Purges and Guilt

Owen Matthews' grandfather was Boris Lvovich Bibikov, a solid member of the Soviet Communist Part throughout the 1920s and 1930s. He was murdered by the NKVD in summer 1937.

Matthews describes how

Bibikov was no innocent caught by an evil and alien force beyond his comprehension. On the contrary, he was a propagandist, a fanatic of the new morality - the morality that now demanded his life, however pointlessly, for the greater good.

And

The men drawn to serve in the NKVD, in the famous phrase of its founder, Felix Dzerzhinsky, could either be saints or scoundrels. But they were not aliens, not foreigners, but men, Russian men, made of the same tissue and fed by the same blood as their victims. "Where did this wolf-tribe appear from among our own people?" asked Solzhenitsyn. "Does it really stem from our own roots? Our own blood? It is ours."

This was the true, dark genius behind the purge. Not simply to put two strangers into a room, one a victim, one an executioner, and convince one to kill the other, but to convince both that this murder served some higher purpose. This can happen only when a man becomes a political commodity, a unit in a cold calculation, his life and death to be planned and disposed of just like a ton of steel or a truckload of bricks. This, without doubt, was Bibikov's belief. He lived by it and died by it.

And so it goes. And so it goes. For the greater glory ...

Life, Art and A Priest

A priest in Lourdes has been found with a large amount of money in his bank account. He is rumoured to have gone for the "the money is just resting in my account defence".

Italian Fascism

There's an excellent post over at DSTPFW on the rise of Fascism and the disgusting treating of Roma and Gypises in Italy.



My Italian not being what it should be, Babelfish tells me the poster says "For greater emergency you offer a finger to Maroni" (Maroni is the Italian Interior Minister, and leader of the anti immigrant Northern League, responsible for a planned census of Roma and a much criticized plan to fingerprint Roma children).

Never forget. Don't let it happen anywhere.

Zimbabwe and the UK's Caring Border Agency

The Observer reports on Britain's reprehensible attack on Zimbabwean refugees and asylum seekers. "Britain is forcing as many as 11,000 Zimbabweans seeking refuge here to make a stark choice between destitution or returning home to possible torture or death". Why are refugees and asylum seekers forbidden from working? It's almost as if immigration policy and asylum is biased towards the independently wealthy. That couldn't possibly be the case under a Labour government. Tell me I'm wrong.

As the Observer reports

A UK Border Agency spokeswoman said that, although the agency was sending out letters ordering failed Zimbabwean asylum seekers to return home, it had no plans to start forced removals. 'We always seek to assist anyone who wishes to return,' she said.

So there are no plans for early morning raids and the barbarity of forced removals, just give people the option: living in the UK with no financial or social support or return to Zimbabwe. That's not putting people in shit creek without a paddle, is it? Crap choice one, or crap choice two. Isn't the Border Agency wonderful? Make life so intolerable in the UK that anywhere seems better. Wonderful.

You can read the official UK Border Agency Operational Guidance Note (OGN) on the state of Zimbabwe here Zimbabwe OGN.

It's full of descriptions of what someone has to show to remain in the UK. If they do not show what is required then they can be deported back to Zimbabwe. They may get returned from whence they came. If they're lucky they may be "internally relocated" in Zimbabwe.

Someone sitting in a comfortable office in the UK makes a decision on the condition of Zimbabwe and threats to another person's life and liberty. That hardly seems the actions of a government that believes in fairness, justice, internationalism, international law, and the rights of refugees and asylum seekers.

The OGN "provides guidance on whether or not an individual making a claim is likely to face a real risk of persecution, unlawful killing or torture or inhuman or degrading treatment/ punishment". A liberal interpretation of this notice would make almost any claimant successful - and I think that's a good thing. However the likelihood is the interpretation is anything but liberal.

Section 3.6 looks at members of the MDC and states:

3.6.6 Internal relocation. Where the ill-treatment or persecution feared is at the hands of the state itself and the threat is credible, relocation to a different part of the country to escape this threat is not feasible.

3.6.7 Where the threat is from local ZANU-PF activists or locally based war veterans so that the claimant is at risk in their home area, the question of whether internal relocation is a reasonable option must in each case be considered on its merits taking into account the fact that there is a network of information available to ZANU-PF and war veterans.

And

3.6.9 Conclusion. Each case must be decided on its individual facts to determine whether a particular applicant is at risk, and, if they are, whether internal relocation is available. MDC activists who are able to establish that their political activities will mean that they are of serious adverse interest to the present regime in Zimbabwe will have a well-founded fear of persecution. It is unlikely that they will be able to relocate internally, and therefore it is likely that a grant of asylum will be appropriate.

3.6.10 Not all MDC activists, supporters or members will be able to show that they are known to the authorities or ZANU-PF activists or war veterans. For example, taking part in mass demonstrations, or being assaulted in random violence associated with the demonstration, is unlikely to result in an ongoing interest. It is therefore unlikely that such individuals would be able to demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution, and even if they could do so in their home area, internal relocation may be available. Where this is a feasible option for the individual and would not be unreasonable, such a claim will not warrant a grant of asylum or Humanitarian Protection.

3.6.11 However, where a low level activist, supporter or member is able credibly to show that their activities have resulted in them personally coming to the serious adverse attention of the authorities, ZANU-PF etc., they may be able to demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution. Such a person would not be able to rely on the protection of the state and it is unlikely that that they would be able to relocate internally, therefore it is likely that a grant of asylum will be appropriate.

My reading of that is that all a Zimbabwean has to do is plead membership of the MDC and "demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution" and they qualify for "asylum or Humanitarian Protection". Now what is the bar set to on "demonstrating a well-founded fear of persecution". Does the Border Agency require videos of threats? Written death threats?

The UK government cannot say that the situation is intolerable in Zimbabwe but we are sending thousands of people back anyway, without coming across as total bastards.

Tesco Rhymes with Alfresco Rhymes With Fiasco

One of our local centres, Beeston, is about to see the construction of a megalith. Sorry, that should read, a great big monstrosity of a Tesco. To clear the site they have demolished several shops, a pub and a garage and devastated a corner of the town.

A protest campaign has started led by the Church of the Militant Elvis Anti-Tesco Popular Front. Their manifesto begins:

Our candidate is fed up with Tesco wrecking Beeston town centre and putting small shopkeepers out of business. If elected he will do all he can to stop the relentless expansion of this corporate monster because at this rate by 2010 there will more Tesco's in Britain than Elvis impersonators.

Will Tesco just leave us alone? Or are they really bent on total domination of every bloody high street? When will they stop? Rapacious capitalist bastards.

[Via Liam]

Testimonies of Torture

June 26th is the UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture.

To mark the day B'selem and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel have put together a video of "David Senesh, an Israeli soldier who was held hostage by the Egyptian army, and Amjad Abu Salhah, a Palestinian who was arrested by Israel, describe the methods of torture to which they were subjected and their long-lasting influence."

Night Wraps The Sky

There is a new book out that looks at the work of Vladimir Mayakovsky. It's called "Night Wraps the Sky: Writings by and About Mayakovsky" and it is edited by Michael Almereyda.

There was a public performance earlier this year which you can listen to.

And here's the cover:



I'll be ordering it.

Broken Records and Twilight Sad

Last night we went out to see Twilight Sad and support.

The first support was a rather competent and earnest singer song-writer playing his acoustic songs about former girlfriends. What the world does not need is another singer song-writer bewailing his former lovers.

Then onto a stage the size of a dining table came the seven piece Broken Records. Drums, bass, 2 guitars, keyboards, violin and cello. Then they started. Echoes of the Waterboys. Echoes of Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Echoes of Arcade Fire. Awesome. Inspiring.



Then came the headliners Twilight Sad. Noisy. Energetic. Moody. Inspired by Joy Division. The lead singer is very inspired by the spirit of Ian Curtis. The potential is all there to be a very good band. The singer should be himself more and drop the Ian Curtis performance style.



