Quick Weekly Links

A very busy week this week, so just time for a few links that might be of interest.

Matt Sellwood has put a draft of his forthcoming pamphlet on Greens and The Left in Britain on his blog and is requesting comments - read it here.
Matt also has video of Mark Thomas' contribution to the Put People First Rally that I mentioned in my last blog entry - good rabble rousing stuff, with humour. A report and pics from the march and rally on the Lenin's Tomb blog here. Joseph Healy's reflections here.

Meanwhile, some interesting links from Jim's Daily (Maybe) blog here.

In other news this week (as the Two Ronnies used to say!)a big victory for the anti-incineration movement in Cornwall.

The RMT are balloting for strike action on the London Underground in a battle against job cuts, a pay freeze and management bullying.

Information here on another story I have covered previously - latest developments in the battle to defend the William Morris gallery in Walthamstow.

Finally, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) issued a report on "The Financial and Economic Crisis: A Decent Work Response," which examines current rescue efforts in 32 countries, including all members of the G20, and notes that demographic projections suggest that nearly 90 million net new jobs would be needed over 2009-2010 to absorb new entrants in the labor market and avoid a prolonged jobs gap. The study calls for enhanced cooperation among key international organizations and a reprioritization between these goals, to, inter alia: pave the way for a green economy; and enhance the Green Jobs agenda, considering that green technologies tend to be more job-rich than their carbon-intensive counterparts. A more sceptical view on likely "green bailout plans" from India here.

Weekly Links 08/03/2009

British Politics
Mandelson "slimed"!
Interesting background information to the reasons this action was taken against Britain's least popular unelected Minister from Airportwatch site here.
Guardian report and more video here.

Meanwhile the Bank of England and the government went for "Quantative Easing" in response to the crisis, Larry Elliott's take on it here.

It was announced this week that prescription charges are to rise, prompting a welcome intervention from the BMA -

Our submission seeks to highlight the many problems within the current system, which consequently are inherent in the proposal to extend the exemption list to include those with LTCs. The BMA's position and the conclusion of this evidence is that the Department of Health should abolish prescription charges in England altogether, as has already happened in Wales and will happen shortly in Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Green Party Leader Caroline Lucas this week had an article on the Gaza situation on the Guardian website.

A snapshot of the anger now prevalent in British politics can be gained from the comments underneath a Guardian article by normally cynical/apolitical cultural commentator Charlie Brooker where he expresses his frustration at the uselessness of the British political system.

Blogging
Joseph Healy reported this week on the lobby held against the Government's Welfare Reform Bill.

Derek commented on the "Quantative Easing" strategy.

Dave Osler reflected on the anniversary of the start of the Miners' Strike of 1984-5.

Jim has been to see the film of the "classic graphic novel", Watchmen, and reviewed it on his blog.


Unions and Work
The Iraqi government has this week tried to sieze control of the Iraqi teachers' union. TUC statement here.

Former Miners' leader Arthur Scargill gave an article to the Guardian summarising his current views on the momentous strike of 25 years ago.

Television
This week saw the first airing of the first part of the dramatisation of man of the moment David Peace's Red Riding novels on Channel 4. Not only is the dramatisation on TV, but Peace's book on the short spell of management of Leeds United FC by Derby and Nottingham local hero Brian Clough in the 1970s is coming out as a film, (The Damned United) and his book on the Miners' Strike GB84 is surely topical with the current anniversary in the news.
Red Riding, centred on Police corruption in West Yorkshire, was brutal and stylish, and the TV adaptation did well to capture Peace's disconcerting style.

Film Review : Slumdog Millionaire

Slumdog Millionaire is already accumulating awards and is hotly tipped for the Oscars. I enjoyed the film, though at times it is a little schmaltzy (the Guardian reviewer said that it reminded him of Max Bygraves' rendition of A Deck Of Cards !) and the theme of escape from poverty and hardship through luck and fate (as it says in the film "It is written") is a little hard to stomach for those of us committed to collective solutions to many of the problems that face us in the world, and the importance of people choosing to try and take control over their lives. Nevertheless, the depiction of a life growing up in the slums of Bombay/Mumbai and the darker corners of India's "precarious" classes is by turns illuminating, funny, harrowing and shocking - at least for us pampered Westerners. This can give a slightly uncomfortable feel at times - a feeling of being a voyeur on misery, or a suspicion, unfounded or not, of complicity in making light of truly desperate situations.

In the film, whilst the squalid conditions of the slums and the horrors of communal violence, gangsterism and child exploitation are realistically depicted, the human spirit and humour shine through. The film depicts the authorities - especially the Mumbai Police - and some of those who have "made good" in the new India in a very bad light and is firmly on the side of the underdogs, the outcasts and the exploited.

