Beware Drunken Brawls

Just found this picture, by Rory Hanratty, of a new street sign in Belfast.



Could we make this a nationwide thing?

Nietzsche Family Cartoon

Via DSFTP here's The Nietsche Family.

The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises whose thousand-year conclusion no one has yet dared to draw.

There's one for you. Just hit refresh and gaze into the abyss.

All the world's a stage and here's a drill

Back in February artist Jo Mitchell recreated Einsturzende Neubauten's famous gig , Concerto for Voice and Machinery, at the ICA in 1984 where they had a cement mixer, electric drills and jackhammers. The recreated gig was supported by an industrial tool hire company, as it would be.

EN's Alexander Hacke recalls

Because we were using petrol-driven chainsaws, very soon the whole room was filled with smoke, the stench of petrol everywhere. It sounded like a cross between a building site and war. Because I was very young, the others wouldn't let me near the heavy machinery so I stood, wearing protective gloves and a visor, throwing milk bottles into the cement mixer, which smashed and flew into the crowd.

But we would have kept it pretty straightforward if we weren't inspired by the reaction of the audience. There's a famous Walter Benjamin essay about the destructive character, and he says: "The destructive character knows only one watchword: make room. And only one activity: clearing away." And that's how it was. We were thinking, "Actually, it's not us doing anything. The audience are tearing the place apart!" People were fighting over the drills and sledgehammers. Cables and machinery were pulled into the audience.

The thing about these situations is that no matter how wild it gets, people do instinctively take care of each other. I'm sure there were moments when we thought it was getting out of hand but it was all so quick, it went "Snap", like a switch being flicked and everyone going berserk.

How many musicians quote Walter Benjamin? How many musicians fire shards of milk bottle at the audience? It's a thin line between really stupid and really smart.

Myth and reality often clash. According to Mick Sinclair's review of the original gig, in Sounds, and in Mick Sinclair's letter to the Grauniad it was not a Neubauten gig but a performance that featured some of the band members. So there, all you mythologisers who mythologise with your pens, your chance is over, it won't come again.

Derby Silk Workers Procession

This Saturday I had a grand day out in Derby. I went to the Silk Mill Procession which is

a trade union commemoration of the struggle of the Derby Silk Mill workers of 1834.
At 10.30am in Derby’s Market Place, join the traditional silver band led procession with your banners, or with your family and friends, in recognition of the long
and radical history of Derby workers. At the end of the procession at the Silk Mill
gates rally, a chaplet will be laid at the plaque commemorating the 1834 struggle, and there will be trade union and labour movement speakers and lusty renditions of 'The Red Flag' and 'The Internationale'.

Here's the start of the march.


The sun shone as we marched to the Silk Museum.


We passed various traction and steam engines. We listened to a cracking speech from the local PCS rep arguing for the retention of tax offices, and tax jobs, in Derby and against the proposed move to Nottingham (sorry but I couldn't find a link). We listened to Margaret Beckett, and a heckler. We heard a passionate speech from Graham Stevenson arguing that "if socialism is not the answer then there is no answer" to the world's problems. Indeed.

We then had a brass band play the Red Flag, then the Internationale. Then a steam organ started up playing Rule Britannia. Was this deliberate? Who knows?

And so to the Silk Mill pub for a talk by Graham Stevenson on Derby working class history.


A bit of history over a pint of real ale. What more could you want?

The Red Review

Don't people accumulate some junk? I've been going through a folder of pamphlets picked up over the years and I found "The Red Review Songbook 1985". Thought I'd copy some of them here.

Here's the cover.



Here's the first songs, The Red Flag and The Internationale.



And here's "I Have a Dream", a song that evokes dreams betrayed.



And here's Old Man's Song.



Nostalgia. A simpler time when the opposition was the opposition. When the enemy was the enemy. The joys of opposition politics. Jumpers for goalposts.

Tonight the Monkey Dies

I was expcting to go to two gigs next week. But after Einsturzende Neubauten were forced to pull out (concert interruptus) I've got just one to go to, Low. Here's a video.



Hope you enjoy it. And get to see Low on their 2007 tour.

Faith, Hope and Salamandrina

Looks like the Einsturzende Neubauten gig at Rock City, Nottingham next Thursday 26 April, has been called off because not enough people wanted to go.

I was first in the queue (ahem) on the 22nd of January. Tickets numbered 10 and 11. What a night that's going to be. I evangelised to everyone I know with even a vague interest in what I call music. Some expressions of interest.

Only to find out that Rock City can't sell enough tickets. What a let down. The idle, ignorant, musically challenged folk of the East Midlands don't know what they've missed. Who could turn down the opportunity for a night of German muttering and clanking? (Obviously almost the entire population, apart from me and Rullsenberg, of the East Midlands).

So I'm at a loose end on Thursday when I should have been listening to sounds like this.



But on Wednesday I have got another gig to go to.

Twenty pound notes

Has anyone seen the new Adam Smith twenty pound note? Rullsenberg has but every time I've been to a cash machine or asked for cash back at a supermarket I've been given either tens or tens and an old crinkled twenty.

