Full Picture

Not a partial picture. Not a bit of the picture. But a whole picture.



An ancient advert for the Guardian.

An event seen from one point of view gives one impression.
Seen from another point of view it gives a quite different impression.
But it’s only when you get the full picture you can fully understand what’s going on!

They don't make 'em like that anymore.

Trains and the Delights of Heavy Engineering

In yesterday's glorious sunshine I went with Rullsenberg on a reconnaissance mission to the Midland Railway Centre near Ripley in Derbyshire.

Yesterday they were running an English Electric event with, you've guessed it, electric trains.

It's also got shiny steam trains, shiny diesel trains and shiny electric trains. Nostalgia is in the air sending you back to the day when heavy engineering was about making things that worked and looked good, or to put it another way, making things that combined form and function to make a perfect whole.



If you do go, make time to go on the Golden Valley Light Railway, and visit the workshop to see the brilliant restoration work.



Also find time to go on the Butterley Park Miniature Railway, hold on for a fun ride.



The Midland railway Centre is full of enthusiastic, friendly people, willing to help you have a fun day out. Now some of you will go trains, how dull. It's not like that. Honest. You may even get the chance to drive a train, be it electric, diesel or steam.

And here's a signal box.

Tax Dodgers Plead for Sympathy

Yes that's U2, the notorious tax dodgers.

U2 drummer Larry Mullen believes rich and successful people are being unnecessarily humiliated when coming in and out of Ireland, describing this as “part of a new resentment of rich people in this country”.

“We have experienced [a situation] where coming in and out of the country at certain times is made more difficult than it should be — not only for us, but for a lot of wealthy people,” he said. “So it wasn’t personal. It was to do with the better-off being sort of humiliated.”

It's great that Bono advocates revoking the debt of developing nations. It would be even greater if he paid some tax.

[ Thanks to Will Rubbish ]

New Deals and False Promises

In the 1930's Roosevelt put into place the New Deal, which put in place much of America's public infrastructure and gave work to Orson Welles, Burt Lancaster and Joseph Cotten in the Federal Theatre Project. Not a bad thing.

In the first decade of the 21st century in the UK we have a scabby programme where private providers are paid to give support to unemployed people. Sometimes that support involves help with writing a CV and a covering letter. Sometimes people turn up with a perfectly good CV, indeed people turn up with several CVs adapted for the jobs they apply for. Sometimes those perfectly good CVs get passed off as the work of the private provider so the private provider can be paid by the Department for Work and Pensions. Here's a site with peoples' negative experiences of New Deal programmes.

The site has some powerful accounts of how New Deal is not working, but they don't like anyone quoting, being advocates of copyright and not for copylefting, or Creative Commons or the GPL.

When the private sector gets involved in the public realm, purely because of the money to be made, you just know the service will be crap, the people on the programme will be patronised, and they will get a crap service. It does not work.


[Via the comments at Dave Spart]

Back to My Roots

For those who don't talk proper here's a guide.



And here's the alphabet for those who want to talk proper.

Will Kaufman and Billy Bragg at Big Session 2009

On Saturday I scooted (actually by bus and train) over to Leicester for a day of the Big Session. It was lucky I got my ticket well in advance as the day was sold out.

After getting my bearings and seeing some performance poetry and the charming Delta Maid (the delta being that of the Mersey) I bumped into my friends. After beer and conversation we went to the see the amazing Will Kaufman do his brilliant Woody Guthrie show. He covers parts of the Great depression , the Dustbowl, Tin Pan Alley, and Fascism all through the songs and life story of Woody Guthrie. If you haven't seen his show I recommend you make an effort when he comes to a place near you.

All together "This land is our land ... it was made for you and me".

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me.

I roamed and I rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
While all around me a voice was sounding
Saying this land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
A voice was chanting, As the fog was lifting,
This land was made for you and me.

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

The night ended with another cracking peformance from the Milkman of Human Kindness. And here's a url if you can't recall the song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Goxm0x4dTw.

Gaza Blockade

Via Gisha, via B'Tselem, I picked up this video protesting the blockade of Gaza.



Now make like the audience for the Lonesome Death of Hattie Caroll.

The End of Our Elaborate Plans

There's a cracking discussion of the late 1970s and Andy Beckett's cracking book When the Lights Went Out. Here the article contrasts Callaghan and Brown.

If Callaghan could invariably, even in the most stressful moments of his immensely stressful premiership, come across as 'Sunny Jim', it was because he was never under many illusions. He was built for (and from) compromise. He accepted disappointment from the start - rather like the Freud who thought the point of psychoanalysis was to deliver patients from excruciating mental agony to 'ordinary misery', Callaghan believed that in politics there were only bad and worse decisions. Yet what counted as 'realism' for Callaghan was partly conditioned by forces outside the parliamentary machine and the financial system [.]

...

And the grandfatherly Callaghan, chirpy and self-possessed, rarely depressed, even amidst the Winter of Discontent that would bring him down, could not strike a greater contrast with the morose Brown, a resentful Richard who carries a wintry discontent with him always, on his heavy brows. For Callaghan stood only at what he thought would be a moment of painful transition for the Labour party, whereas Brown looks like the mortfied personification of the final death of the labour movement itself.

It is time to leave behind stale, decaying, dying representational democracy with its minimum engagement to a system of participatory democracy where people make real decisions that affect their lives.

That's not a call for the will of the noisiest. That's a call for real participatory democracy where people come together to make decsions about the places they live. Real decisions made by local people should encourage more people to take part in the political process instead of leaving it to the political classes.

[ Thanks to Will Rubbish in the comments over there. ]

The Stupid Party.

It's time for a quote from John Stuart Mill.

I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.
Letter to the Conservative MP, Sir John Pakington (March 1866)

And so say I.

I hardly think any sentient being would deny it.

Depths of Despond

With fascists winning two seats in England in the 2009 Euro elections has English politics reached a nadir or are there further depths to plummet?

Nazi Andrew Brons got 9.8 percent in Yorkshire.

Nazi Nick Griffin got 8 per cent in the North West.

The fascist party got 8.9 per cent in the North East; and 8.6 percent in the East and West Midlands.

A large section of the public has spoken and revealed itself as nasty, vicious, self obsessed, supporting a bullying fascist party revelling in jackboots smashing a human face forever.

And here's a picture:


Here's that quote in full from Frederick Douglass:

* If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must pay for all they get. If we ever get free from all the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and, if needs be, by our lives, and the lives of others.
o An address on West India Emancipation (1857-08-04)

Hope Not Hate.

Censure me in your wisdom

Yesterday went to see a splendid production of Julius Caesar at the Courtyard Theatre in Stratford.

It was gory. The blood flew about the stage. And the politics proved contemporary enough.



