April, 30 2008, Guardian Comment Is Free, Z Net

At the beginning of 1968, I was living in a communal house in Hackney musing on being, nothingness, confused love affairs and mounting piles of washing up, quite unaware of the turmoil the new year would bring.

Events took over; the Vietnamese National Liberation Front mounted the Tet offensive against the American forces, sending an unforgettable message around the world that resistance against overweening power was possible. The assassination of Martin Luther King and Enoch Powell's "rivers of blood" attack on immigrants brought a sense of urgency. Rebellion seemed to be everywhere; students and workers erupted in Paris, in Prague, in Pakistan, the Philippines, Mexico, Kenya. In Britain, women marched for equal pay and in the United States they protested against beauty contests.

Insurgency brought an optimistic conviction that change was going to come and this encouraged a sense of empowerment. Before 1968 I had been a supporter of left causes but at 25 that spring, I felt a profound sense of responsibility to think and act. Nothing could be taken for granted.

By John Cunningham

January's Art and Immaterial Labour conference at the Tate brought together some famous names from post-Autonomia to discuss conjunctions between the dematerialisation of art and immaterialisation of labour. John Cunningham reports

By Jaya Klara Brekke, courtesy of Mute Magazine

Jaya Klara Brekke talks to four UK based groups working to improve conditions for migrants and asks ‘how does one organise in the dark?’

A short account of the GLF in the UK which, while we disagree with some of it, contains interesting historical information. From http://libcom.org/library/brief-history-gay-liberation-front-1970-73

ZNet | Vision & Strategy

by Hilary Wainwright and Steve Platt; Red Pepper; October 09, 2006

We are a contrary, and often paradoxical, bunch on the left. On the one hand, most of us began our involvement in politics as rebels against authority. We often find it difficult to accept discipline – even self-discipline. Look at the left’s tendency to split and divide.
On the other hand, the left also has a propensity to look to strong leaders. We have a tendency to project our vision onto a single individual who can articulate it well – or who appears to have a clear and unequivocal sense of where we should be going and what needs to be done to get there. This can mean absolving ourselves of individual responsibility; the other side of the coin to the left’s lack of discipline.

Published on Tuesday, August 15, 2006 by Craig Murray

I have been reading very carefully through all the
Sunday newspapers to try and analyse the truth from
all the scores of pages claiming to detail the
so-called bomb plot. Unlike the great herd of
so-called security experts doing the media analysis, I
have the advantage of having had the very highest
security clearances myself, having done a huge amount
of professional intelligence analysis, and having been
inside the spin machine.

So this, I believe, is the true story.

Peter Hallward
Voting for Hope: Elections in Haiti
Radical Philosophy - July/August 2006
http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/default.asp?channel_id=2187&editorial_id=22053
Late in the night of 29 February 2004, after weeks of confusion and uncertainty, the enemies of Haiti's president Jean-Bertrand Aristide forced him into exile for the second time. There was plenty of ground for confusion. Although twice elected with landslide majorities, by 2004 Aristide was routinely identified as an enemy of democracy. Although political violence declined dramatically during his years in office, he was just as regularly condemned as an enemy of human rights. Although he was prepared to make far-reaching compromises with his opponents, he was attacked as intolerant of dissent. Although still immensely popular among the poor, he was derided as aloof and corrupt. And although his enemies presented themselves as the friends of democracy, pluralism and civil society, the only way they could get rid of their nemesis was through foreign intervention and military force.

ZNet | Terror War

by Mike Marqusee; June 22, 2006

At 4 AM on June 2nd, another grim episode in the war on terror was played out on a quiet residential street in east London. In what the media initially hailed as a major anti-terrorist triumph, 250 heavily armed police descended on a house where, it was alleged, Muslim terrorists were manufacturing chemical weapons to unleash on innocent Londoners.

by Hilary Wainwright ; Red Pepper; March 25, 2006

There is a deepening crisis of political representation in the UK. As the main parties narrow the electoral contest to a diminishing patch of ‘centre-ground’, who will give voice to those whose views are unrepresented? Hilary Wainwright considers the political challenge facing the left

There is something slightly phoney about Blair versus Cameron, or even Brown versus Osborne. It’s not just the stage-managed character of parliamentary question time, with all the guffaws or ‘hear hears’ on cue. The problem is that the frenetic competition for the centre-ground bears so little relation to majority opinion, which is well to the left of both of them on key issue such as relations with the US and the future of public services. The limited radicalism of the Lib Dems seems unlikely to give voice to this progressive opinion. So there is a huge responsibility for the left to get its scattered act together.

by John Pilger
New Statesman Cover story (January 09 2006)

On Christmas Eve, I dropped in on Brian Haw, whose hunched, pacing figure was
just visible through the freezing fog. For four and a half years, Brian has
camped in Parliament Square with a graphic display of photographs that show
the terror and suffering imposed on Iraqi children by British policies.
The effectiveness of his action was demonstrated last April when the Blair
government banned any expression of opposition within a kilometre of parliament.
The high court subsequently ruled that, because his presence preceded the ban,
Brian was an exception.

Day after day, night after night, season upon season, he remains a beacon,
illuminating the great crime of Iraq and the cowardice of the House of Commons.
As we talked, two women brought him a Christmas meal and mulled wine. They
thanked him, shook his hand and hurried on. He had never seen them before.
"That's typical of the public", he said. A man in a pinstriped suit and tie
emerged from the fog, carrying a small wreath. "I intend to place this at the
Cenotaph and read out the names of the dead in Iraq", he said to Brian, who
cautioned him: "You'll spend the night in the cells, mate". We watched him
stride off and lay his wreath. His head bowed, he appeared to be whispering.
Thirty years ago, I watched dissidents do something similar outside the walls
of the Kremlin.