Nostalgia corner, but I can recall the introduction of the twenty pence piece. It was ages before I saw one of those. Then I was one of the last to see a pound coin. As for the two pound coin, they were a year old before I got my grubby mitts on one.

Please, please, please, let me get what I want, this time.

A Visit to Iraq

Harry Barnes gives an informative account of a trip to Iraq he made in 2006.

In this piece he recalls meeting Najim Abd-Jasem, who was kidnapped, tortured and murdered at the end of March 2007. Until his murder, Najim was the General Secretary of the Mechanics, Printers and Metalworkers Union in Baghdad.

Najim had been an active member of the underground Workers' Trade Union Movement during Saddam Hussein's rule and had struggled against the regime, losing his employment as a consequence.

He was a key founder member of the new free Trade Union Movement which emerged in Iraq immediately after the Coalition's invasion. He helped establish both his own Trade Union and the wider body it affiliated to - the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU). The later has now merged into a wider body known as the General Federation of Iraqi Workers and is recognised by the Arab Federation of Trade Unions.

Those seeking to create a better world in Iraq are being targetted by the so-called "insurgency" who see a non-sectarian future as a bad thing.

(Thanks to Will Rubbish)

Denial

There are all sorts of people denying the Holocaust: The BNP described by Denis Fernando of Unite Against Fascism as

"... a fascist party. It has a history of criminal convictions, violence and Holocaust denial. These are not the politics of a normal political party, but a fascist group, utilising the democratic system to gain a foothold in mainstream politics.",

to the leader of Iran

"An international cast of established Holocaust deniers and implacable foes of Israel were given an open forum by Iran ... to support Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's contention that the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis was a "myth".

I've just found this site that sets out to "visit a world where these revisionists have won. A world where facts too painful to be remembered are simply erased, and the sins of facism are eliminated en masse" and tries to stop Holocaust denial (aka revisionism) gaining hold.



It makes uncomfortable viewing, as it should, but I found some of the images worthwhile and informative viewing. Move your cursor over the thumbnail to see the removed section of the image. The site is revisionist photos.

Aunty Clerical Comes to Tea

As Hak Mao points out, this is anticlericalism week at SCWR. Go and see pictures of clerics greeting fascists and fascists greeting fascist clerics.

It's time to empty the midden of fascists and fascist supporting scum.

Great idea thanks to the Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Co-operative Republic (SCWR).

Egyptian Strikes

According to Nicholas Wroe in the Guardian at a talk at the ICA with Slavoj Zizek, Gerry Cohen called a philosopher "an extremely unpleasant man".

Searching for the name of the philospher drew a blank. However I visited Lenin's Amusement Park, and a piece on labour strikes and uprisings in Egypt aiming to overthrow the corrupt regime of Mubarak. Lenin reports on

Recently, a remarkable article in Merip's Middle East Report by Hossam and Joel Beinin, discussed how Egyptians workers are challenging not only Mubarak's deep-state, but the whole economic order that the US seeks to impose. The privatisation drives, the cuts to wages and the attempts to reduce social protections for workers established under Nasser, have all provoked the fierce strike waves that have intensified even while state terror has intimidated opposition groups.

The Merip article itself gives a history of Egyptian Trade Unions. It seems that the General Federation of Egyptian Trade Unions is the government's main means of getting people in the street on pro-government rallies.

labor activists and strike leaders in the textile and railway sectors frequently mention the phrase “independent parallel national labor union.” Various leftist organizations are talking about building such a thing: the Trotskyist Revolutionary Socialists, the Nasserist Karama Party, the remnants of the Egyptian Communist Party, the People’s Socialist Party, the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Rights, and the Workers’ Coordination Committee. (Nearly absent from these deliberations is the “legal left” Tagammu‘ Party.) As of yet, however, there are no concrete plans.

The success of such endeavors will depend on whether industrial militancy is sustained, whether political activists can intervene in the strikes and whether workers can establish effective coordination among themselves. It will also depend on whether the Misr Spinning and Weaving workers indeed manage to withdraw from their government-dominated union. If they do score a victory against the union bureaucracy, other workers will be encouraged to emulate them. It is no secret that there is tremendous frustration with union leaders among the rank and file in the railways and other sectors.

Because of the high price of oil and receipts from the sale of public-sector firms, the government has significant cash reserves and can afford to meet workers’ bread-and-butter demands. It has done so in the hopes that workers will return complacent to their jobs. But some workers, and it is not yet clear how many, have begun to connect their thin wallets with broader political and economic circumstances -- the entrenchment of autocracy, widespread government incompetence and corruption, the regime’s subservience to the United States and its inability to offer meaningful support for the Palestinian people or meaningful opposition to the war in Iraq, high unemployment and the painfully obvious gap between rich and poor. Many Egyptians have begun to speak openly about the need for real change. Public-sector workers are well-positioned to play a role if they can organize themselves on a national basis.

There are many things wrong in Mubarak's Egypt (incompetence, corruption, torture, authoritarianism to give an incomplete list) and overthrowing the government may the only way to fix them.

