Against the Far Right but not Against Antisemitism?
There’s a big march planned in London tomorrow, called Together Against the Far Right. It’s organised by the ‘Together Alliance’, which seems to be a big conglomeration of trades unions and other groups. All well and good.
The odd thing about it is, at a time when antisemitic attacks are at a high, there are no Jewish groups involved. Or nearly none. Indeed, this article from The Times (archive link) is headlined ‘Celebrities back anti far-right march “freezing out Jewish groups”’:
Jewish leaders said they believed they had been frozen out by the organisers despite the event’s far-right focus, while groups they perceive as being linked to “extremist rhetoric and outright antisemitism” were listed as supporters.
I don’t know what the organisers are playing at,1 but I don’t see how you can stand against Nazis if you’re not standing with Jewish people.
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I sort of do know, or strongly suspect, and it’s both sickening and stupid. ↩︎
I’m currently reading The Twenty Days of Turin A Novel by Giorgio de Maria. 📚
It’s a very odd work, which in part slightly prefigures (because it’s set in the 1970s) some of the negative effects of social networks. But it’s about a lot more than that.
Why Can't We Find Out What the Green Party is Proposing?
I’ve been hearing about the Green Party’s conference motion against ‘Zionism’, and how it seemingly is deeply antisemitic, and will effectively have them supporting Hamas. I didn’t want to write about it without reading the actual motion. But that appears not to be possible unless you’re a party member. It’s behind a login requirement. I can’t find anywhere that actually quotes the motion.
The Guardian and the BBC don’t seem to have reported on it at all. The Daily Mail has something behind a paywall, but its headline claims the motion ‘would make it party policy to back Hamas terror attacks’. The Canary’s article on it1 speaks warmly about it, saying it ‘could be a game changer for UK politics.’
Well, yes, and not in a good sense.
It’s one thing to be against some actions of the current Israeli government. Quite another to support — even tacitly — an organisation dedicated to the eradication of the entire nation and people of Israel. Hamas and Hezbollah are Nazis, and all people of the left should oppose them and their aims just as much as we opposed the National Front and the British National Party.
But without being able to read the motion, it’s hard to know how extreme it is. You might argue it’s a private matter for the party, unless and until it becomes their policy. Up to a point, that seems fair. But I think political parties have a duty of transparency. They want people to join them and vote for them. Therefore they should let the public know the kind of things they’re talking about.
And the mainstream press should be reporting on it.
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And hey, who knew The Canary still existed? ↩︎
Putting this interview with Andy Weir here for future reference. We’re going to see Project Hail Mary next week, and it claims the book and film are ‘built on solid science’.
But it’s described as:
a story about humanity’s last-ditch attempt to save Earth from “astrophage,” a fictional, star-eating algae that has infected our sun.
I also watched the trailer last night, and it seemed incoherent (though trailers often do).
But algae? Biology in a star, in plasma at impossible temperatures? I can feel my inner physicist cringing already, so I hope they manage to make it make sense somehow.
The music app on iOS: what does this icon on the top right do? Or what is it supposed to do, because nothing audible or visible happens when I tap it?
The First Band I Ever Saw, 46 Years Later
As I teased, Saturday saw me and my friend Johnbuggerdefanoblog.wordpress.com heading for Camden once again to see Stiff Little Fingers. It is far from the first time I’ve seen them. They were the first band I ever saw, back in 1980, at the Glasgow Apollo, and they might be the band I’ve seen most often. I’m not sure, but they’re certainly up there with The Pogues, The Fall, and James.
But before they got going the other night, there was a support band. The Meffs are that slightly unusual format, a two-piece. And in a mirror image of perhaps the most famous band of that format, they have a female singer/guitarist and a male drummer (and singer).
They were pretty damn good. Noisy, shouty, melodic at times, and well worth a listen. Plus the guitarist, using the incredible power of a pitchshifter (the effects pedal, not the band), we must suppose, created an incredible bass sound along with her lead/rhythm work. Remarkable.
And then on to SLF. They tour in March most years, and to be honest there were no surprises — one new song, which was pretty good. But I enjoyed it a lot more than the last time, and that was partly about atmosphere. I don’t really care for the Roundhouse as a venue. It’s a great building, but I feel like, for a rock venue, the ceiling is too high. Not to the detriment of the sound, it just feels too open above your head.
Which doesn’t make much sense, given the atmosphere can be great at an open-air gig. But there you go, it’s a feeling. However, that’s what I was feeling before I went. This time it was much better, and I think that’s at least partly due to getting there early, seeing the whole of the support act, and generally getting into it. They don’t call it a warm-up slot for nothing.
They love a backdrop, so SLF, as you can see there.
Next year it’ll be 50 since they started out, so we should expect something big. Or not, but I hope they’ll be back, and us too.
Ben Werdmuller tells us ‘AI is changing the style and substance of human writing, study finds’:
the software really does change the substance of your writing in what I would call objectively bad ways: it makes it less personal and less emotional, and it actively changes its underlying meaning in the process.
This takes us back to my recent thoughts on people possibly not even understanding their ‘own’ LLM-generated writing.
To the Hackney Empire tonight, to see Bridget Christie’s Jacket Potato Pizza tour which was excellent.
We watched The Man in the Hat 🎥 a few nights ago. An odd, gentle little British/French road movie from 2020. It’s almost silent, at least as far as the main character goes. Others have dialogue, but not a lot. A man goes on the run across France, after seeing what appears to be gangsters disposing of a body. He meets lots of strangers — mostly strange in more than one sense — along the way.