Here's Rullenberg's take on the proceedings (and here as well).

Make your own mind up.

Coming and Not Going

Mark Haddon visits the Migrants Resource Centre and meets some interesting people.

According to official statistics, from the Home Office, which, by the way, says it is building a safe, just and tolerant society, the UK "removed" 3,025 asylum seekers in the first three months of 2008.

For the first quarter of 2008, the number of principal asylum applicants removed was 2,805, 13 per cent lower than in the first quarter of 2007 (3,205). Including dependants, a total of 3,025 asylum seekers were removed in the first quarter of 2008, 14 per cent lower than in the first quarter of 2007 (3,515). In 2007/08, 12,125 principal applicants were removed from the UK, 19 per cent lower than in 2006/07 (15,050). Including dependants, 13,100 asylum seekers were removed in 2007/08, 22 per cent lower than in 2006/07 (16,710).

Those statistics were brought you by the Home Office, which, by the way, is saying it is building a safe, just and tolerant society.

The Home Office, which is saying it is building a safe, just and tolerant society, is still forcibly deporting about a thousand people a month.

A "safe", "just" and "tolerant" society for who, exactly?

Here's a video report on local communities making a "safe", "just" and "tolerant" society by supporting the right of asyum seekers to stay in this country. Here's the associated article on communities campaigning for the right to remain.

Just remember "no one is illegal".

Asylum in Sunderland

Just finished reading Bryan Talbot's magisterial Alice in Sunderland. It makes the case that Lewis Carroll's work was largely inspired by the scenery and history of Wearside and Sunderland. It also discusses the history of comics and the history of Sunderland - a city that gave the world the electric light-bulb and the stars and stripes.

Some bits work wonderfully - actually all bits are brilliantly done - the exception being the overlong discursive meander with a community crime writer and artist. But, hey, the book tries so much and everything can't work. Talbot is willing to wander and connect various themes. A final documentary section, graphics on lined paper, uses English, and Sunderland, history to support asylum seekers against prejudice (both the whipped up and innate sorts).

It's a massively inspired and wondrous work. They don't mackem like this anymore.

Principia Mathematica and Stupidity Rampant

The petulant Simon Jenkins regurgitates a hobby horse and writes that the study of mathematics is unneccessary for most people and "finance, marketing and design, on service activities" have fed Britain's booming economy which has led to more students studying finance, economics, psychology and other "soft" subjects instead of mathematics, science and engineering. Note that Jenkins picks "soft subjects" that all require an understanding and use of higher level mathematics.

What stimulates today's students is the realm of the creative imagination and the working of the marketplace. This spectrum, from English and drama to business and finance, seems benign both to individuals and to the economy. Students are not stupid. They know where money is to be made, which is why they flock to medicine among the sciences.

And there was me thinking the money was to be made as a quantitative analyst in a hedge fund. The piece is just so wrong I don't know where to begin and Jenkins gets a new one torn in the comments.

In the comments Professor Ross Anderson makes the equally egregiously wrong point that

I teach computer science at Cambridge, and we've found that students can't cope with our course unless they got an A in A level maths. Pretty much the same holds in engineering, economics, physics and chemistry - indeed across the schools of technology and physical science.

Stop and think through the statement "students can't cope with our course unless they got an A in A level maths". One would think that computer science students at Cambridge fit into one of two camps: those with A level maths at grade A (as with any other grade would you be at Cambridge?); and those who haven't studied A level maths. So the evidence comes out as "students can't cope with our course unless they [have] A level maths". So unless Cambridge is accepting students with Bs, Cs, Ds and Es in A level maths Anderson's point about an A grade being necessary lacks evidence and becomes "our course requires A level maths".

Education, education and no right to leave the country

Societies thrive when all members are healthy, vibrant, active and reflective. Similarly my life is improved by the wellbeing of my neighbours. But that may just be me. Others may delight in the misfortunes of their neighbours. But not me.

Israel's future depends on a thriving Palestinian state. And a thriving state needs intelligent educated people. Students in Gaza have been given scholarships to study overseas. Some have been given Fulbright scholarships to study in the USA and others have places waiting at other institutions elsewhere.

I would have thought that it was in Israel's interest to let out all students with offers of places to study overseas. Well, after much protesting from the US State Department some of the Fulbright scholars have been allowed to proceed with their Israeli entry visa applications. Other students are not so fortunate.

At least two students have places in the UK. Wissam Abuajwa has a scholarship and a UK visa to study at Nottingham University; and Abir Abu Warda has a Ford Foundation-funded place at London Metropolitan University. Both of these students are appealing to the British government to support their applications for entry visas to Israel so they can leave the country.

In the Israeli High Court of Justice, Justice Elyakim Rubinstein is reported by the Jpost as saying that the ban is no less harmful to the Israeli interest because we have to live with the Palestinians in the future, too."

He warned that preventing students from accessing education "harms chances for some kind of coexistence."
The court case was run by Gisha: Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, an Israeli non-profit organization.

Gisha say that Israel has refused to grant hundreds of requests by Gaza students for entry permits to Israel so that they can travel abroad to continue their studies. And Gisha further says
"the ban "is part of a policy of closure and collective punishment that is trapping 1.5 million civilians."

Gisha's briefing on Israel's ban on students, and others, leaving Gaza, is an informative document, that argues

according to the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Hague Conventions of 1907, which were designed to protect the rights of civilians in times of war and occupation, the State of Israel is obligated to protect the residents of Gaza, to allow them to live normal lives and to safeguard their rights. Also according to the Geneva Convention and the Hague Conventions, Israel must provide for the regular functioning of civil institutions in Gaza, including the school system and institutions of higher education.
The Fourth Geneva Convention and its First Additional Protocol prohibit the use of collective punishment.
Among the rights which the State of Israel is obligated to uphold for the residents of Gaza is the right to leave and reenter the Gaza Strip. The right of any person to leave a given territory, including the territory in which he or she lives, is protected by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Israel's policy of stopping students take up courses either in Israel or overseas is morally and legally wrong and is politically stupid.

By its actions Israel is building up a generation of disaffected intelligent young people with a rage against Israel for stopping them studying overseas *and* is also delaying the much needed economic growth of Gaza and Palestine.

That's a double whammy of bad consequences that comes from being politically inept and stupid.

Save the Nottingham One from Deportation

As someone said, when you are known by a number and the name of a place then you are in deep shit. Let me introduce you to Hicham Yezza. He was the "administrative officer" arrested at Nottingham University last week over the downloading of a freely available document.

As this Hicham Yezza campaign site puts it

Hicham has lived in Nottingham for 13 years while he studied for undergraduate and postgraduate degrees and worked at the university, where he has built up a large network of close friends. The huge campaign to prevent his deportation is a testament to this. He served as a member of the University Senate for two terms (2004-5) and on the Student’s Union Executive Committee, was President of the Arabic Society, was the editor of the influential Voice magazine for international students, and is the long-time editor of Ceasefire magazine, a political journal. He was a prominent member of the artistic group ‘Al-Zaytouna’, and weeks before his arrest performed the leading role in a feature play at Nottingham Arts Theatre. Numerous references have been collected from reputable professors and prominent members of the local and national community that testify to his integrity and strong roots in the city. He lives and works in Nottingham and has shown every intention of fighting his case, as he thinks he has excellent grounds to remain in the U.K.

Let's not forget that no-one is illegal. The UK immigration service is a racist organisation that deliberately seeks out to deport people who's only crime is to overstay a visa. Often these are solid members of communities doing all the things that governments admire: relocating for education and employment; becoming active citizens.

Deportation on the grounds of involvement in a download of "legitimate research material" is just morally wrong, irrespective of Hicham Yezza's "status".

