Future Legend is back! Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy!

Midsummer’s day saw the first meeting of the All-London Communal Council. Co-operation had built over the months, creating a de facto leadership of various communes, territorial, work and militia based. The communards eventually did the decent thing and gave this working body a name, the Provisional Permanent Council. Many scoffed at the slightly pompous title, but all responded to its call for elections to the first meeting.

The first delegates assembly was so well attended it had to be moved at six hours notice, from Euston Friends Meeting House to, eventually, the old Brixton Academy. It stayed there in daily evening session for the next three months.

----

At the time I thought delegation to the city commune was, like, the worst thing ever. It had to be done, but it wasn’t any fun. People, whingers, liked to claim we packed out meetings. We came to meetings, in large numbers, we brought people… supporters; we were disciplined but we never had a raw majority.

We always had to win the argument and we often did. But it had to be done over and over, every night. Any vote we won, any important vote would usually be challenged at least once. There’d be a revote; we’d win by more or less of a margin. Someone, some pissy little group on the right of the hall would threaten to walk out.

Oh, gosh, this one time… The anarchists, bless ‘em, talked up a lot but always voted with the Restoration. They would go on and on, night after night about consensus.

Anyway, this one meeting, the first meeting in fact, I was at was all about re-electing the permanent council, you know, the one that would meet in the day. It was decided it had to be formally re-elected no less once a month or whenever one of its proposals lost by two-thirds margin. Some restoration groups wanted a vote of no confidence after a straight defeat. The anarchists… consensus.

The thing was elected by proportion, different groups put up slates with order of preference; some wanted to stand as individuals, they mostly died on their arse. There was a little debate, a few people proposed each slate, about a dozen or so. It was a bit noisy and leery but nothing terrible. The chair of the meeting explained the voting process.

There was a recess. People put their forms in one of three ballot boxes. We had argued for a hand vote (we always have), but the provisional council decided not.

There was another session after that, I think I remember about relations with other towns and communes and such. The votes were counted and the results were announced halfway through the second session… Root and Branch won two fifths of the seats on the permanent council. Everyone was surprised. I know I was.

But then it kicked off. The anarchists, backed by some of the Restoration groups, demanded to know many R ‘n’ B members there were in the meeting. Who’s checking the credentials? This meeting has been rigged! There was such a ruckus. The meeting couldn’t go on. Meeting adjourned. We had a little caucus, which pissed the anarchists off even more. One of them demanded the rest of the meeting be able to listen in, which was a bit… funny.

We agreed to have everyone’s credentials checked. Then there was a revote, after which our slate now got 55% of the vote. So the anarchists walked out (or so we thought) all twenty of them. Their apparent leader demanded that it their walk out be noted in the records. Some of the Constitutionals made bad noise, threatened to go as well but in the end they stayed put.

So, after all that, the rest of the session was a bit weird. Everyone kind of rushed what they were saying, not disagreeing much. Our surprise new council members, new chair, new convenor, were getting ready to take over for the final session. It was getting on for half ten by this point. There was just this vote to get done on two commissions (which I remember thinking could have just been made composite).

The chair asked the meeting if it wanted a secret ballot or hand count. I’d like to think people were won to a hand vote by that stage but they might have just been tired. The consensus, there’s that word, was for a hand count. Then this guy right up on the top shelf, jumps up very anxious looking, and starts going on about point of order (it wasn’t a point of order).

As a member of the anarchist delegation he wanted to point out that majority voting is a divisive method and, for the benefit of the meeting, each decision should be taken majority then minority.

I think a fair amount of the meeting turned round to this guy and went “haven’t you walked out already?”

So began a long tradition of long nights. It was a rough and ready get up. Most meetings were contested, noisy things, but the job got done. That’s life, I suppose.

Actually existing news

The Cern Hadron Collider is coming back online (at half power) after a year of repairs. It is an exciting prospect. Having now read a little about fizzics 'n' maffs it strikes me the attempts to reconcile General Relativity and Quantum Theory border on theological speculation, very frustrating stuff.

The PC Brains award goes to members of Devon and Cornwall police who, to illustrate the dangers of unsecured homes... burgled several student homes, leaving people's possessions outside in swag bags with little notes of advice. The police claim:

"Everyone the officers spoke to was very grateful for the advice they received, and we have not received a single complaint from the householders".

