Mike Marqusee – Page 22 – Writings on politics, culture and sport

Nov 13, 2005

Cricket stamped with Murdoch footprint

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 13 November Last summer’s engrossing Ashes series was a testament to the joyful rigors of Test cricket, a long-awaited boost for the game in its native land – and a windfall for Rupert Murdoch. Prior to the series, cable-satellite network Sky TV (in which Murdoch’s News Corp is the largest… Read more

Nov 10, 2005

Fallujah: a name that will live in infamy

The Guardian, 10 November [Below is the complete article; an edited version appeared in The Guardian.] One year ago this week, in the wake of Bush’s re-election, US-led occupying forces launched a devastating assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah. The mood was set by Lt Col. Gary Brandl: “The enemy has got a face…. Read more

Oct 30, 2005

Empire of denial

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 30 October DURING the heyday of British, French, Belgian or Portuguese colonialism, if you asked the citizens of London, Paris, Brussels or Lisbon whether their countries were the seats of great transcontinental empires, they would have answered “yes”, unhesitatingly, and most would have taken pride in the fact. But stop… Read more

Oct 16, 2005

Some crucial distinctions

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 16 October The High Holy Days celebrated during the past fortnight are the premiere events in the Jewish calendar. Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, accompanied by exuberant blowing on the ram’s horn, is followed by Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, marked by fasting and prayer. These are the… Read more

Oct 2, 2005

Blair sidesteps reality – with BBC help

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 2 October TONY BLAIR has dismissed opposition to his Iraq policy as the province of “urban intellectuals”. A strange comment from the Prime Minister of one of the most urbanised societies on earth. But then he also managed to ignore the latest opinion poll showing that 57 per cent of… Read more

Oct 1, 2005

Self-effacing truth-teller

Red Pepper, October 2005 It’s strange that a media obsessed with Brit winners managed to overlook a major success by a British filmmaker at this year’s Cannes festival: Kim Longinotto’s prize-winning documentary, Sisters in Law. Perhaps it’s because Longinotto’s quietly unsensational portrait of African women struggling for self-determination defies received notions about both women and… Read more

Sep 18, 2005

Victimised by Katrina

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 18 September “Well, it thundered and lightenin’d and the wind began to blow There’s thousands of people ain’t got no place to go Backwater blues done called me to pack my things and go Cause my house fell down and I can’t live there no more … ” BESSIE SMITH,… Read more

Sep 4, 2005

Outside agitators

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 4 September Throughout the 1960s, volunteers who joined the struggle for African-American civil rights in the US southland were denounced as “outside agitators”. The white establishment accused them of stirring up the local blacks, who of course would otherwise have remained content with their lot. Despite its dubious history, the… Read more

Aug 21, 2005

Epics of resistance – Bollywood and Hollywood

Level Playing Field The Hindu, 21 August The British opening of Aamir Khan’s ‘The Rising’ was a low-key affair. In fact, there were a grand total of seven of us sitting in the darkness at the first-day screening in my local north London cinema. Yes, it’s easily the biggest ever UK opening for a Bollywood… Read more

Aug 9, 2005

Renaissance reflections

BOOK REVIEW The Devil’s Broker: Seeking Gold, God and Glory in Fourteenth-Century Italy, by Frances Stonor Saunders, Fourth Estate Medici Money: Banking, Metaphysics and Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence, by Tim Parks, Atlas Books, WW Norton From Heaven to Arcadia: The Sacred and the Profane in the Renaissance, by Ingrid D. Rowland, New York Review Books… Read more

Out now: Definable Traces in the Atmosphere

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