Due to a pile-up of stuff to do in the ‘real world’ I’m going to have to put the blog entries on hold for a little while. In the meantime, here’s something to keep you amused:

I remember seeing this picture of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow many years ago, with the following caption added -

Soldier: “Are we retreating from Moscow, mon General?”

Napoleon: “No, we’re advancing on Paris, mon idiot.”

Readers of Andy Newman’s latest prognosis for the future of Respect may well conclude that advancing backwards is firmly on the order of the day. Those of a more optimistic nature might like to take a look at Alan Thornett’s excellent response to Andy’s article:

http://liammacuaid.wordpress.com/2008/08/26/respect-has-to-turn-outwards-alan-thornett/

These two articles are likely to define the parameters of one of the most important debates at the Respect annual conference this autumn…..

One of my favourite poems is by Christopher Logue. It’s entitled ‘To A Friend In Need Of Rural Seclusion’:

‘When all else fails

Try Wales’

Still, imagine my surprise when I discovered that I’d be spending the next seven days in the bijou Welsh dwelling pictured above with my girlfriend’s extended family. In the meantime, you’ll have to make do without my pithy blog postings, and if you haven’t posted a comment on here before do try to be patient - I’ll be back in a week’s time.

In the meantime, if Mad Cyril - who’s agreed to look after my house again while I’m away - is reading this, please try to remember what I told you last summer: gerbils and microwaves do not mix well together, whatever you may have read in the latest issue of New Scientist. Thank you.

As my contribution to Tommy Sheridan’s struggle against tabloid accusations of hot sex, I’m posting this wonderful video of Tommy’s Mum serenading her boy (thanks to ‘Nicaraguan Stu’ for the link):

The Russians have conducted the world’s first successful head transplant, according to sources close to the US administration. Experts believe that evil Russian scientists have succeeded in transplanting the head of weedy Russian premiere ‘Tiny’ Putin onto the body of one-time Olympic gold medalist Yevgeny Ripitov. “This unnatural transplantification cannot stand,” George Bush told a hastily convened White House press conference.

I always found it rather comforting that George Bush couldn’t manage to do two things at once, for example watching television and eating pretzels, without falling flat on his face. But the great man has proved me wrong yet again. He’s managed to take time out from his hectic Olympic viewing schedule to lecture the Chinese on human rights (suffering temporary amnesia about Guantanamo Bay), whilst simultaneously encouraging his Georgian allies to tweak the nose of the Russian bear, thus plunging a whole new region of the world into American-sponsored crisis.

Not that this is how it will appear if you’ve been following the mainstream news, which has muddied the time-line of events to obscure the fact that it was Friday’s Georgian invasion of South Ossetia which kicked the whole thing off. Nor will you hear much talk about the swathe of US military advisers currently operating inside Georgia, nor the fact that the Georgian military is in the process of being re-tooled by the US. Funny that…

For a good outline of the weekend’s events and an interesting debate about how socialists should respond, it’s worth taking a look here: http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=2709

Four weeks ago Condoleeza Rice visited Georgia’s President Saakashvili and reiterated her administration’s support for the ultra-nationalist Georgian regime and its ambitions over South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the other break-away region. Whether Saakashvili was given the go-ahead by the United States for his latest adventure, or simply misunderstood the signals coming out of Washington, the result is the same: another part of the world has been dangerously destabilised by a blundering US foreign policy. Needless to say, this policy is backed uncritically and enthusiastically by both mainstream British political parties and their tame media.

The fact remains that it was Georgia’s brutal attack on South Ossetia’s capital Tskhinvali, resulting in much destruction and many civilian deaths, which initiated the current crisis. As calls mount over the coming days and weeks for NATO to ‘respond’, it might be worth hanging on to that salient point.

