Europe: the return of the beast
- February 01, 2016
- by
- Matt
In every era and in every society, there are those who would like to do to the left what the Chilean army once did to Victor Jara, or what the Freikorps did to Karl Liebnecht and Rosa Luxemburg. It used to be common in Greece for Golden Dawn militants to taunt leftist anti-fascists by referring back to the Greek dictatorship and telling them ‘we fucked you once and we’ll do it again.’
Such fantasies are not unique to Greece. The Guardian‘s Andy Beckett recently wrote of the anonymous soldiers or former soldiers on...
A Bunch of Migrants
- January 28, 2016
- by
- Matt
No one should be surprised that our prime minister should have marked Holocaust Day to regale the nation with a contemptuous joke about how Jeremy Corbyn met with a ‘bunch of migrants in Calais’ and ‘told them that they could all come to Britain.. Contrary to Jonathan Freedland’s schoolmasterish suggestion that this jocularity was...
Davos: the sound of one hand clapping
- January 26, 2016
- by
- Matt
For those who like to follow the example of Brian and his disciples and always look on the bright side of life, it can safely be said that 2016 hasn’t gotten off to the most cracking start. The year began with the mass sexual assaults at Cologne, which have now become a cause celebre...
The Knights of Cologne
- January 14, 2016
- by
- Matt
As a sixty-year-old man I obviously can’t speak with a great deal of authority on what it’s like to be a young woman in Europe. Nevertheless I am the parent of a twenty-year-old daughter who likes to go out at night. Recently she was at a club when a stranger propositioned...
Europe Hearts Erdogan
- October 19, 2015
- by
- Matt
It’s little more than a week since the worst terrorist attack in Turkish history – a vicious atrocity in which the government was at best neglectful and at worst actively complicit, in which more than 100 peaceful demonstrators were murdered because they called for an end to the ongoing war between the Turkish government and...
Three Cheers for Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein
- October 15, 2015
- by
- Matt
The Daily Mail and the Daily Express are angry with the Jordanian United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein. No one will be surprised by this. Neither newspaper is a fan of the United Nations. They don’t like ‘human rights’ – a spurious PC concept that...
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