Peterloo: Review

  By Chris Horner • 8th November 2018
Rory Kinnear (as Orator Hunt)

Great acting and set pieces, but overall, a missed opportunity. This long film suffers from too many people having too many conversations for too many minutes. I’m into this stuff, but even I sometimes felt impatient with it. Director Mike Leigh neither goes for the Peter Watkins style of cinema verite, (Culloden, The War Game, The Paris Commune) nor the high cinematic and non naturalistic Eisenstein style (I’m thinking of the way Eisenstein portrays Kerensky and the counter revolutionaries: to make a political point, rather than deliver a slice of life). Instead, we get a bit of the former when the more … Continue reading

On Hating the English

  By Chris Horner • 27th October 2018 ,
Peterloo 1

There’s a  problematic article that has been circulating on Facebook about ‘hating the English’ – originally published in the Guardian, I think. The Irish person writing it says something to the effect that once she thought it was just a few bad ones etc.,  but now she hates the lot of them ( including me, I suppose: I’m English).  It’s been stimulated, I think, by the repulsive English nationalism that has been raising its head since Brexit, plus the usual ignorance about Ireland and Irish history and interests on the part of your typical ‘Brit’.  It’s not a very good piece … Continue reading

Revolution in 
the Red States

  By Tony Sutton • 20th August 2018

Charlie LeDuff’s new book Sh*tshow reveals how it was the failure of globalisation – not Russian meddling – that propelled Donald Trump to the US presidency. — SH*tshow!
The Country’s Collapsing 
and the Ratings Are Great! Charlie LeDuff Published by Penguin Press
www.penguin.com $27 — If you’re one of those sophisticated urbanites who still believe Donald Trump was elected to the US presidency by sheeplike flocks of Red State “deplorables” brainwashed by an army of Russian trolls spreading lies on social media and hacking Saint Hillary’s email, you’d better take a peak through the pages of Charlie LeDuff’s new book, Sh*tshow!: The … Continue reading

Blurring facts, distorting reality

  By Tony Sutton • 2nd August 2018

  Tony Sutton reads a new book by Greg Shupak that exposes the fake news at the heart 
of mainstream media coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict The Wrong story
Palestine, Israel, & The Media Greg Shupak Published by OR Books
www.orbooks.com $17 We’ve been swamped by dire warnings about fake news and its threat to democracy over the past couple of years, the phenomenon being variously attributed to 
alternative web sites, Twitter feeds, and Facebook postings made by dastardly agents employed by Vladimir Putin. The mainstream media, half-destroyed by years of its own internet and business ineptitude, is delighted to build and … Continue reading

We Need To Reimagine Our Own Future, Not Buy Obama’s American Dream

  By Marc Wegerif • 28th July 2018

Thoughts on Barak Obama’s Mandela lecture, delivered in South Africa 18 July 2018 at the start of celebrations marking the centenary of the birth of the great South African freedom fighter What a privilege to be at the 16th Mandela Lecture given by former USA President Barrack Obama. Obama confirmed himself as a great orator as he wove a story perfectly aligned with Mandela’s life and politics. He gave us a grand overview of world history from when Mandela was born in rural Eastern Cape, touching on the end of colonialism, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the release … Continue reading