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Attila the Stockbroker Diary Unremitting bad news

Touring has been edifying and fun, also cheers to Billy Bragg for calling out the Bandera-supporting band Beton and lastly a red salute in memory of Paul Eustice

SO LOVELY to be on the road again. Crewe, Manchester, Todmorden and Hull last weekend, the last of those a wonderful night at my favourite independent venue in the world, the legendary Adelphi in Hull, doing a fundraiser for Ukrainian refugees and striking Sconthorpe steelworkers alongside the tireless and inspirational Joe Solo. As I write this I’m in the middle of a stint of five gigs in four days in Dorset and Cornwall.
 
In between I had a couple of days at home. Catching up with detailed aspects of the news after four days gigging, talking, cycling, driving and drinking (not together in the case of the last two) was such a bloody miserable experience following such a fulfilling time. And I don’t do miserable, so that is saying something.
 
We seem to be in a period of unremitting bad news, with the return of Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe a small chink of light in an ocean of darkness and the war in Ukraine threatening to explode into something more dangerous and savage than it already is.

Arms dealers and profiteers are rubbing their hands with glee again, deskbound generals salivating.
 
I was so pleased when I heard about that Clash cover (London Calling) in Kiev from the band Beton, and so sad and angry when I heard about their support for the Nazi collaborator Bandera. Well done Billy Bragg for calling it out.

Then I saw the BBC using footage from the neonazi Azov battalion in Mariupol. Whatever the circumstances, for the BBC to do this is completely unacceptable — and independently of the moral and political taboo it is a tactical and PR disaster since it absolutely plays into Putin’s narrative about the reason for the war.
 
The only thing the thugs who run Russia need to do is broadcast that BBC footage on TV and the memory of Stalingrad, baked into the souls of the people, will cause even those who loathe Putin to gasp in horror.
 
No wonder there is so much division on the left. Socialists can’t turn a blind eye to Nazis, ever, whatever the circumstances, whatever the history. We can’t. EVER. Socialists can’t do whataboutery about the flattening of cities and brutalisation of innocent civilians by a brutal imperialist warmonger, whatever the nature of a minority of those opposing him.
 
Pointing out how the West’s triumphalist behaviour after 1991 contributed to the current situation is not enough when innocent people are being brutalised and ONLY PUTIN is to blame. Global capitalism’s worship of the money to be made from war — US, Russia, China, UK, EU, everywhere is capitalist now, sadly — threatens to destroy our planet even quicker than it is scheduled to do already given the cognitive dissonance over climate change.
 
In practical terms helping refugees is right now all we can do.
 
This world is beautiful, and on tour in Cornwall I am in one of the loveliest bits of England as spring takes hold. Every year this time brings fresh hope, but right now hope seems in short supply.  

Our collective role in the world — the fact that a majority permit a minority to destroy it — is a horrible insult to that beauty. And if that sounds like hippy bollocks — it’s not. It is human reality.
 
In conclusion I offer a red salute in memory of Paul Eustice, a principled socialist, dedicated East Worthing and Shoreham CLP Labour Party activist and good friend, whose funeral Robina and I attended last Wednesday. His was a life well lived, and we send all the love in the world to his wife Sparrow.
 
Keep safe everyone.

Visit www.attilathestockbroker.com/merch.php
My main Facebook page is www.facebook.com/attilathestockbroker;
Twitter: @atilatstokbroka

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