The Naked Lunch

obligatory book meme post

2006-09-13T09:48:00.000Z

i like things like this. especially when they're about books. here we go.

1. One book that changed your life.

lots have, but if i had to choose one i suppose it would have to be the one that this blog is named after. william s. burroughs' naked lunch. burroughs is a true scientist and this is a wholly dispassionate appraisal of the human organism. you can't deny that the man had character flaws (and a dodgy aim), but his unrelenting anti-authoritarianism wasn't one of them. it's also incredibly funny - just check the talking asshole routine.

2. One book that you've read more than once.

don't generally do that. but one i have is a wizard of earthsea, because it's a book that works at different levels for different aged people (like all good 'childrens' books).

3. One book that you'd want on a desert island.

it would have to be something timeless, poetic, philosophical. maybe throw in a few warriors and gods. i think the bhagavad gita would do nicely.

4. One book that made you laugh.

zaat by sonallah ibrahim. there were lots of good bits, but i particularly remember the two husbands seruptitiously meeting in the middle of the night to watch porn being particularly funny.

5. One book that made you cry.

i seem attracted to melancholy books so this happens a lot. the god of small things by arundhati roy was one that i found particularly moving. the story is so beautiful but soul-crushingly sad. even the funny bits about the kids are tinged with darkness, about how their mother loved them "a little bit less".

6. One book you wish you had written.

any of the really stirring anarchist works, but i'll settle for the revolution in everyday life by vaneigem. ok, it's pretty laden in continental philosophy, but the situationists' total irreverance and cutting wit combined with their vision of total transformation of human relations are a pretty hard act to beat.

7. One book you wish had never been written.

strange one that. would have to be something really mediocre and self-indulgent. and expressing awful political views to boot. i reckon the world according to jeremy clarkson fits all of those.

8. One book you're currently reading.

only forward by michael marshall smith. humorous/twisted sci-fi thing with evil babies.

9. One book you have been meaning to read.

ulysses. yes, i am a masochist (and a poseur).

No2IDeas (part 2)

2006-08-10T09:07:00.000Z

in my previous post i highlighted some of the major shortcomings i see in the No2ID campaign. mainly a) that it panders to the arguments of authoritarian government, essentially supporting rather than attacking statist invasions into "private life" and b) that its chosen methods are disempowering to individuals, providing yet further support to agents of the state.

i am not alone in these views, and recently a friend who has been involved in both no2id and defy-id had an exchange of views with an anonymous no2id organiser (let's call him X) about some of his concerns. X labelled himself "an extreme libertarian... one who would normally be classified as on the right." he continued:

So I constantly compromise my principles and keep my mouth shut about my unrelated opinions in order to work with people whose bullying authoritarian and collectivist presumptions repulse me.

In particular I'm very sympathetic to the point that "It won't stop illegal immigration," is pandering to the idea that most immigration ought to be stopped. But I accept that changing the public mind at such a fundamental level is neither necessary nor by any means sufficient to progress the campaign. That it isn't is a good thing, because it would actually be a hugely difficult task, perhaps impossible, and while not actually successful would be counterproductive for the campaign as a whole.

The same is true of any number of other themes: the (un)reality of the terrorism threat, "organised crime", the construction of paedophilia, health and education services assisted bureaucratic centralisation, the idea that more policing is better, safety and security in general...

so X acknowledges that many of the arguments of no2id's campaign are not libertarian arguments, and that they are statist, but doesn't think that changing these commonly held views are "necessary" or "sufficient" for "progressing the campaign". so why does he remain with this campaign in spite of the "bullying authoritarianism" and "collectivist presumptions" of his fellow no2iders?

My approach has always been pragmatic. I'll do whatever it takes. I don't believe we can win without appealing to the mainstream. Perhaps even then we can't win, since the real problems of public choice and bureaucratic decision and control are too abstract for, and seem benign to, many of our immediate supporters. But there is no chance without the mainstream.

it seems to me that the no2id organisers, and those members of the public who are against id but don't believe they can change the debate, are essentially conforming with the government's wishes as regards the demands and scope of the campaign against id. it is in the state's interest that we be entirely dependent on them for almost all aspects of our existence, including the bringing about of social change. beliefs that "it would actually be a hugely difficult task, perhaps impossible" to counter the common perception that immigrants are to be criminalised, or to have a "pragmatic" approach (i.e. working within the existing system) are not the beliefs of a libertarian, of any shade. it's a bit of a cliche, but "demand the impossible" is a great anarchist riposte to those whose "pragmatic" approaches help to support the status quo. changing public attitudes on immigration is no more impossible that halting the id card scheme. we won't win any battles with the state whilst strengthening its hand on other front. this is true whether you're a libertarian of the right, the left, or neither.

i also take issue with the idea of "appealing to the mainstream", or rather, what this phrase commonly denotes. the mainstream here means only the socially included for a start, not the whole of society. as such it means pandering to the views of those who speak loudest in a capitalist, patriarchal, neo-colonial state. inevitably the predominant influences on "mainstream" opinion in society will be those that have benefitted most from these influences. the idea of pandering to the mainstream, rather than challenging it, is fundamentally conservative. how can we claim to be supporting the freedom of the individual whilst constantly altering our arguments to fit the views of an abstract, collective mainstream? what this really entails is the scenario that has already been described by X: "I constantly compromise my principles and keep my mouth shut". that's not something i would ever want to do.

all in all, i think the flimsy "libertarianism" of the no2id ideologues should be exposed for the conformism that it is.

for more information on an anarchist campagin against id see defy-id. the nottingham group's site is also particularly useful.

No2IDeas (part 1)

2006-08-09T09:49:00.000Z

i expect that readers of this blog will be relatively aware about the government's proposed identity card and national identity register (NIR) scheme. you will also, no doubt, be aware that there are various campaigns that have sprung up in opposition to the proposals, the most prominent being No2ID. perhaps unbeknownst to you is the reality that No2ID is largely organised and run by the so-called libertarian right. the anarchist anti-id card network is called defy-id, and whilst it does not boast the support of assorted MPs and lords, or political bedmates ranging from global-/monopolise resistance to UKIP and the Libertarian Alliance, it is, in this blogger's opinion, a more principled and consistent campaign.

no2id has become the biggest anti-id campaign and the default organisation to turn to in order to register a protest against the id scheme. this is worrying, because they use the government's own socially exclusive, anti-immigration, anti-terrorism rhetoric, in a manner that surely many of the campaign's official supporters (such as CAMPACC for example) would surely reject. for example, on their site they list the following reasons why the id scheme won't work:

Terrorism
ID does not establish intention. Competent criminals and terrorists will be able to subvert the identity system. Random outrages by individuals can't be stopped. Ministers agree that ID cards will not prevent atrocities. A blank assertion that the department would find it helpful is not an argument that would be entertained for fundamental change in any other sphere of government but national security. Where is the evidence? Research suggests there is no link between the use of identity cards and the prevalence of terrorism, and in no instance has the presence of an identity card system been shown a significant deterrent to terrorist activity. Experts attest that ID unjustifiably presumed secure actually diminishes security.

this is the wrong place to start. the government realises that it won't stop terrorism - they've admitted it publicly in the past. terrorism is a smokescreen for the real aim of the identity scheme which is a step closer to a total surveillance society, and the encroachment of state control over everyday life. no2id state this themselves in the paragraph, but they still give credence to this reason by putting it as the first of the government's arguments to refute. more importantly, by talking about terrorism as something that should be of prominent importance in everyone's minds, and that we should be expecting the state to counter, no2id lends their support to the idea that the state should be protecting us. it also ignores the fact that most terrorist atrocities are carried out by states like the UK, and feeds into racist and religious prejudice. these are not libertarian arguments, they are statist.

Illegal immigration and working
People will still enter Britain using foreign documents—genuine or forged—and ID cards offer no more deterrent to people smugglers than passports and visas. Employers already face substantial penalties for failing to obtain proof of entitlement to work, yet there are only a handful of prosecutions a year.

from pandering to the government fear-mongering about terrorism to pandering to government fear-mongering about "illegal immirants". again this reinforces the idea that immigration is something we should be worried about and that the state should be something to protect us from immigrants. again it panders to racist untruths about "foreigners" and demonsises some of the most vulnerable people in society, asylum seekers. this argument stems from the assumption that immigration is undesireable and that immigrants are to be kept out, and that it is the state's job to do this. there is no attempt to dispel any of the myths about the extent of immigration, or the reasons why people are entering the country. where is the place of a true libertarian in a campaign that fails to question borders? then we move on to:

Benefit fraud and abuse of public services
Identity is "only a tiny part of the problem in the benefit system." Figures for claims under false identity are estimated at £50 million (2.5%) of an (estimated) £2 billion per year in fraudulent claims.

(dramatic drum roll). that's right people, it's not the tax-evading superrich who are the parasites in our society, it's those who try a dodge here and there to get a slightly bigger fraction of the meagre scraps doled out by the benefits system. not only do no2id support the state, they also support the wealthy power elites that run the corporations. you'd think the libertarian right-wingers would be supportive of the entrepreneurial skills of the benefits blaggers but in fact they foam at the mouth at the suggestion that anyone at the lower end of the economic scale might be cheating the system.

aside from their arguments, no2id support the state in their methods as well. apart from supporting no2id, they suggest the following options for taking action against id: writing to your MP, lobbying your council, and renewing your passport. in other words, their best ideas for taking on the id scheme are lobbying your elected representatives, thus supporting the very system that has produced the unaccountable government and its id scheme in the first place. nowhere is there any suggestion that anyone might be able to make change through their own actions, except in the timing of renewing their passport. whilst there was a "pledge of resistance" that was doing the rounds a while back, it seems that no2id only support legal (i.e. state-sanctioned) resistance to id. the mass illegal resistance that beat the poll-tax is presumably not what they have in mind. however, the government has brought in all manner of new offences to fine and imprison those who refuse to be registered, and so mass resistance by legal means is unlikely to be possible for long.

to be continued...

mass consciousness or individual consciences?

2006-06-28T10:58:00.000Z

i think it would be nice to continue with the rousing theme of 'getting rid of leftist ideas that were never any good anyway'. i'll return to some comments of tom's, in response to hal draper: give me a break that i never really got round to dealing with.

tom wrote:

You say you reject the idea of ‘mass consciousness’. I find this startling. How do you explain events in history? Is history the product of minority action? ‘Mass consciousness’ does not mean ‘everyone thinks the same’ but that a militant majority takes action in its own interest.

perhaps we are talking about different things here. i find the idea of mass consciousness a frightening one. we are all different, sometimes radically so, and the idea that a majority of people have the exactly the same interests is a massive oversimplification of what is usually an organic situation with considerable variation. the idea that there can be a single political scheme or single action that will be in the interests of a mass is, in my opinion, dangerous. what normally happens is that the mass works in the interests of its leader. if the individuals that tom would describe as constituting a mass are acting on their own initiative for their own interests they do not, in my opinion, constitute a mass at all. that doesn't necessarily mean that they will not cooperate in order to achieve their different goals - often this is the easiest way of getting the job done (mutual aid as kropotkin termed it) - but it does dispel the myth that the situation is one of 'mass consciousness'. mass consciousness, to me, implies the mass psychology of fascism (or red fascism), where people are rigidly hierarchised and have set roles within a machine-like society. as such i oppose mass psychology of any kind. likewise, any attempt to characterise history or the present in the grossly simplistic and deterministic language of mass psychology is something i see as deeply worrying.

The corollary of your position leads exactly to the sort of criticisms that Draper makes. You seem to be saying ‘political leadership’ is inseparable from an ‘elite’. The idea that leadership = elite is just as well evidenced by the actions of so-called-anarchists as it is by so-called-socialists.

yes, a political leadership is an elite. that is why i reject it. let everyone be their own political leader. any political leadership that is privileged over other people in terms of its powers will become oppressive. the idea that power corrupts is not particularly controversial, although perhaps the term consolidated power roles would be a more accurate substitution for the word power. there is no such thing as an anarchist leader, as i'm sure tom is aware. so-called-anarchists implies that they do not really follow the ideas of anarchism, in which case we shouldn't consider the merits or faults of anarchism based on their activities. draper's idea, or what i gather from it, is that the best way of combating this hierarchy forming is through democratic (mass) voting. such systems are, however, open to massive subversion by those in existing positions of power, and would only serve to produce new leaders, and new masters for the slaves below.

If you consistently judge your political actions by the response they get from 'real' people you have more idea of what needs to be done to achieve your objective (revolution?).

again tom seems to fall into the trap of resorting to mass psychology and the problems inherent within it. who are these 'real' people (i note that he puts the term in quotes as if he is unsure about what it means!) ? what defines them? there is no such group as real people (presumably we would have to contrast them with unreal people - any ideas for whom they would be?) it is ridiculous to rely on a fictitious spook for feedback. why individuals shouldn't judge their actions by their own intellectual and emotional appraisal of the outcomes of those actions, rather than constantly submitting to a concocted external moral authority?

this is where the real revolution lies. in each individual realising her/his own ability to act and interact with the world, and giving up all illusionary 'cops in the head' like religious ideas, party doctrine, and mass psychology.

I could never satisfy myself with single-issue campaigning and actions as an ends in themselves.

nor could i. but i see these campaigns as rational bases for collective action. everyone has different ideas about strategies of overcoming oppression, and the party framework is hopeless in dealing with this. anarchists have similar ideas about the way in which action should occur, but because we are all different, different ideas about where these actions are needed at any given time. the freedom of temporary association seems an excellent way to tackle different issues without straightjacketing people into accepting a whole program for social change. whilst there is a real danger of single issue campaigns evading politics, i think that possibility can be avoided as long as links are made from the issue to others.

I hope that everything I do is in an effort to get as many people as possible acting in their own interests – I think this is a point of difference.

i disagree. i would describe the above as one of my aims in political activity. the point of difference is that i assume that each individual is unique with a unique psychology, and that everyone's interests are different. as such, the autonomous individual is the best judge of their own interests, and such autonomy and defiance of mass psychology is to be encouraged. anything less than this, like draper's call for more democratic systems of leadership, is simply a call for 'bigger cages, longer chains'. that is something that is certainly not in my interests.

who will represent us? we will of course

2006-04-11T14:56:00.000Z

just read this great response to hilary wainwright's who will represent us? by simon tormey (i'm sure i've heard that name before...) wainwrights' piece was the usual startlingly original lefty appeal for a new party to unite us all, and tormey's reply is a great rejection of the whole idea of representation. whilst i have a few reservations about his rather rosy view of chavez, who appears to be more than a little guilty of acting as a representative (i.e. subverting the desires of venezuelans for his own purposes), but all the same, tormey has picked up on something that many of this blog's leftist detractors don't seem to have:-

Similarly, the new politics of the ‘left’ in Britain will be a complete irrelevance if it is does not see that the desire for autonomy and self-definition is not something that can be corralled into a political party, which is altogether too rigid and boring a format for individuals with plans and projects of their own. What we need, and increasingly, what is being created, are spaces in which the anger and disillusionment we feel can be channelled into productive and effective resistances against incorporation into the schemes of the politicians, benign, ‘progressive’ or otherwise.

hal draper: give me a break

2006-04-05T10:09:00.000Z

in response to my recent post on anarchism over marxism, tom u, a local comrade, directed me to hal draper's criticisms of anarchism. i couldn't find the 'critiques of other socialisms' piece that tom was referring to, but looked at his 'the two souls of socialism' with horror. in the section entitled 'the myth of anarchist libertarianism', draper simply drags up lots of personal issues he has with proudhon (which, to be fair, paint him as a thoroughly nasty piece of work) but barely comments on his political philosophy. as we are anarchists, not proudhonists, these personal failings are irrelevant. for a more insightful look into proudhon's work, check out gambone's 'proudhon and anarchism', whose opening paragraph contains the line

Marx did a hatchet job on Proudhon and Marxists such as Hal Draper took quotes out of context or dug up embarrassing statements that made Proudhon look authoritarian or proto-fascist. There are also anarchists who claim he is "inconsistent" or "not quiet an anarchist"

however

When I finally read his works, far from appearing "inconsistent" or "not quite an anarchist", the "Sage of Besancon" had created a practical and anti-utopian anarchism - An anarchism based upon a potential within actually existing society and not a doctrine or ideology to be imposed from outside.

i'm certainly not convinced that comments about proudhon's personal life make for a compelling critique of anarchist theory.

next up for the 'razor sharp' criticism is bakunin. draper writes:

The story is similar with the second "Father of Anarchism," Bakunin, whose schemes for dictatorship and suppression of democratic control are better known than Proudhon's.

so much so, in fact, that draper doesn't feel the need to actually document any of them. seeing as most of these assertions seem to have been made up by marx who had a personal dislike of the man, it's hard to see that this has any credibility at all. the behind-the-scenes string pulling an wrangling marx employed to expel both bakunin and his social democratic alliance from the first international, surely illustrate who the anti-democratic party was in that dispute. the allegations come from a wilful misinterpretation of bakunin's term 'invisible dictatorship'. whilst this has clearly been taken out of context by many marxists, once again it should be stressed that we do not follow the writings of bakunin, or have him as our political idol. as bakunin himself wrote in a letter:

These [revolutionary] groups would not seek anything for themselves, neither privilege nor honour nor power. . . [but] would be in a position to direct popular movements . . . [via] the collective dictatorship of a secret organisation. . . The dictatorship. . . does not reward any of the members. . . or the groups themselves. . . with any. . . official power. It does not threaten the freedom of the people, because, lacking any official character, it does not take the place of State control over the people, and because its whole aim. . . consists of the fullest realisation of the liberty of the people.

for an anarchist interpretation of bakunin's invisible dictatorship see this piece.

finally draper comes up with something resembling a thesis:-

Anarchism is not concerned with the creation of democratic control from below, but only with the destruction of "authority" over the individual, including the authority of the most extremely democratic regulation of society that it is possible to imagine...
Anarchism is on principle fiercely anti-democratic, since an ideally democratic authority is still authority. But since, rejecting democracy, it has no other way of resolving the inevitable disagreements and differences among the inhabitants of Theleme, its unlimited freedom for each uncontrolled individual is indistinguishable from unlimited despotism by such an individual, both in theory and practice.

The great problem of our age is the achievement of democratic control from below over the vast powers of modern social authority. Anarchism, which is freest of all with verbiage about something-from-below, rejects this goal. It is the other side of the coin of bureaucratic despotism, with all its values turned inside-out, not the cure or the alternative.

but surely democratic voting can result in terrible mistakes, and those opposed to its intended consequences have a duty to act and prevent those consequences? if a referendum were to be held in the uk right now on whether asylum laws should be tightened, undoubtedly the majority of people would vote for that measure, in spite of its repressive consequences. anarchists would reject the legitimacy of that vote, and act in order to prevent its implementation. what about wildcat strikes? they're the decision of a minority to resist their oppression, and surely not 'undemocratic'.

the anarchism website has some rebuttals to draper, that question his proposed alternatives to anarchism:-

Draper argues for "democratic control from below" instead of anarchism. Of course, anarchists like Bakunin had argued for elected, mandated and recallable delegates long before the Paris Commune but let us forget that little fact. So what does Draper's scheme actually involve. Marxism, as Lenin made clear, does not aim for direct working class power, but power to the party, which we have to obey (or else!). As Trotsky put it, "a revolution is 'made' directly by a minority. The success of a revolution is possible, however, only where this minority finds more or less support, or at least friendly neutrality, on the part of the majority." So Draper's "democratic control from below" simply results in power being centralised into fewer and fewer hands. The "dictatorship of the proletariat" becomes, in fact, the "dictatorship over the proletariat" by the party.

my own view is that the empowerment of individuals is the only effective brake on the development of authoritarian hierarchical structures. this is not anti-democratic, and indeed many anarchists of today call for the achievement of true democracy. david graeber claims that

[Anarchism] is a movement about reinventing democracy. It is not opposed to organization. It is about creating new forms of organization. It is not lacking in ideology. Those new forms of organization are its ideology. It is about creating and enacting horizontal networks instead of top-down structures like states, parties or corporations; networks based on principles of decentralized, non-hierarchical consensus democracy.

direct democracy is what we seek, and hal draper aint got a clue.

the left and anarchism

2006-04-04T16:03:00.000Z

after some back and forth at workers' liberty, i decided to conclude what seemed like a fruitless argument by clarifying some of the political ideas that i find important and useful, and areas where i thought it might be possible for socialists and anarchists to work together. i've reposted it below.

*

i don't feel that this debate is taking a fruitful path as we both [myself and an awl member] seem to be convinced of our own viewpoints and unconvinced by the other's. you say that my theories are vague and wishy-washy, i say that yours are rigid and authoritarian. you point to revolutions of the past, i point to insurrections of the present. whilst this can be frustrating, hence my rather over the top statements at times, i don't wish to be rude or invasive. my only purpose in engaging with this debate was to say: yes, i do agree with socialists on a lot of points. there can be no doubt that a revolution of class and property relations needs to be achieved, for the benefit of humankind. this alone is enough to draw anarchists and socialists together on a great deal of issues. on these it would be mutually advantageous to work together where possible.

on the other hand, i feel that the classical anarchist critique of the state and political parties is important, and too easily ignored by socialists. power does corrupt even those of us with the best intentions, and the dictatorship of the proletariat, in anarchists' opinion, is bound to corrupt the struggle for a just society.

further, more recent post-left tendencies within anarchism, critique the workerist approach of traditional left-wing socialists and anarchists. this approach questions the paramount importance given to the worker within leftist traditions, and indeed, whether work itself is a force for good or bad. a good exposition of this kind of thinking can be found in bob black's 'the abolition of work', but the start of a trend towards this mode of thinking can be traced through the work of the situationists, who derived their theory from traditional marxist thought, whilst taking it further. work, post-leftists would suggest, is resolutely not "what defines human beings", but is merely a spook (in stirner's terminology). spooks are those abstractions instilled by religion, the state, morality, etc. that prevent the satisfaction of desire. (for more on desire, repression, and revolution, the works of wilhelm reich, who was a marxist writing in the '30s who became disillusioned with the cause, are instructive. maurice brinton gives a good introduction in 'the irrational in politics'.) the work ethic is clearly a spook, as it does not benefit the worker, only the worked-for. work means the continual delaying of satisfaction both in work time and in leisure time, that rationed portion of time left over when the best part is already consumed by work. we surely do not want to align ourselves with the statement 'arbeit macht frei'.

related to this is the post-left critique of technology. whilst most socialists, like most others in society, consider advancements in technology to equal 'progress', many in the green anarchist movement are opposed to technological 'advance'. technology and industry, they argue, are at the heart of our lurch towards ecological collapse. there can be no maintenance of our current technology without the total devastation of the climate and biosphere. most socialists imagine technological fixes to these problems, but the only answer that i see as pragmatic is a massive shift towards local organisation of production, and away from heavy industries. many, like yourself, see these changes as a regression, but this is, i would suggest, a reference to the myth of progress as inextricably linked with technology. for me, it would not be "going back to the Middle Ages" because the middle ages were marred by an intensely oppressive feudal social organisation. obviously, we would wish to arrange our society according to principles of consent, rather than repression.

this is linked to the abolition of work, because, were we to embrace a ludic rather than workerist view of life, we would necessarily need to live without factories and large-scale industry. after all, who would choose to work on a production line?

the primitivists, like john zerzan whose 'future primitive' is a classic text, would go further still. their beef with technology is that it out of necessity requires a division of labour, and the creation of specialists. specialism means that some individuals have access to knowledge and skills that others don't, and can subsequently use that as social leverage, in coercion. this cannot create a harmonious society, say the primitivists. instead they take inspiration from hunter-gatherers who are self-sufficient, have a much greater awareness of their ecosystems, and 'work' for very little time each day, leaving the majority of their lives free for socialising with their families. whilst there can be no doubt that it is impossible to expect an immediate shift towards such a lifestyle, i think that many of these are desirable aspects of society that many of us would want, if we were able to obtain them.

i hope that this has given a flavour of some of, what i find, the more relevant and consistent tendencies within anarchism of the recent past. whilst there are many who might call themselves libertarian or anarchist who cling to spooks like nation, organised religion, rights, or the principles of capitalism, as i find them inconsistent with the core anarchist principle of antiauthoritarianism i do not consider their pretentions to those titles as credible.

as far as practical progress is concerned, i also have a tendency to agree that many of the tactics pursued by socialists are important. collective action within the workplace is, of course, an important way of challenging the bosses, and capitalist thinking. however, we must be careful to avoid mediation by union hierarchies, or disempowering petitions to authority. that is why i would promote, not fetishise, direct actions (not 'Direct Action', a label that seems to be limited to jumping in front of bulldozers, blockading roads, and smashing american bombers), actions that allow an individual to realise their power and act for themselves. these are actions that make the corruption of unions and other organisations by power-seeking individuals harder, because people are more likely to think critically, and for themselves, rather than following the leader.

the left and iraq pt. 2

2006-03-27T13:45:00.000Z

the debate is ongoing over at the AWL's site. pete has responded to my original post on this issue here and here, and has been responded to in turn by disillusioned kid and myself.

this site now seems to be the target for random complaints by disgruntled AWL members, as attested to by a comment from janine who says

If it is 'misguided' of the AWL to publish the Danish cartoons, why is it OK for you to publish a link to them?!

as far as i'm aware i haven't, but if janine can find me that link i'll retract that statement. i think it should be fairly obvious that context is important in this issue. the context of me publishing a link to something amidst text giving my opinion on it is rather different to someone else publishing the actual cartoons as a political statement. if you disagree, i'd like to know on what grounds.

britain shuffles, france riots

2006-03-23T15:24:00.000Z

as some of my dear comrades will know, i was unable to go to the stop the war shuffleathon round london at the weekend, due to ill health. to be honest, it was a bit of a relief as i always find the marches have a very high cost:benefit ratio, in terms of organising energy. let's face it, they haven't been achieving anything since feb 03, except as an opportunity to meet up with pals from the left who live in farflung corners of the empire like chelmsford and hastings. to be frank, i dislike the idea of being a statistic used for the further aggrandisement of the politically bankrupt likes of german, murray, et al. so, i didn't go, although peeps from here and here, will give you the lowdown i'm sure.

meanwhile, across la manche, the merde was well and truly hitting the extracteur (ok, i don't know french for fan). the right-wing french government is trying to push through the CPE (contrat premiere embauche, or first employment contract) which, to cut a long story short, would allow employers of people under 26 to fire them at any point within their first 2 years of employment without reason. this has rightly been linked by many to precarity, the increasing casualisation of work, and degradation of workers' rights in favour of bosses' rights. those of you who made exclamations of joy in response to this will doubtless have been making similar noises in response to news of french youths' inimitable response to the current attack on them. we've been keeping tabs on some of it at the lenton anarchist board, but for better detail check out the libcom blog. here's some of the latest info, after about 10 days of unrest:-

Demonstrator Cyril Ferez remains in a coma, in a state “between life and death”. Various information has been released. Police say that he was drunk, with 2.7grams of alchohol in his sugar. Last night they said he was attacked by demonstrators, this now appears to be a lie - footage now being shown on French news shows three CRS police beating him with truncheons before he falls to the ground.