These are the speeches that impressed:

From Act 2 scene 1

DECIUS
Never fear that. If he be so resolved,
I can o'ersway him. For he loves to hear
That unicorns may be betrayed with trees,
And bears with glasses, elephants with holes,
Lions with toils, and men with flatterers.
But when I tell him he hates flatterers,
He says he does, being then most flatterèd.
Let me work.
For I can give his humor the true bent,
And I will bring him to the Capitol.

Then from Act III scene 1

CASCA and the other conspirators stab CAESAR. BRUTUS stabs him last.
CAESAR
Et tu, Bruté?—Then fall, Caesar.
(dies)

CAESAR
And you too, Brutus? In that case, die, Caesar.
(he dies)
CINNA
Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead!
Run hence, proclaim, cry it about the streets.

CINNA
Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead! Run and proclaim it in the streets.
CASSIUS
Some to the common pulpits, and cry out,
“Liberty, freedom, and enfranchisement!”

And again from Act III Scene 1

ANTONY
O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever livèd in the tide of times.
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!
Over thy wounds now do I prophesy—
Which, like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue—
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men.
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy.
Blood and destruction shall be so in use,
And dreadful objects so familiar,
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quartered with the hands of war,
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds,
And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.

Given the current parliamentary political circumstances I could not help imagining the heroic Regicides and the current, less than heroic, cabinet.

Money Swears

Over at the Brooklyn Rail Paul Mattick argues for the end of money:

if the whole financial system fell away, and money ceased to be the power source turning the wheels of production, the whole productive apparatus of society—machines, raw materials, and above all working people—would still be there, along with the human needs it can be made to serve. The fewer years of suffering and confusion it takes for people to figure this out, the better.

If you can't spend it money just becomes paper and metal. You can't eat it. You can't drink it. What is the point of it? Okay, you could set fire to it to keep yourself warm. But how long would that last.

Thanks to the ever perspicacious Will Rubbish.

The Social Command

Several years ago I blogged on some old notes I'd made on Mayakovsky's method.



Well, I've just found the second page:

As you were.

Random Opinions

More years ago than I care to remember I was browsing in a bookshop in Hay-on-Wye and found a book called Dissenting Opinions. At the time I was on the dole and just had the cash in my pocket to buy it. It's the musings of a liberal historian called Page Smith.

Tardy as ever, I have only just discovered anything about the man. Page was born in 1917 and died in 1995, spending a long fulfilled life in academia even after almost failing his BA.

More generally he absorbed Jamesian values and attitudes - respect for human individuality, service to society, disdain for the merely respectable, abiding sympathy for the eccentric. This blended with a predisposition toward a Calvinist view of human nature, a combination often puzzling to his contemporaries and collaborators. But contrarieties and contradictions, the mysteries of human conduct, did not disturb him, and he responded feelingly to words of Walt Whitman's which conveyed this unfathomable complexity.

Do I contradict myself?
Very well, I contradict myself.
I contain certain multitudes.

I particularly liked Page's Rules for Historians where he disdains the objective:

7. Never write about anything that you do not find of consuming interest, ideally, that you have not fallen in love with. It was once thought that objectivity (often interpreted as not caring) was essential to the writing of good history. The reverse is true; in Hegel's words: "Nothing great is accomplished without passion;" or, as Nietzsche put: "One is only creative in the shadow of love and love's illusions." Controlled and disciplined passion is the only proper mode for the historian.

I also liked

15. Professional historians often behave (and teach) as though they thought history was something embalmed in monographs; that it had a tapeworm-like structure made up of successive monographic increments; that it is cumulative, constructed of facts and units of facts (monographs) which in time will add up to TRUTH. The fact is that history, both past and present, is almost frighteningly "open". That is to say, the past exists only in some kind of relationship to the future and, in a real sense, vice versa, i.e., it is only possible to conceive of the future in terms of the past.

16. The historians passion for explanation and for constructing casual sequences in history is a dangerous delusion. It is the product of a world view in which manipulation and control are the dominant values. It obscures the fact that the unexpected is the only certainty in history and thus leaves people unprepared to cope with that same ultimate certainty - the unexpected. The teaching of history must reflect the openness of history. This means a new way of thinking about and teaching history. Indeed, it may mean not teaching history at all - simply studying history. History, while it has been written and read since the ancient Hebrews, has only lately been taught in colleges and universities. Some would argue that its decline as a humane study can be dated from the time when it was organized into part of the academic curriculum.

This I take to mean disdain a belief in progress, and moreover a belief in the inevitability of progress. Some things get better, such as the eradication of diseases like smallpox make life now better than in the medium term past. Some things get worse, such as the immiseration of working class communities, caused by capitalism's deskilling of swathes of the workforce, in the rich Northern countries. Other things get worse like Coca-Cola's ravages in the global South.

What we need is passionate accounts of the past to guide us into the future.

March of Greed

If you don't hand over some meat and gold you'll be thrown out on your big ass in a few hours.

The Past is a Foreign Country

I have always been a great believer in nurture having the upper hand over nature in human behaviour, after all you only have to watch Trading Places to see nurture beating nature. That's just a trite pop culture example but sometimes one discovers things about oneself that only strengthen one's beliefs.

Way back when there was an organisation called the Croydon Association for Moral Welfare. Here's proof of its existence for whose who doubt the joining of the words Croydon and Moral and Welfare.

Sometimes I think it was more to do with the welfare of Morals than the welfare of the people it "helped".

Coffee In the Morning, Coffee in the Evening

Coffee any time just as long as it ain't Starbucks. Starbucks is a determined anti-union shop, as detailed at drink soaked trots and stopstarbucks.com.

Here's a question: what's the difference between Starbucks and Walmart? The answer is that they both spend a fortune on union busting lawyers rather than concentrate on what they do, in Starbucks case, making and selling coffee.



Here's a link to the Starbucks Union which is affiliated to the IWW - Industrial Workers of the World.

This links to loads of other accounts of Starbuck's union busting activities.

Levellers' Day 2009

Tomorrow I am going to Levellers' day in Burford, Oxfordshire.

Levellers' day commemorates the day

17 May 1649, three soldiers were executed on Oliver Cromwell’s orders in Burford churchyard, Oxfordshire. They belonged to a movement popularly known as the Levellers, with beliefs in civil rights and religious tolerance.

During the Civil War, the Levellers fought on Parliament’s side, they had at first seen Cromwell as a liberator, but now saw him as a dictator. They were prepared to fight against him for their ideals and he was determined to crush them. Over 300 of them were captured by Cromwell’s troops and locked up in Burford church. Three were led out into the churchyard to be shot as ringleaders.

A good day of traditional marching and chanting and changing the world.

Castro on OAS

Here's Fidel Castro Ruz's criticism of the statement from the Organisation of American States on Cuba's Human Rights record.

