Archive / Society
Liberalism, Censorship and the Chilling Effect
Index on Censorship asked me to blog about the campaign against Rod Liddle's possible appointment to the editorship of the Independent. A comment thread is already underway on the the Index Site:
Airline Security: Profiling and paranoia (2010)
I flew LHR-JFK just after the Christmas day bomb attempt. Paranoia and security lines. I was reminded of how bad things were just after 9/11 and wrote an anecdotal piece for The Guardian.
The First War on Terror (2008)
Anyone interested in political history or theory should visit Christie Books, the publishing house and anarchist archive run by Stuart Christie, would-be assassin of General Franco and author of the entertaining memoir Posted on December 31st, 2009
Happy New Decade: Are you (still) Afraid? (2004, 2009)
As we head towards the new year and every media outlet on the planet compiles lists of definitive this and that, I found this 2004 piece on my hard drive, which seems to do a reasonable decade-summarising job. It was a column for Arena magazine. I'm not sure they printed it, though I remember they took my picture on the concourse at Waterloo station.
The Crime and Punishment of Yang Yunbiao (2008)
In 2008, in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, I participated in a PEN event intended to highlight human rights abuses in China. This is a video of a text I read at that event.
The Far Right, Youth and Fascist Occultism
A few days ago the Youth BNP’s charmless Billy Brit appeared in my Facebook feed. There was something both bizarre and inept about the clip: a pale cream sub-Sesame Street puppet speaks in a castrato voice before a backdrop that looks like it’s been set-dressed by the guy who does beheading videos.





Recent comments
4 weeks 5 days ago
5 weeks 5 days ago
6 weeks 4 days ago
7 weeks 21 hours ago
7 weeks 6 days ago
8 weeks 4 days ago
8 weeks 6 days ago
8 weeks 6 days ago
9 weeks 1 day ago
9 weeks 5 days ago