Cricket, Conspiracy and Murder

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

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

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

Child Murder in Iraq

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

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

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

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

(Via Harry's Place)

Encyclopedias from 1933 and Marx

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

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



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

Ear.

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

So, walls do have an ear.

Beta Boswelox

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

Busy and knackered.

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

Pish. Pish. Pish

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

Simple.

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

The argument goes:

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

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

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

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

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

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















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

Smoke, a London Peculiar

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

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

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

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

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

Education, Education, Eduation in Iraq

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Raid on Iraqi Trade Unions

On 23rd February 2007 US and Iraqi security forces raided the headquarters of the General Federation of Iraqi Workers (GFIW).

Labour Start has a campaign where you can email your condemnation of the raid.

Go on. Do it now.

The wonderful Josie Long

Friday night I went with Rullsenberg to see Josie Long on her Kindness And Exuberance Tour.

Jolly good it was too. We left the show and came out into the snow with a warm radiant glow.

If you're into that sort of thing you can be Josie's friend on MySpace.

Can you read a map, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

Will has a great post on the Iranian request for "evidence" of the Holocaust.

How difficult is it to get from the Iranian embassy in Berlin to Wannsee?



Even I could follow those instructions and my inability to read a map is notorious.

America the Photographed

Mick Hartley has some spectacular pics of American industrial sites, garnered from the Library of Congress.

Here's an image in the Roundhouse of a Chicago and Northwestern Railroad Yard in Chicago, Illinois.



There are lots and lots of amazing images available from the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information Collection.

Go and discover.

Catching Up

Times flows onwards. Things consume time. And I lack time to post. And the world contnues to spin.

George Monbiot attacks 9/11 conspiracists and Comment is Free gets more comments than anything else you think might attract more comments. How do you organize an event of the magnitude of 9/11, involving thousands of people, and hope to keep it secret? Here's a deft summary of the popularity of conspiracy theories:

Everybody wants to feel special, and conspiracy theories are one hell of a way to go about feeling that way. After all, you have secret knowledge that "the government doesn't want you to know" and "most people refuse to believe" and that "science can't explain". But you know the truth, right? Right.

So here's an interesting experiment. The next time you feel like George Bush is trying to hide the truth about the Jesus's third cousin from the world in order to boost Haliburton's profits so they can further fund the Trilateral Commission...try taking your S.O. out to dinner. Or go see a musical. Or play basketball. Or masturbate. Anything to replace thoughts of ancient evil plots with fun in the here and now. I'm pretty sure you'll feel much better. [From The Blog of Many Hats]

I know the Truth and there are no conspiracies but those conspiracies in which I play a part. Now, when governments, and the private sector, struggle to organize a decent I.T. system for the NHS, does anyone believe governments can conspire to kill thousands of their own citizens without someone leaking news to the media?

The Damned United

I've just started reading David Peace's splendid account of Brian Clough's 44 days at Leeds United and so far it's damned good. Here's a sample. Brian Clough has just started as manager at Leeds and he's being interviewed on local tv.

Here's an extract as quoted on One Mick Jones

“So we can expect a bit more warmth, a bit more honesty and a bit more Brian Clough from the League Champions,” repeats Austin Mitchell.
“A lot more Brian Clough actually,” I tell him. “A lot more.”
“And hopefully win a lot more cups and another title?”
“And win it better, Austin,” I tell him. “I can win it better. You just watch me.”
“And the Leeds set-up? The legendary back-room staff? The legacy of the Don?”
“Well, I’ll tell you one thing, I had great fears of that lucky bloody suit of his, in the office when I walked in. You know the one he’s had for thirteen years? I thought, if that’s there, that’s going straight in the bin because not only will it be old, it’ll smell …”
“You’re not a superstitious man then, Brian?”
“No Austin, I’m not,” I tell him. “I’m a socialist.”

And there's more quotable stuff. Much more. But I'm not one to take the bread out of the mouths of starving author's children so buy the damned book.

Palast der Republik

History is created with the march of a historian's pen or the pecking of a historian's fingers across an Underwood.

Einsterzende Neubauten's Blixa Bargeld said I hope history will once create the legend that [the Palast der Republik] was demolished because we played there. But I can state now, it's not true but you can erase that sentence later!




Here are some pictures of the Palast up to its ongoing demolition and here's a search for more images of the Palast der Republik.

Today I am happy because the lovely Rullsenberg told me that Einsturzende Neubauten were coming to Nottingham on 26 April. Lunchtime I caught the bus into town and got two tickets.

