Counago & Spaves

Folk Art, Let's Dance!

2004-11-16T16:26:00.000Z

Yard Dog gallery in Austin, Texas, is currently showing works by Kevin Coyne and by Mekons (not ex-Mekons) Jon Langford and Rico Bell. True multimedia masters.

Why not just call them mongs and be done with it?

2004-11-16T15:37:00.000Z

How about this for a spectacularly misjudged piece of humour?

I always thought we here at Counago and Spaves had the monopoly on bad taste, and while saying that comparing special needs kids with the Bush administration is an insult to special needs kids sounds clever, Ted Rall really has managed to insult special needs kids in this cartoon. Can you think of anything more patronizing?

Fuck it. I've just spent the last couple of weeks moaning about Norm having no sense of humour for the "Kill Bush" appeal in the Grauniad and slagging Lenin for finding Americans who apologize for Bush's election win "sickening." Now it's your turn to write in and tell me to "lighten up."

Should his mother be worried?

2004-11-15T14:04:00.000Z

Although I'm not a 'blood relative,' I'd like to think that in some way I was influential in the recent behaviour of my godson's twin brother (aged 4), as recounted by his mom.

Young Jordan and Joshua used to sit at the same table at school, but recently they've been separated, and Joshua now sits at a different table. Nonetheless, they still go to the same classes.

How then to explain Jordan's response to a teacher the other day who asked him whether he had any brothers or sisters? "No," he replied to her. "They're all dead."

Delightful.

By coincidence, I'd been musing over a character for my next novel whose first words to her mommy and daddy were "Darkness . . . darkness," on the supposition that no child is able at such a young age to develop a sense of the eternal night that is death, but Jordan proved me wrong. And not just a sense of mortality, but an understanding of the principles of black comedy to boot.

Joshua's response to Jordan's answer is not recorded.

More fun than kicking Bishop Brennan up the arse

2004-11-11T13:39:00.000Z

From America:

“In consultation with the Vatican and the local bishop, a Vatican-appointed investigator has announced the closing of the seminary in the Diocese of Sankt Pölten "effective immediately."

Bishop Klaus Küng of Feldkirch, Austria, whom Pope John Paul II appointed to investigate the diocese and its seminary, where thousands of pornographic photographs had been found on computers, made the announcement on Aug. 12.

The bishop, in a statement published on the Sankt Pölten Web site, said "several" of the seminarians were healthy, holy, committed men who would be assisted in finding a new place to continue their studies for the priesthood. "Unfortunately," the bishop said, "serious erroneous trends" were found among many of the seminarians. He cited in particular the practice of viewing and downloading pornography from the Internet and the development of "active homosexual relations" among members of the seminary conimunity.

Without directly criticizing Sankt Pölten's Bishop Kurt Krenn, Bishop Küng said, "Over the past years, too little attention was paid to the necessary criteria" for accepting candidates for the priesthood. "The more pressing the lack of priests," Bishop Küng said, "the more balanced, more sincere and more virtuous must be those chosen to become priests."

In late July, Pope John Paul appointed Bishop Küng to make an apostolic visitation of the seminary and the diocese. The appointment came after a student was arrested on charges relating to child pornography and after an Austrian magazine published photographs police had found on the seminary computers. The student pleaded guilty on Aug. 13 to downloading child pornography and was given a six-month suspended sentence.

The seminary rector and vice rector resigned after the photos were published showing staff members and seminarians kissing and fondling each other. Bishop Krenn initially downplayed the seriousness of the photos, saying they were part of a boyish prank during a Christmas party.

After Bishop Küng was appointed, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, president of the Austrian bishops' conference, said the conference and the nuncio to Austria had "warned for months" that Bishop Krenn was "dangerously ignoring the rules of recruitment" by admitting students to the Sankt Pölten seminary without investigating why they had been rejected elsewhere. Bishop Küng said "all past and future candidates" for the priesthood in the Sankt Pö1ten Diocese would undergo pastoral and psychological counseling, for their own good and the good of the church.”

Mommie, he's scaring me!!

2004-11-11T13:38:00.000Z

That's next year's holiday sorted out, then.

Interview with Rennie Sparks

2004-11-11T11:34:00.000Z

Taken from HERE.

New links, left.

Armistice Day. Let's make up.

2004-11-11T09:57:00.000Z

Also Veterans Day, Remembrance Day in Canada, and the Feast Day of St. Martin, patron saint of beggars.

Here's a reminder that there are many, many honest, decent, good Americans.

Long Live the Edelweiss Pirates

2004-11-10T14:25:00.000Z

Recognition at last!

Lookout! Injuns!

2004-11-10T11:58:00.000Z

A news report entitled "Dogfight Upset," by Malcolm V. Lowe in the November issue of Popular Mechanics magazine:

“We may not be as far ahead of the rest of the world as we once thought,” Air Force Chief of Air Combat Command General Hal Hornburg candidly admitted to the press after his pilots were trounced by Indian aviators during the “Cope India 04” exercise.

“We always knew we were good,” an Indian air force spokesman said. “But it is only when the U.S. says so that the world takes notice.” Just how well the Indian pilots performed the U.S. Air Force refused to say. Results have been classified. However, the British media claimed an unnamed U.S. congressman who had been briefed on the exercise said American pilots were defeated in nine out of 10 engagements.

The mock combat pitted the older Air Force F-15C Eagle fighter against the Indian air force's new Russian-made Sukhoi Su-30MK Flanker, a twoseat multirole fighter. American pilots in the mock air-to-air combat were drawn from the 3rd Wing of Pacific Air Forces. Weapons fire was simulated with radar. “The U.S. Air Force has never flown with or against the Su-30 Flanker before, so that aspect of this exercise is completely new for us,” Capt. Mark Snowden, an Eagle pilot, said in an interview distributed by the Air Force prior to the exercise.

An analysis of the exercise by New Delhi-based India Defence Consultants (IDC), a military-affairs think tank, cited its sources as saying that the Americans and Indians had spotted each other on their radar screens at the same moment, but that the Indian pilots shot first. Another factor, said IDC, may have been the absence of two critical support aircraft, the Grumman E-2C Hawkeye and Boeing E-3B Sentry. Each carries an airborne warning and control system (AWACS). Normally operating with Eagles, AWACS-equipped aircraft spot targets minutes before they appear on cockpit radars, and then help pilots determine how to best attack the opposing force. IDC said that the inability of American pilots to win without AWACS support could lead to changes in tactics that place higher value on protecting these assets.

Hornburg believes a more sweeping overhaul is needed. “The exercise leads me to remind people that we need to modernize our air-to-air capability.”

Please will someone put this show on in Ireland?

2004-11-10T11:32:00.000Z

It's been packing them in, in Hollywood.

Why not Harold's Cross Hell House?

What a show, there they go, smokin' up the sky

2004-11-09T15:26:00.000Z

Not an appropriate lyric unless he's cremated, I suppose.

Emlyn Hughes (aka crazy horse) died today, aged 57, of a brain tumour.

Another one of Thatcher's children dies before she does.

Such is her curse.

Reasons to be Cheerful . . . and Miserable

2004-11-08T15:52:00.000Z

Accumulating another book review backlog, so it's time for more mental evacuation.

How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World, by Francis Wheen.

An elegantly argued and carefully written book. Wheen spends most of his time deflating the free-trade balloon and indulging in the schadenfreude many of us felt when the Internet bubble burst. He also has a good go at postmodernism and finishes off with a sideswipe at the antiwar left (I note that Normblog gets a mention in his list of worthy Web sites).

It's an easy read but covers ground so many others have dealt with, and in a similar vein. There isn't much to distinguish this from, say, Greg Palast's writing.

What's more, and strange at that, I was struck by the lack of indignation in the text. As a regular Skeptical Inquirer reader, I was hoping for a major lambasting of New Age philosophy, repressed memory syndrome, alien abduction, and Christian and Islamic fundamentalism, but it's as though Wheen never gave much thought to researching these fertile areas. Insteads, the book comes across as a series of essays looking for a home, for a common theme to connect them.

The tacked-on anti-antiwar left piece sits uneasily too. The pro-war left might flatter themselves that they're the only ones defending enlightenment values and civilization, but that's at the expense of ignoring the legitimate case against "instrumental reason" advanced by Adorno, Horkheimer and the Frankfurt School, (if only to the extent of ignoring the fact that scientific research is not applied disinterestedly but where the money is - weapons and big pharma). If you want to defend "reason" and civilization by criticizing those supposedly cozying up to Islamofascists, you need to distance yourself from fundamentalist Christians and people who'll use your essential decency to legitimize thier regime.

