answering the apologists for mumbai

Howard Jacobson writing in the Independent replies to those like Caroline Lucas who have sought to blame Israel for the massacre in Bombay.

There is no hierarchy of the dead. The slaughtered are the slaughtered. This is not always what the slaughterers think. For those who kill in the name of religion their killing answers to deserts – a casual bullet in the face if you're a poor Hindu, a more selective punishment if you're American or British, a slow, luxuriating torture if you happen to be a Jew. In reward for which, their religion tells them, they themselves will be arranged according to degree in heaven: the more assiduous their killing in God's name, the closer to His right hand they will sit. They are cruelly mistaken. No rewards await them in another world. Just as no restitution according to degree of suffering awaits their victims. In death there is no hierarchy. So I mean nothing hierarchical when I talk about the Jewish victims of the Mumbai massacre. I sorrow no more for them than I do for the impoverished Bihari migrant workers waiting to catch trains home, innocent of any involvement in the mythical cause the gunmen had been brainwashed into believing they must kill for. I allude to the Jewish aspect of this tragedy, not because I am Jewish myself and know a little about the outreach programme in which the murdered Jews were involved – the provision of kosher food and a place of prayer for Jewish tourists in Mumbai – but because it bears on the blame game which, with the usual unseemly haste and ignorance, has already begun in this country. As it was after 9/11 so it has been after Mumbai – hearts going out to the victims, necessity of bringing perpetrators to justice, blah blah, and in the same breath the moral exculpation of those perpetrators in one of those acts of "understanding" which in fact understand nothing but give the speaker the opportunity to inveigh piously against our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Israel's presence anywhere. Even before the bodies had been recovered from the towers, contributors to Question Time were laying the blame for 9/11on us. After Mumbai, before the blood on the streets had dried, they were doing the same on Any Questions?. It's not the programmes' fault. They merely hold the mirror up to nature. Though you might ask how the BBC always manages to have the appropriately sanctimonious speaker on hand to remind us that, whatever the calamity in whatever part of the world, we in the West in general, and Israel in particular, are responsible. It was Caroline Lucas who, unlike the Bihari migrant workers, happened on this occasion to be in the right place at the right time. Caroline Lucas, should the name mean nothing to you, is the elfin leader of the Green Party. But she could, as far as attributing the usual culpability is concerned, have been anyone at that end of British politics. Reader, I could have gone on the programme and said what she said for her. To wit, Iraq and Afghanistan prove we can't bring peace at the end of a gun (though it would seem that "understanding" can be found at the end of a terrorist's gun), many people see the "war on terror" as a war on Muslims (a point that fails to distinguish between what people choose to "see" and what is the truth of the matter), and, in her actual words, "if we are to defeat extremism we have to go to the root causes of it – we have to look in particular at countries like Palestine". We are not unsubtle in this column. We understand that a simmering resentment will not always express itself rationally or fairly. In frustration, the angry often kill the wrong people in the wrong places. But to argue that Palestine fuelled the massacre at Mumbai, that the Hindu waiter shot in the forehead after serving water to a terrorist was paying for the inequities of Gaza, that he wasn't already, in the eyes of that terrorist, expendable enough as an unbeliever, as one who had stolen Kashmir, or simply as a spot of target practice en route to a mad and misguided martyrdom, is not only preposterous, it is irresponsible. I don't doubt that the terrorists' moral education included lessons about the vileness of Jews, along with lessons about the vileness of everyone else in the west, but we cannot be responsible for the lies people tell about us. Vileness of the Jews, note, not vileness of the Israelis. However carefully Caroline Lucas distinguishes between Jews and Israelis in her frequent newsletters and platform speeches on these and other "Green" issues; whatever her hurt at being accused of anti-Semitism when it is only a Jewish country, for God's sake, and not Jews themselves she abominates – it would appear she has not succeeded in communicating this nice distinction to the Mumbai terrorists. Frankly, my dear, they don't give a damn. The Chabad Centre in Mumbai was a Jewish organisation, not an Israeli one. Its occupants were tortured and killed for being Jews, not for being complicit in the "strangulation" of Gaza, unless all Jews are held to be complicit in the strangulation of Gaza, in which case Caroline Lucas must be very careful where and in what language she lays blame. If she is right that the perception of a great wrong in Palestine motivates such murders as those in Mumbai, then it behoves her, as one who influences perception, to be scrupulous in her observations. Scrupulous, I say, not discreet. I would not wish her, in caution's name, to speak other than the truth. But truth is hard to find. I have visited Israel several times recently, making a documentary about Jesus, travelling in the company of Israelis of all parties and persuasions. The "Green" view is that there are good Israelis and bad Israelis, the good being those who oppose the occupation. Nothing could be more simplistic. I encountered extreme left-wingers who could not bear what their government was doing, but understood its sometime necessity; I met right-wingers who had no sympathy with settlers, and could not wait to live in peace with Palestinians; all wanted change, all were frightened, all loathed the naive, ahistoric sentimentalism that paints them as brutal invaders of a foreign land, and not as fellow combatants in a long and tragic struggle for safety and self-determination. Whatever doesn't tell that story is propaganda – the institution of a falsehood into truth. And propaganda, by Caroline Lucas's own account, kills. Come the next massacre, when she is looking around for someone other than the perpetrators to blame, she might ask how much of their hatred she has stoked. When the world is a tinder box, it is a crime to play with matches.
This piece by Howard Jacobson is from The Independent.