If they're coming to a town near you you could always buy a ticket. You never know, you might like it.

Proxy Blogging

That Will Rubbish he's a one! He sends me a link to some pomo guff on Laibach and Zizek's "over-identification" theory. Here's a taster:

"Are Laibach really fascists? Is their use of props serious?" Simply responding "no" and "yes" (respectively) misinterprets the radical nature of the question. For Laibach, it's all about involving oneself in fascism, which they see as representative of all types and ages of totalitarian regime, from "God's will to evil", as they sing. Instead of rejecting fascism from a socialist or moral standpoint, they identify with fascism to an extreme degree – Zizek defines this using the psychoanalytic term "over-identification". One could say that Laibach come across more fascist than fascism.

But Lillemose (the piece's author) goes on to argue

"In art, morality is nonsense and Laibach's only responsibility is to remain irresponsible,"

Swastikas -tick; jackboots - tick; It's a tick box Nazi dressing up kit and if there's some diagnostic spectrum in the DSM then Laibach are well up toward the raving Nazi end. As I said to Will

There was a split-second when punk adopted the swastika as a "fuck you" to the world in an instant of art-school adolescent rage and it made sense. It only had validity for the flash of a camera and then it was gone to be replaced by lazy identification with the fascist, nazi NF and thence the SWP's high point Rock Against Racism. Laibach have been "over-identifying" (to use Zizek's term) as Fascists for over twenty years. There may well be a layered meaning to their Fascist obsession or they may just be Fascists.

Where was I? Yes, that Will Rubbish he kindly takes over and blogs my comment on his home turf and DSTPFW. Some may call that "appropriation of labour" but I say he's doing my work for me!

The Art of Being a Total Prat

Sometimes you read a blog and you agree with it. Other times you read a blog and agree with part of it and disagree with part of it and it sets you thinking. Reader, today I read a piece that I totally disagreed with. It's about the most scabby, nasty piece of blogging I have ever read.

Jonah Albert wrote a splendid piece in the Observer asking why so few Asian and Black Britons visit the National Gallery. It's a question that any seeing, sentient visitor can't help but ask themselves. It's a major gallery in a major multi-cultural city. So why is the audience so "hideously white", to borrow a phrase?

Oliver Kamm, disliked the piece so much that he called for the sacking of the author. Oliver Kamm is, and here's an ad hominem attack, a prat. We'll deal with Kamm's argument after we have looked at what Albert wrote that so offended Kamm.

Albert asks

Figures show that 43 per cent of the British population visited a gallery or museum last year, but I know from just working in a gallery that the percentage of those from ethnic minorities was in single figures.
An obvious culprit hides in the nature of the National Gallery's collection: Western European painting from 1200 to the turn of 19th century was the remit it was given when it was established in the early 19th century. Other institutions would collect and display Eastern and African Art; the National Gallery was set up to focus on old master paintings.

To the minds of those who choose not to engage with the place, it's little more than the work of some dead men - well, mainly dead white men.

Oliver Kamm believes this shows that Albert has no idea "what art is for" and Albert should therefore be relieved of his duties immediately. Kamm is wrong. Albert is working through reasons why people fom Britain's visible ethnic minorities do not visit major art galleries. When Albert discusses the universal message of some images

The paintings in the National Gallery deal with major life themes: love, loss, death, jealousy, betrayal, war, peace, power and many more ideas, all of which are just as relevant to black people as anyone else. But it's also significant that behind many of the portraits of white folk in their finery lurks the ghostly presence of an invisible black population.

Zoffany's painting of Mrs Oswald shows a lemon-lipped, bored-looking woman trussed in a furbelowed dress. Joshua Reynolds's image of Banastre Tarleton depicts a handsome, if somewhat camp and bouffant, soldier in full military dress. The buried story behind both Persil-white portraits tells of African enslavement, Caribbean plantations, slave factories on the West African coast, abolition and slave revolts in Florida. More history than you'd imagine on first glance.

This gets dismissed by Kamm as showing Albert's "incomprehension" of "what the arts are for". Kamm sees the "pedagogic power of art" lies in "broadening our experience and appreciation of enduring human concerns." Nowhere in Albert's piece does he argue against that. Nowhere does Albert say he disagrees with that position. Kamm has read into Albert's essay, or should that be read into the lacunae in Albert's essay, an argument against what Kamm sees as the purpose of art.