I haven't provided a link to this book, by the way, because it's published by a company owned by Murdoch. I'm sure you'll understand.

The Communist Technique in Britain, by Bob Darke.

Amusing autobiography of former Communist bus conductor and Hackney councillor Bob Darke, mostly describing how put-upon he was by the party and recalling the emotional blackmail his superiors used to drag greater and greater sacrifices from party members - although they were mostly interested in members' donations. The clandestine meetings and obtuse messages from on high are not half as funny as the clear tension in the party between retaining members for their cash contributions while insisting on complete obedience and devotion.

Call yourself a revolutionary yet you can't sell 1,000 papers a week? A common refrain, I fear.

Most of the members, it appears, simply gave the party the money and burnt their copies of the paper on the fire at home - at least it did some good that way.

At the same time, it's a sad story; a number of Darke's comrades suffer ill-health, as does Darke himself until he quits the party, as a result of the strain and workload. No one said making the revolution was going to be easy, but it's going to be even harder if it only attracts masochists.

After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order, by Emmanuel Todd.

A strange book, if only for its unusual approach. Todd, who predicted the imminent downfall of the Soviet Union in his book La Chute in 1979, argues here that the supposedly horrifying American empire is, if anything, already coming to an end. The United States, he says, have provided the world with a largely benign empire over the past 50 years or so, mostly during the cold war, but since then the United States has lost not only its indispensability but also its economic and military power, as well as the ideological unanimity required to sustain the imperial endeavour.

Todd has been criticised by both right and left for trying to put U.S. power into some perspective; neither like the way he downplays U.S. might, the left because it means the U.S. aren't to blame for everything, the right because it offends their belief in American exceptionalism and the country's imperial destiny. Todd argues that the state of the U.S. economy, an annual deficit of $500 billion or thereabouts, and its military weakness - it's the strongest individual country, perhaps, but can barely even manage to occupy Iraq - mean that the balance of power is shifting away from a unipolar world order and towards a multipolar one; economically, Japan, Germany, China, and Russia are providing new challenges and agreements between them that put American hegemony in doubt.

Todd calls himself post-American rather than anti-American. He regards this issue as settled and has already returned to other pursuits. He is also pro-capitalist in the sense that he sees no immediate viable alternative. And he makes some odd comments about American culture and American women in particular that bear no relation to wht I would understand by those terms, but the book's a quick read (possibly an indication of the shallowness of Todd's arguments, I'm not sure) and worth getting to grips with if only for the unusual perspective it provides (Todd's use of demographics, for example). Give it a go.

I'm not the vanguard, I'm the ticket inspector

2004-11-08T13:43:00.000Z

Norm's profile of Marc Mulholland last Friday drew my belated attention to a fascinating debate on Indymedia concerning Dennis Tourish's argument that revolutionary left parties function effectively in the same way as religious cults.

This debate took place last August, but of course I only caught up with things last month, (surprise surprise). Largely focusing on a chapter about Militant in a book Tourish cowrote, On the Edge, the debate extends to cover the Socialist Party in Ireland and the SWP, with contributors from around the globe intervening. I do recommend you read it, if you have the time, if only to observe Tourish's view being confirmed by the arguments advanced by his opponents, who exhibit clear signs of cult-like thinking, mainly in their resistance to and capacity to reinterpret any evidence that contradicts the coherence of their worldview.

A joy.

Today's motto: Far better to be inconsistent and wrong half the time than consistent and always wrong.

Adeu Escriba

2004-11-05T14:02:00.000Z

Maker of the best chocolates in Catalonia, Antoni Escriba i Serra, has died aged 73. He ran my wife's favourite shop in Barcelona.

A pilgrimage is required.

Synchronicity??

2004-11-04T16:20:00.000Z

A couple of the lads at work were stood out the back of the building five minutes ago and who should they see but Adam Clayton of U2. In our company car park! Not two days after I made a comment (see kidnapping Mr. Aaronovitch) about his band and only hours after suggesting that smokers lead lives of more interest.

Maybe it's not synchronicity at all though. Maybe he's come looking for me.

The Day the Enlightenment Went Out

2004-11-04T14:30:00.000Z

Without a doubt the best article title of the day, a New York Times op-ed by Garry Wills.

Why are smokers more interesting than non-smokers?

2004-11-04T13:59:00.000Z

Now a question of national import given that smoking has been banned in indoor public spaces such as restaurants and pubs. This is clearly a conspiracy to kill off independent thinkers by exposing them to the inclement Irish weather, leaving the country populated by clean-lunged, conformist, stolid, unimaginative drones.

Is it that smokers are naturally more self-deprecating? That they're more cynical about their own lives and, by extension, those of others?

Is it because they're shite at sports and as a result don't fall into the mindless adoration of Beckhams, Keanes, and Duffs - and don't delude themselves that they could have ever been a pro either?

And despite what the propaganda says, smokers are better in bed too.

Answers please.

Fucking Atlantic

2004-11-04T13:57:00.000Z

Not the ocean. Obviously that's a good thing.

The magazine. My link yesterday to the article on Faisal al-Kasim was to a subscription-only item. Never mind. As I pointed out, you only have to Google his name to find plenty of information about him out there.

Mr. C. O. Jones himself

2004-11-03T16:13:00.000Z

There's a profile of al-Jazeera talk-show host Faisal al-Kasim in the latest issue of The Atlantic magazine. They're a bit behind the curve there; Google his name and you'll see an article by Tariq Ali from 2002 and a mention of him in Time going back to 1999, but it's instructive nevertheless. Any man who can cause five Arab countries to withdraw their ambassadors as a result of his show - and get death threats from the Iraqi National Congress - must be doing something right.

And to top it all, he studied drama in Hull!!

Buy this book or I'll shoot yer

2004-11-03T15:02:00.000Z

. . . should be the title of this, judging from the cover.

It was written by one of my former workmates who's gone on to other things (I hesitate to say better). It was launched on Monday night in Buswell's hotel, along with a couple of other books from Brandon. Those in attendance included TD John O'Donoghue and Gerry Adams.

Yes, this is the same Frank Ryan as the one who

" . . . bought you whisky in a brothel in Madrid
And decked some fucking blackshirt who was cursing all the yids."

Although that verse should have ended:

"Then fucked off to collude with the Nazis as an adviser to German intelligence."

But it doesn't scan.

Presidential Haiku

2004-11-02T17:01:00.000Z

Don't forget to vote

It's democracy at work

Not where I work though.

True to my word

2004-11-01T14:34:00.000Z

Assassinate Bush?
What could possibly be worse?
Hundred thousand dead

Those damned tiny Japanese cars.

2004-11-01T14:25:00.000Z

From the Mainichi Daily News.

Also check out this paper's haiku page. Think I might start posting some.

Reciprocal Listing

2004-11-01T14:06:00.000Z

Those awfully decent and well-bred people at Dead Men Left have said nice things about us. Hence the link to your left. Read, devour, enjoy.

Kidnapping Mr. Aaronovitch

2004-11-01T13:46:00.000Z

A number of recent and not-so-recent postings, such as this, have led to the unwanted recovery of several horrific repressed memories. Allow me to explain.

Back in the early 80s, don't ask me why, the LSE saw fit to offer me a place on its B.Sc in Sociology course, where I spent an enlightening year rubbing shoulders with such luminaries as Mark Urban and Nick Cohen. Nick was a very pleasant bloke (and probably still is), whom I knew from the anarchist group, such as it was there, and I was cheered many years later to see this interview in Black Flag.

After a year or so I got bored with sociology and moved to Bedford College, in Regent's Park, to study philosophy, and it was while there that - I'm not proud of it - during one rag week we decided we were going to kidnap the head of the NUS, one Dave Aaronovitch, and hold him to ransom for money to be donated to our charities; such kidnappings were commonplace during college rag weeks in those days.

Five or six of us burst into the big man's offices on Gower Street, I think, to find him, on his own, sat behind his desk, clearly doing very little and looking smug and self-satisfied. We explained where we were taking him and what the plan was, but, clear in his own mind of his own value, he refused to yield. I've got too many things to do, he told us. I'm too busy. Or words to that effect.

