Weekly Links - 02/09/2007

First up this week I would like to link to the RMT website as workers in the RMT union are currently engaged in struggle and campaigning on the London Underground. The first of two 72 hour strikes at failed tube privateer Metronet has been planned for Monday this week, furthermore they are calling for solidarity and support at a lobby and demonstration at the Department of Transport, planned for 11.30am-1.00pm on Tuesday.

Various interesting articles on the Guardian Comment is Free site this week (albeit accompanied by the now customary acres and acres of bile, invective and abuse from the right-wing vermin that infest the comment element of the site.) Last Sunday Mark Braund interestingly commented on the current dominant position of finance capital and the effect his has, but then ends on a typically Guardian-liberal exhortation for the capitalist to just 'be nicer'. On Tuesday Braund went on to comment on the huge and growing levels of personal debt in the UK.

Also on Tuesday, Derek Wall commented on the carbon footprints of the rich and famous in relation to David Beckham's itinerary. Turncoat former German Green Party Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer again demonstrated just how far to the right he is swinging with another article that looked like an apology for both US imperialism and the European centralisation and imperialism that he sees as a necessary "restraining influence".

Meanwhile George Monbiot had a cracking article on the Mont Pelerin group and the way they constructed intellectual arguments that covered the massive power and wealth-grab that has been neo-liberalism. As always the crypto-fascist rats and swivel-eyed right-"libertarians" immediately swooped to defend Hayek, Friedman et al and denounce Monbiot as a conspiracy theorist, ignoring the fact that what Monbiot was saying was not that the elitists and intellectuals conspired, but that their ideology perfectly fitted the economic needs/desires of the finance capitalist class and so was well funded and supported out of self interest rather than some dream of 'world domination'. Monbiot is clearly an anti-conspiracist writer (hence he enrages 9-11 cultists) who seeks to analyse how the base and superstructure of capitalism interact.


On Wednesday, Green Party Green Left supporter and parliamentary candidate Peter Tatchell had a piece on Nigeria's anti-gay witch hunt.

The vicious personal and political attacks by the political right in the comment sections of the Comment is Free pages demonstrate how threatened the right feel at this time of financial instability and imperial over-extension, and also the nasty and aggressive nature of right-wing ideologists that makes them feel the need to obsessively troll sites that they see as in any way (economic) left-leaning or (social) liberal. I have never felt it necessary to venture onto right-wing boards to pick pointless squabbles, disrupt discussion and hurl abuse - for many of the right and far-right doing just these things on left leaning boards and sites appears to be an itch that they cannot resist scratching, and then they accuse the left of intolerance!

Elsewhere on the net this week, various Brit left bloggers have been preoccupied by the significance of the George Galloway letter which appears to contain not-too-veiled attacks on the SWP element of his Respect coalition. Socialist Unity Blog covered the controversy over several posts including this one.

Meanwhile Ed at International Rooksbyism has been impressed by the ecosocialist material appearing in the UK left paper Socialist Resistance.

Over the water, Renegade Eye addresses the current vexed issue of boycotts and Israel.