Some notes on understanding Socialism’s failure.

What was the cause of the failure of the great movement of the twentieth century?

Why was it that socialism, which promised the end of the history of Human oppression through class exploitation, should fail so completely?

How did a movement which embodied the high ideals of creating a new human millennium free from tyranny, slavery and oppression have become so compromised by its support for tyranny, slavery and oppression?

These are some notes I have been playing with to try to answer these questions any comments would be welcome.

I have written before of my belief that the answer to these questions lies in the real class interest which the socialist parties have pursued.

Marx was undoubtedly correct when he described the principle actors in the class struggle of Modern industrialised capitalism as being between the modern proletariat and the bourgeoisie and he was careful to add that this did not preclude the existence of other classes. I believe that Marx missed the development of a third historic class, which emerged to meet the needs of managing and administrating an increasingly intricate and complex capitalist state system; this class is the educated managerial class, the Salatariat.

Marx once noted that the New Model army did not defy, defeat, and execute a Divinely appointed King under a banner emblazoned with the motto 'protection of the dividend', nor did the French San culottes take their revolution across Europe on the end of their bayonets in the name of 'all power to the Bourse!', instead the class interests that these revolutions were fought were disguised behind the most noble of slogans and programmes, of liberty, equality and brotherhood. The first, and most important, of the tasks of the victorious regimes brought to power by these revolutions has been the suppression of the hopes and aspirations which those slogans and programmes have created. Because these revolutions were for the benefit of minority Classes they were forced to hide their true programme and interests, the working class, Marx declared, as the vast majority, had no need to disguise its programme, and so would inscribe it upon their banners; "Abolition of the wages system!". (It may be instructive that, with the exception of the venerable old SPGB, none of the various 'Marxist' or socialist parties ever actually used that slogan).

Capitalism could maintain its 'classical' form only as long as it remained a mercantile system; the industrial revolution required a concurrent managerial revolution reflecting the increased complexity of controlling industrial capitalist companies. This new management in industry was matched by the expansion of a new state bureaucracy which grew to adapt to the burgeoning interrelation between industry and state. The expansion of Empire upon which so much of Britain's industrial growth depended for its profit also needed its own army of functionaries. To provide personnel for the Imperial, state and private bureaucracies meant a vast expansion of education and a major change in its character. The universities became the entry points to the Salatariat, producing a pool of educated young men (and occasionally women) to provide for the needs of industrialised State and Capital.