If that's the case students are even bigger morons than I suspected.

Also in the news, Alan Johnson is rushing through legislation to ban alcohol, which led to over 9,000 deaths last year... sorry, my mistake, I meant mephedrone. Such is life. Hey, let's have a ban on war, that's a bit deadly too.

Just a band

Last night I was washing up to the sound of BBC 6 Music. The DJ played an hour of music based on the bands namechecked on Thou Shalt Always Kill. It was the best hour's radio I can remember. Despite Mark Thompson's wonky rationalisation you will not find any such music on any other radio station.

BBC 6 Music should stay on the air.

Academics say: up the cabin crews!

Macho Walsh wants to break the union:

As academics in the field of employment relations our expertise includes the analysis of the causes, process and outcomes of industrial disputes and particularly the dynamics of strike action. Given the near certainty of further strikes (Follow-up strike will go ahead says union, March 22nd), it is clear to us that the actions of the chief executive of British Airways, notwithstanding his protestations to the contrary, are explicable only by the desire to break the union which represents the cabin crew. What other possible interpretation can there be for Willie Walsh rejecting Unite's acceptance of BA's previous offer or indeed of his marshalling of resources, including those of bitter industry rival Ryanair, to undermine the action of his staff? Walsh and now Prime Minister Brown have made the error of underestimating the deep seated and justifiable anger of a loyal and dedicated workforce, whose continued trust and goodwill is a vital ingredient of customer care.

Follow the link for the rest of the letter. It is signed by 91 industrial realtions academics by my count.

News in Briefs

Here we go:

Charlotte Church: 'I've just gotta sing'... It's not compulsory, you know?

Brian May: My battle for Welsh Badgers. "The planned cull of thousands of Welsh badgers to curb bovine TB is unscientific and inhumane – so I decided to help fight it..." Stick it to the man... now, about that Sun City gig...

British Airways management have hired crews from other firms, flown empty planes and dressed up as cabin crew to give the impression of business as usual during the current strike... but they're still strapped for cash and anyone who says they're not is a fool or a communist (or, perhaps, telling the truth).

And finally, people still like John Lennon.

More Bolton

In response to the footage of police officers ploughing through an 89-year-old man on the Bolton demo the GMP have released this film.

Yes, they couldn't get any clearer footage, despite surrounding the place with cameras and coppers... and yes the reason they knocked the old man down was because some people allegedly had hold of some barriers. It all makes sense now. Apparently this film "showed some protestors 'within the UAF site' attempting to break through police barriers". Unfortunately for the police there's some clearer images out there of the incident in question:



The police were clearly driving people onto the barriers, which corresponds to eyewitness reports that they were using flying wedges in order to snatch members of the crowd.

Thoughts on Bolton

Thoughts on Bolton must turn to Dudley. The EDL's momentum will be broken but we haven't clearly reached that point yet. Let's get to Dudley in big numbers. Let's also not forget we face an uphill battle.

The establishment as one is bent on fostering violent street racism in Britain. Once the story of the killing of Ian Tomlinson reached the Guardian last April the Metropolitan Police's tactics fell apart in front of everyone's eyes (triggering the Guardian's liberty campaign in the process). The Guardian will not do the same here. On the back of the scuzzy red baiting in the Observer, the Graun produced a standard churnalist piece on the demo, paraphrasing the police's handout without balance.

This is the best mainstream paper, you understand?

Meanwhile, judging by the internet, which I know is hardly representative, the rest of the identifiable left is insane. Either they refuse to see the point (i.e. try to quibble over whether the BNP is a fascist party or a party with a fascist past, whatever that means) or they're spending precious time working up a froth about this tactic or that tactic, he said she said.

There is a comment piece on CIF today from Ian Austin that repeats the common canard (at least on the internet) that demos are counter posed to door knocking. Why should we care? Who is Ian Austin? He is the Labour MP for Dudley. Oh dear. As a side note, when he says "we must trust in basic British decency to beat the racist BNP..." I wonder what he thinks the Labour Party means?

The final thought, for now, is on the attempts by the police to decapitate UAF. It is of credit to everyone on the demo that it didn't fall apart after the chief organisers were arrested. The trouble is when you hear that the Joint Secretary of Manchester UAF has apparently been banned from attending UAF meetings as part of her bail terms, we know this problem is not going away. Unite Against Fascism is not a hive mind. It cannot withstand endless trumped up arrests.

