Raid on Iraqi Trade Unions

On 23rd February 2007 US and Iraqi security forces raided the headquarters of the General Federation of Iraqi Workers (GFIW).

Labour Start has a campaign where you can email your condemnation of the raid.

Go on. Do it now.

The wonderful Josie Long

Friday night I went with Rullsenberg to see Josie Long on her Kindness And Exuberance Tour.

Jolly good it was too. We left the show and came out into the snow with a warm radiant glow.

If you're into that sort of thing you can be Josie's friend on MySpace.

Can you read a map, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

Will has a great post on the Iranian request for "evidence" of the Holocaust.

How difficult is it to get from the Iranian embassy in Berlin to Wannsee?



Even I could follow those instructions and my inability to read a map is notorious.

America the Photographed

Mick Hartley has some spectacular pics of American industrial sites, garnered from the Library of Congress.

Here's an image in the Roundhouse of a Chicago and Northwestern Railroad Yard in Chicago, Illinois.



There are lots and lots of amazing images available from the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information Collection.

Go and discover.

Catching Up

Times flows onwards. Things consume time. And I lack time to post. And the world contnues to spin.

George Monbiot attacks 9/11 conspiracists and Comment is Free gets more comments than anything else you think might attract more comments. How do you organize an event of the magnitude of 9/11, involving thousands of people, and hope to keep it secret? Here's a deft summary of the popularity of conspiracy theories:

Everybody wants to feel special, and conspiracy theories are one hell of a way to go about feeling that way. After all, you have secret knowledge that "the government doesn't want you to know" and "most people refuse to believe" and that "science can't explain". But you know the truth, right? Right.

So here's an interesting experiment. The next time you feel like George Bush is trying to hide the truth about the Jesus's third cousin from the world in order to boost Haliburton's profits so they can further fund the Trilateral Commission...try taking your S.O. out to dinner. Or go see a musical. Or play basketball. Or masturbate. Anything to replace thoughts of ancient evil plots with fun in the here and now. I'm pretty sure you'll feel much better. [From The Blog of Many Hats]

I know the Truth and there are no conspiracies but those conspiracies in which I play a part. Now, when governments, and the private sector, struggle to organize a decent I.T. system for the NHS, does anyone believe governments can conspire to kill thousands of their own citizens without someone leaking news to the media?

The Damned United

I've just started reading David Peace's splendid account of Brian Clough's 44 days at Leeds United and so far it's damned good. Here's a sample. Brian Clough has just started as manager at Leeds and he's being interviewed on local tv.

Here's an extract as quoted on One Mick Jones

“So we can expect a bit more warmth, a bit more honesty and a bit more Brian Clough from the League Champions,” repeats Austin Mitchell.
“A lot more Brian Clough actually,” I tell him. “A lot more.”
“And hopefully win a lot more cups and another title?”
“And win it better, Austin,” I tell him. “I can win it better. You just watch me.”
“And the Leeds set-up? The legendary back-room staff? The legacy of the Don?”
“Well, I’ll tell you one thing, I had great fears of that lucky bloody suit of his, in the office when I walked in. You know the one he’s had for thirteen years? I thought, if that’s there, that’s going straight in the bin because not only will it be old, it’ll smell …”
“You’re not a superstitious man then, Brian?”
“No Austin, I’m not,” I tell him. “I’m a socialist.”

And there's more quotable stuff. Much more. But I'm not one to take the bread out of the mouths of starving author's children so buy the damned book.

Palast der Republik

History is created with the march of a historian's pen or the pecking of a historian's fingers across an Underwood.

Einsterzende Neubauten's Blixa Bargeld said I hope history will once create the legend that [the Palast der Republik] was demolished because we played there. But I can state now, it's not true but you can erase that sentence later!




Here are some pictures of the Palast up to its ongoing demolition and here's a search for more images of the Palast der Republik.

Today I am happy because the lovely Rullsenberg told me that Einsturzende Neubauten were coming to Nottingham on 26 April. Lunchtime I caught the bus into town and got two tickets.

If they're coming to a town near you you could always buy a ticket. You never know, you might like it.

