Big brother this Friday, a vote on Britain?

Tomorrow evening Britain will cast a vote for either Indian Bollywood star, Shilpa Shetty, or abrasive working class girl, Jade Goody. Goody and two other housemates have rounded on Shetty and it appeared to be racial.

The public will decide who will be kicked out of the Celebrity Big Brother house and Britain's reputation. What a start to the cultural year, a reality check on racism.

Celebrity Big Brother 2007 Shilpa Shetty - Massive Row


If Jade goes, the press will claim that the UK has shown itself, once again, to be a fair. Mhambi's bet is that Jade will go. But if Shilpa is voted out. Oh dear...

Racism and the Spanish civil war

Weird. I have been reading a monumental book by Anthony Beevor on the Spanish Civil War called The Battle for Spain. It is an incredible account and an incredible event. The moral courge of professor Unamuno or the destruction of Guernica are just two of the tales in this facinating account.

This war was a conflict that drew fighters, intellectuals and writers (Beautiful Neruda, clever Orwell and macho Hemmingway were just some) from around the globe. On the one side the Republic, supported by Anarchists, Socialists, Communists, Basques, Catalans and Republicans supported by the Soviet Union, and on the other the Nationalists, made up of Facists, Monarchits, Catholics supported by Nazi Germany and Facist Italy (and a bit of secret help via the British Navy). I spotted no South Africans in it however, untill today. Unfortunately it ain't flattering:

"Not all writers were pro-republican. The nationalists had the support of charles Maurras, Paul Claudel... as well as the South African Roy Campbell, who wrote a 5,000-verse epic poem, violently racist, which was entitled Flowering Rifle."

I wondered what the Afrikaners made of this war? Staunch republicans, but religious (if protestant) half of them Communists and the others Nationalists and even Facists building so-called volks-kapitalisme (people's capitalism). But they must have felt a sympathy for the Basque and Catalalonian independence drive, if they knew about it.

Sphere: Related Content