Matthew Carr's Blog, page 57

Hey look: we’re at war against evil again

With ‘reluctant warrior’ Barack Obama’s declaration of war against Islamic State, the United States has found another in a seemingly endless series of justifications for waging war in the Middle East. In 1990/91 it was saving Kuwait.  In 2003 it … Continue reading →

Scotland the Brave

I was disappointed by the Scottish independence defeat on Thursday, particularly by such a wide margin, but nor was I entirely surprised by it.  The NO campaign was initially inept, detached and condescending about a result that its organizers took … Continue reading →

The West versus IS: a marriage made in hell

In Don de Lillo’s 1991 novel Mao II, the writer-protagonist Bill Gray declares: ‘ Years ago I thought it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture.  Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken over that … Continue reading →

Gaza’s Drowned Refugees

How many people must die in the Mediterranean migrant graveyard before Europe decides that the human cost of its ‘migration management’ policies requires a change in these policies?   Or to put in another way, at what point does the ‘collateral … Continue reading →

Caledonia Rising

Whatever happens in Thursday’s referendum, the campaign has cast a grim spotlight on the venal and corrupt British state that so many Scots are eager to escape from.  Having spent much of the last two years complacently assuming that it … Continue reading →

Terrorism: the Medea Syndrome

Violence and the consequences of violence are recurring themes in  Greek classical drama, particularly in the works of the three great tragic dramatists Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripedes.    All three were citizens of an Athenian state that waged imperial wars … Continue reading →

Destroying and Degrading: the War Machine Marches On

It’s often difficult to determine whether the post 9/11 interventionist drift is directed by incompetent fools or cunning and devious knaves.   For thirteen years now, a succession of overt and covert wars have left the shells of broken eggs everywhere … Continue reading →

Go Scotland Go!

The spectre of an independent Scotland no longer haunts Westminster – as a result of the recent polls placing the Yes campaign in the lead, it has now reduced the British political class and the media to abject terror. After … Continue reading →

Beating Galloway

On Friday 29 August the British parliamentarian Adam West, Conservative MP for South Benfield, was viciously attacked by a Muslim fanatic while posing for a photograph on a London street.   Horrified onlookers watched helplessly as the MP was punched in … Continue reading →

An Afternoon in Belchite

Lower Aragon is a very different place to the towering peaks of the Aragonese Pyrenees, where I spent most of last week.  Drive south of Zaragoza and you leave the fertile plain of the Ebro River and pass through a … Continue reading →