Proxy Blogging

That Will Rubbish he's a one! He sends me a link to some pomo guff on Laibach and Zizek's "over-identification" theory. Here's a taster:

"Are Laibach really fascists? Is their use of props serious?" Simply responding "no" and "yes" (respectively) misinterprets the radical nature of the question. For Laibach, it's all about involving oneself in fascism, which they see as representative of all types and ages of totalitarian regime, from "God's will to evil", as they sing. Instead of rejecting fascism from a socialist or moral standpoint, they identify with fascism to an extreme degree – Zizek defines this using the psychoanalytic term "over-identification". One could say that Laibach come across more fascist than fascism.

But Lillemose (the piece's author) goes on to argue

"In art, morality is nonsense and Laibach's only responsibility is to remain irresponsible,"

Swastikas -tick; jackboots - tick; It's a tick box Nazi dressing up kit and if there's some diagnostic spectrum in the DSM then Laibach are well up toward the raving Nazi end. As I said to Will

There was a split-second when punk adopted the swastika as a "fuck you" to the world in an instant of art-school adolescent rage and it made sense. It only had validity for the flash of a camera and then it was gone to be replaced by lazy identification with the fascist, nazi NF and thence the SWP's high point Rock Against Racism. Laibach have been "over-identifying" (to use Zizek's term) as Fascists for over twenty years. There may well be a layered meaning to their Fascist obsession or they may just be Fascists.

Where was I? Yes, that Will Rubbish he kindly takes over and blogs my comment on his home turf and DSTPFW. Some may call that "appropriation of labour" but I say he's doing my work for me!

The Art of Being a Total Prat

Sometimes you read a blog and you agree with it. Other times you read a blog and agree with part of it and disagree with part of it and it sets you thinking. Reader, today I read a piece that I totally disagreed with. It's about the most scabby, nasty piece of blogging I have ever read.

Jonah Albert wrote a splendid piece in the Observer asking why so few Asian and Black Britons visit the National Gallery. It's a question that any seeing, sentient visitor can't help but ask themselves. It's a major gallery in a major multi-cultural city. So why is the audience so "hideously white", to borrow a phrase?

Oliver Kamm, disliked the piece so much that he called for the sacking of the author. Oliver Kamm is, and here's an ad hominem attack, a prat. We'll deal with Kamm's argument after we have looked at what Albert wrote that so offended Kamm.

Albert asks

Figures show that 43 per cent of the British population visited a gallery or museum last year, but I know from just working in a gallery that the percentage of those from ethnic minorities was in single figures.
An obvious culprit hides in the nature of the National Gallery's collection: Western European painting from 1200 to the turn of 19th century was the remit it was given when it was established in the early 19th century. Other institutions would collect and display Eastern and African Art; the National Gallery was set up to focus on old master paintings.

To the minds of those who choose not to engage with the place, it's little more than the work of some dead men - well, mainly dead white men.

Oliver Kamm believes this shows that Albert has no idea "what art is for" and Albert should therefore be relieved of his duties immediately. Kamm is wrong. Albert is working through reasons why people fom Britain's visible ethnic minorities do not visit major art galleries. When Albert discusses the universal message of some images

The paintings in the National Gallery deal with major life themes: love, loss, death, jealousy, betrayal, war, peace, power and many more ideas, all of which are just as relevant to black people as anyone else. But it's also significant that behind many of the portraits of white folk in their finery lurks the ghostly presence of an invisible black population.

Zoffany's painting of Mrs Oswald shows a lemon-lipped, bored-looking woman trussed in a furbelowed dress. Joshua Reynolds's image of Banastre Tarleton depicts a handsome, if somewhat camp and bouffant, soldier in full military dress. The buried story behind both Persil-white portraits tells of African enslavement, Caribbean plantations, slave factories on the West African coast, abolition and slave revolts in Florida. More history than you'd imagine on first glance.

This gets dismissed by Kamm as showing Albert's "incomprehension" of "what the arts are for". Kamm sees the "pedagogic power of art" lies in "broadening our experience and appreciation of enduring human concerns." Nowhere in Albert's piece does he argue against that. Nowhere does Albert say he disagrees with that position. Kamm has read into Albert's essay, or should that be read into the lacunae in Albert's essay, an argument against what Kamm sees as the purpose of art.

