Monty Johnstone

The unexpected death of "Monty Johnstone, Political and Social Historian" and Eurocommunist was announced in the Death Notices in yesterday's Guardian.

In Francis Beckett's Enenmy Within, The Rise and Fall of The British Communist Party (1998) Beckett acknowledges the "tireless Monty Johnstone who has been generous with his deep knowledge" and says that Monty has "spent many years of his life making sure that the darkest secrets of international Communism are not swept under the carpet" (p viii).

Becket goes on to mention that

"Monty Johnstone, condemned in the higher reaches of the CP ever since 1956 as a revisionist, was staying in Prague at the time of the Soviet invasion. I'd gone to spend a holiday to see what was going on - I was attracted by the programme of democratisation. On the night of 20 August I was with a the director of Czech television, Jiri Pelikan, who was also a member of Parliament's foreign affairs commission. He thought the Soviet Union would invade. I said he was exaggerating - Brezhnev would not be so foolish. As we parted outside the television station at 10 pm he said, "Come and see me again, if I'm still here." I laughed. But he was never to enter that building again."

Later Johnstone was to draft a pamphlet, at the request of the YCL, called Czechoslovakia's Struggle for Socialist Democracy. (Becket p164 - 165). After almost a decade of exile from the top ranks of the CP Johnstone "was at last respectable again and in demand to address meetings" (Becket p165).

For a more critical piece try this essay from 1976 by Jim Higgins on Monty Johnstone.

YOU CANNOT help having a sneaking regard for Monty Johnstone. He is quite un-putdownable. Not only that, by a quirk of an unjust world, he seems to have discovered some spring of eternal youth.

Perhaps that is why his best writing is reserved for the pages of the Young Communist League magazine, Cogito. In the late 1960s he produced a lengthy critique of Trotsky and Trotskyism part 1.

Despite a promise, in part 1, of an early appearance of part 2, we have had to wait 7 years to get the full beauty of Monty’s thought on the question. But now it is with us and it would be surly to cavil at the delay.

Monty Johnstone has some credentials, that set him apart from his fellow CP authors on the subject, to write on Trotskyism; In his extreme youth he was a Trotskyist, a trauma which – if it did not last long – must have left lasting scars.

He has actually read the source material, which as I say puts him one up on such as John Mahon, Willie Gallagher, William Wainwright, Betty Reid, Marjorie Pollitt, J.R.Campbell and a host of others – who have vented their ignorant literary spleen on Trotsky.

Monty knows that Trotsky was not in the pay of the Mikado (the one in Japan, not the Labour MP), Adolf Hitler or anyone else and, refreshingly, he says so. He takes some pains to point out that on Germany, during the rise of Nazism, Trotsky was right and Stalin, and the Comintern, were wrong.

That, however, is as far as Monty will go. On every other question Trotsky was wrong, apparently. The “fallacy” in Trotsky’s thought is traced back to his theory of Permanent Revolution. This theory, placing as it does the working class as the central core of socialist strategy and action, blinded poor old Trotsky so it seems, to the great revolutionary potential of the middle classes, the peasantry and the “progressive” capitalists, as represented, for example, by the Kuo-Min-Tang.

Now, of course, this is a point of view, and one that has activated the minds of the Stalinist wing of communism for many years. It is not, nevertheless, the only view on the question.

It is for example the view of quite a number of people that the theory of permanent revolution is one that explains, in a Marxist way, the developments of the post-war period in Eastern Europe and China and several other “workers’ paradises”.

...

In part 1 of his work Monty Johnstone conceded, readily, that the Moscow trials were a frame-up: What he did not make clear, though, was the reason for the need of such a method of winning an argument.

The fact is that Stalin was neither right or wrong on the questions Monty Johnstone discusses. Zinoviev and Kamenev were right, or wrong. Bukharin was right, or wrong. But Stalin just won the arguments and in the end it was with a gun or a long distance ice-axe.

In the process the Communist International was transformed into an instrument of Russian policy. The Communist Parties became the extension of Russian diplomacy. And almost without exception the men who made the revolution were killed, disgraced or capitulated completely.