Whilst a very few functionaries of empire, government and industry held important and powerful positions vital to the continued running of society the vast majority undertook mundane work for rewards which, in their eyes, failed to account for their expertise and provided little or no control over the society which they helped to run. Amongst these young intellectuals grew new political ideas based upon conceptions of 'meritocracy', which the power of the state was to be invoked and expanded to take over control of the whole of society on 'rational grounds' by which what was meant it should be run by those whose education and ability made them best suited to do so. In early nineteenth century Europe the marginalisation of radical alternatives following the victory of Reaction after Waterloo, pushed these meritocrats into collusion with the emergent working class movement. Very different and divergent concepts of how a future society was to be organised developed alongside each other and became confused with each other.

An essential difference which was lost at this time was the recognition of the true nature of the state; the state was created alongside the emergence of Class exploitative society, for the ruling class of any such society the state is the armed wing, the protector, and the enforcer of its rule. Class society and the state are inseparable; one cannot remove the one and maintain the existence of the other.

When Marx, himself a member of this new class of intellectuals, found himself in conflict within the first International with the supporters of Bakunin, who despite their many faults, at least understood the nature of the state, he found support from the leaders of 'state socialism', Jaures, Liebknecht, Lassalle etc. Who, after Marx's death, collaborated with the aging Engels to determine the character of 'Marxian' socialism as a socialism which was wedded to the state as the instrument of transformation.

In most of Western Europe the state and capital accommodated and assisted in the growth of the EMC, but in Tsarist Russia the backward and entrenched powerful aristocracy which controlled the autocratic regime of the Tsar, whilst recognising the necessity of modernising their economy to be able to compete in the inter imperialist great game, were terrified of the threat to their power that the democratic reforms that accompanied the expansion of industrial capitalism in the west. Thus, although the educational establishments necessary to provide the state with its new bureaucracy and industry with its new managers were being created throughout Russia, the autocracy viewed their alumni with fear and distrust, preferring to rely on the old aristocratic feudal bureaucratic state structure, and import industry from France and Britain.

Excluded almost in their entirety from their place within Russian society, the, would be, EMC constituted a new, volatile, class, unique to Russia; the intelligencia, that became synonymous with revolutionary opposition to Tsarism. Various intellectuals advocated various solutions; Populism, Anarchism and agrarian social utopianism etc. And various strategies; peaceful agitation, communalism, terrorism, but it was Marxism that came to dominate the politics of the radicalised intelligencia. The promise of a combative and young Russian working class spearheading the struggle against Tsarism (with of course a intellectual leadership) appealed to many of the intelligencia who had grown tired of sacrificing itself in struggle against the cops and Cossacks, or trying to galvanise the peasantry into conflict with the state (the peasants who were never slow to take up their cudgels and torches in their own interest whenever the local aristos showed weakness, were far less willing to do so in the interests of what they recognised as a separate class).

How these Marxists wanted to try to relate to the Russian working class was the cause of the great schism in Russian Marxism, both Mensheviks and Bolsheviks were convinced of the necessity of their leadership, but Lenin was determined that no challenge to the intelligencia's control of the party.

The socialist movements which dominated working class politics throughout the twentieth century were thus not the expression of the interests of the working class, but instead were a manifestation of the political aspirations of sections of the educated Managerial class.

The Russian anarchist Machajski identified the class nature of bolshevism (http://www.geocities.com/cordobakaf/cont.html), but did not extend the analysis beyond the borders of the Russian empire. The success of the revolution meant that clones of Lenin's party sprang up all over the world, monopolising and dominating the revolutionary movement for 80 years.

Bolshevist state centralism represented the rule of the Educated Managerial Class in its purest form, but was a part of a world-wide trend as the increasingly complex interaction between sate and capital concentrated more power into the hands of the EMC. Fascism, Nazism, corporatism and even Roosevelt's New Deal all were differing versions of increased EMC power in the face of the global economic crisis (as described in James Burnham's Managerial Revolution.).

The Russian experience confirmed Bakunin's dictum; "We are convinced that freedom without Socialism is privilege and injustice, and that Socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality." That if one seeks to destroy capitalism whilst retaining the State, one does not gain freedom but replaces one set of tyrants for another.

But what of the social democratic experience?

