Matthew Carr's Blog, page 57
September 4, 2014
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 →
August 31, 2014
Gaza: Who Won?
After seven weeks of horrendous violence, the third Gaza war is over, leaving an eye-wateringly lop-sided audit of destruction. On the Palestinian side, more than 2,143 people have been killed, included more than 400 children, and thousands injured. 17, 200 … Continue reading →
August 26, 2014
The Eyes of Richard Cheney
Some years back, Faye Dunaway starred in a vaguely kinky thriller called The Eyes of Laura Mars. Dunaway plays a glamorous fashion photographer who specializes in taking pictures of stylised violence, only to develop a second sight that enables her … Continue reading →
August 25, 2014
Lost in the Fear Factory
As anybody who has ever been exposed to a dangerous or life-threatening situation knows, fear is not a particularly useful emotion. At an individual level, it can paralyse the resolve and confidence that you need to survive or go forward, … Continue reading →
August 22, 2014
Why ISIS eyes are smiling
You can loathe the Islamic State (IS) all you like, and an organization that beheads prisoners and posts videos boasting about it, rapes women, crucifies Christians and uses its primitive interpretation of Islam as a justification to murder anyone with … Continue reading →
August 21, 2014
A Terrible Beauty
Yesterday I was lucky enough to see a screening of the new documentary about the 1916 Easter Rising A Terrible Beauty, at the Derby Quad cinema, in the presence of its director Keith Farrell. The film is part of an … Continue reading →
August 18, 2014
Indiana Cameron and the Temple of Doom
Of all the Indian Jones films, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is for me the most obnoxious, with its racist stereotyping and unproblematic referencing of nineteenth century imperialist cliches about white men saving childlike dark-skinned folk from the … Continue reading →
August 16, 2014
Ferguson: The Future in the Present?
The massive display of force by the police of Ferguson, Missouri in response to protests at the apparent extrajudicial execution of black teenager Michael Brown has once again drawn attention to what the Economist has called the ‘hyper-military culture’ of … Continue reading →
August 13, 2014
Silencing Israel’s Critics: a new McCarthyism?
Israel has always depended heavily on emotional and moral blackmail to influence public debate internationally and neutralize its critics. Few supporters of South African apartheid ever openly defended the system itself, whatever they believed privately. Even when governments were broadly … Continue reading →
August 12, 2014
The Battles of Calais
For millions of British tourists, Calais is a the gateway for continental driving holidays and the pleasures of the summer. For others it’s a city of designer shops, of the massive Euroshopping mall Cité Europe, where the Daily Mail and P&O … Continue reading →