There were only half a dozen of us, so there was no way we could have lifted him out of his chair. Thus, we left empty handed. Only now do I have cause to think back and reflect how different things might have been, and how much we might have raised for our charities, had we done things properly, and had we known how to make full propaganda use of his kidnapping.

Fuck it. Who am I kidding? No one would have paid for Aaronovitch.

And he probably knew it, too. Only today do I understand his reluctance to join in. Who'd want Aaronovitch back?

Not Debord

2004-11-01T10:07:00.000Z

After two stops on the train this morning, I was joined by a respectable-looking chap, mid-fifties, balding, thick-rimmed glasses, excessive body hair but otherwise well-groomed, who sat beside me and pulled a brand-new copy of this from his briefcase.

A lecturer at Trinity, perhaps, since he got off at Tara Street, but a pleasant surprise whatever the explanation. Most of my fellow commuters read this or this (yeah, lots of students).

What next? This?

I swear, they make this crap up.

2004-10-31T17:16:00.000Z

From today's Sunday Tribune (cunning linguist section):

Spave (verb)

Spend money on items that are on sale and save the difference in price; thus, the illusion that you are better off financially than you were before (eg "Those Manolos were reduced from 450 euros to 300 euros in the sale, so I effectively pocketed 150 euros on the deal"). Mainly found in the vocabulary of females.

When in fact:

Spaves (n. pl.) Mainly found in the vocabulary of males. Usually accompanied by Counago. As in, "I spent hours wandering around the Spaves part of town but for the life of me I couldn't locate Counago."

Well, I'm reassured for one.

2004-10-29T15:56:00.000+01:00

Spokesman says not to worry about all the Prozac in the drinking supply because it's "watered down."

They're keeping all the good stuff for themselves

2004-10-29T15:52:00.000+01:00

Cannabis supplied by the Canadian government is rubbish, say users.

George Bush: white trash

2004-10-29T13:42:00.000+01:00

From the Korean Central News Agency:

"U.S. President Bush during his election campaign in Wisconsin State on Aug. 18 hurled malignant slanders and calumnies at the supreme headquarters of the DPRK and groundlessly accused north Korea of steadily developing nukes, while asserting that it is important for the United States to unite with China, Japan, south Korea and Russia and now these five countries are urging the tyrant to disarm himself, according to a Japanese Nihon Keizai Shimbun Internet report. This vituperation let loose by Bush against the supreme headquarters of the DPRK has lashed the Korean people into towering hatred and resentment at him and touched off unprecedentedly bitter anti-U.S. sentiment across the country.
It is the unshakable mettle of the Korean people to take strong counter-actions against anyone hurling slanders and calumnies at the supreme headquarters boundlessly respected and trusted by all Koreans.
Had Bush have even an iota of elementary reason, morality and ability to judge reality as a human being, he would have not dared defile the political system of his dialogue partner so malignantly.
Bush is, in fact, a thrice-cursed fascist tyrant and man-killer as he revived the fascist war doctrine which had been judged by humankind long ago and is now bringing dark clouds of a new Cold War to hang over our planet and indiscriminately massacring innocent civilians after igniting the Afghan and Iraqi wars.
It is the greatest tragedy for the U.S. that Bush, a political idiot and human trash, still remains in the presidential office of the world's only "superpower," styling himself "an emperor of the world."
In a word, his vituperation discloses his cunning political ploy to mislead the world public opinion and bring down the inviolable political system of the DPRK, come what may.
Bush said the U.S. was seeking a peaceful solution to the nuclear issue of north Korea in the framework of the six-party talks. This is nothing but a fig-leaf to hide its sinister design to destroy the political system of the DPRK by force of arms.
Bush's open brigandish demand that the DPRK disarm itself simply reveals the true intention of the U.S. to settle the DPRK-U.S. nuclear issue by bringing down the former's system, not through dialogue.
The U.S. is staging even "Ulji Focus Lens-04" joint military exercise aimed to unleash a war against the DPRK after massively shipping up-to-date war equipment into south Korea, blustering that a military option has not been completely removed from the table. This clearly indicates that the U.S. option is not dialogue but showdown.
Now that the U.S. has clearly revealed its true intention, the DPRK can no longer pin any hope on the six-party talks and there is a question as to whether there is any need for it to negotiate with the U. S. any more.
The option for a stand-off is not a monopoly of the U.S.
It is the DPRK's firm resolution and conviction in sure victory to react to confrontation with confrontation and return a preemptive attack with a preemptive strike.
The reality today makes substantially convinces the army and people of the DPRK that its Songun politics is entirely just.
The U.S. foolish attempt to bring the DPRK under its control by force of arms by bringing down its system compels the latter to bolster up its war deterrent both in quality and quantity in order to beat back any aggressor at a single blow."

More of the same here.

Book Recommendation of the Week

2004-10-29T10:10:00.000+01:00

Possibly premature, since I've only just started reading it, but presenting views worth examining by pro- and antiwar camps as well as anyone with an interest in the prospects of the Pax Americana.

Film Recommendation of the Week

2004-10-29T10:08:00.000+01:00

Anarcho-syndicalism in action.

So, it's Naomi Klein. What of it?

She screamed like a sissy and ran away

2004-10-27T16:54:00.000+01:00

Ann Coulter pied. Of course, one can't condone this sort of thing etc. etc.

Today's facetious hypothetical question

2004-10-27T13:09:00.000+01:00

Had it been Iran that invaded Iraq and removed the barbaric dictator Saddam Hussein, would it still have been a just war worthy of our support?

A Dark Day Indeed

2004-10-26T14:26:00.000+01:00

We will miss you, John Peel.

Thanks for everything.

A disturbing noise for the bourgeoisie

2004-10-22T16:46:00.000+01:00

The Nightingales are back!!

Book Review Digest

2004-10-22T09:42:00.000+01:00

Probably shouldn't use that title: it's copyrighted by my bosses, I imagine.

My appointment with my G.P. on Tuesday resulted in a look of horror on his face when he learned that I'd been back in work after my spell in hospital. "You've been suffering from a serious illness. Take the rest of the week off. Put your feet up and read a good book," was more or less what he told me, the last sentence being verbatim. I phoned my boss and told him the good news straight away, and since Monday is bank holiday over here, I have until next Tuesday to lie in bed and read. Here's what I've managed since the last set of reviews:

Anarchism, by Peter Kropotkin: A collection of pamphlets and articles by the great P.K., including his contribution to the 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. By and large, these works are, of necessity, more general and vague than his longer texts, but they give a flavour of Kropotkin's views and remind us that he knew full well where Marxism and the Soviet Revolution were headed, even if the Marxists didn't. Credit where it's due: Either the Marxists knew their philosophy would result in tyranny if put into practice and pretended not to, or else they were just blinded by love of theory or wishful thinking or strategic denial. For all the arse that's written about Marx's erudition, let's not forget the difference between learning and wisdom. And Kropotkin's Mutual Aid shows that he had a better understanding of Darwin, too.

Marx after Sraffa, by Ian Steedman. I was tipped off about this work after reading the interview with Norm on his blog (see link at left). This is an economics text that manages not to be excessively dry and if you have any interest in problems with Marx's theory of value, this is the place to come. Steedman points out that valid refutations of Marx's argument date back to the late 1800s/early 1900s but that it is only since Sraffa that such refutations have been taken seriously. He demonstrates that Marx's solution to the transformation problem is inconsistent and that the whole issue of transformation is in itself a red herring because reference to values is entirely unnecessary in showing that surplus labour is the source of profit and that exploitation of labour takes place. The real problem for Marxist theory arising from Marx's errors lies in the invalid conclusions drawn regarding the tendency of the profit rate to fall and the inferences regarding the inevitable crises of capitalism and its ultimate downfall. There's no reason to assume it's ever going to happen.

London Labour and the London Poor, by Henry Mayhew. A monster of a book, which I forced myself to read as part of the research for my next novel, set in London. Mayhew presents scores of interviews with the working classes of early- to mid-19th-century London and describes their living and working conditions. Lots of references to Ireland, of course, thanks to famines and free trade, but also a source of many occasions for nostaliga, at least for me, in that many of the descriptions of street hawkers brought back memories of London in the 70s and 80s, as a kid visiting Petticoat Lane and a student buying hot chestnuts off the bloke on Oxford Street. Mayhew manages not to be repetitious, mainly because he lets the people speak for themselves and reproduces their dialects and idioms with apparent sympathy and accuracy. A treasure trove.

