CONTENDING FOR THE LIVING
Red Pepper, October-November 2011
Events over the summer brought to mind William Blake’s uncompromisingly angry poem “London”, written in the early 1790s under the impact of revolution in France and repression at home. The poet wanders “through the charter’d streets / near where the charter’d Thames does flow” where he encounters signs of widespread distress. He hears the sound of “the mind-forg’d manacles”, the fears and prejudices that keep people in thrall to an unjust social system. Above all he sees the exploitation of youth: chimney sweeps, soldiers, prostitutes – victims of state, church and commerce, Blake’s tyrannical trinity. read more…
Red Pepper
The second Global Week of Action in Swaziland, organised by the Swaziland Democracy Campaign, which concludes this Friday (9th September), has already scored remarkable successes amid terrible sacrifices. The week marks a new highpoint in the on-going confrontation between an absolute monarchy that for decades has plundered the country and an increasingly emboldened democracy movement. read more…
LEVEL PLAYING FIELD
The Hindu
“Criminality pure and simple” was Prime Minister David Cameron’s initial verdict on the rioting. From the right came the mantra, “Down with sociology! Up with water cannon!” Don’t think but do act – harshly, punitively, peremptorily.
In the wake of the riots, a powerful vested interest has been at work – a vested interest in people not making links, not searching for causes, not weighing contexts. Above all, an interest in derailing the growing resistance to the government’s austerity programme. read more…
The Guardian, 27 July
[A longer version of this article will appear in the August issue of Red
Pepper.]
Now entering my fifth year of living with multiple myeloma, a haematological cancer, I reflect back on a roller-coaster ride of symptoms, treatments and side effects. Whatever else this experience has been, it’s been an education. But what exactly have I learned? To begin with, that any glib answer to the question misses the core of the experience – the complex dialectic of being ill, which is a social as well as physical condition. read more…
Review in The Hindu of Sachin: Genius Unplugged, a collection of essays on the master batsman edited by Suresh Menon and featuring Mike Marqusee’s article The “Symbolical” Cricketer.
LEVEL PLAYING FIELD
The Hindu,26 June 2011
In a few weeks the India squad will arrive on these shores to commence a demanding two-month tour, playing four Tests, five ODIs and one Twenty20. The Test series, in particular, looks set to be a stiff challenge for both sides and the result may well seal the top spot in the international Test hierarchy for one or the other.
The tour will offer English-based cricket-lovers their last chance to see Sachin Tendulkar at the crease, and even the most dedicated England supporters will not want him to go home without adding to his record tally of centuries. read more…
Spanish translation (by Christine Lewis Carroll) of Mike’s Red Pepper article about Mahmoud Darwish, published by Rebelion.
CONTENDING FOR THE LIVING
Red Pepper, June-July 2011
In 1818, Shelley visited his friend Byron in Venice, where his Lordship was camped out in a decaying palazzo, ruminating on the city’s faded glories. Their conversations – on human freedom and the prospects for social change – formed the basis for Shelley’s poem Julian and Maddalo, in which the mild-mannered English rationalist Julian (Shelley) puts the case for hope while the brooding Italian aristocrat Maddalo (Byron) argues for despair. “We might be otherwise,” Julian insists, “we might be all / we dream of: happy, high, majestical” were it not for our own “enchained” wills. To which Maddalo replies bitterly: “You talk utopia!”
That snap dismissal echoes down to our own day. read more…
LEVEL PLAYING FIELD
The Hindu (to be published 29 May)
When it came to foreign affairs, Barack Obama’s first presidential task was a simple one. He had to be better than his predecessor. For this alone, it seems, he was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.
But those who hoped Obama’s promise of “change” would apply to the US’s relations to the rest of the world have been bitterly disappointed. His recent State Department speech and ensuing overseas tour are supposed to mark a new phase in US foreign policy, but it’s continuity, not “change”, that prevails. read more…
LEVEL PLAYING FIELD
The Hindu, 23 April
A high court in London is hearing a suit brought against the British government by four elderly Kenyans who were tortured, sexually abused and in one case castrated while held in detention during the British repression of the Mau Mau rebellion in the 1950s. As a result of the trial, the Foreign Office has been forced to make public a vast cache of documents that confirm in grisly detail both the systematic nature of the abuse and the complicity of British officials at the highest levels. Torture, mutilation, starvation, forced labour were routine. People were clubbed to death or burned alive. More than 1,000 were hanged, many on the basis of confessions extracted by torture.