I have not read the book on which the film is based, and had not read many reviews before going to see it, so I came fresh to the film and got all kinds of nods and references which may or may not have been intended - including the novels of Charles Dickens, particularly Oliver Twist (with a far more horrific hybrid of Fagin and Mr Bumble) and Great Expectations (this Pip finally liberates his Estella), Indian "Bollywood" Epics (as would be expected - the question master in the central Who Wants To Be a Milliionaire Show in the film is a well known Bollywood star), Biblical stories from Old and New Testament (Cain and Abel, Judas)and both the feelgood films of the 1930s and the film noir of the same period - with the interogatory theme and narrative eye throughout.

The 30's echos are particularly interesting given the economic times we are living through - with the same ideas of escape and glamour, the human spirit overcoming hardship and disadvantage and moral messages that were found in some of the films of that period. This may account for some extra success due to good timing.

Great acting by all concerned, particularly Dev Patel and Frieda Pinto as the central couple, excellent cinematography and a great script. This is undemanding and beautifully shot entertainment, without as sharp a feel as Danny Boyle's previous Trainspotting and Shallow Grave. Nevertheless, it will be good that the world gets to see a glimpse of another India beyond journalistic platitudes about the recent "boom" and tourist publicity.

Season's Greetings!

It is the Winter Solstice today.
I shall be taking some time off from blogging to be with my family and have a rest from work over the next week or two. Hopefully normal service will resume before long.
The very best wishes for a happy festive season to all my readers, whatever or however you celebrate.

More Support For Republic

Here is the latest press release from the British campaign group Republic :

'OTHER BOLEYN' AUTHOR BACKS CAMPAIGN TO ABOLISH MONARCHY

Philippa Gregory, the British historical novelist, best known for 'The Other Boleyn Girl' has joined the ever growing list of high profile republicans to support Republic's campaign to abolish the monarchy.

Asked in a recent interview if she would ever write about the current Queen, Philippa replied: "No. I'm a republican, not a monarchist. I don't see the point of a monarchy."

Republic's Campaign Manager Graham Smith told reporters:
"We are delighted to have Philippa's support. Philippa is someone who knows what the monarchy means to British history, having written about many of the key characters in our past. Yet she understands that it has no place in our future."

"Republic welcomes Philippa as the latest in a long line of high profile figures who have backed our campaign in recent months."

NOTES
'The Other Boleyn Girl' was turned into a Hollywood movie starring Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson and Eric Bana.

Other recent additions to Republic's campaign include directors Paul Greengrass, Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, television writer Maureen Chadwick and former Clash bassist Paul Simonon. Philosopher Julian Baggini, human rights lawyer Imran Khan and biologist Richard Dawkins.

Here are links to the Canadian, Australian and New Zealand Republican movements.

The Night Sessions

I have just finished reading Ken MacLeod's latest book, The Night Sessions. I really enjoyed Ken's last book, The Execution Channel and I am a great fan of his Fall Revolution series, so I was really looking forward to The Night Sessions. I was not disappointed. Ken revisits some of the themes and technological innovations of the Fall Revolution novels whilst exploring the new area of religious belief and motivation. So we have self conscious machines and artificial intelligences, a 24-7 online society and moves towards expansion of human civilization into space alongside the aftermath of "Faith Wars" and the global marginalisation of religion, creationist exiles from a US civil war conspiring in New Zealand and underground Christian fundamentalists conspiring in a hi-tech Scotland dominated by Russian capitalists, booming green technology and space industries, war weariness and sexually liberated hedonism! The action largely takes place in an Edinburgh at once recognisable and remote and a New Zealand of natural beauty, philosophical absurdity and technological wonder. A key part of the plot is an attempt to "techno-fix" climate change.

Like The Execution Channel, the new book is part detective story, part philosophical enquiry, but it is also a lovingly crafted depiction of a future world shaped by climate change, the aftermath of the "Armageddon" result of current conflicts and developing technologies, seen from the point of view of ordinary and extraordinary people.

As with his dissection of the political life and evolution of left sects and cults in the Fall Revolution series, Ken here looks at the life of churches in decline and the development of fundamentalism, re-occurring just when everyone thinks it has been defeated. This mirrors our modern experience. Religious conflicts, and class or national conflicts filtered through a religious frame had begun to seem very old fashioned and irrelevant even just 15 or 20 years ago. Yet now, by accident or design, religion and fundamentalism are hardly out of the news and are ascribed as causes to many events, even where Occam's Razor would suggest a much more easily understandable and basic causation.

