From Dave's Part
Statement: libel action brought by Johanna Kaschke
AS IS being reported widely across the leftwing blogosphere, I am currently being sued for libel by Johanna Kaschke, a Conservative Party activist based in Tower Hamlets. In light of the considerable publicity, let me state the following for the record.
This case centres on whether or not Ms Kaschke - filmed in May in the company of London mayor Boris Johnson - can fairly be said to have been ‘linked’ to the ultraleftist Baader Meinhof terrorist gang in her youth in seventies Germany.
Ms Kaschke admits arrest on suspicion of terrorism in 1975, and spending two months or so thereafter in custody. As I made clear in the article complained of, she was in 1977 paid compensation for false imprisonment, and has consistently denied any wrongdoing. Despite her contention otherwise, I have at no time accused her of being a ‘hardline terrorist’, or indeed a terrorist of any stripe.
As recently as last year, Ms Kaschke put herself forward for the Labour nomination for the winnable seat of Bethnal Green & Bow. After receiving just one vote, she defected to the Respect party of George Galloway, quickly left to join one of Britain’s multiple Communist Parties, adhered again to Labour and then switched to the Tories; she now overtly advocates political positions that place her on the hard right of the legitimate Conservative spectrum. Rarely can ideological peregrinations have been so comprehensive in such a short space of time.
In addition to her action against me, I know for sure that Ms Kaschke is also suing Labourhome founder Alex Hilton, Labour-supporting blogger John Grey,and leading German news magazine Der Spiegel. She has settled out of court with Private Eye, and I also reliably understand that she earlier this year lost a substantial sum in costs in a failed action against the Labour Party. In addition, she is seeking judicial review against a decision on her right to legal aid made by the Legal Services Commission.
Being a journalist, I have had sufficient professional training to put forward a defence of justification and/or fair comment, and I furthermore contend that the doctrine of ‘bane and antidote’ applies, in that her side of the story was properly set out. I admit to breach of copyright in using a photograph from her website, and will shortly make an offer of settlement, based on National Union of Journalists rates for photographers.
Novel points of law raised by the claimant include the issue of whether her inability to carry out decorative work in her abode can legitimately form part of an action for aggravated damages in defmation, and whether accurately listing her past affiliations is tantamount to denial of her right to freedom of association under the European Human Rights Act. Both interpretations seem to me frankly quixotic, although that is naturally for the court to decide.
Evidence includes a copy of Ms Kaschke’s arrest warrant, stating that she had access to a storage area in which were kept imitation firearms, gas masks and car number plates, and a letter written by a lawyer on her behalf, admitting that she put on a benefit concert for Rote Hilfe, an entirely lawful organisation that raised money to fund legal fees for Baader Meinhof defendants accused in the German courts. Ms Kaschke contests the claims contained in her arrest warrant.
I am happy to make copies of these documents - and ample other supporting material, most of which attracts qualified privilege and is thus immune from action for defamation - available to journalists who may wish to cover this story. Incidentally, application under Germany’s Freedom of Information legislation for further details concerning Ms Kaschke’s arrest will shortly be made.
Comments left on the original post form part of the action, something that in itself raises important issues for freedom of speech on the internet. One of the grounds on which this action is being brought is a remark in this blog’s comments box that describes Ms Kaschke as ‘one cherry short of a Schwarzwalderkirschtorte’. The merit of this designation is now entirely a matter for the court; however, such deliberations can scarcely be considered the optimal use of judicial time.
As most blogging aficionados will realise, such a lighthearted and jocular insult is nothing compared to the anarchic mêlée of a controversial thread in full flight. Everyone - regardless of political affiliation - who values the right to express an opinion online in vernacular English should support all of the bloggers involved in this blizzard of writs.
Congratulations are due to top Tory blogger Iain Dale, who has come down against his fellow Conservative Ms Kaschke in support of Alex Hilton. Heartfelt thanks also go to another prominent Tory, who has offered me concrete support in all this on principled libertarian grounds. All will be revealed if push comes to shove, but it is already clear that this woman does not have the backing of the better elements of her own party.
The next directions hearing is on January 27th next year, at which point I will apply to have the action joined with the action against Alex and John. If this matter comes to court, it is likely to prove one of the more colourful defamation claims of 2009. In the meantime, feel free to publicise this matter, on the basis of the uncontested facts set out in this post
Friday, December 05, 2008
Thursday, December 04, 2008
A pirates life for me
Considering the recent revival of Piracy I cannot believe that I hadn't published this before. It was virtually the first piece of published writing that I did, and convinced me that I could write (although I am immensly grateful to Manny and Gerry who edited it and corrected my 'individual' approach to punctuation). It was first published in Red Star #2 in 2004.
On the afternoon of the 26 July 1726, William Fly walked the steps of the Boston gallows. Unlike his fellow condemned, Fly had shown no fear at his fate. The great and the good who had gathered to see the pirate die were uncomfortable: he was not playing his agreed part in the moral drama. But, as Fly neared the rope, their fears it seemed were unfounded. Fly became upset and animated, pointing to the noose and shouting at the executioner.
This was more like it. Fly inspected the rope and the noose that would soon be around his neck, and with distress on his face he turned on the hangman and reproached him for "not understanding his trade". Luckily for the amateur, Fly was a sailor and knew his knots, and he offered to teach the officer of the court how to tie the noose properly. Then Fly, to the astonishment of the crowd, retied it to his own satisfaction and informed the crowd that he was not afraid to die, as he had wronged no man and was a brave fellow.
When the time arrived for the prisoners to address the crowd with their final words, Fly's three colleagues played their part: the condemned were expected to act as morality plays for the education of the unwashed. The unwritten agreement was that if the prisoners condemned alcohol and depravity, confessed their crimes, praised the church, and the courts, and the king, then there was always the slight possibility of a last minute reprieve. Fly's turn came and he didn't play along: no plea for forgiveness for him, no praise for court, or god, or king. Instead, the waterside crowd, packed with sailors and ships officers, was treated to a warning, that "all masters of vessels take warning at the fate of the captain he had murdered and to pay sailors their wages when due and to treat them better, saying that their barbarity turned so many pyrates."
I grew up fascinated by pirates. Wet Saturday and Sunday afternoons were saved by the promise of a Basil Rathbone or Errol Flynn swashbuckler. Westerns left me cold (at least until I discovered Sergio Leone far later on). But pirates just hit the spot. Not simply on film - Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe were books that first spurred me to enjoy reading. As I grew up, though, reading and watching about my childhood heroes became increasingly difficult, as historians insisted on telling me that the pirates themselves were little more than brutes, and their commanders psychopathic bloodsoaked loonies, guilty of all and every violent crime and fully deserving of their fate.
Marcus Rediker is a fan of pirates too, but he is also a historian of the l8th century Atlantic. He shows that this 'history', as it is peddled is nothing more than a repetition of the eighteenth century ruling class in its war of extermination against the last, and greatest, of the pirate brotherhoods, of what he describes as ‘the golden age of piracy’. Marcus reclaims the reputation of my pirate heroes: Calico Jack Rackham, Blackbeard, black Bart Roberts, Mary Read and Anne Bonney- who in a brief ten years from 1716- 1726 shook the new British Empire to blood soaked core- and reveals a real history that puts all the stories of Hollywood in the shade.
As long as maritime trade routes have existed, there have been pirates; the ancient Greeks considered piracy as a valid option for a merchant down on their luck and did not place any moral weight upon the term. The Romans, however, used the piracy at sea in much the same way as they employed the term barbarian on land. A pirate was anyone on the ‘Roman’ sea who wasn’t Roman. In their determination to dominate and control their world, they created a policy describing pirates as Hostes humani generis, the common enemies of mankind, that the rulers of the later emerging British empire would employ to justify its campaign of extermination of the Atlantic pirates.