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin declares: there will be “neither withdrawal nor suspension” of the CPE.

Lionel Jospin, former Socialist Prime Minister, denounces the CPE as an “idea of the ancien régime”

Grenoble students this morning voted to continue the blocking of the university with a vote of 4000 for and 1700 against. From Indymedia Grenoble.

57 universities ‘disturbed’, 15 blocked (according to the Ministry for Higher Education

814 schools also affected, 49 in the Aix-Marseilles region, 35 in Paris, 19 in Nice as the “movement grows amongst high-school pupils more and more”, says Le Figaro.

Two of nine arrested yesterday in an anti-CPE demonstration that turned into a riot in Corsica have been sentenced to a month in prison.

The FCPE, the leading French high school parents body, calls for a day of ‘ecole mortes’ to coincide with the strike called by trade unions for Tuesday 28th of March.

Thousands demonstrate across France (40,000 according to police). In Paris, teargas is fired in the vicinity of the Sorbonne around 5.30pm French time at the end of a march of 15,000.

Other demonstrations took place in Rennes (3000), Nantes (4000-7000), Limoges (2000-3000), Nancy (2000), Calais (600) and even in Souillac in Lot, where 200 high-school pupils organized a sit-in in the small town of just 3500.

In Clermont Ferrand a demonstration of between 3000 (police estimate) and 4000 (organisers estimate) took place.

Spontaneous march of 1500 young people in the streets of Mâcon this morning. The strike and the demonstration had been decided the morning at the entry of the schools. The presence of a score of young people wanting a fight with the police force, a few moments of tension with dustbins and billboards turned over. [from Indymedia Grenoble]

Between 4500 and 6000 marched in Toulouse.

In Dunkirk, a spontaneous demonstration of 1000 high school pupils involved several ‘incidents with the police’ says state broadcaster tf1.

In Besancon, the main train station was blocked by protesters.

Politicians have been posturing.

"Moved by egoism, Dominique de Villepin is imprisoning France in his personal destiny. He does not give a tinker’s damn that France is breaking apart”, said one Parti Socialiste deputy, members of Villepins UMP party left the debating chamber in protest.

Bernard Accoyer, UMP parliamentary president, insisted upon his party’s unity behind Villepin, saying that “The UMP deputies are convinced that we must hold firm - the street cannot prevail over the law.”

Despite this, members of Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozys’ entourage have in fact been criticising their rival for the leadership of the right, Dominique de Villepin.

the contrast between the tactics used on both sides of the channel, and their relative efficacy at getting the state to chier dans ses brefs is intructive.

the left and iraq

2006-03-22T15:36:00.000Z

those of you who persist in checking my blog, despite the dearth of new material over the past weeks/months, will be pleased to see a new post! the penultimate post before this absence was on a statement concerning solidarity with the workers of iraq and iran, and in which i made the assertion that the AWL's line on iraq was "muddled". since then, pete radcliff, a local AWL stalwart has left an extensive comment on the piece and, as you might guess, is none too pleased with my assessment. i thought i'd write an extensive piece here on some of my views regarding the issue, in the hope that a discussion can be generated on some of the very difficult matter of taking a stance on this hugely important issue.

pete's criticism seems to suggest that he thinks i'm a fan of the SWP(!) i guess he didn't read much else on my blog then. let's have a look at what he said:-

Stop the War, under the SWP leadership:
1) refused to condemn the mass murder of the 9/11 attack
2) refused to oppose Saddam Hussain
3) pushed the most discredited of parliamentary opponents of the war, George Galloway to the front of the anti-war movement.
We opposed all of this, as well as opposing the war and the occupation. Iraqi and Iranian socialist groupings did likewise.

oh yeah, did i mention that i think the SWP are shite? well, the SWP are shite, and reasons 2 and 3 listed by pete are clear examples of the kind of tyranny-appeasing politics that make me think that. their knee-jerk "anti-imperialism" is crude and misguided, as is the case with a lot of the 'old left'. refusing to condemn 9/11 is more complicated, in my opinion, and some highly principled people have spoken of the world trade center as a legitimate target for attacks on US imperialism (i'm thinking ward churchill and his ...justice of roosting chickens here). is condemnation of 9/11 just acquiescence in the face of the establishment's sanctification of 9/11, privileging the lives lost in new york above all the victims of capitalism? does it give heroic status to the "little eichmanns" who were among the victims of the attack (or, at the least, civilian status)? whilst there can be no doubt that it was a remarkably "scattergun" approach to attacking western economic power, it's a very difficult issue to tackle, and i don't think there's an easy option for anti-capitalists and anti-imperialists.

anyway, i've meandered backwards in time. i suppose your approach to 9/11, however, will determine how you might view some of the later "consequences" (i.e. the invasions of afghanistan and iraq). i started by making it clear that much of the AWL's position is reasonable:-

I should also make it clear that I am sympathetic to a lot of the AWL's points on opposition to the Iraq war. The emphasis on solidarity with the Iraqi working class, support of secularism, and refusal to side with "the resistance" as though its members are all heroic freedom fighters are all necessary and sensible.

however

...to see the resistance as either black or white is false. Whilst there are undoubtedly strong religious and Ba'athist elements who should be opposed, I would wager that the majority of people involved in resistance to the occupation are simply those who wish to oppose the occupation and terrorisation of their country. Does the AWL support them? ...
For me, solidarity should be with the grassroots, not with unions acting as intermediaries between the people and the government.

then there's the question of withdrawal of occupying forces:-

I'm also not a fan of the AWL's unwillingness to end the occupation by getting troops out. They simply shouldn't be there. They are also contributing to the vast majority of civilian casualties in Iraq if Les Roberts' Lancet survey is to believed (and I would suggest it is). Whilst it might be conceived that the withdrawal of US/UK troops would be a terrible thing for those opposing the religious fundamentalists who wish to take power, I would suggest that keeping the troops there is worse. Having western troops on the ground makes western control of Iraq inevitable - something that is not at all in Iraqis' interests. It fuels the fantasies of those who would love to see this as a crusade against Islam, and continues the cycle of aggression and counter-aggression that harms civilians more than anything else. This in turn gives the occupiers carte blanche to carry on bombings, torture, invasions of people's homes, and all of the other ongoing crimes of the occupation. How this situation can be good for working class Iraqis is beyond me. It appears that the AWL line has followed the same line of thought of many liberal commentators, that a republic is better for Iraqis than religious tyranny. Well that's fine, if you accept that view of the situation. I don't personally believe that the US blueprint for Iraq is good for Iraqis and I don't see that religious tyranny is necessarily the only alternative. In which case, isn't it rather dangerous to be viewing the invading imperialists as the defenders of Iraq? This plays directly into the hands of those who seek to impose western domination on Iraq.

i'm also very suspicious of the line the AWL seems to be taking on muslims. firstly, they appear to be portraying all interpretations of islam (and, consequently, all muslims) as equally tyrannical and archaic, and have made the deeply misguided decision of republishing the danish cartoons in their paper, solidarity. as one old friend from the peace movement put it recently, they've aligned themselves with the BNP on this one:-

Whilst I am no fan of organised religion, I do believe in freedom of belief within a secular society, and recognise that Muslims are a hugely diverse group of people who cannot simply be lumped into the box of 'things we can attack'. Given the current low status of Muslims in our society, joining with the liberal elite in attacking them is something I cannot support. They are a rather too convenient scapegoat for all kinds of imagined crimes, not dissimilar to those heaped on other religious and ethnic groups throughout history. I am not going to make them my scapegoat.

that just about wraps up my summary of why i think the AWL's approach to iraq is muddled. perhaps i'm misinterpreting their politics, or perhaps i'm just wrong about certain things. i'd be interested to know, dear readers, what you think. the best way of seeing the inadequacies of one's own theorisations and positions is always through criticism by others, so let's discuss.

from the centre of a crime scene

2006-02-14T17:08:00.000Z

news watchers will, by now, have gathered that a wpc was shot in nottingham last night, just a few hundred yards from where i live. i was completely oblivious to the fact until i woke up this morning thinking "it's very quiet today" and found our flat behind lines of crime scene tape with radford boulevard and the surrounding area cordoned off. police evidence gathering teams in their puffy white suits have been up and down the street out the back of the house all day, and i have to ask police permission to get in and out of my street whilst taking ridiculously long roundabout journeys to uni. news teams with huge white vans with satellite dishes are parked at the end of lenton boulevard, and adverts for local papers scream "WPC SHOT IN CITY".

having read the few facts that seem to be available at the moment it seems like a burglar was interrupted by police who were then shot at as he did a runner. they're saying lenton boulevard although a bigger area has been cordoned off up at the radford boulevard end. perhaps the gunman ran off in this direction. what is interesting to me about all this is the difference in response when a policewoman gets shot compared to previous shootings in this area.

nottingham has a bit of reputation within the uk for violent crime which even makes it into the summary of the city on wikipedia. radford, the area i live in, has a particularly bad rep, although in my view this is largely a racist thing. the area is predominantly populated by afrocarribeans and asians. nonetheless, there was a shooting round here a few years ago, of a local person. i don't remember seeing anything in the news about that. large areas of the city were not shut down and a massive police evidence gathering operation was not initiated. after an initial crime scene investigation centring on one small residential street there were more police on the beat for a while, and that was it. this morning local people were getting quite pissed off with the police not letting them into their own streets. it's hard not to see local people's treatment as discriminatory.

does it matter that the victim was a police officer? i would say not. the same treatment, by both the police and the media, should be given to any shooting. does it matter that she was a young woman? once again, the same comment. a potential murder is a horrific crime and it doesn't matter who's on the end of the bullet. why do poor black people getting shot not make the news in the same way as a young female police officer, who has essentially given consent to be placed in potentially life-threatening situations? it seems we only care about certain kinds of victims. it's just not newsworthy when working-class afrocarribeans are the victims of crime.

will doubtless blog more about this event as more info emerges.

the joy of sects

2006-02-13T10:56:00.000Z

some of you in nottingham will be aware of this statement, recently circulated amongst anti-war activists in an attempt to build solidarity with iraqi and iranian workers. the initiative was started by a local member of the alliance for workers' liberty (awl), a small trotskyist group, as was clear to me from both knowledge of who the sender was, and the other people who'd signed it. i had a look and it seemed reasonable enough. i put my name to it, hoping that it might bring together some of the disparate elements of the anti-war movement in nottingham.

ho ho ho. you can't overcome the left's myopic sectarianism that easily! today i received this email from someone who i will only describe as nottingham's only maoist (i hope):-

People should be aware that this statement originates from the Alliance for Wokers' Liberty, a small Trotskyite sect. Most of the local signatories are AWL members or fellow travellers. They claim to call for an "end to the occupation" (of Iraq) but in fact the AWL supports the American and British imperialist occupation of Iraq. They are in fact opposed to the withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq at present.
Also they condemn the armed struggle being waged by various sections of the Iraqi resistance. Don't sign it.

the line appears to be "it doesn't matter how reasonable the statement is, the people who wrote it are from the wrong place, so don't sign it". i'm not an ardent leftist sect watcher, so i have to admit, i'm not that up on the latest line from awl hq on "what to think about the occupation". however, from having read one of their pamphlets on iraq, they seem to have a reasonable guiding principle of: occupation = bad, islamic fundamentalists = bad, no matter who they're fighting. they argue for support for democratic secularists, which doesn't seem like such a bad idea. i'm sure this becomes problematic when they come down to defining who those democratic secularists are, but that doesn't come into the statement. there is nothing in the statement to suggest that it is in favour of keeping occupying troops in iraq.

not being one to be told what to think i felt it necessary to reply:-

Dear [Nottingham's Only Maoist],

I am unable to see any pro-occupation sentiment in the statement. I'm aware of the AWL's rather muddled position, however, I would be equally suspicious of those giving uncritical support to the resistance. Certain sections of this resistance are religious fundamentalists who would crush any genuine egalitarian democracy as readily as the occupiers. This is surely insupportable.

I signed the statement as an individual on the basis of what was written within it, at the request of another individual. I am not, nor will I ever be, a member of the AWL. I would advise others who have received the statement to sign or not sign on a similar basis, not on the basis of sectarian politics.

Sincerely,

[Dan R, who is Not a Maoist]

moral of the story - stay independent, and use your common sense not the party line (especially if you don't belong to any party!)

offensive behaviour

2006-02-02T17:40:00.000Z

apparently it's now illegal to give security cameras the finger. do we really want to be giving the "security" enforcers any more powers than they already have? where are the politicians standing up and saying they'll take their goons' authority away?

students against war

2006-02-01T13:39:00.000Z

imagine my surprise and delight - i went to an anti-war meeting and came away feeling uplifted and inspired! actually, it does happen more than i'm making out. what am i going on about? a new initiative in nottingham by students from the university of nottingham (nottingham student peace movement), nottingham trent university (peace & liberty forum, people & planet), new college, south notts college, and possibly places i haven't even heard of, to gather students opposed to the iraq war based in nottingham into a collective force. i had no idea there were so many others out there.

we filled the upstairs room of the peacock pub on mansfield road, with over 20 people in attendence. depsite the flinging around of plenty of industrial metaphors ('building' this that and the other, i felt like i was in a soviet propaganda movie), the meeting was good at generating a genuine coalition of students against war. email lists, message boards, etc. seem to be in the pipeline, and people were keen to get involved in the peace conference and ceasefire. we also discussed ways that we as a large student group could try to radicalise the existing anti-war movement further, and planned actions against the erosion of civil liberties.

knowing there's a whole bunch of people out there ready to get involved in stuff makes this activism thing a whole lot more pleasant. long may it last.

old man

2006-01-31T14:11:00.000Z

i got this in my inbox today:-

WANT TO TAKE PART IN A TV DISCUSSION?

CHANNEL 4 WILL BE FILMING A SHOW ON BRITAIN'S DRINK & DRUG CULTURE ON FEBRUARY 10TH

WE ARE LOOKING FOR VOCAL 16-24 YEAR OLDS WITH STRONG OPINIONS ON THIS WIDE & VARYING TOPIC

- Do you think 'binge drinking' is a fuss about nothing?
- Are you a recreational drugs user that wants to defend your right to do so?
- Do you think that by taking any type of drug you are on a slippery slope to addiction?
- Or have you or any of your family members been affected by drink or drugs?

If so, we want to hear from you! Please call Dominic on 0208 964 2122 for
more details, and the chance to have your say on national TV!

it's official - i'm too old to be give my opinion on this kind of thing anymore
just a nice quiet cuppa tea for me

nepali unrest

2006-01-27T15:03:00.000Z

things seem to be getting increasingly tense in nepal as police fired on pro-democracy demonstrators yesterday. protestors were involved in attacks on vehicles as a general strike brought the country to a standstill. the absolute monarch, king gyanendra, is the object of the protestors fury, and is looking increasingly fragile as he uses more and more repressive powers to quell the uprisings.

meanwhile the democratic parties are making coalitions amongst themselves and talking with the maoists who've been waging a civil war against the state in nepal for many years. maoist bombings and attacks on government forces have continued throughout.

the king's methods of responding to the maoists is your usual state repression. according to fpif's review of the situation:

Claiming to curb the Maoists, the king has embarked upon a path that is as brutal as theirs. Torture, arrests, abductions and killings by the army have become commonplace. With even less support from the general public for his rule than for the Maoists, the king has used his control over the army to perpetuate his rule with no regard for the law. The army is responsible for almost two-thirds of the total killings in this war.

...and that war has claimed 12,500 lives and counting. unsurprisingly in this day and age, the king has resorted to the terror card, implementing a familiar-looking bit of legislation:

Key to the king's power is the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act (TADA) 2002, which has given the security forces new powers to arrest people and detain them without charge. In October 2005, the king increased the powers of the TADA extending the period of detention without charge or trial from 90 days to a year.

now that's even worse than what the absolute monarch of britain was proposing.

in the face of the frequent and brutal repression, we just have to hope that the state will crumble and that the freedom of nepalis wins the day.

my name is red

2006-01-25T11:50:00.000Z

good news for orhan pamuk, the acclaimed turkish writer (whose novel snow i happen to be reading at the moment) - a turkish court has dropped the case against him for "insulting turkishness" after the justice ministry refused to say whether the case should stand. good to see that authoritarian regimes aren't resorting to authoritarian style "crimes" to silence dissidents. according to the beeb:

Mr Pamuk was accused under Article 301, which makes it illegal to insult the republic, parliament or any organs of state - and can lead to a sentence of up to three years in jail.

i bet stalinist pig-dogs would love it there.

pamuk was initially also charged with "insulting the turkish armed forces" but this was dropped last december. the trial was suspended amidst ugly scenes as nationalists demonstrated against the author.

so what did pamuk say to enrage the turkish powers-that-be so? he dared to draw attention to turkey's massacre of armenians and kurds, saying that "One million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in these lands, and nobody but me dares talk about it." but the problem is that others have spoken about it and remain on trial for the same charge. more than 60 other writers and publishers are facing similar charges, but perhaps because they haven't sold as many books as pamuk and therefore won't be able to muster as many western allies, their cases may go unheard.

the decision of the turkish justice ministry to say "no comment" seems to be part of the state's ongoing determination to become part of the EU, and therefore to be seen to be cleaning up its act, regardless of the reality. the announcement occurred in a week when the EU was scheduled to begin a review of the Turkish justice system, which surely cannot be a coincidence.

the armenian genocide of 1915-17 is, in most parts of the world, considered a fact, the result of ultranationalism by the young turks who strove to revitalise the declining ottoman empire by deporting the non-turkic armenians towards the syrian desert. victims were usually made to walk to these destinations and the 'resettlements' were really cover for death marches. mass executions of able-bodied young armenian men first made the process easier. the armenians' property was left intact for plunder by the turks. up to 1.5m are thought to have perished during the period.

the systematic oppression of the kurds, another non-turkic people, continues into the present. as turkey is an ally of western powers like britain and the usa in their "war on terror", little pressure is exerted for a genuine solution for the kurds who continue to face oppression. mark curtis puts it this way:

Turkey has destroyed 3,500 Kurdish villages, made hundreds of thousands of people homeless and killed thousands more in its war against Kurds. Atrocities have decreased since the late 1990s but hundreds of thousands of Kurds are unable to return to their villages. Ankara-appointed "village guards" occupy much of their lands; villagers attempting to return have recently been shot dead. Turkish police torture remains systematic.

Britain has been an apologist for these crimes while conducting business as usual. Arms exports flow, while Turkish military officers and the police, guilty of the worst human rights abuses, receive training in Britain. London aided Ankara by closing down the Kurdish TV station, MED-TV, in the same month that BAE Systems, Britain's largest arms company, struck an arms deal with Turkey. Whitehall is bending over backwards to support Ankara's bid to join the EU.

it seems likely that only cosmetic changes will be encouraged by britain, as we seem to be making far too much money out of this conflict to really want to stop it.

it is poetic that orhan pamuk should straddle the east-west divide in all this, as this is what his books and characters seem to be all about. snow's central character, ka, is an exile who's spent most of his adult life in frankfurt, and returns to rural turkey to find himself torn between the yearning for european life and the poetry and love he finds in the east. reading about pamuk's own turbulent crises the line between reality and fiction blurs as the fervent nationalists and homicidal generals could come from either. whatever you think of pamuk, snow is a book that has some important questions about the nature of religion, of god, and relations between europe and the muslim world. sadly, in this profoundly sad story i suspect that there will be no last minute reprieve.

identity crisis

2006-01-24T14:13:00.000Z

...for the government that is. finally some of the country's law makers seem to have cottoned on to the implications of the scheme:-

Angry peers last night invoked the memory of fascist regimes which forced citizens to carry their papers as they tore the heart out of the Government's planned legislation for identity cards.

viscount bledisloe (not often you get a viscount as an ally!) said "One would be debarred from the freedom to travel around the world unless one 'chose' to go on some other government register". give the man a pat on the head. it seems it's taken this long for the powers that be to work out that making people sign up to the scheme when they renew their passports is compulsion for everyone except those who refuse to travel.

the peers voted to enable people to get biometric passports without going on the database, which still of course means that from next month all passport renewers will have to get a biometric passport, but at least you're not on the central registry of future offenders. they also voted for an ammendment requiring a separate act of parliament before id cards can be made compulsory.

we're certainly still a long way from being clear of the danger of id cards, however, as spy blog note:-

no doubt, the Home Office is hoping that a centralised biometric database could be used to control people even without a physical ID Card (which would make biometric matching quicker and easier). There is no guarantee that a future Government would not make the carrying of an existing ID Card compulsory.

no doubt even if the government is forced to make the scheme voluntary, propaganda of the "respect" type* could be used to swing the public's opinion in favour of making the database compulsory in future. you know, respect authority, respect your elders, if you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to fear from your benign dictators, etc.

* check out one of the paragraph headings "reclaim the streets" for a great recuperation!

blair-ted out

2006-01-17T10:08:00.000Z

this weekend nottingham university was graced with a visit from none other than tony blair, who was in town to address a policy forum on... the usual incomprehensible gibberish:

[Education and health reform] is a programme based on translating Labour's traditional values into the modern idiom. And thematically it is about empowering individuals through collective support to make the most of their lives. The absolute pre condition for electoral success.

yeah right, tone, whatever. fortunately about 100 of nottingham's activists (and an errant member of lenton anarchist faction (chelmsford branch)) were on hand to march right up to the entrance of the conference centre and scream their lungs out, not to mention getting pushy with the porcine mercenaries. what follows is a report i wrote for the student magazine with the vague hope that i could convey that protest can be fun. well i had a larf:-

Unbeknownst to many students, Tony Blair turned up at the East Midlands Conference Centre on Sat 14^th Jan to address a policy forum on issues including nuclear power (he’s a big fan). Thanks to a leak of details about the venue and the estimated time of arrival to Nottinghamshire Indymedia about a day before, about 100 members of the public also showed up to gatecrash the party. This is a personal account of what happened next.