This is not the place to discuss how we better protect our leadership, but we should discuss it.

They did not pass

Despite the best efforts of the tender, loving Greater Manchester Police the English 'Defence' League did not get control of Bolton's Town Square. My particular group arrived about an hour late (we had a bus driver who managed to programme Boston into his Sat Nav). Apologies to all who were on the rough end of the police. We were due to help at the end of the square where the police rioted.

So we stuck to the other end of the square with Scottish comrades and the other latecomers. There was roughly 3-400 people at our end of the demo. The police sized us up a few times but made no effort to break us up. The idea was to stop members of the EDL coming round the back to surround the main demo. It's moot whether they were going to try, although we did see a few of them drop by for a look.

What did work was we met numerous locals, mostly Asian lads, but also women, African-Carribean and White kids as well. That was the crowning glory of the day (that and the march after the bulk of the demo was let out of the square), we won the lion share of visible local support.

The police were a disgrace. You brace yourself for this every time, but sometimes you have to be shocked. The politically motivated arrest of Weyman Bennett was the biggest insult, that and the slavish reaction of most of the media, who felt obliged to act as a mouthpiece for the GMP. For a sharp analysis of the media's reaction see here.

Anybody in doubt, check this out. This is footage of the police knocking over an 89-year-old veteran. It's just one example:

No Pasaran

No to the English Defence League in Bolton!

National demonstration

EDL racists will try to hold an anti-Muslim march and rally in Bolton on Saturday 20 March. But thousands of anti-racists are set to demonstrate against them. The EDL are violent racist hooligans with links to the Nazi BNP. They shall not pass!

The UAF demo meets at 11am in Bolton's Victoria Square

Coaches to Bolton leave from: Birmingham, Blackpool, Bradford, Bridgend, Brighton, Bristol, Burnley, Camden, Coventry, Derby & Chesterfield, Doncaster, Dudley, Ealing & Harrow, Edinburgh, Essex, Finsbury Park, Glasgow, Hackney & Waltham Forest, Huddersfield, Kent, King's College London, King's Cross, Kingston University, Lancaster, Leicester, Leeds, Lewisham & Lambeth, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield, Shrewsbury, Stoke-on-Trent, Telford, Tower Hamlets & Stratford, Wolverhampton.

Stuck inside the lexicon with the roget's thesaurus blues again

There's a book for everything in this world... Did I say everything? I meant almost everything. There's a a few titles yet to grace the British Library:

John Terry's A to W Guide to Good Loving
Bombs 'R' Us - a people's history of British Aerospace
Coping With Chronic Stupidity
Furry Armageddon: String Theory and the Coming of the Cosmic Kitten
101 Uses for John Prescott
Where's Nick Cohen? (note: over there, in the pub)
Peanuts - a systems theory approach
The 1990s and Why We're Never Going Back
Honk If You're Itchy
Fed Up with Lindsey Lohan

A guest post!

A rare thing indeed. You've heard of the socialist magician...? You have? Get out more, dude. Anyway, you've heard of him so brace yourself for Comrade Petulengro, the world's first socialist astrologer, dispensing top quality advice free every week or until we get bored (which will probably happen quite soon):

Aries - This week you will notice a couple of rogue hairs growing on top of your left arm... well spotted.

Taurus - Stop headbutting people at work, you know you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, and you can catch even more with flypaper. If you've recently borrowed some money from a friend pay it back, they might turn out to be Nick Clegg.

Gummi Bear - Yours is a very gelatinous sign, but this week you will need extra starch. Make sure you have enough children or pets to drive a sleigh as your car is likely to break down on Thursday.

Zoidberg - At 11.33am on Friday you will go into a room but forget why you're there.

Solero - GUARD YOUR EARS! You've only got two. Dancing will be your prerogative this week and you don't want to be falling down in front of a potential new boyfriend or girlfriend.

Soup Spoon - Your dog has no nose. How does it smell, you might ask? It doesn't. It has no nose. Fix it, Soup Spoon!

Tractor Beam - You are mostly comprised of energetic photons. As such this week will happen next week and onward until you reach a factor of 1,000 or finally have a break. Slow down, take a week, talk to a pizza.