The British experience of piracy began as a wing of semi official government policy. In perpetual war against the mighty Catholic empires of Spain and Portugal, Protestant England granted letters of mark to pirate adventures to explore, trade and to prey upon the treasure ships of the enemy as they sailed back to Europe packed with silver and gold from the Spanish and Portuguese American territories. Drake, Grenville, Raleigh and Morgan cut themselves a page in history and folklore as they carve England a slice of the New World out of the control of the 'Dons'.
The end of the War of Spanish Succession saw the end of the need for these 'privateers'. Britain gained the assiento, the right to import slaves to the Spanish colonies and so began the trade that would provide the spur and capital for the industrial revolution. As Karl Marx would later note, capitalism was born in blood and filth: the middle passage, from the African coast to the slave markets of Havana and Virginia, saw the bloody birth of a brutal age. The end of the war created two conditions that provided a bonanza for the London and Bristol merchants. The opening up of the slave trade and the demobilization of tens of thousands of sailors meant that even the massive expansion of trade failed to exhaust the surplus of labour. This meant that the employers could force down wages, and worsen onboard conditions to unbearable levels, in the drive for greater profits. Life aboard was never easy and a navy ship was no place for the weak, but the sailors could remember that life had never been as bad as it was now. The brutality of the slave ships was not only visited on the 'cargo' - with the crew facing mortality rates of 30% or higher in a voyage. The master's treatment of the crew reflected that every slave lost was a loss of potential profit, whilst every sailor lost was a saving in wages. As well as the constant threat of drowning, sailors faced disease, made worse by malnutrition and non-existent sanitation, and the constant threat of violence at the whim of the ships' masters, who ruled their ships as god, judge, jury and often executioner. A sailor's life was nasty brutal short and miserable.
Just as capitalism in all its brutality was born in this filthy trade, so also were the sailors the first to develop resistance to its effects. Work stoppages, go-slows, sabotage and strikes were all invented by sailors in their class war with the masters and ships captains. In fact, the strike was invented by sailors in 1768 in London, when sailors went from ship to ship cutting down - 'striking' – the sails to prevent the masters setting sail.
These conditions were what led many to find the alternative of rising in mutiny and becoming pirates an attractive option. For men who faced the threat of death and mutilation on a daily basis, the certainty of an eventual date with the hangman's noose was no deterrent. The pirate laughed in the face of Death and proclaimed a short life and a merry one!
The sailors who became pirates did not do so only because of their suffering – of the tens of thousands of sailors employed on the Atlantic trade, only a minority (no more than 4000) ever became pirates - but also because of the vision of freedom that becoming a pirate provided.
Each mutiny followed a similar pattern: once the ship's officers and any loyalist seamen were overpowered, the rebels organised a meeting involving the entire crew. At this, 'articles', the rules of the ship, were drawn up, and officers elected. The articles followed certain common rules:
· Providing for the care of those injured on board, or in combat
(One of the most audacious acts of notorious pirate captain Edward
Teach, also known as Blackbeard, was the blockade of Charleston
Harbour: not as one might suppose for grog or gold but to obtain
medicine for sick crewmates).
· Limiting the powers of the elected officers: the captain only had
control of the ship whilst in storm or combat, at all other times
power rested in the hands of the ship's council, made up of all the
'full' pirates on board - new recruits were denied representation
until they had proved themselves, usually in combat.
When pirates attacked a merchant ship their first act would be to raise the 'Jolly Roger', the pirates' flag. This would begin the psychological assault, informing the seamen that to oppose them would mean death. So many ships' captains would be prevented from mounting a bloody defence by the rest of the crew simply folding its arms and refusing to fight that parliament decreed that to refuse to fight pirates was a crime punishable by death. For all their violent reputation, the pirates themselves would rather not to fight at all, and the chance of taking a ship cleanly was much preferred.
Once aboard, the crew of the ship were gathered together and their officers paraded before them. The crew were invited to speak out either in favour or against the captain and his staff: their testimony would decide the fate of the captain and his ship. Good or kind captains would find themselves not only still alive but often still in command of their ships at the end of the pirate attack and with the bulk of the cargo intact, minus any alcohol, fresh food, or gold and silver.
A bad or violent captain would, however, be lucky to escape with his life and what the pirates couldn't take or use would be burned with his ship.
The final act before the pirates departed was to appeal for volunteers. Hardly a ship could be found without one or more potential pirates.
For the pirate the aim was for a short life, but a merry one, and the pirates found what comfort they could when they could. The hunt for alcohol was a constant one. Although merchant and navy ships were not known for their sobriety - Nelson's ships have been described as asylums of chronic alcoholics - the pirates' appetites sometimes got them into real trouble. More than one ship was wrecked on reefs or captured by the authorities because the crew were too drunk to sailor to fight.
The privateers of the 17th century had followed a practice of matelotage a relationship of shared property and responsibility between two men, and the pirates carried on this liberated attitude toward homosexuality. Whereas the Royal Navy at the time has been described as being run by 'Rum, Sodomy and The Lash', homosexuality was punishable by death on navy ships. On board a pirate vessel love was accepted wherever it could be found.
Women played a very minor part in this extremely masculine world, but Rediker, who tells the stories of the famous female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read, challenges the bourgeois historian's view that women were only victims or whores. He shows that, on one ship at least, 'the molestation of unwilling women' was banned by the articles and punishable by death. Although most pirates had served on the middle passage and thus had been a part of the slave trade, the pirates displayed remarkably little of the racial prejudice that was being developed at that time in order to justify the trade. Whilst pirates were known to take, and sell on, slave cargos, black former slaves made up a considerable portion of pirate crews (over 40% of Blackbeard's crew were black). Pirates would often describe themselves as Maroons, copying the name adopted by the escaped Jamaican slave gangs. On one occasion, Marcus relates, the captain found himself handed back control of his slave ship only after the pirates had released all the chains and provided the slaves with a knife each. That the captain and his 'cargo' would be able to discuss their respective situations on a more equal basis would have appealed to the pirates' sense of
justice.
It was the threat that the pirates made upon the profits of the slave trade that determined their fate. The seaboard coasts of both Africa and the Americas were swamped with navy ships; the pirates were hunted down and hanged by the dozen. The pirates themselves responded to state terror with a terror of their own. More merchantmen were burnt; towns that hanged pirates were blockaded. The pirates themselves declared "No surrender" and vowed to blow themselves and their ships to kingdom come rather than be captured. But the writing was on the wall, and the dwindling bands of pirates either dispersed or died fighting, or upon the scaffold.
Marcus Rediker has done us a great service: he has written an account of those who, facing a world full of horror and brutality, rebelled and challenged the conventions of class, race and gender. Laughing in the face of authority as they laughed in the face of
death, the pirates rebellion created an alternative to the dour hypocrisy of our betters which has given hope and inspiration for over 300 years.
The origin of the Jolly Roger
There have been a number of different explanations of the origin of the most famous of the pirates' flags, the 'skull and cross bones'.
In the book Socialism for Beginners, Anna Paczuska declared that, despite pirates’ flags being almost exclusively black, the term
Jolly Roger was a perversion of the French jolie rougier (red and beautiful). This may have some basis in fact as the navy flag signal for mutiny was a red flag.
The Jolly Roger flown by the Atlantic pirates, however, was black and either showed a skeleton or a skull and bones. Marcus
Rediker provides a more convincing explanation of its origin.
The flying of the Jolly Roger was a part of the psychological war waged b the pirate band and was designed to strike terror into the hearts of those who saw it. The skull and crossed bones device was commonly used by a ship's captain in his log, as a sign that a seaman had lost his life on voyage. As such it would be a universally recognised symbol of death. The colour of the flag indicated 'no quarter' and ordered the victims not to resist. Finally, Rediker argues that the name is taken from 18th century slang for sex (as in 'a good rogering'). Quite simply, if the captain of a fat merchantman were to look out, and see through his telescope the Jolly Roger flying, then he could be sure that he was well and truly fucked.