Ken MacLeod again succeeds in bringing us a novel that not only entertains and amuses but asks serious questions of us all, enlightens and educates. I heartily recommend The Night Sessions to lovers of science fiction, politics, detective fiction or just those in search of a good read.

The other good news is that we are promised a new book entitled The Restoration Game in 2009.

The Devil's Whore

The first episode of Peter Flannery's The Devil's Whore was aired on Channel 4 last night, and very good it was too. We were introduced to the fictional characters of the Fanshawes and historical characters such as Charles I, Rainsborough, Cromwell and John Lilburne and his wife. The style was lush and expensively costumed with the occasional surreal or supernatural element helping to distance us and lessen the effect of the artistic license and historical shorthand necessary to link all the characters and stories together. Excellent performances came from a brooding John Simm as Edward Sexby and Andrea Riseborough as the central fictional character of Angelica Fanshawe.
I look forward to the rest of the episodes.
Here are previews and reviews from :
The Telegraph

The Independent

and The Guardian

Weekly Links 17/11/2008

Television
The waiting is over! Two long awaited drama serials are set to start on terrestrial TV in Britain this week - the remake of Terry Nation's seminal apocalyptic series Survivors, which I have blogged on before, and the English Civil War story The Devil's Whore by the man who created the brilliant Our Friends In the North.
The BBC is due to air its first episode of Survivors on Sunday 23rd November.
Channel 4 air the first episode of The Devil's Whore on Wednesday 19th November.
Here is a topical (see later) piece by Ronan Bennett on The Devils Whore.

I am very excited by both of these series and will report back in due course, along with posting more links on both.


British Republicanism
Graham Smith, of Republic returns to the fray at the Guardian Comment is Free site this week after a Republican article by him last week got a massive response, pro and anti.

"You may have seen reports that prince Charles wishes to become an activist-King. Not content with meddling in political debates and haranguing ministers as heir to the throne, he craves power and influence at the highest level, but wants to be spared the inconvenience of an election. In the article I argue that a politically active King would be tantamount to winding the clocks back on centuries of gradual democratic reform. The only answer of course is the abolition of the monarchy and the creation of a democratic alternative."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/17/prince-charles-monarchy

Graham blogs here.

Workers and Unions
This is from Eric Lee at Labourstart -
I doubt if many of you regularly buy leather goods sold by Prada, Louis Vuitton, Mulberry and Nicole Farhi. These are luxury brands, priced too high for ordinary working people like us.

But the people who make those products are often low-paid, non-union workers. When those workers stand up and fight for their rights, it's our responsibility to stand with them.

Earlier this year, hundreds of workers at the Turkish leather manufacturer DESA -- which produces for all the luxury brands mentioned above -- joined a union. The reaction of the company was fierce: 44 union members were sacked, and 50 more compelled to quit the union.

Nevertheless, the workers have stood firm, holding daily protests outside the factory. Local police have been called in to arrest them, and bribes offered to union leaders to call off the demonstrations.
Families have been threatened.

Workers at DESA need a union urgently. They complain of poverty wages, long hours and terrible health and safety conditions.

Please take a moment to send off a message to DESA's customers -- the luxury fashion brands -- telling them that you support the DESA workers in their struggle:

http://www.labourstart.org/desa

Tell them that a union is right, not a luxury.

Thanks - and spread the word!

Eric Lee

Green Politics
The German Green Party, much reduced after its years of historic compromise has elected a new broom as co-leader.

This from the BBC -

The first ethnic Turkish head of a German political party has dismissed any comparisons between himself and US President-elect Barack Obama.

Cem Ozdemir, who was elected co-leader of the Green Party at the weekend, told Germany's Bild am Sonntag newspaper such comparisons were "inappropriate".

Closer to home, the Green Party Trade Union Group's latest bulletin is now out.

Lefty Politics
For us lefty trainspotter types, there are some interesting, dare I say even slightly original (if still mainly plagiaristic)new boys on the block of lefty politics these days - for example the International Luxemburgist Network and in Britain The Commune, Group of International Communists who put a libertarian socialist motion to the recent Labour Representation Committee conference -

Social Ownership and Workers Self-Management

After years of being told 'There is No Alternative', the crisis of global capital has shown that the entire system can be brought into question. Furthermore the widespread state intervention to preserve finance capital has brought into question previously conceived ideas of nationalisation and "public ownership" traditionally accepted in the labour movement.

As part of developing a vision of a viable alternative to capitalism our movement needs to develop new ideas of social ownership and abandon statist conceptions which have proven to be an historical failure.

1. State ownership, no matter what pseudonym it goes under is not social ownership. They are in fact two counter-posed things: one cannot equate the state with society.