Social democracy experienced its 'golden age' in the aftermath of World War two; the tasks of both rebuilding Capital and redirecting it on a more harmonious relationship between state and private Bureaucracy was beyond what could be achieved without extensive direct state involvement in Capitalist accumulation. The reforms achieved in this period made a real difference in the lives of the working class, in housing, health, and education, however the true benefits of these reforms were overwhelmingly the EMC.

Within the socialist democratic parties there has always been a constant conflict between the organised working class who provide the bulk of these parties electoral supporters and a fair number of members, and the EMC who made up the parties leadership and ideological driving force, this struggle was never as it has been portrayed by Trotskyite agitators one of a simple left/ right = working class/ middle class dichotomy, many times 'left wing' activity was undertaken by the EMC against, and in opposition to, Working Class interests within the party.

The Leninists resolved this tension between the working class base of their organisation and its EMC leadership by creating the 'professional revolutionary' and the organisational theory of 'democratic Centralism' which excluded the workers from any influence whatsoever in the Leninist party.

Despite all the propaganda against the pro-capitalist policies of social democracy, it was within social democracy that workers had more influence and a voice; the nature of social democracy in seeking to find an accommodation with capitalism encouraged those elements of the working class which sought better conditions within capitalism and further isolate those who would strangle it.

The massive expansion of higher education in the 1950s and 60s was deeply connected to the need of the modern state for more and more educated graduates to fulfil minor managerial roles in the policing and regimenting of an increasingly surveillance society.

The growth of this lower educated managerial Class has been observable in the growth of white collar trades unionism and a radicalised 'new left', which marked both the Bennite left of the labour party in the 1980's, and the neo Trotskyites of todays Leninite left. These groups were identified by both an adherence to abstract principles completely divorced from any real relevance to their own declared audience, the working class; for example an anti imperialist pose which champions any butcher of workers abroad on the proviso that they be in temporary opposition to our own ruling class, and a inability to relate in even the simplest way with the working class in their own communities- witness their total incapacity to respond to the growth of support for BNP fascism amongst some workers. With The shrill shrieks of 'Nazi' and waving of lollipops, combined with calls for state bans and police action alongside the thrill of being able to finally put down the 'Chavs' who steadfastly refuse to follow the leadership of the party cadres, after all the only supporters of the BNP are the 'scum off the estates', The would be patricians of these socialist parties display their ultimate satisfaction with the status quo, with only one small alteration, they should be in charge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

James Purnel is an arsehole

And I hope he gets piles!

A tail of two Cities

Yesterday, as self satisfied Eco toffs and their trot hangers on sauntered smugly through the streets of London, in Athens real class anger erupted in Fire after the murder of a sixteen year by the police.

Fuck the hot air waffling of the new puritan ecotories!

Increase global warming- Burn the Pigs! Recycle the Rich!

Defend bloggers from Gaggers

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

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.

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.

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?

Rumours that Sunderland are preparing to launch a nuclear assault on Newcastle have been denied as 'wishful thinking' by the UN

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.

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

All Coppers Are Bastards

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

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.

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.

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

If they dress like pigs and act like pigs

They can be as corrupt as pigs

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/berkshire/7679747.stm

Proof that even Nazis can swing too far to the Right

Ha, Ha, Dead Nazi!!

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers"

After them the fucking Bankers!

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."

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.

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.

to misquote oscar wilde

One must have a heart of stone to read this without laughing.







fuck 'em all!

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.

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.

Meeting: Class, Climate Change and Clean Coal- 1st November 2008

Labour Movement Conference;
Class, Climate Change and Clean Coal


The Climate Campers and The unions.
The Upstairs Lounge
The Bridge Hotel
Castle Garth
Newcastle Upon Tyne

1st November 2008
11-30 - 5-30
Speakers and Agenda

Davie Hopper, Gen Sec, Durham Miners Association
(NE Area NUM) Chair and introduction to conference

David Douglass, IWW (and retired NUM official)
A brief overview on ‘the environment’ and class in the politics of energy

Rachel Whittaker, Wrekin Anarchist Group, Climate
Direct actionist;

Arthur Scargill Hon President National Union Mineworkers. Which way for energy?

Paul Chatterton; Leeds University and Climate Camp Activist. Why Not Coal?