On the afternoon of the 26 July 1726, William Fly walked the steps of the Boston gallows. Unlike his fellow condemned, Fly had shown no fear at his fate. The great and the good who had gathered to see the pirate die were uncomfortable: he was not playing his agreed part in the moral drama. But, as Fly neared the rope, their fears it seemed were unfounded. Fly became upset and animated, pointing to the noose and shouting at the executioner.
This was more like it. Fly inspected the rope and the noose that would soon be around his neck, and with distress on his face he turned on the hangman and reproached him for "not understanding his trade". Luckily for the amateur, Fly was a sailor and knew his knots, and he offered to teach the officer of the court how to tie the noose properly. Then Fly, to the astonishment of the crowd, retied it to his own satisfaction and informed the crowd that he was not afraid to die, as he had wronged no man and was a brave fellow.
When the time arrived for the prisoners to address the crowd with their final words, Fly's three colleagues played their part: the condemned were expected to act as morality plays for the education of the unwashed. The unwritten agreement was that if the prisoners condemned alcohol and depravity, confessed their crimes, praised the church, and the courts, and the king, then there was always the slight possibility of a last minute reprieve. Fly's turn came and he didn't play along: no plea for forgiveness for him, no praise for court, or god, or king. Instead, the waterside crowd, packed with sailors and ships officers, was treated to a warning, that "all masters of vessels take warning at the fate of the captain he had murdered and to pay sailors their wages when due and to treat them better, saying that their barbarity turned so many pyrates."
I grew up fascinated by pirates. Wet Saturday and Sunday afternoons were saved by the promise of a Basil Rathbone or Errol Flynn swashbuckler. Westerns left me cold (at least until I discovered Sergio Leone far later on). But pirates just hit the spot. Not simply on film - Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe were books that first spurred me to enjoy reading. As I grew up, though, reading and watching about my childhood heroes became increasingly difficult, as historians insisted on telling me that the pirates themselves were little more than brutes, and their commanders psychopathic bloodsoaked loonies, guilty of all and every violent crime and fully deserving of their fate.
Marcus Rediker is a fan of pirates too, but he is also a historian of the l8th century Atlantic. He shows that this 'history', as it is peddled is nothing more than a repetition of the eighteenth century ruling class in its war of extermination against the last, and greatest, of the pirate brotherhoods, of what he describes as ‘the golden age of piracy’. Marcus reclaims the reputation of my pirate heroes: Calico Jack Rackham, Blackbeard, black Bart Roberts, Mary Read and Anne Bonney- who in a brief ten years from 1716- 1726 shook the new British Empire to blood soaked core- and reveals a real history that puts all the stories of Hollywood in the shade.
As long as maritime trade routes have existed, there have been pirates; the ancient Greeks considered piracy as a valid option for a merchant down on their luck and did not place any moral weight upon the term. The Romans, however, used the piracy at sea in much the same way as they employed the term barbarian on land. A pirate was anyone on the ‘Roman’ sea who wasn’t Roman. In their determination to dominate and control their world, they created a policy describing pirates as Hostes humani generis, the common enemies of mankind, that the rulers of the later emerging British empire would employ to justify its campaign of extermination of the Atlantic pirates.
The British experience of piracy began as a wing of semi official government policy. In perpetual war against the mighty Catholic empires of Spain and Portugal, Protestant England granted letters of mark to pirate adventures to explore, trade and to prey upon the treasure ships of the enemy as they sailed back to Europe packed with silver and gold from the Spanish and Portuguese American territories. Drake, Grenville, Raleigh and Morgan cut themselves a page in history and folklore as they carve England a slice of the New World out of the control of the 'Dons'.
The end of the War of Spanish Succession saw the end of the need for these 'privateers'. Britain gained the assiento, the right to import slaves to the Spanish colonies and so began the trade that would provide the spur and capital for the industrial revolution. As Karl Marx would later note, capitalism was born in blood and filth: the middle passage, from the African coast to the slave markets of Havana and Virginia, saw the bloody birth of a brutal age. The end of the war created two conditions that provided a bonanza for the London and Bristol merchants. The opening up of the slave trade and the demobilization of tens of thousands of sailors meant that even the massive expansion of trade failed to exhaust the surplus of labour. This meant that the employers could force down wages, and worsen onboard conditions to unbearable levels, in the drive for greater profits. Life aboard was never easy and a navy ship was no place for the weak, but the sailors could remember that life had never been as bad as it was now. The brutality of the slave ships was not only visited on the 'cargo' - with the crew facing mortality rates of 30% or higher in a voyage. The master's treatment of the crew reflected that every slave lost was a loss of potential profit, whilst every sailor lost was a saving in wages. As well as the constant threat of drowning, sailors faced disease, made worse by malnutrition and non-existent sanitation, and the constant threat of violence at the whim of the ships' masters, who ruled their ships as god, judge, jury and often executioner. A sailor's life was nasty brutal short and miserable.
Just as capitalism in all its brutality was born in this filthy trade, so also were the sailors the first to develop resistance to its effects. Work stoppages, go-slows, sabotage and strikes were all invented by sailors in their class war with the masters and ships captains. In fact, the strike was invented by sailors in 1768 in London, when sailors went from ship to ship cutting down - 'striking' – the sails to prevent the masters setting sail.
These conditions were what led many to find the alternative of rising in mutiny and becoming pirates an attractive option. For men who faced the threat of death and mutilation on a daily basis, the certainty of an eventual date with the hangman's noose was no deterrent. The pirate laughed in the face of Death and proclaimed a short life and a merry one!
The sailors who became pirates did not do so only because of their suffering – of the tens of thousands of sailors employed on the Atlantic trade, only a minority (no more than 4000) ever became pirates - but also because of the vision of freedom that becoming a pirate provided.
Each mutiny followed a similar pattern: once the ship's officers and any loyalist seamen were overpowered, the rebels organised a meeting involving the entire crew. At this, 'articles', the rules of the ship, were drawn up, and officers elected. The articles followed certain common rules:
· Providing for the care of those injured on board, or in combat
(One of the most audacious acts of notorious pirate captain Edward
Teach, also known as Blackbeard, was the blockade of Charleston
Harbour: not as one might suppose for grog or gold but to obtain
medicine for sick crewmates).
· Limiting the powers of the elected officers: the captain only had
control of the ship whilst in storm or combat, at all other times
power rested in the hands of the ship's council, made up of all the
'full' pirates on board - new recruits were denied representation
until they had proved themselves, usually in combat.
When pirates attacked a merchant ship their first act would be to raise the 'Jolly Roger', the pirates' flag. This would begin the psychological assault, informing the seamen that to oppose them would mean death. So many ships' captains would be prevented from mounting a bloody defence by the rest of the crew simply folding its arms and refusing to fight that parliament decreed that to refuse to fight pirates was a crime punishable by death. For all their violent reputation, the pirates themselves would rather not to fight at all, and the chance of taking a ship cleanly was much preferred.
Once aboard, the crew of the ship were gathered together and their officers paraded before them. The crew were invited to speak out either in favour or against the captain and his staff: their testimony would decide the fate of the captain and his ship. Good or kind captains would find themselves not only still alive but often still in command of their ships at the end of the pirate attack and with the bulk of the cargo intact, minus any alcohol, fresh food, or gold and silver.
A bad or violent captain would, however, be lucky to escape with his life and what the pirates couldn't take or use would be burned with his ship.
The final act before the pirates departed was to appeal for volunteers. Hardly a ship could be found without one or more potential pirates.