Nunchuks - Whoa there, hot stuff, is that a rash? Don't ignore it. You need some cream, urgently. On the plus side this week ou will have infallible luck with games of chance. If ever you were planning to go on Deal or No Deal now's the time.

Tescos - This week will be like any other week. That's the service industry for you. You could plot armageddon but, frankly, you'd be better off reading a book.

Coriander - Someone's got eyes for you. You should have eyes already though. If you do, beware talking dogs bearing gifts. You have been warned.

Black, Cracked Pepper and Sea Salt - Oh Canada, we stand on cars and freeze.

Fishsticks - You're on the ground floor of a building. You get into a lift with three other people. You go up one floor, two people get on one person gets off. You go up another floor, two people get on, three people get off. Next floor, seven people get on, five people get off. The floor after that, two people get on one person gets off. The floor after that, nine people get on, four people get off... the question is, what floor are you on?

Get with it, Granddad... internet’s, like, the new Lenin in the 21st century.

Thinking about literature, the novel seems permanently foundered, like an aeroplane sunk in a dune. The invention of recorded sound, moving images and synchronisation did most to end the cultural dominance of the novel (more than the alleged collapse of grand narratives). It’s difficult to imagine a 21st century Scandal of Ulysses.

However, despite the physical difficulty of prolonged intense interaction with a flat glowing screen (the internet demands much more attention than the TV), the internet has the potential to revive literature.

At various points in the 20th century popular music, film and fashion took over as the driving force of culture. These are fundamentally different forms to literature. Books or newspapers and magazines may be mass-produced, but they are individually consumed. Pop music, on the other hand, is mass consumed in the form of the concert or nightclub. Collectively experienced art forms incline toward iconography, mass fantasy: very difficult qualities for literature to generate.

Despite various crises of confidence there is still much vitality in these art forms (latest trends: solo women singers, 3D cinema and kids dressing like Molly Ringwald or Axl Rose). When people worry about the decline of popular culture they are wondering whether it has a revolutionary edge anymore. It might be strange to us but it was something taken for granted by Baby-Boomers.

To pre-war culture the notion of free, improvised dance between a mixed-sex, mixed-race audience was a hellish notion to be repressed. To us it’s just normal. The fact that at the height of his fame Ray Charles found his concerts frequently shut down or attacked by police because of the objectionable dancing is plain weird. By this estimation we have to conclude modern popular culture is conservative (in a non-pejorative sense).

If modern culture, non-linear, cool and participatory were still revolutionary then the internet would be reactionary. The internet may be mass-produced or it may be a successful cottage industry. This is what frustrates journalists about bloggers and facebook groups. The fact is people don’t crowd around computer terminals. The internet is consumed individually. What you are usually given through the internet is pre-determined content, with little room for participation.

But what then would the internet be a reaction against?

Much cutting edge post-war culture and philosophy advocated freedom of human interaction from military/industrial strictures, e.g. from marriage to co-habitation or homosexuality, prohibition to recreational drug use, from the waltz to the twist, representative to abstract and conceptual art, music sheets to jamming and sampling; all clearly progressive ideas.

We also know how much of this movement was synthesised into Post Modernism, the ultimate arid anti-philosophy, expressed politically as There Is No Alternative. Everybody is entitled to his or her opinion (an allegedly liberal stance that today compels outwardly sensible people to defend modern fascism) but nobody is entitled to put their opinion into effect, that would be oppressive, especially if said person wanted to make the world a better place.

In a world of philosophical chaos governed by Lord of Easy-Going Scepticism, in particular where news and comment amounts to churnalism and licensed ignorance; until the internet is completely enclosed, the urge to sit and read (and write) could well be the most revolutionary thing going.

Even more legend

The train ride, oh yes, that was something. This one time I was delegated, as they say, to escort a special edition of the Root and Branch paper.

Trains were something special. There weren’t any planes. Trucks, no, and there wasn’t enough electricity for the high speed trains to run, but there were quite a few diesels still running. So steam made a comeback. Who'd’ve thought?

The countryside, the provinces were a wild place. Trains got hijacked or derailed all the time. In the old days you’d get all angry if a train was ten minutes late, or whatever. But, you had to be pleased if you arrived in one piece on the same day you left.

