I'm here in the beautiful Union Chapel in Islington to give you the liveblog treatment for the official launch of the Euston Manifesto, a "fresh vision for the internationalist left in Britain and beyond". Euston was written by a handful of bloggers and journos including Norm Geras from normblog. To it's supporters, the Manifesto is an important first step to producing a new progressive vision. To it's opponents, it's a complete waste of time - a place "where self-important, leftie media types can pontificate amongst themselves about Iraq" (Guido Fawkes). Brendan O'Neill wrote: 
There remain two groups of people who think international affairs can be understood in simplistic terms of good and evil: the Euston Manifesto group and al-Qaeda. I am often struck by the similarities in the tone and turns of phrase used by sections of the pro-interventionist left and Osama bin Laden and his henchmen.
PooterGeek had a nice response:
There is something deliciously satisfying about seeing the wilfully stupid wax hysterical at the thought of a few people meeting in a pub, writing down what they think about the world, and then asking some other people if they¹d like to talk about it.
The launch tonight is to answer questions and get the ideas out there. The first issue raised by Nick Cohen is the hypocrisy of the contemporary left: the way that, say, religious fundamentalism is being defended by liberal newspapers - the mainstream liberal left are adopting the attitudes of the ultra-right.
The arguments haven't been conducted in the media, but on the Internet. The interesting thing is that Euston is a bloggers manifesto
Norman Geras is the first to stand up and talk. He started with a discussion of Eliot: "And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from." The end is 9/11 - 9/11showed us a willingness to use terror for political purposes - 9/11 "not amenable to simple-minded response" - "blowback", "comeuppance", "a crime but", "contextualised immediately". Not a group of people you wish to be involved in. "Terrorism is murder, there is no context that makes it okay".
Reasonable people can reasonably disagree about the war, within the Manifesto group. "A discourse of denial".
Shalom Lappin from Kings College has described how he believes that there is a new Luddite left which wants change to just go away, and that a new left must be willing to shift back towards class-based issues.
Eve Garrard attempts to shoot down cultural relativism on the basis of it's incompatibility with universal human rights. Cultural relativists are impotent when criticising other cultures, it is self-contradictory because it's claim to tolerance is universal while it rejects universality, and it often becomes cultural determinism. Garrard points out how the rhetoric of cultural relativism has shifted from the right (during apartheid South Africa) to the left. She blames a cultural relativist double standard for the report by Amnesty International.
Alan Johnson is discussing what should be happening with reference to Daniel Finklestein's article in the Times. He points out the ridiculousness of George Galloway, and how Euston is a new connected network between a large variety of let-wing networks including groups like Unite Against Terror and Engage. It's being picked up by students and activists across the world. "Every generation needs to rediscover anti-authoritarianism".
The first question is about women and feminism - the response was simple: get involved, and look at Ophelia Benson at Butterflies and Wheels.
Shalom rebuffed the accusation of Islamophobia - but stating that Islamism was not progressive. There is a complex question about the deportation of Islamists, which is a complex moral question.
There are questions about interventionism, and whether interventionism can be justified generally - it can't. It can only be justified specificially. Kosovo is OK, but Iraq, perhaps not. There was also discussion about the failures of internationalism.
A guy from Engage is talking about responding to a NATFHE proposal to boycott Israeli academics - he described anti-Semitism as a litmus test.
They're asking for money and ideas (hey, it's a church, so that justifies the first). They've also been very nice in helping me blog here by giving me power. 
Even as a libertarian, I wish these guys success - they're the ballsy, common sense left rather than the whiny, idiotic, kneejerk anti-American left we've grown used to.