Kamm is arguing from the position "I think art is this and this is what it's for". This person does not mention my position therefore he must be agin it.

Kamm's reading is totally against the aims of Alberts essay which is about seeking reasons why people from visible ethnic minorities do not visit major art galleries and reasons why they should visit. Albert's essay offers some reasons why people, of all ethnicities, should visit.

Kamm argues

How can you be a curatorial fellow of one of the greatest art galleries in the world and say nothing about the enjoyment and elevation that art provides? How can you have any role connected with arts administration and not regard the love of art as a sufficient - or even a possible - reason for looking at paintings? In my view, you can't or at least shouldn't. If Jonah Albert is representative of the Arts Council's "Inspire" scheme, then the Council should put a stop to it with alacrity. (You can read more about the programme in this article from Time Out.) In any event, Mr Albert's article is more than reason enough for the Council and the National Gallery to dispense with his services.

Kamm misses the point of Albert's article, which is to get people to engage with art. If you are discussing people who have yet to engage with art then "a love of art" is not going to get those people into galleries. The "love of art" comes after engagement. To be trite, you can't have a "love of art" without looking at and engaging with art. Your initial reason for entering a gallery and looking at art is not going to be "love of art". How can it be so? You have no experience of art to fall in love with.

Kamm has every right to disagree with what Albert wrote. He has every right to disagree with what Albert did not write. But, for Kamm to call for the sacking of Albert based on ideas Kamm thought, wrongly, should have been in Albert's article is morally wrong and has all the hallmarks of a lynching.

Oliver Kamm's blog is a nasty, smug self-satisfied piece arguing, to paraphrase, "I know what art is and what art is for. This Albert chappy doesn't. Therefore sack him".

What a nasty, smug, vicious, scabby piece of blogging.

Headcleaner

Einsturzende Neubauten - Headcleaner





If you like what you've seen you can always subscribe to the Neubauten supporters site. Go on. Sounds like this need your support.

Blume on NYE

Einsturzende Neubauten - Blume

Don't write History, let Geography have it's say

I have just finished reading Daniel Pennac's "The Fairy Gunmother". A most enjoyable read, and the second part of the Malaussene Saga, set in the Paris neighbourhood of Belleville. One of the lead characters, Benjamin Melaussene, is employed as a scapegoat by a succession of companies. His partner, Julie Correncon, is the daughter of "ex-Colonial Governor Correncon, the Independence Man, as some newspapers put it at the time, or else The Gravedigger of the Empire" and recollects her time living with her father.

"Correncon had been the first to negotiate with the Viet Minh, when it still hadn't been too late to avoid a massacre. Under Mendes-France, he'd worked out a self-governing status for Tunisia, then he'd worked under De Gaulle when it was necessary to give Black Africa back its freedom." p224

The recollection continues with a list of visitors to their farmhouse: Farhat Abbas, Messali Hadj, Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap, Ibn Yusuf and Bourguiba, Leopold Sedar Senghor and Kwame Nkrumah, Sihanouk and Tsiranana. Other names included Vargas, Arraes, Allende, Castro and Che. That's some list!

Ex-Colonial Governor Correncon believed in Geography. "Don't try to write History, just let Geography have its say" to which Che laughed "Geography is just a collection of movable facts."

Julie Correncon's recollection continues.

"What is a colony, student Giap?", Correncon asked in a colonial schoolmaster's voice.

And, just to make Julie laugh, Vo Nguyen Giap, who was later to become the victor of the battle of Dien Bien Phu, replied in a schoolboy's chant:

"A colony is a country whose civil service belongs to another country. For example: Indochina is a French colony and France is a Corsican colony". p224

From the laughter the recollection passes to the aftermath.

No sooner had countries been given their independence, than Geography had started making History again, as though it were an incurable disease. An epidemic with a high death count. Lumumba was executed by Mobutu, Ben Barka's throat was cut by Oufkir, Farhat Abbas was exiled, Ben Bella imprisoned, Ibn Yusuf eliminated by his own men, Vietnam was forcing its own History onto a Cambodia which had been bled dry. Friends from the ... farmhouse were being hunted down by friends from the ... farmhouse. Che himself had been shot in Bolivia, with, so it was whispered, Castro's tacit agreement. Geography endlessly tortured by History ..." p226

So it goes. So it goes. "Geography endlessly tortured by History".

[ Many apologies for the apostrofly in the heading of this piece. I am going to do the honourable thing and go outside and shoot a panda. ]