Two excellent offerings from OffGuardian this week. Yesterday was a video featuring Peter Ford, ambassador to Syria 2003-6, telling the “Imperialism on Trial” symposium in Derry that humanitarian invasion and sanctions are simply updated versions of the “White Man’s Burden” … Read More »
Two years ago, in a post on privatisation as a global phenomenon, I wrote: … whether or not the demonising of distant regimes has substance, and whether or not it is hypocritical, are secondary questions. In no case – cold war … Read More »
A few years ago I heard a veteran journalist on how, with pounding heart and now-or-never audacity as his one and only interview with Woody Allen drew to a close, he’d asked: How come someone as ugly as you attracts … Read More »
A friend told me a joke the other day. A squaddie awaiting his train home after Armistice 1918 was interviewed on the platform by a radio reporter. And what’s the first thing you’ll do when you get home? Take the … Read More »
All you need is love. The Beatles I see friends shaking hands, saying how do you do? – they’re really saying, I love you. Louis Armstrong A recent post saw me invoking Maslow as if his ‘hierarchy of human need’ … Read More »
Here’s a thing. Following Turkey’s sudden but unsurprising move yesterday to attack Kurdish YPG forces in Syria, compare Guardian coverage with that of the centrist middle east outlet, al-Monitor. A little background. Before Daraa 2011, Erdogan used to call Assad … Read More »
Celebrities are on my mind. My previous steel city scribbling was on Gwynneth Paltrow’s keen advocacy of novel uses for coffee, mugwort tea and jade eggs. The post before that concerned celebrities less stratospheric – Jones, Mason and Monbiot – … Read More »
“Bankers’ nieces seek perfection”, sneered Dylan in an otherwise rare ode to romantic love, “expecting all the gifts that wise men bring.” He’d clearly been mugging up on his Maslow. [ezcol_1half]Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of need is well known and easily … Read More »