"ONCE OUR boys are fighting, opposition to the war will virtually evaporate." The Blairites, the Tories and the political commentators close to them all agreed on this after the parliamentary debate 10 days ago. A section of the left, believing the media are all-powerful, agreed. How wrong they were.
SOME IN the anti-war movement argue that once war starts it would be better for it to be over quickly, with the US and Britain winning with the minimum of fighting. That is an understandable reaction, motivated by wanting to see the least loss of life in the immediate conflict. It is, however, mistaken.
MANY YEARS ago when the benefits of parliamentary democracy were shared by very few of the world's population, the Russian revolutionary Lenin pointed to a fundamental problem. He argued that "hidden beneath the polished exterior of modern democracy are deceit, violence, corruption, mendacity, hypocrisy and oppression of the poor". Tony Blair's New Labour has managed to illustrate each one of them in six short years. One measure of the outcome is the declining number of people who vote in elections.
THE GLOBAL movement against war on Iraq continues to go from strength to strength. In Britain it is tearing New Labour apart. But there are people who are asking, "What can it achieve? Bush is going to go to war anyway, whatever anyone else thinks." The argument is mistaken on a number of counts. First, despite Bush's bluster, key sections of the US ruling class are worried about going to war without some cover from other governments.
MUSICALS, WESTERNS and good old fashioned love stories dominated Hollywood films of the 1950s. On the surface many of those films appear to be politically innocent. But beneath the surface, and using only the subtlest of references, a moral, sexual, ideological and political battle took place.
WE'VE BEEN told this week that Blair's cabinet are 100 percent behind him. It may well be true that New Labour is splitting up faster than lovers in EastEnders, but no worries for Blair - he's got solid support where it counts.
WHEN AN establishment paper like the New York Times reacts to the anti-war protests on 15 February by commenting that "there may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion", you know things are beginning to move.
CHORUS SINGERS at the English National Opera (ENO) struck on Tuesday. They are staging a series of one-day strikes to prevent 20 of the 60 chorus singers losing their jobs. Their strike is about much more than the jobs, important though they are. It raises the question of who controls access to art in our society.
LAST SATURDAY'S great demonstration was one of those "once in a lifetime" events which it would be hard to find anything to match. One of the few that begin to compare - in my experience at least - was the million-strong anti-war march that concluded the European Social Forum (ESF) in Florence on 9 November last year.
THE ANNUAL conference of the NATO military alliance has for 40 years been an occasion for mutual backslapping and bland statements by leaders of the Western powers.
RETURNING FROM the World Social Forum (WSF) at Porto Alegre in Brazil, I feel as if I have just emerged from a vast, multicoloured sea that swept all the participants along in a great exuberant wave.
QUESTION TIME is the kind of TV show that spends much of the year trying to drum up support for itself. Anxious trails from David Dimbleby tell us that we'll be lucky enough to hear the views of a panel made up of cold sponges, wet towels and old flannels. It's as if he's warning us not to switch over to Newsnight or we'll miss hearing from someone as thrilling as Margaret Beckett - a politician sadly afflicted by a strange illness.