In this hemisphere, the poor never had freedom of expression because they never received quality education and knowledge was reserved solely for the privileged and bourgeois elite. Don’t blame Venezuela now, which has done so much for education since the Bolivarian revolution, or the Republic of Haiti, crushed by poverty, diseases and natural catastrophes, as if any of these were ideal conditions for the freedom of expression proclaimed by the OAS. Do what Cuba is doing: first help to massively train quality healthcare personnel and send revolutionary doctors to the most remote corners of the country so that they may contribute to the saving of lives, and transmit to them educational programs and experiences; insist that the financial institutions of the developed and rich world send resources to build schools, train teachers, produce medicines, develop their agriculture and industries, and then talk about the rights of Man.

The right of freedom of expression means nothing when most of the people with that right have no means of asserting that right. That's not to say that Freedom of Expression will automatically fall, fully formed, out of a certain stage of development but it is an important part of all stages of development.

Meniningitis in Africa Ignored

West Africa has had over 2,000 people die this year from meningitis.

Has anyone read anything about this in newspapers? Has anyone read anything about this in blogs? Has anyone seen anything about this in television news? Well I haven't. It was only listening to the World Service on digital radio that I heard about this pandemic.

Doctors without borders (MSF) say

More than 1,900 people affected by meningitis have died since January in the “meningitis belt” of sub-Saharan Africa, which stretches from Senegal in the west to Ethiopia in the east. In Nigeria, Niger, and Chad alone, more than 56,000 cases of meningitis have been recorded in the areas where Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) medical teams, working alongside Ministry of Health staff, are treating sick patents. They are also vaccinating more than seven million people, making this the largest vaccination MSF has ever carried out.

Currently, dozens of MSF teams together with health authorities are performing vaccination campaigns throughout these countries to reduce the impact of the epidemic. Meanwhile, other MSF teams are travelling to urban and remote health centers to collect data, review and treat patients, and donate medicines.

The increasingly maligned and neo-liberal Europeam Community has

allocated 4.7 million Euros to eradicate meningitis in Nigeria and Niger as well as support the Economic Community of West African States in preventing conflict and enhancing good governance.

So what is the split between money for vaccines for meningitis and money for preventing conflict and enhancing good governance?

May Day in Caracas

I wasn't there but there's a good report at Venezuela Analysis.

The National Front of Bolivarian Workers march, supported by the National Union of Workers (Unete, which split from the CTV after it supported the coup against Chávez in April 2002), the Socialist Confederation of Workers (CST) and the Cruz Villegas current of the Confederation of United Venezuelan Workers (CUTV), began at three different points in Caracas then converged on Avenue Urdaneta, extending a kilometer and half as participants listened to a range of speakers and bands.

Marchers interviewed by national channel VTV expressed repeatedly that they were out marching in order to support the revolutionary process and the Chávez government.

President Hugo Chávez, addressing the large crowd said, "There's no socialism without the working class... solid, conscientious, and committed to what is being born in Venezuela, which is Socialism."

"The happiness and passion in the streets of Caracas [today] and the excellent transmission by [community and government run media] VTV, TeleSur, TVes, Radio Nacional, YVKE Mundial...affected me so much that although it wasn't planned that I would speak today, the enthusiasm motivated me."

That's like Fidel Castro announcing "unaccustomed as I am to public speaking I'll be brief".

The attempts of the Bolivarian Revolution to overcome Venezuela's problems by reducing poverty, increasing education resources, and increasing the rights of the poorest Venzuelans are to be applauded.

Secular Arguers, Befrienders, Controversialists, Debaters and Jokers

The National Secular Society has recently exposed the cost to the taxpayer of hospital chaplains being between £32 millions and £40 million.

The NSS says they should be paid for by churches (that's churches as in

"advocates for religions and for faith—i.e. the total surrender of rational autonomy, the submission to unreason and illegitimate authority. A G_d that cares, judges, and lays down taboos, customs, rules, rewards, punishments, traditions and social hierarchies is a monstrous deceit and a vile, sick, inanity. An evil ideology in sum".)

And that's right unless the role was changed to a secular one of wandering around the hospital and talking to patients, friends, family and visitors.

Imagine being a patient stuck in a ward for a week or two. Would you like someone to have an intelligent debate about the expulsion of the anarchists from the First International? A debate about whether Alex Cox's Repo Man is a classic depiction of Los Angeles Suburban Punks and early 1980s capitalism or just a cracking film with a cool soundtrack? A debate about why Slavoj Zizek in his book The Parallax View does not discuss the film The Parallax View?

And talking of The Parallax View, here's the montage scene.



But I digress, some people would welcome someone to share an intelligent conversation; or even to have a heated debate while they have to stay in hospital.
It may even aid people's mental health to have a good conversation or debate. And at least it will stop patients dying of boredom.

Such a service should be delivered by the staff, with no responsibility but to engage patients, and others, in conversation, debate and maybe even tell a few jokes. Intelligent conversation, debate and reasoned argument should be as much a right during a stay in hospital as good medical treatment. And to guarantee that right you need full time staff to deliver the service.

Bankers not to Blame

Here's an essay from Krisis arguing bankers are not to blame for the financial crisis, it's an endemic problem inherent to capitalism.

Crash Course
Erstellt von Achim

Why the collapsing of the financial bubble is not the fault of “greedy bankers” and why there can be no going back to a social welfare capitalism.

A new version of the “stab in the back” legend of the 1920s and ‘30s is making the rounds: “our” economy has supposedly fallen victim to the limitless greed of a handful of bankers and speculators. Gorged on the cheap money of the U.S. Federal Reserve and backed up by irresponsible politicians, these greedy bankers have–so the legend goes–brought the world to the edge of the abyss, while honest people are made to play the fools.

Nothing could be more contrary to fact nor, given its demagogic and even anti-Semitic propensity, as dangerously irrational as this notion–now being broadcast across the entire spectrum of public opinion. It stands things on their heads. The cause for the current misery is not to be sought in the huge over-valuation of financial markets; the latter was itself not a cause but an effect, a mechanism aimed at avoiding the real, underlying crisis with which capitalist society has been confronted ever since the 1970s. That was when the post-WWII boom, and the long and self-sustaining period of growth made possible by the generalization of industrial production methods and their expansion into new sectors such as auto-making, came to an end. Mass production of commodities in the 1950s and 1960s required additional masses of labor-power–labor-power thereby in a position to attract the flow of wages and means of subsistence that in turn enabled it to go on mass-producing such commodities. Since then, however, widespread rationalization of the core, world market-oriented sectors of production has displaced ever greater quantities of labor-power through processes of automation, thus destroying the basis for this “Fordist” mechanism and with it the precondition for any renewed tendency towards prosperity in the real economy. Capitalist crisis in its classical form gives way to an even more fundamental crisis in which the viability of labor itself comes to the fore.

De-valorized labor power –“superfluous” human beings?
The real insanity of the capitalist mode of production is expressed in the contradiction between the enormous advance in productivity brought about by the “microelectronic revolution” and the fact that that advance has not even come close to guaranteeing the possibility of a good life for all. On the contrary: work itself has been intensified, its tempo accelerated and the pressure to produce ramped up even more. Across the world, more and more people must sell their labor-power under the worst possible conditions because, as measured against the standard set by the current level of productivity worldwide, that labor-power is increasingly de-valorized.

