Monday, May 31, 2010

Six of the Best 60

"Several thousand people gathered in Whitehall outside the entrance to Downing Street this afternoon, to voice their anger and disgust at the criminal Israeli assault on the Gaza aid flotilla in international waters. It was impressive how many people turned up at such short notice — an interesting reflection of the power of social networking media, including Twitter," says Jonathan Fryer, who was there.

So was Craig Murray - in fact, he was one of the speakers. He writes that "anybody with any fairness is bound to admit that the statement William Hague came out with is much better than anything on Israel which New Labour ever came out with ... But as I told this afternoon's tremendous spontaneous demonstration on Whitehall, fine words are not enough and we must now see the kind of sanctions regime we saw against apartheid South Africa."

Liberal Democrat MP Adrian Sanders provides more evidence for the view that the Daily Telegraph is out to get us by reproducing his recent correspondence with the newspaper.

One blogger who disagrees with the newspaper's campaign is Think of England, who celebrates the way the crowd was allowed on to the outfield at Lord's today: "The Lord's Perambulation seems to me the very essence of CamCleggy Liberal Conservatism. I like it very much and I wish the Telegraph would stop trying to strangle it at birth."

Wouldn't it be Scarier? offers a new angle on the David Laws story: "The thing about this whole thing that really gets to me, though, is the attitude of many gay people which I have seen expressed. Several people who ought to know better have been snarky and unsupportive of Laws, on the basis, so far as I can tell, that if they managed to come out surely everyone else ought to have managed it." Step forward, in particular, Ben Bradshaw and Ben Summerskill.

And Heresy Corner reviews Philip Carr-Gomm's A Brief History of Nudity: "The basic problem, of course, is sex: or rather the assumption that a naked body must somehow constitute an invitation to or a reminder of sex. That this should be so is far from obvious. Throughout history, nakedness has had any number of significations: innocence, vulnerability, health, aggressiveness, political protest, even sanctity (as in the case of naked Hindu holy men)."

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