Top 5 socialist blogs — that are not updated enough

Meta, socialism
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After the Socialist Unity list of the top 101 leftwing blogs and Histomat’s Top Ten International Socialist Blogs, I thought it was time to prepare my own top five socialist blogs –that haven’t updated in yonks or don’t update enough.

Honorable non-socialist mention: Vaara.

A puzzler

Israel/Palestine
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Here’s a puzzler for you. While “foreign insurgents” in Iraq and Afghanistan are routinely condemned as the worst of the worst, which other Middle Eastern country has no problem with letting foreigners like Jeffrey Goldberg serve in its army, with not even a hint of disapproval from the usual suspects?

Death of criticism: film at eleven

"Literature"
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It must be a month with a vowel in its name, as once again the Guardian‘s blog Comment is Free has an article lamenting the death of professional criticism, this time written by one Ronan McDonald, who isn’t important enough to have his own Wikipedia entry. His article follows the usual pattern of these things: first an assertion of the importance of literary criticism, then the contrasting of a vanished golden age of criticism when critics were Taken Serious as arbiters of good taste, with the present democratisation and vulgarisation of opinion through blogs and Amazon ratings, all the while confusing criticism with reviewing, followed by a call to arms to the great unwashed to once again let professional critics determine what we should like or not like. The following excerpt is typical in its confusion:

The bloggers and reading groups often claim that they would rather get recommendations from someone they know, someone with similar tastes. One problem with this is that the public are relying on a reviewing system that confirms and assuages their prejudices rather than challenges them. An able and experienced critic, with sufficient authority, could once persuade readers to give unfamiliar work a second chance, to see things they did not see at first glance. In that respect, critics can be the harbingers of the new.

Can we rely on the bloggers to bring vital if alienating art to a wide audience? The conviction that educated taste is an elitist ruse, that one opinion is as good as another, and that we should take our lead for our cultural life solely from people like us might seem like an instance of “people power”. Yet the death of the critic is to be mourned. If we only listen to those who already share our proclivities and interests, the supposed critical democracy will lead to a dangerous attenuation of taste and conservatism of judgment. Without critics of authority, the size and variety of contemporary criticism may ultimately serve the cause of cultural banality and uniformity.

See? It positively reeks of sour grapes and fear. Literary criticism rarely sold papers anyway, and with informed opinion on almost every book imaginable just a google away, who would want to buy a Guardian say to read up about the latest predictable novel by a well established middle aged author, reviewed by a friend of said author hoping for a nice blurb from him for their own next book? Professional critics these days rarely if ever champion controversial art other than that branded controversial by the artist because it’ll sell better… Modern art and literature has gotten in a rut, is created and written for a small circle of London literati, smug and self satisfied and professional criticism echoes this.

Meanwhile for every professional critic eking out a living regurgitating received wisdoms, there are thousands of people online just as qualified if not more so to give their opinion about art, even when we would want to adhere to McDonald’s absurd standards, and who do it for free, for the sheer love of literature, of art. And they aren’t bound by London conventions…

Brown bottles out

Nu Labour, UK politics
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The question has been doing the rounds for weeks now: will he or won’t he? Today the answer came: he won’t. Brown won’t call for an early election:

Mr Brown told the BBC he had had a “duty” to consider whether to hold an election, but decided against it so he could show his “vision” for Britain.

[…]

He denied the opinion polls had led to the decision not to hold an election, saying: “I have a vision for change in Britain and I want to show people how in government we’re implementing it.”

Pressed on the decision, Mr Brown said that the series of crises since he became PM in June meant “the easiest thing I could have done is call an election. I could have called an election on competence”.

He added: “We would win an election, in my view, whether we had it today, next week or weeks after.”

But, he said: “I want the chance in the next phase of my premiership to develop and show people the policies that are going to make a huge difference and make a change in the whole country itself.”

That’s typically New Labour, to always talk as if they’ve just come into power, to ignore their own history. It’s always new policies, more change, new approaches, new opportunities for the people of Britain, as if the past ten years of Labour governments never happened and the Tories have just been ousted from power. This way their own mistakes and failed policies are swept under the carpet, while keeping the momentum of a new government. Having an early election would be part of that process, if Brown had been confident he could’ve won and won convincingly. But he bottled out and now he’s going to recreate this momentum the oldfashioned New Labour way: with lots and lots of new, improved, not very well thought out policies.

However, none of this changes one very important fact: that Brown has become the prime minister of Britain without ever having had a mandate from the voters.

David Attenborough not happy with EO censorship

Creationism, Dutch politics
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More than three months ago it emerged that the Dutch broadcaster EO had censored Attenborough’s Life of Mammals series, by removing references to evolution. Since they were an Evangelical broadcaster, evolution did not fit in with their beliefs. Now it seems somebody has told Richard Attenborough himself and he is not happy:

The world’s best known wildlife broadcaster, Sir David Attenborough, has called on the BBC to stop Christian fundamentalists from deleting references to evolution from his documentaries.

Censored versions of Sir David’s award winning programmes have been broadcast in Holland without any references to evolution, speciation, descent and timescales of millions of years, after being censored by Christian creationists who are opposed to Charles Darwin’s ideas.

“Instead of saying “70 million years ago, something happens,” they say “a very long time ago something happens”. They also omit paragraphs such as: “This is inherited from my warm-blooded ancestors,”” Sir David told the Telegraph. “I would much rather they kept to the letter, as far as that is possible, of what I said.”

The edits by the public broadcasting organisation Evangelische Omroep (EO, Evangelical Broadcasting) have triggered howls protests about “deviations and sins of omission” from Dutch scientists, led by Dr Gerdien de Jong, an evolutionary biologist at Utrecht University.

With Dr Hans Roskam of the University of Leiden, she has organised a petition, signed by more than 300 biologists, including 50 professors, and letters of complaint to the Director General of the BBC, the director of the BBC Natural History Unit, and Sir David.

“I am entirely on the side of the biologist in Utrecht,” said Sir David. “The BBC should take steps to make sure that the minuteness of the meanings are maintained.”

So far the publicity about their censorship has not persuaded the EO to give up their practises. Hopefully pressure from Attenborough on the BBC and from the BBXC on the EO will do the job. If not, the EO should not be allowed to broadcast Attenborough’s series anymore.