But it is also a contradiction of capitalism that, in the process of becoming ‘too productive,’ it wrenches its own foundations out from under its feet. For a society that rests on the exploitation of human labor-power collides with its own structural limits as it renders this labor-power, to an ever-greater degree, superfluous. For over thirty years, the dynamic of the world economy has only been sustained thanks to the inflation of a speculative and credit bubble – what Marx termed “fictional capital.” Capital is diverted into the financial markets because the real economy no longer offers adequate investment possibilities. States go into debt to maintain their budgets and more and more people finance their own consumption, directly or indirectly, at the credit pump. In this way finance turned into the “basic industry” of the world market and the motor of capitalist growth. The “real economy” now so suddenly prized is not forced into submission by finance. On the contrary: it could only flourish as the latter’s appendage. The “Chinese economic miracle” and Germany’s so-called world-class export economy would never have been possible except for the gigantic, global recycling of debt that has been going on for more than twenty years, with the USA at the center of it all.

Crisis management and stagflation
Such methods of postponing an eventual collapse have now reached their limit. There is no reason to be overjoyed about this. The effects will be dramatic in the extreme. For the combined potential for economic crisis and de-valorization that has been building up over the last thirty years is now exploding violently into the here and now. Politics in the accepted sense may be able to influence the tempo and the trajectory of this process. But it is inherently incapable of stopping what has, in truth, become unstoppable. Either the rescue packages themselves, already topping the trillions, will go up in smoke, and the crisis will break through into the “real economy” with catastrophic results. Or they will catch hold of the runaway train one more time with the result being an exorbitant increase in national debt, followed by another, still more gigantic collapse in the near future. The return of “stagflation”—galloping inflation combined with a simultaneous recession—is already looming, and at much higher levels than in the 1970s.

The last decades have already seen massive downward pressure on wages, a descent into ever more precarious working conditions and the privatization of large parts of the public sector. The present crisis means that, to a degree previously undreamt of, ever-greater numbers of human beings will simply be declared “superfluous.” The much-invoked “new role of the state” has not the slightest chance of recreating a 1960s style social welfare capitalism, with full employment and a rising standard of living. What it portends, rather, is the organization and administering of racist and nationalist policies of social exclusion. The return of “regulation” and “state capitalism” is at this point conceivable only as an authoritarian and repressive form of crisis management.

The world is too wealthy for capitalism
The present financial crisis marks a turning point in the epoch of fictional capital and with it a new stage in the underlying crisis of capitalism already discernable in the 1970s. This is not just the crisis of a specifically “Anglo-Saxon system” of “neoliberalism,” as is widely affirmed amidst the current emotional outburst of European anti-Americanism–an outburst in which, however faint as yet, the echoes of anti-Semitism are unmistakable. What is clearly apparent now, rather, is that the world is and has long been too rich in relation to the stinginess of the capitalist mode of production—and that society will break apart, unravel and sink into a morass of poverty, violence and irrationalism if we do not succeed in overcoming that mode of production.

It is not the “speculators” and the financial markets that are the problem, but the utter absurdity of a society that produces wealth only as a waste product of the valorization of capital, whether as a real or a fictional process. The return to a seemingly stable capitalism, kept standing by the onslaught of massive armies of labor, is neither possible nor anything worth striving for.

Whatever sacrifices now being demanded of us in order to perpetuate the (self)destructive dynamic of this senseless mode of production and the capitalist way of life count only as an obscene mockery of the good and decent existence long since within reach in a society beyond commodity production, beyond money and beyond the state. With the present crisis the question of the system itself is finally being posed. It is time that we answered it.

Please distribute this text as widely as possible. Downloadable as a .PDF file at: www.krisis.org

Printed by: Förderverein Krisis e.V.
Postfach 81 02 69, 90247 Nürnberg

If you like this, you'll also like this essay by Norbert Trenkle, "Fictitious Capital and the Structural Crisis of Capitalist Reproduction".

Deference and the Elder Statesman

There is a tradition in the European Parliament that the eldest member becomes "the father of the chamber" and delivers the keynote opening address after the election. That's a gesture of deference to the wisdom of age. Just because you have lived through a greater number of years than any one else it does not automatically mean you are wiser. It just means you have blown out more candles on your birthday cake. With time some juvenile arseholes mature and become wiser people. Others just become older, wrinklier arseholes.

After the election the oldest member of the chamber could be a fascist, specifically, Jean Marie Le Pen. So the European Parliament, set up in the wake of the horrors of fascism, will give a platform to a fascist. Such is the way of history, and democracy, to repeat, like a bad gherkin, the first time as tragedy ... .

Stop Le Pen getting to the parliament.

In a further warning about the activities of fascists, the MEP for South-West England and Gibraltar warns of a BNP surge in the forhcoming election.

On the Sanctity of Contracts

There's a piece in the Guardian about tax fiddling banks.

A comment there points to this Huffington Post piece on how to stop bankers and insurers getting their bonus, contracts be damned.

"Sanctity of contracts" has for some time been TARP's equivalent of Harry Potter's magic wand, the thing you waved to make difficulties disappear (for financiers, of course; if you are an ordinary worker with a pension contract, by contrast, the magic doesn't work for you).

Those who want bonuses can have their jobs transferred to a new unit with all the toxic debt. If they refuse to waive their bonus then that new unit will be made bankrupt and has no money to pay any bonues. Problem solved.

The magical realist army

Reasons to be Impossible discusses the Borgean army.

Barmy Army

Though commanded by a real Lieutenant General, headquartered in Padua, Italy's so-called Terzo corpo designato d'Armata was a fiction - a giant cold-war bluff. It was dreamed up in the early 50s to convince Moscow that Nato's frontline was altogether more solid than was the case.

Successive commanders and their minuscule staffs generated mountains of paperwork to show that any commie troops breaching the Yugoslav border would have to reckon with an entire army corps, up to 300,000-strong, on the flat Venetian hinterland. Troops - most of them imaginary - were recruited and promoted, fuel was notionally stored, and ammunition supposedly distributed in perhaps the most elaborate exercise ever in Italian fantasia.

The army was disbanded in 1972 but archives and barracks the length of Italy have remained clogged with what La Stampa said was "tonnes" of paper. And none of it can be destroyed. Under Italian law, officially secret documents can only be pulped once they have been declassified. And they can only be declassified by the office or unit that created them. And, of course, this no longer exists ...

In your dreams you are a four star general. Some dreams.

If all that is solid melts into air what does that stuff that was in the air to begin with melt into?

I am Curious

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but sometimes it means something else. Sometimes people like a band because they like the music and the lyrics, and it all reminds them of important times. Great. That's part of what music should do.