Violent London: 2,000 Years of Riots, Rebels and Revolts, by Clive Bloom. Another giant of a book and replete with fascinating information about popular insurrections in the capital. Like Mayhew, Bloom writes sympathetically of people's rage and anger at injustice. Early chapters cover Boadicea, the Peasants' Revolt, the Diggers and Levellers, and the Gordon Riots, which began as anti-Catholic but turned into a general insurrection, then turns to the Chartists and popular resistance to the formation of the police (On Lord mayor's Day 1830, a notice was posted up which read, in part: "All London meets on Tuesday. Come Armed. We assure you from ocular demonstration that 6,000 cutlasses have been removed from the Tower, for the use of Peel's Bloody Gang . . . These damned Police are now to be armed. Englishmen, will you put up with this?").

Later chapters deal with the Sidney Street siege, the suffragettes, the Battle of Cable Street, the Anti-Nazi League, Grosvenor Square, the poll tax riots, and the guerrilla gardeners and the Countryside Alliance. My only disappointment was the lack of reference to the Stop the City festivals. Otherwise, this is well worth a look at.

Farewell to the Working Class: An Essay on Post-Industrial Socialism, by Andre Gorz. Written about 1980 but prescient enough and much of what Gorz identifies in terms of demographic and technological trends holds good; the expansion of contract work, McJobs, an increase in automation of both industrial and service sectors, and a labour aristocracy comprising the permanently employed, namely, technicians and experts. Gorz's main argument is that the development of productive forces under capitalism will not only fail to establish the preconditions for socialism but will actually hinder its realization. Rather, we should be pushing to expand the sphere of freedom outside the workplace and reduce the margin of necessity, the amount of time spent in the workplace, to a minimum, say two hours a day. Marx's homo faber will be developed outside of the workplace (automation, after all, has made work into a grindingly boring process of repetition), where communities should be organized to provide a new arena for self-realization (which of course includes community involvement, engagement, and commitment).

I wasn't entirely convinced. The idea that all workers will be interchangeable in the workplace (except for the technicians at the top) is presented here as an obstacle to appropriation of the means of production, because, as Marx himself said, factories produced 'monsters,' individuals 'incapable of any independent act,' 'stunted' and 'crippled' people, governed by an 'entirely military discipline.' In other words, the workers don't know how to do anything except press a few buttons and stand back. Now, any good Leninist will tell you, this shouldn't be an obstacle to appropriation so long as you have the technocrats available to step in and remedy any faults in the production line. So long as the capitalists are removed from the equation, all the worker has to do is keep pressing a few buttons, secure in the knowledge that he's working for the benefit of society instead of for exploiting capitalists. And all the surplus labour he generated can be redistributed by the Party to where it's most needed. Lenin could quite happily borrow from Henry Ford because he never envisioned a revolution in the productive forces. For him, and Trotsky, there was nothing wrong with a hierarchical and highly fragmented division of labour, so long as the proletariat had 'seized power.' No wonder they emphasized the dignity of labour. How else would they keep people at their stations (oh well, yes, guns). The proletariat could win their freedom and they wouldn't even have to leave their workplace.

The socialist movement needs to accept, Gorz argues, that the means of production and a considerable portion of what is actually produced do not lend themselves to genuine and concrete collective appropriation by real workers. The problem is one of changing the means and structure of production in order to render them collectively appropriable.

As I say, there isn't a necessary contradiction here. If Lenin and Trotsky had been able to reduce the working day to a couple of hours, they would have earned the eternal gratitude of a proletariat prepared to tolerate the crappy work. That sort of scenario seems to be what Gorz has in mind himself: Automation, rather than social revolution, offers the possibility of expanded free time. What we need to campaign and struggle for now is the equitable distribution of the entire output. That, of course, requires the removal of the capitalists.

Trained seals, not sealed trains

2004-10-20T11:09:00.000+01:00

A lovely article from Cultic Studies Journal by Dr. Dennis Tourish on the similarities between the practices of Militant Tendency, and by extension, other Trotskyist organizations, and those of religious cults. Not a new analogy, I know, but nice to see it given concrete (and amusing) examples and scientific scrutiny.

Big Endians vs. Little Endians

2004-10-20T10:50:00.000+01:00

While all those other self-important blogs drone on about the fucking war, here's a piece of news of essential importance and relevance to everyday English life. We've all been cleaning our teeth the wrong way. All our lives.

Remember in school how you were told not to clean from side to side but to clean up and down? Well, it wasn't until I moved to Ireland and started playing soccer with a crowd of surgeons, doctors, and dentists (it's a long story) that I discovered I'd been damaging my gums for the past 40 years.

Over here, dentists teach their patients that you should brush from the top gum down and from the lower gum up, not up and down like they tell you in England. By following the irish method, you remove particles of food and detritus from between the teeth, AND, more improtant, you avoid pushing back the gums and exposing the soft enamel. The English way increases the risk of sensitive teeth, because it leads to receding gumlines. No doubt the toothpaste manufacturers are involved in some sort of industry conspiracy to prevent the truth from coming out: That's why you'll always see shelves of Sensodyne in the dentist's surgery.

Now, after me: Down from the top, Up from the bottom.

You know it makes sense.

There's going to be a spanking!

2004-10-18T11:21:00.000+01:00

Not sure yet this is such a bright idea.

Erin go bray

2004-10-15T16:24:00.000+01:00

In today's Guardian, Terry Eagleton describes a mishap on his way back from buying a donkey from a farmer in Mayo. Well, what the fuck do you expect? You were just lucky you didn't end up in hospital in Offaly.

The Ghostly Ones

2004-10-15T16:15:00.000+01:00

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings profiled in the September 20 New Yorker.

Hell is other people, mainly students

2004-10-15T09:57:00.000+01:00

A work colleague of mine is teaching an undergraduate course on Heidegger and asked me if he could borrow my copy of Sartre's Being and Nothingness. Fortunately, this is the one book I have two copies of: The first, bought when I was 18, is covered in adolescent scribblings along the lines of 'how true' and 'yes, exactly!' that have rendered it unreadable, so I bought a second copy several years later and actually read the damn thing cover to cover, while on holiday (there's not a lot else to do in Fuerteventura).

My colleague required the text, he explained, because there's a section in which Sartre deals with Heidegger's concept of Mitsein, and my colleague was concerned because one of his students knows Heidegger inside out and was likely to pull him up on this subject during the next class. "I can see him, sat there, actually thinking DURING the class," he told me, like this was an unpardonable crime.

I said nothing, coward that I am, but should have pointed out to him that it might be reasonable to regard this as a hazard that comes with the territory. After all, if you're going to teach philosophy, don't be surprised if some of your students end up thinking.

I know from my own experience just how painful it can be. Philosophy, especially, is a subject in which your success as an educator can be measured by the independent thought generated by your students, however discomfiting it is for you to have to confess your ignorance in front of everyone when they demonstrate their intelligence.

It's a humbling discipline, if you're doing it right.

But this episode also brought to mind Woody Allen's classic line: "I failed my metaphysics exam the other day. I was caught looking into the soul of the boy next to me."

He was lucky it wasn't Sartre he was cribbing from. Imagine what was in his soul.

Remember You're a Womble

2004-10-14T16:59:00.000+01:00

Web site for the Beyond ESF conference.

Murdoch still alive

2004-10-14T15:37:00.000+01:00

Time to move on?

I don't know. Some of us have long memories. I'm determined not to have Sky in the house till he's dead.

Eureka!

2004-10-14T11:09:00.000+01:00

Looks like I've managed to figure out how to paste in links to other sites - and with no help from anyone.

Some of them even seem to work.

Watch this space. Or that space over there.

Pop tarts for everyone!

2004-10-13T15:24:00.000+01:00

Dougal McGuire is a 1,000 to 1 outsider for the papacy according to Paddy Power bookmakers.

Gordian knot-cutter

2004-10-13T11:03:00.000+01:00

An article from the September issue of Wired magazine on psychologist Gordon Rugg of Keele University, who seems to have solved the mystery of the Voynich manuscript, a 400-year-old book written in an undecipherable code. His success has come as a result of a re-examination of the scientific method and an analysis of the logic used by experts. One statement from this article that stood out for me was the finding that 11 percent of papers printed in Nature and the British Medical Journal contain serious statistical errors.

Work hard, increase production, and be happy!

2004-10-13T10:43:00.000+01:00

George Lucas's THX 1138 is being rereleased in a digitally remastered form, with a number of extra shots, commentary, and documentaries. It's a classic.