Now sophisticated CP apologists will argue, with the characteristic dialectical chop-logic of the breed, that whatever the crimes of Stalin, whatever the inadequacy of his theoretical grasp, it all came right in the end.

Well that too is a point of view. Even if it flies in the face of all the facts, and it ignores the divisions in the Communist movement, and the abject failure of the Western Communist parties to see any route to socialism except via a bourgeois parliament.

It is true that Trotsky had his failings but he never dreamed that working class power could be exercised through a capitalist institution. For Monty and his chums in the Italian CP this may smack of ultra-leftism; for others it sounds dangerously like marxism.

Our advice to Monty Johnstone is that, now he has completed his work on Trotsky, he should reexamine the Stalinist tradition and attempt to explain the phenomena of the late J.V.Stalin. It will be instructive, worthwhile for the YCL and will undoubtedly get him a highly paid post squaring circles.

Relationships

Just sent an email to a friend.

Got this message back:

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at yahoo.com.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.

<name@host.com>:
207.183.238.67 does not like recipient.
Remote host said: 551 5.7.1 Recipient Unable to accept message
Giving up on 207.183.238.67.


It seems like our relationship is over. And that makes me sad. I think it's the folksiness of "I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out" that adds to the pathos.

Meme House

I have just been tagged by Rob of Eine Kleine Nichtmusik with a meme, that originated with the wonderful Clare Sudbury of Boob Pencil.

1. Tell your readers three things about you that would make you the Ideal Housemate if you were imprisoned in a house with ten random strangers for weeks on end. Then three things that'd make you the Housemate From Hell.

Three Things on the Good Side



1. I can converse. I can converse about the Converse Chuck Taylor All Star and other shoes. I can converse about almost anything except pop trivia and biology. And one of those statements is a lie.


2. I have patience. But can you spend your whole life hanging around with arseholes? If I can take in several books I won't pester anyone. I'll be no bother. Honest.


3. I can cook a mean Bolognese (either veggie or meaty)



Three Things on the Bad Side



1. I can converse. I can converse about the Converse Chuck Taylor All Star and other shoes. I can converse about almost anything except pop trivia and biology. And one of those statements is a lie.


2. I have patience. But can you spend your whole life hanging around with arseholes? If I can take in several books I won't pester anyone. I'll be no bother. Honest.


3. I hate people who just witter on about nothing in particular without pausing for breath and who don't know how to carry a conversation so it includes other people and even when what they start off saying is vaguely interesting by the time they've reached what should be the end, the end my only friend, of their train of thought you have long since factored every number from here to 1729 into sums of cubes and started to wish that someone in a cloak and twirly moustache had abducted you and tied you to a railway track with great thick rope so a heroine in red and black 1950s style dress could come to the rescue but then you're disturbed by a thought that you chose to go in with these complete strangers who'd all chosen to go in to this charnel house so you have actually got something in common but then you stop and find yourself at war and watch waterfalls of pity fall and find yourself not paying a damm jot of attention to what is going on with life all around you and you stop to think that yes life is carrying on all around you with punctuation but you drift in and out of picking up words drifting across the ether from your housemates and you start to sing half remembered lyrics and then you start thinking that don't you know gazing into the vastness of it that G_d is Pooh Bear only to stop right now and know that when you gaze into abyss the abyss also gazes into you.

Oh and I'm sometimes not a social being.

Yes I will vote for the wonderful Clare. In fact I'll vote early and vote often to quote Tony Banks quoting someone else.

I'll tag anyone who reads this. Go on. Just do it.

Blogging At Work

Well, in the public sector. Some of us do work and we do it in the public sector. Research (and good honest to goodness academic research) shows that public sector bodies are using blogs to communicate with each other and the public.

The research was done by David Wyld at South Eastern Louisiana University who reasons that any body funded by the tax payer is a public body. As an old fashioned lefty I'd say that a public body is almost any body funded by the tax payer that is not part of the military. But he's an academic.

In looking at bloggers and blog readers, Wyld said they tend to be better educated, more diverse and more urban than the American population as a whole. In addition, from a political perspective, they are more civically involved and politically engaged in both the online and offline worlds.