The current British government does not deny the facts of the case, but does dispute its “residual liability” and is refusing to apologise or pay compensation. read more…
CONTENDING FOR THE LIVING
Red Pepper, April-May 2011
On a bright winter morning we made a pilgrimage to the hill of Al Rabweh, on the outskirts of Ramallah, where the poet Mahmoud Darwish is buried. An ambitious memorial garden is planned, but at the moment it’s a construction site littered with diggers and cement mixers. The oversize tombstone is crated up in plywood. We were welcomed by cheerful building workers and joined by Palestinian families paying their respects and taking snaps. read more…
In the Guardian, Jonathan Freedland writes that liberal interventionism is “fine in theory” but goes wrong “in practise”. I’d suggest that it goes wrong in practise because it’s deeply flawed in theory.
The hypocrisy, double standards and selectivity displayed in the western military action in Libya defy enumeration, but just for a start….
In Yemen and Bahrain western-backed regimes are violently repressing the democracy movement the west claims to back in Libya. In Iraq a US-sponsored regime protected by 47,000 US troops is trying to do the same – shooting demonstrators, detaining thousands and subjecting many to torture. The “urgency” of the response to Gaddaffi is in marked contrast to the infinite patience extended to Israel. No one proposed a No Fly Zone when Israeli aircraft were pummelling Gaza. Nor did they when the Sri Lankan government killed some 20,000 civilians in its final assault on the LTTE. In Burma condemnation has never been matched by the merest hint of military action, while millions have perished in a war in the Congo financed and armed by western corporations Had the Egyptian army jumped the other way and repressed the uprising, would western powers have treated them as they”re treating the Gaddafi regime? Not a chance. And then there’s the flip-flop over Gaddafi himself, from pariah to partner and back again in record time. read more…
LEVEL PLAYING FIELD
The Hindu, 20 March
At the outset of this World Cup, both the format and the event were on trial. Questions about its pre-eminence in the global game had been raised not only by the best forgotten 2007 instalment but even more by the rise of T20 and the IPL. While it’s too early to say, at the half way point the tournament seem to be answering these questions in the affirmative. read more…
This tribute to Tendulkar has just been published in SACHIN : Genius Unplugged, edited by Suresh Menon, available at Flipkart .
“Cricket is first and foremost a dramatic spectacle,” wrote CLR James in Beyond a Boundary. “It is so organised that at all times it is compelled to reproduce the central action which characterises all good drama from the Greeks to our own: two individuals are pitted against each other in a conflict that is strictly personal but no less strictly representative of a social group.” read more…
The Mercury, Durban, South Africa
Monday February 28 2011
With the 10th World Cup now under way, 50-over cricket and the event itself are on trial, says one of the game’s most provocative, passionate and analytical followers, Mike Marqusee. Patrick Compton spoke to him.
THE famous dictum of historian CLR James: “What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?” certainly finds its place in the person of Mike Marqusee – scourge of the England cricket establishment and the author of two of the most impressive cricket books in recent memory. read more…
LEVEL PLAYING FIELD
The Hindu, 20 February
On a visit to Jerusalem in December, we met with residents of Sheikh Jarrah, a neighbourhood north of the Old City, where 28 extended Palestinian families are waging a struggle against eviction and displacement by Jewish settlers.
read more…
The Guardian 19 February 2011
As a long-term patient at St Bartholomew’s hospital in London I read this week’s news of cuts with trepidation. In order to meet the government’s £20bn NHS “savings” target, the trust that runs Barts and the Royal London in Whitechapel is to cut 635 jobs, including 258 nursing posts – 10% of the total. This despite repeated government pledges to protect frontline services. Yesterday the Guardian revealed similar cuts at other London hospitals.
The trust insists that none of this will affect patient care. To anyone who regularly uses Barts or the Royal London that’s an assertion so wildly improbable as to border on insult. read more…
Outlook (India), 21 February
The 10th cricket World Cup opens with the format, and the event itself, on trial. That’s curious, for through most of its history, the World Cup has been an extraordinary success story. It came about more by accident than design (to plug a gap left in the English season by the ouster of apartheid South Africa), but the enthusiasm of fans and the ingenuity of players turned it into a premier attraction. read more…
Mike Marqusee’s talk in Johannesburg, 14th August 2010. The talk was sponsored by the Palestine Solidarity Committee of South Africa and held at the AMEC centre in Emmarentia.
CONTENDING FOR THE LIVING
Red Pepper, February-March 2011
A body of antiquated dogma and myth, a source of repression, paean to patriarchy, bulwark of hierarchy. That’s how many would summarise the Bible, and there are more than enough juicily quotable Biblical passages to justify that view. But there’s much more to this book – or rather, this collection of texts by various hands – than either its detractors or devotees often suppose.
Take 1 Samuel, Chapter 8, where the elders of Israel ask the sage-judge Samuel to appoint a King “to govern us like all other nations.” Samuel, after consulting with God, warns them to be careful what they wish for. read more…