Hicham Yezza must stay and the Immigration Service needs a solid reform if not total abolition.

Ban Cluster Bombs

There's a petition from Cluster Bombs org uk that seeks to ban cluster bombs. As they say

Cluster munitions, weapons that release several hundred smaller ‘bomblets’ when fired, pose an unacceptable danger to civilians both during and long after a conflict. Civilians constitute 98 % of cluster munitions casualties.

The UK currently stockpiles and exports cluster bombs.

Here are some basic facts:
* 98% of recorded casualties are civilians.
* 27% of casualties are children.
* 67% casualties are killed or injured in course of earning their livelihood.
* 24 countries and regions are affected by cluster munitions worldwide.
* 5% to 30% of cluster bombs fail to explode on impact.
* 34 countries produce at least 210 different types of cluster bombs and 73 countries stockpile cluster bombs.
* The UK currently stockpiles and exports cluster bombs and used them during the war in Iraq.

Handicap International calls for
* A ban on the production, use and transfer of cluster bombs
* A commitment from the UK government in favour of an international agreement on this ban
* The destruction of any existing stocks

Can you really support the use of a munition that goes on killing and maiming when the region is no longer at war?

Yesh Din

I've just found, probably years behind everyone else a source of news from Israel, with particular reference to Human Rights abuses: Yesh Din. Here's a news report:

Over the last year, “Yesh Din” has received a number of complaints of settlers seizing private Palestinian agricultural lands. Today “Yesh Din” exposes for the first time that a meeting was held after the signing of the Oslo Accords, in which senior figures among the northern West Bank settlements decided to take measures to expand into lands surrounding the settlements, although these lands were not under their jurisdiction. Under the method chosen for carrying out this plan, the local councils of settlements appointed individual settlers to seize plots outside their jurisdiction, restrict access to the Palestinian landowners of the plots, and after a few years demand that the army declare them ‘state lands.’ According to “Yesh Din's” information, in some of the cases the army did in fact agree to this demand and the lands were declared state lands and officially made part of the settlements. This method was exposed during discussions held by the military appeal committee in Ofer camp, while reviewing an appeal of a Civil Administration order submitted by Michael Lesence, a settler from Kedumim. Lesence was given an eviction order from a plot of land belonging to Palestinian residents of Qadum, after the local council agreed to “Yesh Din's” demand they do so. During the discussions over the appeal, the Kedumim Council’s land coordinator, Ze'ev Moshinsky, and a former Council security officer, Michael Bar Neder, both gave testimony. Both confirmed that the Kedumim Council's practice of seizing lands surrounding Kedumim was used to expand the settlement's municipal lands. Moshinsky confirmed that the meeting of senior figures from the northern West Bank settlements took place, and that it was decided to map and seize "uncultivated" plots surrounding the settlements. Moshinsky even confirmed that the Kedumim council had the settlers sent to man the plots sign contracts avowing that they would not claim ownership of them. Bar Neder confirmed that the objective was the turn the plots into state lands by designating them as lands in use by the settlements. According to Moshinsky and Bar Neder's testimonies, Kedumim seized at least seven plots, some of which have already been declared state lands and became part of the settlement. From “Yesh Din's” information and testimonies by army representatives at the appeal committee, it is revealed that a central component in the "method" is to forcefully prevent Palestinians from reaching their lands and therefore legally ensure the declaration of the plots as ‘state lands’ by claiming "non-cultivation." Over the last year “Yesh Din” received seven complaints by Palestinians of seizure of their lands through this method.

Ban Flechettes

Knee-jerk response time.

There may be a case for justifying some armaments. But don't expect me to make that case. How does anyone make a case for flechettes? Let's fire in an area and kill and maim people indiscriminately. There again, is discriminate killing and maiming ever justified? Ethics 101 I'll leave for now.

BT'Selem argue against flechettes:

Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana’a was killed by a Flechette shell. This is the result of B’Tselem’s investigation, as well as the results of Shana’a’s autopsy, as reported in the media. B’Tselem demands that the Israeli Army’s Judge Advocate General order the immediate cessation of the use of this prohibited weapon in the Gaza Strip, and open a criminal investigation of the event.

The flechette shell is an anti-personnel weapon that is generally fired from a tank. The shell explodes in the air and releases thousands of small metal darts, which disperse in a conical arch three hundred meters long and about ninety meters wide.
According to B’Tselem statistics, at least 18 Palestinians were killed over the past 7 years due to the use of Flechette shells. Of them, 11 did not participate in the hostilities when killed, 2 were taking part in the hostilities when killed, and as to the additional 5, B’Tselem does not know whether they participated in the hostilities.

Circumstances in the Gaza Strip render the use of Flechette shells illegal. This is because to the wide area of dispersal of the darts shot out of the Shell makes its use in populated areas a type of indiscriminate firing which endangers innocent civilians, in violation of international humanitarian law.

B’Tselem is continuing its investigation into other civilian deaths as part of yesterday’s events in Juhor a-Dik village, southeast of Gaza City.

Glasgow

I'm in Glasgow on a weeks's course.

On Monday saw Mike Leigh's entertaining Happy Go Lucky. It's not filled with conflict or action but it leaves you feeling up. The moments of emotional depth are when it deals with bullying - by a primary school kid and also the after effects of childhood bullying on the racist, conspiracy theorising driving instructor.

Channel 4 quotes Mike Leigh:

"It's important to reject the growing fashion to be miserabilist, the growing fashion to be pessimistic and gloomy because the world is in a bad way. Everywhere there are people on the ground getting on with it and being positive."

And says

Poppy is the incarnation of Gandhi's words, 'Be the change you want to see in the world.'

But what was most important was that I saw it in the coolest cinema: the Glasgow Film Theatre as featured in the opening chapter of the splendid Lanark (if I recall correctly) when Duncan Thaw meets his mates.

Tonight I'm off to see Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip. Get down with the Pipettes or whatever.

Epitaph

Here's Robert Burns' epitaph to his "ever honoured father".

O YE whose cheek the tear of pity stains,
Draw near with pious rev’rence, and attend!
Here lie the loving husband’s dear remains,
The tender father, and the gen’rous friend;
The pitying heart that felt for human woe,
The dauntless heart that fear’d no human pride;
The friend of man-to vice alone a foe;
For “ev’n his failings lean’d to virtue’s side.”

Amen.

Workplace Spying

Here's a tale of bosses spying on workers.
Lidl has been discovered spying on its staff. The German supermarket chain is accused of "Stasi methods". I find it irritating that the Grauniad, in its sometimes patronising way, thinks its readers require a reminder that the Stasi were the East German secret police. Note to Guardian: we are intelligent people and we know who the Stasi were.

The story says

The detectives' records include details of precisely where employees had tattoos as well as information about their friends. "Her circle of friends consists mainly of drug addicts," reads one record. The detectives also had the task of identifying which employees appeared to be "incapable" or "introverted and naive".

In the Czech Republic

A female worker was forbidden to go to the toilet during working hours. An internal memorandum, which is now the centre of a court case in the republic, allegedly advised staff that "female workers who have their periods may go to the toilet now and again, but to enjoy this privilege they should wear a visible headband".

Recording how a German employee identified as Frau M spent her break, one report read: "Frau M wanted to make a call with her mobile phone at 14.05 ... She received the recorded message that she only had 85 cents left on her prepaid mobile. She managed to reach a friend with whom she would like to cook this evening, but on condition that her wage had been paid into her bank, because she would otherwise not have enough money to go shopping."

It is just wrong that any employer should snoop into the private lives of its staff. These practices breach laws on freedom of movement and freedom of expression. What makes management believe they can override the rights of workers?
Lidl said "the purpose was "not to monitor staff, but to establish possible abnormal behaviour". So "establishing possible abnormal behaviour" makes snooping a legitimate management activity? What is "possible abnormal behaviour"? And could we have some more "abnormal behaviour".