The report includes tables detailing Wyld’s research, which is baseline data identifying blogs initiated by members of Congress, Congressional committees, governors and lieutenant governors, state legislators and other officials throughout the nation and in places as far away as Scotland and India.

The public sector body most eager to use blogging is U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM). That means that the global war on terror is being run and fought by bloggers.

A Logician's Dilemma

There's a classic logical puzzle about a cell, two doors and two guards. A bit like this from the brilliant xkcd.



But not.


(Via Norm)

Lichfield Jazz and Blues Festival

Sunday we went to Lichfield Jazz and Blues festival and saw some great acts.

First up we saw John Etheridge a great guitarist but a bit too rocky for jazz guitar.

Then the amazing Gareth Roberts, his fantatstic trombone and his quintet.

We also caught the excellent pianist Zoe Rahman.

The best band on was definitely Empirical.

Four of them are past members of Tomorrows Jazz Warriors namely, Jay Phelps trumpet (here last year with Dennis Rollins) Nathaniel Facey saxes, Neil Charles double bass, Shane Forbes drums with outstanding pianist Kit Downes completing the quintet.

Here's a performance from the Vortex Jazz Club



If you like jazz then these are your cup of tea. They have an album out shortly.

Dickie Attenborough's Crockery

I went with Rullsenberg to Leicester to pick up our Summer Sundae tickets and to see the exhibition of Picasso ceramics donated to the city museum and gallery by Richard and Sheila Attenborough.

The exhibition is brilliant. The pieces are well displayed. They are all of a quality you would expect of Picasso. The back story as to how the Attenborough's came to own a collection of Picasso ceramics is on the Times's site.

Before visiting the gallery we had a glorious lunch at The Quarter. That was a glorious lunch at The Quarter.

The link between Amin and Hussein

It's all down to money.



As seen in a shop off St Martins Lane, London, last week.

Gratuitous Use of the word rooster

Or, how to use a thesaurus and get things totally wrong.



As seen in a shop window off St Martin's Lane last week in London.

Hello, Goodbye

I've just been in London for a week on a course. Managed to meet up with an old friend. We talked. We drank. We ate and drank and talked some more. We walked and we drank. And we talked some more. Then it came to that time when you have to go your separate ways. You say goodbye. And realise there has to be a better way of parting. There are things you didn't say. They'll have to wait for next time.

Anyway, here's a link to a cool cartoon about goodbyes.



I recommend xkcd, a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

Bonfire of Books

A second hand book store owner has started to burn books he can't give away. When he wanted to thin out his stock libraries didn't want them, thrift stores didn't want them. Tom Wayne, owner of Kansas City's Prospero's Books, saw burning books as a protest against declinining support for the printed word. His colleague said "There are segments of this city where you go to an estate sale and find five TVs and three books". That's tragic. Is it really the case that not reading a book is as good as burning it? I don't think so. A book shelved has the potential to be read. A book burned can never be read. Many books are read and then recycled. How many Tom Clancy novels does the world need?

That second hand book shops are closing down is a cultural tragedy. That people aren't reading as much as they did once in a golden age of literacy is another cultural tragedy. Are those who still read reading better books? Reading Adorno over Adams (but there again, Douglas Adams and Henry Adams are both worth reading)? Reading Althusser over Debord, or even Debord over Althusser.

Secondhand book shops are a major cultural resource. I love going in to a good secondhand bookshop. Picking a book. Beginning to read it. Paying for a pile of books. Leaving with a pile of books. The acquisition of books is good. Reading books is better. Reading good books is better still. But how do you define a good book?

Notebooks and the social command

I was tidying up and reviewing some old notebooks when I found some notes I'd made on Mayakovsky. Can I find where the notes are from? Can I heck. But here are the notes. Someone may know from whence they came. Probably not some dizzy whore in 1804.

Unreconstructed non-revisionists

At the Chesterfield May Day rally there was ideology and newspapers on sale like biscuit and cakes at a CWI fete.

I bought The Proletarian sold by the CPGB-ML, who are a bunch of unreconstructed anti-imperialist non-revisionist Communists who left Scargill's Socialist Labour Party because of its commitment to social democracy.