Debate and Discussion on first half of conference.
Dinner Break 1-30 / 2-30
(There are a great number of cafes and restaurants within five minutes walk of the conference
or the grounds of St Nicholas Cathedral & the Bigg Market is handy for eating bait)


Chris Kitchen; General Secretary NUM
Chair and introduction to second half

Mr Bob Crow, General Secretary, Rail, Maritime and Transport Union; How we view it.

Kev Grey, Green Anarchism and Climate Camp direct actionist. How we see it.

Ian Lavery, President NUM and International Energy and miners Organisation; Prospects for Coal Production and consumption worldwide.

Paul Morrison; Greenpeace and Climate Camp Activist.

Stan Herschel, Regional Organiser RMT. On or off
the rails on Energy and Climate.

Davie Guy, President North East Area of NUM (and DMA) Prospects for revival of the Great Northern
Coalfield.
Discussion and debate and questions from the floor End of conference 5-30 Social 7-30 with live bands in The Bridge, or the delights of the ‘the toon’ on a Sat night, or stay downstairs in the bar for a more leisurely drink (Invited but not confirmed at time of publicity UNITE, Community, GMB, Powerfuel).

Organised by IWW Tyne and Wear in conjunction with The NUM and consultation with RMT and the ‘Green’ movement.

Yang Jia is our friend, is our friend

(thanks to Paul for this)
China has it's own Harry Roberts
Yang Jia, a 28-year-old unemployed man from Beijing, appeared in court in Shanghai charged with an alleged attack against the police on July 1, the anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party.

Mr Yang is said to have thrown molotov cocktails into a police station in Zhabei, a northern suburb of the city, before entering the building and attacking a group of unarmed officers with a knife. He was arrested at the scene.

However, instead of condemnation, he has received widespread approval from Chinese internet users, or netizens, for his apparent act of defiance.

He has become a symbol for the growing number of people who are attacking Chinese police in protest at the brutality of the state.

Mr Yang has even been compared to Wu Song, one of the greatest heroes in Chinese literature, who killed a tiger with his bare hands.

One message left on his MySpace page said: "You have done what most people want to do, but do not have enough courage to do".

The prosecution said Mr Yang had acted out of "revenge" after he was caught by police riding an unlicensed bicycle last October and interrogated. He later sued the Shanghai police for 10,000 yuan (£803) for psychological damage, but his claim was rejected.

Mr Yang is rumoured to have been badly beaten and maimed by police.

One blogger, Zi Bingyue, wrote: "Yang Jia is not bad. He has no previous criminal record. On the contrary, he has a strong sense of the law. He gave seats to older people on the bus and carried luggage for weak travellers."

His father, Yang Fu, said his son must "have been greatly wronged" and added that he hoped Mr Yang's almost inevitable death sentence would help spur the Chinese legal system to change in the future.

Another blogger, Qing Feng, wrote that Mr Yang had been ground down by the reality of being unemployed in China. "He would have self-destructed one way or another since he has lost hope. He has no job, no degree, no income, no background, no relationship or normal family," he said.

Since Mr Yang's arrest, his lawyers have been uncontactable. An attempt by the Telegraph to trace them to a second-floor office in north Shanghai was met with a simple note saying that the office would be closed for the foreseeable future.

In addition, blogs mentioning Mr Yang have been deleted and bloggers have been told by websites that sensitive articles will be blocked
from the Daily Telegraph

Dave cocks a snook

me and Dave discuss Red star commando in happier times

Its getting lonely on here.

The others stopped blogging a long while back- Mostly because they kept forgetting how to log in.
Dave and me were the only ones posting at all.
Now Dave has started his own blog where he brings his own brightness and jollity to the world, as seen through the prism of Yorkshire curmugeonlyness.
Dave's contributions to this blog have been the best part of it in the past and I hope he will still pop round occasionally.

professional contrAryans?