May I suck you off, sir?

2004-10-12T16:19:00.000+01:00

Soon we'll all be saying it, if Kent Jones's assessment in the July/August Film Comment is anything to go by:

Hong Sang-soo's beautifully titled Woman Is the Future of Man (I'll say!) won the prize for most invisible film in competition (if you don't count The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, that is). Hong's movie is so unassuming that many took it for little more than a riff on his previous work. It unfolds like a minor anecdote: two old friends pay a visit to a former lover (of both men) that extends through the following day and into the night, ending for Hong's surrogate character in embittered despair. If Cassavetes had been born uptight, pissed off, and South Korean, he might have made this movie.

The simple structure, unwinding over roughly 36 hours, unassumingly encompasses a lifetime of disappointment and inescapable male foolishness. It's quite a rich, absorbing spectacle to watch this supposedly happy family man worm his way into his old lover's apartment for the night, ask for a blow job so he can get to sleep, run into his students and berate one of them during the obligatory drinking scene, and end up in the most depressing motel room for yet another blow job from a willing student methodically fulfilling a classroom crush. Hong's mastery-of narrative, of tone-is undeniable, and the acting is utterly flawless. But his new film begs the question: How much does the endless parade of passive women, self-deluding men, drinking sessions, and not so carefully cloaked depression belong to him, and how much is it the property of Korean culture?

Once you've seen the film, it's hard to get the adoring student's entreaty to her befuddled prof out of your head. With the greatest politeness, struggling to kneel in a miserable room barely big enough to stand up in, this smart, calculating, beautiful young woman utters the soon-to-be immortal line, “May I suck you off, sir?” A suitable slogan for the hard-sell, aggressively sybaritic atmosphere of Cannes.

This is not a hint

2004-10-12T15:27:00.000+01:00

It's a recommendation. I'll buy my own copy, thanks.

Cheers for the film previews, Jose. Will you be doing the Catalan subtitles for these?

What's wrong with golf, strangling animals, and masturbation?

2004-10-12T15:24:00.000+01:00

Sacha Baron Cohen has been reaping the Kazakh whirlwind. There's nowhere to hide these days, mate.

Sky Captain and the World Police

2004-10-12T14:22:00.000+01:00

Hello there,

I told John I would post some suggestions as well, and here I go.
There's a couple of films coming soon that could be interesting, and you've probably heard about them already. One is 'Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow', which I think has already been released in the UK. The old-fashioned sci-fi look is what attracted me when I saw the trailer. You can watch it at the official website (http://www.tiscali.co.uk/skycaptain) and read some opinions here: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0346156/

The other film is 'Team America: World Police', the last effort by 'South Park' creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. The trailer looks quite promising. They seem to laugh at everybody and everything. Here's the official site: http://www.teamamericamovie.com/
There's a site in Spanish where you can watch the trailer, tv spots and some film clips (http://www.quedetrailers.com/trailers1230.htm). I myself didn't watch the film clips yet. I'd rather wait to see the whole film... I don't want to spoil the fun.

Greetings from Barcelona,

Jose

Wot, no weapons?

2004-10-11T16:40:00.000+01:00

An article in the American Journalism Review reporting the belated accolades accorded the journalists of Knight Ridder for their reluctance to believe government claims that Saddam had WMD.

Au revoir Jacques Derrida

2004-10-11T10:16:00.000+01:00

"Sous rature" from this point on.

Rest in Parse

Mutha Tonge

2004-10-09T18:45:00.000+01:00

This sample of a typical undergrad student essay was submitted by one of our team members who shall remain unidentified for fear of retribution from his wards. Many thanks.

Consider Eavan Boland’s approach to the role of the poet or the nature of poetry in comparison to either Lyrical Ballads or Aurora Leigh.

The role of the poet in Browning’s Aurora Leigh is about Aurora Leigh who wants to be a poet but she is a woman whereas her cousin, Romney says she can’t be. This infers like Wordsworths Ancient Maryner that you shouldn’t mess with Nature. Let us look in contrast now to Eavan Bolands’ poet’s role’s, however, it seems as though it could be said that it is possibly another role altogether because although she is a woman, despite this she is Irish. The role of the poet in Wordsworths’ “Tintern Abbey” is like ‘the language of ordinary men” to symbolise how beautiful Nature is after hard times. As in ‘The Thorn’ when the garrulous old, unreliable narrator tells to us the story of the beautiful bush who is Martha.

In the Victorian times of the eighteenth-century women and Irish were being repressed by men. They were supposed to sew, cook and have children, and do the washing up.(1) In the ‘Idiot Boy’ they are very poor and repressed but the boy has superior knowledge to the poet even though he is mentally challenged. Also, we see the childlike innocence of the child in ‘Now we are Seven’ but the poet is very patronising to the sweet little girl with her superior wisdom. This makes him a hypocrite because he said in the Preface that the role of the poet was to praise the common people- this is not the way to treat children. But in Boland’s poem the old woman has eaten all the children because their were no potato’s. This seems a much worse thing to do!

Literary critic Michelle Foucault states;
‘There is no author.
He is dead.(2)

However, I feel she has misunderstood the plot as much of Bolan’s poetry is very alive and full of ideas. Bolands’s poems are shaped like coffee cups so that we can learn ‘Lessons’ from the ‘Objects’. Hence, the title, ‘Object Lessons’. But in contrast Wordsworth writes poem’s that have lines that have a rhythm and stop at the ends. Browning uses many female words like ‘she’, ‘witch’ and ‘Lady’. But in contrast Wordworths pronouns are all heavy and masculine like ‘him’ and “the”.

In conclusion, though they lived a hundred years apart and one of them was even Irish the role of these poets is to “tell the truth in ordinary language’ and to assert the timeless beauty that poetry is.

footnotes:

1: http://www.google.com

2: Foucault, Michael The Norton Theory Book, (WW Norton ltd, 1996; America)) PP76

More on Casey, Yeats

2004-10-07T08:45:00.003+01:00

On reflection, I was a tad unfair to Garry O'Connor in describing his biography of Casey as lacking in roundness. There's plenty of detail about Casey's personal life and how he managed to bear grudges at the tiniest of slights. Most peculiar was his nearly lifelong relationship with Harold MacMillan, whose family's publishing house was responsible for putting many of Casey's works into the public domain. More peculiar still is the suggestion that Casey's wife had a more than Platonic relationship with MacMillan, with Casey's knowledge (there was a significant age gap between the couple).

Casey comes across as a real begrudger, an unreconstructed Stalinist, and as someone with legitimate grievances against his treatment by the Irish, as well as a superb playwright. Like Patricia Highsmith, he deserves admiration for his bolshieness, his willingness to think outside the box, his refusal to conform, and his readiness to burn his bridges.

Apologies to O'Connor clearly due, then.

Not related in this book, but still my favourite story about Yeats, is the account of his one and only visit to a pub. His friends were determined that he should go to one at least once in his life, so they dragged him along to Toner's on Baggot Street, where he sipped a sherry (whether or not in the little snug by the entrance is not recorded) and then declared, "Right, I have seen the inside of a pub. Now take me home," or words to that effect. And he never set foot inside another pub.

Anyone who knows Toner's might say, "I'm not surprised"; the best that can be said of the place is that it has "character." And yet it's also the finest pub in Dublin, which doesn't say much, I suppose, for the rest, but it says an awful lot about Yeats.

Quick Plug

2004-10-06T18:35:00.000+01:00

For the International Rooksbyism blog just established by Ed Rooksby, who seems a decent sort. Keep an eye on it.

The Alternative was watching "Trisha"

2004-10-06T15:53:00.000+01:00

I managed to get some reading done in hospital, despite the searing agony and constant lusting after nurses. I finished off Garry O'Connor's biography of Sean O'Casey, which was entertaining if a little one-dimensional: O'Connor is an actor himself and focuses on the plays rather than the politics. Nontheless, I came away with some amusing descriptions of W. B. Yeats, Maud Gonne, Lady Gregory, and Virginia Woolf. And I wasn't aware that Alfred Hitchcock had made an early 'talkie' version of Juno and the Paycock in 1930 which was criticised for its anti-Semitism (not in the original play: Hitchcock turned the tailor Needle Nugent into a 'stage-Jew' called Kelly).