We arrived at the Portland Building at 10am to find around 70 others already amassed. The action was supported by Nottingham Student Peace Movement, Lenton Anarchist Forum and the Student Union, as well as the local Stop the War Coalition, Nottingham Trent’s Peace & Liberty Society and many other groups and individuals. There was a fine array of banners attacking nu-killer energy and Trident replacement, as well as ongoing crimes like the Iraq war. We were soon approached by a member of the Notts constabulary who informed us that a cosy designated protest area had been set aside for us if we would kindly follow him. We declined the offer and set off in the opposite direction past the library and towards the Downs. We’d soon picked up an escort of fluorescent jacketed officers who looked baffled by what we were up to. Someone cleverly suggested a change of direction and we headed up the hill, through the trees and down the path towards the conference centre’s carpark. A couple of coppers and a security guard tried in vain to stop the mass of people from descending and we seemed to have caught security completely off guard. We made our way right up to the line of police outside the front entrance of the centre, to get our front row seats for Blair’s arrival.

Chanters chanted, drummers drummed, a football was bounced about and someone’s terrier wouldn’t stop yapping. On the other side of the police lines photographers snapped away and various officials bustled around looking furious. The usual intimidation tactic of having several police waving camcorders around was used (how terrifying!) The atmosphere was carnivalesque and good-natured in the crowd although someone at the designated protest area had apparently been arrested after not giving his personal details to an officer stopping and searching him (he was perfectly within his rights not to do this). The ramshackle police finally got their act together and surrounded us, although we were right where we wanted to be. After quite a bit of waiting and making lots of noise, the “meet and greet” line outside the centre were rushed inside the building and we received the news that Blair had been bundled in the back door. You know that democracy is alive and well when the Prime Minister is too scared to face dissent! Our Great Leader obviously prefers the company of those who’ll moronically applaud each and every line. We greeted him with a scream of protest.

Soon a senior officer informed us that we were being detained under Section 12 of the Public Order Act due to “an ongoing security risk in the area”. This was shambolicaly relayed to us by a megaphone wielder and various groupings huddled together to discuss our options. Apparently if we didn’t move to the designated protest zone we’d be arrested. It had started to rain and many wanted to go home to feed children, walk the dog, or just to pee. Many walked up to the police lines and attempted to leave but apparently no one was allowed to leave, even though we’d been asked to! The stalemate continued with the police perpetually saying we’d be able to move in “5 minutes” until out of frustration a group huddled under their banner and crawled up to the police lines in an attempt to wriggle out between their legs. People started moving down to that end and the police were looking increasingly nervous. “We can’t do anything without orders from our senior officer,” one apparently not-senior-enough officer wailed, “Just give us 2 minutes!” We waited about a minute and then started counting down from 60 seconds as we rallied behind the banner to push. At about 20 seconds police resolve crumbled and we easily shoved our way down the hill to the pen. They did have the cheek to try and keep us in there as well, but after a few of the more athletic vaulted a wall and ran off they finally gave up.

Looking back it may look as though our protest didn’t achieve very much. We didn’t get to challenge Blair’s diktat or get very much mainstream media attention for our arguments. However, I saw many people getting a taste of their own power by standing up to authority for the cause of democracy. A local reporter was so infuriated with the police’s tactics that she rallied to our cause. Whilst the politicians had to hide their “discussions” behind police lines, we sought to reclaim our campus for an alternative vision, and had fun in the process. Whilst within the Labour party dissent is clamped down on, our group encompassed many different viewpoints and there was scepticism towards those who took it upon themselves to lead or negotiate with the police “on our behalf”. Perhaps next time Blair will think twice before taking on Nottingham.

and finally...

2006-01-12T09:25:00.000Z

a belated new year's message from someone that some readers will recognise instantly:-

i'm trying to work out how much of the ideas that we were throwing around were the ravings of a few privileged kids on narcotics and where the nitty gritty class struggle is

something to ponder methinks

rewriting indian history

2006-01-10T10:25:00.000Z

whilst christian, jewish and islamic forms of fascism are well known, hindu funtamentalism is more insidious. probably as a result of orientalist views of indians as effeminate peace-loving people in loin cloths and the enduring legacy of gandhi, fascism doesn't seem like it could sneak into hindu culture. but it has and is growing more powerful.

just take a read of this frightening article by angani chatterji, reprinted on znet, detailing attempts by diaspora hindu nationalists to have history textbooks rewritten in californian schools. the suggested rewrites would, in my opinion, gloss over some of the worst oppression of the historical origins of indian society, and alter generally accepted facts about the origins of the indian people. for example:-

[T]he revisions refute the migration of Aryans, associated by historians with the emergence of Hinduism, from Central Asia into India. The revisions posit Hinduism as indigenous to India and ascribed with its origins, rendering mute the histories of adivasis (tribal, first peoples) and their subjugation by Hindus.

this is to preserve the mythology favoured by fundamentalist hindus that hinduism is the original belief system of the region and that the hindus are the original people. the truth appears to be more complicated, although the debate has become one of politics rather than history. there are more worrying rewrites tho:-

[T]he Curriculum Commission accepted, that the current text, 'The Aryans created a caste system…', be replaced with: 'During Vedic times, people were divided into different social groups (varnas) based on their capacity to undertake a particular profession.'

as chatterji argues, this move obfuscates the reality of the rigid caste system which is not meritocratic with the possibility of social mobility as the revised text tries to suggest. the struggles of the dalits (untouchables, considered beneath the 'feet' of the caste system) are powerful testimony to the continuing oppression of caste in india. also glossed over is traditional indian society's subjugation of women:-

On page 245, the Ad Hoc Committee proposed, and the Curriculum Commission accepted, that the current text, 'Men had many more rights than women', be replaced with: 'Men had different duties (dharma) as well as rights than women. Many women were among the sages to whom the Vedas were revealed.'

the reality, as testified to by this indian feminist, is rather different. women often have to endure abusive relationships as the social cost of divorce is so great, and a woman must faithfully serve her husband. indeed the favouring of males over females extends into sex selective abortion, where a recent lancet report suggests that around 10m female foetuses have been aborted over the past 20 years. the persecution of women has a clear precedent in hindu religious texts, as detailed by sita agarwal:-

The scriptures of the 6 orthodox (`astika') schools of Brahmanism, including the sects of Vasihnavism and Vedism, prescribe the cruellest punishments imaginable for women guilty of even minor offences. Mere disobedience to the husband is immediately punished by amputation and maiming, whilst severe betrayal leads to certain death. Women guilty of lesbianism have their fingers chopped off, whilst adulterous wives are eaten alive by dogs.

i should make clear here that my intention is not to condemn hindus and suggest that they are all misogynistic upholders of the caste system - they are not. it is merely to demonstrate that, as with other religious systems, hinduism has some archaic barbarities in its closet that need to be examined rather than airbrushed out of history. the voices of those oppressed need to be heard and given space in high school history books. the problem seems to occur when self-appointed 'community leaders' like hindu education foundation (hef) and vedic foundation (vf), the groups responsible for demanding these changes, hijack processes aimed at giving minority cultures a voice, in order to propagate their religious extremism.

whilst these rewrites (and 131 out of the 153 revisions have been accepted) are certainly a disturbing attempt to censor the oppressed and favour an elite view of indian history, they do not on their own constitute fascism. but some of the bodies and organisations that do promote a highly nationalistic and fundamentalist vision of hinduism could certainly be termed fascist, and contain admirers of hitler in their ranks. the largest such group, the rashtriya swayamsevak sangh (RSS), according to andrew robinson*:

...carry lathis (hard cane sticks), wear Gestapo-like uniforms and salute their superiors. Many of them, including high-ranking politicians, openly worship Hitler - wearing armbands and swastikas (the word is of Sanskrit origin) among other icons.

the RSS were founded on the model of mussolini's brownshirst and prominent RSS figures have openly admired hitler. madhav sadashiv golwalkar said in 1938, that:-

Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races -- the Jews. National pride at its highest has been manifested here...
The non-Hindu people in Hindustan [homeland of Hindus] .... may stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment, not even citizen's rights

the parallels between these ideas of cultural purity and hitler's desire for a pure aryan race could not be clearer. the RSS are active today in india and their current tactics, according to chatterji, include a concerted effort to infiltrate the educational system in india for their religious and nationalist purposes:-

The RSS has established a network of schools... to advance the ideological agenda of Hindu nationalism. For adivasis (referred derogatorily by Hindu nationalists as 'vanavasis' or 'forest dwellers') and dalits (erstwhile 'untouchable' castes), this ongoing reality of Hinduization forces their coercive incorporation into Brahmanical Hinduism. Hindu nationalists have utilized such educational networks as mechanisms through which to recruit and mobilize women, adivasis, and dalits in campaigns against religious minorities. The participation of Hinduized women, adivasi, and dalit communities in the genocide of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 exemplifies this pattern.

the aim appears to be to imbue previously dispossessed communities with a (misplaced) faith in their religious identity, to such an extent that they are willing to kill their supposed enemies.

the hindu fascists are not just content to operate via the educational system, however, as hindu nationalism had a strong hold on indian politics until the 2004 election, in the guise of the bharitiya janata parishad (BJP), the hindu nationalist party. a. b. vajpayee, the former prime minister was an RSS cadre, as were other members of the cabinet and the party executives. the party used its time in office to stir up discrimination against muslims and christians, and move the country perilously close to nuclear war with their arch enemies pakistan."We will no longer be thought of as a country of eunuchs!" said bal thakaray, leader of shiv sena (shiva's army) on learning of vajpayee's decision to go ahead with provocative nuclear tests in 1997. the macho face of militarism could not be more clear.

the election defeat of the bjp in 2004, and the victory of the congress coalition, was a welcome rejection of the milatarist hindu nationalist agenda in india, but there is no doubt that the hindutva agenda is still a potent force, not just in india but in the diaspora of countries like britain and the usa. there is no doubt that many cling more closely to their community and religious identities when terrible communal violence erupts on the subcontinent, such as the gujarat massacres or the destruction of the babri majid. the babri majid, a mosque in north india, was destroyed by fundamentalists in 1992, and pragna patel desribes the british community's response:-

It became clear that meny hindus, across the class divides, sympathised, if not directly supported the cause of the Hindu right. The arguments, quarrels, shouting matches and silences revealed a schizophrenia as memories and feelings of partition resurfaced, even though many were not affected by it, to justify the need to take revenge against muslims.

more recently tensions mounted after sep 11th as hindus strove to dissociate themselves from muslim asians, to the extent that sunrise radio station (a popular asian station) chose to ban the use of the secular term asian, after pressure from the uk branch of the vishwa hindu parashad. the idea seemed to be to persuade racist whites to channel their anger towards muslims rather than asians in general. the VHP has called for all non-indians to leave india at a meeting in southall, during the gujarat massacres. there is even a reference to nottingham in the archives. apparently when the irreverently anti-patriarchal film bhaji on the beach was first screened here, the cinema was surrounded by hindu men who intimidated women who tried to get in. pragna patel ascribes the rise in hindutva here to events in india and the rise of muslim political identity in the uk. she describes her brave attempts to infiltrate a caste mela (festival, exclusively for high-caste hindus) and distribute leaflets calling for a more tolerant hinduism, amidst threats of sexual violence and initimidation. particularly telling was the manner by which they were finally ejected - by the police. no doubt keen not to rock the 'cultural sensitivity' boat, the boys in blue intervened on behalf of the more powerful side (as usual).

there are groups fighting against communalism and caste and gender-based exploitation in britain, including the south asia solidarity group and southall black sisters. at nottingham uni a south asian peace society was set up last year, although it appears to have disappeared now. it seems to me to be paramount to try to understand the nature of hindu fascism as with all other types of religious extremism, and to ensure that it does not take hold in our communities.

*no, not our andrew robinson!

the end is nigh!

2006-01-09T13:52:00.000Z

...for campaigning on rainy saturdays in nottingham? sadly not. our rather small demonstration about the fact that air travel is screwing the planet did, however, make quite an impact due to the fact that some students from trent turned up in order to film us, and that j. insisted on wearing what looked like air traffic control headphones and mike to unsettle the opposition. as dean noted in his indymedia article, the opposition (in the form of travel agents staff and disinterested council wardens) wasn't up to much on the day. as could be predicted the best bit was the chat in the pub afterwards.

in case you're wondering "but dan, why target lovely travel agents who are giving us those lovely cheap flights to far away destinations" here's the blurb:-

Air travel produces 19 times the greenhouse gas emissions of trains and 190 times that of a ship.

If aviation continues to grow at its present rate all other sectors will have to reduce emissions to zero to meet the Government’s commitment to reduce C02 emissions by 60% by 2050.

Greenhouse gas emissions caused by UK air travel have doubled in the past 13 years.

Aircraft taking off from the UK emit more CO2 than from any other country in the world except the United States.

A passenger on a long haul flight accounts for as much C02 as an average motorist produces in a year.

Emissions at altitude have up to 4 times the environmental impact of those on the ground.

Air travel is growing at UK airports at an average of 4.25%. In 1970, 32 million flew from UK airports; in 2002 189 million. By 2030 some 500 million passengers may pass through UK airports.

Cargo transportation is growing by 7% a year. In 1970 580,000 tonnes of freight were moved by plane; in 2002, 2.2 million tonnes were moved by plane. It is forecast to reach 5 million tonnes in 2010.

Flying 1kg of asparagus from California to the UK uses 900 times more energy than the home grown equivalent.

Sending goods by air, weight for weight, results in up to a hundred times as much pollution as sending them by train.

Globally, flying produces more than 700 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year (an average household produces in the region of 2 tonnes per year).

There is currently no tax on aviation fuel and the Government gives an annual £9 billion of publicly funded subsidy to the aviation industry

The Government’s commitment to reduce C02 emissions by 60% by 2050 is incompatible with its plans to build new runways at Heathrow, Birmingham and Stansted.

this was part of the local dissent group's campaign on climate change issues, which looks set to culminate in a climate change action camp this summer. in nottingham people are particularly worked up about the proposed expansion of east midlands airport. i find climate change a pretty difficult one to campaign on, because flying and eating food flown in from the other side of the planet are such accepted parts of modern life. nonetheless, the facts are frightening, and the wider they are spread about by actions like this, and linked to travel agents' displays with cutprice offers, the more of an effect we'll have.

come the revolution

2006-01-05T15:22:00.000Z

i've been reading quite a bit about the 1968 paris uprising recently (see poster on the left, "free press"), and pondering the total unexpectedness and swiftness of events. workers, students and radicals were suddenly swept up in a massive struggle that seemed to be too big, too fast. whilst there is no doubt that temporary autonomy was a goal worth fighting for, the total revolution of society hoped for was not obtained.

whilst there is no doubt that french society in 68 was very different to modern society, i imagine any revolutionary attempt in the britain of today would would look more like paris 68 than some of the more famous struggles in this vein (e.g. russia 1917), because we live in a technologically advanced european capitalist state. no doubt there'd have to be a general rebellion of workers in order to halt the machinery of the economy, the seizure of media outlets, and immediate steps to defend the revolutionary forces. no doubt all of this has been theorised and pored over and over by the likes of academic marxists (that seems to be all they do), and no doubt one of the biggest obstacles to change would be the "professional revolutionaries" who'd like to lead the movement, but what about us?

here i'm talking about the small handful of people who i know to read this blog and (as far as i'm aware) are fairly unaffiliated individuals. the problems of leaders and parties are well known to us, but in the event of a sudden uprising in our town/country/planet how would we respond? presumably we'd want to be involved in order to help the changes that we wanted to see. we'd probably need to spread the word about our struggles and counter propaganda, take part in the defence of our comrades against the police, and do our bit in installing alternative social and economic systems.

i'm thinking about this on a purely 'what if i got the chance to be part of something like that' sense. what would you do?

what friends are for

2006-01-04T14:40:00.000Z

world news

thanks to adam shaw for this deeply bonkers christmas production. with friends like this who needs nightmares. i'm more comfortable with this one:

stalinist pig-dog reprints

2006-01-03T15:37:00.000Z

i was in the strange position (in the run up to xmas) of being quoted by mil rai in his prison diaries (random remarks for radicals no 15: comfort zones), and having my book review from ceasefire reproduced on the socialist unity website. now that i'm over this terrifying pinnacle of success and well into the nadir of total obscurity again i feel safe to let these facts out.

however, if you want some decent reading mil's prison diaries are an excellent source of ruminations and reflections on activist stuff.

there's also this which claims to be "defining a post-leftist anarchist critique of violence" that i'm still plucking up the courage to finish. it's been pretty good so far, but i hate reading long things on the computer. should've bought it in print when i was in the cowley club over xmas.

and i've just read this interesting little post from guerillas in the midst, which is well worth a gander.

and while you're at it, why not fill this newcomer's comments box with interesting suggestions. some of you will know him already, so give him a nod.

some resolutions?

2006-01-03T15:18:00.000Z

unpredict yourself
deprogram
sing a different song
desist from participation in the production line of alienation
those who make bombs must be disarmed
those who make mental shackles must be stripped of their uniform
there will be total disrespect for the law
we will burn effigies of authority
we will replace statues with wilderness
turn office blocks into gardens
dance on the graves of stalinist pig-dogs

(please add some new lines of your own)

new year feelgood post

2006-01-03T14:28:00.000Z

as i'm usually fairly rubbish about maintaining contacts with my many wonderful acquaintances, i decided to make an effort this new year to see what everyone's up to. some of the messages i've received over the "festive period" are listed below. try and guess who's doing what:-

"I think that's me more or less done. Go forth and drink until you throw up your livers. But make sure you do it responsibly. The adverts say so. It must be true." - now i see why you haven't been blogging recently...

"we are planning our first Festival next summer. watch this space for further details. thinks of Glastonbury, on a small scale. i am submitting plans to the City Council this week" - we're doomed, doomed i tell you!

"Merry something, 'hampton sucks like a 17 year old actress in LA, but that's par for the course. My work is currently taking me all over the place, going to Dorset next week, to teach nurses how to use the internet. And no mention of www.hotandhornystudentnurses.com at all." - i'm glad this individual isn't teaching me how to use the internet

"anyhow yes I still work with mentalists but i'm also doing an MA in - wait for it philosophy of religion oh yes thats right
its just great" - i can feel a cult coming on

"quacky duckmass!" - no prizes for guessing

"i'm living in chichester and i work as a guitar teacher as well as playing in a few bands - check out www.illuminati3.com" - doh! another conspiracy theorist

"Christmas is a time for communism!" - don't think they've told the high street stores that yet

"New Years Resolutions:
1. Get fit.
2. Learn photography (to some extent)." - he's no utopian

"actually i'm just having a film edited that i made last september and am in need of a soundtrack. its a bastardisation of the inferno section of dante's divine comedy set in a restaurant with no reference to our favourite middle-ages florentine poet or any coherent plot and a scene where an immortal maitre-d rapes a woman in a toilet dressed up as princess diana and shouting 'there are three of us in this marriage' in a bad french accent." - i'm being offered the opportunity to write music for this - i'm scared

"Currently trying to produce a joint 10 year Cardiac Surgery and Cardiology report for two consultants (cardiac surg and cardiology respectively) who hate each other and think anything the other does is rubbish! Oh the diplomatic dilemmas. Keeps me on my feet." - proof that i could never be a hospital auditor

"I'm reading Capital at the moment for my PhD - heavy going, but I'm getting a lot out of it." - eek, marx geekery!

10 good things about 2005

2006-01-03T10:39:00.000Z

ok, so this is quite liberal-american in places, but i still like to see glimmers of light in the darkness (courtesy of truthout):-

Hugo Chavez has shown how an oil-rich nation can use the country's wealth to provide education, healthcare and small business opportunities for its people - and we here in the US have discovered an oil company we can feel good about buying gas from: Venezuela's CITGO.
Bolivians have, for the first time in their history, elected an indigenous president, Evo Morales. The former llama farmer and coca grower has fought against "free trade" and the privatization of his nation's resources, and has brought new hope to indigenous people throughout the continent.
Anti-war activists - who once represented a much-maligned minority - now represent the majority of Americans who agree that the war in Iraq was a mistake and the troops should come home as soon as possible. And with Cindy Sheehan and Cong. Jack Murtha, we finally had spokespeople the mainstream media listened to!
In an historic blow to the Bush administration's five-year attempt to destroy the Kyoto Protocol, the climate summit in Montreal ended with even stronger measures to combat global warming. At home, nearly 200 cities are taking their own Kyoto-type actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The Senate ended the year with a spurt of defiance, refusing to permanently extend the expiring provisions of the Patriot Act, blocking the Republican maneuver to attach Arctic oil drilling to a defense spending bill, and passing John McCain's anti-torture amendment.
Despite a concerted offensive to lift the president's sagging public support, George Bush's approval ratings are still below 50 percent, his economic agenda (from the privatization of social security to the repeal of the estate tax) has unraveled, key cronies from Lewis Libby to Tom DeLay have fallen from grace, and 2006 might just put impeachment back into the congressional lexicon.
Labor, community activists and women's groups have mounted a spirited campaign against the behemoth of behemoths, Wal-Mart. And a California jury awarded $172 million to thousands of employees at Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., who were denied such basic rights as lunch breaks, with 40 similar lawsuits pending in other states.
With the wild swings in gas prices, SUV sales have plummeted (Ford Explorer down 52%, Chevrolet Suburban down 46%), the sale of hybrids has doubled, and the US House of Representatives actually held a forum on the "peak oil theory."
In a great win for farm workers, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers forced the fast food giant Taco Bell to raise the price for picking tomatoes (nearly doubling many workers' salaries), and now they're ready to take on an even bigger bully: McDonald's.
The global movement for peace and justice proved it was alive and kicking: witness Argentina during the Free Trade Agreement meetings, Hong Kong around the World Trade Organization ministerial, and the ongoing rallies against the war. The steady growth of the fair-trade movement also shows that we are not just protesting, but we're also building a more sustainable economy.

anyone want to add some more?

communique from the stalinist pig dog

2005-12-24T11:51:00.000Z

nella will be pleased to note that my profile picture is now the nearest pic i could find to a stalinist pig dog.

karate chimp pictures and fluffy kittens and ducks will also be appearing shortly.

i will also be chatting at great length and in meticulous detail about the latest reality soapumentaries i've been goggling at on the idiot box.

and if you're really lucky i might slip in a situationist quote about the situation in the democratic republic of congo too.

i think i'm going to like this new role :)

The Decision of The Board

2005-12-23T11:20:00.000Z

Dear Rabble,

We have read, with a mixture of boredom and total disinterest, your responses to DanR's ridiculous ultimatum. Whilst we were reluctant to bother adjudicating in such a trifling matter, there is nothing we like more than arbitrarily deciding and stamping our name on everything.

Whilst our initial reaction was that DanR should immediately implode his "weblog" to avoid further wasting valuable space on the worldwide web that could have been used to sell things, we thought he would serve as an example to you all. His impotent rants and unintelligible screeds are an unmistakable symbol of your Movement's total inability to change anything. Long may he lead you!

Please also find attached an expenses claim for our first class travel and gut-busting lunch, and details of our bank account registered in the Cayman Islands.

Yours in total disregard,

The Board

fin?

2005-12-16T16:04:00.000Z

is it the end of the road for the naked lunch? after a tad over 100 posts and about 6 months has danr finally run out of even the most banal inanities to spout fitfully at foolish passers-by who stop for a glimpse? or should he continue to pimp his intellectual wares on the electronic backstreets?

in a uniquely democratic event, you the reader will decide.

yes, it's pseudoreality blogging! you get to vote. but unlike those doddery crocks of timeslot filling proverbial, we encourage you to actually participate. here's your task:-

post a comment to this article including a brief discussion of either a) why this blog should be destroyed or b) how it should be radically altered in order that a new and brighter utopia can be imagined within.

in precisely 10 days from now an unelected and thoroughly corrupt committee will weigh the votes cast and the relative merits of the arguments, and make the decision that best suits them.

remember - your vote counts!!!

situationist quote of the day

2005-12-14T10:42:00.000Z

from raoul vaneigem's basic banalities (II)

In a caricature of antagonisms, power urges everyone to be for or against Brigette Bardot, the nouveau roman, the 4-horse Citroen, spaghetti, mescal, miniskirts, the UN, the classics, nationalisation, thermonuclear war and hitchhiiking. Everyone is asked their opinion about every detail in order to prevent them having one thought about the totality.

i'm guessing he wasn't a member or the debating society ;)

oi student!

2005-12-06T17:03:00.000Z

read this. and get off your arse and do something about it.

got to pick a pocket or two

2005-12-06T16:56:00.000Z

apparently sheffield's pre-g8 warm-up match cost the coppers a whopping 1.6m...

...and they were still rubbish...

...anyone want to guess where they get this kind of money?

q: when is a fascist not a fascist?

