Rough Music: Blair, Bombs, Baghdad, London, Terror - Softcover

Ali, Tariq

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1844675459 ISBN 13: 9781844675456

Publisher: Verso, 2006

Synopsis

On July 7, 2005, the murderous mayhem that Blair’s war has sown in Iraq came home to London in a devastating series of suicide bombings. Two weeks later, with apparent impunity, security forces shot dead a young Brazilian electrician on his way to work.

Rough Music is Tariq Ali’s riveting response to these events.

He lays bare the vengeful platitudes of Blair’s war on civil liberties, mounts a scorching attack on the cozy falsehoods of the government’s “consensus” on what the threat amounts to and how to respond, and denounces the corruption of the political-media bubble which allows it to go unchallenged. Finally, invoking the perseverance and integrity of the great dissenters of the past, he calls for political resistance, within parliament and without.

About this title

About the Author:

Tariq Ali is a writer and filmmaker. He has written more than a dozen books on world history and politics—including Pirates of the Caribbean, Bush in Babylon, The Clash of Fundamentalisms and The Obama Syndrome—as well as five novels in his Islam Quintet series and scripts for the stage and screen. He is an editor of the New Left Review and lives in London.

From Publishers Weekly:

Leftists who think Bush is bad should get a load of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, as pilloried in this lively polemic. British writer, filmmaker and activist Ali (The Clash of Fundamentalisms) calls Blair a liar, an authoritarian and a "hypermilitarist" who "likes the smell of blood." He shudders at "the burning eyes and fake humility" of Blair's "facile simulacrum of sincerity" and speculates that, like Posh Spice, Blair has "never read a whole book." And while Blair has happily prostrated himself to Washington's demands, the author contends, domestically he has consolidated Thatcherism, and even extended it in deplorable new ways while making Labour a party of "the living dead" and turning Britain into a "banana monarchy." Ali also carries on a spirited fencing match with Blair's media supporters, reprinting great swathes of their "sycophantic pro-government drivel" and replying with lengthy excerpts of his own speeches and articles and those of other Blair critics. It's not all invective; Ali offers a brief, well-supported critique of Britain's unrepresentative electoral system, cogently debunks the government's explanations of the 2005 London terrorist bombings and the subsequent "premeditated execution" of an innocent Brazilian immigrant by security forces, and survey's Blair's ominous infringements of civil liberties and due process. Ali's rancorous rehashes of obscure British political dogfights will leave Yanks feeling like outsiders. But caustic, partisan and exaggerated as it is, Ali's is a scintillating, elegantly written and thought-provoking take on the state of British politics.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Verso
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1844675459
• ISBN 13: 9781844675456
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 104