Anyway, we had important cargo to protect; two passenger carriages (engineers, some delegates, you know, political people… I think there was one prisoner on board too). There two fresh water tanks, a consignment of scrap metal, spare parts and machine tools, 6000 boxes of rifle ammo and the first edition of The People’s Standard (corny title, I know). It was only a four pager but it was the first national newspaper, and it was ours.

We had to take this all up the old East Coast line, from St Pancras to Edinburgh. It was a regular bi-weekly delivery. I was part of third string crew. We all had jobs elsewhere in the commune.

At the time I was working half the week stacking and inventory in this warehouse, the other half in a local primary school teaching maths. Most of my weeknights I was a union delegate to the central communal and a fair few weekends training with the militia.

Sorry, I went off a bit there. The first crew were good guys, old RMT. There were loads of stories, I suppose some of them were true, about how they held the line against all comers. East Anglia, that bit of, you know, the Midlands was tough, with bandits, endless sabotage.

They were off sick. London had another bout of flu going round. There was a horrible panic, as it seemed the virus had mutated. One of the drivers fell ill, so they were all quarantined. The next lot, their replacements disappeared somewhere after Peterborough. They were expected in Leicester but weren’t heard from for nearly three days.

A burned out set of carriages was eventually found. Everything was gone and no bodies nearby. Some reckoned it was them who stole everything, gutted the train and ran off. Where to though?

Off we were going. We had an old tube driver taking us. He didn’t have any relief driver, so we had to take it extra slow. It was to be a two-day trip.

It was two guards per carriage. Me and this guy Waheed, a young lad but a regular militia from the North London commune (we were both R’n’B). We had what become standard issue militia weapons, rife, pistol, 50 rounds of ammo each, two grenades, a hunting knife… I tell you, I still can’t get over how this stuff rolls off the tongue. It’s so easy. Waheed, I remember, loved his pistol. He kept spinning it round in his hand, flipping the clip in and out, and taking pretend pot-shots at the passing scenery (he was only a lad, must have been eighteen or so, but he had loads of war stories). I kept telling him off. He’d laugh to himself and shuffle off for a bit, then he’d forget himself and start doing it all over again. I gave up in the end. It was a long journey.

There must have been a weapons factory started up. I remember it was a training event. This team leader, ex-soldier, gave us these new weapons. He said they were simple but effective, so better for us to learn on (they were a bit like that, the old soldiers). I mean, they were good. Oh, yes, we also had this machine gun; I think it was new too. It looked like one of those old World War One machine guns; huge barrels. It was kept up the front, just in case.

I felt, I think we all felt prepared going out there. So when there was a break in the line deep in the countryside, somewhere after Peterborough we were rightly on edge. The driver spotted this pile he said about a mile to half a mile off. Luckily we stopped in time. It was a solid stash of, like, broken concrete and bits of heavy metal, sheets and stuff. It was quite a substantial pile, but the rails didn’t seem to be damaged, so we could clear it and get on our way in an hour or so.

But then we could see these people bowling up to us. We were in open fields, up on a ten-foot embankment, quite an inviting target when you think about it. We warned them not to get any closer; I could see them about a hundred or so yards away. One guy, the team leader I think, fired a warning shot, but they just kept coming. We all went into battle mode, took cover or got down low. Then one of them shouted ‘eggs, we’ve got eggs’.

So these yokel bastards were hawkers. They’d blocked the line so they could sell us stuff. Mind you, they had quite a fresh range. They had plenty of eggs. I saw plucked chickens and ducks. They had white bread (I felt a loaf, it was slightly warm), tomatoes, and these sugar biscuit things. There was a dozen of them, all had painted faces, in various colours and were wearing this woven, multi-coloured poncho getup, which occurred to me later was a tribal outfit (the team leader and the driver were both offered a poncho).

They were happy to see us, glad for the custom. I think we were all a bit disarmed, so to speak, didn’t know what to expect anymore. Some of us tried to buy but, what do you know, we didn’t have money, by which they meant old pounds. We were traitor scum, violent usurpers who’d surely be hanged for treason (especially Waheed, where was he from, no, where was he really from?). Our money wasn’t worth the recycled toilet paper it was printed on.

Things were getting tense again. A thought occurred, were they a trap, a decoy of some sort, but no one else was around.