2005-12-05T17:19:00.000Z

a: when it's a tory.

what the hell am i going on about? last week we had a meeting about combatting fascism at the university. whilst undoubtedly a response to 'the mortuary', it was also aimed at getting people together to plan anti-fash activities. well, that was the plan.

in the event i turned up to find an idiocy of tories (is that the collective noun? i feel it should be), all puffed up with pride about how they were, urm, hijacking an anti-fascist meeting. their ardour was dampened somewhat by the gradual arrival of lots and lots of anti-fascists from nottingham who unknowingly surrounded them. the tories were, of course, led by 'nazi tim', who predictably made a tit out of himself.

once the speakers had finished the tories pounced. tim in the lead, of course, decided he didn't have any criticism to make about pete radcliff's talk (how kind!) but claire taylor's argument for no platform was not so well received. with question after question the tories revealed that a) they had either misunderstood or wilfully ignored the purpose of the meeting and that b) they didn't understand much about the one issue they were interested in (no platform) either. no doubt they saw themselves as crusading defender's of free speech, but from where i was sitting they looked more like bnp apologists.

they repeatedly refused to understand any approach that did not have legislature in mind, were horrified that violence might be involved in anti-fascism, and seemed to think that no platform was somehow an intellectual chickening out of dealing with the bnp. this approach wasn't just stupid - i found it pretty offensive to the speakers and the members of the audience who'd come to get involved. tim made the ultimate faux pas in slagging off the miners who'd struck in the 80s, which immediately got a furious riposte from one of the strike's supporters. apparently it was the miners, not the police, who were violent!

personally, i'm considering a no platform approach to dealing with tory wankers, so we can actually get some action planned.

naked lunch hibernation shocker!!!

2005-12-02T15:44:00.000Z

i'm not dead, just snoring faintly in my electronic burrow, far away from the evils of the world...

in reality of course i'm far too bloody busy to be blogging having been trying to sort out this, and this, and this, not to mention promoting this, cycling through the broadmarsh centre, and also trying to stop the university investing in dealers of mass destruction.

on the last point, we finally received a reply from the finance director this week (after getting large numbers of students to deluge him with emails and letters):-

Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 11:22:41 +0000
From: "Martin Wynne-Jones"
Subject: Reply to Request re Investments

In response to your request regarding the University's investments, I can confirm that the University does own 35 shares in Rolls Royce. These were donated by one individual to the University along with the following:

GUS - 259
Astra Zenica -221
BAA - 44
BP - 270
BAT - 494
BT - 269
Carillion - 59
IMI plc - 308
Iternational Power - 59
Lloyds TSB - 198
Severn Trent - 63
Cable & Wireless - 162
O2 - 269

The donor's estate is still in the hands of solicitors and once probate has been completed and the University has received the share certificates, all these shares will be sold.

Apart from the above and the shares held in University spin-out companies established by academic members of staff, the University only holds investments through Pooled Tracker Funds, managed by Barclays Global Investors.

The nature of pooled tracker funds is that they hold shares in all the companies making up the market index which that fund is tracking ; we hold shares in tracker funds which themselves invest in the FTSE all share index, Dow Jones in US, a fund of funds which invests in European exchanges e.g the Bourse in Paris, Frankfurt, Holland etc, the Nikkei in Japan , and a small range of emerging country exchanges in Asia.

The statement from Barclays on Corporate Governance and ethical issues - from its most recent report - has been sent to the President of the Students Union, Mike Baxter who has also received a copy of this email.

Martin Wynne-Jones
Director of Finance

caat have this to say about the kind of accounts that wynne-jones is talking about:-

[A]t any given moment, Nottingham University could hold investments in all arms companies (and not just UK based, they could also hold investments in Lockheed Martin and Raytheon through the Dow Jones; EADS through Euronext Amsterdam; ThyssenKrup via the Frankfurt Stock Exchange; Thales via Euronext Paris etc) or alternatively in none of them. Most likely, your university will hold shares in at least one arms exporting company at all times, given the spread of their tracker funds.

As these funds are probably passively managed (although it is worth verifying this with Mr Wynne-Jones) there is likely to be no consideration of ethics as all they do is track stock markets.

funnily enough, that didn't really surprise me. they had let arms dealers cobham set up a recruitment stall (complete with pictures of bombings) at the uni during our one world week. the two staff were extremely defensive, and whined on about the 3,000 they'd paid the university for this privilege, as we effectively flushed it down the drain by mobbing them and redistributing a few of their glossy brochures. caat have good news tho, and we should soon be following these up:-

The main thing to do is create pressure for your university to adopt an ethical investment policy - there are some great student campaigns that have already got started on this including at St. Andrews and York Universities. York University People and Planet have drafted a motion for the Student Union to adopt an ethical investment policy, to further influence the university to sell their arms trade shares, and this might be something you could adapt.

Once the university has an ethical investment policy it is up to their fund managers to research financial products that fit the criteria - EIRIS provide information on this - but the first step is getting ethical criteria decided!

ok wynne-jones, round two starts now...

is it the poverty? is it the racism?

2005-11-17T16:39:00.000Z

no, it's the polygamy.

Bernard Accoyer, leader of President Jacques Chirac's UMP party in the national assembly, said that polygamy was "certainly one of the causes" of France's worst urban violence for four decades.

Gérard Larcher, the junior employment minister, was also quoted as saying that polygamous families generated "antisocial" behaviour. He said his remarks were "an appeal for a debate on the issue, rather than a value judgement".

are you sure it's not their genetic inferiority accoyer? god knows what le pen's saying.

on the merits of rioting

2005-11-14T15:20:00.000Z

apologies for the lack of personal input into my blog in recent posts - it seems to be turning into a place to quote other people. don't intend to stop tho, as guardian columnist gary younge's written a good piece on rioting as a tactic in class warfare.

And the reality is that none of this [concilatory concessions by the french government] would have happened without riots. There was no petition these young people could have signed, no peaceful march they could have held, no letter they could have written to their MPs that would have produced these results.

of course, we know this, but it's nice to be reminded. those who supported make poverty history take note.

according to younge "in certain conditions rioting is not just justified but may also be necessary, and effective." he names certain conditions under which a riot receives his seal of approval:

When all non-violent, democratic means of achieving a just end are unavailable, redundant or exhausted, rioting is justifiable. When state agencies charged with protecting communities fail to do so or actually attack them, it may be necessary in self-defence.

of course, rioting is a big gamble. the state has means available to smash and repress rioters in brutal ways (not least of which, 28 days detention without trial in the uk). even if the system changes for the better the rioter is still in prison. i would agree that the conditions stipulated by younge are a reasonable, although as an anarchist, i might differ in my interpretation of them.

i'm sure many liberals, and i think we can count younge amongst them, would argue that we live in a democratic state in which there exist political and legal avenues for addressing citizens' grievances. as an anarchist, i would say that the state is not democratic, does not act nonviolently, and as such we should be justified in rioting against it unless there are non-state alternatives to addressing the problems we face. let's take a few issues in which i believe the state is an obstacle to democratic progress:

the abolition of class - what ruling elite is ever going to eradicate privilege?
the establishment of direct democracy - once an elite has seized power, its members are unlikely to be willing to distribute it back to the people

most of the other ills in our society stem from these (which are themselves inter-related). these are the key issues perpetuating the inequalities which fuel riotous protests, and whilst the privileges of the few are in place unrest will continue. given that the rulers will violently resist any attempts to remove them from their lofty positions people will be taking to the barricades with justification.

cognitive liberty

2005-11-14T12:06:00.000Z

...sounds like something i could do with right now. or perhaps just liberation from cognitive science. but "oi you meandering git, get back to the point" i hear you say:-

Psychoactive drugs offer access to varied states of consciousness; restriction of this access is a fundamental form of repression. Consequently, the “war on drugs” is not just a campaign against the use of certain substances; it’s also an attack on “cognitive liberty,” or the right to control individual consciousness.

...or so say the center for cognitive liberty and ethics (ccle), a libertarian group demanding the right to mind expansion, according to salim muwakkil's article for in these times.

The United States acknowledged the legitimacy of these substances in 1995 when Congress amended the American Indian Religious Freedom Act to allow the Native American Church the sacramental use of peyote in all 50 states. Devotees believe peyote allows the faithful to contact God without the need of an intermediary.

Governments, not just organized religions, fear that kind of independence, say advocates of cognitive liberty. But criminalizing people who use outlawed substances for spiritual exploration is a much bigger crime, they argue.

well getting directly in touch with god is not to be sniffed at, but i don't think much of the chances of organising a revolution once we're all smacked up to the gills. let's get the class warfare over first kids, then we can all hold hands and take mushrooms...

more from mil

2005-11-14T12:03:00.000Z

milan rai has written a lucid and thoughtful blog entry about his experiences of coming up against the serious organised crime act:-

Filling in the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act form, however, was cooperation with repression. It was asking for permission to mourn the dead.

Ringing the bell was important. Reading the names was also important. But not at the cost of cooperating with the erosion of freedom in this country.

mil currently faces up to 51 weeks in prison for his non-cooperation

fodder to the machine

2005-11-10T16:10:00.000Z

an evaluation of the french riots by an english inhabitant:-

So far I've heard no one mention that the transformer where the two kids from Clichy-sous-Bois got electrocuted while trying to hide from the police has just been privatized, along with the entire public electricity system. You see an idiotic ad with a brainless young middle-class couple bushing over the beauty of a stainless-steel windmill, a dam or a nuclear reactor that they're about to own shares in. When just yesterday everyone owned it - it was a public service. As if that did us a lot of good.

star performance

2005-11-09T14:04:00.000Z

i mentioned a little while back that i'd been to the star conference last weekend. star (student action for refugees) do exactly what they say on the tin, and there's a (dormant) group at nottingham. this was their national conference and i was glad to have gone.

first off naaz coker of the refugee council and susie symes (standing in for johann hari) introduced asylum, its history and the uncomfortable present. there was then a big choice of workshops. after much deliberation i opted for 'mental health and refugee children' and 'western sahara'. i wasn't disappointed.

i've done a fair bit of volunteering in mental health (both formal and informal) over the years so the mental health session was a natural one to go for. it was run by gill martin of leeds asylum seekers supporters network (lassn) but she spoke a lot about hull as well, which is where she is currently based. the particular problems seemed to be the ignorance and insensitivity (to the point of abuse) of gps and psychiatrists using children as interpreters for their parents. apparently there have been cases of young children having to interpret the results of their mothers' gynaecological exams. of course children are particularly vulnerable to stress- and depression-related illnesses, not just from post-traumatic stress, but also from the hardship of having to look after parents debilitated by psychiatric illness as a result of their experiences. add to all this the insecurity of not knowing whether you are going to be kicked out of the country at any minute and you're looking at an impossible situation for mental well-being. there were some positive ideas and projects mentioned though, such as community arts and social events which could brought isolated people together, and helped them to feel good about themselves again.

the western sahara session was particularly interesting because it's something i've read a little about before but not really got to grips with. i've been to the moroccan sahara and seen a little of how the indigenous berber people live, which i'm sure gave me some insight into the saharawi's situation. the session was run by war on want who are campaigning for western saharan independence to coincide with 30 years since the end of colonial rule. briefly, spain was the colonial power in the region until the early '70s. when the spanish withdrew they made a secret deal with morocco and mauritania to divide the country between them, and both armies invaded, despite the fact that the international court of justice confirming that the saharawi, the nomadic indigenous people of the area, should be allowed a referendum on independence. the polisario front, the saharawi resistance movement fought back against moroccan invaders (mauritania withdrew its forces from the territory in 1979). morocco has built a huge wall (the longest in the world) between territory it controls and that controlled by the polisario, and has encouraged thousands of arab settlers to move to the territory. eventually a ceasefire was agreed, on the basis that a referendum would be held in the territory (in 1991) backed by the un. after years of stalling morocco, realising it would not be able to win the referendum, rejected the agreement whilst holding on to the territory it had conquered.

all interesting stuff, but what has it got to do with refugees? well, most of the saharawi women and children fled the area during the invasions of '75, to the algerian desert. 165,000 saharawi live in permanent refugee camps in this inhospitable terrain and are dependent on food aid to survive. despite this their society is a triumph in the face of adversity in many ways. women have equal status with men and there are no real leaders or hierarchies. a massive campaign of education by the people has changed the literacy rate from 10% to a massive 95% - the highest in africa! the saharawi arab democratic republic (sadr) is their government in exile, a member of the african union (unlike morocco which resigned in protest).

so why is morocco still hanging doggedly on to western sahara? because it is rich in resources: fishing, oil and phosphates. the eu is about to sign a fisheries agreement with morocco in which it will effectively buy the right to fish off western sahara. as morocco is not the legitimate administrative power of the region and it should not be viewed as such. some positive news, from an unlikely source, is that the usa has specifically excluded western sahara from their free trade agreement with morocco. us-based kerr-mcgee, however, is still planning on surveying for oil off the coast, and should be a target for actions in solidarity with the saharawi.

in the meantime, morocco is brutally suppressing any saharawi protest with extensive human rights abuses, and the detention of many in laayoune's black prison.

more later...

"rentrez chez-vous"

2005-11-09T13:33:00.000Z

got some very interesting insights into the french situation from an australian academic yesterday. the views of ian coller, who is completing a doctorate on the history of the arabic populations in paris during the nineteenth century, at the university of melbourne, sent an email via richard menec's (canadian academic) mailing list:

There is little doubt that the majority of French people have an intense and passionate attachment to their national culture, and a deep interest in other cultures--something I feel that others can admire and learn from. In 2003, all of France celebrated the “Week of Foreign Cultures,” an expression of cosmopolitanism and tolerance. The festival’s slogan was “I love you from afar.” This, for me, sums up the limits of this cosmopolitan idea, the need for a clear separation between “French” and “foreign”. French people have had greater difficulty loving these “foreign” cultures when they are in the apartment above their own, in the streets of Saint-Denis, in the “wall” apartment blocks of the outer suburbs, or in the high-schools of provincial France.

the problem, historically, he suggests was that arabs weren't allowed to be "french":

North African workers in particular were viewed as a threat. Exposed to “French” ideas of liberty and equality, they began to demand these things in France and Algeria. From the 1920s onwards a special police force was created, using the state institutions including the hospitals and the mosques, for surveillance and control of North African immigrants, leaving many with a deep- rooted suspicion of the state.

most interesting, tho, is coller's account of a televised political debate which "crystallized" the problem for him:

The program opened with an interview with Azouz Begag, the first government minister of North African background, responsible for the “ascenseur sociale” or upward mobility for underprivileged groups. The interviewer, Yves Calvi, asked him if he was a “beur alibi” (a “Token Arab”), and why he did not think about resigning. Begag’s suggestion that he would try to speak to the families of the boys who were killed, “in Arabic if necessary” provoked outraged reactions on the on- line forum after the program. The tone was one of incredulity that a “French Minister” should speak Arabic to “French citizens.” For many outside France, it is simply not obvious at all what is so outrageous about this proposition. American ministers have spoken in Spanish to their citizens, and in Australia government brochures are printed in at least five languages (including Arabic).

In the panel discussion which followed it was clear what Calvi meant by a “Token Arab,” since the panel contained only one member from North African background, a local educator and youth worker from Clichy-sous-Bois, Samir Mihi, who had been very much in evidence in the news stories as a leader encouraging dialogue rather than violence, working in close contact with the youths on the street. When he began to explain the anger felt by the communities in the cites at the death of the two boys, and the particular anger felt by Muslims when a police tear-gas canister was fired into a crowded mosque, Calvi simply cut him off and demanded “Will you make a statement now that these youths should go back to their homes”? When Mihi replied that he was working for this result every day, the interviewer began to insist over and over that he make a direct imperative statement to the rioters to go home. (Again, there is no sensitivity here about the meanings of “Rentrez chez-vous!”) This confrontation, to me, is quite representative of the crisis as a whole. It was not sufficient that this young man should be engaged in the “mediation” between rioters and the authorities, he must declare himself - through an enunciative act - as a representative of “order”, of French culture.

The implication made immediately by another panel member, the UMP [Union pour la Majorite Presidentiale, Jacque Chirac's centre-right coalition] deputy-mayor Manuel Aeschlimann, was that Mihi and other mediators were using a “double language,” secretly encouraging attacks against the police while claiming to be working toward calm. Mihi was then ignored for the rest of the program while a group of “French” politicians and intellectuals discussed the restoration of order. At no point in this discussion was Mihi respected as an equal voice in the debate: he was hounded, told what statement to make, and implicitly accused of “treachery” toward the French state.

This is fairly indicative of how North Africans and other immigrants have been viewed across the French Republican establishment. They have been discussed as a “ problem”, a “challenge” or a “failure,” but rarely as a constitutive part of French society and history. There is only one solution to these “problems”--become French. But they must become French in a way defined by the Republican consensus built since the 1880s (not coincidentally the era of massive colonial expansion) and not by their own understanding of what “French” might mean.

coller's conclusion:

French “pluriculturalism” has failed, but needs to be rebuilt painstakingly from the ground upwards. A new and more inclusive Arabo- African- Indochinese- French history of modern France needs to be written, against the immobile and conservative Revolutionary-Napoleonic-Third Republic version which dominates at
present. It must talk about the slave trade, colonialism, Islam, the Algerian War - in Algeria and in France - the Holocaust, the role of immigration in France, and develop new perspectives on the customary landmarks of French history. It must teach other languages and other cultures, respect the rights of individuals to choose their cultural expression, while still defending them from abuses.

i don't suppose that's what sarkozy or le pen have in mind though.

there's very little i feel i can add to this which really expresses what i feel any better that coller seems to have been able to. one thing tho - in my last post about the banlieu i mentioned that sleepy suresnes (where i lived in my time in the ile-de-france) was unlikely to become embroiled in rioting. then i saw this picture:

formerly a garage in suresnes. oh yeah, and while we're at it, this is pretty cathartic...

la banlieu brule

2005-11-07T16:50:00.000Z

i've been watching with interest the scenes spreading from paris' banlieu to the rest of the country (and perhaps beyond into belgium and germany). it is interesting to see the mainstream media's pro-establishment portrayal of the rioters as anti-social troublemakers, with little understanding of their motivations. the independent's headline today is getting there with its ironic look at the liberte, egalite and fraternite of modern france, but sadly the article itself is all about the politicians and the violence, with little analysis of what has fuelled the fire.

i feel a special connection to this issue having lived in the suburbs of paris myself a few years back. the place i lived was suresnes, a rather sleepy place to the west of paris, quite removed from the areas that are errupting into insurrection at the moment, but my year gave me a bit of insight into french society and its dispossessed. the year i was there ('00/'01) was a year of political upheaval too. september 11th occurred, le pen made it to the last two in the presidential elections, and chirac was shot at during the bastille day parades. i was involved in some of the anti-fascist marches that took place in protest against le pen, and quickly learnt how to say world trade centre with a french accent.

french society is very divided. the research department i was working for consisted of an entirely white european research team, whilst cleaners and chauffeurs, were almost entirely black and brown. this is, of course, true in areas of britain too, but i found it more striking in a country where both working class and middle class cultures were alien to me. to cut a long story short, there were some people who mattered and some who were a persistant nuisance, to be tolerated with contempt, or suppressed when they got out of hand. the events of the last few days will have the middle classes shaking in their beds as the downtrodden decide that enough's enough.

i found this call to arms on paris indymedia and will attempt to do a very shoddy translation of some of the key parts. i think it's interesting because it actually seems to be an articulation of the rioters' motivations from one of their own:

Nous voulons vivre. Vous nous faîtes crever. Vous envoyez vos C.R.S., vos flics aux grévistes, à tous ceux et toutes celles qui luttent. L'Etat veut nous diviser, nous devons répondre par la solidarité, et ce de partout que ce soit à Marseille, Paris, Bordeaux, Lyon… La réquisition, ce n'est pas pour l'Etat…

[we want to live. you crush us. you send the c.r.s (french riot police, militant thugs), your cops to the strikers, to all those who struggle. the state wants to divide us, we must respond with solidarity and all that we can in marseille, paris, bordeaus, lyon... the requisition, it is not for the state...]

Si aux mains de l'Etat, la force s'appelle droit, aux mains de l'individu, elle se nomme action. C'est maintenant qu'il faut agir… Les commissariats, préfectures, commerces, doivent brûler, pour que le capitalisme -et tous les dégâts de la course aux profits- cesse de nous affecter, et que pour l'Etat n'intervienne plus dans notre vie quotidienne.

[if in the hands of the state, the force is called right, in the hands of the individual it is called action. it is now that we must agitate... the commissariats (police stations), prefectures (local authorities), commercial centres, must burn, so that capitalism - and all the (somethings?) in the pursuit of profits - cease to affect us, and that the state no longer intervenes in our lives.]

La religion est un danger, il ne faut pas l'oublier. Elle ronge nos libertés, nos désirs, à nous rendre docile… Nos ancêtres ont trop donné… Enfin, il est facile de nous faire peur en trouvant l'adversaire « terrorisme ». Ils ne pourront pas toujours régner en désignant un ennemi.

[religion is a danger, it is necessary not to forget. it (does something?) to our liberties, our desires, to make us docile... our ancestors gave too much(?)... finally, it is easy to make us afraid by finding the adversary "terrorism". they cannot always reign in designing an enemy.]

Nous devons rien attendre des partis politiques ou des centrales syndicales. Il n'y a pas de dialogues possibles avec le pouvoir, que ce soit l'Etat ou mon patron. Je ne veux rien négocier, je veux ni Etat ni patron.

[we must never wait for political parties or central syndicates. there is no dialogue possible with power, whether it is the state or my boss. i don't ever want to negotiate, i don't want the state or the boss.]

Et maintenant ? Brûlons, sabotons, rêvons, créons…
[and now? burn, sabotage, dream, create...]

fancy printing that tomorrow the independent? didn't think so

nazi tim

2005-11-04T14:23:00.000Z

one of the candidates in our (totally pointless) elections for delegates to n.u.s. conferences this year, is a certain tim aker. he's the president of the conservative future (sic) society and i'm informed by tim's 'friends' that he's affectionately known as 'nazi tim'. my impression of him garnered at political meetings where he's stuck his oar in are that he's a deeply unpleasant nationalist with a worryingly hard-line on a number of issues. rather worse than your usual money-grabbing tory.

for the aforementioned elections a bewildering number of candidates (32 this year) battle it out for 15 delegate places. as delegates all they can really do is vote as instructed by nottingham s.u. as far as i can tell, so i don't see why they bother. it seems like something to put on your cv and another step on the way to becoming another anaemic waste of space in westminster. many of the candidates are already members of the s.u. executive at nottingham, and many of the rest could be seen as 'representing' certain groups (or representing their party lines) e.g. islamic soc, jewish soc, political parties. i wouldn't vote for any of them.

depsite the fact that they are already mandated to vote in a certain way, candidates seem to insist on producing mini-manifestoes detailing the far-reaching changes to world politics they would make on their election. a bit of a warm up before standing as the tory candidate for erewash or whatever. tim aker's is particularly revolting, as you'd expect:-

Hold the NUS to account over their finances and motions, no more waste of time and money!

well that's the usual tory priorities (+dodgy grammar)

Campaign for a British History Month, no more trashing our past!

ok tim, so you're obviously counterposing this to the threat you perceive from black history month (british history month = white history month), which trashes "our" past. that's the british legacy of colonialism, slavery, warfare and massacre. a past that thoroughly deserves not just a trashing but a determination to never let it happen again. it's the reason why we need black history month, due to the british imperial arrogance that has attempted to eradicate the histories of all non-white peoples from the planet. we get a british history month (in the propagandistic rather than the critical sense) every month of the year. and another exclamation mark - does this guy have permanently raised eyebrows?

More Campaigns on the issues relevant to us and not on Iraq, Israel or Palestine!

so who's us? no doubt the "honest law-abiding" bigot who's a natural tory party supporter. not the majority of people who think that the iraq war is not only a very bad thing for iraqis, but is increasing the risk of terrorism in britain too. not the people who are concerned about seeing a just settlement in the middle east. tim is for perpetual isolation of the student body from the outside world and a total immersion of it in its own lint-filled navel. as long as you're not a supporter of black history month of course (bloody commies).

to top it off, as if anyone could have failed to have got the gist of this idiot's message, the flyer is adorned with a union jack. he might as well be wearing jack boots. with guys like this around its not surprising that the sanctuary has a readership on campus.

watch this space - nspm and lenton anarchist forum are organising an anti-fascist meeting on campus soon.

the mass remains massive...