At First It Was A Rumour

Somewhere in Canary Wharf a chap in a three button single breasted Boss suit whispers to a colleague, wearing a double breasted Armani suit. "I say, I was having a drink at lunch with old Pongo. He said he knows someone who works as an accountant at HBOSH who told him that HBOSH is bust."

Armani suited chap says, "If HBOSH is bust then their shares will fall and we can sell short and clean up".

And that is just what three button single breasted Boss suit chap and double breasted Armani chap did.

These two chaps acted on inside information to trade in shares.

Unofficial information has to start somewhere. Any information about a company that is not a public announcement has to come from people either inside the company or from their associated advisors. That makes it inside information and trading on inside information is illegal.

What is the legality of acting on information you thought was inside information but was just a load of cockamamie airy fairy fantasy? Can Armani suited chap be prosecuted for insider trading?

And what is to be done with the whole rotten edifice of parasitic financial trading?

Sure, in a capitalist system there is a place for raising funds for worthwhile, and not so worthwhile, enterprises. But most trading is just a parasitic activity that benefits no-one bar the traders involved.

Jazz And A Monday Lunchtime

This Monday lunchtime I found myself in town. Buzzing in my head were some jazz riffs so I popped into a record store and decided to buy some jazz to fill the gaping lacunae in my cd collection.

Found a great cd Jutta Hipp with Zoot Sims.

Took a chance on someone I had never heard before. Got it home. Listened. And wow. It's moving. It's emotive. And it's got feeling. Listen.

Pi day

Today is the 14th of March, or as the Americans put it 3/14. That's an approximation to Pi and that's why today is the day some people celebrate Pi.

Here's the first million digits:
And here's a start

3.
1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209 7494459230781640628620899862803482534211706798214808651 3282306647093844609550582231725359408128481117450284102 7019385211055596446229489549303819644288109756659334461 2847564823378678316527120190914564856692346034861045432 6648213393607260249141273724587006606315588174881520920 9628292540917153643678925903600113305305488204665213841 ...

Go on. Take a look.

Update on the world

Or should that be to the world?

At the end of January I flew from London to New Zealand for my dad's funeral and to see family.

Got back to London, and thence to Nottingham, last Tuesday. Our house has no kitchen - the old one has been demolished to create a new one.

Last weekend Rullsenberg and I went down to London. Dinner at the excellent Ristorante Olivelli in Store Street. Hotel. Breakfast at Bar Bruno in Wardour Street. Then a walking tour of some churches around King William Street, especially the Hawksmoor. Nottinghamshire lad Hawksmoor definitely had his own style.

Rullsenberg had to be dragged, kicking into a guided tour of The Globe.

Saw The Killers with Burt Lancaster at the too too hot BFI.

Sunday made it to Spitalfields Market and Rough Trade East. Walking back met up with celebrating Kosovans in Trafalgar Square. Cars flying Kosovan flags circled central London making lots of noise and causing gridlock. Kosovans seem very happy to have their, limited, independence; Serbia seems unhappy that Kosovo wants to leave. Has Kosovo the wherewithal to survive as an independent nation? I am left wondering if it is a good thing that a nation splits into nations on the grounds of historic disagreements. What makes a nation? A shared past? An identity? A unifying culture?
Does Kosovo have what it takes?

Jetlagged still.

Some Mothers

Here's a tale about Bobby Fischer's mother, on the picket line at Grunwick,

In 1977, standing on the Grunwick picket line in north-west London, I recognised Regina Fischer and introduced myself. "Ah yes," she said grimly, "you're the one who writes all those horrible things about Bobby." I explained that I would be delighted to learn that Bobby's alleged views on the inferiority of women, the evils of socialism and the duplicity of the Jews had been totally misrepresented, and I would be sure to get published whatever she told me.

...

She considered this offer carefully. After some thought, she handed me a slice of the orange she was eating and said: "I forgive you." She added some words on the significance of vegetarianism and the meaningfulness of giving fruit. "But now," she said with absolute conviction, "I will stop this bus."

Arthur Scargill's miners had tried and failed to stop the Grunwick bus.

As it reached the gate, Regina threw herself in front of its wheels. Braking sharply, it ground to a halt. This was the only time during the historic Grunwick strike that the infamous bus was stopped by a demonstrator.

Graham Taylor
London

Definitely a "strong-willed woman". And where would we be without optimism of the will?

Democrats for Romney

As "approved by some guy you've never heard" of here's an appeal by Democrats for Romney.



You know it makes sense.

Hawk and A Hacksaw Gig

How do you describe Hawk And A Hacksaw? I suppose you could use words like Hungarian folk, Balkan wedding songs, Turkish folk. Whatever words you use if you like that sort of thing then you'll like Hawk and a Hacksaw. Oh, I forgot to say, it's party music.

Here's some pictures I took at a gig, at the Malt Cross in Nottingham on 5th December 2007. The lineup for this gig was Jeremy Barnes, Heather Tost on violin, Kovacs Ferenc on trumpet and violin, and Balazs Ungar on cimbalom (which is a hammered dulcimer, my sources tell me).

Jeremy Barnes and Heather Tost.



Jeremy Barnes and Kovacs Ferenc.



The whole band.



The logo on a drum



As an encore the band walked into the audience for some crowd participation. It was hard to tell the band apart from the audience if not for the instruments.

There's a review of an earlier Hawk and a Hacksaw gig here. And there's a cracking review of a night on the same tour at Anti-Social Life.

Hawk and A Hacksaw Review

Coming soon: pictures of a Hawk and A Hacksaw gig.

That Was Then In The Here and Now

There I was reading this week's super soaraway SW when I saw this gem of logical reasoning:

If the left allies with the invader, the eventual resistance will hate the left. Feminism is now very weak in Afghanistan because in the 1980s Afghan feminist women supported the Russians and their violent occupation.

So Jonathan Neale is arguing that if not for the political mistakes of Afghanistani feminists in the 1980s you would be unable to move for Feminist books and Feminist practices in downtown Kabul.

Oh! Optimism of the will. Wild wonderful optimism.

Reading

Time off from work has allowed me to start catching up on reading. A friend who subscribes to a wide range of magazines passes his cast offs to me. I've got several months New York Review of Books, Tribunes, Chartists, Le Monde Diplo to get through. Any sane person would take the easy route and either pass for recycling or pass them on to someone else.

I have also to get through the books and journals we bought over the summer.

In issue 32 of the Harvard Review there's a piece by Daniel Maier-Katkin and Birgit Maier-Katkin called Love and Reconciliation: The Case of Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger. It is June 1933, Heidegger has just become Rektor of Freiburg University, and goes to visit Karl Jaspers.

To Jaspers' question "How can a man as coarse as Hitler govern Germany?" Heidegger replied: "Culture is of no importance. Just look at his marvelous hands."

Who was that man's manicurist? Didn't you know a good manicure can excuse anything? Well, now you do.

Seasons Greetings

As Rullsenberg notes, this Xmas card is des pudel's kern.

So in a feeling of seasonal generosity take it as a gift from me to you and yours.

Travel Restrictions are a Bad Thing

One of the markers of a free society is the extent its citizens can travel freely. One day you decide to visit country X because you've heard they do an excellent cheese toastie. Fine. Go and taste the fine cheese toastie, the like of which has never been tasted on these shores.

Some countries, often those labelled as dictatorships or tyrannies, put restrictions on where their citizens can travel. For example Saudi Arabia prevents its citizens visiting Israel. Now, Israel is investigating three journalists, Lisa Goldman, Ron Ben Yishai and Tzur Sheizaf, on suspicion "of unauthorized travel to enemy states Syria and Lebanon to report for some of the country's main media outlets."

Sure Syrian and Lebanon are not exactly friendly towards Israel, and you may call them "enemy states", but in a free society citizens should be allowed freedom of movement inside and outside the country.

