//EDIT//: When I wrote this piece, I had assumed the Seumas Milne was no longer the Comment Editor of the Guardian. He apparently hasn’t gone yet.
If you thought that the departure of Seumas Milne as Comment Editor of the Guardian meant the end of articles by extreme right wing cranks, Stalinists and Ostalgists, you’d be wrong.
This week, the paper edition of Britiain’s premier liberal and progressive newspaper has published an article by Zsuzsanna Clark presenting the Stalinist Young Pioneers – which one veteran of that organisation aptly compared to the Hitler Youth in the comments to the article – as some sort of jolly version of the Woodcraft Folk.
Yesterday, we had a rubbishy piece by Tariq Ali.
Today, we have another article by far right Milosevic-groupie John Laughland: who runs the fake “British Helsinki Group”. As the genuine British Helsinki Subcommittee is at pains to stress, the BHG has nothing at all to do with the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights.
More information on this crank and the wacky organisation he runs can be found here.
No prizes for guessing Laughing boy’s theme:
“Slobodan Milosevic was posthumously exonerated on Monday …”
You can guess the rest. For an analysis of what the ICJ judgement actually said, here’s Oliver Kamm’s piece.
We also are treated to another piece by that wide boy and scrounger, George Galloway:
Despite complete control of Venezuela’s national assembly – the opposition boycotted the last elections after being defeated in seven electoral tests in a row – Chávez has been given enabling powers for 18 months to ensure he can pilot his reforms through entrenched opposition from the civil service, big business, the previously all-powerful oligarchy, their vast media interests and their friends in Washington.
As tim points out in the comments, the panegyric to Chavez ties in nicely with this:
George Galloway wants Venezuela to sponsor a web TV station which will broadcast political satire and speeches by President Hugo Chávez from the Respect MP’s home in London.
The political firebrand, below, hopes to visit Caracas next month to request funding and technical support for the venture.
“I’m definitely headed that way,” he told the Guardian. “I want to talk to the Veneuzuelans about television.”
…
Mr Galloway said his venture required modest resources but that it still needed technical support and content, such as tapes of Mr Chávez’s speeches, to fill the time when he was not doing a Scottish socialist version of The Daily Show.“The plan is pretty advanced but I need help to run the thing. It will probably be broadcast from my front room.”
Why is the Guardian publishing this rubbish? I mean, really? What is going on here?
Meanwhile, if you want to read a piece by a member of the sane left, here’s my old friend Conor Foley – neither a liberal interventionist nor a lunatic – on the International Criminal Court’s charging of two suspects in relation the Darfur. Unlike Laughland’s piece, it is both informed and informative.
Yet Conor’s piece sits in cyberspace, while Laughland gets delivered by paper-boys nationwide.
Something is wrong here.