2005-10-31T16:24:00.000Z

...and tash gets arty. most importantly, no psychopathic drivers on the streets this month, and a sound system and decorations kept the carnival atmosphere going. a megaphone proved to be an "interesting" addition to the mass, although as a friend has remarked before, it's usually the people you want to shut up that get hold of them: "...tell george bush about climate change, a real weapon of mass destruction, maybe he'll start bombing cars, yes! bomb cars everyone, bomb cars..." ;)

not london-sized yet, but damn good fun!

no justice, no peace

2005-10-28T13:14:00.000Z

i've spent the week running around like a headless chicken, both physically and metaphorically speaking. one of the consequences has been a self-imposed divorce from the media (of any description). it came as a nasty and unwelcome surprise to see in this week's schnews a 'crap arrest of the week' featuring mil rai and maya evans, the good people of justice not vengeance, who've done some great work campaigning against the 'war on terror' over the past years. a press release on the iraq mortality website describes the arrest:-

Today, Tuesday 25 October, two peace activists were arrested in Whitehall shortly after 9am for organising an unauthorised ‘bell-ringing’ remembrance ceremony marking the anniversary this week of the Lancet estimate that 100,000 people have died in Iraq of war-related causes.

Milan Rai, coordinator of Justice Not Vengeance, became the first person to be arrested as an organiser of an unauthorised demonstration under new legislation governing protests in the vicinity of Parliament.

The maximum penalty for being an ‘organiser’ of such a demonstration is a prison term of nearly a year, compared to a maximum fine of £1,000 for being a ‘participant’ in an unauthorised demonstration. All previous arrests connected with the new legislation have been of ‘participants’ rather than organisers.

The remembrance ceremony was to have consisted of four hours of bell-ringing to mark the deaths of 250 Iraqis and 97 British soldiers in the Iraq war, as part of an international project known as ‘100,000 Rings For Iraq’. Rai and his colleague Maya Evans were to have read out the names of Iraqis and British soldiers while ringing a bell once every minute.

Rai said as he was arrested: ‘Over a hundred thousand Iraqis have died. It’s time to replace British and US troops with a UN force.’

there's a video of the arrest here, that refuses to work on my computer but you might have more luck with.

this is particularly ironic timing, coming a week after the SOCA was lambasted at ftp, and shows the extent to which dissent is to be whitewashed from whitehall. the cartoon in shcnews is apt, introducing a cage in the outer hebrides as "britain's newly approved official protest site". it seems the powers that be are intent on vitiating and marginalising protest, especially against political nightmares for labour such as the iraq occupation.

for a more in-depth analysis from mil on the body counts conducted in iraq, and the human cost of the occupation, see this recent article by mil.

...i'm back!

2005-10-27T15:38:00.000Z

well, briefly anyway. went to the anarchist bookfair and the freedom to protest conference at the weekend, so that was quite a flood of information, which i'll write up when i have the time. most of this week's been taken up being outraged by the sanctuary, an odious student paper that's sprung up on our campus and is publishing articles by the likes of stuart russell of the bnp. we've been having quite a discussion about it, relating to whether or not 'no platform' is the way to beat the fash or not. read disillusioned kid's decent post on the issue for more.

did someone say something about deadlines? bugger...

wot? no bloggin?

2005-10-19T12:31:00.000Z

fear not, avid readers, for i have been busy here and here.

arbeit macht frei

2005-10-14T10:03:00.000Z

there's been a lot of fuss in some sections of the media, and rightly so, about the police beating of robert davis, a 64-year old black man in new orleans. the police said he was drunk, but as tetsuo pointed out, the defendent denies having had a drink in 25 years. a pretty disgusting story, but an isolated case right? just some more examples of "bad apples" in the force.

well no, actually. an article by jessica azulay for the new standard (also published on znet), has some horrific news about the "law and order" situation in the city:

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans authorities are arresting hundreds on minor charges such as breaking curfew or public intoxication, housing them in brutal conditions and then pushing them through a court process that forces most into working on clean-up projects at police facilities, according to numerous interviews and documents obtained by TNS.

the report focuses on the procedure at a place known as "camp amtrak", a converted bus station, where inmates must sleep on concrete, with or without a blanket according to whether there's enough to go round, separated from the elements by a wire fence. they are denied phone calls because there is no telephone in the building. inmates are regularly maced in the night by police. unless they have the money for a private lawyer they have to put up with legal advice en masse from a public defender, who refuses to give individual advice. the "advice" given, looks extremely suspicious - either they can plead guilty and get sentenced to 40hrs community service (cleaning the police stations, prisons and court houses), or get sent to prison for a further 3 weeks to fight their case. it looks like the louisiana cops have been taking a leaf out of david blunkett's book (or was it that other germanic chap with the moustache): work makes you free.

so what do the police themselves have to say in their defence:

It’s keeping the bad guys off the streets from harassing the poor people of the New Orleans district from worrying about their houses being broken into or worrying about some drunk laying on their porch…

if i were leaving in n.o. right now i'd be more worried about a certain other sector of the population breaking in:

Jack, a black immigrant from Trinidad and Tobago, said police had arrested him on his own property and charged him with violating curfew, which in most neighborhoods here is still in affect from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m.
"I was in my yard, and a young white guy came by the gate and I was talking to him and the police came and arrested both of us," he recounted. "He was outside breaking curfew; I was inside… behind the gate. The police broke my gate down with a pick-ax. They broke it completely off the fence."

Jack continued: "It makes me really angry, man. It made me realize that the law isn’t working the way it is supposed to."

shared identities

2005-10-13T14:32:00.000Z

the excellent media reviews from jnv picked up an article that i missed out on in yesterday's paper:-

Councils, Whitehall departments and firms running public services will
routinely share personal data about citizens by 2010, acccording to
leaked documents seen by the Guardian.

The plans, drawn up by the Cabinet Office, could cause anger among
privacy campaigners. The documents suggest that identity cards, expected
to be issued from 2008, will play a big role in data sharing

(Guardian, Michael Cross, 'Leak reveals Whitehall plans for data shareout', page 10)

"Data sharing will increase under new proposals." but don't worry: "information sharing will be clarified and rolled out, balancing the potential value to the customer or taxpayer with privacy concerns." yes, i'm feeling very reassured. i know how much faceless organisations value my privacy by the frequency with which they pass my details on to other people to send me more junk mail.

It will involve government bodies routinely exchanging personal data about individuals, with the proposed national identity card set to play a major role.

and if that wasn't enough to scare you, the last paragraph's a clincher:-

In line with Labour reforms in education and the NHS, IT should underpin a "transformed government" in which "boundaries ... between central and local, and between public, private and voluntary continue to be less important and less visible" than today.
(Guardian, Michael Cross, 'Our failures are behind us, promise ministers', Technology section)

but i don't understand - why are you all refusing those lovely id cards?

the beat of the drum...

2005-10-13T14:27:00.000Z

...is getting louder

to all the evolutionary psychologists...

2005-10-13T14:18:00.000Z

nice comment on breaking the "biological" boundaries preventing women from gaining equality:

women may feel that despite all the attempts at changing society made by women, we have now come up against the biological imperatives that will always lock us out of the freedom and equality we desire. We cannot just wish away women's vulnerability to attack by men, women's shorter fertility span or the neediness of young children.

however...

Because whatever kernel of biological truth lies at the heart of these findings, the truth is that biology is not some immutable reality for women or for men.

so...

Is it really time to give up and impress upon young women only the risks that they are taking? Or should we say that it is really time for men to take responsibility for the violence that they commit?
[...] do we really want women to feel that they have no choice but to live a circumscribed life decided by red-toothed nature, while men are free to roam, and rule, the world?

it's certainly the case that the biological "realities" are often seen by many as absolute boundaries which there is no point in trying to change. but this is a fundamentally conservative position, appeasing all kinds of behaviour that is morally unacceptable. if we are serious about gender equality we must be serious about removing the obstacles that remain in its way.

policeman evangelist beats black man

2005-10-11T14:40:00.000Z

race relations in new orleans are at a pretty low ebb anyway, and the news that officers lance schilling and robert evangelist were caught on camera beating a 64-year old black man, robert davis, on bourbon st ain't exactly helping:

There was no mistaking the ferocity of the police action against Mr Davis, however. He is seen on the tape flailing his arms helplessly as two of the officers punch him in the head twice and eventually drag him to the ground. Mr Davis is then seen lying face down on the pavement, with blood streaming down his face and arm into the gutter.

Four of the five police officers involved appear to be white and the fifth was described as light-skinned.

apparently they then proceeded to start on the cameraman, not realising that he was a journalist. how many times does this kind of thing go on when the cameras aren't watching? how many of those officers will be charged and how many of those incidents will be investigated?

il-liberation

2005-10-11T14:30:00.000Z

david blunkett is telling all those scrounging dole monkeys (oh he's probably said it in private) to get a job: "If people ... reassociate with the world of work, suddenly they come alive again". urm, davey boy, that's not really a general trend is it? let's face it, they're probably only going to be offered the most deadening jobs that everyone else has refused to do. "We can offer people liberation from dependence in a way that was never possible before," he said in a worrying turn. so he's "liberating" the jobless is he? given the manner in which his great leader has "liberated" iraq, the unemployed have reason to look busy. perhaps he should rename the department for work and pensions, the department of liberation through slavery.

feckin random

2005-10-11T14:13:00.000Z

got this via dynamite lady.

I'm 'Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me'!

Which Line from Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody Are You?

she appears to be gallileo

benjamin and blackdrop

2005-10-10T16:07:00.000Z

a good bit of catharsis, to return to reality after the fairytale land of hockerton, was going out to the blackdrop third birthday party on sunday. mate f had been telling me about blackdrop for ages but i'd never been able to make it until last month, and i was really impressed by the atmosphere and the openness of the evening, as well as the performances. basically, blackdrop is an open mic night, focussed on spoken word material, set up by a group that seems to largely comprise the members of wahaad, an african drumming group who've done loads of gigs for the peace movement in the past. as well as regulars from nottingham, they feature a guest performer each month too. last month it was spicy fingers from birmingham, who was amazingly versatile skipping from comic accounts of late night munchies to the dark depths of the african slave trade. this month we had the great pleasure of being in the presence of the great benjamin zephaniah.

the first part of the night was largely composed of reprises from last month which was a little disappointing, but the performers had seemed to be reperforming their best works for the birthday special. some striking new additions did come tho, from scarily young rappers ttm (true to nottingham) eschewing the fantasy worlds of their peers for something more real, and an amazing duo from leicester (damn, can't remember their names) who acted out a ballad of struggle. however great these were, they could only ever be a warm up for the benjamin, who soon had the (sizeable) audience in stitches with his "they can't get the reggae out me brain" on psychiatrists' attitudes to black people, and hanging on his every word with devastating pieces like "what stephen lawrence has taught us". from denouncing the illusion of money in favour of mutual aid, to his commitment to veganism ("be nice to yu turkey dis christmas...") he just seems to have the right attitudes towards everything, whilst being an amazing entertainer as well. from nicely spearing his father's attempts to turn him into a "macho man" to an amazing account of a sadhu with a mobile phone up his arse, you feel like he somehow has a deeper understanding of things that makes his message simple yet powerful.

i'll be back to blackdrop next month, first monday of the month, 7.30, canal house bar.

sustainable living?

2005-10-10T15:12:00.000Z

on saturday i went on a guided tour of hockerton housing project, 20 miles north-east of nottingham. hockerton is "an exemplar of sustainable development" according to their website, comprising 5 ecohouses, self-sufficient for water, almost self-sufficient for power (two wind turbines and photovoltaic panels) and producing 80% of their own fruit and veg. sounds pretty good, right? i was interested in how they'd done it, and a friend who's a student of architecture was keen to book us on a day-long sustainable communities workshop. 35 quid seemed a little steep, but i was enthused and signed up.

having planned to get there by bus (keeping in with the spirit of things) we later realised that there were virtually none going to southwell at the time we wanted so sheepishly ended up going in the car. we were greeted by a guy who was later to guide us round the site, who seemed rather intrigued by our organisation: lenton anarchist forum. this seemed to be a source of some amusement to the fellow visitors throughout the day. this was not the kind of "eco warrior" i was used to. these people wore green wellies and came from surrey. i felt a little out of place.

the morning had the potential to be quite interesting: a couple of small group discussions on what makes a sustainable community (in terms of environmental, social, and economic aspects) and decision-making/rules of membership. unfortunately, the rather patriarchal atmosphere (there were several couples, in which the men usually dominated) and the fact that these were overwhelmingly middle-aged professionals contributed to making it stifling and uninspirational. my comments on alternative economies and consensus decision-making models were heard, but were misunderstood. i got the impression with the people attending, as i did with the people who lived in the community, that they wanted to keep their nice middle-class lifestyles thank you very much, they just didn't want to have to feel guilty about them. socially and economically they weren't radical at all.

lunchbreak was a good time to unwind sat by the lake, and for the anarchists to express their doubts with one another. next up was the tour of the site. we examined the two wind turbines and heard about the nimbyism that almost put paid to their erection, looked at reed beds, compost heaps, allotments and reservoirs. we were shocked to realise the extent to which they farmed animals (sheep, chickens, fish) for meat and animal products. once again, lifestyle was put ahead of sustainability and ethics. the group all seemed to have cars, although bikes were in abundance too. interestingly they'd been having a security scare after some bikes were nicked, and people wanted security cameras and gates installed. i sighed inwardly (again).

the houses themselves were pretty amazing. earth-sheltered and with walls about 50cm thick, they had no need for heating being so well insulated that the warmth of their inhabitants was trapped inside. even the tiled floors were warm on socked feet. apparently the mass (concrete), which is inside the polystyrene insulation, absorbs and stores the heat, warming the air. large glass conservatories on the front let loads of light in and made the houses seem spacious and airy. architect friend, c, wasn't convinced tho, muttering about the use of concrete (not degradable) and polystyrene (an oil-based material). the houses cost the same per sqm to build as newbuild, which was impressive, but alternatives such as straw bale houses are much cheaper, and genuinely eco-friendly.

so, as you can probably tell, i was sceptical to say the least. this kind of "solution" only seems open to the well-financed and rule-bound. i suppose i was looking for a much more radical solution, using the shift from "modern life" with all its problems as a spur for social reorganisation as well as material changes. some of the concepts and technology was interesting to see and got me thinking about things like water treatment and power generation that i'd not really considered much before. think i'll wait a bit longer to find a rather more coherent approach to living tho.

stave them off

2005-10-06T12:21:00.000Z

yesterday's guardian reports that in some immigration detention centres prison officers routinely carry wooden staves to enforce discipline. obviously no one told them that the inmates are meant to be in their care and are not criminals. an easy mistake to make given successive governments' attempts to make finding asylum in britain an impossibility. the prison service is apparently withrawing all of these weapons soon.... oh no, not because they're an intimidating weapon almost certain to make everyone less secure, but because they "don't provide adequate protection". they're replacing them with plastic batons, which makes my previous comments about the police and plastic swords more believable.

fanatics in our midst

2005-10-05T11:40:00.000Z

i've just been ejected from the portland cafe. i was sitting, as i have done for the past couple of years or so at lunch time, eating my sandwhiches in a seat by the window. the cafe was fairly empty. the portland cafe is a large room in the student union at nottingham. it seems to have been leased to a private catering business, but i presume that it is still owned by the student union. i've certainly always treated the place although it was just somewhere that any student was free to go to.

the manager shuffled nervously up to me, acting like he was just going round straightening chairs. finally he leaned over towards my table, smiling but very defensive and said "next time, don't bring your own food to my cafe". i looked back at him, fairly surprised. i should probably have used the opportunity to find out exactly what his claim was, or at least made some challenge, but i was in the middle of my lunch. i'm never going to actually buy any of their food because it's a) not vegan and b) ridiculously overpriced. i've been a fairly faithful consumer of their fair trade coffee and tea though, so it is a shot in the foot for this guy and a bit of a cheek too.

i should have seen it coming. commericalisation has been creeping in, with the introduction of signs saying "only food purchased here to be consumed here" or something to that effect (up until now, fairly unanimously ignored in my experience), a tv screen constantly broadcasting adverts, and big ads on the walls. i guess they just couldn't tolerate me any longer. just yesterday i noticed a disgusting notice behind the sandwhich bar:

We're fantical about freshness. We're so obsessed with making sure that our sandwhiches reach you fresh that unsold items are thrown away 3hrs after they are made.
We're that fanatical!

you certainly are! so obsessed with keeping a smart clean image to justify your hiked up prices you will go to obscene measures like throwing out perfectly good food whilst thousands of people starve in the city. preachers of hatred indeed! makes me want to start a food not bombs collective.

the total commericalisation of universities has turned students into consumers with no rights, prey for the advertisers and salesmen that unions like nottingham's are so keen to prostitute themselves to. education is another commodity. vice chancellors are business managers with more interest in being able to attract big corporations to their campuses than students. whilst i have only been denied access to one of the few decent places to sit and eat lunch, students elsewhere have not been so lucky. witness the trial last week of the george fox 6 who have been successfully prosecuted for aggravated trespass by their own university, for interrupting a "corporate venturing" conference attended by companies such as bae and shell. the university is an amoral slave to the dollar. decisions are made not on the ethics of an act, but on its effects on a university's brand image.

it's enough to put you right off your lunch.

who are the 'terrorists'?

2005-10-05T10:18:00.000Z

there seems to be a great deal of uncertainty over what terrorism is amongst the police of this country. if they're not shooting innocent people they're locking them up, detaining them, or searching them. it seems that anti-terrorist laws are not simply racist, but are increasingly becoming a byword for anti-opposition laws. the scotsman reports that over 600 people were held under section 44 of the terrorism act during the labour party conference. amazingly enough many of those held were protesting against the conference. if i were suspicious i might suspect that the laws were being used to quash protests, in a similar manner to the massive police presence around the dsei arms fair (where s44 has also, controversially, been used in the past).

free country my arse.

do you know who i am?

2005-10-03T15:48:00.000Z

just checking my email when i came across this mildly amusing piece of tabloid tattle. it seems that the grand old duke of got a bit antsy about having to undergo a security check at an airport in australia. shows what a bizzarely sheltered world these strange genetic experiments live in doesn't it, when they don't realise how routine this kind of thing is now. it would be good to get a transcript of what was said, perhaps "do you know who my mother is?" or "insolent proles!", who knows?

fortunately the airport staff knew how to deal with tantrums:

Managers and security were called and it was suggested to the Prince that he sit down in the next room and think about it for a while...
Eventually he reluctantly agreed

yes, all this to avoid being subjected to a 10 second scan. you see andy, even royals aren't exempt anymore. bow down before the machine.

the lethal alternative to lethal force

2005-10-03T14:56:00.000Z

those who keep their ears to the ground concerning potential new methods of police repression will know all about tasers. these are the guns that fire electrodes into their target and then unleash a 50,000 volt shock. apart from the notorious use of electroshock equipment by torturers the world over, they are widely carried by us police forces and their uk counterparts have recently been given the green light for their use here too. amongst others disillusioned kid has been following the distinctly unappealing story of the taser reporting on the use of tasers on 12-year old girls, the psychologically different and protesters, amongst others (also see his excellent article here). the reason usually touted for why the police should have them is that they are a "non-lethal" alternative to guns. not only is there plently of evidence that they are not actually used in this manner at all (not many police would have shot to kill in the examples above) but today's guardian reports that the taser may not even be non-lethal after all.

according to the report:

Mr Smith [President of Taser Inc] also said that Taser uses the term "non-lethal" as defined by the US Department of Defence - which does not mean the weapon cannot cause death, but that it is not intended to be fatal.

hmmm... i don't think that would stand up in court would it?

Other changes include substituting the phrase "leave no lasting after-effects" to "are more effective and safer than other use-of-force options"

remember, these are just the changes taser have been forced to make - the reality is probably consideraly dodgier. reassuringly tho, a spokeswoman for the Association of Chief Police Officers said British authorities "did not call Tasers non-lethal and never had done". they were quite happy to let their forces loose with these weapons knowing full well that they could kill suspects. and given how well-trained those forces are (remember the police tasering a suspected suicide bomber in birmingham, which could have blown him and his surroundings up?) it isn't exactly backed up by a study quoted in the guardian article:

Home Office researchers discovered people who had been in contact with CS gas were at "serious risk" of catching fire if a Taser gun was subsequently used. Many officers are told to use CS gas to resolve a situation before employing a more extreme method such as a Taser.

isn't that reassuring? given these changes isn't it rather galling that taser continue to claim that tasers "save lives everyday"? in that case wouldn't we save more lives by arming the police with toy guns or plastic swords?

still, it could be worse. apparently, until the recent "voluntary" changes to legislation by taser, people under the age of 18 could purchase them in the usa (adults still can). i'm sure it would add an interesting new dimension to playground fights but thanfully this is an arena in which the truly non-lethal weapons still hold their ground...

pedal powered

2005-10-03T14:51:00.000Z

nottingham critical mass: leaves the texaco garage at 5.30pm on the last friday of the month

exploited cleaners protest against anarchists

2005-09-30T12:00:00.000Z

whilst perusing uk indymedia, i found this epilogue to the g8 actions, from a local activist. whilst s/he has good things to say about the lasting positive effects of the mobilisation, the article is critical of the apparent division of labour:

The few activists left to tidy up other people's mess were not the bigmouthing, theoretical and ideological proofed academics or wanna-be intellectuals, who are so quick in telling everyone what to do and how

no surprise there then. i'll read this as the middle-class "trustafarians" used to others doing such menial tasks for them. let's just say that this didn't go unnoticed for me either. who did end up doing the shit jobs?

most of the reliable, hard working people present, were the silent, unobtrusive types, and most of them were female, who kept themselves usually in the background a lot, who talk less and work more, and have earned my total appreciation, respect and admiration for what and how much they worked, how reliable they are, whilst also doing one of the least
acknowleged, but one of the most important work: tidying up the mess left behind.

oh, that's ok then, it was the underclass. those people who aren't continually involved in glorious direct action, but provide the essential nuts and bolts that make it possible in the first place.

now, i'm no one to talk. i wasn't able to stay for the cleanup at stirling, although this was largely because i was relying on a certain minibus leaving at a certain time to get back to notts. nonetheless, i did notice a certain division of labour at the horizone that i commented on soon after returning, and it kind of relates to the issues of individualist vs. collectivist approaches discussed here. there was certainly a sexist division resulting in women doing the jobs most like traditional 'housework' (i.e. cleaning, cooking) which is pretty abhorrent when you consider the supposed values of our "glorious" movement. another division occurred between the assertive and inflexible, and those who were more flexible and willing to adapt to others' needs. as with the gender divide this is not simply a difference, but an exploitative arrangement with one group having a less pleasant time than the other.

a major problem that i saw was that many had come seduced by the thought of getting involved in daring and adventurous activism, with little thought that it takes a hell of a lot of entirely unglamorous work to make that happen. as a result many did not contribute to the running of the camp, merely sitting around and waiting for the next action to go on. there was also a lot of fairly dubious "anti-authoritarianism" which seemed to assume the purpose of ensuring that certain individuals were not "told what to do" and consequently did bugger all. of course, we don't want people to really be told what to do and coerced into exploitative arrangements, but there should be a recognition that exploitation also occurs when no one tells anyone else what to do, as certain groups will end up doing more work than others. all stuff to bear in mind before we turn up at the next eco-camp expecting to have action served up on a plate...

get out of our house

2005-09-29T09:18:00.000Z

the past few days have been fairly hectic, but today i've been able to peruse the news at my leisure again. i'm immediately hit by some disgusting behaviour by some of the country's most notorious organised terrorists - that's right its labour party conference time.

apparently a mr walter wolfgang, labour party member for 57 years, had the temerity to suggest that jack straw's pathetic attempts to spin the war on iraq (for the umpteenth time) were "nonsense". he did so vocally and repeatedly, nobly disrupting the attempt of a preacher of hate to justify his terrorist acts. unfortunately it seems blair's security forces hadn't been briefed on who the violent extremists were as they proceded to forcibly eject the 82 year old from the building, and then prevented him from re-entering using the notorious section 44 of the prevention of terrorism act. notorious for, amongst other things, preventing anti-war protesters from travelling to actions at raf fairford, and for intimidating anti-arms trade protestors at dsei in 2003. the prevention of terrorism act seems to be acquiring orwellian status.

blair's apology (not coming soon enough to actually prevent mr wolfgang's ejection you understand) came with the following pathetic attempt at justifying his violent acts:

The stewards of conferences are volunteers and we are going to have to look at how we train them but obviously it should not have happened.

it should not have happened of course because the stewards should have been trained to screen out anyone with a moral conscience at the door. apparently blair argued that there was no attempt to stifly government politics. how long can we allow these radical clerics to poison innocent minds with such lies? "I think it is a bit of a leap [to evoke a wider civil liberties debate]" he said to the today programme (a safehaven for extremists), "I have just been through an election campaign when people had the chance to criticise me." presumably that means he's now allowed a 2 year period where people aren't allowed to criticise him at all then? it's surely no surprise that people are a tad worried about their civil liberties.