I also dipped into a couple of books by Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism and The True and Only Heaven. However, I must confess that neither book held my attention, both being full of unsubstantiated generalizations or attacks on straw men. Lasch is clearly erudite, or at least well-read, but also clearly writing from a crypto-conservative perspective that takes for granted that which remains to be proven, i.e. the negative impact of progress, the negative effects of the 'decline' of 'the family' and so on. As a consequence, his analyses tend to be partial, incomplete, lacking in vision or awareness of alternative interpretations.

Next up is The God That Failed, edited by Richard Crossman. So far an excellent collection of narratives from ex-Communists (Koestler, Silone, Wright) explaining how they came to disillusionment with the Communist Party in their respective countries. Part Two consists of fellow travelers offering similar tales: Gide, Spender, and Louis Fischer). Enjoyable stuff, albeit 60 years old. The sort of material I'd recommend to anyone who still thinks the Bolshevik seizure of power was anything other than a defeat for the Russian people.

Everyone should have that 'Kronstadt' moment.

Wise sayings of the Amish no. 2

2004-10-05T11:08:00.000+01:00

Don't point at airplanes.

Wise sayings of the Amish no. 1

2004-10-05T11:06:00.000+01:00

When you talk you only repeat what you already know, but if you listen you may learn something.

And to think some artists moan about prostituting themselves . . .

2004-10-05T10:14:00.000+01:00

Andrea Fraser, on the other hand, received $20,000 from a 'collector' to have a 'sexual encounter' with her, which was filmed and then exhibited as part of her show here. What was that about everyone having a price?

Dopey, Bashful, Grumpy, Doc and Psycho

2004-10-04T16:16:00.000+01:00

An article in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry reports that Disney cartoons are educating children to fear the mentally ill. Well worth a read.

John Green R.I.B. (rest in bed)

2004-10-01T10:04:00.000+01:00

Sorry for the lack of posts on this site recently. It's all been down to this. I was surprised by how common this illness is: Appendicitis affects between 1 in 7 and 1 in 10 people at some time in their lives. Jeez, I NEVER have anything exotic (oh, except gonorrhea of the gums, of course).

The good news is that the mass/abscess seems to be resolving, so that they can take out the appendix in 6 weeks' time. Expect another slowdown in posting then.

In the meantime, no jokes like "did you hear the one about the editor and his appendix?" (I don't have a punchline yet.)

Well, I realize the casting wasn't great, but . . .

2004-09-22T16:32:00.000+01:00

Two of my staff produced this abstract at work today. They shall remain nameless but shamed.

In an interview, Indian-born director Mira Nair discusses such topics as the changes she has seen in the United States toward Muslims since the September 11 terrorist attacks and her new film, Vanity Fair.

Mommy, he's scaring me

2004-09-22T13:13:00.000+01:00

A picture of Brozo here. Sadly, it would appear Victor Trujillo has jacked in the show following the death of his partner. Shame. He looks like he could have been the new Beelzebozo. Maybe we can persuade Ms Leen to do a translation on this page.

probably heard his latest album

2004-09-22T13:00:00.000+01:00

Cat Stevens denied entry to United States.

Hooray for Brozo the Clown!

2004-09-22T11:22:00.000+01:00

There's an excellent article here in the New York Review of Books explaining why the foremost arbiter of Mexcian politics is a clown who runs a TV show called El Mananero (slang for 'The Morning Quickie'). I'm only sorry this page doesn't carry a photo. If I locate one, I'll post a link.

If God had meant Brian Clough to die . . .

2004-09-22T09:52:00.000+01:00

he would have put grass in the sky.

R.I.P. Cloughie

Don't Forget, Me Hearties

2004-09-16T14:46:00.000+01:00

This Sunday is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Oo-ar!

Book of the Day

2004-09-16T13:34:00.000+01:00

Reviewed by Janet Maslin in today's New York Times:

In the midst of an especially bitter political season, the troublemakers at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart can be seen regularly on Comedy Central, shamelessly exploiting current events for their own gain. Now this crew carries its mischief even further with a mock textbook that purports to describe American democracy. It tells us, among other things, that the Oval Office has no corners in which the president can be made to sit in if he shames the nation. It also tells us that if The Daily Show had its way, the world would be a vastly funnier place.

In spirit, America (The Book) is a direct offshoot of The Daily Show. A little of it is silly. ("If the president were the longest recorded flight by a chicken, he would be 13 seconds.") A little, like a picture that claims to show the Supreme Court justices naked, is just plain unforgivable. But the rest is the devil's own comedic handiwork, a side-splitting guide to the abuses and absurdities built into our political processes and institutions. The responsibility of the Food and Drug Administration, this book maintains, is to provide the second halves of prescription drug commercials, the parts about nausea and diarrhea.

America can be opened at random, the way it will be in college dormitories when it becomes much loved and indispensable. But it can also be read straight through, thanks to sustained clever writing and a smart, durable premise. This brightly illustrated guide (with a handsome design by Pentagram) follows the rise of democracy from prehistoric man through the Ten Commandments given to the Israelites in 1300 B.C. ("Nothing bad ever happens to Jews again.") It moves on to early American history and then to the conundrums of the present day.

"I did some research," writes Rob Corddry, one of the show's hilarious on-the-air correspondents, "and it turns out if Betsy Ross was alive and sewing American flags today, she'd be a 13-year-old Laotian boy." The book also has Alexander Hamilton touting the Constitution as "the must-ratify document of the summer" and John Adams describing it as "a decent jumping off point" for a president.

"A good ambassador knows the little fork is for salad," notes the section of the book devoted to diplomacy. Other chapters describe the role of Congress as the gastrointestinal tract of the American body politic and explain the work of lobbyists, "whose sole job is to insure, through persuasive argument and financial remuneration, that Congress never forgets the people's wishes.'' It adds, "Especially the people's wishes for deregulation." After a bill has been drawn up and debated, the book notes, "it's amendment-sneakin' time."

Illustrations explain the stages of democracy, from infancy to "once-great'' nation. A map of a presidential library (which appears to be made of Lego blocks) shows where the "Faustian Bargain" is displayed. A chart of the judiciary branch identifies United States Tax Court as "the place to argue that the bubble-jet printer on your kitchen counter constitutes a 'home office.' ''

As with Mr. Stewart's priceless anchorman persona and his show's hawk-eyed editing for real news gaffes, there is enough truth here to make America almost as instructive as it is sly.

The exigencies of an election year do not go unnoticed. The good news for Democrats, for instance, is that after the Rapture occurs they will regain control of the House and Senate. In its attempt to be even-handed, the book presents a Bush-Kerry boxing match ("The Thrilla in Vanilla") and even analyzes the power of political endorsements. The backing of The New York Times, it is said, "shores up support among Lincoln Center season-ticket holders."

"I'm not a terrorist, I'm a physiotherapist . . .

2004-09-15T20:03:00.000+01:00

. . . but if I have to break the law to keep fox hunting alive, by God, I shall do it."

My favourite quotation from today's protests against the fox hunting bill, spoken by a very posh lady with the collar turned up on her shirt (do posh birds still do that?)

Can the revolution be far behind now that the gentry have tasted the iron fist of Blair's fascist police state? It's only a matter of time before the SWP take over the WI.

Dick Tuck

2004-09-14T13:32:00.000+01:00

is the genuine name of a political prankster who tormented the late Richard Nixon with some excellent stunts, some of which are described on this amusing site at the Museum of Hoaxes. My favourite is Tuck telling bandleaders at republican fund-raisers that Nixon's favourite tune was "Mack the Knife," so they used to play it when Nixon came on stage.

"Experience the Coolness of Ice!"

2004-09-13T16:11:00.000+01:00

I kid you not, this is the new slogan accompanying adverts for Bewley's new iced coffees - I saw a poster on Nassau Street at lunchtime.

Do you not think they could have identified some other feature of their product to highlight? And just who, exactly, are they targeting out there? People who've never experienced the coolness of ice. Who the hell are they?

Coming soon:

Ballygowan - Taste the wetness of water.

Comments please

2004-09-10T16:44:00.000+01:00

I've activated the comments function for the blog, so you can leave remarks, insults, better jokes than mine etc., under each posting. Just click on the hash symbol next to the name of the poster (usually me) to add a comment and to see any previous comments that have been made.

Heirs to Nothing

2004-09-10T16:25:00.000+01:00

According to today's Independent, Leicester band Kasabian are the "spiritual heirs of the Stone Roses." All I can say is, poor bastards.