Sometimes someone writes about their love and affection for a band and it comes across as being all about that person wanting to be associated with the message and the reputation of the band. That can be good as well.

Working in an office, and in an IT office at that, there are people who like to show how wacky they are by wearing a comedy tie. Or rather they think a comedy tie shows how wacky they are, when really everyone else thinks "what a tosser". It's even worse when they wear a comedy tie in an office where most people don't wear ties anyway.

Now in these days of social networking sites and revealing your interests a declaration of love for some bands can be the same as wearing a comedy tie shouting out "what a tosser". To be specific there are some managers, of a certain age, who proclaim themselves fans of Mark E Smith and The Fall. They may well be ardent fans. Too often they appear as too self-consciously giving off a message of "I am a maverick" when everyone else reads it as "tosser".

The Fall are, and were, a good band. But they don't half attract a lot of tossers as fans.

Motto of the Day

I'll get my geek coat.

Caldonia - that's her name

There's a letter in todays' Grauniad by the actor Bill Paterson about Caledonian integrity.

While wee Sir Fred was a Paisley school boy in 1973, we toured the country with John McGrath's great polemic The Cheviot, The Stag and The Black Black Oil. Towards the end of the play, we let rip with the statement: "Nationalism is not enough. The enemy of the Scottish people is Scottish capital as much as the foreign exploiter."

Isn't that true of all nationalisms? They aim to unite a people against "the foreign" while ignoring the class divisions and the power basis of the local society. Nationalism's rallying cry "kick out the foreign exploiters and replace them by a local exploiter" isn't going to get a lot of support when put like that.

Lincoln Cathedral

Last saturday Rullsenberg and I took the train to Lincoln.

Here's a shot of Lincoln cathedral.

The Colour of Fair Trade

I can remember reading someone saying that the colour of Africa is terracotta, a lush gorgeous reddy terracotta.

Here's a picture that mixes terracotta with a forest green and the bluest African skies.

That's all an introduction to a good post on fair trade by the Black Country Bloke.

Many nations of the South have had to agree to Structural adjustment programmes are an evil where nations are encouraged to sell off resources like water to global multi-nationals so they can get loans, reduced interest rates on loans and support from the rich North organisations like the World Bank. They privilege the rich over the poor and they are an evil of international trade. Nick Matthews writes:

Ghana would have been far better off without structural adjustment programmes and we still need real trade justice but in the meantime Divine chocolate is just that. It can be found in Oxfam shops and as the source it means that the Co-op sells more fair-trade chocolate than all the other supermarkets put together.

More important however is the relationship that has been built between the producers and the consumers based on the principle that the producers should be paid what they need rather than the market rate.

This is just one small step but it is a beginning as Marx said in the Critique of the Gotha Programme “after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

Numbers

What is a number? You could go on about set theory, Zermelo-Fraenkel, Russell, predecessor and successor functions. Or you could go here to find out about numbers, in a Terry Gilliam kind of way.


[ Via Will ]

Sack The Bosses Updated

Will informs me that Nestle have backed down in the dispute in Hong Kong. The union president, Chan Pong Yin, has been reinstated. The struggle continues for full union recognition at bthe company.

In Geneva IUF general secretary Ron Oswald commented, "It's good to see that Nestlé has seen sense in this case and we congratulate our members for their determined and courageous action in defence of their union". Oswald added, "Now we look to Nestlé to end its constant harassment of these workers and our members' effort to build a strong independent union. We demand the company fully recognizes their union with all the associated rights our members have every reason to expect.

Unions must be recognised by all employers. That's a universal truth.

Underarm Tactics

Here's footage of a moment of sporting perfidy.



It was 1st February 1981. Australia against New Zealand at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Last over. All to play for. Trevor Chappell bowling.

[ Via Virtual Stoa. ]

How to Talk Proper

Here are some hints on how to talk proper, like people do in the Black Country.

Sack the Bosses!

Nestle make crap coffee and are bastards to work for. It's crap coffee because it leaves a nasty taste in the mouth from all their ethical violations. They are bastards to work for because, as this report from the IUF shows, they treat their workers worse than a cat treats a mouse.

The company launched an aggressive assault on the union by suspending the union president, Chan Pong Yin, indefinitely. In doing so the message from management is clear: Nestle wants to return to the 17-hour workdays, wage increases of one percent in 12 years, and a system of insecurity maintained by having a third of the workforce on revolving casual contracts.

It was precisely these conditions that led to the strike in July 2008 that not only brought production to a standstill during peak season, but shocked the Hong Kong public by exposing such outrageous working conditions in the world's largest food manufacturing company. In the months following the strike the company has tried to repair its public image, while making a series of commitments to improve working conditions without actually implementing them.

The extreme hypocrisy of Nestle management was soon revealed when it followed up on the promise to grant permanent employment to casual workers (many of whom had worked there for 10 years) by firing them one by one before their contracts expired.

The same hypocrisy underpinned management’s response to union recognition - a fundamental trade union right that Nestle repeatedly claims it respects globally, but which management consistently violates.

Boycott Nestle. There are better coffees and chocolates out there.

See here for more information on the IUF.

Canteens are Everywhere

Even on the Death Star.




Or see here.

Broon's Vague, Vacuous Speeches

Back in 2007 Gordon Brown harked on about "British jobs for British workers". That probably made every BNP blackshirt smile.

On a charitable interpretation Broon may have been saying that workers in Britain need education and training so they can compete for the jobs of the future. Only thing is, most people took it at face value. And at face value it reads like a BNP slogan.

Now that employers are laying off workers and construction sites have contracts with European companies there's a clamour to give those jobs to Broon's "British workers". This is now becoming a campaign, and recruiting, point for the BNP.

Now I read an SWP article, and stand back in amazement, I almost agree with it.

But these strikes are based around the wrong slogans and target the wrong people

It’s right to fight for jobs and against wage-cutting. It’s right to take on the poisonous system of sub-contracting that is used to make workers compete against each other.

It’s right to demand that everyone is paid the proper rate for the job and that there’s no undercutting of national agreements. And we need militant action, including unofficial action, to win these demands.

But these strikes are not doing that – whatever some of those involved believe.

The slogan accepted by many of the strikers is “British jobs for British workers”. That comes directly from Gordon Brown’s speech to the Labour Party conference in 2007. And it has been encouraged by many in the higher levels of the Unite union. Derek Simpson and others at the top of Unite have done nothing to encourage resistance to job losses, or a fightback against repossessions or against the anti-union laws. Instead they go along with a campaign that can divide workers.

But it lets the bosses off the hook and it threatens murderous division at a time when we need unity in action to fight back.

It’s not Italians or Poles or Portuguese workers who are to blame for the attacks on British workers’ conditions.

Construction workers have always been forced to move far from home for jobs, whether inside a country or between countries. How many British workers (or their fathers or brothers) have been forced to work abroad from Dubai to Dusseldorf?