For the pirate the aim was for a short life, but a merry one, and the pirates found what comfort they could when they could. The hunt for alcohol was a constant one. Although merchant and navy ships were not known for their sobriety - Nelson's ships have been described as asylums of chronic alcoholics - the pirates' appetites sometimes got them into real trouble. More than one ship was wrecked on reefs or captured by the authorities because the crew were too drunk to sailor to fight.
The privateers of the 17th century had followed a practice of matelotage a relationship of shared property and responsibility between two men, and the pirates carried on this liberated attitude toward homosexuality. Whereas the Royal Navy at the time has been described as being run by 'Rum, Sodomy and The Lash', homosexuality was punishable by death on navy ships. On board a pirate vessel love was accepted wherever it could be found.
Women played a very minor part in this extremely masculine world, but Rediker, who tells the stories of the famous female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read, challenges the bourgeois historian's view that women were only victims or whores. He shows that, on one ship at least, 'the molestation of unwilling women' was banned by the articles and punishable by death. Although most pirates had served on the middle passage and thus had been a part of the slave trade, the pirates displayed remarkably little of the racial prejudice that was being developed at that time in order to justify the trade. Whilst pirates were known to take, and sell on, slave cargos, black former slaves made up a considerable portion of pirate crews (over 40% of Blackbeard's crew were black). Pirates would often describe themselves as Maroons, copying the name adopted by the escaped Jamaican slave gangs. On one occasion, Marcus relates, the captain found himself handed back control of his slave ship only after the pirates had released all the chains and provided the slaves with a knife each. That the captain and his 'cargo' would be able to discuss their respective situations on a more equal basis would have appealed to the pirates' sense of
justice.
It was the threat that the pirates made upon the profits of the slave trade that determined their fate. The seaboard coasts of both Africa and the Americas were swamped with navy ships; the pirates were hunted down and hanged by the dozen. The pirates themselves responded to state terror with a terror of their own. More merchantmen were burnt; towns that hanged pirates were blockaded. The pirates themselves declared "No surrender" and vowed to blow themselves and their ships to kingdom come rather than be captured. But the writing was on the wall, and the dwindling bands of pirates either dispersed or died fighting, or upon the scaffold.
Marcus Rediker has done us a great service: he has written an account of those who, facing a world full of horror and brutality, rebelled and challenged the conventions of class, race and gender. Laughing in the face of authority as they laughed in the face of
death, the pirates rebellion created an alternative to the dour hypocrisy of our betters which has given hope and inspiration for over 300 years.
The origin of the Jolly Roger
There have been a number of different explanations of the origin of the most famous of the pirates' flags, the 'skull and cross bones'.
In the book Socialism for Beginners, Anna Paczuska declared that, despite pirates’ flags being almost exclusively black, the term
Jolly Roger was a perversion of the French jolie rougier (red and beautiful). This may have some basis in fact as the navy flag signal for mutiny was a red flag.
The Jolly Roger flown by the Atlantic pirates, however, was black and either showed a skeleton or a skull and bones. Marcus
Rediker provides a more convincing explanation of its origin.
The flying of the Jolly Roger was a part of the psychological war waged b the pirate band and was designed to strike terror into the hearts of those who saw it. The skull and crossed bones device was commonly used by a ship's captain in his log, as a sign that a seaman had lost his life on voyage. As such it would be a universally recognised symbol of death. The colour of the flag indicated 'no quarter' and ordered the victims not to resist. Finally, Rediker argues that the name is taken from 18th century slang for sex (as in 'a good rogering'). Quite simply, if the captain of a fat merchantman were to look out, and see through his telescope the Jolly Roger flying, then he could be sure that he was well and truly fucked.
Monday, December 01, 2008
Murder In Bombay, business as usual in Islamabad
I have attempted several times to write something appropriate to respond to the butchery in India, but given the smart alecky one liners that I tend to prefer on this blog nothing had seemed to match the horror of the images which have crowded our TV screens.
the deliberate targetting of foreigners and Jews, the indiscriminating machine gunning of commuter trains, the attack on women and children at the Cama and Ablass hospitals show the true FASCIST nature of Islamist terror; those who have excused such acts in the past as expressions of some sort of 'anti imperialism' should hold their heads in shame.
My sincere condolences to the families of all those who lost their lives.
The evidence that points toward Pakistani secret service involvement threatens an even greater horror as the two great Nuclear powers of south Asia square up for yet another war.
One of the many questions that do occur is the relationship between the 'return to democracy' in Pakistan, following the election of the PPP, and the Islamist terror groups. In the popular acclumation that the western press greeted the resignation of General Mushareff, and the election of Benazir Bhutto's successor Yousaf Gillani as prime minister, there was much made of the PPP's loudly proclaimed opposition to Terrorism and support for the USA's TWAT.
However the long recognised close relationship between the Taliban and Pakistans secret service ,the ISI, began, and flourished, not during the dictatorship of Mushareff, but whilst 'democratic' Benazir Bhutto was in power. The contrast between the urbane, privately educated, and cultured Pakistani Ruling Class, extemplified by Bhutto herself (and that arch trot toff twat Tariq Ali) and the web of tribal and clan allegiances that make up their political power bases especially in the old North west frontier regions where the Taliban and the islamist groups have their havens, is stark, and has been generally glossed over by their cheerleaders in the West. The 'democratic' politicians of Pakistan are nothing of the sort, the difference between them and the warlords of the NWFP is nothing more than an Oxbridge accent, a sharp suit and better public relations.
the deliberate targetting of foreigners and Jews, the indiscriminating machine gunning of commuter trains, the attack on women and children at the Cama and Ablass hospitals show the true FASCIST nature of Islamist terror; those who have excused such acts in the past as expressions of some sort of 'anti imperialism' should hold their heads in shame.
My sincere condolences to the families of all those who lost their lives.
The evidence that points toward Pakistani secret service involvement threatens an even greater horror as the two great Nuclear powers of south Asia square up for yet another war.
One of the many questions that do occur is the relationship between the 'return to democracy' in Pakistan, following the election of the PPP, and the Islamist terror groups. In the popular acclumation that the western press greeted the resignation of General Mushareff, and the election of Benazir Bhutto's successor Yousaf Gillani as prime minister, there was much made of the PPP's loudly proclaimed opposition to Terrorism and support for the USA's TWAT.
However the long recognised close relationship between the Taliban and Pakistans secret service ,the ISI, began, and flourished, not during the dictatorship of Mushareff, but whilst 'democratic' Benazir Bhutto was in power. The contrast between the urbane, privately educated, and cultured Pakistani Ruling Class, extemplified by Bhutto herself (and that arch trot toff twat Tariq Ali) and the web of tribal and clan allegiances that make up their political power bases especially in the old North west frontier regions where the Taliban and the islamist groups have their havens, is stark, and has been generally glossed over by their cheerleaders in the West. The 'democratic' politicians of Pakistan are nothing of the sort, the difference between them and the warlords of the NWFP is nothing more than an Oxbridge accent, a sharp suit and better public relations.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Does Sunderland threaten a Nuclear option?
Roy Keane is reported to be 'considering his options' following yesterdays slapping by Bolton.
Perhaps
he will return to the day job?
he will return to the day job?
Rumours that Sunderland are preparing to launch a nuclear assault on Newcastle have been denied as 'wishful thinking' by the UN
Friday, November 28, 2008
Comrade Rees is Purged- A nation mourns
there is really nothing much to be said.
But, as this is my blog then I will.
Many years ago when I was working as a train driver in Leeds I was an active member of the Swappies; an announcement in the Party notes asked for speakers at that years Marxism summer school. I was at that time doing talks for West Riding SWP branches on The Luddites and was quite pleased with how it went down. I decided that it would be nice to do the talk in front of them fancy londoners and so called the number attached. I was put through to John Rees. I explained who I was and gave him my pitch; after a moment of silence he said; "It all sounds very interesting. Is this a part of you're thesis?"