It turned out Waheed had some old five-pound notes on him, quite a stash actually, so he bought up something from each of the hawkers, and they left, seemingly happy. He explained to me later some of the North London communes had contacts with villages in Hertfordshire. The villages were contested. They communes sometimes paid them in pound notes, fives and tens, which they’d use as tribute if ever the Bishop’s men made a raid. If ever the militia travelled they took a wad of notes, just in case. I had a look at one of them. It was a fairly simple forgery by old standards.

We got on our way. The train made stops in these towns up the East Midlands. The journey was fairly uneventful. Everywhere we went the people who met us wore facemasks. They’d heard about the outbreak in London. Most of the ammo in Sheffield, where we picked up a load of freshly rolled steel. That took several hours. By nightfall we reached Leeds, where we stopped over. The train was refuelled and we spent the night in a recovered hotel, which doubled as the local party HQ.

The following day we stopped off in York, Newcastle and Berwick before heading on to Edinburgh. The bulk of the passengers were delegates to the Scottish assembly. Of course Scotland had declared itself independent and tried to shut its borders. I got speaking to one of the delegates. They were diplomats (of a kind, the guy I spoke to was a mechanic from Lambeth, the delegation included a shepherd, a teacher, an allotment farmer, several wombles… these weren’t professional diplomats) sent to negotiate permanent relations and an open border and also just… find out what on earth was going on, very little information ever came down from Scotland.

But we were turned back at the border, men in masks again. The poor driver had to reverse up about 50 miles of track to the next siding where he could turn round and couple to the other end.

Good morning, fellow violent left-wing activists

Let's see how many times Tony Thompson, Grauniad journalist can conjoin the words "violent" and "left-wing" (and drop in some references to heavy drinking).

If "lonely and violent world of the Yard's elite undercover unit" isn't intended as a don't-actively-oppose-the-BNP-or-EDL article (i.e. don't go to Bolton next Saturday), I'd be very surprised. However, look beyond the typical Guardian sniffiness about "hate-filled activists" its a useful reminder about the dynamic of infiltration.

The police officer's testimony could have come straight from Victor Serge's excellent pamphlet What Everyone Should Know About State Repression.

"I never had any respite when I was back at home. I simply couldn't relax," said Officer A. "The respite for me was being back in my undercover flat because that was where I was supposed to be. Even if my targets were not there, I felt more at ease. I had a really good time with my targets and enjoyed their company enormously – there was a genuine bond. But I was never under any illusion about what I was there to do. They were not truly my friends. The friendship would last only up until the point when they found out what I really was. I was under no illusion about what would happen to me if they did."

What would have happened? What would his erstwhile friends have done, called the police? That aside the statement shows the fundamental weakness of provocation, especially provocation from the outside (where an agent assumes a completely new identity). If you have a cause that is worthwhile and you pursue it in an intelligent, active way you will recruit many genuine people, thus making it harder for provocateurs to get to the heart of the movement and cause damage. The higher the level of politics the harder it is for the agent to pass themselves off.

In between the pleading and justification (and red-baiting) there's some stuff of note. Example:

"When your target is a man, it is just a matter of becoming his best friend. If your target is a woman, that becomes impossible. SDS officers would get together for regular meetings and you always knew if something was going on. If someone started talking about getting good information from a female target, we all knew there was only one way that could have happened. They had been sleeping with them." He himself had slept with two members of his target group. Although not officially sanctioned, such activity among SDS officers – both male and female – was tacitly accepted and in many cases was vital in maintaining an undercover role. "You can't be in that world full-time for five years and never have a girlfriend or boyfriend. People would start to ask questions," said Officer A.

I'm sorry to be grim but in what sense is that not rape? The article ends with:

"Looking back, I should have done something. I should have dealt with this 11 years ago. I am coming forward to get closure for the things I did back then. By the end I'd spent four years fighting the police. When I came back to Special Branch I had to suppress who I was. I was no longer the same person. I hated the job and everything about it."

Officer A was later diagnosed as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. He sued the Met and received an out-of-court settlement. The Metropolitan police, meanwhile, has refused to comment on any matters connected to the SDS.

Serves him right is about as polite as you can get. Agents are one notch above nazis; vile, vile people.

