Sep 4, 2004
WhatsonUK, September 2004 For many years it seemed all but invisible. For a few months after 9/11 you’d be forgiven for thinking it had been utterly extinguished. But the other America, the dissident America, was always alive and over the last two years it’s been kicking with increasing force and rising impatience. On 15th February… Read more
Jun 26, 2004
The Guardian, 26 June, 2004 Review: Why Arnold Matters: The Rise of a Cultural Icon by Michael Blitz and Louise Krasniewicz, Basic Books After Arnold Schwarzenegger’s election victory in California, no one wants to be caught under-estimating the power of celebrity. But there’s a danger of over-estimating it, and of over-simplifying it, too. Why Arnold… 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
Nov 16, 2002
Mike Marqusee on Donald McRae’s evocation of the hurdles faced by Joe Louis and Jesse Owens The Guardian, 16 November, 2002 Review of In Black and White: The Untold Story of Joe Louis and Jesse Owens by Donald McRae, Scribner. In 1936, under the irritated gaze of Hitler and the Nazi high command, the sprinter and long jumper… Read more
Feb 28, 2002
Tribune, 28 February 2002 On 19 February, the Pentagon Central Command confirmed that it has launched missile strikes in Afghanistan on “enemy forces” who are neither Al Qaeda nor Taliban, but are apparently hostile to the interim regime of Hamid Karzai. Asked by reporters in Delhi about the progress of the war in Afghanistan, General… 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
Oct 4, 2001
There is nothing anti-American about opposing the drive to war The Guardian, 4 October, 2001 Reading the fulminations against the alleged anti-Americanism of those opposed to the current drive to war, I feel I’ve come full circle. As an American teenager protesting against the butchery in Vietnam, I became accustomed to being attacked by some… Read more