After the interweb kerfuffle that surrounded the story of ‘Harry Potter and the goosestepping academics',there has been a great deal of discussion about how a certain section of the Left have developed a selective blindness towards anti semitism,
Just to prove that the 'anti- imperialist left' don't have a monopoly on scarcely concealed anti semitism, I have just received a email with this weeks missive from those 'jolly japesters’ at spiked-online and found this about Jerry Springer's BBC programme Who Do You Think You Are

But how many more times must we be told that the Nazis weren’t very keen on Jews? Why not have a documentary on the Pope not being a Protestant? Or on ursine bowel movements in arboreal regions? It’s been told time and time again.

Leaves a distinct queasy feeling in the guts.
But do fear as All is apparently ok as;

I’m not anti-Jewish. In fact, I am exactly the opposite. I’m very pro-Israeli, because I think the Jews are a nation of geniuses. You can always spot a loser in life if he is anti-Semitic. This is the politics of envy. Hitler hated the Jews because he thought they were clever; the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche loved the Jews because he thought they were clever. Hitler, the über-anti-Semite, was an über-loser. Never trust anyone who hates Jews

A great improvement on ‘some of my best friends are Jewish’ –‘some of my favourite nations are jewish.’
And I always thought that at the heart of modern anti-Semitism was not some idea that Jews were inferior but that they were geniuses (who ran the world).

But

(Why is there always a BUT?)

But Holocaust stories have become very tiresome,

Those Jews do keep on about it don’t they?

especially when people alive today claim victimhood status on behalf of their ancestors, which is not only boring but despicable. Jerry Springer shed many a tear on behalf of his grandparents who were rounded up by the Germans in Czechoslovakia. But what about the people who actually survived Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and the like, or the children of the survivors and the dead who do actually remember the trauma they endured? This programme felt like an insult to genuine Holocaust survivor
These were the cheap words of a cheap TV presenter who has made his career from deriving cheap thrills from the misfortunes of others. He has made a living from parading and creating ‘victims’ by humiliating them on American and international TV, and now parades himself as an ersatz victim on the BBC.

I have a confession to make, I like Jerry Springer!! I have always found his show sympathetic and decent, not unjudgemental, but never treats its guests as victims, in fact it has been for many years one of the few programmes on which american working class people get to speak for themselves.
Mr. West finishes his piece apparently equating the industrialised murder of Jerry Springer’s grandparents, and millions of others with his own family experiences;

All families have skeletons in their closets. My direct paternal ancestor was Lord North (yes, the surname is no joke), the incompetent prime minister who lost Britain the War of Independence against the American colonies. My grandfather Douglas West was features editor of the Daily Mail in the 1930s, where he championed Mosley’s fascist Black Shirts. My maternal grandparents in Dublin used to host dinner parties for the German ambassador in the 1940s.
But then again, my mother was a leading feminist in Ireland in the 1960s who brought condoms from Belfast to Dublin, and my father was a veteran journalist in Vietnam at the same time and was one of the first to say that the US campaign there was actually correct. He was also one of the very last journalists to leave Saigon before the final US retreat in 1975.
But I am not ‘traumatised’ by any of these events, nor informed by them. We are who we are, not who our ancestors were

I dislike this man.

Anti Semitism seems to be this year’s black.

Class War Bonfire Party November 5th

superb promotional video now out for this years bonfire party

Nazi loving academics- Fuck off!

UPDATE- Harry's place is currently offline
UPDAte 2- temporary Harrys place at http://jennadelich.blogspot.com/

the blog Harry's Place is under threat after revealling that an academic happily reprinted articles from the Nazi, former Klu klux Klan leader, David Duke's website on her Trades Union's internet discussion board.
the idiotic nature of the 'anti- imperialist' left in its opposition to zionism now means that the racist rantings of neo- nazis are acceptable if they oppose the jewish state.

the post that caused the trouble


The University and College Union maintains an email list for its activists, which is administered and monitored by the union. As Harry’s Place readers know, the email list traffic is dominated by political extremists and almost entirely given over to their obsessive and nasty campaign to boycott Israeli academics.

The extremists are countered by a small number of Jews and anti-racists, many of them supporters of Engage. They are routinely defamed as racists, imperialists, Apartheid supporters, liars and conspirators. Quite a few of the Jews and anti-racists have been chucked off the list by the UCU administrators, arbitrarily, and usually for making public their complaints about the racism on the list.