"Pardon?" , I was a train driver who left school at 15; but I was not ignorant, I knew what faeces is, and I was not impressed with with the implied criticism.
"Are you studying the subject as a part of your degree?"
I explained that I was a manual worker and not, in fact, a student.
Silence. "Oh."
Rees then 'patiently explained' how the speaker at Marxism had to speak for 45 mins and take questions from a large number of people who may know a great deal about the subject, and it would be very different from a branch meeting, and how daunting that might be.
I was beginning to feel a little patronised* and said that I had been to marxim many times, knew what was involved and that if I did not feel up to it then I would not have applied.
Rees said that he would be in touch if they needed me.
Two months later I arrived at that years Marxism and walked into the meeting entitled "the Luddites" at which I spent an hour correcting the howling mistakes that the teenage student swappie stumbled and stuttered his way through.
Me? Bitter?
damned right!
* If you have ever been a blue collar worker in the SWP you will know that being patronised is the default position, to such an extent that you become immune to it and only notice when it stops.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
life a riot with Bjork Vs. Bjork
Iceland was the first country to feel the full effects of the 'Credit Crunch'. now Iceland is the place that is fighting back
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
this is what trotskyism stands for
A thirteen year old girl, who had been gang raped receives justice from Somalia's Union of Islamic Courts
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7707000/7707683.stm
Meanwhile the brave anti imperialists of the SWP laud the UIC as a 'serious blow against Imperialism'.
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=9216
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7707000/7707683.stm
Meanwhile the brave anti imperialists of the SWP laud the UIC as a 'serious blow against Imperialism'.
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=9216
Sunday, November 02, 2008
An interview with Dave Douglass
lifted from the shift magazine website
At the camp you joked about the police presence being nothing compared to your previous experiences. How did you find the Climate Camp this summer?
Well I’ve been up against the law since the age of 14, arrested for hitting the prime minister with a tomato and assaulting the police at 15, through to Holy Loch and Aldermaston’s right up to the late 60s. Grosvenor Square, London. Dam Square Amsterdam, Belfast, and pickets in the 72 / 74 miners strike. Mass confrontations in 84/5 Orgreave, hit squads and petrol bombs, the cops weren’t a surprise at all, but I was just making a joke I wasn’t trying to ‘pull rank’ or see who had the raggiest arse.
Before the camp you wrote an open letter to the Climate Camp, why did you choose to do that?
I was incensed. Because it seems to me, the miners throughout history have had nothing but betrayal and being stabbed in the back. ‘The Green Movement’ we had foolishly thought was our ally. An ally who could see that we stood against nuclear power, civil and military, were against opencast mining, and were for practical renewables. We thought they understood the politics of energy and why it was the miners had been almost wiped off the face of the earth (in Britain) in class war. We had set up an alliance Energy 2000 way back in the mid 80s with Greenpeace and environmental groups (by ‘we’ I mean the NUM) to campaign for Clean Coal Technology, and an end to Nuclear power, for solar, tidal, and geo-thermal and phasing in practical world applicable programmes like solar power farms in the worlds deserts to supply the world with ever lasting power, free and clean, with clean coal buying us the time. Then just when we are on our last chance for survival, just when we are trying to knock back the major nuclear construction programme in favour of clean coal and carbon capture, the Climate Camp marches in and attacks Drax. The shrill middle class instruction that there was no place for coal in Britain energy supply, came as a slap down, and a warning to keep our place and be quiet. Our betters knew better than us, and coal had to go, it had been decided. Well it drew a furious response from me. I am not, by the way saying the Climate Camp is entirely middle class, nor am I saying that a largely middle class milieu invalidates their argument just because of that. I am saying that that particular bright young middle class thing, appearing on the TV news that night, and telling us what was good for us, did produce class anger, and it reinforced a class divide of perception. I have been associated with protest organisations since I was 14, many of them heavily composed of middle class people and full of muddled middle class shite ideas, but the cause, the anti bomb movement for example, the anti nuclear movement demanded that the working class add its own colours to those movements and debates. This was another reason for responding to Climate Camp instead of bricking them.
In your letter and at the camp you made the case for the continuation of the coal industry. Does this not put you on the same side as the government, the police and the E.ON bosses?
Well the cops didn’t seem to think so when we got nose to nose on the gate on Wednesday afternoon. But let me ask the same question, on the day the Camp opened, Brown made a statement saying he too was concerned about coal and CO2 and this was why they were investing in Nuclear Power. The stink against coal is fuelling a revision of ideas among so called socialists and environmentalists, who now are panicked into believing nuclear provides the only answer. The fact is the choice for base load generation, is either coal or nuclear, the camp keeps bashing coal, which is promoting nuclear. This just so happens to the Government’s policy and has been since the Ridley Committee drew up plans in the late 70s to take out the miners as a social threat to the system. The camp is acting on the side of the state and government. We fought the cops, whole communities of working class people fought the cops and some think the army too, to stop pit closures, against state and government plans to wipe us out. Now the Climate Camp shouts Leave It In The Ground, and defacto Shut The Pits. The cops helped shut the pits, the government closed the pits and coal power stations, this is the same demand as the Climate Camp now advances. So you answer the question whose side are you on? By the way, when mass protest movements stand against the big power generators investing in land based wind turbines and political arm-twisting, patronage and sheer bribery is applied to force Wind Turbine estates into rural lands, where do the Climate Camp stand? Not on the side of the protesters, not against the environment being utterly despoiled by industrial turbine estates, but on the same side as the capitalist power generators N Power and the others, getting £300,000 per turbine per year whether it turns a blade or produces a watt of power. So which side and whose side? Fact is the government is anti coal, anti coal communities, and those who support that side support the government and state, touché.
Many who attended the Climate Camp, yourself included, are not just concerned with climate change but with radical social change. If this is our goal does there not need to be a fundamental change in industrial infrastructure, the nature of work and the role of trade unions?
Whey aye, why do you think we want a working class revolution? We want minimal amounts of work, an end to the wage slavery of capitalism, an end to useless duplication of production and waste. We want real fundamental needs met, like water, housing, clothing, education, food, and freedom not invented needs, which we don’t need. But we believe only the organised working class, organised and conscious of its own existence and role in changing society and smashing the old order can deliver this change. For that, we need progressive unions like the NUM, visionary working class communities like the pits, docks, factories etc. That’s why we defend their existence and the ruling class will at every turn try to wipe us out, close us down, disperse us, or divide us. That’s why they closed the pits here only to import 70 million tonnes of coal from countries where the union doesn’t exist and miners toil in conditions we fought our way out of over a hundred years ago. It’s not just about work, its not and never has been just about jobs, it’s about the right and ability to intervene into life and challenge the system, and bring about a new social system. We thought that the decision to invite NUM members to the camp was definitely a step in the right direction. Where do you see divergences between your own goals and those of the Climate Camp? Well we’ve organised a Labour Movement Conference on Class, Climate Change and Clean Coal in Newcastle upon Tyne on Nov 1st, with myself and Arthur Scargill and others speaking at it. We invite the Climate Camp spokespersons to come and debate these issues with us. (Venue to be finalised) The Climate Camp is a thoroughly undemocratic movement, which is led by some strange impulsion, which seems not to debate targets, or strategy or goals or class before it arrives at a new enemy. It takes for granted, coal for example is the enemy. It is deeply offended to be offered a different vision. I was asked about ten times as I gave out our bulletin if I had had permission to give these out in the field. Seriously. I will not tell you how I responded. The Climate Camp needs to engage itself, and it needs to engage and understand the working class movement. It needs to accept that the working class movement, the union movement and the socialist / anarchist movement have a vision too, and we don’t necessarily agree. They need to engage us more and confront us less. They need to intercept the demands and goals of the workers movement with questions and ideas on how they relate to the environment and climate change for example. I say again I am not saying there are no trade unionists and working class people engaged in the camp, there clearly are, but the camp overall is not represented by that small tendency, and will frequently confront their own class positions and they will find themselves in contradictory positions. It must also be said that elements of ‘the left’ have jumped on this environmental bandwagon and is free loading. It hopes to seem relevant to a powerful movement because it despairs of the working class. Abandons traditional working class areas and unions to seek new shiny platforms on which to lead and appear relevant.
