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16 December

So, one ugly beardie is gone, to be replaced by another. I wonder if anything will change? Mr C has just announced his intention to plough ahead with the ID cards bill, but perhaps it would be a good time to renew campaigning against it anyway, just in case.

There are two campaigns that I know of running against ID cards at the moment. One of them looks like yet another SWP front group (the same three names keep popping up, and they've used that font again for all their banners!), but you can judge that for yourself and let me know. The other doesn't seem to have any Trots involved and is consequently likely to be both more democratic and more badly organised. C'est la vie.

Talking of Trots, isn't it interesting that so many New Labour ministers were hardline reds in their youth - this applies to both Blunkett and Clarke. These days they're neoliberals who think nothing of flogging off schools and hospitals to corporations or introducing indefinite detention without trial for people who look a bit foreign. This might seem like a 180 degree political shift but one thing has remained the same since their communist glory days - their authoritarian streak. They knew they were right then, they know they're right now and they're going to get their own way whatever it takes. Once a totalitarian, always a totalitarian.

Speaking of which, I really want to direct you to one of my favourite ever websites. It's the HQ of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which is home to the best collection of film reviews on the internet. As far as I can tell, MIM are a real organisation and these reviews are not spoofs. Consider these wonderful extracts:

Men In Black: 'We have no complaints about the acting or the editing, but the script is bourgeois propaganda.'

The Matrix: 'We can use the movie to educate people about dialectics, modes of production, Lenin's book "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism" and the drawbacks of anarchism and individualism.'

A Bug's Life: '"A Bug's Life" has as good side and a bad side. The good side is that it portrays the successful collective struggle of the apparently weak oppressed and exploited (in this case, an ant colony) against the apparently strong oppressors and exploiters (in this case, a band of grasshoppers). So it could be used as a parable about the struggle against u.$. imperialism. The bad side is that it never directly ties its oppressors (the grasshoppers) to the biggest oppressors in the real world, the imperialists.'

There's much, much more of this kind of eye-watering joy here. Go on: while away a few hours while you wait for Christmas to come. You won't regret it.

Posted by paul at December 16, 2004 10:05 AM

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Posted by: Alice at December 27, 2004 11:41 PM

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