When workers are divided it’s the bosses who gain. Total Oil, who manage the Immingham refinery, make £5 billion every three months! Jacobs, the main contractor which has then sub-contracted to an Italian firm, made £250 million in 2007.

These are the people workers should be hitting, not turning on one another.

Those who urge on these strikes are playing with fire. Once the argument is raised it can open the door to racism against individuals. Already in some supermarket warehouses the racists are calling for action against workers from abroad.

We all know what will happen if the idea spreads that it’s foreigners, or immigrants or black or Asian people who are to blame for the crisis. It will be a disaster for the whole working class, will encourage every racist and fascist and make it easier for the bosses to ram through pay and job cuts. Already the BNP are pumping out racist propaganda supporting the strikes.

Everyone should ask themselves why Tory papers like the Express and the Sun and Mail – which hate union power and urge on privatisation – are sympathetic to the strikes

Right wing ideas gain a hold among workers when they see their lives being torn apart and the unions offer no lead. No doubt some in Unite think it’s easier to get a fight around a slogan like “British jobs for British workers” which sets people apart than one that brings people together like “Workers should not pay for the bosses’ crisis”. That’s a doomed strategy.

Do people really stand back and wait for a lead from unions? But that's not the point. The point is to change the strategy of the strikes to an inclusive one of attacking the employers and the practices of sub-contracting and low-wages.

Democracy and its Application

Israel has decided to ban two Arab political parties from standing in the forthcoming elections.

Members of the the new Meretz alignment reacted angrily to the decision.

"Labor and Kadima's position is a declaration of war on Israel's Arab citizens," a party member said. "Do Barak and Livni really prefer blocking Israel's Arabs' right to parliamentary activity and driving them to street demonstrations?"

"Every time a clear statement to ensure basic civil rights of the Arab minority is required, Labor and Kadima choose to side with the radical right wing for populist motives, to deprive the Arabs of their fundamental democratic rights," party chairman Haim Oron said.

Arab lawmakers Ahmed Tibi and Zahalka, political rivals who head the two Arab blocs in the Knesset, joined together in condemning yesterday's decision.

"It was a political trial led by a group of fascists and racists who are willing to see the Knesset without Arabs and want to see the country without Arabs," said Tibi.

Isn't one of the marks of a democracy allowing any qualified person freedom to stand for election? Banning political parties that claim to represent a vital demographic of the country is anti-democratic and verges on the authoritarian. It's just a wrong thing to do.

*** UPDATE ***

The ban has now been overturned. There is more information here. But there will probably be appeals and counter appeals at least until the election.And that should be the end of the matter.

Thanks to Will.

*** UPDATE THE SECOND ***

Thanks to the commenter formerly SIAW.

Gaza Blog

There is a new blog concentrating on the recent conflict in Gaza. It is produced by Israeli Human Rights Groups including B'Tselem. It is also available in Hebrew at gazaheb.blogspot.com.

Casualties
Update for 18 January '09, morning (GMT+2)
Gaza: at least 1,205 killed, of them at least 410 children and 98 women. More than half those killed since the ground incursion began (580) are women and children. Over 3,520 injured, of them over 350 severely (Palestinian Ministry of Health figures).
Israel: 13 killed, of them 1 woman and 10 soldiers. Over 82 civilians injured, of them 4 severely injured, not including those treated for shock , and 113 soldiers injured, of them one in critical condition and 20 suffer moderate or severe injuries.

And so it goes.

Bankers will be Bankers

It seems that banks and building societies are ignoring bonuses when assessing mortgage applications.

Melanie Bien of broker Savills Private Finance says: "It's basic salary only. We had a client who works for one of the big investment banks, who earns £140,000 per year in basic salary plus a bonus of £1.3m a year for the past three years. But Woolwich would only take the basic into account."

So this banker has had £3.9m over the last three years *AND* still wants a mortgage. Where did the money go? Can you drink almost £4 million in three years? Can you snort almost £4 million in three years?

The only thing I can assume is that this banker donated almost £4 million to orphanages for children in Uganda and kept it quiet. Is that likely? Maybe.

What would you have done with almost £4 million over three years? I can be damn sure even with my level of financial illiteracy I would not now be applying for a mortgage.

Late news

B'Tselem report on Gaza on New Year's Eve 2008.

Since the beginning of the military operation in the Gaza Strip, on 27 December 2008, the army has bombed dozens of houses, public buildings, and other structures throughout the Gaza Strip.

The principle of distinction, one of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law, states that all parties engaged in combat must distinguish between civilian objects and military targets, and are forbidden to intentionally attack civilians and civilian objects. The First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions establishes two conditions that must be met for an object to be considered a legitimate military target: it must effectively contribute to military action and its total destruction or partial neutralization offers a clear military advantage.

Despite this, other statements made by Israeli officials in recent days raise the suspicion that the army is not maintaining the requisite distinction in its attacks in Gaza. Prime Minster Ehud Olmert stated that, “Israel is not at war with the Palestinian people but with Hamas, which has dedicated itself to acting against residents of Israel. Accordingly, the objects attacked today were selected with the emphasis on the imperative to prevent harm to innocent persons.” In an article published in yesterday’s Washington Post, a senior military official was quoted as follows: "There are many aspects to Hamas, and we are trying to hit the whole spectrum, because everything is connected and everything supports terrorism against Israel." Major Avital Liebowitz, of the IDF Spokesperson’s Office, told the correspondent that the army had indeed widened its target list in comparison to previous operations, saying Hamas has used ostensibly civilian actions as a cover for military activities. "Anything affiliated with Hamas is a legitimate target," she said.

These comments suggest that the operation in Gaza is aimed against every person and entity tied in some way to Hamas, even if they are not engaged in military action against Israel. An examination of the sites that were bombed in recent days raises questions regarding the legality of targeting many of them.

For example, the military bombed the main police building in Gaza and killed, according to reports, forty-two Palestinians who were in a training course and were standing in formation at the time of the bombing. Participants in the course study first-aid, handling of public disturbances, human rights, public-safety exercises, and so forth. Following the course, the police officers are assigned to various arms of the police force in Gaza responsible for maintaining public order.

Another example is yesterday’s bombing of the government offices. These offices included the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Labor, Construction and Housing. An announcement made by the IDF Spokesperson’s Office regarding this attack stated that, “the attack was carried out in response to the ongoing rocket and mortar-shell fire carried out by Hamas over Israeli territory, and in the framework of IDF operations to strike at Hamas governmental infrastructure and members active in the organization.”

These are just examples of what appear to be clear civilian objects attacked by the army. On the face of it, the activity carried out in these places is not military activity aimed against Israel, and the IDF spokesperson does not even make this claim. Clearly, then, they cannot be considered military objects in accordance with the provisions of international humanitarian law – they do not make an effective contribution to the military activity against Israel and the attack provides Israel with no militaryadvantage whatsoever, and certainly not a clear militaryadvantage.