Given the need for some kind of response to climate change, could you see trade unions such as the NUM ever having a productive working relationship with 'radical' greens such as the Climate Camp? Is a red-green politics possible?
As I say we started this way back first with CND, and Trade Union CND, and then with Energy 2000, With The Anti Nuclear Campaign, in the 90s in joint campaigns against open cast mining which was being undertaken at the expense of the deep-mined industry. But with a collective perspective on clean coal, and practical renewables, (solar can be made practical on a world scale, geo thermal on a limited scale and tidal too –but land based wind turbines are classic ‘green wash’ and a cheap trick which is decimating huge tracts of unspoiled countryside and wilderness.) We can and must co-operate. Hopefully lots of people will come to our November conference and we can debate it further.
David Douglass, worked in the mining industry for 40 years; 30 of those on the Coalface tunnelling and driving roadways, working both in the Durham and Doncaster coalfields. The last three years working was as a Trade Union Organiser for the TGWU in the Northern Region. Previously 25 years an official of the NUM at Branch level and executive member of the Yorkshire Area of the NUM. The last ten years in the industry ran the Mining Communities Advice Centre which was a hub for political and welfare and benefits action in the South Yorkshire Coalfield communities.An Anarcho-Syndicalist, with roots and history in the anarchist movement but still philosophically a Marxist. Anarcho-Marxism has been recently described by the CPGB Weekly Worker as ‘just anarchism’ so ‘just an Anarchist’ then by that definition. Been active and involved in movements from Holy Loch in 62, through to Vietnam, Ireland, Iraq and countless strikes and battles with the employers, the cops, the army and the state. Just completed my autobiographical Trilogy: Stardust and Coaldust, the first book Geordies gets its launch at this year Anarchist Bookfair, and I hope people will come along and hear my reading from the book, (and actually consider buying it). Produced by Christiebooks, with great help and support from Stuart Christie.
At the camp you joked about the police presence being nothing compared to your previous experiences. How did you find the Climate Camp this summer?
Well I’ve been up against the law since the age of 14, arrested for hitting the prime minister with a tomato and assaulting the police at 15, through to Holy Loch and Aldermaston’s right up to the late 60s. Grosvenor Square, London. Dam Square Amsterdam, Belfast, and pickets in the 72 / 74 miners strike. Mass confrontations in 84/5 Orgreave, hit squads and petrol bombs, the cops weren’t a surprise at all, but I was just making a joke I wasn’t trying to ‘pull rank’ or see who had the raggiest arse.
Before the camp you wrote an open letter to the Climate Camp, why did you choose to do that?
I was incensed. Because it seems to me, the miners throughout history have had nothing but betrayal and being stabbed in the back. ‘The Green Movement’ we had foolishly thought was our ally. An ally who could see that we stood against nuclear power, civil and military, were against opencast mining, and were for practical renewables. We thought they understood the politics of energy and why it was the miners had been almost wiped off the face of the earth (in Britain) in class war. We had set up an alliance Energy 2000 way back in the mid 80s with Greenpeace and environmental groups (by ‘we’ I mean the NUM) to campaign for Clean Coal Technology, and an end to Nuclear power, for solar, tidal, and geo-thermal and phasing in practical world applicable programmes like solar power farms in the worlds deserts to supply the world with ever lasting power, free and clean, with clean coal buying us the time. Then just when we are on our last chance for survival, just when we are trying to knock back the major nuclear construction programme in favour of clean coal and carbon capture, the Climate Camp marches in and attacks Drax. The shrill middle class instruction that there was no place for coal in Britain energy supply, came as a slap down, and a warning to keep our place and be quiet. Our betters knew better than us, and coal had to go, it had been decided. Well it drew a furious response from me. I am not, by the way saying the Climate Camp is entirely middle class, nor am I saying that a largely middle class milieu invalidates their argument just because of that. I am saying that that particular bright young middle class thing, appearing on the TV news that night, and telling us what was good for us, did produce class anger, and it reinforced a class divide of perception. I have been associated with protest organisations since I was 14, many of them heavily composed of middle class people and full of muddled middle class shite ideas, but the cause, the anti bomb movement for example, the anti nuclear movement demanded that the working class add its own colours to those movements and debates. This was another reason for responding to Climate Camp instead of bricking them.
In your letter and at the camp you made the case for the continuation of the coal industry. Does this not put you on the same side as the government, the police and the E.ON bosses?
Well the cops didn’t seem to think so when we got nose to nose on the gate on Wednesday afternoon. But let me ask the same question, on the day the Camp opened, Brown made a statement saying he too was concerned about coal and CO2 and this was why they were investing in Nuclear Power. The stink against coal is fuelling a revision of ideas among so called socialists and environmentalists, who now are panicked into believing nuclear provides the only answer. The fact is the choice for base load generation, is either coal or nuclear, the camp keeps bashing coal, which is promoting nuclear. This just so happens to the Government’s policy and has been since the Ridley Committee drew up plans in the late 70s to take out the miners as a social threat to the system. The camp is acting on the side of the state and government. We fought the cops, whole communities of working class people fought the cops and some think the army too, to stop pit closures, against state and government plans to wipe us out. Now the Climate Camp shouts Leave It In The Ground, and defacto Shut The Pits. The cops helped shut the pits, the government closed the pits and coal power stations, this is the same demand as the Climate Camp now advances. So you answer the question whose side are you on? By the way, when mass protest movements stand against the big power generators investing in land based wind turbines and political arm-twisting, patronage and sheer bribery is applied to force Wind Turbine estates into rural lands, where do the Climate Camp stand? Not on the side of the protesters, not against the environment being utterly despoiled by industrial turbine estates, but on the same side as the capitalist power generators N Power and the others, getting £300,000 per turbine per year whether it turns a blade or produces a watt of power. So which side and whose side? Fact is the government is anti coal, anti coal communities, and those who support that side support the government and state, touché.
Many who attended the Climate Camp, yourself included, are not just concerned with climate change but with radical social change. If this is our goal does there not need to be a fundamental change in industrial infrastructure, the nature of work and the role of trade unions?