Every restriction on free movement of people makes a society less open and less free.

Touristy Pics

Last weekend I went with Rullsenberg to London. Being provincial types we like to take pictures. Here's a couple I like.

This one manages to get a London bus, a taxi, and St Paul's Cathedral in the same shot.



This one is a steamy shot from our bedroom.


Ok, it also has the tower of St Pancras train station. What did you expect?

Patronising Sexist Tosh

You know how it is when you're a member of various organisations and the journals and magazines come through the post, you sometimes wait some time before opening them.

In my latest copy of Engineering and Technology from the IET I noticed the following piece that reads as if it has come speeding from the 1950s.

Do you know what WAF is?” LG Electronics president and CEO James Kim asked the audience at the IFA consumer-electronics show in Berlin in August. The answer came back from the floor immediately: “woman acceptance factor”.
Kim was far from alone among executives at IFA in citing it and although he introduced WAF as a joke, he thought that there was money to be made by solving one of the stereotypical conflicts of the sexes. “No longer does the man make all the decisions regarding electronic products for the home,” he claimed. “By creating products that offer the ‘woman acceptance factor’, we can please both parties.

Has anyone read anything so patronisingly unfunny, outside of a Jimmy Carr gig?

This casual, patronising, sexism is what is deemed acceptable content, in the 21st century, for a magazine from a prestigious professional organisation. Whatever happened to feminism?

The argument is not only sexist it's also wrong. For the past twenty, nay thirty, years consumer electronics have used design and aesthetics as selling points. Look at the queue outside the Apple store for the aesthetically pleasing but over-hyped iPhone: nary a woman in sight. People want well designed consumer electronics that do not have the appearance and appeal of a brick. And that's "people" of all genders, not just people of one gender. To argue otherwise is to perpetuate a patronising, unhelpful and offensive stereotype that serves to perpetuate the stereotype of engineers as socially unaware geeks who wouldn't recognise a feminist if one came up and rammed an iPhone where the sun fails to shine.

Music Was My First Love

Just found, probably years after everyone else, the BBC's Peel's Festive 50s. With 31 seconds (probably a licensing fair use thing) of almost every track.

I was actually trying to find the song Venceremos, off the album Working Nights by Working Week and there it was number 50 in 1984. Singing on the track were Tracey Thorn and Robert Wyatt. What more is there anyone could want?

And now I find they've reformed (well, they had in 2005 and I've only just found them again).

Tributes Being Paid after Untimely Death of Scotland

The Daily Mash reports that

TRIBUTES are being paid to Scotland this morning after the entire country laughed itself to death.

Most would have been dead within minutes. The alarm was first raised at around 10pm last night as thousands of phone calls and text messages went unanswered.

Small groups of volunteers from Berwick-Upon-Tweed and Carlisle ventured north just after midnight only to find houses full of dead people gathered around still blaring television sets.

For more of this sad story read on.

More on Sudanese Refugees

Lisa Goldman interviewed some refugees from Sudan who were living and working on a kibbutz in northern Israel.

We asked why the kibbutz had decided to accept refugees from Darfur.

Jeanine looked at me sternly. “Do you know what happened at the Evian Conference in
1938?” she asked. “When all the countries gathered to try to find a solution
for the Jews of Germany and Austria but no-one was willing to give them
refuge?”

Yes, I answered, of course.

“So that’s why,” answered Jeanine. “We knew that we had a moral obligation, after what happened to us.”

Read on.

Thanks to Lisa Goldman in the comments.

Sudanese Refugees in Israel

Israel is becoming an increasingly popular destination for refugees from southern Sudan and the western region of Darfur.

Greater economic prospects in Israel are encouraging Sudanese refugees to cross from Egypt into Israel evading border patrols on the way.

Al-Ahram Weekly reports

Excessively harsh socio-economic conditions and racist attitudes in Egypt seem to be the main reason why Sudanese refugees want to relocate to Israel. Of the Sudanese refugees now resident in Israel 71 per cent report verbal and physical abuse as the main reason for their fleeing Egypt. Some 86 per cent had refugee status with the UNHCR in Egypt, though those crossing the border spent an average of six months in detention upon arrival in Israel. Others are subject to indefinite detention.

There's another section that suggests southern Sudanese are "culturally more attuned to Israeli culture, and Israelis warm up to them", whereas Darfurians are not so liked.

Israel, as is the wont of richer nations, is suggesting that Sudan's neighbours should take more refugees. Al Ahram says

There are an estimated 400,000 Sudanese refugees in Kenya, 400,000 in Chad and 100,000 in Egypt. Yet on the UN human development index, Israel stands at 23, Egypt at 111 and Kenya at 152. Chad is among the world's poorest and least developed nations and Sudan is not far behind.

Via Lisa Goldman's informative site I found this beautiful and emotive set of photos about Sudanese refugees in Israel. Go look.

What's happening in Darfur?

Here's a link to Globe for Darfur's news page.

And, reader, the news isn't good.

Here's Latin Quarter's Radio Africa - "I'm hearing only bad news from Radio Africa".

A day

Woke up early today, a sunday. Had to go in to work for 7am to finish a big system upgrade. The database upgrade scripts had been kicked off at 8pm on Friday. The scripts finished at 9am this morning. Our experience in development, with full copies of our development database took, on average, about 26 hours. The much more powerful production server took 37 hours. Go figure.

If I was making a symbolic point I would say that the development box succeeded without power, perhaps validating the withdrawal from power principle of Subcommandante Marcos. Or maybe not.

Give the system back to users. Return home by lunchtime for breakfast. Eat. Sleep. General malaise.

Power and Resistance

When you meet with power and resistance and treat those two impostors just the same, and then you'll be a revolutionary, my comrade.

Slavoj Zizek writes on power and resistance in the current London Review of Books. The piece is a critique of the latest book from the philosopher Simon Critchley, Infinitely Demanding. Critchley argues for a "politics of resistance" operating at a distance from the state "bombarding the state with impossible demands, of denouncing the limitations of state mechanisms". Zizek then brings out the "superego" to describe Critchley's "anarchic ethico-political agent" which "bombard[s] the state with demands; and the more the state tries to satisfy these demands, the more guilty it is seen to be. In compliance with this logic, the anarchic agents focus their protest not on open dictatorships, but on the hypocrisy of liberal democracies, who are accused of betraying their own professed principles." Wow. Liberal democracies aren't perfect lands of milk and honey. Tell me something new. Sure, it is worth seeking to change the egregious parts of liberal democracies, like the UK's immigration policies and the USA's prison system. Leaving critique's of "open dictatorships" to the people of those countries is like telling those people "I have heard your heart breaking story, now go and annoy someone else", and washing your hands of their predicament. Whatever happened to solidarity and internationalism?

Zizek then discusses the 2003 demonstrations against the war in Iraq:

Their paradoxical outcome was that both sides were satisfied. The protesters saved their beautiful souls: they made it clear that they don’t agree with the government’s policy on Iraq. Those in power calmly accepted it, even profited from it: not only did the protests in no way prevent the already-made decision to attack Iraq; they also served to legitimise it. Thus George Bush’s reaction to mass demonstrations protesting his visit to London, in effect: ‘You see, this is what we are fighting for, so that what people are doing here – protesting against their government policy – will be possible also in Iraq!’

Finally Zizek argues against "impossiblism".

... the truly subversive thing is not to insist on ‘infinite’ demands we know those in power cannot fulfil. Since they know that we know it, such an ‘infinitely demanding’ attitude presents no problem for those in power: ‘So wonderful that, with your critical demands, you remind us what kind of world we would all like to live in. Unfortunately, we live in the real world, where we have to make do with what is possible.’ The thing to do is, on the contrary, to bombard those in power with strategically well-selected, precise, finite demands, which can’t be met with the same excuse.