We have tolerated people coming here from abroad and allowed them to say what we want. If people come here and preach hatred against Britain I think we are entitled to say to them that they cannot do that.

...did he really say that! that people coming from abroad (like mr wolfgang, a refugee from nazi germany) are only allowed to say what "we" want, and if they criticise britain we should chuck them back. surely no one can be in any doubt now over the extreme authoritarianism that drives blair and consequently the direction of politics in this country. mr wolfgang, i'm sure, will have seen this all before. just to really confirm blair's fascist agenda though:

I cannot honestly stand up in front of people and say 'I can protect you' unless we have really tough powers.

this is a classic authoritarian pose. we are the strong that must protect you, the weak. mr blair, given your protection of the people of afghanistan, iraq, diego garcia & rwanda, i think this yours is protection we can do without. your "protective measures" in the muslim world are what has brought the bombs to london in the first place.

blair's message is simple: if you don't agree with us get out of our house, be it at the party conference or within the borders of the country he has usurped. but the more he sets himself up as a protector with an iron rule, the more insecure we become. rule through violence and absolutism sows the seeds of hatred in response to it. when that response cannot find an outlet through whatever accepted channels are available in the political system it will seek other outlets. if criticism of the party elite is not accepted and acted upon, it finds its expression elsewhere in the heckling of odious speeches. if massive criticism of government foreign policy is ignored and peaceful protests are repressed by state security forces, the protests become more direct, like the break ins into air bases. the more rigid the authority becomes the more it forces its opponents into illegal and violent acts. an evil power has taken over our house and is kicking everyone else out. it's time we told blair and the politics he espouses to get out of our house.

roll up, roll up!

2005-09-27T08:17:00.000Z

it's that time of the academic year called 'freshers' week', in which aforementioned freshers are directed out into a hideous tent thing on the sports field, tortured with university radio loud enough that any chance of conversation is eradicated, and are propagandised at with abandon by corporate sponsors. oh, did i mention, they're also encouraged to get involved (rather less wholeheartedly) in student societies, such as the nottingham student peace movement, an anti-war group in which i'm involved. we're shoved to the far end of course, not being as important as snug lounge bar or deloitte.

ironically, for those with some idea of the peace movement's history, we're cosied up next to aiesec this year. we've had confrontations with them over the past two years by: 1) disrupting their careers fair with anti-oil and arms company propaganda and 2) refusing to let them jump on our bandwagon at events due to their involvement with aforementioned companies. fortunately these companies seem to employ different 'fun' young students every year to run around in uniform telling everyone how amazing they are, so we didn't have to face any hostility.

recruitment has been interesting. i sense a bit less enthusiasm for anti-war activities, presumably because people have become desensitised to the horrors of iraq. we still got a fair few people signed up yesterday tho, including some quite interested indeed. apparently one guy introduced himself as being "into rioting" which i think should further scare the tories (who described us as being "full of radicals", which doesn't mean much coming from them mind). there were, as ever, some tense moments with patronising idiots who think they know everything about the occupation just because they've watched the occasional bbc report. lots of flyers going out for our mark curtis event and critical mass, and we'll have to work hard to keep people involved.

enough chatting. time to get back to dodgy house music and (largely) apathetic youth!!!

burying bad news

2005-09-22T09:09:00.000Z

on tuesday it was this

[T]wo British soldiers, reportedly dressed as Arabs and driving a civilian car, attracted the notice of police at a checkpoint.
According to the Iraqi authorities they refused to stop, instead allegedly firing at the officers, killing one and wounding another.

...by today it is this:

UK soldiers have described the moment when they were forced to flee their burning armoured vehicle during unrest in Basra, southern Iraq, on Monday.

similar change of focus in the guardian:

The soldiers, who were said to have been wearing Arab headdress, were accused of firing at Iraqi police when stopped at a road block.

becomes:

British soldiers yesterday gave dramatic accounts of how they escaped from their burning Warrior armoured vehicles after an angry mob attacked them with petrol bombs in downtown Basra, following the explosion of violence on Monday night.

what is not being reported is this:

The two soldiers were using a civilian car packed with explosives, [an Iraqi Interior Ministry source] said.

funny that isn't it? rather than focusing on the fact that british soldiers have been caught posing as terrorists (possibly with bomb-making equipment), the media is now distracting everyone with tales of how heroic our gallant plucky lads are. the furious iraqis are of course 'mobs', not people intent on seeing murderers being brought to justice. the only background in the latest bbc story is that the soldiers were involved in a "rescue operation", not that they were undermining iraqi sovereignty in a desperate attempt to prevent undercover operations coming to light.

but then there couldn't possibly be anything underhand going on could there? we know our media would swiftly expose that...

don't worry, we're completely screwed!

2005-09-21T15:39:00.000Z

have been joining trufflesniffer's woe about the terrifying state of climate change. what with news this week about record losses of arctic sea ice, and the recent discovery that siberia's permafrost is melting, it's time to be afraid... very afraid. scientists are now suggesting that we may have passed the 'point of no return' after which global warming becomes locked into a positive feedback loop with no possibility of reversal. surely now our governments will be prepared to do something about it? well, no actually.

george monbiot, in yesterday's grauniad, reported his dismay at seeing big business' requests for government support for their environmental projects being refused, because instituting the measures would constitute "an unwarranted intervention in the market". unwarranted, you understand, because the possibility of avoiding the end of the world is too big a price to pay for untrammelled profiteering. today's guardian has news of a report by the tyndall centre for climate change research with dire warnings about the growth of aviation. dr kevin anderson is quoted as saying:

If the UK government does not curb aviation growth, all other sectors of the economy will eventually be forced to become carbon neutral.

this is apparently for the ridiculously short-sighted reason that aviation and shipping emissions are not counted as part of a country's CO2 emissions, even though it is widely acknowledged that aviation is one of the biggest producers of greenhouse gases. a return transatlantic flight can produce 2 tonnes of carbon dioxide per passenger, more than the average african produces in a lifetime. why aren't we doing anything about it? well, everyone likes a sunny summer holiday, don't they?

we can't rely on government solutions to climate change. we'll have to try to implement them ourselves, despite the huge obstacles in our path (like the fact that it could already be too late). it's easy to be overpowered by the sheer scale of the problem but the devastating nature of the potential consequences should be enough to drive us to action. maybe we should be eschewing the luxury of holidays to distant destinations in favour of the development of sustainable local communities. let's not get disheartened. we've got to do what we can!

commissioner of sewers for st. louis

2005-09-20T14:20:00.000Z

as my blog's title is ripped off one of his books, i feel the need to pay the occasional bit of homage to william s. burroughs every now and again. this is one of my favourite bits from the adding machine, a realistic appraisal of what it +really+ takes to get into "power":

To take a microcosmic example: my humble ambition to be Commissioner of Sewers for St. Louis, and my boyish dream of what I would do when I occupied this position. These dreams were outlined in an essay I wrote for Harper's in response to the question "When did you stop wanting to be President?" I imagined a soft sinecure, crooked piping deals, my house full of languid vicious young men described in the press as "no more than lackeys to his majesty the Sultan of Sewers." I supposed my position would be secured by the dirt I had on the Governer, and that I'd spend my afternoons in wild orgies, or sitting around smoking the Sheriff's reefer and luxuriating in the stink from ruptured sewage lines for miles around.
But why should I have been appointed Commissioner for Sewers in the first place? The duties are nominal; no skill is required. I am not appointed on my knowledge of sewers or my ability to do the job. Why, then? Well, perhaps I have worked for the Party for a number of years; I am due for a payoff. However, I must also have something to give in return...
Now an under-the-counter deal in cheap piping involves contractors, auditors and a whole battery of fixes, fixers and cover-ups, all of which have to be paid for in favors and cash. So my house is not full of languid vicious young men - it is full of cigar-smoking, bourbon-swilling fat-assed politicians and fixers. I have something on the Governor? I'd better be very damn careful he doesn't have something on me. The Commissioner, like Caeser's wife, must be above suspicion; certainly above the suspicion of sex orgies and drug use. I would have been out of my mind to compromise myself with the Sheriff. Sure, I can call on him to fix a parking ticket, but I'd better keep my hands off his confiscated marijuana unless others in high positions are also involved. And even if I could wangle a few special police to guard the sewers against communistic sabotage, they would not be handsome youths. More likely I would be stuck with the Sheriff's retarded brother-in-law who can't make the grade as night watchman, and with two or three other washouts from police and guard positions.
So if I can't do what I want as Commissioner of Sewers, still less can I do what I want as President of the United States.

terrorism in the whites only zone

2005-09-19T13:05:00.000Z

you would be hard-pressed to have avoided the news that new 'anti-terror' legislation is headed our way again. in the wake of the london bombings the government had to be seen to be doing something tough, and this seems to be the latest salvo. the disillusioned kid, who i might add holds a bachelors law degree and therefore knows more about the nitty-gritty of these things than me, has the low down here. apparently the key section is this bit:

(1) A person commits an offence if
(a) he publishes a statement or causes another to publish a statement on his behalf;
(b) the statement glorifies, exalts or celebrates the commission, preparation or instigation (whether in the past, in the future or generally) of acts of terrorism; and
(c) the circumstances and manner of the statement's publication (taken together with its contents) are such that it would be reasonable for members of the public to whom it is published to assume that the statement expresses the views of that person or has his endorsement.

there is no definition of terrorism in the act and dk assumes that this will come from terrorism act 2000:

1. - (1) In this Act "terrorism" means the use or threat of action where-
(a) the action falls within subsection (2),
(b) the use or threat is designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and
(c) the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause.
(2) Action falls within this subsection if it-
(a) involves serious violence against a person,
(b) involves serious damage to property,
(c) endangers a person's life, other than that of the person committing the action,
(d) creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public, or
(e) is designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system.
(3) The use or threat of action falling within subsection (2) which involves the use of firearms or explosives is terrorism whether or not subsection (1)(b) is satisfied.

dk then goes on to discuss some of the legal grey area between the targetting terrorism of the religious extremist variety vs. 'terrorism' of the activist variety (e.g. gm crop trashing, protesting against arms fairs, etc.) the point is that if people trashing crops can be defined as terrorists, this law will make anyone who says those people were doing a good thing terrorists too. dk also, correctly i would say, makes the assumption that these new laws are less likely to be used against white activists than against asian muslims, who are obviously intended as their target.

this is a particularly regressive use of the law, and an erosion of our civil liberties. the targeting of muslim extremists suggests that there is something about islam that is to blame for terrorism, where as robert fisk suggested recently, all of the abrahamic religions (and i would suggest most other religions too) are based on scriptures with verses that are steeped in blood. for example, the new testament's anti-semitic portrayal of the jews as 'christ-killers' which according to john shepherd, principle lecturer in religions studies at st. martin's college, lancaster "contains passages that would … be actionable under British laws against incitement to racial hatred". fisk also points to the significance of the jewish festival of purim for one extremist:

Thus, for example, Baruch Goldstein, the Israeli military doctor who massacred 29 Palestinians in Hebron in 1994, committed his mass murder on Purim, a festival celebrating the deliverance of the Jewish communities from the Persian empire which was followed by large-scale killing “to avenge themselves on their enemies” (Esther 8:13).

clearly the qu'ran cannot be singled out as a source of incitement to commit crimes for religious purposes. clearly there is nothing unique about islamic extremism - there are extremists of all faiths, such as pat robertson, the christofascist who recently called for the assassination of hugo chavez. will the new 'terror' laws do anything to tackle extremism, or are they really anti-muslim laws? are these laws going to make anyone more safe or are they a device with which to criminalise an 'undesireable' section of the british community?

all of which brings me to gary younge's latest article in the guardian, on the hypocritical nature of calls for muslim integration into british society. this is how 'good' muslims are being portrayed, as those who are well 'integrated', who do as we do, who think as we think. the government's taskforce on tackling 'muslim extremism' will reccommend later this week that integration is the key. but as younge correctly points out, it isn't the muslims that need integrating, it's the whites.

A YouGov poll for the Commission for Racial Equality last year showed that 83% of whites have no friends who are practising Muslims, while only 48% of non-white people do. It revealed that 94% of whites, compared with 47% of people from ethnic minorities, say most or all their friends are white. There is no good reason why white people should go out of their way to befriend ethnic minorities. But the truth is some go out of their way not to. A Mori poll for Prospect magazine last year showed that 41% of whites, compared with 26% of ethnic minorities, want the races to live separately.

but of course, the popular discourse doesn't allow the possibility that there could be white ghettoes, and segregated white communities:

And so it is that it seems to make no difference how segregated their lives, white people rarely ever seem to live in ghettoes. When a group of white people gather, they call it a country club, boardroom or - for most of the last century - House of Commons.

as younge points out with examples of jewish integration into german society before the nazis, and black integration into white american society during slavery, it is not integration that is the key to a just society, rather the status which the races hold. only equality of races and an abolition of the racial hierarchy will bring about a society in which everyone feels that they have a stake and are a part of. with laws designed to be used against one people of one religion only, we are heading further and further into the white ghetto.

profiling revisited

2005-09-15T15:34:00.000Z

a while back jon made a controversial statement about racial profiling on his blog. he suggested that the police would be justified in biasing terrorist searches towards people of certain ethnic groups.

well it looks like the police thought so too.

the indy reports that:

Civil liberties campaigners and black groups have reacted furiously over orders to the British Transport Police which say terrorist suspects are of "Asian, West Indian and east African origin". They have urged the Commission for Racial Equality to investigate.

i argued then, and continue to, that it would be racist and counterproductive. the comments that i posted to jon's blog contain the full arguments, but a major component was that it would reinforce white privilege and a racial hierarchy. jon seemed to disbelieve that such a hierarchy existed.

an article in the la times from a few years back that was recently posted to me (The great 'white' influx - Wed, Jul 31st, 2002) has some interesting facts about white privilege and conceptions of whiteness in the usa. according to the piece "Regardless of color, two-thirds of immigrants choose that designation [white] on census replies". a recent afghan immigrant to the us is reported as saying "She regarded white as synonymous with American, with belonging, with fitting in."
USC demographer dowell myers explained what the new whiteness was all about:

What white traditionally meant - the WASP, the blond hair, the California drawl, the Hells Angels motorcycle riders - is being overlaid with new images of white Russians and Armenians ... Iranians, North Africans and Latinos...
White is the most polyglot category, and it's morphing.

racial boundaries seem to shift with social currents. historically many 'white' peoples were not considered white in the usa: spaniards, french, italians and russians were not considered anglo-saxon enough to be classed as white in the times of benjamin franklin.

whiteness is aptly summed up by matthew kelley, publisher of the journal mavin, thus:

Whites live in a society that was created for them, that caters to them, where they are the norm. They fit...
So to a lot of people being white is almost indefinable. It's just this kind of comfort that you don't recognize unless it goes away. It's like describing air.

so it's not surprising that everyone wants a piece of the white pie. it confers the privilege of your race becoming invisible. who wouldn't want to be included? well, that's the sticking point. because for such privileged minorities to exist there have to be underprivileged ones too, like african americans and native americans in america, and black and asian people in britain. these people aren't likely to be considered white by themselves or their anglo-saxon compatriots. they can't be included even if they wanted to be. they have to submit to racist police orders like those detailed in the independent article. whiteness is an unobtainable ideal that we ought to do away with.

a violent movement

2005-09-15T15:23:00.000Z

you'd think i'd heard enough of unintentionally bad jokes courtesy of the police force this week, but i couldn't help passing this one on. a member of the 'uk peace army' reports that he was stopped and searched, and subsequently arrested on the way to a planned peaceful protest against the erosion of civil liberties, at the eu justice & home office minister's conference in gateshead. the fact that a civil liberties protest was stopped before it was even started is ironic enough, but it gets better/worse:

Initially the arrests were for "Breach of the Peace", but later changed to "Conspiracy to cause Criminal Damage". The cops were heard to say that they were taking it so seriously because "anarchism is a violent movement that started in Spain in the 1930's"!

their ignorance, our suffering. same as it ever was.

the stench of death

2005-09-15T10:21:00.000Z

thanks to a last minute offer of a lift from a friend and fellow activist, i managed to get down to the docklands yesterday, to protest against "the world's largest international tri-service defence exhibition". that's defence systems and equipment international (DSEi, or dicey to most activists), an enormous arms fair held at the excel centre. the fair is held every other year and has become a regular fixture in the anti-war campaigner's calender. didn't take my camera so pics kindly supplied by the posters at uk indymedia, who've also got a fairly comprehensive timeline of actions. for those who might not know why we were protesting, people like this were exhibiting weapons like these, protected by police with tactics like these. hope that clears a few things up.

police defend a fleet of warships swarming with arms purchasers from a group of peace activists

we headed down loaded up with vegan lemon cake and a bear suit (more later), and were approaching custom house dlr station at around 11am, the time the blockade of the station called by disarm dsei was supposed to happen. every station on the way was swarming by yellow-jacketed coppers as was the train. we also got our first glimpse of the arms dealers and buyers, mainly rich fat middle-aged white men in expensive suits. some had at least the shred of decency to look ashamed of themselves. at the station a few black-clad people leapt to unravel sheets of plastic in order to try and push their way up the station steps. they weren't enough people tho and the masses of police quickly arrested those carrying the equipment. without enough time to feel disappointed, the rest of us were quickly escorted out of the station and into what seemed to be an attempt at a pen. we quickly dispersed to get a plan together.

walked through the estate for a little while then doubled back towards the far end of the excel centre, near the prince regent dlr station. no police about but we did bump into a few fellow protestors looking for the critical mass. we managed to find a vehicle entrance to the excel centre with a handy pedestrian crossing and, by making continual use of the crossing, started up a tailback of cars and taxis taking delegates into the centre, who whilst stationary, were hassled by us about their involvement in the arms trade. we were soon accompanied by four police on foot and the sudden arrival of a riot van. we noticed that taxi drivers without passes weren't being allowed into the cordoned off area, so delegates were being forced to walk down the path, right past us, to get to the entrance at the dlr station. they would soon be invited to talk with us as they passed. c was by now wearing the bear suit with a sign saying 'against bearing arms'. this went on quite successfully for the best part of an hour until the police started getting bored. bored of telling us that if it wasn't for the arms trade we'd all be speaking german now (apparently being overcome by a nazi non-violent revolution), and bored of our disinterest in their crude attempts to gather information on us ("so you've come a long way today then?" being the phrase used by +every+ met officer who tried to speak to me). they started waving vehicles through when the lights were red, then one came and hassled me about a picture of an injured iraqi kid on the sign i was holding. apparently if he found out that it was a picture of a dead kid there'd be trouble. i decided it was an injured child and when he realised i was going to ignore him he left me alone. obviously a real law then that one. of course, they were just 'facilitating' our actions and not trying to stifle protest against an industry dealing in death.

...need we say more?

the critical mass passed and we walked back down towards custom house to catch up. near custom house we shouted at the delegates taking lunch breaks on the terraces of excel, and saw some activists in wheelchairs take to the streets and get ineffectually hassled by police. up to a junction on silverhill way, at the west side of excel where a group of activists were being cut out of a lockdown by police, and were successfully blocking one carriage of the flyover backed up by the stationary critical mass on the bridge.

activists locked on to a metal and concrete weight

we headed up onto the bridge to join the spontaneous party that had started, with the sound system playing folk music and a bit of country dancing going on... lots of good placards (se pic below), people dressed as flesh eating zombies and vampires (obviously trying to blend in with the delegates) and a huge purple and pink disarm dsei banner. people decorated the streets with chalk slogans and, urm, bears.

chalking up another bear-faced murder...

quite!

after a bit of dancing the cyclists remounted and those of us on foot marched on over the bridge and took a left towards the west entrance to excel. we were halted at the gates near some penned in clowns and decided to stop and protest for a bit. the police seemed intent on penning us into a fenced off area out of the way of the incoming delegates and ineffectually tried to stop people jumping back out into the street. some guys climbed up lampposts and strung up a banner saying 'unwelcome corporate bloodsuckers' and the police formed up a line by the gates. they unwisely tried to get cars carrying delegates through which prompted a mass sitdown, and then when they persisted on foot, with an angry mob. tensions continued as there was some incident where the police manhandled a woman violently, seemingly for personal reasons (he waited around til more police arrived then quickly got his mates to bundle her into the back of a van), creating another angry mob. they arrested a guy in a suit and zombie fangs leaping over the barriers but to the guy's credit it took about four or five to stop him trying to leg it. two lines of police moved in, to pen everyone into the area, which i and others had seen coming and evaded, but j got caught up in it.

we decided to meet up with j when she got out of the pen, but follow those who got away in the meantime. they'd carried on to the far side of the dock where they'd reassembled on the quayside. we could see a line of warships docked by the excel centre, and tents and amphibious equipment set up outside. the waters were patrolled by five police boats, loaded with coppers with cameras whispering to each other and trying to look hard. announcements to the delegates across the water were made through the soundsystem and by samba. one brave/insane guy even leapt into the water and started swimming across only to be swiftly turned back by a black dinghy. j was there amazingly quickly apparently having been able to walk out of the pen when the police weren't looking. the police attention was already increasing and we reckoned it would only be a matter of time before they tried to pen us in again. our little group split off and attempted to walk all the way around and over the far bridge to get back to our original spot to hassle delegates on their way home. after a long hot walk we were told by police, in the usual garbled language they use when they're trying to lie and get away with it, that they weren't allowed to let us cross the bridge on foot (barely concealed satisfaction). that was fine tho - we got a bus from city airport over the bridge instead and gave the coppers a little wave on the way past.

protestor on the roof of a silverlink train at canning town

it was now about 5 and we decided we'd better start going back in order to get home at a reasonable time. we tried to get on the dlr at prince regent but no trains were running at all from there because protestors had got on the roofs of trains further up the track. at custom house a particularly stupid copper said we weren't allowed onto the platform because the station manager had asked them not to allow anyone involved in the protests to use the station. he didn't seem too happy about my questions about the technicalities of this, whether we could speak to station staff, why the london transport ticket inspectors seemed happy to let me through until instructed by him to do otherwise, and on what grounds he was choosing who was a protestor and who wasn't. resigned ourselves to getting a bus to canning town and waited on the pavement with a few people who were shouting at the rows of arms dealers on the station platform through the wire fence. this was getting the police hot under the collar and they failed miserably to move them along not getting anywhere against the protestors' passionate defence of their rights to protest using the rare opportunity to come face to face with merchants of death. clearly having enough one cyclist (pictured below) was informed he was being arrested for obstruction of the highway. we pointed out that he was on the pavement, a public right of way. the cop then manhandled him into the road told he was now obstructing the highway and told his mates to arrest him for it. fortunately the incident was being filmed by another activist so hopefully the guy won't get away with it. he then proceded to threaten us with arrest until we pointed out that we were waiting for a bus at a bus stop and there's this small thing called the law that would prevent him from doing it. fortunately our bus arrived before he did. once again the met go out of their way to stamp on the right to protest.

now don't go telling me about wishywashy things like the law sonny, you're nicked

so we got to canning town and were still being hassled at every junction and every platform by police demanding to know where we were going whether we'd been involved in the protests today, etc, etc. none of this treatment to the suits mind, lined up with their raytheon goody bags and dsei caps for the kids. we continued giving them a hard time on all the dlr trains we had to get on due to the massively disrupted service. in the carriages i noticed there was something terrible in the air. an all pervading scent emanating from the networking dealers sharing business cards, from the well-heeled delegates and their arrogant looks. the stench of death.

spot on!