There have been complaints to UCU about racism on its activist list. UCU has dismissed them all as baseless.

One of the formal complaints was made in relation to a series of particularly poisonous and nasty emails written by a Sheffield-based UCU activist called Jenna Delich. That complaint was also dismissed.

Yesterday Jenna Delich wrote the following message on the activist list in order to support a boycott of Israeli academics:

John,

In support to your link this may be a long but also an interesting reading:

http://www.davidduke.com/general/humanitarian-disaster_595.html

No comment necessary. The facts are speaking for themselves.

Jenna



The website which she links to is the website of David Duke, who is the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and perhaps the most notorious racist and anti-semite in the world. The article itself was originally posted on an extremist conspiracy nut website, but appears only on David Duke’s website. It is therefore reasonable to infer that Jenna Delich reads and takes her information on world events from neo Nazis.



So, in a nutshell, the position is this. The UCU refuses to take action against viciousness against Jews and anti-racists on its own activist list, and endorses their exclusion from that email list when they defend themselves. Meanwhile, the UCU is circulating links to David Duke’s website on behalf of Delich.

What a wonderful institution UCU is.

NUM'S PAST MASTERS OF DEBATE TAKE ON THE CLIMATE CAMPERS

NUM'S PAST MASTERS OF DEBATE TAKE ON THE CLIMATE CAMPERS - 17 AUGUST 2008
from the yorkshire NUM website
Dave Douglass former NUM Yorkshire Area Executive member writes this report of his visit to the so called Climate Camp."

In August, me an Arthur Scargill enter another big field to fight the corner for the miners and coal our industry and cause. Last time it was that field at Orgreave, this time it’s the Climate Camp at Kingsnorth Power Station and instead of thousands of cops there’s thousands of eco-warriors who now believe coal is killing the planet and want to stop all new coal stations.

If truth were known, they want to close down all coal stations per sae. This time there is only Arthur, and me, we have no squads of pickets, no marching bands and no flying banners. It is in many respects as daunting a prospect, but it shows the quality of this man, our differences aside, he came into the teeth of opposition with an unpopular and untrendy message, among people who are hardly receptive to his old school brand of Marxist-Leninist socialism but prepared to debate till the cows come home why the NUM and clean coal technology are allies in the struggle for a socialist ecology and a just world.

Arthur is now 70 and I am 60, I think we present a figure of two rather battered and scarred alley cats come for a peace conference with the league of dogs. This is a sad and confusing conjuncture of forces. I have never in my life experienced a situation where the miners and what we do is the unpopular foe except among the ruling class and Tories.

Outside of the Young Conservatives, I have never known young people regard mining and pit heads as their enemy. What is worse is that these are my traditional constituency on the Anarchist left, they have the aura of the hippies, they aspire to the freedoms and love of life, which our 60s/70s generation did. I come across the Newcastle and Scottish camp, and know many of the activists from the Toon scene and demonstrations. Previously we have always held each other in a silent mutual respect, now there is a mutual distance, coolness, a sort of mutual Et tu Brutus. However, I see here also the mortified conviction of my own anti-nuclear youth. The conviction that myself and the world were on the brink of extinction. The certainty that if we delay we are all doomed to a wretched and painful end. Now it is climate change, and the gathering speed with which the earth is crashing toward climatical obliteration ironically for all carbon based creatures and vegetation on the earth as we know it. A change, which will cleanse us all from the surface of the globe for eternity.

The camp like some latter day Woodstock; they are a commonwealth, locked in debate and dedication, little communities with kids romping through the fields, longhaired, dreadlocked, singing and dancing. It is deeply wounding to be the enemy.

This is an anti-Durham gala, everywhere are Workshops on mining, on resistance around the world to mining of all descriptions, pictures of headgear and open cast, industry and miners, and the campaigns against them. It is like a Durham miner’s gala on bad acid. Instead of everywhere a celebration of the miners, our work, our communities, are protests for its end. I am shocked that many left groups are now Groupies to the eco movement and have abandoned all attempts at class analysis.