If these are not possible then what is possible? Make things better.

How Things Were

Madeleines. Or how things were when I was a lad. Last night Rullsenberg and I began watching the 1980's drama A Very British Coup with the splendid Ray McAnally. Even better was the screenwriting by the incomparable Alan Plater.

It being a school night we stayed til the Foreign Secretary, played by the always good Jim Carter, came back from the USSR with the money to free the nation from the strictures of the IMF. If only it were that easy. Marital infidelity, and - worse - being discovered by the press, meant he then had to resign. What happened to the dictum that Labour scandals were to do with money and Tory scandals with sex?

Thursday we get to watch it til the end.

Top One Hundred Numbers

That would be every one from one hundred to one. I was looking at George Szirte's blog on the brilliant Jan Svankmajer when I found this short film.



But should zero find its way in?

Back to My Roots

As an exiled Wolverhampton boy I do miss the old accent. And yes, it is an old accent still using many Anglo Saxon sounds. The Black Country Bloke at Large writes:

Basically the dialect of the Black Country seems to preserve the way people in England spoke before the great vowel shift!

The Great Vowel Shift was a gradual process which began in Chaucer's time (early 15th Century) and was continuing through the time of Shakespeare (early 17th Century). Speakers of English gradually changed the parts of their mouth used to articulate the long vowels. Simply put, the articulation point moved upward in the mouth. The vowels, which began being pronounced at the top, could not be moved farther up (without poking into the nose); they became diphthongs1. The upshot has been that the Anglo-Saxons lived (like the Scottish still do) in a 'hoose', and the English live in a 'house'; the Anglo-Saxons (like the Scottish) milked a 'coo', and the English milk a 'cow'; an Anglo-Saxon had a 'gode' day and the English have a 'good' one; an Anglo-Saxon had 'feef' fingers on each hand and the English have 'five'; they wore 'boats' on their 'fate' while the English wear 'boots' on our 'feet'. The Great Vowel Shift is still continuing today in regional dialects; many speakers are now trying to move the topmost articulation points farther up, producing new diphthongs.

So we do genuinely spake Shakespeares english!

For those of you who have been left wanting more try these Black Country Dialect sayings.

Supporting Palestinians

Jon Pike made a speech on the 2nd October about the death of the campaign to discriminate against Israeli academics. That's what you'd expect.

In the speech he goes on to make a welcome call for support for "real solidarity" with Israeli and Palestinian students and academics by supporting Gisha, Center for the the Legal Protection of Freedom of Movement, and Hamoked, Center for the Defence of the Inividual, and FQMS, the Foundation for Al Quds University Medical School.

Hamoked described itself as

Hamoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual is an Israeli human rights organization whose main objective is to assist Palestinians of the Occupied Territories whose rights are violated due to Israel's policies.

Both Gisha and Hamoked "oppose the restriction placed on Palestinians form studying at Israeli universities."whilst FQMS

provides teaching, and examiners on the medicine courses at Al Quds University and its Abu Dis campus. The Foundation provides funding for Palestinian students to train over here, and covers travel costs for British medics to go over to Al Quds. In particular, some of the teaching is at a distance, by email and video conferencing, including with students in Gaza.

Pike goes on to say

We publicised and campaigned around the case of Sawsan Salameh, prevented from taking up her PhD place at Hebrew University Jerusalem. There are, right now, restrictions placed on the travel of Palestinian students, and in some cases these are preventing them from taking up places at UK Universities.

We could not do this sort of work, as a union, before. We could not say a simple thing: that it’s wrong to discriminate in access to education merely on the basis of nationality. Now, we can say this, and in due time, we might even get a hearing. The fact that our voice may easily be dismissed in Israel at present is the fault of the boycotters. Right now it is important to raise the issue of the Bradford student from Gaza who is prevented from taking up his place because of the restrictions placed on exit and travel.

It is important to campaign against restrictions of travel rights for peaceful Palestinians. Free movement is a general human right.

Any policy of collective punishment or the assumption that people of a certain ethnicity are all guilty is racist and morally wrong. Guilt is an individual thing and should be punished accordingly.

Support Gisha, Hamoked, FQMS and B'Tselem.

[FQMS's president was Lord Gilmour who died in September 2007. Their website has not been updated since. Their aims are worthwhile but their website maintenance is sporadic.]

[Hat tip: Norm]

Exploitation That's What It's All About

Going through my photos from this year I found two images of window displays from job agencies.

The first image comes from Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles.



The second image comes from Derby in the East Midlands.



They say they do not pay peanuts but what does a monkey say to you? It says peanuts to me.

Thou Shalt Kill

Doing some reading of other people's blogs I read Reidski's excellent The Big Blowdown and saw this video by Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip.

Rabid Anti-Dentite

Tomorrow I have a dental appointment. Reminds me of this Seinfeld scene:



And here's another one about an answer phone and call screening:



Class (but not the sort that lends itself to a materialist analysis).

Three Johns

Via the informing, educating and agitating Counago and Spaves I have restarted listening to the wonderful Three Johns.

Great.

Bookshelves Don't Declutter Themselves

Bookshelves accumulate all sorts of clutter. Leaflets, pamphlets, flyers and books.

Looking at my bookshelves was starting to get depressing. So many books I have not touched in years. So I decided to donate to my local Oxfam book shop.

That is, of course, assuming they are sellable. Some were quite expensive like Operating System Concepts by Silberschatz and Galvin. I bought that ten years ago when I was a software engineer and had to know those things. Now I'm a DBA operating system fundamentals aren't as important as they used to be.

Carrier bags of heavy computer books are waiting by the front door for me to take to work tomorrow. From work I will lug them to my local Oxfam.

Free shelf space. A void. To fill.

Immigration Controls Pander to Racists

Immigration controls pander to racists. That's a simple enough idea. "Oh, the neighbourhood is changing its character, let's stop people like that coming into the country". And the politician seeking votes for his party stands and demonises others. And people read the unspoken racist sentiment. Some agree. Some disagree and say that immigration controls are wrong. Free movement of labour is the corollary to free movement of capital. It's one of the good parts of the free market neo-liberal package of ideas that's worth keeping. And it's the right thing to do.

Hak Mao argues agin immigration controls

Given Reid's political background*, his recourse to and enthusiasm for racist immigration** controls to restrict the movement and activities of those the Home Office considers 'undesirable' - a method which unjustly oppresses the innocent and seeks to make the guilty someone else's problem: a pointless exercise in the era of international travel and global communications - is entirely unsurprising. If people commit, or are conspiring to commit criminal acts, evidence of their malfeasance should be gathered and presented as evidence in the criminal courts, and, once convicted they should be imprisoned. When their sentence has been served, they should be released. Criminal behaviour must be dealt with by criminal sanctions, not by racist controls.

Amen.

Books and Quotes

When I was a part-time student, and unemployed, I used to spend my days studying, reading and applying for the occasional job. One of the books I read was The Bombardiers by Po Bronson. As high powered romps go it went. If you're interested it's about bond traders and the publisher's blurb says

"the sales manager [is] so overwhelmed by corporate ambition that he forces his traders to sell more bonds than they can handle. As the deals swirl, faster and riskier and bigger, the transactions become increasingly bizarre: shifting around the debt of failed savings and loans, financing investment in bankrupt Eastern European nations, and, finally, arranging a corporate takeover of certain assets in the Dominican Republic (in this case, the entire country)."

Anyway the story is not the point of this post. Trawling through a box of index cards I found this, taken from the book.

1. Knowledge is Power!
2. Knowledge is not a candy bar.
3. Word travels fast.
4. Power is temporary.

It purports to be a summary of Information Economics. As a summary it seems to work. I post this because I saw recently someone arguing that the Bank of England should have kept its deal with Northern Rock secret to stop depositors worrying and starting a run on the bank.