Well, not only that. I can also say, "spiritual heirs"? I can understand, maybe, if they were the musical heirs, since there was something identifiable about John Squire's guitar, but who the fuck would want to be the spiritual heir to a twat like Ian Brown? That'd be like being the spiritual heir to a rabid vacuum flask.

An empty one.

With a chimp's face stuck on it.

Apostate Windbag

2004-09-10T11:40:00.000+01:00

The September 10th article at this blog more or less conforms to arguments I presented previously concerning support for the resistance in Iraq. I particularly like this blog's self-description: Being a journal of left-wingery, but with a decided preference for discussing how the late Christopher Hitchens is a twat.

Yikes!

2004-09-09T16:08:00.000+01:00

Talk about Out of the Frying Pan and into the Fire.

A Reaction to Oppression?

2004-09-09T11:18:00.000+01:00

That is how Lenin has characterized the school hostage-taking in Beslan. Usually I have plenty of time for Lenin, despite his SWP sympathies, and I loathe those on the right who insist that either 'these people are just evil' or that 'liberals who try to understand the perpetrators are nothing but apologists for them.' But there comes a point where you really have to ask, 'how much oppression justifes the killing of schoolchildren?'

My inclination, in this case, anyway, is to regard this as nothing to do with Chechnya; these seem to be Islamists drawn to the Chechen struggle because of its religious dimension, and the Chechen nationalists have a legitimate grievance in objecting that events in Beslan have nothing to do with their cause. Nonetheless, regardless of one's grievance, and no matter how much one has suffered - even if one's own children have been killed - anyone fighting for their freedom should sooner die, surrender, or submit before taking the lives of children. No cause, no freedom, is worth it.

Once upon a time, those struggling for freedom retained a sense of dignity, of self-respect. Indeed, their argument for liberation rested upon the premise that they were entitled to be treated as fully human, with all the rights and obligations that that entailed. And one of the consequences of this argument was that, in the pursuit of their freedom, they demurred at stooping to the levels of their oppressors. There was a logic to this approach: It demonstrated that they, even though oppressed, were still able to avoid engaging in the sort of behaviour and actions that the oppressors engaged in in the process of depriving them of their rights. Thus, they demonstrated both their own dignity and the shameful nature of their oppressors' actions.

Now, however, it would appear that the pursuit of freedom can be used to justify arbitrary murder. This is post-enlightenment thinking.

To most people I would have thought it obvious, but let's just be clear on this: The pursuit of freedom, of human rights, of equal rights for all, cannot be achieved by depriving the innocent of theirs.

If You Read One Article on Iraq

2004-09-09T10:51:00.000+01:00

It has to be Naomi Klein's in the September issue of Harper's. I can't find the article online, and I read the bloody thing at work, which was an opportunity to cut and paste it, sorry, but DO get down to your nearest decent newsstand and get it.

Klein describes how Paul Bremer tried to privatize the entire Iraqi infrastructure, laying off hundreds of thousands of workers in the process and offering sweetheart deals to foreign multinationals to encourage them to invest (including the option of repatriating 100 percent of all profits). This has proved to be entirely illegal, so now the Coalition Authority is trying to strong-arm the Iraqi government to sell off nationally owned industries.

If you want to know where the resistance is coming from besides Muslim fundamentalists, it's here: Sacked coppers, soldiers, workers in former state-owned industries. Think they don't have a legitimate grievance? Well, as Klein shows, the new Iraq was meant to be a neocon utopia all along, and we all know what that means.

Saudi Links to 9/11 Covered Up

2004-09-08T14:37:00.000+01:00

Surprise, surprise. From the Miami Herald.

The Hideout Block Party

2004-09-08T10:03:00.000+01:00

Is coming up soon. Here's a link to the Hideout web site. And here's Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune's preview of last year's party:

A neighborhood Hideout

Katie and Tim Tuten run their hotspot with an eye on the community

Greg Kot, Tribune rock critic

"The Hideout's 7th annual block party may be among the smallest of the city's annual spate of summer street festivals, but it's also among the best--and not just because the music is bound to be good. Sure, in past years the block party has been a forum for breakout performances by bands such as the New Pornographers, the Electric 6 and Bobby Bare Jr. But Tim and Katie Tuten, who have co-owned the Hideout with Mike and Jim Hinchsliff since 1996, have done more than simply book bands in a cozy, affordable setting. They've brought a sense of community that extends far beyond music. Like the late, great Lounge Ax, the Hideout has an identity that makes it more than just an anonymous watering hole tucked amid warehouses on the Near North Side.

"I love the idea of a public house," Tim Tuten says. "A working person's bar, a regular guy's bar, that has a high level of conversation--like what bars used to be, before television took over. People would come together and discuss politics, art, cars, sports. That faded in the '80s and '90s, so we decided why not have a place like that for us and our friends?"

Since 1934, the Hideout had been an anonymous watering hole with an unlisted phone number that served workers from nearby factories and warehouses. It opened at dawn, closed at dusk, and was shuttered during weekends. Katie Tuten's father, Tom Nicholson, was a regular since the '60s, and Katie and her future husband, Tim, began hanging out there in the mid-'80s when they moved to Bucktown. A decade later, the couple bought the place with Tim's grade-school friends the Hinchsliffs."My father told me, `You don't really own the bar. We own the bar, one beer at a time.' And it's true," Katie Tuten says.

At most shows, the club asks for donations rather than charging a flat entrance fee, and proceeds from the block party will go to benefit three charities: P.L.A.Y., which provides music and arts education for abused children ( http://www.causesforchildren.org ); Tuesday's Child, a parent education group ( http://www.buildinghappyfamilies.org ); and the fund for ailing Texas musician and Hideout regular Alejandro Escovedo, who is battling Hepatitis C ( www.alejandrofund.com ). The children's charities tie in with one of the Hideout's many facets: as a hang-out for adults who have started families but haven't stopped going out. On Saturday, the block party's annual tradition of providing kids activities and music will continue, including afternoon sets by Twang Bang and ex-Coctails' Mark Greenberg and John Upchurch.

"We were 35 when we bought this club, and by that time you're supposed to be too old to be running around in bars," Tim Tuten says. "Your friends are having families, settling down, moving to the suburbs. But I look at people like Jon Langford and Doug McCombs [both playing the block party with the Waco Brothers and Tortoise, respectively] who are our age, and who haven't stopped being involved in music and going out. I'm not a musician, but we can provide a space for these people to play and have a drink and talk. We want this to be a place for people who aren't just going through a phase, but for people who have made this their life."

For Escovedo, who thrilled everyone by showing up at the second block party with his band and jumping on stage to jam, it's payback time. Escovedo was a longtime fixture in Austin, Texas, where Katie Tuten attended college, and his generosity and the city's musical camaraderie have been an inspiration.

"A lot of bands are playing the block party as a way to repay Alejandro, because he's always been there for everybody else," Katie Tuten says. "There's a big Austin-Chicago connection anyway, because of South by Southwest [the annual music conference], and the fact that Austin is blessed to have so many outdoor events. So the idea for doing the block party was to say thanks to all our friends and play music outdoors--that's definitely in the spirit of Austin."

The Tutens' friends include most of the bands playing this weekend, in particular Langford's hillbilly-punk band, the Waco Brothers, and the Gothic country duo the Handsome Family. "Those two bands pretty much define us and define Chicago," a one-time prairie town transformed into a big city, Tim Tuten says. "They have a western sound, they are country bands, but they're singing about Wal-Marts and urban blight."

Though there are several performers who could headline their own concerts at larger clubs--Tortoise, Bobby Conn, Poi Dog Pondering's Frank Orrall and Susan Voelz, Detroit's Dirtbombs--the bands that best capture the Hideout's scope are Erase Errata, an angular post-punk female quartet from San Francisco, and the Contractors, a cover band consisting of guys who hang out at the Hideout in between building jobs.

"It's only fitting that regulars kick off the shows," Tim Tuten says. "Plus they're the only garage band I know who can actually build a garage."

The 7th annual Hideout Block Party

When: Friday and Saturday (hours vary)

Where: Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia Ave.

Lies and the lying liars etc.

2004-09-07T11:54:00.000+01:00

A Web site produced by journalists assessing the accuracy of statements made by the Bush and Kerry campaigns in the current election campaigns. Entertaining and conducive to cynicism.