2005-09-13T09:52:00.000Z

this is the upshot of this. more piccies here! and don't forget to vote on the matter.

the ubiquitous disclaimer: a lesson in propaganda

2005-09-12T13:50:00.000Z

i know that this is going to be controversial, but i think it's something that's well worth thinking about. something i've been interested in for a while is the way in which the media works to produce a 'reality' that is widely seen as objective, whilst it is inevitably produces something subjective. i'm particularly influenced by herman and chomsky's propaganda model of the media, and those like medialens who apply it to the british media. the crux of this model is that, due to the ownership and control of the corporate media, it inevitably produces a message that is pro-corporate, and pro-establishment.

what got me going was the increasing realisation that every commentator on the london bombings has somewhere included the disclaimer that runs something like "of course, the bombings were totally unjustifiable". these are not found just in the mainstream media, but also from respected left wing journalists such as john pilger ("While not doubting the atrocious inhumanity of those who planted the bombs (as if anyone could)"). of course, in that piece pilger went on to lay the responsibility with tony blair, but the inclusion of the compulsory disclaimer detracts from this view. first i want to examine why i think this insertion has become ubiquitous.

were anyone to not include the disclaimer, particularly a fairly radical writer, the 'moral' powers that be would descend upon it and villify the author as a supporter of terrorism. the unspoken rule is that unless you specifically condemn terrorism, and in britain specifically the 7/7 bombings, you are sympathetic to the perpetrators and are therefore fair target for a tirade of outraged criticism. this is reinforced by the government's aims to introduce 'terror laws' to specifically prosecute those who make statements in support of terrorism. if you support terrorism you ought to be deported or locked up in belmarsh say the government, with some degree of public support. those who fail to condemn the bombings and terrorism as a blanket term are increasingly seen as terrorist sympathisers who are worthy of similar treatment. writers, especially those with views that put the blame with the establishment, go to great lengths to distance themselves from terrorism hence the appearance of statements to the effect of "no matter what else i think, i think the london bombings were entirely unjustifiable". once this became a recurring theme of such opinion pieces it morphed into a necessary one. if x includes this, you can imagine writers subconsciously realising, i'm going to have to as well.

herman and chomsky's propaganda model suggests that information must be able to pass through various filters to make it into the final media product. the fourth of these is flak, essentially criticism from external apparatuses. they describe it thus:

If flak is produced on a large scale, or by individuals or groups with substantial resources, it can be both uncomfortable and costly to the media. Positions have to be defended within the organization and without, sometimes before legislatures and possibly even in courts. Advertisers may withdraw patronage. Television advertising is mainly of consumer goods that are readily subject to organized boycott. During the McCarthy years, many advertisers and radio and television stations were effectively coerced into quiescence and blacklisting of employees by the threats of determined Red hunters to boycott products. Advertisers are still concerned to avoid offending constituencies that might produce flak, and their demand for suitable programming is a continuing feature of the media environment. If certain kinds of fact, position, or program are thought likely to elicit flak, this prospect can be a deterrent.

it is clear that any article perceived to be condoning terrorism can never pass through this filter and emerge in the media. government officials would leap to condemn it, the public would be outraged and there may even be legal ramifications. no sane publisher would print such a piece, even if they agreed, because they would be vilified and boycotted.

to return to herman and chomsky, the fifth filter is ideology. manufacturing consent was written at a time when the official threat to the west was still communism, hence the references to the "red menace". in modern times, the official threat to the west is terrorism. terrorism is the spectre invoked to explain an increasingly broad range of threats to state power and corporate interests, including certain segments of protest movements and those fighting for human rights and self-determination. the government propaganda message, largely faithfully adhered to by the media, is that anything we say is terrorism is the same as the london bombings, which we say were totally unjustifiable attacks on civilians. terrorism becomes the dark intangible terror lurking in every shadow, which we should never try to understand. those who do attempt to understand the motives of terrorists are immediately victims of flak and are considered terrorist sympathisers.

when a tape made by one of the london bombers, mohammed sidique khan, was widely aired, establishment and media figures leapt to refute his claims to be "a soldier" responding to "crimes our government commits abroad" by stating that terrorism is never justifiable (see alex's excellent blog article). these weren't real refutations of khan's arguments, they were attempts to stifle the debate about establishment responsibility for the bombings. they were flak, pure and simple, a demonstration to the media that any attempt to try to understand khan's motivations would be publicly denounced so don't even think about it. whilst many still do have the courage to speak up about blair's responsibilities, and the obvious connection between britain's role in the 'war on terror' and our increasing vulnerability to terrorism, these arguments are still accompanied by the disclaimer. i don't doubt that this is an unconscious reflex but it is proof of the power of the censors.

of course, there are very few of us who don't condemn the acts of the bombers, that were so obviously designed to cause loss of civilian lives and increase our fear. that's not the point. this is something so obvious and widespread a view that it is surprising that it still needs to be mentioned like a mantra with such regularity. it is an ideological bias. comment pieces never feel the need to say "of course, the british/american/israeli/turkish (insert state of choice here) government's continued terror against the people of iraq/afghanistan/palestine/kurdistan (insert people of choice here) is totally unjustifiable and abhorrent". writers do not struggle to distance themselves from warmongering butchers when they have power over their reputations and paypackets. the difference is ideological, not objective. it reinforces the idea that what "they" do to "us" is despicable and not even worthy of empathy, whilst what "we" do to "them" is actually good work to improve our security and prosperity.

one thing that does come through from mohammed sidique khan's statements are that he did not feel secure:

Until we feel security, you will be our targets.
Until you stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people we will not stop this fight.
We are at war and I am a soldier. Now you too will taste the reality of this situation.

this is really not very different to the rationale behind the 'war on terror', simply make the 'we' and 'my people' refer to westerners, and the methods of repression bombings and kidnappings, and this could be a statement by bush or blair. both types of terrorism are grotesque and feed one another's insecurities. we must stop them both.

new orleans vs. mumbai

2005-09-12T11:04:00.000Z

was posted this by my dearly beloved - as she points out, the author's motives may be suspiciously nationalistic, but the comparison is instructive. this is also a bit of a riposte to all those keen to put down katrina as an illustration of 'what happens' when society breaks down. in a much more collectivist society, such as india, the damage wreaked by natural disasters is considerably less because people pull together and look after one another better. i'm sure that in this case there was a much stronger will on behalf of the authorities to do something in the mumbai case too, which always helps.

race update

2005-09-12T10:42:00.000Z

just read this nice summary of some of the problems of race, from a white perspective. i think the most important thing that comes across is that it is preceisely white fears of non-whites that are the root of the racism, and are obstacles on the route to a 'raceless' society. the author, robert jensen, hits the nail on the head with his description of experiencing fear of being seen through when discussing race in the presence of a black man. by sharing this experience in the debate he was able to overcome it, to some extent. i know from my own personal experience that talking about these fears and working through them is a great help, and empowers me to try to move beyond a white perspective to something more universal. it seems that, whilst you feel the fear you can't get out of your skin.

also, i blogged last week about the invisible nature of race (and gender) privilege, and said i was going to try and make it more visible. here are some of the things i thought about my race:

if someone is describing me they are unlikely to refer to my race
i can get on a train wearing a rucksack without clearing the carriage
i can answer the question "where are you from?" without having to explain what country my family's origins are in
i can walk around most of my city/country, safe in the knowledge that i will see many other people of my race
if i produce a record, it won't be filed under 'white music'
if i write a novel, i won't feel under pressure to discuss racism or 'my culture' within it
i don't have to assert the fact that my culture is about more than 'food and festivals'

there are, of course, loads more things to say, but i was conscious of not repeating the existing lists verbatim. if anyone's thought some other good ones, feel free to post in the comments box.

fixin' to die

2005-09-09T10:43:00.000Z

i've noticed a recent tendency in the uk, following the government's authoritarian crackdown's in the wake of the london bombings, to focus inwardly in an attempt to retain our civil liberties at home. lest anyone forget tho, the blackhole of guantanamo bay continues to subject british citizens to unbearable torment.

today's guardian reports news of a mass hunger strike of inmates at the gulag where "More than 200 detainees in Guantánamo Bay are in their fifth week of a hunger strike". the inmates are protesting their continued degradation and alleged humiliations and qur'an desecration. binyan mohammed is quoted as saying:

People will definitely die. Bobby Sands petitioned the British government to stop the illegitimate internment of Irishmen without trial. He had the courage of his convictions and he starved himself to death. Nobody should believe for one moment that my brothers here have less courage.

this is precisely what the americans fear - the mass death of detainees on their watch.

this is a second hunger strike, the first of which is alleged to have been ended by a cruel trick:

The administration promised that if we gave them 10 days, they would bring the prison into compliance with the Geneva conventions. They said this had been approved by Donald Rumsfeld himself in Washington DC.

the inmates are obviously in a very poor condition if they're starting to believe that rumsfeld would ever let that happen. mohammed continues with some graphic details of the routine his fellow prisoners endure:

Hisham from Tunisia was savagely beaten in his interrogation and they publicly desecrated the Qur'an (again). Saad from Kuwait was ERF'd [visited by the Extreme Reaction Force] for refusing to go (again) to interrogation because the female interrogator had sexually humiliated him (again) for 5 hours - Therefore, the strike must begin again.

given the intensely repressive conditions in which the men are being held, it is no wonder that they are grimly holding onto control of the only thing they have left - their voluntary cooperation. by refusing to eat they hope to retain their humanity by not submitting to the machine of interrogation and punishment. as to whether their hopes to die rather than to endure the torture will be fulfilled a pentagon spokesman was blunt:

They are being held in the same standards as US prison standards... they don't allow people to kill themselves via starvation.

clearly the us' aim is to force the men into submission, to make them slaves to a wrathful american master. this is bentham's panopticon in the 21st century, an institution of total control where surveillance is complete and freedom is evaporated. surely no one can remain in doubt that this is the logical conclusion of our security obsessed society.

we must fight to destroy control wherever it arises. each new cctv camera and each new law to criminalise thought takes us one step closer to guantanamo.

mubarak, mubarak, or mubarak

2005-09-08T14:02:00.000Z

whilst regular readers will know my feelings about the sham democracy of the uk, there are plenty of countries that have to endure much worse. egypt is one of them. since reading the works of sonallah ibrahim, i've come to have a better knowledge of the endemic corruption and greed that rules egyptian politics, and has resulted in hosni mubarak retaining the presidency for the past 24 years. well, it looks like it will be mubarak for the next 6 as well.

the independent reports on a 'false' election, defied by pro-democracy activists, and characterised by a major pro-mubarak agenda:

Cairo polling stations were decked with massive pictures of President Mubarak and burly members of his ruling National Democratic Party wearing Mubarak badges hovered around voters, taking their ballots from officials and handing them to voters exhorting them to do their duty to the 77-year-old strongman.

no wonder they were nervous - this was the first time egyptians have been given a choice of candidates (rather than a yes-no referendum), and they were no doubt keen to maintain the status quo. the elections took place under emergency law, which according to secretary general of the egyptian human rights organisation hafez abu saada, restricts political campaigning in general, and results in a lack of support for presidential rivals due to the extra powers granted to the president.

in an interview with german paper das spiegel, nuaman gumaa, the only rival to mubarak and chairman of the liberal wafd party, claims that:

The people want total change. They want to get rid of the entire political gang that has been in power for the past two and a half decades. They hate this clique. People want freedom, they want democracy, and they want to enjoy the economic benefits of this freedom. The majority of our people live in poverty. We must establish social justice, otherwise a change doesn't make any sense at all.

exactly what kind of social justice gamaa has in mind is debatable however, as the wafd party has seen largely as a party of business with close ties to the usa and other western powers.

in the meantime, demonstrations by the pro-democracy kifaya (enough) movement have continued. their slogan is "enough corruption, enough authoritarianism, enough hypocrisy and enough negativity", but the movement's rallies have been restricted by martial law imposed by the state of emergency. whilst on the surface the move to allow alternative candidates in the election and the (last minute) decision to allow independent election monitoring are positive moves, real democracy still seems a long way off.

rapex

2005-09-08T13:52:00.000Z

according to a reuters report (South Africa anti-rape condom aims to stop attacks, Wed Aug 31) "A South African inventor unveiled a new anti-rape female condom on Wednesday that hooks onto an attacker's penis and aims to cut one of the highest rates of sexual assault in
the world." the 'rapex' aims to offer protection to women in a country where 50,000 rapes occur anually, aiming to physically deter the attacker, and alert hospital staff and police to potential rapists.

whilst i would welcome any development that offers women protection against rapists, it seems that the rapex could be a very counter-productive invention. presumably, if such a device is readily insertable and removable, anyone with the physical force to rape can presumably force a woman to remove her rapex too (once they become a widespread deterrent). there's also the worry that, by causing the rapist physical pain, violence will be meted out to the wearer of a rapex when sexual assault is frustrated.

Other critics say the condom is mediaeval and barbaric -- an accusation [Sonnette Ehlers, inventer of the device] says should be directed rather at the act of rape.

well that's certainly true. but maybe technology is not the answer.

celebrate with jeremy

2005-09-08T11:58:00.000Z

i learn with delight from indymedia, that poster boy for the posh boorish twat association of britain, mr. jeremy clarkson, is soon to receive an honorary degree from oxford brookes. read the article for details of how to join the celebratory party. the article also lists some choice quotes from the great man himself which i'd love to share with you:

clarkson, doctor of bicycle appreciation:
In the wake of the London bombs we're told that many commuters are now switching to bicycles… can I offer five handy hints to those setting out on a bike for the first time. Do not cruise through red lights. Because if I'm coming the other way, I will run you down, for fun. Do not pull up at junctions in front of a line of traffic. Because if I'm behind you, I will set off at normal speed and you will be crushed under my wheels…. Do not, ever, swear at or curse people in cars or trucks. You are a guest on roads that are paid for by motorists so if we cut you up, shut up.

clarkson, doctor of climate change science:
Cars are a symbol of our release, our freedom, so enjoy them. Stop twittering on about the damage they do to the environment

clarkson, doctor of social policy:
So, they’re lowering the age of consent for homosexuals to four, teachers will be allowed to promote sodomy in schools and the Army is to become a hotbed of single-sex fumbling. I therefore find myself wondering. How long will it be before we get "Gay Lanes" on the motorway?

clarkson, doctor of politics and animal welfare:
I read that the Tories are rejecting bright, well-educated candidates for being ‘too posh’. They've had a gay summit to make sure they're seen as ‘inclusive’ and leader Michael Howard is keen to open the door to as many ethnic minorities as possible. Why? We're talking about running the country here, not some two-bit outreach group for partially-clubbed seals

clarkson, doctor of eugenics:
Cars sit in the Japanese psyche along with spoons and mashed potato. They don’t come naturally, ... I reckon the genetic North Pole is a 6ft 5in Brit and the genetic South Pole an 11-year-old Japanese schoolgirl

so congrats to jeremy. and if anyone has the blueprints for a monster bike capable of permanently squishing his bouffoned hair down into his cowboy boots, i will pay good money for its rental. go on, i'll slip you an honorary degree into the bargain.

arbeit ist sheisse

2005-09-08T10:52:00.000Z

the independent reports that the german anarchist pogo party has caused a storm with its "no-holds-barred political broadcast featuring bare-breasted women, raucous partying and alcohol-fuelled vandalism." apparently the party's slogan is "Arbeit ist Sheisse" (work is shit). i suspect that election night in germany might be a little more interesting than it is over here...

update (09/09/05): apparently their manifesto also includes the aim of "humankind's complete and
ultimate return to stupidity." 1m people saw their broadcast.

the barbarians at the gates

2005-09-08T09:45:00.000Z

been forwarded an interesting blog post entitled get pissed: destroy, by alistair liv, about the never distant clash of cultures often found in temporary autonomous zones. the post centres around starhawk's evaluation of the horizone experience, at the scotland g8 protests. describes her as "one of the most respected voices in modern earth-based spirituality" but aforementioned friend has described her as an "eco-pagan, but she probably wouldn't describe herself that way". anyway, here's what she has to say:

While the vast majority of people were there to mount and support actions against the G8, there was a small but significant group of the festival/party crowd, who drank heavily, imbibed, I'm sure, other consciousness altering substances, and caused an immense amount of trouble to the rest of us. Overall Scottish and British culture is much more alcohol-focused than us U.S. puritans are used to, at least in action situations, and even the most serious activists like their beer and some loud disco music to unwind with at night.

yes, you've heard it all before. it's the old favourite "serious activists" vs. "party people" antagonism. i remember this debate coming up in a meeting at stirling, and at the morning meeting at the earth first! gathering. the problem usually seems to be that there are, broadly speaking, two main camps within the protest camp: those who are "serious" activists, who are often middle-class it has to be said, get up early to do yoga and get the kids breakfast, before going out to blockade, and those who are part of the travelling festival community and rave til the early hours with cans of "spesh"(-ial brew) before getting up and going out to the blockade or not bothering. this is simplification and stereotyping to the max, so apologies there. and no doubt there's more crossover than i'm hinting at. it seems to be a divide between those who see life as one long party, without boundaries, and those who see it as something clearly demarcated with boundaries that should not be crossed (i.e. having music on after 1am, drinking before 6pm). i suppose i like to sit on the fence. i think the party is a vital aspect of the autonomous space (and, well, life in generally really). as emma goldman famously once said: "If I can not dance, I want no part in your revolution." i guess i feel the same. nonetheless, it does become a problem when thoes doing the dancing (etc) forget about the community in which they dance, and stop taking personal responsibility for its wellbeing. in a campsite with young children, it seems very selfish to party at their expense. some sort of compromise can easily be made (hence the establishment at earth first! of quiet and noisy fields).

the drinking too easily becomes a liability for everyone, not just the drinkers themselves. for example, at stirling there was the infamous toilet incident. for bureaucratic reasons the camp had to hire some portaloos for the site, which then had to be cleaned by a lorry coming from outside. this worked fine until the police blockade, but even then the police were allowing the lorries in and out. apparently tho, on thursday some pissheads revelling at the gates decided to mount the vehicle, dance on it, and threaten to kill the driver if he didn't let them use it to batter police lines. the driver was understandably upset and the company refused to come back for several days leading to an outbreak of dysentry on the site. this, according to starhawk, "illustrated some of the wild contradictions in the camp." they were a minority tho, and a consensus (if rather unrealisable) decision was made to give the offender the opportunity to either clean shit pits for the rest of his time at stirling or leave the camp, if ever caught, was made. a bit authoritarian perhaps, but dysentry epidemics aint much fun.

this, i think, illustrates the dilemma of anarchist communities. whilst it's easy in theory to say that there will be no rules and everyone will be free, i think that true freedom can only come when you're not having to deal with selfish wankers the whole time. i want everyone's desires to be satisfied, not just my own, and it's possible with a bit of thought and consideration. starhawk poses similar questions:

Does anarchism simply mean that no one can ever tell me what to do, whatever state of consciousness I'm in or however I'm affecting the good of the whole? How do we respect the individual freedom of those who are in no state to make rational decisions or listen to the needs of others, and who gets to decide? And at what point does the good of the whole override the absolute freedom of the individual?

these issues also seem to be at the heart of the left / post-left anarchist divide.

alistair liv suggests that the divide has a long history:

I guess anyone who has been involved in any kind of alternative actions/ spaces over at least the past 25 years will recognise the problem. Way back in 1981/2 , at least according to Albert Meltzer, it was drunken punks wot trashed the Wapping ‘Autonomy’ (Anarchy) Centre. John Pendragon made a similar complaint to me (circa 1986) about ‘punks’ destroying the Travelling / free festivals culture… although a few years later blame shifted to the acid house rave scene. At Greenham in 1982 , it was the Peace Convoy from Stonehenge - though here it was men in generally rather than punks that were seen as the problem. At Greenlands Farm, Glastonbury in 85, it was the ‘Brew Crew’, with similar problems on the M11 campaign at Claremont Road in 94.

he quotes a friend who has an alternative theory to the simple 'clash of cultures' one tho: that alternative spaces attract those with mental health problems, and in such a concentration that the resources for dealing with these problems are overwhelmed. his idea was that those without a community (who had been rejected by existing communities) sought solace in the more welcoming alternative community. it seems that that rubs up the 'normal' within that community the wrong way. if this is the explanation then it's probably best that we're all more understanding of one another, and less quick to penalise and criticise. nonetheless, alcohol and other drugs can be avoided, and an emphasis has to be placed on individual responsibility. as someone mentioned at earth first!, it seems that our understanding of gross-level political interactions and motivations has not filtered down to influence our individual interactions and motivations. it's only when we have revolution at all levels of society that our politics will be meaningful.

left vs. post-left anarchism

2005-09-06T13:24:00.000Z

wow, do i ever talk about anything other than anarchism? global warming is melting siberia and trashing new orleans, thousands are dying in iraq, and these are just the atrocities that make it into the papers. and what do i do? talk about the arcane differences between strands of anarchist thought. well, it's something to mull over as the ship hits the iceberg eh!

this stems from an interesting discussion i've been having with andy on the lenton anarchist forum list. basically it started (at the end of another about poststructuralism) when andy wrote:

An anarchist ethic means - decide what you wanna do and go do it. The starting point is desire, not abstractions/"spooks"...
I think anarchism is basically a politics of desire (yes, a "selfishness" of sorts, but an enlightened "selfishness", not a narrow one...

The differences between politics-of-desire anarchism (expressed by various "post-left" tendencies such as those around the journal "Anarchy: Journal of Desire Armed", Situationism, etc.) and more traditionally normative kinds of anarchism (such as the "left" anarchists in various anarchist federations - AF, SolFed etc) is one of the main issues of dispute among anarchists at the moment, and one of the main organisational divisions also.

i was a little confused:

but doesn't an "enlightened" selfishness necessitate self-repression? the temporary negation of desires for the bigger prize (e.g. putting oneself at risk of arrest and punishment by taking part in direct action)..

perhaps you could explain this a little more. is the difference between [left and post-left factions] a difference of emphasis or a difference of philosophy (or even a difference of methodology)? presumably you favour the former "post-left" anarchists over the left anarchists for their embrace of desire, but what is the practical difference? i suppose again that i'm asking what is enlightened desire, and how is it possible to prevent it turning into a more basic desire, such as that upon which systems of repression are based?

perhaps i'd not been specific enough in my understanding of repression. andy wrote:

I'm not sure as I'd call that "repression". I'd call that conflicting desires. Repression in the full sense only happens when either you come to value the non-satisfaction of desire as a good in itself, or you push desires down into the unconscious so you're no longer aware of them. I see what you mean, that there's a certain similarity in cases of delayed gratification, taking risks and so on, and these things can certainly convert into repression if you aren't careful, but I don't think it's the same thing.

fair enough. what about direct action?:

Actually I usually feel the opposite regarding direct action - that my "gut" urge is to take instant and extreme action when faced with the provocations of the world, and that it's the ego acting as a constraining force, looking for better "strategic" options. And this I think is what post-left anarchism usually builds on - action which is fuelled immediately by rage against the system, and which gets around threats of state reprisals not so much by being self-sacrificing as by being so strongly and immediately felt as not to be deterred.

which gets me back to the core of my opposition to the "post-left"ists:

but how does this stop anarchists falling into the trap of becoming boorish parochial reactionaries like the countryside alliance/racist bigots/pro-war demonstrators? the anger must surely be directed by a coherent view of how society should be, shouldn't it?

so what exactly is this post-leftism anyway? andy wrote:

Post-left anarchism on the other hand takes desire as a starting-point and is more sceptical and historical/reflexive in its use of identity-categories. There's also a tendency in practice for post-left anarchists to be very interested in ecology and often also animal rights, and in unfashionable issues of exclusion and oppression such as the liberation of children, mad liberation, solidarity with prisoners, indigenous struggles, and countercultural resistances of various kinds (from sexual liberation issues to graffiti and squatting). Basically, post-left anarchists organise loosely, around fragmented struggles connected through networks which expand outwards rather than forming together into anything solid (something like Critical Mass being a good example of the kind of thing they encourage).

...well this is all sounding like my bag...

Primarily they organise as a movement "against" capitalism/industrialism/ecocide (rather than "for" a specific existing category), and tend to prioritise direct action over organisation-building.

...but this is the bit i'm not so keen on:

not being 'for' anything is pretty nihilist isn't it? i wouldn't want to find myself part of any movement without any kind of vision of what it wants, only lots of complaints about what it doesn't want. for a start it's just a bit depressing! a recurring criticism levelled at anarchists, in my experience, is that, whilst many agree that the existing system is awful, anarchism doesn't have an alternative. do post-left anarchists agree?

by "agree" here i mean, do post-left anarchists agree that there should be no alternative vision, and instead we should emphasise the primacy of methodology, which seems to be what they propose. then there's the problem of collectivism vs. individualism. andy wrote:

In theory there doesn't seem to be a great deal between the two types, since in theory the leftists also commit to network rather than hierarchic organisational forms, and since they sometimes theorise class/community as an extension of individual needs/desires. But in practice they tend to get along very badly, which suggests there is something fundamental in the various differences. Unfortunately the leftists have not responded very effectively to the challenge posed by the post-leftists, tending to revert to a style of response ("they're wrong because they don't take class seriously enough" or "they're wrong because they're individualists instead of collectivists") which tends to simply reinforce the critique without really challenging it.

yes, these aren't particularly well thought out arguments, but i must admit i sympathise with them:

i must admit, i'm often one to complain about individualism of fellow anarchists as
opposed to what i see as an essential spirit of collectivism, as an emotional reaction rather than a rational one. nonetheless, i do find it rather uninspring and alienating how you can go into some social centres/squats/action camps, ready to find common ground and to be welcomed, and get a rather cold response. it's fair enough, but for me solidarity and a sense of community are pretty vital factors to political organising.

i await andy's responses. in the meantime, he's sent a load of links to resources on post-left and left anarchism:

post-left

http://www.geocities.com/kk_abacus/ioaa/ioaa.html

left

post-left bashing

all of which makes me realise that i'm not the only anarchist with nothing better to do than spend my life on the web... anyway, back to those links...

unpacking invisible knapsacks

2005-09-06T12:14:00.000Z

i was alerted to this via my gf being alerted to this via a link from nella's "nice feminist post". the original article, white privilege: unpacking the invisible knapsack, by peggy mcintosh leads to a useful trip all unaware victims of international whiteydom would be advised to take. briefly, the white author makes a list of the daily effects of white privilege she experiences, in attempt to make the effects of white supremacy visible to herself. she describes how "For me white privilege has turned out to be an elusive and fugitive subject". she notes certain trends in the list:

I could think of myself as belonging in major ways and of making social systems work for me. I could freely disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to anything outside of the dominant cultural forms. Being of the main culture, I could also criticize it fairly freely.