2. The state is not a neutral force concerned only with the welfare of society and possessing the ability and the means to take measures suited to this end. The state
is not a vehicle to achieve 'socialism' and cannot be relied upon to act as a protective shield against capital.

The capitalist system, whether in its private or state forms of appearance, does not and cannot work in the interest of the majority. It is an unjust system, an economic tyranny where the rulers at all levels make the crucial economic decisions that affect our lives, solely on the basis of what will increase their profits and promote their interests. The Labour Representation Committee considers that the people who should have the deciding voice on the economy and its problems are the people most directly connected with it, the workers who produce the goods and services.

As such the Labour Representation Committee sets as it goal a system of genuine social ownership, organised on the basis of workers' self-management, a system of participatory democracy based on the sovereignty of those who produce the goods and services in society.

Conference recognises that if we are to realise the slogan 'another world is possible' workers' self-management is a necessity in the creation of a new cooperative society based on common, social ownership. Workers' self-management is not something which can be proclaimed or enacted from above, nor is there a blueprint. It requires a process of social self-organisation and creativity from below.

The publication of Building a new common sense, Social Ownership in the 21st Century is a welcome initiative in helping rejuvenate discussion of these issues in the movement.

Conference agrees:

1. To hold a series of forums and conferences on the question of social ownership and workers' self-management, with LEAP and fraternal organisations.

2. To publish a series of pamphlets on making the case for social ownership and workers' self-management, drawing on historical, international and contemporary experiences of the working class.

3. To develop with affiliated trades unions the case for workers' self-management in specific industries.

4. From these discussions and debates to take forward a campaign for workers' selfmanagement and social ownership

International
Interesting blogging here on the situation in Iceland.

Some updates from my blog on Saturday re

Italy

and

The Paris Demo

Peter Tatchell To Speak After John Osborne Play In London

A Patriot for Me – by John Osborne

Followed by

The State of the Queer Nation - with Peter Tatchell

The New Players Theatre
Thursday 30 October 2008


7.30pm: A Patriot for Me – by John Osborne

10.30pm: Peter Tatchell Q and A on the play and on the unfinished battle for LGBT human rights.

Ticket price includes admission to both events.

In the post-performance Q and A, gay human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell discusses the issues raised in John Osborne's acclaimed play,
A Patriot for Me. He offers a perspective on the cultural changes since the play was written, and the still unequal status of LGBT people in contemporary Britain.

This new version of A Patriot For Me by John Osborne is directed by David Harris. It is set in the 1900s. Alfred Redl is an exemplary Austro-Hungarian soldier, working up through the ranks to Colonel whilst battling with his homosexuality. His struggle takes him on a riveting journey, through turbulent relationships, drag balls and espionage.

First performed in 1965, this play met huge opposition from the chief censor, the Lord Chamberlain, who only allowed it to be performed to membership club audiences. It went on to win The Evening Standard Best Play of The Year and crossed new boundaries in the representation of gay lives and loves.

Peter Tatchell praises the huge gains in equal rights for LGBT people over the last decade, but identifies key areas of discrimination that remain to be rectified. He is the Green Party's parliamentary candidate for Oxford East, began campaigning for queer freedom in 1969, aged 17. Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, Sylvia Pankurst, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, he adapted their direct action methods and invented a few of his own.

The New Players Theatre
The Arches

Villiers Street

London

WC2N 6NG
www.newplayerstheatre.com

Box Office: 020 7478 0135
Tickets: £20, £15 (concs) & £12.50 for 10+

Peter Tatchell's website is here.

Weekly Links 19/10/08

Green Politics
The Campaign For Better Transport is running a campaign to get UK MPs to support a Transport Bill amendment to make it greener.
Michael Palin is a leading light of the Campaign for Better Transport and is speaking at a CFBT fundraiser at the Southbank Centre on 13th November.
Michael is like me, Sheffield born, so local CFBT campaigns around the Woodhead Tunnel and the Peak District will have a special interest for him.

Workers and Unions
I reported on Friday about the PCS strike ballot. On Tuesday of this week the Union is holding a meeting at Westminster to discuss the so-called welfare "reforms" proposed in the government's Green Paper.

There was a general strike in Italy this week - good to know that resistance to the Berlusconi regime continues.

From the USA, Daniel Gross has an article on the Counterpunch website about the case of Alexandra Svoboda, an IWW activist subject to Police brutality during a peaceful march last year -

A peaceful union march is brutally attacked by police. A union activist’s leg is horribly disfigured and nearly amputated. Maimed possibly for life, she is charged with multiple felony offenses.

The battleground is not the coalfields of Harlan County in the 1930s or 1970s; it's not an example of anti-union violence in Colombia or the Philippines. Our setting is present day Providence, Rhode Island.