Whey aye, why do you think we want a working class revolution? We want minimal amounts of work, an end to the wage slavery of capitalism, an end to useless duplication of production and waste. We want real fundamental needs met, like water, housing, clothing, education, food, and freedom not invented needs, which we don’t need. But we believe only the organised working class, organised and conscious of its own existence and role in changing society and smashing the old order can deliver this change. For that, we need progressive unions like the NUM, visionary working class communities like the pits, docks, factories etc. That’s why we defend their existence and the ruling class will at every turn try to wipe us out, close us down, disperse us, or divide us. That’s why they closed the pits here only to import 70 million tonnes of coal from countries where the union doesn’t exist and miners toil in conditions we fought our way out of over a hundred years ago. It’s not just about work, its not and never has been just about jobs, it’s about the right and ability to intervene into life and challenge the system, and bring about a new social system. We thought that the decision to invite NUM members to the camp was definitely a step in the right direction. Where do you see divergences between your own goals and those of the Climate Camp? Well we’ve organised a Labour Movement Conference on Class, Climate Change and Clean Coal in Newcastle upon Tyne on Nov 1st, with myself and Arthur Scargill and others speaking at it. We invite the Climate Camp spokespersons to come and debate these issues with us. (Venue to be finalised) The Climate Camp is a thoroughly undemocratic movement, which is led by some strange impulsion, which seems not to debate targets, or strategy or goals or class before it arrives at a new enemy. It takes for granted, coal for example is the enemy. It is deeply offended to be offered a different vision. I was asked about ten times as I gave out our bulletin if I had had permission to give these out in the field. Seriously. I will not tell you how I responded. The Climate Camp needs to engage itself, and it needs to engage and understand the working class movement. It needs to accept that the working class movement, the union movement and the socialist / anarchist movement have a vision too, and we don’t necessarily agree. They need to engage us more and confront us less. They need to intercept the demands and goals of the workers movement with questions and ideas on how they relate to the environment and climate change for example. I say again I am not saying there are no trade unionists and working class people engaged in the camp, there clearly are, but the camp overall is not represented by that small tendency, and will frequently confront their own class positions and they will find themselves in contradictory positions. It must also be said that elements of ‘the left’ have jumped on this environmental bandwagon and is free loading. It hopes to seem relevant to a powerful movement because it despairs of the working class. Abandons traditional working class areas and unions to seek new shiny platforms on which to lead and appear relevant.
Given the need for some kind of response to climate change, could you see trade unions such as the NUM ever having a productive working relationship with 'radical' greens such as the Climate Camp? Is a red-green politics possible?
As I say we started this way back first with CND, and Trade Union CND, and then with Energy 2000, With The Anti Nuclear Campaign, in the 90s in joint campaigns against open cast mining which was being undertaken at the expense of the deep-mined industry. But with a collective perspective on clean coal, and practical renewables, (solar can be made practical on a world scale, geo thermal on a limited scale and tidal too –but land based wind turbines are classic ‘green wash’ and a cheap trick which is decimating huge tracts of unspoiled countryside and wilderness.) We can and must co-operate. Hopefully lots of people will come to our November conference and we can debate it further.
David Douglass, worked in the mining industry for 40 years; 30 of those on the Coalface tunnelling and driving roadways, working both in the Durham and Doncaster coalfields. The last three years working was as a Trade Union Organiser for the TGWU in the Northern Region. Previously 25 years an official of the NUM at Branch level and executive member of the Yorkshire Area of the NUM. The last ten years in the industry ran the Mining Communities Advice Centre which was a hub for political and welfare and benefits action in the South Yorkshire Coalfield communities.An Anarcho-Syndicalist, with roots and history in the anarchist movement but still philosophically a Marxist. Anarcho-Marxism has been recently described by the CPGB Weekly Worker as ‘just anarchism’ so ‘just an Anarchist’ then by that definition. Been active and involved in movements from Holy Loch in 62, through to Vietnam, Ireland, Iraq and countless strikes and battles with the employers, the cops, the army and the state. Just completed my autobiographical Trilogy: Stardust and Coaldust, the first book Geordies gets its launch at this year Anarchist Bookfair, and I hope people will come along and hear my reading from the book, (and actually consider buying it). Produced by Christiebooks, with great help and support from Stuart Christie.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Nothing to do with us guv
Many years ago I bought a book from the bookshop of the SWP called 'The Stalin School of Falsification' by Leon Trotsky and it is good to see that in the latest edition of International Socialism the SWP has learned well the lessons of the past. Alex Callinicos, the SWPs leading 'theoritician', and longstanding member of the party's central commitee looks at the collapse of the Respect project and Scottish Socialist Party- luckily it has nothing to do with him.
The son of the Hon. Ædgyth Bertha Milburg Mary Antonia Frances Lyon-Dalberg-Acton correctly points out that;
"In Britain first the Scottish Socialist Party and then Respect split: when the rival fragments ran against each other, both sides predictably suffered electoral eclipse."
but neglects to mention which organisation was central to the splits in both the SSP and Respect, and prime mover in the resultant splinters on both sides of the border whose candidates "predictably suffered electoral eclipse".*
One question immediatly springs to mind, if the defeat of you're comrades was so predictable, then why was so much of your party's resources and it's members energies expended in those elections?
* The SWP, in case you haven't guessed.
The son of the Hon. Ædgyth Bertha Milburg Mary Antonia Frances Lyon-Dalberg-Acton correctly points out that;
"In Britain first the Scottish Socialist Party and then Respect split: when the rival fragments ran against each other, both sides predictably suffered electoral eclipse."
but neglects to mention which organisation was central to the splits in both the SSP and Respect, and prime mover in the resultant splinters on both sides of the border whose candidates "predictably suffered electoral eclipse".*
One question immediatly springs to mind, if the defeat of you're comrades was so predictable, then why was so much of your party's resources and it's members energies expended in those elections?
* The SWP, in case you haven't guessed.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
As Queer as Volk
The welcome death of the Austrian Nazi Haider has taken an even odder turn, having wiped himself out driving his car straight into a wall at 90 miles an hour whilst pissed out of his head, it now appears that he spent his final hours partying away at a gay club and his former deputy fuerher, and now leader of the Nazi 'Alliance for Austria's Future' Party has revealled that he was for years his 'life partner'
"We had a special relationship that went far beyond friendship," Mr Petzner said in an emotional interview.
"Joerg and I were connected by something truly special. He was the man of my life," he added.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7685905.stm
There must be something about those leather lederhosen.
check out Johann Hari excellent post
"We had a special relationship that went far beyond friendship," Mr Petzner said in an emotional interview.
"Joerg and I were connected by something truly special. He was the man of my life," he added.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7685905.stm
There must be something about those leather lederhosen.
check out Johann Hari excellent post
Monday, October 20, 2008
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Monday, October 06, 2008
I didn't know there was a competition
The Americans are having one of their regular media circuses to discover the identity of the latest multi millionaire who will defend the interests of Americas richest for the next 4 years. this year has been somewhat enlivened by the one who isn't black appointing a mad woman as his potential vice president. Although Palin has the slight advantage over her 'Democratic' opponent Joe Biden, in that he is a old and balding politician and she looks like she just stepped off a MILF porn shoot, her associations with Alaskan separatists and funda-mentalist god bothering had marked her down as the looniest candidate since dan 'potatoe' quail.
"Mr Redstar You are a very naughty boy- I may have to spank you"
However, Americans do not like to do things by halfs, and it now seems that not to be outdone the US green party has trumped the Republicans with a candidate who out loons even Palin
the socialist unity site has reported how Cynthia McKinney, Green Party presidential candidate has claimed that the US government executed 5,000 prisoners and dumped their bodies in a swamp during the Katrina emergency. McKinney has form, she was previously a Democratic congresswoman and in the aftermath of 9/11 accused Bush of prior knowledge of the attacks, later becoming a early supporter of the 'Truther' cult.
However none of this dissuades the so called Green Left in Britain. Derek Wall said;
"I certainly backing Cynthia, good on ecology, peace and socialism as far as I am concerned, looks like she is the victim of smears….have listened to her speak she sounds sound to me, so I am happy to put this down as an out of context comment…’keep the oil in the soil’ and plenty of other stuff from her and Rosa mark them as powerfull candidates."
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Rage, rage against the dying of the light! pt.2
So, what to do?
Well to be frank, buggered if I know.
The anarchist's critisisms of state socialism are excellent, but wherever anarchism has moved beyond a peripheral cult and began to build a viable alternative it has been crushed by the state or, more commonly, by the state leftists.
Today anarchism is a ideology which is held by a terribly tiny number of people not even on the margins of the working class.
So what is the point?