Arthur’s worst critic in the field is the local secretary of The Socialist Party, who tells him the NUM and miners’ struggle was yesterday’s cause, this was where the struggle was now, that Eon and the big generators to facilitate their profits are using us. I argue the opposite that every attack on coal feeds the nuclear agenda, sets the agenda for government policy. I remind them too that they are enthusiastic supporters of EON when it comes to ramming wind turbines down the throats of protesting locals resolved not to have them.

Around the tent, are dotted Trade Union members of the SWP are they now ready to bury him having once been full of his praise? For a month, the Weekly Worker has carried uncritical adverts for the camp while the Morning Star warned me I was underestimating the forthcoming climate holocaust and declined my article criticising the camp.

I have the honour to have wrote the official NUM bulletin The Miners and The Climate Camp, which Ken Capstick the Miner’s editor has managed to reduce from 8 sides to four with a bit of clever editing. I’ve humped 2000 of them in a huge bag from Doncaster and have spent the morning spreading them round the field, where they are received with less than enthusiasm. About 150 protesters turn up to the tent, where Arthur and I are speaking from 1500 in the field. Their bottom line argument is we shouldn’t be generating so much power anyway, it should be cut by 50% and we need to get use to not having electricity.

Arthur gets one of the Greens scientific officers to admit she was talking about taking out all nuclear and coal capacity, which would leave Britain virtually without power generation of any sort.

They are non-plussed by the fact that we both accept practical renewables, that we see solar energy as the long-term future for the planet. That many other clean sources, as long as they are not equally environmentally damaging (like land wind turbines) should be deployed along with mass insulation projects and energy saving programmes. But that coal should be the base supply agent and buy the world a breathing space so long as we developed carbon capture systems to burn it cleanly.

There is sympathy for the miners generally accepted as the most exploited people in Britain over the last century, but there has to be losers if we are to save the Planet, and we have been chosen to be it. Few people believe that CO2 capture works, and anyway will not be ready ‘in time’ to stop the climate going into free fall.

At the same time as facing the Climate Camp and linked to it across the left and green movement, more and more people are coming over to the Government programme for nuclear power, and an end to coal mining and coal burning in Britain. I have argued far and wide that clean coal is the alternative to a civil nuclear programme. I am stunned to be told the NUM’s new policy supports both coal and nuclear although I still claim this to be untrue. It needs urgent clarification, because this is a central plank in our defence.

I am asked to give a Workshop on the relevance and importance of the great 84/5 coal strike, nine people come. The relevance clearly isn’t too well established.
‘The Earth’ becomes an abstraction, humanity is some sort of foreign and alien invader and the storm troops, this time not of the TUC but of tidal waves, poverty and death, are the miners.

Of course, Arthur’s arguments are not totally mine, he talks of ‘dirty foreign coal’ and unfair competition, slave labour and child labour, these are not my arguments. Import controls are not a progressive answer, in my view, but I am for a level playing field of subsidies and a ‘fair trade’ standard of terms, conditions and union rights, which would be, for the millions of coal miners abroad as much as for us. We agree though that clean coal technology is an achievable science now, and it is vital that it is applied wholesale across coal generation.

The cops are arseholes as usual I am stopped and searched two sometimes three times a day, against my consent and often with force. Indeed, I am almost arrested, which would have been proved interesting in court. They could hardly argue they had reasonable grounds for suspecting I was going to sabotage the Power Station when I had gone down two thirds of the country with half a tonne of literature in its defence.

They attack the camp on numerous occasions and lay into protesters with truncheons; day after day, they line people against the fence from the very youngest toddlers to very old people, and search and harass them. Arthur makes a very strong Statement to the media at the gate, in defence of the right to protest and welcomes the protesters invitation to him and to debate this vital issue.

It was a privilege to stand with Arthur again, in the teeth of opposition again, though we could have done with thousands more supporters so short sighted ‘greens’ are not allowed to dominate this crucial debate.

I am trying to put together a Labour Movement Conference on Climate, Class and Clean Coal in Newcastle for the end of the year, and very much hope the NUM sponsor it and supply key speakers. Watch This Space.