In proportion as my racial group was being made confident, comfortable, and oblivious, other groups were likely being made unconfident, uncomfortable, and alienated. Whiteness protected me from many kinds of hostility, distress, and violence, which I was being subtly trained to visit, in turn, upon people of color.

the male privilege checklist, "an unabashed imitation of [the aforementioned article by peggy mcintosh]", follows a similar structure of self-exploration and eductation. the male author mentions the following important point:

An internet acquaintance of mine once wrote, "The first big privilege which whites, males, people in upper economic classes, the able bodied, the straight (I think one or two of those will cover most of us) can work to alleviate is the privilege to be oblivious to privilege." This checklist is, I hope, a step towards helping men to give up the "first big privilege."

this is, i think the key to understanding how the majority of racism and sexism works, and why so many of us white males are loathe to accept that we are part of this execrable system. these are the issues that bell hooks explores so well in talking back, and describes as part of a "White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy". i hope that through a similar process of self-examination i can start to relinquish the subconscious privilege that i wield over others, and i thought i'd try compiling my own lists in order to reshape my consciousness of who i am. watch this space...

spreading like a hurricane

2005-09-06T10:45:00.000Z

it seems like the disaster area of new orleans has given everyone in the blogosphere something to write about (almost universally with shock and horror at the handling of it). it's given the anarchists amongst us the unwelcome experience of having the capitalism-engineered disaster zone compared to anarchy, something i wanted to debunk, and disillusioned kid has taken up here. nella gets angry about the hijacking of tragedy by christofascists here.

i was pretty dismayed to see trufflesniffer 's dismissive post entitled 'Two words for Anarchists' with the entry 'New Orleans'. i can only assume he hasn't been getting enough sleep. it gets worse tho in his latest, where he laments the lack of jackboots on the ground:

The whole point of the army is to establish a monopoly on the use of force as quickly and convincingly as possible. They're the Hobbesian bedrock of all modern liberal societies, and need to be out in force in emergencies whenever existing civil infrastructure get wiped out to stop theft, rape and murder becoming 'rational' behaviour for an individual or group to engage in.

if you're that bothered you can follow the whole discussion thread on his site. what follows is a summary. there are two immediate criticisms that i made to the above point:

the presence of an occupying force, which is more or less what the troops will be in new orleans, is usually associated with theft, rape and murder committed by that force. after all, according to your logic when someone can get away with these things they will do them (something i'll dispute in point 2), and whilst the presence of soldiers under shoot-to-kill orders will make ordinary citizens a little more cautious about their misdemeanours, those wielding the force are not under such pressure. it becomes 'rational' for the soldiers to get away with what they can.

you seem to think that the moment the ordinary checks and balances aren't in place everyone becomes a deranged psychopath indulging themselves at whim. would you in such a situation? i wouldn't. this looks like a very simplistic and amoral view of human nature, not one that i consider accurate. of course, there will be a minority that will act in this way, but they do under "normal" conditions too when they get the chance. all that changes is that these behaviours become more overt, and require less engineering on behalf of their perpetrators. perhaps, also, you've been mislead by the lurid mainstream media reports of looting, encouraged by the us government's focus on the maintenance of order over minor things like helping the disaster's victims. why is this the case? because the us gov is like all states, it relies on its people's acceptance of its monopoly on the use of violence. it is essential for the governments' credibility that first) it retains this monopoly, and only then b) that it maintains an image of protecting its citizens (or at least the ones who matter). on both counts the bush administration's credibility is looking fairly non-existent.

trufflesniffer replied thus:

Without police in high-density societies, the existence of just a few psychopaths amongst the general population would make it 'rational' for most people, with normal pathologies, to become isolationist and fear strangers - because the possibility of one lethal encounter with a stranger out of even two-hundred good encounters makes not fearing the Other too dangerous (a version of the life-dinner principle). In this kind of social environment, it becomes rational for pathologically normal people to begin fearing strangers universally - because 'stranger = bad' becomes an effective heuristic for staying alive (when a group is self-sufficient, they have no need to approach outsiders for help, and no reason or opportunity to break the heuristic).

as usual, i have to attempt to filter out some of the sociobiological jargon that i don't understand, but i think it's fairly obvious what trufflesniffer's point is. i disagree:

[fear of strangers/Others] is the case with or without a police force. the only difference that a police force makes is that it gives psychopaths a place from which to prey upon people with impunity.

the only +real+ security comes from a social safety net, whereby people look out for one another and use the power of greater numbers to tackle the anti-social. gun- and taser-toting demigods with a license to shoot don't make me feel much less at risk of a knifing in an empty street, but they do give me more 'others' to be suspicious of.

i await a reply, but in the meantime, feel free to join the debate...

anarchy in new orleans?

2005-09-02T11:26:00.000Z

the mainstream media have been quick to liberally, and inaccurately, apply the term 'anarchy' to describe the terrible situation in new orleans and the surrounding states, including this headline from the indy. shevek debunks this on indymedia. chaos certainly. anarchy - not likely. with national guard fresh from iraq being flown in to shoot to kill and armed gangs roaming the streets a definite hierarchy is present. in all the attention focussed on the threats to state authority, the real victims are being forgotten:

In times of crisis the seemingly peaceful social relations are violently exposed in their true light. While the rich quickly leave to their second homes, the poor were are left behind. Some reluctantly accepted help from the state and where ushered into the Superdome, not knowing what else to do. Others, unable to go, or unwilling to leave behind their only possessions remained, choosing to brave out the storm.

it's not hard to see that the poor and the black are the worst off in this situation. gary younge points this out in his guardian column:

[T]he lives and the livelihoods of the poor without cars to escape, sturdy homes to protect them and insurance to fall back on, were the most vulnerable. In one of the poorest states in the country, where black people earn half as much as white people, this has taken on a racial dimension.

in the midst of all this george bush is displaying his usual disdain for the dispossessed by not bothering say anything at all the first day, now calling for "zero tolerance" towards looters, who are often ordinary people desperate for basic food and drink. bush's promises of aid sound hollow given that it is rapidly emerging that resources have been diverted away from fema (the federal emergency management administration) towards much more important things, like attacking poor brown people in other countries, and enriching the already hyperrich at home. according to the independent:

The Army Corps, like every other authority charged with preventing the flooding of New Orleans, has had its budget cut repeatedly in recent years. The Federal Emergency Management Administration has had its resources diverted towards the Bush administration's "war on terror", and many of the National Guardsmen who might have been in place to intervene sooner have been diverted to Iraq.

the parallels between new orleans and baghdad were bound to be made considering yesterday's emerging dual tragedy, that dion dennis describes as the katrina-baghdad "strange attractor". how american's will view the situation in iraq, and how their attitude towards global warming will change in light of this tragedy is yet to be seen.

in fact important lessons for those intent on reminding us all that bloody revolution is the way forward can be learned from the situation. true anarchy +cannot+ come about in one fell swoop until the existing power structures have been dismantled and disarmed. otherwise the vulnerable are bound to be preyed upon, and the wealthy will send in their hired guns to maintain the law. until people are self-reliant shortages of state aid will be catastrophic. katrina has not caused anarchy, it has exacerbated the hierarchical system of pillage that rules our lives.

What drives support for this torturer?

2005-09-01T09:01:00.000Z

1st september is independence day in the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan. Had true independence ever reached this beleagured country there would be no need to write this article today. However, Islam Karimov (pictured), the current dictator of the country, seems intent on ensuring that Uzbeks are mere obstacles in the path of his greater glorification, to be suppressed and tortured at whim.

"I'm prepared to rip off the heads of 200 people, to sacrifice their lives, in order to save peace and calm in the republic…If my child chose such a path, I myself would rip off his head." - President Karimov reacting to acts of violence in Uzbekistan in March 1999. The government originally blamed the incidents, including a bus hijacking, on "criminals" and later on "Islamic extremists." Agence France-Presse, April 2, 1999.

The Uzbek state has been waging a war of intimidation and torture against what Human Rights Watch call "independent Muslims", those whose belief and practice of Islam do not conform to official guidelines and institutions, for the past decade, resulting in "the arrest, torture, public degradation, and incarceration in grossly inhumane conditions of an estimated 7,000 people." The effect of this widespread violence is that, in the words of former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, "[t]he conviction rate in criminal and political trials in Uzbekistan is over 99% - in President Karimov's torture chambers, everyone confesses." According to Human Rights Watch's 2004 report the methods include beatings by fists or with truncheons or metal rods, rape and other sexual violence, threats to rape family members, use of lit cigarettes and newspapers to burn detainees, asphyxiation with plastic bags or gas masks, the tearing out of fingernails, and immersion in boiling liquids.

Talib Yakubov, Chairman of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan, lists a number of the "accomplishments" of the Karimov regime's "far-reaching cleansing based on religious beliefs" in the 2002 Report of the Society. These include:

banning loudspeakers in mosques for the call to prayer
enlargement (by a factor of 10) of the militia
the drawing up of a list of 250,000 "unreliable citizens"
imposition of harsher legal sanctions for religious beliefs
concentration camps set up to detain "prisoners of conscience"
sanctioning of the planting of evidence by security forces

Uzbekistan's terrible human rights record normally never makes it into the mainstream press, and I imagine that few people could give much information on the country off the cuff. This is largely because Uzbekistan is an ally of the Western powers, who don't want undue attention focussed on the deals they cut with Karimov in private. Lynn Pascoe, the US State Department's deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs, explained that Uzbekistan is a US ally in the "War on Terror":

Uzbekistan has been an early and outspoken supporter of the war on terrorism. Indeed, it has played a critical role in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, and provided the military base at Karshi-Khanabad, now home to roughly 1500 US servicemen and women, without rent or as part of a broader defence agreement.

It's the usual story then. No amount of human rights abuses can deter a great power from supporting its military and strategic assets. According to Rohan Pearce's article in Green Left Weekly, the US provided US$508 million in aid to Uzbekistan, between 1992 and 2002. Some aid money was finally withheld in July 2004 in an apparent protest over the lack of democracy in the country. The "War on Terror" link goes further than this, however, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported on 1st May 2005, that there was growing evidence that the US was sending prisoners for torture in Uzbekistan, as part of its "rendition program". Former intelligence agents had apparently named Uzbekistan as a surrogate jailer for terror suspects, and the New York Times had obtained evidence that US-registered planes had landed in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent.

Whilst US backing for the Karimov regime is undeniable, British involvement appears to be rather more covert. It may be that, as is often the case when the US directly supports oppressive regimes, the British government is a private supporter but seeks to hide this in public. According to Craig Murray, a British army team was sent to Samarkand in March this year to teach the Uzbek military marksmanship. Alex Doherty notes in an article for ZNet, that the UK government has taken a "(non) position on Uzbek human rights."

In a house of commons debate on Uzbekistan Simon Thomas MP commented that Uzbekistan has "perhaps a worse human rights record than Zimbabwe." Whilst Tony Blair has been outspokenly critical of the Mugabe regime and pushed hard for the suspension of Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth he has said exactly nothing about our new ally. A database search of all British newspapers reveals that Tony Blair has not once commented on Karimov or his regime.

One individual who has spoken out, fearlessly and at the cost of his job, is Craig Murray. UK ambassador to Uzbekistan between 2002-2004, he continues to be a harsh critic of the Karimov regime and UK support for it. In the wake of the Andijan massacres, in which 500 Uzbeks were killed by security forces after armed protestors had stormed a jail, White House spokesman Scott McLellan insisted that the protestors should have sought democracy "through peaceful means, not through violence". Murray was quick to rebuff the comment, stating that "This is not Georgia, Ukraine or even Kyrgyzstan. There, the opposition parties could fight elections." He pointed to the state-imposed media blanket on the massacres, and to the violent breakup of past peaceful protests. Murray's suggestion for a non-violent measure to end the tide of human rights abuses, is to call for sanctions to be imposed on Uzbek cotton:

[Uzbekistan] is the world's second largest exporter of cotton. Citing the use of child and serf labour, concerted trade sanctions against Uzbek cotton and textiles containing Uzbek cotton should be the way forward. Given the self-interest of the very powerful US cotton lobby and the new frost in US-Uzbek relations, this might even be achievable.

I would call on all those who read this, to lobby and campaign for such sanctions to be imposed. We must continue to put pressure on the government to withdraw its tacit support for the Karimov regime, and all such regimes where terror and torture of civilians are a way of life.

actually doing some work for a change...

2005-08-31T14:06:00.000Z

...so i don't get a chance to blog properly ;)

here's a few bits and pieces that may have slipped beneath yr radars:

men are trained like dogs - i wonder if these viewers complain about every instance of +female+ degradation they see on tv?
just a film? - or a racist colonial fantasy?
britain uses hate law to ban animal rights campaigner - i bet you didn't see that one coming!
and in response to my praise for american regional initiatives, ken livingstone jumps on the band wagon

SeeDyTV

2005-08-26T15:44:00.000Z

in case you were wondering what cctv is really for, given that it seems somewhat problematic in the fight against terrorism, it seems this news story might have the answer. doesn't that make you feel safe?

is this what democracy looks like?

2005-08-26T14:38:00.000Z

i blogged with excitement (!) a while back on finding david graeber's fragments of an anarchist anthropology available for download. having read it i can heartily recommend it to anyone interested in the subject. i certainly enjoyed graeber's irreverent style and his convincing attempt to synthesise the lessons of anthropology and anarchist organising. in particular, the final section, in which he talks about the current directions of anarchist organising, has some interesting ideas.

a post i made a while back generated quite a discussion (in the comments box) about democracy, what it is and what it could be. graeber has some interesting views on anarchist approaches to democracy, something that he sees as the key theme of current anarchist organising. the first thing to remember about consensus-based democracy is that:

this is a form of direct democracy which is very different than the kind we usually associate with the term - or, for that matter, with the kind usually employed by European or North American anarchists of earlier generations...

...as anthropologists are aware, just about every known human community which has to come to group decisions has employed some variation of what I'm calling "consensus process" - every one, that is, which is not in some way or another drawing on the tradition of ancient Greece. Majoritarian democracy, in the formal, Roberts Rules of Order-type sense rarely emerges of its own accord.

so the 'democracy' that george bush constantly chides various poor brown people for not adopting is a bit of an anomaly. graeber quite askly poses the question of why no one's really spoken up about this in academic circles, and comes up with the following rather unsavoury answer:

The real reason for the unwillingness of most scholars to see a Sulawezi or Tallensi village council as "democratic" - well, aside from simple racism, the reluctance to admit anyone Westerners slaughtered with such relative impunity were quite on the level as [sic] Pericles - is that they do not vote.

but, from an anthropologists point of view, the idea of voting is not an attractive one for a society:

If there is no way to compel those who find a majority decision distasteful to go along with it, then the last thing one would want to do is hold a vote: a public contest which someone will be seen to lose. Voting would be the most likely means to guarantee humiliations, resentments, hatreds, in the end the destruction of communities.

what was different about ancient greek society then? it was an unusual example of a society in which there was the coincidence of a system of coercion to enforce group decisions, and a feeling that people should have an equal say in making group decisions. as graeber points out, where there is systematic coercion those wielding it are usually unlikely to make the pretense that they are enforcing the will of the people! graeber thinks that the greeks liked their 'democracy' to be like everything else in their society - intensively competitive. every decision-making council had to have a victor.

majoritarian democracy, according to graeber, makes the lines of force between the coercive apparatus (state violence) and the apparatus for maintaining consensus, explicit, and is inherently unstable. the instability is used by the state to justify their monopoly on violence and to minimise democracy to such an extent that:

it comes down to nothing more than insisting that ruling elites should occasionally consult with "the public" - in carefully staged contests, replete with rather meaningless jousts and tournaments - to reestablish their right to go on making their decisions for them.

the answer is to accept that "we" "the west" are not particularly special in our practice of democracy, and that, more often than not, we've been involved in the destruction of indigenous democracy in many parts of the world, rather than its cultivation. we should, according to graeber, be turning to anthropology to find viable alternatives to our corrupted modern system:

The fruits of ethnography... could be enormously helpful here if anthropologists can get past their... hesitancy, owing to their own often squalid colonial history, and come to see what they are sitting on [democracy] not as some guilty secret... but as the common property of humankind.

the remaining 99.5%

2005-08-26T14:33:00.000Z

ha'aretz reporter amira hass has writen an excellent piece on gaza for znet in which she argues that:

For the sake of about half a percent of the population of the Gaza Strip, a Jewish half-percent, the lives of the remaining 99.5 percent were totally disrupted and destroyed.

she describes the inequalities that existed between the jewish settlers and the palestinians on the other side of the razor wire fences:

What talent it takes to live for 35 years in a flourishing park and splendid villas just 20 meters from overcrowded, suffocated refugee camps. What talent it takes to turn on the sprinklers on the lawns, while just across the way, 20,000 other people are dependent on the distribution of drinking water in tankers; to know that you deserve it, that your government will pave magnificent roads for you and neglect (prior to Oslo, before 1994) to the point of destruction the Palestinian infrastructure. What skill it takes to step out of your well-cared-for greenhouse and walk unmoved past 60-year-old fruit-bearing date trees that are uprooted for you, roads that are blocked for you, homes that are demolished for you, the children who are shelled from helicopters and tanks and buried alongside you, for the sake of the safety of your children and the preservation of your super-rights.

given the media outpourings about the 'sacrifices' made by israel in withdrawing from gaza, this is a point that needs to be made.

electric shock

2005-08-26T14:26:00.000Z

check out a timely article on tasers. it's hard to think of any positive reason for using them (remember, they couldn't be used against potential bombers cos they'd be likely to detonate the device), and easy to think of plenty of really seriously bad ones (torture, deterrence from legitimate protest, extracting confessions).

oh yes, and btw - hindes is the chomsky of contemporary britain - his insight as dazzling as orwell, the prose dances on the page and greets the reader with its witty charm (i'll have that tenner now please... ;)

puerile...

2005-08-26T14:25:00.000Z

...and quite amusing - give it time to load: http://choad.tv/~mike/funny/bush-small.jpg

if bush says no, we'll do it without him

2005-08-25T16:06:00.000Z

i was heartened to read about a new initiative by regional government in the usa, to bypass the federal government's unwillingness to act on climate change. according to the report:

[N]ine states are expected to announce a plan next month to freeze carbon dioxide emissions from big power stations by 2009 and then reduce them by 10% by 2020.

i'm no expert on greenhouse gases but anything's better than nothing it would seem, and at least there appears to be recognition that a reduction needs to happen. the states comprise a geographical region in the north east stretching from maine to new jersey, and look set to be joined by a bloc in the west (washington (state), oregon, california, arizona and new mexico), who are "exploring similar agreements".

from the looks of it the agreement is less demanding than kyoto, which is already deemed insufficient by many climate scientists, so perhaps i'm being a little optimistic. what seems to be of greater significance though, is the break away from washington's deliberate blocking of scientifically necessary measures because they would hamper business. whilst i am far from suggesting that state governments are more responsive to their constituents than the federal government, but on this occasion they seem to be adopting a more responsible attitude. it maintains my belief that positive change must come about through disengagement with the unchangeable and corrupt institutions that would block it.

science's dirty money

2005-08-25T14:56:00.000Z

there's bad news for those who oppose the science fundamentalists: sir john krebs will be giving the royal institution christmas lectures. this will, no doubt, consist of children (the prime target of the lectures) being 'educated' about how the wonders of gm technology and that organic food is just an "image-led fad". previously head of the food standards agency (fsa) he once claimed that manure caused more air and water pollution than chemical fertilisers. there's no prizes for guessing where his allegiances lie, as gmwatch state that sir john:

has backed the position of the US government and the biotechnology industry in opposing strict EU labelling and traceability rules on GM foods and animal feed. Its position has been condemned by the Consumers' Association who 'remain bitterly disappointed at the anti-consumer stance' taken by the FSA.

another scientist for business then. when he chaired the oecd conference on the 'scientific and health aspects of genetically modified foods' dr arpad pusztai described it as "a propaganda forum for airing the views and promoting the interests of the biotech industry." since then he has become involved with the social issues research centre (circ) which appears to function as a self-appointed judge of media science coverage. sirc have gets considerable funding from big us food and drinks companies, including bestfoods (now owned by unilever) and several other front organisations for food and drinks companies. quite an unholy alliance if you ask me. do we really want a man payed by the food and drinks industries to be presented as a paradigm of scientific responsibility to kids?

the reality of the matter is that in the biological sciences gm is presented as the future of food, and the unpleasant aspects of this technology, such as the potential for its western ownership to control the daily bread of the poor, the potential for environmental disaster, and the insufficiently examined health issues, are considered irresponsible scaremongering. i've blogged recently about my worries over the rather messianical claims of the biological sciences and the insistence that the science is 'value free'. no scientist exists in a political vacuum. scientific funding directs what scientists can work on, and this is largely driven by big business in the form of agrobusiness and big pharmaceutical companies. there is enormous pressure on scientists to 'prove' that the companies' drugs and foods are effective and safe, so that profits can start to be made. if you stand against the profit-at-any-cost ethic, as a personal friend who was a toxicologist for l'oreal did, you pay the price. he said their product wasn't safe and was promptly fired.

it seems that the only way to break the involvement of corrupting finances in science is to get scientists to work for the people again. currently the government is hoplessly enamoured by the biotechnologists, such as lord sainsbury, the minster for science, and bush with his climate change deniers in the usa. as a result research funding councils, like britain's biotechnology and biological sciences research council (bbsrc) have pots of cash to throw into biotech, and the medical research council (mrc) does the same for animal research. we have to demand that the ethical implications of gm and animal testing are examined in detail, and don't just have lip service paid to them (as is the case with the rrr programme of replacement, reduction and refinement of animal testing). this can only be done by making science accountable to society. every penny spent on wheedling another ineffective antidepressant through clinical studies is one that could have been spent lowering the price of antiretrovirals for aids victims. every million on developing gm crops that only benefit monsanto could be spent developing sustainable agriculture. science should be for social benefit not corporate profits.

unanswered questions

2005-08-25T14:47:00.000Z

the independent has a few questions about the j. c. de menezes case:-

If the CCTV cameras showed Mr de Menezes using his Oyster card to open the ticket barrier, why did police sources suggest he vaulted it?
Were cameras trained on the platform in full working order? Police and Tube sources contradict each other.
How could all four cameras around the platform have failed at the same time?
If the cameras had failed, why did the station log book contain no details of the fault?
Why had CCTV onboard the train been removed?

i think similar questions could be asked about cctv in general. its ability to catch 'criminals' depends on the willingness of the 'criminal'-catchers to release the evidence. you'd just better hope the 'criminal' isn't one of their mates.

uzblog gets flashy

2005-08-22T15:50:00.000Z

disillusioned kid wants us to blog for uzbekistan

here's some reasons why

go on, have a go!

what kind of anarchist are you?

2005-08-22T15:45:00.000Z

http://quizfarm.com/test.php?q_id=37281 - but be warned, it might call you christian

just out of vanity, here's me:-

You scored as Anarcho-Communist.

Anarcho-communists seek to build a society based upon a decentralised federation of autonomous communes and a moneyless 'gift economy'. The movement first emerged in the late 19th century and has had a large influence particularly in Spain, Italy and Russia. Key thikers include Peter Kropotkin and Errico Malatesta.

Anarcho-Communist 60%

Anarcha-Feminist 50%

Anarcho-Primitivist 50%

Anarcho-Syndicalist 40%

Christian Anarchist 25% [eh?]

Anarcho-Capitalist 20%