Kamm is arguing from the position "I think art is this and this is what it's for". This person does not mention my position therefore he must be agin it.

Kamm's reading is totally against the aims of Alberts essay which is about seeking reasons why people from visible ethnic minorities do not visit major art galleries and reasons why they should visit. Albert's essay offers some reasons why people, of all ethnicities, should visit.

Kamm argues

How can you be a curatorial fellow of one of the greatest art galleries in the world and say nothing about the enjoyment and elevation that art provides? How can you have any role connected with arts administration and not regard the love of art as a sufficient - or even a possible - reason for looking at paintings? In my view, you can't or at least shouldn't. If Jonah Albert is representative of the Arts Council's "Inspire" scheme, then the Council should put a stop to it with alacrity. (You can read more about the programme in this article from Time Out.) In any event, Mr Albert's article is more than reason enough for the Council and the National Gallery to dispense with his services.

Kamm misses the point of Albert's article, which is to get people to engage with art. If you are discussing people who have yet to engage with art then "a love of art" is not going to get those people into galleries. The "love of art" comes after engagement. To be trite, you can't have a "love of art" without looking at and engaging with art. Your initial reason for entering a gallery and looking at art is not going to be "love of art". How can it be so? You have no experience of art to fall in love with.

Kamm has every right to disagree with what Albert wrote. He has every right to disagree with what Albert did not write. But, for Kamm to call for the sacking of Albert based on ideas Kamm thought, wrongly, should have been in Albert's article is morally wrong and has all the hallmarks of a lynching.

Oliver Kamm's blog is a nasty, smug self-satisfied piece arguing, to paraphrase, "I know what art is and what art is for. This Albert chappy doesn't. Therefore sack him".

What a nasty, smug, vicious, scabby piece of blogging.

Headcleaner

Einsturzende Neubauten - Headcleaner





If you like what you've seen you can always subscribe to the Neubauten supporters site. Go on. Sounds like this need your support.

Blume on NYE

Einsturzende Neubauten - Blume

Don't write History, let Geography have it's say

I have just finished reading Daniel Pennac's "The Fairy Gunmother". A most enjoyable read, and the second part of the Malaussene Saga, set in the Paris neighbourhood of Belleville. One of the lead characters, Benjamin Melaussene, is employed as a scapegoat by a succession of companies. His partner, Julie Correncon, is the daughter of "ex-Colonial Governor Correncon, the Independence Man, as some newspapers put it at the time, or else The Gravedigger of the Empire" and recollects her time living with her father.

"Correncon had been the first to negotiate with the Viet Minh, when it still hadn't been too late to avoid a massacre. Under Mendes-France, he'd worked out a self-governing status for Tunisia, then he'd worked under De Gaulle when it was necessary to give Black Africa back its freedom." p224

The recollection continues with a list of visitors to their farmhouse: Farhat Abbas, Messali Hadj, Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap, Ibn Yusuf and Bourguiba, Leopold Sedar Senghor and Kwame Nkrumah, Sihanouk and Tsiranana. Other names included Vargas, Arraes, Allende, Castro and Che. That's some list!

Ex-Colonial Governor Correncon believed in Geography. "Don't try to write History, just let Geography have its say" to which Che laughed "Geography is just a collection of movable facts."

Julie Correncon's recollection continues.

"What is a colony, student Giap?", Correncon asked in a colonial schoolmaster's voice.

And, just to make Julie laugh, Vo Nguyen Giap, who was later to become the victor of the battle of Dien Bien Phu, replied in a schoolboy's chant:

"A colony is a country whose civil service belongs to another country. For example: Indochina is a French colony and France is a Corsican colony". p224

From the laughter the recollection passes to the aftermath.