It’s normally about this time of year, as cold winds sweep the land and the rain pours down, that thoughts turn to sacrificing a policeman in order to ensure an improvement in the weather. For those of you unfamiliar with that wonderful film The Wicker Man - the kitsch 1973 original, I hasten to add, not the awful Hollywood remake - this may seem an obscure point. So if you haven’t already seen it, treat yourself to an evening of sheer indulgence and hire a copy. Let’s face it, you might as well stay inside and watch a movie - the weather’s so bad this summer it’s hardly worth venturing out of doors.

Then again, every cloud has a silver lining. With the weather putting the blight back into Blighty for a second summer in a row, the reality of climate change seems all too apparent, even in our relatively comfortable environment. And as the weather is the one topic that really gets our fellow citizens riled, I have little doubt that once they’ve put two and two together and laid the blame for our lousy summers at the door of international capitalism, the barricades will start going up all over the country. Us revolutionaries need to  provide a lead, umbrellas and slogans at the ready…

In the meantime, I’ll be taking my wicker-work kit down out of the loft - just in case.

I posted an article a week ago on the mounting toll of civilian casualties in Afghanistan. Shortly after I’d posted it, the number killed in the latest incident rose to 47. The US continued to describe the dead, most of whom were women and children, as legitimate targets.

Far from learning from their mistakes, the American forces have carried out a further atrocity, killing eight civilians on Tuesday in the Bakwa district of Farah province. As usual, they claim to have been targetting insurgents at the time of the incident. In this respect they have learnt some valuable lessons from their Israeli allies, whose war crimes are regularly camouflaged beneath rhetoric that sounds more or less plausible to the uninformed.

So this is the better world promised to the Afghan people by George Bush on the eve of invasion. Women and children live in a permanent state of poverty and terror. Civilians are cut down by ‘coalition’ forces, their deaths barely registering on the monitor of Western public opinion because they have dark skins. What a brave new world the Americans are making; and how wonderful it is to know that we in Britain are a part of it.

There’s been a lot of discussion in Blogland recently about the question of ‘progressive patriotism’, and the possibilities of reclaiming an English national identity for the Left. I have to say I’m not convinced that this is really much more than special pleading by people whose allegiance to the England soccer team seems to have miraculously survived not only their politicisation but also (perhaps more surprisingly) the disappointment associated with following a really crap side. Still, in the spirit of constructive debate I thought I’d add my tuppence worth to the discussion. So here’s Christopher Logue’s excellent poem on the evergreen appeal of national identity, entitled ‘Loyal To The King’, which pretty much sums up my feelings on the matter:

Loyal to the king

and to preserve

their nationality,

a tribe of nits

inhabiting

the northern cliff of a turd,

from time to time

made war upon

a neighbouring tribe

over matters of territory.

Often among

the conflicting hosts

tens of thousands

of lives were lost;

sometimes the vanquished were pursued

relentlessly

for up to fifteen days.

Don’t expect it to make the main item on the evening news, but for the second time in three days US forces have butchered civilians in Afghanistan. Following Friday’s incident, where fifteen civilians were killed by a missile attack in Kunar province, US helicopters have killed at least twenty people in Nangarhar province. According to the BBC, ‘district governor Hamisha Gul told AFP news agency that 22 people had been killed in the strike - 19 of them women and children’. They were part of a large wedding party targeted by Coalition forces. While the US military are in denial about both incidents, claiming that all the victims were militants, the Afghans think differently. Pro-Western President Kharzai released a press statement about Friday’s killings saying that he ’has been deeply saddened since learning about this incident’.

Given the awful track record of the US military on ‘collateral damage’ and their video-game approach to the current wars, more civilian deaths are inevitable. But hey, who really cares? Certainly no government ministers on this side of the Atlantic. While David Miliband bleats about the excesses of Robert Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe (especially their treatment of downtrodden white farmers), you can expect a resounding silence on the latest atrocities in Afghanistan, or at best a mealy-mouthed comment about the ‘tragedy’ of war. No New Labour minister is going to rock the boat when it comes to ‘our’ alliance with the American Empire. After all, why should they? They’ve been promised the crumbs from the top table, and that’s more than enough to buy their loyalty - and their silence.