Oct 17, 2003
Review of Dude, Where’s My Country? by Michael Moore The Independent, 17 October 2003 Can the left communicate to a wide popular audience? Can it free itself of the prison of jargon? Can it reach out to the unconverted? New Labour and its co-thinkers in the Democratic party decided that the only answer to these… Read more
Sep 3, 2003
Review of Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist by Alton Chase The Independent, 3 September 2003 For sixteen years, Ted Kaczynski led the FBI a merry dance, stuffing his intricately crafted parcel bombs with tantalising, impenetrable clues. By 1995, his campaign had struck sixteen targets – grad students, computer store managers,… Read more
Aug 2, 2002
When Dylan played Newport in 1965 he shocked the crowd. Will he do so again when he returns tomorrow? The Guardian, 2 August 2002 On Saturday night Bob Dylan returns to the scene of the crime. For the first time since 1965 – when he appalled traditionalists by playing electrified rock’n’roll – he will be… Read more
May 24, 2002
The British Library’s new exhibition on the East India Company does not tell the whole story The Guardian, 24 May 2002 According to the British Library, its new exhibition on the East India Company shows “how the work of 11 men, from a cold, wet and then relatively poor country, paved the way for what… Read more
Feb 4, 2002
America’s attempt to use Muhammad Ali to sell its policies to Muslim countries will not work The Guardian, 4 February 2002 When Hollywood bosses were asked by the Bush administration to do their bit in the “war on terrorism”, they readily signed up for the new crusade. In particular, they promised to “stress efforts to… Read more
Jan 6, 2002
By Charles Shaar Murray and Mike Marqusee Independent on Sunday, January 6 2002 When is Star Trek not Star Trek? When it’s Enterprise. The latest instalment of television’s 35-year-old science-fiction flagship – which begins tomorrow on Sky 1 – cannily hedges its bets by omitting the words “Star Trek” from its title, but that’s not… Read more
Jan 1, 2002
From Beyond September 11: An Anthology of Dissent (Pluto Press). I was visiting New York when the news of the massacre of 15 Christians in Bahawalpur flashed up on CNN. It was a brief item, included in an update on the war, and all that the casual viewer would know was that ‘Islamic fundamentalists’ had… Read more
Dec 21, 2001
The Guardian, December 21, 2001 If any of the England cricketers currently struggling with the spin bowlers in Bangalore have had a chance to see Lagaan, the Bollywood crossover hit about a Raj-era grudge match between heroic Gujerati villagers and dastardly Anglo-imperialists, they’ll know that they are merely bit players in a long-running national psychodrama…. Read more
Dec 1, 2001
BBC History Magazine, December 2001 Asked if ‘Ali’, the soon-to-be released Hollywood epic starring Will Smith, would be ‘controversial’, screenwriter Eric Roth responded, “Are you kidding? It’s about Muhammad Ali. Do you really think all the things he stood for don’t matter anymore? His name is still a lightning rod in American society.” Roth has… Read more
Sep 28, 2001
Media Workers Against the War, 28 September 2001 I’m thinking today of a remarkable man I met not long ago in Quetta, a city in western Pakistan, a few hours drive from the border with Afghanistan. He was a devout and observant Sunni Muslim. He was also a community activist, who had helped establish women’s… Read more