No sooner had countries been given their independence, than Geography had started making History again, as though it were an incurable disease. An epidemic with a high death count. Lumumba was executed by Mobutu, Ben Barka's throat was cut by Oufkir, Farhat Abbas was exiled, Ben Bella imprisoned, Ibn Yusuf eliminated by his own men, Vietnam was forcing its own History onto a Cambodia which had been bled dry. Friends from the ... farmhouse were being hunted down by friends from the ... farmhouse. Che himself had been shot in Bolivia, with, so it was whispered, Castro's tacit agreement. Geography endlessly tortured by History ..." p226

So it goes. So it goes. "Geography endlessly tortured by History".

[ Many apologies for the apostrofly in the heading of this piece. I am going to do the honourable thing and go outside and shoot a panda. ]

That was then ...

Sometimes you recall something that affected you and then you spend ages trying to find it. Well I could not think who sang the 1984 song "Germans". But that's not what I was trying to find. My favourite moment from Live Aid 1985 was the performance and speech by Udo Lindenberg. Here it is, in full:

Although it is great that over 30 to 50 million dollars are being raised for Africa, it is but a small token of repayment for the years of colonial explotation.
The only real help will be the inmediate withdrawal of all military and economic interests on the part of Europe, Japan, USA and the East-Block.

(applause)

It is a perverse tragedy that we allow the spending of 1000 billion dollars for murderous weapons.

(applause)

With a small part of this amount we could feed the entire world.
We ask when will there be a rising up of global conscience.

(applause)

40 thousand children die every day at the hands of this military built-up.
It is a crime that this madness has now moved into another dimension.
These governments in Washington and the Kremlin are sick in their heads.

(applause)

They are still walking in a dense fog.
We – from this country which has instigated two terrible wars - appeal to all people who still close their eyes to this schizophrenic world :
stop the wars in the Thirld World.
Stop the crime of military built-up.

(applause)

We cannot forget the purpose behind this event.
If this should turn out to be only a huge Rock ‘n’ Roll celebration – carried out on the backs of dying children - we can forget it.
We see our song as a demonstration of those people who will no longer condone this insanity - we rise up against it.

(applause)

It was the single event on the day that summed up what it should have been all about. I also recall the BBC getting complaints about the "unnecessary introduction of politics into an otherwise enjoyable event". Such was life in 1980s Britain, where people believed that poverty, starvation and wars were issues that had nothing to do with "politics".

Indoor Penguins

I know penguins can be kept indoors, after all I have read about Misha in Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov. This guy saw an ad for a pet penguin and realised he'd always wanted one.

I didn’t realize it before that moment, but I had always wanted a pet penguin. Probably everyone has. I just never thought it was possible. Penguin Warehouse assured me that it was in fact possible

So this guy buys an inflatable pool and, against all advice, installs it in his living room. He has a decision making flow chart that many a management consultancy may be interested in. (This flowchart is from Pooter Geek via The Fishbowl, who tidied up the flowchart from the original).




Read it and laugh or weep. It made me laugh.

Taxes und Thurn

Nick Cohen, in today's Observer, discusses inequities in the UK tax system. He argues that

In public, the City paints a terrifying picture of foreign bankers fleeing Britain if the government requires them to pay the same tax rates as everyone else, but in private, no financier I know believes it. The odd Russian gangster will leave, they say, but London is too important a financial centre for global players to abandon.

Because Brown lacks the moral and political confidence to call the City's bluff, his debauched tax system is debauching British society. Tax-free money is making housing in the south east and beyond too expensive for the middle class, let alone the working class that Labour once represented. The legacy of a decade of Labour rule is that the modest hope of a house in which they can have children is beyond hundreds of thousands of couples.

And as it debauches the economy, it also debauches politics.

Many of the millionaires donating/lending to the Labour Party pay very little tax.

In the financial year 2004/5 the top 20% of households, "ranked by equivalised disposable income" paid 35.6% of their gross income in taxes, while the bottom 20% paid 36.4%. That's according to Stephen Penneck, on behalf of the National Statistician, in a Paliamentary letter dated 25th July 2006 based on a report "The effects of taxes and benefits on household income, 2004/05" by Francis Jones by the National Statistics Office.

