Matthew Carr's Blog, page 52

Je Suis Charlie Hebdo

Yesterday, as the whole world knows, three self-styled holy warriors carried out a military-style assault on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, in which they murdered ten journalists and two policemen, before leaving shouting ‘God is great’ and … Continue reading →

Might as well face it we’re addicted to war

War is a serious business, or it would be if we took it seriously.  If war was treated with the seriousness it deserves then wars would not be begun lightly on false pretenses.  They would have clear and realistic strategic … Continue reading →

Kevin MacDonald’s Black Sea

Submarine films are always tense experiences, whether they consist of the black & white war films that I watched as a kid, Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or the  claustrophobic U-boat epic Das Boot.  Tension, anxiety and claustrophobia … Continue reading →

Sleaze Britannia

We British often like to peer into the bedrooms of dictators.  When dictatorships fall we have almost come to expect a torrent of sleaze to come pouring out of their bedrooms, the wilder and more depraved the better.   We like … Continue reading →

2014: Gaza’s Year of Mayhem

There are some years when Gramsci’s adage about pessimism of the mind and optimism of the will seems more appropriate than others, and 2014 was a year filled with some pretty awful events, whether it was kidnapped schoolgirls in Nigeria … Continue reading →

Briton of the Year

I generally try to disengage from the news from Christmas Eve onwards, and even when I don’t succeed festivities and family obligations tend to reduce the amount of time I have to write or even think about it.   One thing … Continue reading →

In God’s Name: Religion, Islam and Pakistan’s child murderers

‘Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction,’ wrote Blaise Pascal. From General Lothar von Trotta’s extermination of the Herero to the Russian purges, the Holocaust and the Kymer Rouge, the twentieth … Continue reading →

Killing for God? Religion, Islam and Pakistan’s child murderers

‘Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction,’ wrote Blaise Pascal. In the last three decades, the world has experienced an upsurge of violence that seems, at first sight, to bear out … Continue reading →

Jimmy Mubenga: A Shameful Verdict

Yesterday a jury delivered one of the most astounding verdicts that the British justice system has delivered in many years, when it found three former G4S guards not guilty of the manslaughter by gross negligence of  Jimmy Mubenga, the Angolan … Continue reading →

Money for Torture: the endless gravy train of the ‘war on terror’

One of the most striking revelations in the Senate Select Committee’s scathing condemnation of the role played by two former military psychologists in the CIA’s torture program has been the role of the two psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen … Continue reading →