What is meant by "meaningful support for the Palestinian people"? Financial support to develop the Palestinian economy? Military support? Financial support to develop the economy would be a good thing. Military support would just lead to more Palestinian and Israeli deaths and more instability in the region which would not be a good thing.

Cricket, Conspiracy and Murder

After looking at the Toronto Star for the last piece I noticed a piece on the sad death of Bob Woolmer. Now it has been confirmed that he died of "asphyxia as a result of manual strangulation" this has become

a mystery dripping in blood, passion, money and underworld intrigue. All that's missing is sex, grassy knolls and CSI: West Indies. But you never know. There is more, much, much more, to come.

Was it down to gambling? A disgruntled fan? Match fixers? Who yet knows? It's a sad week for cricket and for friends and family of Bob Woolmer.

Child Murder in Iraq

I was looking at a piece in the Toronto Star on children being deliberately murdered as they were left inside a car bomb in Bagdad

Police said today that children were used in a weekend car bombing in which the driver gained permission to park in a busy shopping area after he pointed out that he was leaving his children in the back seat.

The driver then ran away and detonated a bomb, killing the children and eight bystanders.

What other than outright murderous criminality can justify such an act? Does anyone support such an act? If anyone does support such acts haven't they resigned from membership of humanity?

(Via Harry's Place)

Encyclopedias from 1933 and Marx

My parents had a set of the New British Encyclopedia (Illustrated) published by Odhams Press in 1933. Several years ago this set passed into my hands.

I have always found it fascinating. Now I have a scanner I will put a selection of articles on my blog. The first entry will be that of Karl Marx.



That should be readable if you double-click on the image.

Ear.

Several months ago I moved offices. At my new desk I noticed my new neighbour sketching. On his pad was a sketch of my right ear. He's just given me a picture of what he did with it.

So, walls do have an ear.

Beta Boswelox

It's now been a fortnight since I last blogged.

Busy and knackered.

And my work pc consistently fails to open the Blogger Beta login screen to request a username and password.

Pish. Pish. Pish

Trident is a waste of money and so is it's replacement

Simple.

The validity of Mutually Assured Destruction was unproven at the height of the Cold War. Now, in an age of asymmetric warfare and irrational "players" it won't work.

The argument goes:

"If you fire at us a nuclear weapon which will destroy us then we will fire at you a weapon which will destroy you."

"Ah. But I am going to get my reward in the next world and I'll have destroyed you. I win."

To such an idea M.A.D. means nothing.

Last weekend I was in Trafalgar Square when the demo against the Trident replacement, against attacking Iraq and for withdrawing troops from Iraq was on.

The Metropolitan Police gave reports of 2000 - 3000 people on the march.
The Stop the War Coalition reported 100,000. Given the capacity of Trafalgar Square is 50,000 and it was not full I'd say there about 20,000 to 30,000 there, tops. There's a discussion about it essentially upping the figure to agree more with the StWC here.

Here's some pictures of the demo taken on my new camera.















There was more than enough room to wander freely and swing (whatever you felt like swinging). Nobody felt squashed. It was one of the sparser attended demos I have seen.

Smoke, a London Peculiar

One of the joys of browsing market stalls and bookshops is coming across small magazines. Last weekend I found a copy of a fascinating magazine: Smoke a London Peculiar.

In issue 9 there's a splendid piece on St Giles Circus (where Chraing Cross Road meets Oxford Street and where Centrepoint is) and psychogeography, by Smoke's editor, Matt Haynes:

It's a true and fascinating fact, for instance, that the churches of the City and East End are aligned in triangular grids whose basic unit of measurement is taken from the dimensions of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. But it's not true because there's anything mystical about triangles or Jerusalem; it's true because architect Nicholas Hawksmoor was bonkers.

Here's the homepage for Smoke, a London Peculiar. And, if you're into that sort of thing, here's the myspace page for Smoke, a London Peculiar.

Small magazines are one of those things that make life worth living. That sharing in someone else's enthusiasms makes you feel glad to be alive.

Education, Education, Eduation in Iraq

With the Iraqi insurgency aiming to disrupt everyday life for Iraqis one of their main targets is schools.

A group of Iraqi teachers is currently visiting the UK. The Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) reports

Ali Ahmed Sindal, aged 63, a school inspector, checks on his three sons and daughter every day after work. But Ahmed, who spent four years on death row under Saddam Hussein, was hopeful: 'We are optimistic that all these things will be ended within one year, two years, three years. Then we are expecting a new life, a better life.'

In the meantime, the teachers want to keep improving the country's education system. Mahdi, who has brought the teachers to Britain with the support of the Iraqi Federation of Workers, said he was still planning strategies for teaching a year in advance despite the trouble.

'These people who attack education, attack schools and teachers have nothing in their heart but hate and violence and they want the destruction of Iraq. They have no sense of humanity.'

Teacher Mohamed Seed Hatem said the situation today 'was still better than it was. A bloody dictatorship has gone.'

That's a spirit of optimism to shame those who see only things getting worse.