Palestine
An exhibition of Art for Palestine, by artists from Palestine, the Arab World, China and the UK - Occupied Space 2008 is to be on show in London for the first two weeks in November. The exhibition is organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

And Finally ...A Bit of Music
Finally this week, a bit of music. The US election campaign has unleashed further waves of distortion and propaganda from the established media. Meanwhile in Britain we have had the unedifying spectacle of a New Labour Minister (incidentally a much unloved National Union Of Students leader in my days of study) playing to the reactionary media gallery on the topic of immigration. One of the best agit-prop songs on media distortion of the last few decades was Billy Bragg's "It Says Here" - a song that he tends to adapt to changing circumstances for live appearances. Here is a youthful angry version from You Tube. Speaking of adapting songs to changing circumstances - have a listen to one of Bragg's later versions of "Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards" here.
One of Bragg's popular radical songs is The World Turned Upside Down about the Diggers of the English Revolution - explained here and sung by songwriter Leon Rosselson, a legend of rebel protest music in Britain whose songs have been recorded by a variety of artists.

Review - Steve Tilston, Ziggurat

Last night I was privileged to attend a gig by a stalwart of the British folk scene, Steve Tilston. Folk (and occasional Blues) singer-songwriter Tilston has new album out called Ziggurat, and he played a variety of tracks from it last night, along with some old favourites like Slip Jigs and Reels (a version of which has been recorded by Fairport Convention).

The songs on Ziggurat are a combination of reflective compositions inspired by incidents in his life, traditional songs, and political songs.

I particularly enjoyed Steve's political songs - his reflection on English identity and an alternative pantheon of radical English heroes and heroines ( including Tom Paine, John Ball, mass trespassers, striking match girls, Levellers and Tolpuddle Martyrs) in Speaking in Tongues and his very timely observations on City greed and the financial manipulation of the "new Coiners" in A Pretty Penny.

And behind their hedge,
They don't plant wheat,
They don't cut corn,
they don't pick tea,
They don't dig coal,
They don't forge steel.
They just push numbers about. They push too far, we bail 'em out,
Keep their fingers firm on fortune's wheel.

There is also an anti-war song, The Spoils of War and reflecting on destruction in Iraq and the threat of war with Iran gave him the title of the collection, Ziggurat.

These are supplemented by some lovely ballads like After Summer Rain and a traditional song taken from the wonderfully titled "Holroyd's Yorkshire Ballads" - The Fisher Lad of Whitby.

Well worth a listen.

Bonekickers - Expensively Recycled Garbage

Good grief! BBC1's new Tueday night drama serial Bonekickers seemed like proof that if you get one TV success story under your belt you can pitch just about any old tripe and get funding. Bonekickers was like a cack handed lashing together of the archaelogical team of Time Team with the ludicrous plotline of the Da Vinci Code and the breathless running around and "shorthand TV" of adventure series like Primeval, Torchwood and Spooks. It managed to be less than the sum of its parts - appallingly cheesy dialogue, a plot that was easily predictable to anyone who has read Dan Brown's book or watched any of the above serials and a cringeworthy attempt to appear relevant in the first episode that involved anti-muslim christian fundamentalist bigotry.
We perhaps should have suspected this would have been the case after the disappointment that was Ashes to Ashes, the follow up to Life on Mars - the programme that made a name for Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah.

Where Life on Mars was original and witty, Ashes To Ashes was derivative and predictable. Where Philip Glenister's character DCI Hunt was a funny portrayal of a stock character from the 1970s in Life On Mars - with views that allowed viewers to have a laugh both at Neanderthal 70's males and the "PC" 21st Century views of John Simm's time travelling cop, situating themselves somewhere in between - in Ashes to Ashes the affectionate response people had had to Hunt was taken as carte blanche to present him and his views as a positive role model and the series came out with some appallingly reactionary crap, stereotypes and messages.

But Bonekickers managed to be even worse, you had to keep reminding yourself that this was expensive "quality" BBC TV you were watching and not some cheap lowest common denominator ITV pap. Hugh Bonneville had some lines that were supposed to be funny, but most of them fell flat, and the rest of the dialogue was painful. The far-right Christian character was so caricatured as to be unbelievable, but was given "topical themes" which may have meant that his oft repeated speeches actually got a sympathetic response from some of the audience, whilst allowing themselves to distance themselves from the ludicrous portrayal. If the message was liberal (as suggested by the "peace and love" portrayal of a Muslim community leader that one of the "soldiers of God" beheaded) then it was put forward in such a stupid way as to negate itself - likewise the treatment of the religious subject, all "woo-woo it's a miracle!" one minute showing the atheists in the team in a bad light, and then throwing the miracle into a more explicable light later to keep most of the audience on board regardless of faith. This just came across as tacky compromise - nothing wrong with being enigmatic and not offering solutions, but the way it was done here was just silly and obvious.
Sorry Life on Mars guys, we now know that the Emperor has no clothes!