Is it good for public bodies to keep their major deals secret? Or is it a part of an older more circumspect way of business that is thankfully gone? Openness in government is a good thing. Let's have more of it.

Heroes

Everyone has heroes. Sometimes you find they have feet of clay [cliche alert].

A hero of mine is Orson Welles. In last week's LRB there's a review, by J Hoberman, of several biographies. Here's a quote.

As Welles was editing The Lady from Shanghai, the House Un-American Activities Committee turned its attention towards Hollywood. The FBI, whose files described Citizen Kane as ‘nothing more than an extension of the Communist Party’s campaign to smear one of its most effective and consistent opponents’, namely William Randolph Hearst, had long been interested in Welles. He was regarded as a threat, and placed on the FBI Security Index largely because of his political activities on behalf of the committee organised to defend the beleaguered Communist labour leader Harry Bridges and the 17 Mexican-American youths charged with murder in the 1942 Sleepy Lagoon case.[†]

Welles submitted himself to the 1947 interview with Hedda Hopper, a red-baiting ally of the FBI, in an attempt to get right with the authorities: ‘I’m sick of being called a Communist,’ he protested. ‘It’s true that I’ve worked for some of the things the Communist Party has advocated. But that was merely coincidental. I’m opposed to political dictatorship [and] organised ignorance.’

Let's say that I dispute his disavowal of being called "a Communist" but agree with "I’m opposed to political dictatorship [and] organised ignorance".

Cricket in the U.S.A

Beyond A Boundary is my favourite sporting book. It is also pretty damn good on culture and society.

Humanistic Academia (I use this phrase as it always irritated me to read in reviews books described as "a must read for students" when I could not see many science students, apart from myself, ever reading it. I was the student who read so widely around the subject he forgot the subject, but that's for another discussion) in the USA loves CLR James.

Unfortunately the centrality of cricket and cricketing analogies to Beyond A Boundary means it is the neglected work.

The New York based writer Joseph O'Neill reviews Beyond A Boundary and writes

cricket was, as it happens, the first modern American team sport -- which is to say, a sport properly organized and monitored. Benjamin Franklin was very interested in cricket, and by 1779 at least two teams, Brooklyn and Greenwich, were turning out regularly. More teams sprang up, and in 1838, the first formally constituted club, the St. George Club of New York City, came into being. Matches for money were played: In 1844, a Toronto team won a $1,000 purse in front of several thousand spectators in New York. Most of the players were British expats, but in Philadelphia, significant numbers of homegrown Americans took up the sport as an elite pastime and produced great cricketers and great clubs.

O'Neill then argues that

Using cricket to blur boundaries between white and black, colonized and colonizer, an-cient and modern, political and social, [James] stages a brilliant attack on "that categorization and specialization, that division of the human personality, which is the greatest curse of our time." His concern was profound and by no means abstract. Are there more-consequential divisions of human personality than the ones currently imposed by religion and nationality?

The trouble, of course, is that Americans, even if they are Americanists, can't read Beyond a Boundary. They can follow the words, but with what prospect of understanding them? How could their reading not be riddled with misconceptions, guesses, gray areas? E. P. Thompson once remarked, "I'm afraid that American theorists will not understand this, but the clue to everything lies in [James's] proper appreciation of the game of cricket." Unfortunately, he was right.

O'Neill ends with the Jamesian line, borrowed from Kipling, "What do they know of America who only America know?" Indeed.

(Hat Tip: Norm)

We Care, We Care A Lot

Eric Lee and LabourStart are campaigning with Unison in support of care workers in Barnet. The workers work for Fremantle Care a not-for-profit trust that is seeking to slash wages and impose worse terms and conditions.

On their website Fremantle have the usual managerial vision and values section that says their vision is to "To develop the skills and qualifications of our dedicated workforce" and their value is to "Encourag[e] every member of staff to contribute fully". Fishcakes.

Fremantle have tried to shut LabourStart down. Eric Lee writes:

The campaign we launched a little more than a week ago in support of low-paid workers in care homes in north London has generated more support than any other campaign we have ever done.

Already, well over 8,100 messages have been sent to the employer. This is even bigger than our 2005 campaign in support of the Gate Gourmet workers, which was a much more widely publicized dispute in the mainstream media.

As we mentioned in this week's message, the employer reacted swiftly and brutally -- first threatening us with a libel action in the English courts and then sacking a union rep.

And then on Thursday, in an unprecedented move, the employer (Fremantle Trust) contacted our internet service provider and demanded that they shut down the campaign or else face a lawsuit themselves.

We were contacted by the legal department of the internet service provider and told that we had until noon on Friday to close down the campaign or else the entire LabourStart site would be shut down.

We worked very hard over those 24 hours to attempt to get our provider to back down, and had the full support of Unison (Britain's giant public sector union, whose members are at the center of the dispute) but were not successful in doing this before the noon deadline on Friday.

As a result, at 11:59 on Friday we were compelled to shut down the campaigns.

But -- we instantly revived the campaign in nine languages on a different server, in a different country, with a new name that reflects our feeling at this time.

The new site is called "We will not be silenced!" and is located, appropriately enough, at http://www.wewillnotbesilenced.org/

If you have not yet sent off your message of protest to Fremantle, please do so from the new page.

Remember that you can use our system to send out your own message to the chief executive of Fremantle Trust -- and you can tell her, if you wish, what you think of this attempt to silence our campaign.

Please also inform all your lists and every trade unionist you know to use the new site to send a loud and clear message to this employer.

If Fremantle Trust were unhappy to receive 8,000 emails, how are they going to feel about getting thousands more in the next few days? Because that is exactly what is going to happen. We will not be intimidated, we will not be bullied, and we will not be silenced. The campaign continues.

Nick at 4glengate points out that LabourStart is working on behalf of Unison but Unison refuses to fund LabourStart becuase of Eric Lee's position on Israel. Hmm.

Now we have LabourStart playing an important role in a crucial UNISON dispute, at the request of the union. For my money, this just shows that the union leadership had no intention of actually carrying out the boycott decision, but that means the whole debate at conference was dishonest. I hope LabourStart's role in this campaign will help to set the groundwork for the boycott motion to be overturned next conference.

That partly explains why I joined the GMB when I recently began working in local government. I know the GMB has its own internal issues but it's not UNISON.

Changes

I've been away from work for three weeks. Just over the road from my office is Trent Bridge cricket ground home of Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club. Today I went past the ground for the first time in three weeks.

The Musters Road stand had been demolished.



The plans are online here.

What a difference three weeks makes.

Karl Popper in Christchurch

Wandering by the Arts Centre in Christchurch I stumbled upon this plaque commemorating Karl Popper's tenure at the University College and the writing of The Open Society and Its Enemies in 1943.



The quote of Popper's on the plaque came to mind when I watched Julian Temple's biopic of Joe Strummer "The Future is Unwritten". Strummer had obvious genius but he also had some crap character traits - dropping people, self obsession to name two.

As someone else said "Don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters".

Off for a Break

I'm off to see my folks in New Zealand. We're going via LA.

Planes.

Packing still to do.

Labels to write.

Check this. Check that.

Leave.

Summer Sundae 2007

Last weekend I went with Rullsenberg to Summer Sundae in jolly Lesta, sorry, Leicester.

Had a whale of a time.

Divine Comedy.

Cud.

Low.

Tom Russell with a brilliant song against the planned wall across the South West USA to stop Mexican immigrants. If Mexican immigrants to the SW USA were deported, and future migration stopped, the regional economy would collapse. Picking fruit, mowing lawns, building lawns and washing children. Who would do it? The SW USA needs low paid economic migrants. Sure, they are exploited. Sure, they should be paid more. Sure, some should be higher up the economic chain. Calling for an end to immigration to the USA is racist and against the economic interests of the USA.

Kitty Daisy and Lewis. Amazing rockabilly band.