Is it fair that people who have a low income pay a greater percentage of their income in tax than those who have a higher income? No. It's quite simple. It's wrong. Let's take more and more low paid people out of paying tax altogether. Raise the threshold at which people pay tax and also raise tax rates. And simplify the tax system - you earn it you pay tax on it. Simple.

If you want to see some arguments that the current system is perfectly fair read the comments to Nick Cohen's piece and weep. The spirit of Ebenezer Scrooge is alive and well.

[Note to self: the title of this piece is a pun on Thurn und Taxis Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49]

Sky Bully in the news

In today's Grauniad there's a lucubration of letters arguing for and against creationism and whether evolution contradicts the second law of thermodynamics. Here's my favourite:

"Creationists always try to use the second law,/ to disprove evolution, but their theory has a flaw./ The second law is quite precise about where it applies,/ only in a closed system must the entropy count rise./ The earth's not a closed system, it's powered by the sun,/ so fuck the damn creationists, Doomsday get my gun!" (MC Hawking.com)
Peter Manson
Glasgow

Must get out those physics text books.

Poverty in Pie Town

There's a a brilliant exhibition of photos from 1939 to 1943 documenting the rural poor, especially in Pie Town, New Mexico. It's on at the Photographer's Gallery in Great Newport Street, London until the 27th of January.

The main photographers were Russell Lee, Marion Post Wolcott, Jack Delano, Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange. They were all employed by Roy Stryker who ran the Information Department of the Farm Security Administration. Stryker used photography to garner support for the F.D. Roosevelt's New Deal.
A brief curatorial essay sets the scene. Marion Post Wolcott joined Stryker because

“I had deep sympathy for the under-privileged,resented evidence of conspicuous consumption,(and) felt the need to contribute to a more equitablesociety.“

Get yourself along to the exhibition. You are probably used to seeing the black and white images but (as the Photographer's Gallery site says) the colour ones give it a "shocking immediacy and freshness bringing to life the human cost of the Depression" .

If you want to see some of the images go to the Library of Congress, browse the Geographic Location Index for New Mexico, Pie Town. I'm unsure of the persistence of this link to New Mexico, Pie Town but here it is.

Quote of the Day

Here's a quote I came across as Rullsenberg was purging her old student files.



Not wanting to retype it I decided to use Rullsenberg's scanner. So there you go.

Iraqi Trade Unionists

Here's a campaign worth supporting.





Great campaign. Let's see how much media coverage it gets. Let's see how many organisations run with it.

Let's hope it works and gets the coverage it deserves.

The original poster and more information is available here.

Hat tip: Will Rubbish.

England expects (or why o why o why...)

Take two. I started to write this piece and then Flash killed my browser. Damn that Gordon.

Anyway. Only the England cricket team could take their most talented bowler; their most passionate bowler to Australia and have him carry the drinks. As this splendid piece says

MONTY PANESAR has been cast as England's teddy bear, a Paddington wandering through the bad world of cricket wearing a label that says "please look after this bear". He is nothing of the kind. He is a lion. I was able to see that clearly when I faced him in the nets at the Adelaide Oval.
The nets here are visitor-friendly. I was able to stand directly behind the stumps -- the net in between us -- when Panesar was bowling.

It was an educational experience. The first thing that always gets you when you get close to any real slow bowler is that he isn't slow at all. The ball comes at you with a vicious eagerness.

Time and again, the ball came out of Panesar's enormous hands, carried on straight for a few yards and then veered in disconcertingly, seeking you out like a living thing. It then dipped, bounced and turned sharply the other way.

All this is impossible to appreciate in the two dimensions of the television or from the safety of the boundary.

And watching in close proximity, it was impossible to miss Panesar's intensity -- the massive personal investment he makes in every ball he lets go.

The intensity is not of expression and gesture; rather, it is expressed in the ball itself, something you can only see when you are just a cricket pitch away.

It is crystal clear that cricket is the breath of life to him and that bowling means a great deal more than that.

Perfect for carrying drinks thinks the England management team. And the England management team is so wrong.

So Panesar is not the best batsman. Big deal. Get your best batsmen to bat. And then your best offensive bowlers can take wickets. Attacking cricket. Let's have more of it.

Hat tip: Norm