Hamas is certainly responsible for missile fire at Israeli civilians, which constitutes a war crime. However, as the entity effectively governing the Gaza Strip, it is also responsible for maintaining daily life. As such, it supervises the activity of all civilian frameworks in Gaza – among them the welfare, health, housing, and legal systems. Hamas must also ensure public order and safety by means of a police force. Therefore, even if Hamas is a “hostile entity” whose principle objective is to undermine the existence of the State of Israel, this does not lead to the conclusion that every act it carries out is intended to harm Israel and that every government ministry is a legitimate target.

The argument that striking at objects of this kind is consistent with international humanitarian law is untenable. Such an interpretation, which relates to these bodies as military objects, stretches the provisions of international humanitarian law in a way that is inconsistent with the articles cited above, and contravenes the principle of distinction that lies at the foundation of international humanitarian law. An intentional attack on a civilian target is a war crime.

Returned

As you may have gathered I have been away visitng family over in New Zealand.

I have now returned with bad jetlag. I do not know when to sleep or when to go to work or when to just be.

Onwards. It will pass.

If you're in the vicinity of the Otago Peninsula I can recommend Penguin Place as an opportunity to see some endangered, anti-social, yellow-eyed penguins. These yellow-eyed penguins are cute but they evolved before other species of penguin and have a trait of not flocking for protection or warmth, preferring their own family for comfort. I think that makes them proto-Thatcherite (no such thing as society) penguins. If he knew I think Steve Bell would be annoyed.

Waiting Books

I have a big list of books to read. Most of the books are sitting in piles around my study. Waiting to be read. Waiting to be picked up and read. Mostly just waiting.

Recent acquisitions include:

The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons for All by Peter Linebaugh.

The Captive Mind by Czeslaw Milosz.

Terrorism and Communism by Leon Trotsky with a preface by H N Brailsford and foreword by Slavoj Zizek.

Getting round to reading them. Slowly. Reading.

Test Department

Last weekend we went to London. In Rough Trade in Brick Lane we rediscovered Test Department's soundscape "The Unacceptable Face of Freedom".

I saw them do an Anti Apartheid Benefit in Wolverhampton in February 1987. They could only do an afternoon gig. That it snowed and there was a demo in town protesting the police killing of Clinton McCurbin in Next meant there were only about 20 people who braved the demo and the weather to see the band. They had the brilliant Sarah-Jane Morris guesting on vocals. Still one of the best gigs I have ever been to.

Here's some Test Department, but not from The Unacceptable Face of Freedom.


Couldn't get the sound to work. If you get any sound do let me know.

Stuckism in IT

Stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues again, or stuck trying to move a 240 gig database from an AIX server to a Windows server.

It's depressing doing a cross platform migration of Oracle databases especially where the table that's essential to our users is almost 200 gig and indivisible by design. And the export runs for two days and bombs out.

Our users only have to use the damn thing as a read only data source for 8 hours on Sunday while our computer centre temporarily has no power or communication links. And the pace of the export is like a sleeping tortoise walking through mud.

The reasons we have to struggle to put our production system on a Windows box and not use our disaster recovery site are too technical to list here but forward planning and infrastructure development are two reasons.

Sometimes I hate technology. The sheer monotony of it. Waiting. Try again. Fail again. Fail Better. And our emergency duty team of social workers will have an application to work with on sunday.

Psychoanalyse This

I found a psychoanalysing tool for blogs (via Coffee Shop Philosophy). The analysis gives a Myers-Briggs personality type.

It seems this blog is an ISTP - The Mechanics.

The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.

The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

Now I know it's all about the writing and not the author (rumours of the death of the author are greatly exaggerated) but most of the description also applies to the author. Most but not all. The final sentence, "They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters" is a no, no, no when it comes to the life of the author.

ISTPs are sometimes described as Crafter Artisans,

"introverts, [but] authoritarian in their interactions with others and .. forceful at influencing people. They focus on accomplishing tasks efficiently and skillfully.

To master the tool of their interest, ISTPs require a certain degree of seclusion in which to practice. The result is often a virtuosity that other types find difficult to match."

It seems that DSTPFW is also ISTP.

And it seems that Rullsenberg is ESTP - The Doers, also described as Promoter Artisans. ESTPs are "hands-on learners who live in the moment, seeking the best in life, wanting to share it with their friends." Strikes me as like Rullsenberg.

Billy Bragg at Rock City

Wednesday night I rushed with Rullsenberg to town to get tickets to see Billy Bragg.

He plays his guitar. He points out some pissed trouble makers. He carries on playing his guitar and singing in that Billy Bragg way. I am the milkman of human kindness. I will leave an extra pint. Chorus sung by the audience. [Corrected]

As Swiss Toni recounts

He chastised people who want to "throw piss" over the hope generated by Obama's election in the USA and suggested that although he is going to disappoint us over some things, at the moment he represents possibility above everything else and we should embrace that. The last time he played Rock City, he told us, was the night before the General Election in 1997, when the Labour party finally swept the hated Tory regime aside. No matter how much we felt that the Labour Government had let us down (I doubt all that many tories attend Bragg gigs), we had to gear ourselves up for another election next year because a Labour government still represents possibilities that we would not have if the Conservatives get back into power.

Half way through the show his voice started to go (you at the back, I heard you say, how could anyone tell) so he drank a mug of Throat Coat tea, "guaranteed to get you singing in tune", or so he said.

The encore was A New England with the audience singing the chorus - "I'm not looking for a new England, I'm just looking for another girl".

Politics. Tunes. Singalong. Is there any more you want from a night out in Nottingham?

Brendan Barber and Golden Balls

Meeting the Treasury Select Committee the other day Brendan Barber, head of the TUC, criticised the pay, and bonues, of bankers. Fine. A good thing.

Then Barber put his feet firmly in his mouth by speaking up for multi-million salaries paid to premier league football players:

"the remuneration paid to David Beckham is part of a system which does not apply to the rest of the human race"

No. Footballers' pay should be no different to the pay of everyone else. No special cases. Sure some people are better at their job than other people but that does not warrant a vast differential in salaries.

Leaked List of Johnsonian Scoundrels

There's a leaked list of Johnsonian scoundrels floating about, or, to be blunter, there's a list of names and addresses of fascist BNP members floating about.

It's likely to be taken down soon but as of 10pm on Tuesday 18th November 2008 it's available at http://bnpmemberslist.blogspot.com.

Most of the entries are just name, address, phone number, and possibly email address. But then there are those that describe hobbies and interests, and sometimes those interests are a tad bizarre.

Here's an, anonymised, example of hobbies and interests:

Tour guide ([XXXX] Cathedral). Writer for local paper (church/village history). Runs a Christian singing group. Vegan/supporter of organic produce. Members of the Woodland Trust, National Trust, VIVAI, Anglican Society, Open Doors, British Israel World Federation.
oh, and being an activist in the fascist B*N*P.

