Photos by unslugged from today’s protest in support of the Tomlinson family at the Crown Prosecution Service and on into the City.

In today’s Friday lunchtime distraction, the philosopher Slavoj Žižek gets the RSA Animate treatment as he investigates the surprising ethical implications of charitable giving.

In the first detailed interview with a prisoner released from Guantánamo to Algeria, Abdul Aziz Naji, forcibly repatriated last week, has spoken to the Algerian newspaper El Khabar, describing his experiences during his eight years in US custody. While this is a welcome demonstration of transparency on the part of the Algerian authorities, it is also indicative of what can be achieved through international criticism. After the Obama administration and the US Supreme Court conspired to repatriate a...

CALL FOR PAPERS SSPT18 (Autumn/Winter) – Utopia, Dystopia and Critical
Theory We invite submissions for the next issue of SSPT linked to the theme
of Utopia, Dystopia and Critical Theory. In a period of geo-political,
ecological and e…conomic turmoil, we find ourselves in the midst of a
crisis of legitimation with respect to the dominant post-Cold War neoliberal
economic and political doctrine of unfettered market-led growth,
de-regulation and privatization of national resources and public services,...

Nina Power applies the scalpel of socialist feminist critique to the Right to Work campaign in today’s Guardian. This is most welcome, because the campaign against the cuts, and against unemployment, should be the topic of urgent debate in the press - which otherwise shows little interest in the concerns of the working class. (Ask yourself this: all newspapers have a ‘business’ section, overwhelmingly concerned with the doings of chief executives, financiers and multinationals, so why is there no labour...

The first meeting of the new 20-strong steering group of the ‘Save Wanstead Flats’ campaign met tonight at Durning Hall Community Centre and is planning a public meeting in late September. The campaign will be inviting representatives of the City of London Corporation and the Metropolitan Police to provide answers about plans to base an Olympics policing operational base on the Flats in 2012. In order to push this proposal through, the Corporation intends to amend the Epping Forest Act, which has...

Also see my piece about Zizek’s book ‘First as tragedy, Then as farce’ HERE and Duncan Simpson’s Counterfire review of his new book HERE.

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Zionists are often fond of pointing out that there are Arab members of the Israeli parliament and that this somehow proves that Israel is not a racist state, indeed that it is a normal functioning democracy. Well these two "Israeli"-Arab visitors to the UK parliament have other ideas. See this from the UK’s Jewish Chronicle:

Israeli Arab Knesset members have launched a blistering attack on the Jewish state and its Parliament, declaring Israel "racist, fascist and worse than apartheid South Africa"....

Well, I’m off to the Lake District for a wedding and a long, relaxing weekend, so blogging resumes on Monday. Meanwhile, Luna17 recommends:

1. Capitalism in the wake of the financial crisis (Left Economics Advisory Panel)

2. Southampton’s Tory council to sack librarians (The Third Estate)

3. Economic vandalism and UK Film Council (A Very Public Sociologist)

4. Gay jokes and Carry-On commentating (Laurie Penny)

5. Is John Redwood as stupid as his blog? (Though Cowards Flinch)

6. Thoughts about coalition...

Resisting cuts is the central political priority of our time for a simple reason: implementing the cuts is the number one priority for the ruling class. The crisis is deep and our rulers have opted to launch a full-blown assualt on the public sector and welfare state.

If they get their way, it will have a massive effect for decades to come. And it will alter the balance of forces in their direction. This will weaken the Left, the labour movement and the working class. The stakes could hardly be higher.

If...

Also see HERE.

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Last week, the release from Guantánamo of Abdul Aziz Naji, who was transferred to Algerian custody against his wishes, overshadowed other news from the prison, and with good reason. As I explained in an article at the time, the Obama administration, the Supreme Court and the D.C. Circuit Court, which all played prominent roles in his enforced repatriation, had flouted the United States’ commitment, under the terms of the UN Convention Against Torture, not to “expel, return (‘refouler’) or...

A milestone in labour struggles and women’s liberation, a 1968 strike by machinists at Ford Dagenham, is to be turned into a film. The strike fed into the National Joint Action Campaign for Women’s Equal Rights, and resulted in a series of similar struggles across British industry, driving up womens’ representation in trade unions. It also forced the Labour government to launch an investigation into Ford’s practises by employment secretary Jack Scamp, ultimately resulting in the Equal Pay Act of 1970,...

Sami Ramadani in The Guardian’s Comment is free on Hans Blix’s "evidence" to the Chilcott "inquiry":

Yesterday it was Hans Blix’s turn to appear before the laid back and suitably emotionless inquisitors. The former chief UN weapons inspector revealed nothing we didn’t know. He told Chilcot there was no justification for war, because his inspectors found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction; and he told them that he had needed a few more months to finish his task.

As an Iraqi living in Britain, and...