Even though the left is dead, and the chances that anarchism could achieve a libertarian revolution is probably zero. that does not mean that you have to roll supinely onto your back and accept this pile of crap as the best that can be achieved. Instead my attitude is to take as example Dylan Thomas in his cry of anger against old age and death;
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
I believe that one day we will rise again and sweep away the filth and the horror of class society, But I have no idea when that would be, in the meantime I will attempt to rage against the dying of the light, to tilt at the windmills of capitalism and its fake enemies. In opposing the capitalist state system I refuse to become the cheerleader for its 'opponents', those who would wish to replace one form of state oppression for another, even more savage. I have no illusions that my actions, my words will have any influence other than registering my own opposition and contempt for their system and values.
But perhaps that is enough.
Well to be frank, buggered if I know.
The anarchist's critisisms of state socialism are excellent, but wherever anarchism has moved beyond a peripheral cult and began to build a viable alternative it has been crushed by the state or, more commonly, by the state leftists.
Today anarchism is a ideology which is held by a terribly tiny number of people not even on the margins of the working class.
So what is the point?
Even though the left is dead, and the chances that anarchism could achieve a libertarian revolution is probably zero. that does not mean that you have to roll supinely onto your back and accept this pile of crap as the best that can be achieved. Instead my attitude is to take as example Dylan Thomas in his cry of anger against old age and death;
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
I believe that one day we will rise again and sweep away the filth and the horror of class society, But I have no idea when that would be, in the meantime I will attempt to rage against the dying of the light, to tilt at the windmills of capitalism and its fake enemies. In opposing the capitalist state system I refuse to become the cheerleader for its 'opponents', those who would wish to replace one form of state oppression for another, even more savage. I have no illusions that my actions, my words will have any influence other than registering my own opposition and contempt for their system and values.
But perhaps that is enough.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light! pt.1
the Left is, to all intents and purposes, a dead duck. the entire socialist project has turned out to have lasted less than a century and, rather than liberating humaity from the tyranny of class oppression instead inaugrated new and exciting forms of tyranny. The domination within the workers movement of statist forms of socialism, both leninist and social democrat, ensured that the interests of working people have always been sacrificed in the interests of state, party or in support of 'progressive movements'- anti- imperialists, Islamists, Latin American populist presidents, national liberation movements, the Greens etc. etc. whose first acts when achieving power would be to inevitably to launch attacks upon the working class.
Over 100 years ago a Polish revolutionary active within the Russian movement, Jan Wraclaw Machajski, came to the conclusion that the Marxists of the RSDLP were not interested in promoting to power the working class,but were instead aiming to establish power for a very different class, the Intelligentsia. Machajski confined himself to critiquing the Russian and German social democrats, but these two movements became the templates for all the socialist parties over the next century, and the western equivalent of the intelligentsia, the educated managerial class has been the prime mover and beneficary of these parties, both 'reformist', Social Democratic, and 'revolutionary', Communist.
In the UK the 'hard left' has been synonymous with the contrasting ideologies of stalinism and Trotskyism, The trotskyists, who until the 1960s were miniscule in comparison to the monolith of the british Communist Party, had portayed themselves as a purified Leninism with all the strengths of the Russian revolution but without the downsides of Stalinist degeneration. However, they were essentially parasitic upon the CPGB and the larger Labour Left that it influenced, without the communists to critique, the trots, far from being able to put forward 'true leninism' instead peddled cheap knock off replicas of stalinist policies to a far smaller, and rapidly shrinking audience. When unexpectedly in 2003 they found themselves at the head of a genuine mass movement they did not hesitate for a moment and immediately and publically junked all the principles which had guided them for decades and launched themselves into alliance with Islamic fundamentalists whose politics were indistinguishable from fascism.
Today what remains of the left sects tear each other apart over how many bolshevik angels could dance on the head of a commissar Trotsky's knob and pretend that their pronouncements have any relevance to to real world at all.
Over 100 years ago a Polish revolutionary active within the Russian movement, Jan Wraclaw Machajski, came to the conclusion that the Marxists of the RSDLP were not interested in promoting to power the working class,but were instead aiming to establish power for a very different class, the Intelligentsia. Machajski confined himself to critiquing the Russian and German social democrats, but these two movements became the templates for all the socialist parties over the next century, and the western equivalent of the intelligentsia, the educated managerial class has been the prime mover and beneficary of these parties, both 'reformist', Social Democratic, and 'revolutionary', Communist.
In the UK the 'hard left' has been synonymous with the contrasting ideologies of stalinism and Trotskyism, The trotskyists, who until the 1960s were miniscule in comparison to the monolith of the british Communist Party, had portayed themselves as a purified Leninism with all the strengths of the Russian revolution but without the downsides of Stalinist degeneration. However, they were essentially parasitic upon the CPGB and the larger Labour Left that it influenced, without the communists to critique, the trots, far from being able to put forward 'true leninism' instead peddled cheap knock off replicas of stalinist policies to a far smaller, and rapidly shrinking audience. When unexpectedly in 2003 they found themselves at the head of a genuine mass movement they did not hesitate for a moment and immediately and publically junked all the principles which had guided them for decades and launched themselves into alliance with Islamic fundamentalists whose politics were indistinguishable from fascism.
Today what remains of the left sects tear each other apart over how many bolshevik angels could dance on the head of a commissar Trotsky's knob and pretend that their pronouncements have any relevance to to real world at all.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Resist 9/11 Conspiracy Theories
This month has seen a concerted push for respectability by the 9/11 ‘truth’ movement.
Around the seventh anniversary of the attacks in New York, some more ostensibly rational ‘truth’ activists such as Ian Henshall, Belinda McKenzie and Ian Neal, along with the ex-MI5 spy Annie Machon, are looking to hang out in press rooms and have attempted to buy major advertising space in at least one national newspaper.
Whilst cloaked in the language of opponents of US/UK foreign policy (among which we include ourselves) it should be understood that behind their charm offensive are the all too familiar shrill voices and oddballs who tell us 9/11 was carried out by the US government, Mossad, beam weapons, remote control planes, controlled demolition etc, etc
The ‘truth’ movement seeks to rebrand itself under the banner of ‘Reopen 9/11’ and ‘Make War History’ because people were repelled by the absurd arguments, cult like behaviour and rampant anti-semitism that characterised their previous incarnation – the UK and Ireland 9/11 Truth Movement.
Perhaps most worryingly of all the 9/11 truth movement has spawned mutant offspring, with theories looking to blame anyone but the actual perpetrators of subsequent terrorist outrages such as the 2004 Madrid bombings, the July 2005 London bombings and even the attack on Glasgow Airport. Any future bombings will no doubt be explained away in the same manner.
What price social cohesion if we cannot even recognise the challenge events like 7/7 pose to all our communities?
Encouragingly some former activists are beginning to see the danger of the 9/11 ‘truth’ movement. One such person, Mick Meaney, comments:
"In my experience, the truth movement provides a safe haven for anti-Semitism and is a breeding ground for ludicrous theories that only serve to divert attention away from the valid concerns about the War on Terror and the erosion of our civil liberties."
"During my involvement with the truth movement I have seen first hand racism and prejudice towards the Jewish people. Influential members of the movement will often label those who oppose this fascism as “shills” or other government agents, making the problem almost impossible to combat as those in prominent positions refuse to acknowledge its disturbing presence."
"Attacks against those who refuse to share their conspiracy theories have become all too common as journalists, terrorist attack victims (and their families), politicians and members of the public have been subjected to harassment, insults and slurs. What could have once been a credible campaign for justice and freedom has festered into a shameful display of aggression, racism and ignorance."
Heidi Svenson, on behalf of 9/11 Cultwatch, London.
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
New Coat for the end of the world
Given that mad scientists are due to end the world tomorrow I popped downtown and bought a new coat.
assuming that a mini black hole does not eat all of reality tomorrow, then I look forward to modelling it at a riot soon.
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