Utah Phillips

Sad news that the great IWW activist and songwriter Utah Phillips has died. More from David Rovics Songwriter's Notebook Blog here.



Here is the official family obituary posted on the IWW website.

Weekly Links - 19/04/08

I am very busy at the moment and over the next couple of weeks - hence the more infrequent nature of posting. Just time this week, then, to post a few links of interest.

The main continuing stories in the news have been the terrible disasters in Burma/Myanmar and China. In Britain the Burma aid effort is being coordinated through DEC, the Disasters Emergency Committee that links together major charities and aid organisations. The British Red Cross is coordinating a China Earthquake appeal.

Green Politics
A hard hitting new report on Climate Change was published last week and drew comment from the South East England Green Party Euro MP Caroline Lucas. Jim at Daily (Maybe)last week posted his final analysis on the London election results.

Blogging
Tim at Green Left Infoasis posted links to a range of interesting stories on Friday, including this article about John Cusack's film War Inc.

Derek Wall commented on the trials (and trial!) of infamous right wing Anglo-Irish blogger "Guido Fawkes" on the Socialist Unity Blog.

Celebrate England's Glorious Tradition (Of Rebellion!)

Today, April 23rd, is England's National Day - though sometimes you wouldn't know it and I am typing this before going to work - the refusal of the British establishment to grant a holiday on this day perhaps qualifying as a minor example of what the old English rebels used to call the "Norman Yoke". Appropriately for a country of many inflowing races, religious and secular currents and cultures the Saint celebrated was a foreigner and is shared with such places as Georgia, Russia, Portugal, Greece and Catalonia. (Incidentally, the Catalans, I believe, have the delightful tradition of giving their loved one a book and a rose on this day) The day is also the alleged birthday/death day? of England's most famous playwright William Shakespeare, though what can be said about this elusive figure with confidence is a matter of historical controversy.

It seems to me that the National Day of England offers an opportunity to celebrate some of the better political examples of English history and some of the heroes and fighters that offer lessons for today. Ironically many of these are what the current establishment would term rebels and malcontents, even "traitors" - but as a Republican and a seeker of freedom and equality claims of treachery to most of the gangsters and tyrants that have sat on the English and then British throne should probably be seen as a plus point, and at least understandable.

So, from the legendary Robin Hood, who stole from the rich to feed the poor, to John Ball, Jack Straw, and Wat Tyler and the revolting peasants who rose against the first Poll Tax, right through to the Poll Tax rebels of more recent history, there is an honourable history and romantic legends of revolt, rebellion and resistance.
Let us today remember the known and unrecorded fighters who strove for an England that was fairer, more just and more free. Let us remember:

The Peasants' Revolt

John Lilburne and the Levellers

Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers

The Western Rising

Tom Paine


William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft

Shelley

The Corresponding Societies

Jeremiah Brandreth and the Pentrich Rebels

The Chartists

The Co-operators

William Morris

The Suffragettes, particularly Sylvia Pankhurst

The Syndicalists

The squatters after the Second World War

The Miners' Strike

The Poll Tax Revolt

I'll be celebrating 'em all with a pint of English Ale or Porter and perhaps watching a multinational Mancunian team play a multinational Catalonian one!

Britain Today?

Another day slaving in part of the bureaucratic nightmares that are the number crunching, data-creating, target-chasing, semi-privatised, quango-fied torture instruments that were previously known as "public services". Life in Britain today, under a government that happily mixes nannying, patrician Fabianism with management psycho-babble and an almost messianic religious reverence for the "transformative power" of markets increasingly resembles the description of the "age of bureaucracy" in Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson's great comic masterpiece, The Illuminatus! Trilogy:

Appendix Gimmel : The Illuminati Theory of History

(The Fourth Stage)
BEAMTENHERRSCHAFT

This is the age of bureaucracy, and to live at this time is, as Proudhon said, "to have every operation, every transaction, every movement noted, registered, counted, rated, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, refused, authorized, endorsed, admonished, prevented, reformed, redressed, corrected....to be laid under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, exhausted, hoaxed, and robbed." The governing I Ching hexagram is 47, K'un, oppression or exhaustion, the dried up lake, with the usual reading of superior men oppressed by the inferior. This is the time when homo neophobe types most rigorously repress homo neophile types, and great heresy hunts and witch trials flourish. This correlates with the number 8, signifying the Last Judgement, because every citizen is to some extent a state functionary, and each is on trial before the jury of all. The traditional Chinese associations with this hexagram are sitting under a bare tree and wandering through an empty valley - signifying the ecological havoc wreaked by purely abstract minds working upon the organic web of nature.

