I think there is a case to be made that radicals need to perform a multitude of tasks to help make society less oppressive and exploitative, including pointing out why the current system is flawed. I suppose there is a case to be made that the radical left does have a tendency to spend the majority of it’s time analysing and pointing out the worst aspects of the current systems and structures, and not enough…
It’s been just over a year since Znet published my five part series of extended essays on the role of the illegal drugs trade in the history of modern imperialism, called the War on Drugs. Reading them again to check the references before putting them up on my own site has been an interesting process for me. Before setting up this site I have not previously tended to go back and re-read my own work…
In the lead up to ‘Brexit’, it is worth considering what it was that it’s instigators had in mind for a post-brexit UK. And when I say it’s instigators I don’t mean those carefully sampled and then edited members of the general public that are now the staple of ‘unbiased’ and ‘democratic’ reporting. I mean the sub-group of the political and economic ruling class that were keeping time for the ‘journalists’ from the early days…
The fourth of the five essays on the War On Drugs covers the years from 1984 to 1998, the same years that I lost sight of what was important, due in part to, but mostly facilitated by the global drugs trade. To be entirely accurate it was probably more like 1985 to 1998, and rather than a block of lost years, it was more like a process of decreasing humility, compassion, honesty and respect, and…
George Orwell famously said, 'in times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act”. That quote has been echoing around my mind for several weeks now. Of course It didn't help that during the last couple of weeks I've also read two articles by Jonathan Cook on Znet which amplified the reverberations around my mind. The first was a refreshing analysis of the recent hysteria from the mainstream media branding Corbyn's Labour Party…
One of the first pieces I ever had published was about Baby Bush's War in Iraq, and the corresponding mass mobilisation of solidarity in the global anti-war protest of February 2003. And just as it was promised at the time, over fifteen years later the dead are still mounting in Afghanistan and Iraq, democracy is nowhere to be seen, large sections of the Middle-East are at war, and of course the most aggressive regimes in…
One of the benefits of actual socialism being represented at the top of the UK Labour party is that, much like a lightning rod, it apparently draws fire from all directions. Helpfully, although not for the peace of mind of the socialists within the Labour Party, by putting actual socialists at the top of the party all the various people in positions of power that are anti-socialist, even if they had previously been pretending otherwise…
The third essay in the War on Drugs series is the one that I found most upsetting to write and still find difficult to read. Even though, in terms of the Pax Americana, the 1960s was the decade that many of the calls for equality came together, I would argue that it was during the 1970's when the establishment strategy of presenting authoritarianism as democracy really began to unravel at pace, in the public arena…
I have shared my life with many people of many doctrines, beliefs and faiths, some religious and some political. One of the things that has never ceased to amaze me is the moral dissonance that affects so many people, regardless of whether their purported 'ideological core' is based on faith in scripture, or faith in science. Society, as it is structured today, seems to have a tendency to nudge people together into groups, and then…
I was at the Anti-Trump march and rally in central London on Friday. For me at least, there was definitely something of the 15th February 2003 anti-war march about it. That is not to say that there was anywhere near as many people there, but the make up of those attending was very similar. Many protests and rallies can end up feeling like the same old faces and banners, but every once in a while…