from the Gorgeous One ("I glorify the Hizbollah national resistance movement, and I glorify the leader of Hizbollah, Sheikh Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.") to the Not-So-Gorgeous-But-Trying-His-Hardest (you wouldn't catch George with a side-parting like that, it’s everso Weimar Republic) over at Lenin's Tomb who now proudly displays a Hezbollah flag on his website. You certainly can't accuse them of not flying their true colours. Cnuts.
Guardian columnist Azzam Tamimi (the one they always forget to tell you was/is an MAB rep) also got in on the act, but ended up praising the wrong bunch of thugs, instead using his spot at the London Stopper Rally to give a pro-Hamas rant (video here). "Special Envoy" indeed.
More recently, Harold Evans' criticism of the "We Are All Hezbollah Now" mind-set for Comment is Free predictably brought the loons out to froth. I'm afraid I don't subscribe to the "It's all a storm in a tea-cup, that was only one banner!" line - these were mass-produced placards and you can see plenty of them on display here.
Interestingly, the second website at the bottom of the placard is for what at first sounds like a reasonable organisation - the Islamic Human Rights Commission. As it turns out, they're the same outfit who run the "Islamophobe of the Year" competetion. Last year's nominees included Oprah Winfrey.
They're currently upset the Mail on Sunday and the Sun accused them of supporting terrorism, claiming "Neither Mr. Shadjareh or IHRC have advocated or supported terrorism". But doesn't their more recent action of producing and distributing placards stating "We Are All Hizbullah" for the rally on the 5th August not totally destroy their defence? It'd be hard to find a better example of Islamist doublespeak.
Feeling a little left out of the media spotlight, Hugo Chavez decided the best way to raise his comedy villain profile was a trip to see Lukashenko’s model social state of Belarus. He’s rapidly running out of dictators to hang out with although I’m not sure he’s made it to Turkmenistan just yet. I’m sure Niyazov could give him a few ideas.
Over at HP, Harry went back to the old school and dipped into his extensive back catalogue.
So too it would seem did Harry’s Place Floater Benjamin. This thread is a particlarly fine example: a dig at Harry, snide remarks about “Decents”, a swipe at the Euston Manifesto and a few dashings of “old boy” and “comedy” thrown in for good measure. Did Harry really edit Benji’s post of 01:35 AM? Or was “That’s enough Monty Python – Ed.” simply Benjamin trying to hold a conversation with himself to cover the lack of attention he so desperately craves? We may never know.
Finally, once again the folk out East showed the rest of us how it should be done, got off their arses and organised two demos in the space of a week:
(More photos here.)
Perhaps the British Left could do with taking a few leaves out of their book, starting with organising a counter-demonstration to the Al-Quds March in London later this year. Volunteers welcomed.
Anyhow, that’ll do for now. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose as they say.
posted by Dan @ 2:27 am
<< Home