As they say

The CPGB-ML was set up in July 2004 by a group of committed communists who had either been expelled or had resigned from the Socialist Labour Party. It was set up in recognition of the fact that there was no existing party in Britain that carried a consistently Marxist-Leninist, anti-imperialist, anti-social democratic political line. It was, and is, the unshakable conviction of these comrades that only such a party can develop into a genuine working-class vanguard.

And they unconditionally support Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Kim Jong Il in DPKR and the memory of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. There's a strong overlap with the Stalin Society which

was formed in 1991 to defend Stalin and his work on the basis of fact and to refute capitalist, revisionist, opportunist and Trotskyist propaganda directed against him.

At a meeting with the Workers Party of Korea (WKP) last September Harpal Brar said

The leadership of the Labour Party and the trade unions, which are very similar, have exercised a most harmful influence on the working-class movement in Britain. The old CPGB, under the guidance of the Comintern, was able to make deep inroads into the working-class movement, but that party went revisionist with the ascendancy of Khrushchevite revisionism in the CPSU(B) from 1956. In 1989, the CPGB dissolved itself and passed a resolution saying that the October Revolution had been a “mistake of historic proportions”.

In these circumstances, we picked up the banner of Marxism Leninism and tried to build a movement. We are trying hard to dig deep roots in the working class, with very limited success so far. With increasing imperialist attacks on the working class at home and the oppressed peoples abroad, people are beginning to listen to us. We are working hard to develop trade union and working-class work, but a lot has to be done.

So is the CPGB-ML going to win over the British working class to its program? Join us next week to find out. Erm. That may be postponed to next year. If you can't wait to find out just read The Proletarian.

As A Very Public Sociologist says the presence of smaller groups make the British left a fun place to be. Diverse ecosystems are good and that extends as much to a political ecosystem as to any other.

Laggardly posting of Chesterfield May Day

Last monday, 7th May 2007, Rullsenberg and I went to Chesterfield for the May Day Rally.

Here's the brass band before the march.



Here's the gathering of the banners, with what looks like an old NHS bed.



Here's one with Chesterfield's famour crooked spire.



Here's some more banners.



At the beginning of the rally there were stalls selling books. There were stalls selling ideology and newspapers.

And at the end of hte march the sun came out. And there's more in the next post.

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.

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

Miles and Trane

Dave Osler links to this amazing clip of Miles Davies and John Coltrane performing So What.



Go listen. Go be inspired.

Anorak returns to the cupboard.

After my moment of success in geekdom I now have a failure to report. I installed the bright, shiny and new Internet Explorer 7 and my PHP stopped working.

Here goes loads of investigation. Seems someone else had the same problem. Now just to find an answer. Finding a solution would be wrong, a bit too much like a Private Eye column.

Anorak is back in the cupboard.

*UPDATE*

Going to the source is always better than some dodgy teach-yourself book, even if it has some cute cat on the front. W3C revealed that my book was showing a style of coding that worked in IE6 and works in Firefox but is not the true and proper way. Do stuff that's right.

So endeth the lesson.

Anorak is in the post

I don't normally do geeky stuff but I've installed Apache 2.2 and PHP 5.2.0 on my laptop. And, after a gentle introduction, they even talk to each other.

I am so pleased.

And so to bed.

Lit Crit Comes Alive

Today Brenda attended the reburial of a Mohegan tribal chief, Mahomet Weyonomon, who came to England in 1736 seeking justice from George II about the capture of his land by English settlers.

Now it turns out that Mohegans are not Mohicans but James Fenimore Cooper got a tad confused.

Even James Fenimore Cooper got things confused when he wrote "Last of the Mohicans" in 1826. Since Cooper lived in Cooperstown, New York and the location of his story was the upper Hudson Valley, it can be presumed he was writing about the Mahican of the Hudson River, but the spelling variation chosen (Mohican) and use of Uncas, the name of a Mohegan sachem, has muddled things. Other factors have contributed to the confusion, not the least of which was the Mohegan were the largest group of the Brotherton Indians in Connecticut. After the Brotherton moved to the Oneida reserve in upstate New York in 1788, they became mixed with the Stockbridge Indians (Mahican) from western Massachusetts. Because of this, the present-day Stockbridge Tribe should contain descendants from both the Mahican and Mohegan. Anyone not confused at this point may consider himself an expert.