The 16th Tarot trump, The Tower, describes this age. The Tower is struck by lightning and the inhabitants fall from the windows. (Cf. The Tower of Babel legend and our recent power failures.) The traditional interpretations of this card suggest pride, oppression and bankruptcy.

This correlates with Libra, the mentality which measures and balances all things on an artificial scale (Maya). Typical Libras who have manifested Beamtenherrschaft characteristics are Comte de Saint Simon, Justice John Marshall, Hans Geiger, Henry Wallace, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kenneth Galbraith, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., John Dewey, and Dr. Joyce Brothers.

In Beamtenherrschaft ages there is ceaseless activity, all planned in advance, begun at the scheduled second, carefully supervised, scrupulously recorded - but inevitably finished late and poorly done. The burden of omniscience on the ruling class becomes virtually intolerable, and most flee into some form of schizophrenia or fantasy. Great towers, pyramids, moon shots, and similar marvels are accomplished at enormous cost while the underpinnings of social solidarity crumble entirely. While blunders multiply, no responsible individual can ever be found, because all decisions are made by committees; anyone seeking redress of grievance wanders into endless corridors of paperwork with no more tangible result than in the Hunting of The Snark. Illuminati historians, of course, describe these ages as glowingly as Zweitracht epochs, for, although control is in the hands of homo neophobe types, there is at least a kind of regularity, order, and geometrical precision about everything, and the "messiness" of the barbaric Verwirrung ages and revolutionary Unordnung ages is absent.

Nevertheless, the burden of omniscience on the rulers steadily escalates, as we have indicated, and the burden of nescience on the servile class increasingly renders them unfit to serve (more and more are placed on the dole, shipped to "mental" hospitals, or recruited into whatever is the current analog of the gladiatorial games), so the Tower eventually falls.

(p752-3, Raven Edition, Robinson Publishing)

Survivors to return to TV

I have in the past referred to Terry Nation's memorable 1970s apocalyptic drama series Survivors as raising interesting questions and even playing a role in the growth of the green movement in Britain.

After much talk since the success of the new version of Doctor Who back in 2006, it seems that a new version of the drama is set to arrive on our screens. The new version is to be written by Adrian Hodges, responsible for bringing two of Philip Pullman's gothic dramas to life and the promising, but perhaps ultimately disappointing Primeval on ITV.

This follows the success of the CBS post-apocalyptic drama Jericho, set in small town America in the aftermath of a series of nuclear explosions in the USA. (N.B. - I have just had news that CBS have today again cancelled further episodes of Jericho)

The new Survivors has been discussed on a variety of blogs, forums and sites over the last 6 months or so. It is actually going to be a dramatisation of Terry Nation's novel rather than a remake of the three original series.

Here and here are fan sites of the original Survivors with some nice pics and links. Here is the TV Gold discussion forum for Survivors.

Finally, there is a blog on the progress of the new Survivors, which linked my own humble ruminations of last year.

Whilst we are on the subject of survival and resilience, perhaps it is not too much of a leap to link to the increasingly popular ideas of Transition Towns.

A Transition Initiative is a community that is unleashing its own latent collective genius to look Peak Oil and Climate Change squarely in the eye and to discover and implement ways to address this BIG question:

"for all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain
itself and thrive, how do we significantly increase resilience (to mitigate
the effects of Peak Oil) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (to
mitigate the effects of Climate Change)?"

The resulting coordinated range of projects across all these areas of life leads to a collectively designed energy descent pathway.

The community also recognises two crucial points:

* that we used immense amounts of creativity, ingenuity and adaptability on the way up the energy upslope, and that there's no reason for us not to do the same on the downslope
* if we collectively plan and act early enough there's every likelihood that we can create a way of living that's significantly more connected, more vibrant and more in touch with our environment than the oil-addicted treadmill that we find ourselves on today.

Food for thought....

Orwellian Nightmare Marches On

I have just finished reading Ken MacLeod's recent novel The Execution Channel, which has just come out in paperback in the UK. An exciting, intriguing and terrifying experience - the terrifying element being in recognising how many elements of his dystopian near-future vision are already in place. (His dystopian near-future is linked to an amusingly re-envisioned present and recent past) As ever, Ken's book has lots of fun lefty and other political references and in-jokes, but awareness of these should not be a necessity for enjoying and appreciating his work.
Here is part of the publisher's blurb -

It's after 9/11. After the bombing. After the Iraq war. After 7/7. After the Iran war. After the nukes. After the flu. After the Straits. After Rosyth. In a world just down the road from our own, on-line bloggers vie with old-line political operatives and new-style police to determine just where reality lies.