Anarchism is shit

2004-09-06T13:31:00.000+01:00

Here's a little piece of nostalgia from a former class-struggle anarchist that largely conforms to my own recollections of the uselessness of the anarchist movement in the 1980s (not that I'm entirely guiltless). I don't agree with some of what he says towards the end, but he has a legitimate grievance against supposedly pro-working class movements, and he offers a generally valid outline of the state of anarchy in the UK.

Like they couldn't have picked Gandhi

2004-09-02T16:57:00.000+01:00

From the Associated Press:

Bosnians to honour Bruce Lee
By Samir Krilic in SarajevoSeptember 2, 2004

IN Bosnia, where one man's hero is often another man's villain, citizens have decided to honour someone Serbs, Croats and Muslims can all look up to - kung fu great Bruce Lee. Lee is best remembered for single-handedly taking on dozens of bad guys in a series of kung fu flicks.

But the statue of the Chinese action hero in the ethnically-divided city of Mostar is intended to remind people of Lee's lesser known values - "loyalty, friendship, skill and justice", said Veselin Gatalo, a writer who helped come up with the idea.

Lee acted in a series of Hong Kong films in the early 1970s that propelled him to stardom first in Asia, then Europe and eventually the US.

His Hollywood debut came in 1973 with the hugely popular Enter the Dragon, a box office success Lee never lived to witness. He died a month before the film hit US theatres of a swelling of the brain, aged 32.

But can a monument to a karate-chopping, high-kicking B-movie star unite Mostar, a town that was both physically and psychologically scarred in Bosnia's 1992-95 war? Even now, Roman Catholic Croats and Muslims still live apart, sending their children to different schools, watching their own television stations and cheering for rival soccer teams.

"Lee is a true international hero and is a hero to all ethnicities in Bosnia and that's why we picked him," Mr Gatalo said.

Bosnia's war killed hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Croats and Muslims and left the country divided into a Serb republic and a Muslim-Croat federation. In Mostar at least, Gatalo, an ethnic Croat, hopes a statue to Lee will help erase the city's tarnished image as a place of bitter ethnic rivalries.

"We want that people, when you say Mostar, respond: 'That's the city that has a monument to Bruce Lee,'" Mr Gatalo said.

Mr Gatalo and a friend, Nino Raspudic, grew up on Bruce Lee movies. They persuaded Boris Jovanovic, a sculptor from Mostar, to create the statue of Lee "as if he was alive and kicking".

They hope to install the statue by November this year and invite Lee's wife, Linda Lee to the opening ceremony, Mr Gatalo said.

The site picked for the statue is symbolic - the Spanish Square, in the centre of the divided city some 70km south of the capital Sarajevo.

Dead Rabbit Climax

2004-09-02T12:19:00.000+01:00

This is just the opening paragraph of a fine review by Alex Ross in the August 9-16 New Yorker:

"“A ray of light: the Grail is fully radiant. A dove floats down from the dome above.” These are Richard Wagner's stage directions for the maximally transcendent final moments of Parsifal, his last opera. Christoph Schlingensief's production at the Bayreuth Festival last week gave us instead two dead rabbits, their rotting bodies intertwined, their images projected on a screen above the stage. We then saw a sped-up film of one rabbit decomposing, its body frothing as the maggots did their work. I've seen a lot of stupid, repulsive, irritating, befuddling, and boring things on opera stages over the years, but Schlingensief's dead-rabbit climax was something new: for the first time, I left a theatre feeling, like, ready to hurl."

They'd better keep yer man away from Oberammergau.

Still married after all these years

2004-09-01T12:04:00.000+01:00

Yes, a whole nine (go on, count em), nine years of glorious wedded bliss. Thank you, my sweetheart. You are my proletarian revolution every day.

Hooray for Me!

2004-08-31T15:24:00.000+01:00

Men's Over 40s Doubles Champion 2004 at Laytown/Bettystown Tennis Club.

Still got it.

Anything we can do . . .

2004-08-31T15:08:00.000+01:00

Natalie Portman can do too. Taken from a review of Mike Nichols's movie adaptation of the wonderful Patrick Marber's play Closer in the August 30 issue of Newsweek:

"On the first day of shooting their new film, Natalie Portman gave Julia Roberts a gift. The two women had never met, and because Portman had always admired Roberts, she decided to present her with a delicate silver necklace. On the chain were four letters that spelled out the most profane term for the female anatomy--otherwise known as the C word. "I just thought that was hilarious," Portman says. "But then I was like, 'I hope I don't offend her'." Nope. Compared with what Roberts has to hear, and say, in Closer, it's practically sweet talk. Directed by Mike Nichols......"

If only it had read "Counago."

Blimey! (c) F. Sidebottom

2004-08-31T14:06:00.000+01:00

Managed to walk past Waterstones, Hodges Figgis, and Easons this lunchtime without buying a book. And on payday too. I did however, buy Andrew Collier's book Critical Realism and Ian Steedman's Marx after Sraffa online. My name's John and I'm a shopaholic.

I haven't bored you all with book reviews for weeks, so here's a quick report:

My Life, My Art, by Diego Rivera. Or possibly My Art, My Life, can't remember. Orotund, bombastic, and not at all impressive. Stick to painting and being dead, Diego.

What Is This Thing Called Science?, by Alan Chalmers. Since I used to teach the first five chapters of this book in A Level Philosophy at South Trafford College ten years back, I thought it was about time I read the whole thing. It's a reasonable, and purely introductory, outline of the philosophy of science, and I can understand why Sadie Plant, whose notes I used, only covered the first five chapters; subsequent accounts of the theories of Lakatos, Feyerabend, and Althusser are cursory at best.

The Yogi and the Commissar, by Arthur Koestler. A series of essays written during and just after the war, when Koestler was a credible and non-rabid anticommunist socialist. Very good on the horrors of the Soviet Union. Also relevant: His essay, "On Disbelieving Atrocities."

The Enemy Within: A History of the British Communist Party, by Francis Beckett. A very readable history, and a laugh a minute as party members engage in multiple gyrations as they try to toe the Soviet line. Only Raji Palme Dutt seems to have no qualms about defending Hitler one week then condemning him the next, just because Moscow says so. And when the miners' strike was at its height, the party was more preoccupied with in-fighting between tankies and Eurocommunists than taking on the Coal Board and Thaatchi. What's that old joke about the first item on the agenda being 'the split'?

Currently beside my bed or the loo: The Bumper Book of British Lefties, by Paul Routledge. Brief profiles of all and sundry, including Bernard Ingham (!), Jeremy Hardy, and picket-line crosser Anna Ford. And Gubu Nation, by Damian Corless. Accounts of antics perpetrated in Ireland in an effort to live up to British stereotypes. Great fun.

My train-time reading is currently Naked, by David Sedaris. This man is the greatest living gay American comic essayist resident in France. I adore his work. This collection was bought as a birthday present for me by the gorgeous and wonderful Ms Catherine Leen. A woman of great taste.

How Bizarre is this?

2004-08-31T12:58:00.000+01:00

Some geeks are running a fantasy blog market, like the stock market only using blogs as businesses. C & S has been cited on the market (and worth fuck all of course). I thought this was a workers' collective.

The Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq

2004-08-31T12:33:00.000+01:00

can be found here. Sign petitions, send letters of protest. Support them.

The Worker-Communist Party of Iraq

2004-08-30T17:23:00.000+01:00

Whence Marc Cooper derived his reports, can be found here.

Progressive Swine Technologies

2004-08-30T16:38:00.000+01:00

A wonderful name for an awful business (allegedly).

Save the Hill of Tara

2004-08-30T15:57:00.000+01:00

Sign the petition if you would. Tara's legacy to archaeology and thus to our knowledge about humanity is still being explored. I don't want a fucking motorway bulldozered through the middle of such a valuable place.

Hanging with Mr. Cooper

2004-08-30T13:57:00.000+01:00

Esteemed antiwar Nation journalist Marc Cooper lays into Naomi Klein and explains his current position on the war.

Impressive, but not as much fun as pushing them up your arse

2004-08-27T15:17:00.000+01:00

er . . . drugs, that is.

Altogether now: PIN-O-CHET, A-SE-SINO!!

2004-08-27T11:32:00.000+01:00

It's Friday, the sun is shining, and Pinochet is going on trial. Have a wonderful weekend.

Should have flown Virgin

2004-08-26T16:18:00.000+01:00

From the BBC, the latest in in-flight entertainment.

The new Jerry Stahl

2004-08-24T15:37:00.000+01:00

I, Fatty reviewed in the New York Times.