Scoot over to Rullsenberg for some cracking reviews: Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

James on Trotsky

In Cultural Amnesia Clive James has an essay on Leon Trotsky.

A respected cultural citic has vouched an opinion that "James' essay on Trotsky is fucking shit".

James, as the liberal he sees himself as, sees any attempt at "an egalitarian project" as inevitably leading to the deaths of innocent people. He sees this by taking some examples, notably Stalin's USSR and forced collectivisation of agriculture, and constructing an ,incorrect, universal truth.

James sees Trotsky as a hero to "aesthetically minded progressives" who wished for "a vegetarian version of communism", "a more human version of the historic force that sacrificed innocent people to egalitarian principle".

According to James,Trotsky was idealised because he wrote, orated, loved women and threatened Soviet power so much that the sent assassins out to Mexico to kill him. If you change Soviet to US and Mexico to Afghanistan you can then change Trotsky to Osama Bin Laden argues James. So does that make George W Bush Stalin?

Like a bucket full of bullet holes James's argument holds no water.

"The only thing true about Trotsky's legend as some kind of lyrical humanist was that he was indeed unrealistic enough to think that the secretarial duties could safely be left to Stalin. His intolerance of being bored undid him." And "Trotsky wasn't interested in the hard grind of running the show: Leave that to Stalin. But, an important but, Trotsky yielded no points to Stalin in the matter of dealing with anybody who dared to contradict him." Was this the same Trotsky who is described in Lenin's last will for his "too far-reaching self-confidence and a disposition to be too much attracted by the purely administrative side of affairs"? (Isaac Deutscher,The Prophet Armed, Trotsky 1879 - 1921, Oxford, 1970, p516).
I think that gives Lenin one up on James.

Sure Trotsky was, at times, an unyielding, stubborn, murdering bastard. Witness Kronstadt. The massacre at Kronstadt was inexcusable and wrong. As Emma Goldman stands for many on the left when she quotes, and then criticises Lenin Lenin at the Tenth Congress of the CCP, in My Disillusionment with Russia, ch 27, "The sailors did not want the counter revolutionists but they did not want us either". Goldman goes on to argue that what made the suppression of the rebellion worse was that at the Tenth Congress "Lenin advocated free trade - a more reactionary step than any charged to the Kronstadt sailors".

This shows that Trotsky did not get a free ride from the non-Stalinist Left, well at least from anarchists.

James reveals a massive gap in his knowledge of geo-politics when he says "when totalitarianism is no longer a thing for states, but only for religious fanatics". So Burma is not totalitarian? North Korea is not totalitarian?

James's liberalism leads him to believe, wrongly, that communism, or egalitarian projects inevitably lead to mass deaths. He then loses against Lenin in a description of Trotsky's character. Then he ignores totally the remaining existence of totalitarian states. Finally he posits Trotsky's appeal on the fact that young people want to be him. Where is the evidence? A sudden crop of goatee beards?

Marseilleise and Patriotism

Socialist Unity have a discussion about Progressive Patriotism centred on this wonderful clip that always always sends a tingle down my spine and a tear to the eye.



As the comments at Socialist Unity say

It is also worth saying perhaps that this scene just wouldn’t work with “God Save the Queen”!, but it would with Mae Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau, Flower of Scotland, or Jerusalem.

And

if we have a referendum we should automatically assume that anyone proposing “God Saves the Queen” realy means the Sex Pistols - and I think we could live with that as a perfectly English national anthem

All those in favour ...

Drink Soaked Trots Have Moved

Drink Soaked Trots have moved to Drink Soaked Trots.

Healey Has Small Feet

This weekend I discovered that Denis Healey has small feet, UK size 6, European size 38.5, US size 6.5 (from ShoeSize.org) and he still dislikes Dr Death.

In an interview with John Harris

H[ealey's] most incisive character-sketch comes when we discuss the very different mischief wrought by the SDP, and the anticlimactic career of that short-lived political poster-boy David Owen. "When he was born," says Healey, "all the good fairies gave him every virtue: 'You'll be beautiful, you'll be intelligent, you'll have charm and charisma.' And the bad fairy came along and tapped him on the shoulder and said, 'But you'll be a shit.' That was his trouble."

Has anyone who has met Owen ever thought differently?

In the mid-1980s John Tomlinson was chosen as the rapporteur of the European Parliament to negotiate with Sweden over their future membership of the EU.

Tragically in 1986 the leader of the Swedish Social Democrats, Olaf Palme, was assassinated. As European Parliament rapporteur Tomlinson was invited to the state funeral. As a speaker of Swedish Tomlinson was popular with the Swedish Social Democratic Party and he was given a prominent seat for the ceremony. The official representative of the British state, David Owen, was given a seat several rows behind Tomlinson.

Owen and Tomlinson had a history as they had both served under Anthony Crosland in the Foreign Office in 1976, Owen being a junior minister and Tomlinson being a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State. Being made to sit behind Tomlinson, in a less prominent position, made Owen ask Tomlinson "What the fuck are you doing here in front of me?"

Such is the manner of Dr Death.

Rafah Border Crossing

BT'Selem have just issued a call for the opening of the Rafah Border Crossing.

30 July 2007: Joint Call by Israeli, Palestinian and European Human Rights Organizations: The Rafah Border Crossing Must be Opened

Gaza Residents Are Not Pawns in the Struggle for Control of the Strip

Israeli, Palestinian and European human rights organizations today issued a joint declaration calling on Israel , the Palestinian Authority, the European Union, and Egypt , to immediately open Gaza 's borders to passenger traffic, irrespective of their political agenda concerning Hamas. The organizations jointly stated that residents of the Strip must not be used as pawns in the struggle for control in Gaza . The continuous closure of the border crossing for more than six weeks is causing severe harm to hundreds of thousands of Gaza residents who cannot leave the Strip or return to it, impairing their ability to earn a living, receive medical treatment, or pursue education abroad. Various reports indicate that more than 20 people have already died while waiting to return to Gaza from Egypt .

A Gaza resident, aged 25, who is stuck on the Egyptian side of Rafah with his wife and infant son, told Gisha's researcher: “Our situation is a nightmare, it's hell. We came for 15 days to get treatment for the baby, and now we have been here for 65 days. My money has run out. There are many sick people here who traveled to Egypt for medical treatment and got stuck here… I have another son in Gaza and we cannot go back to him.” Another man, who is waiting at the El-Arish airport, said: “More than ninety people are stuck here… There are seriously ill people among us who went to Egypt for treatment and are now trapped here.”

The call by the organizations was directed at the four parties involved in operating the Rafah border crossing. According to the call, Israel 's duty to act to open the border between Gaza and Egypt is based on its responsibility to ensure the well-being of Palestinian residents of the Strip, due to Israel 's position as an occupying force, employing effective control over Gaza . There is importance to finding emergency solutions to reduce the suffering of those stranded in Egypt , said the organisations. However, those cannot replace the Rafah crossing, and there must be a solution to its operational difficulties.

The organizations called on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to care for the welfare of Gaza residents and to demand that Israel open Rafah crossing. The groups also said that it is incumbent upon the Hamas leadership in the Strip – which controls the security forces in Gaza – to allow for the safe opening of the crossing from the Gaza side, as part of its duty to safeguard the welfare and rights of Gaza 's residents.

The coalition of organizations called on Egypt to play its part by opening the border crossing from its side, and to attend to the needs of the thousands of Gaza residents waiting, some in intolerable conditions, on the Egyptian side. The organizations also called upon the European Union to issue an unequivocal statement that the Rafah border crossing must be opened immediately, and to demand that the parties permit the European observers to return to the crossing, since their presence is essential for its operation.

Participating organizations: Al-Haq, Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, Al-Dameer, B'Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, Gisha - Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, Hamoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual, The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network, The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, Rabbis for Human Rights, Yesh Din: Volunteers for Human Rights