James Travis is a British patriot and a French spy. On the day the Big One hits, Travis and his daughter must strive to make sense of the nuclear bombing of Scotland and the political repercussions of a series of terrorist attacks. With the information war in full swing, the only truth they have is what they're able to see with their own eyes. They know that everything else is--or may be--a lie.

Ken has interesting things to say about such varied topics as extraordinary rendition, conspiracy theorists, blogging, spooks, survival and the human psyche under extreme stress. The renditions and torture/interrogations are imagined in a way that communicates the human reality of such things in a more direct and impressive way than cold journalistic accounts. There is little doubt of the warnings Ken MacLeod is giving us about where we are heading.

So today's news management (for that is all we can call it) around the "National Security" plans seemed particularly blatant to me. Listing risks without putting them in context or suggesting how they might be reduced (rather than just "managed") seems a good way of cranking up fear and (they hope) dependency. What British Governments and establishments never say, but are of course aware of is that the biggest risk to their security would of course come from a population that began to see them as a major part of the problem and sought ways in which they might be removed.....

Weekly Links - 09/03/08

Firstly, away from politics for a while, and as a Yorkshire born lad myself, may I say Glory, Glory Barnsley FC! who yesterday repeated their FA Cup "giant killing" of Liverpool by defeating the "mighty" (ho-ho)Chelsea. Barnsley's success and the promotion chasing efforts of Doncaster Rovers in League One give some much needed excitement to football in South Yorkshire, away from the trials of the two Sheffield Teams. Come on Barnsley and Donny!

Onto the blogs, and a football link there to start too - Anton at Enemies of Reason Blog has a piece on the latest despicable behaviour of the Express newspaper - this time in relation to Paul Gascoigne and his troubles.

Elsewhere, Phil from A Very Public Sociologist blog reports the death of holocaust survivor and veteran anti-fascist Leon Greenman.

Over at the Cedar Lounge Revolution there are some interesting thoughts on the return to print of the anti-postmodernist hoaxer Sokal.

Louise reports on the International Women's Day events in London this weekend over at the Socialist Unity Blog.

Septic Isle reviews the latest George Romero film, Diary of the Dead at Obsolete.

Liam MacUaid this week publishes an account of the situation with the Green Party in the USA as regards the upcoming elections, written by New York State Green Party Member Steffie Brooks.

Jack Ray has interesting reflections this week on the meaning of democracy and self determination in a world of globalised capitalism.

The GPTU blog has Derek Wall's Green Party statement on the Shelter dispute.

Green From Below this week has Guy Debord's Situationist Theses on Traffic.

Jim at Daily (Maybe) reports on the call from Green MEP Caroline Lucas for progressive opposition to the Lisbon Treaty. He also has a piece on the Bush regime and torture, and some thoughts on death. A cheery note to end on this week!

Quote of the day

"We shall choose Ithaca, the faithful land, frugal and audacious thought, lucid action, the generosity of the man who understands. In the light, the earth, the earth remains our first and last love. Our brothers are breathing under the same sky; justice is a living thing. Now is born that strange joy which helps one live and die, and which we shall never again renounce to a later time. On the sorrowing earth it is the unresting thorn, the bitter food, the harsh wind off the sea, the ancient dawn forever renewed.

With this joy, through long struggle, we shall remake the soul of our time, and a Europe which will exclude nothing. Not even that phantom Nietzsche who, for twelve years after his downfall, was continually invoked by the West as the ruined image of its loftiest knowledge and its nihilism; nor the prophet of justice without mercy who rests, by mistake, in the unbelievers' plot at Highgate Cemetery; nor the deified mummy of the man of action in his glass coffin; nor any part of what the intelligence and energy of Europe have ceaselessly furnished to the pride of a contemptible period. All may indeed live again, side by side with the martyrs of 1905, but on condition that they shall understand how they correct one another, and that a limit, under the sun, shall curb them all. Each tells the other that he is not God; this is the end of romanticism.

At this moment, when each of us must fit an arrow to his bow and enter the lists anew, to reconquer, within history and in spite of it, that which he owns already, the thin yield of his fields, the brief love of this earth, at this moment when at last a man is born, it is time to forsake our age and its adolescent rages. The bow bends; the wood complains. At the moment of supreme tension, there will leap into flight an unswerving arrow, a shaft that is inflexible and free."

Albert Camus, The Rebel