Statues

Would those who say that we should hang on to a few Francos because it was how things were, weren’t it, say the same of images of Marx? I’m something a fan of the Roman custom of leaving statue torsos intact and swapping heads as each dictator came and went.

Chinese government attacks on Marxists.org

Apart from principle, there are practical reasons to object strongly to attempts by the Chinese government (via BB) to damage and destroy Marxists.org: it’s a brilliant, unique resource, the examination of the often weird premises, analysis and conclusions of whose content helps one begin to understand how great portions of the world, including China, got…

Live from revolutionary Oaxaca

The police have left town and the revolutionary teachers (beardos with baseball bats trying to blackmail the administration into giving them cushy jobs) have hung up great big portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, along with placards calling the governor a murderer, and they’re breaking up folk dancing in the barrios and intimidating the…

Balloons and the social revolution

Margaret Marks says that the Marxist-Leninists are not giving away balloons in the German elections. I hope this is because they can’t afford them rather than for ideological reasons. While it is true that Jimmy Connolly saw in them the nemesis of the working classes, a progressive balloon vendor appears in one of my favourite…

Aub on intellectuals

One of the surprises of Sergio Vila-Sanjuán and Sergi Doria’s Passejades per la Barcelona literària (“Walks in literary Barcelona”) is that it ignores Max Aub, whose Campo cerrado, the first part of a six-volume account of the war, is probably the best fictionalised version of the period leading to the events of July 1936 in…

The number 73

I did a little customised walk for some people this morning, taking in planned and unplanned (ie gypsy shanty and troglodyte) housing developments at the point where Barcelona crests and breaks on the Collserola ridge, and ending with drinks at my favourite spouse-swapping club. We started amid the tower blocks of airy, light Nou Barris.…

Tunisian liberal blogger

The excellent Mouse Hunter links to tn.bl*gs, a Tunisian bloggregator. Tn.bl*gs–which is completely unrelated to Mouse Hunter–includes excerpts from an interesting blog by dissident lawyer, Mokhtar Yahyaoui. Although the regime has avoided the Marxist, Islamist, and nationalist foreign relations disasters of many of its neighbours, any country in which a president “wins” a fourth term…

Throwing nutters

One Mangalorean is a betel-nut seller.
Two Mangaloreans can’t stand one another.
Three Mangaloreans is a Udupi restaurant.
Four Mangaloreans is a fanatical Konkani Sabha.