Such are the trials of a historical novelist. But Fenimore Cooper was not just any historical novelist. Fenimore Cooper had the delight of being savaged, in print, by Mark Twain.

Cooper's gift in the way of invention was not a rich endowment; but such as it was he liked to work it, he was pleased with the effects, and indeed he did some quite sweet things with it. In his little box of stage-properties he kept six or eight cunning devices, tricks, artifices for his savages and woodsmen to deceive and circumvent each other with, and he was never so happy as when he was working these innocent things and seeing them go. A favorite one was to make a moccasined person tread in the tracks of a moccasined enemy, and thus hide his own trail. Cooper wore out barrels and barrels of moccasins in working that trick. Another stage-property that he pulled out of his box pretty frequently was the broken twig. He prized his broken twig above all the rest of his effects, and worked it the hardest. It is a restful chapter in any book of his when somebody doesn't step on a dry twig and alarm all the reds and whites for two hundred yards around. Every time a Cooper person is in peril, and absolute silence is worth four dollars a minute, he is sure to step on a dry twig. There may be a hundred other handier things to step on, but that wouldn't satisfy Cooper. Cooper requires him to turn out and find a dry twig; and if he can't do it, go and borrow one. In fact, the Leatherstocking Series ought to have been called the Broken Twig Series.

Go and read the whole piece. If you've ever read a better literary savaging please let me know (and let me know the details).

The Power of Indirection

Magic is all about leading your audience to believe they are seeing one thing when something else is happening.

If that's a guiding light of magic then I have just had a magical journey. Rullsenberg and Cloud set off from Nottingham to Y Drenewydd. Taking advice from Multimap we decided to try the M6 Toll. Threw our £3.50 in the hopper, waited for the barrier to rise and off we went. We remarked how splendid the road was. We remarked we were going in the wrong direction. We left the splendid M6 Toll.

After stepping into the same river, almost, twice we found our way. Paying to go in the wrong direction.

There's an analogy in there, somewhere, trying to get out.

Indecision

Sometimes you have to make a decision.

Sometimes a decision is needed in seconds. And sometimes it takes a little longer. And sometimes you prevaricate. Here's what indecison is all about, according to Ambrose Bierce.

INDECISION, n.
The chief element of success; "for whereas," saith Sir Thomas Brewbold, "there is but one way to do nothing and divers way to do something, whereof, to a surety, only one is the right way, it followeth that he who from indecision standeth still hath not so many chances of going astray as he who pusheth forwards" -- a most clear and satisfactory exposition on the matter.
"Your prompt decision to attack," said Genera Grant on a certain occasion to General Gordon Granger, "was admirable; you had but five minutes to make up your mind in."

"Yes, sir," answered the victorious subordinate, "it is a great thing to be know exactly what to do in an emergency. When in doubt whether to attack or retreat I never hesitate a moment -- I toss us a copper."

"Do you mean to say that's what you did this time?" "Yes, General; but for Heaven's sake don't reprimand me: I disobeyed the coin."

That's from The Devil's Dictionary etext, expertly transcribed by Aloysius West.

One of those elongated weeks where ...

It seems like forever that I've been working hard trying to get other people's buggy software to work. Finally it's working as it should and I can relax.

Phew.

Calm. All is calm.

What's been happening in the world? I've gathered that Donald Rumsfeld "was asked to leave and he wouldn't stay" (that's a saying of my Mother's but other people's mother's may have prior claims on it and some girl's mothers are bigger than other girl's mothers and I don't want to start a fight).

Saddam Hussein has been sentenced to hang. Whatever the crime capital punishment is wrong. Always. In all circumstances. Wrong.

The Guardian blog gets more comments on a piece on book storage than on almost any other piece, ever. Book storage is a major topic of conversation in the house of Rullsenberg and Cloud. We talk about it. We shuffle books. We see books. We see books where there weren't books previously. Where do they come from?
Make it stop.