Mick Hartley, who has been a regular reader of normblog since I started it and has sent me occasional emails, has started his own blog. It bears his name: Mick Hartley. I warmly recommend it. It is clear from Mick's early posts that this will be a site of thoughtful analysis and clear prose. Mick has kicked off with pieces on the Benny Morris interview, the London Review of Books and Alan Bennett, Noam Chomsky, thoughts prompted by the sighting of a fox in central London, and the enquiry into the death of Princess Diana. On Bennett, Mick writes:
Every January the LRB publishes Bennett's diary for the previous year. Unfortunately it's not on line, but you can see the title of this year's piece in the contents page. "A Shameful Year". No surprise about what according to Bennett is so shameful, but it strikes me as very odd. I can think of many shameful things: Munich and Chamberlain was shameful. The behaviour of the Major government, refusing to allow arms to the Bosnians while Milosevic carried out his ethnic cleansing and the UN stood by, that was shameful. The total inaction of the UN while Hutus slew Tutsis in Rwanda, until they set up camps over the border in Zaire (as it then was) which were taken over by those same Hutus: that was shameful. But getting rid of one of the most despicable tyrants in modern history and freeing the Iraqis from their decades-long nightmare...shameful?? Clearly we live on different planets.Mick's analysis of Chomsky is long, interesting and difficult to summarize with a handy quote or two. It relates Chomsky's political stance to aspects of his work. Give it a read. A big welcome for Mick Hartley's blog!