Being curiouser than Alice, I looked up the British Israel World Federation. I thought it was a Victorian relic of Empire that had long since passed the way of the Primrose League and the Economic League. How wrong could I be. It even has a website.

Apparently they believe that some (go on and guess what sort of people they believe this applies to) people in Britain are descendents of the lost tribe of Israel and the country is thereby blessed by the spaghetti monster (or G_d or sky bully or non-existent entity).

I bet this fascist read the Da Vinci Code.

East meets West

Terminology collides with geography.



This annoys the ever brilliant xkcd as well.

Conversations

Talking. It's what makes the world go round. Here's the brilliant Studs Terkel in conversation.



[ Via Linda Grant. ]

Sound of Colour

Simon Hoggart makes the outrageous, racist and daft point that "[Obama] does not even sound black".

How does "black" sound? How does "white" sound? Is this just Hoggart saying that Obama does not sound how Hoggart imagines "black" people speak? Or is there something else to this?

Does Hoggart think all "black" people sound the same? Does Hoggart think all "white" people sound the same? Does Hoggart think there's a range of voices that are "black" and a range of voices that are "white"?

Individual people have a voice. That voice is a product of geography, society and education. Even if you could make statements about a group having a common accent, or dialect, is it fair to argue that someone without that accent is outwith the group? I think it's only fair if the sole definition of the group is that it is made up of people who all talk the same way.

Hoggart's statement is muddled and nonsensical and capable of racist interpretation.

Galbraith Centenary

One hundred years ago a wise and witty economist, JK Galbraith, was born on the shores of Lake Ontario.

There's a good appreciation of Galbraith by a Black Country Bloke.

In the Affluent Society, Galbraith wrote:

People are the common denominator of progress. So... no improvement is possible with unimproved people, and advance is certain when people are liberated and educated. It would be wrong to dismiss the importance of roads, railroads, power plants, mills, and the other familiar furniture of economic development.... But we are coming to realize... that there is a certain sterility in economic monuments that stand alone in a sea of illiteracy. Conquest of illiteracy comes first".

Read more. Read widely. Read wisely.

Backstage with Obama

Obama prepping to go into the gladiatorial debating chamber!

Propaganda or Political Commercials

Party political broadcasts in the UK have always seemed dull.

Here's a chance to see some really dull political broadcasts from the USA. But some of them have a historical resonance.

Political broadcasting all the way from 1952 to 2008.

Here's one from 1968.



It's an analysis, of sorts, of why Spiro Agnew for Vice-President appeared as unlikely as Sarah Palin.

Brokers with hands on their faces

It does what it says on the tin.

Banning Books Is a Bad Thing

This blog holds it to be a self-evident truth that banning books is a bad thing.

If Sarah Palin has her way it could be the hottest thing in town (as hot as Fahrenheit 451).

Inevitability and Reasons Not To Be Cheerful

Somethings seem so inevitable that they just cannot not happen. Like Wolverhampton Wanderers getting promoted to the Premier League; like Labour winning the election in 1992; like Obama becoming the next President of the United States of America.

Okay, the first two examples are not particularly good ones. Just suppose McCain wins. That'll take one hell of a lot of explaining. The map of the USA will have to be redrawn: red states, blue states and totally racist states. I could see how, if you're a right-wing diehard Republican, you could vote McCain and Palin. If you're not a rabid Republican pitbull then why would you do that? McCain stands for the same old Republican voodoo-economics. Palin stands for a belief in the victory of old certainties and old prejudices. But some of the media coverage, like that coming from Pox News, has been racist, appealing to the worst characteristics of the worst, unprogressive sector of the electorate. For Obama to lose with poll ratings like this would be a death blow to the poll industry.

Anyway, Slate magazine has "A McCain Victory Survival Kit", subtitled "A just-in-case guide for reporters just in case Obama collapses." By Jack Shafer

I'm just waiting for the fat lady to sing.

[Via PooterGeek]

Connections

One of Rullsenberg's favourite children's books is The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster (1961).

In the Family supplement to this Saturday's Grundie was a review, by Lucy Mangan, of The Phantom Tollbooth. If you haven't read it, it recounts a tale of a country, the Kingdom of Wisdom, two capital cities Dictionopolis and Digitopolis

The cities are governed by two warring brothers who banished the Princesses of Rhyme and Reason from the land, after they were asked to adjudicate between the merits of words and numbers and refused to accord one more importance than the other. Since then, the kingdom has descended into chaos.

The story seeks to resolve this conflict by a newcomer to the kingdom.

Anyway, the book was ilustrated by Jules Feiffer.

And, then, what do I read, but a review of cartoons by Jules Feiffer, from 1956 to 1966.

It's not some plan. It's just the sheer connectedness of everything that makes this world interesting, and, like, totally random.

Drawing Against National Socialism and Terror

Will draws my attention to a good exhibition of the work of Arthur Szyk at the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin.

Here's a Szyk image, Freedom From Fear (1942).



Here's Anti-Christ (1942)



And here's a review of the Szyk exhibition from the New York Times.

And here's the Syzk online exhibition.

Marx and Money

You can get a money box that looks like an old leather bound copy of Das Kapital.



Somewhere for bankers to put their stolen bonuses.

A house is a place to live

It's not an investment. It's a place to hang your hat. It's a place to keep your books. It's a place to keep your clothes. It's a place to eat. It's a place to sleep. It's a place to make love. It's a place to have fun. It's a place to be happy. It's a place to be sad. It is not an investment. Or as Charlie Brooker puts it:

For years, money was just appearing from nowhere, or so we were told. People bought houses and bragged about how the value kept zooming up, and up, and up. In fact they didn't seem to be houses at all, but magic coin-shitting machines. It was all a dream, a dream in which you bought a box and lived in it, and all the time it generated money like a cow generates farts. Great big stinking clouds of money. And none of it was real. And now it's gone.

All that was never real melts into a big cloud of nothingness.

Thieves

Governments all the world over fly to the rescue of banks. Are bankers grateful? You betcha (to borrow a phrase from Ned Flanders). More money for them to pilfer from the till.

Financial workers at Wall Street's top banks are to receive pay deals worth more than $70bn (£40bn), a substantial proportion of which is expected to be paid in discretionary bonuses, for their work so far this year - despite plunging the global financial system into its worst crisis since the 1929 stock market crash,

Thieving bastards.

Curry and Economics

It turns out that the great bank rescue plan was powered by curry.

Anticipating the long and tense night ahead for him and his team, Darling had taken matters in hand at 8.30pm, personally ringing one of his favourite restaurants, Gandhi's in Kennington, south London, to order £245 worth of rice, karahi lamb, tandoori chicken, vegetable curry and aloo gobi.

From the article it's difficult to work out how many people were there. Eleven named and one unnamed, and probably note takers and support staff. Was £245 enough curry?

Would the government have got a better result if they had ordered some naan?