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?

Miami Five

Not a mash-up of Hawaii-5-0 and CSI Miami but the five Cubans held in the United States for nothing more than informing the FBI of plans of terrorist attacks on Cuba.
The five are Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González and René González.

This is the Miami 5 page from the Cuba Solidarity Campaign.

But instead of arresting the terrorists, the FBI used the information to identify and arrest the Five anti-terrorists on September 12, 1998 in Miami, where they were illegally held in solidarity confinement for 17 months.
A miscarriage of justice

The trial began in November 2000 in Miami, a hugely hostile environment where the anti-Castro Cuban-American community wields enormous political influence.

Defence attorneys’ motions for a change of venue were denied five times by the judge, although it was obvious that a fair trial was impossible in the city.

During the trial, the judge, prosecution and US government officials suppressed defence evidence and ensured key witnesses would not testify.

Despite intimidation of witnesses by the press and testimonies by prominent US officials that the Five had not accessed any classified documents, the jury reached a unanimous guilty verdict on all charges, without once seeking clarification of any evidence.

The Five were convicted on charges ranging from being foreign agents to conspiracy to commit murder, and sentenced to between fifteen years and double life.

For opposing terrorist acts on US soil the Miami Five were prosecuted in a strongly anti-Castro and anti-Cuban government city and given sentences of more than fifteen years with little chance of parole. That evokes mental pictures of justice dispensed by a bouncing kangaroo.



Cuba is not a socialist paradise. Amnesty International in its 2008 Report cited:

Restrictions on freedom of expression, association and movement remained severe. At least 62 prisoners of conscience remained imprisoned and political dissidents, independent journalists and human rights activists continued to be harassed, intimidated and detained.

Many of the dissidents were convicted of "social dangerousness" which is defined as "proclivity to commit a crime". This "crime" carries a sentence of up to four years in prison. Further penalties include “therapeutic treatment”, “re-education” or “surveillance by the Revolutionary National Police”.

All that stands against Cuba as a socialist Eden. Many things are good in Cuba: the increasing use of cooperative farms; the (albeit forced by circumstances) recycling of materials from cars to fridges. As the country moves from a central party dominated culture to trusting its people to act and work independently of the party things will improve.

The lifting of the embargo by the United States government will lessen the control over the economy of the party and government, giving more decisons to be made by the people of Cuba.

Free the Five!

Greenspan and Revolution

A year ago Alan Greenspan was quoted by the FT (on 17th September 2007) as saying that "Profits are much higher than they should be in a world of ever intensifying global competitition". He managed an accounting explanation for this by saying that "workers compensation in the USA and other developed nations is unusually low by historical standards".

An economics explanation was lacking but he did say that real compensation parallels real productivity in the long run, but not now and, here's the killer, if wages for the average worker do not rise quickly "political support for free markets may be undermined".

So even the ex Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve sees that the acts of capitalists threaten the existence of capitalism.

As the man said, "sometimes even the Chairman of the Federal reserve has to stand naked".

[ This is borrowed from Ken Coates's introductory essay the The Spokesman 97, Brown Studies, published earlier this year, see Spokesman Books]

Miserabilism and Emil Cioran

When international finance capitalism is falling willingly into the hands of governments you know it must be up shit creek without a paddle.

There is a mood of pessimism in the air, and, to quote Gramsci, it's not just "pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will" pervading the ether.

Once upon a time I had a thing for the writing of EM Cioran. His aphorisms have an almost beautiful streak of pessimism. Witness "Basis of society: anonymous sweat" or "We are afraid of the enormity of the possible".

Unfortunately in the 1930s and 1940s he, like the Daily Mail, admired a chap called Hitler.

Shalom Auslander has been reading a book of Cioran's.

This week Shalom read EM Cioran's The Trouble with Being Born: "Imagine the worst mood you've ever had, and now imagine there's someone for whom that mood would be the best mood they ever had. Now imagine they wrote a book."

That's a good summary but somehow it fails to describe the despairing beauty of Cioran's aphorisms.

Several years ago we were in a pub in the Bloomsbury fringe. Someone came round putting out notices saying that the research notes of a friend's six year study into Cioran had been stolen from a car and asking had anyone seen the notes which were worthless to anyone but the student. There is something beautifully tragic about a study into Cioran ending in despair; but I do hope the student recovered to submit their thesis.

Who Gives to Which Political Organisation

Just found a site that records donations to the United State's political parties.

You can search on names, like Stipe, and find that R.E.M.'s singer donated $2,300 to the Obama for America Political Action Committee.

With patience you may be able to find out something important. It helps if the person you are searching for has an uncommon name. Searching for a name like Moore gives over 300 pages.