Something completely else

Karl Heinz Stockhausen: Gesang der Junglinge. Apparently it was a key inspiration behind Revolution 9.



Yup, you can't get it out of your head, can you?

Roobin's extra: here's something completele else else: very, very funny Beatle audio:

World of News

Yes, it's all the news you can handle. Karl Rove, once credited with being George W Bush's organ grinder, is proud of water torture.

A senior adviser to former US President George W Bush has defended tough interrogation techniques, saying their use helped prevent terrorist attacks.

In a BBC interview, Karl Rove... said he "was proud we used techniques that broke the will of these terrorists".

Here's me taking pride in having a 2:1 in English Literature, more fool me. It's funny all this stuff that keeps the world safe. Lisa Simpson might point out that this rock keeps away tigers. Lisa, I want to buy your rock.

Elsewhere, the British establishment has come down in favour of racism and racists... again.

Mr Maurice Smith, [author of the government report] said a ban on BNP members in schools would be "taking a very large sledgehammer to crack a minuscule nut".

"I do not believe that barring teachers or other members of the wider school workforce from membership of legitimate organisations which may promote racism is necessary at present," he said.

Such a move would be a "profound political act", he said, and there was no consensus on the issue.

He accidentally sums the anti-fascist case well "legitimate organisations which may [may? definitely!] promote racism". The point of the no platform policy is not to deny people with fascist views exist, but to deny them legitimacy. The British ruling class (like its brothers and sisters abroad) knows its sitting on dynamite. Its long-term estimate is that breeding and legitimising racism will defuse any class insurgency. But they are the sorcerer's apprentice, summoning up dark forces, such as the EDL, invited to parade through Central London with heavy police protection.

Only we can drive the spirit of fascism back down below. Be here. No passaran.

The Bundeswehr is waging a war against the Afghan population

Speech in the Bundestag, 25th sitting, Friday, 26 February 2010
Christine Buchholz (The Left Party):

Mr President. Ladies and gentlemen. The Federal Government today wants to send even more troops to Afghanistan, ostensibly to maintain security there. What they mean by that, however, is providing military backing for the Karzai government. I visited Afghanistan four weeks ago with my parliamentary-group colleague Jan van Aken. In every discussion we held with Afghan men and women, we sensed their condemnation of the government. This is because it is corrupt, because it includes the warlords from past wars, and because there have been no significant improvements in the lives of the population.

(Applause from Members of the Left Party)

Without the support of the NATO states, this government would be nothing.
(Applause from the Left Party)

The Federal Government says it wants to protect the population. ISAF Commander Stanley McChrystal has called for civilian casualties to be avoided. But the insurgency against the Karzai government and the foreign troops enjoys widespread support among the Afghan population. The insurgents you are fighting are part of the population. The insurgents are civilians too. A civilian looks like a potential insurgent in the eyes of the soldiers.

(Dr Dagmar Enkelmann (The Left Party): That’s right!)

This means that military counterinsurgency and the protection of the population are irreconcilable aims.

(Applause from the Left Party)

The head of the Stability Division at ISAF headquarters told us that counterinsurgency required a strong civilian component. He referred to McChrystal’s call for 40 per cent of ISAF’s work to consist of reconstruction measures. But regardless of whether the civilian component is 20, 40 or 60 per cent: as long as civilian aid is subordinate to military counterinsurgency, it will never be able to improve the Afghans’ living conditions.

(Applause from the Left Party)

The war will continue. More people will be killed. UN figures show that last year 2140 unarmed victims died, including 346 children, and the numbers are rising. The airstrike against the tankers near Kunduz on 4 September will, unfortunately, not be the last of its kind if you decide to issue a new mandate today. It reflects poorly on you that you are not prepared to acknowledge this reality.

(Applause from the Left Party)

In Afghanistan, we met with victims of the airstrike of 4 September. That was only right and proper, in our view, because we wanted to know what impact the airstrike has had on them and their lives.

Take Noor Djan, 26 years old. He has three children, his wife is heavily pregnant, and they have no money. Until a few days before the airstrike, he worked in a plastics factory in Iran, because he couldn’t earn enough money in Afghanistan. The explosion tore off his right arm. The hospital reattached it, but he lost the hand and he cannot use the arm. He is in constant pain, unable to sleep, and he can no longer provide for his family. He told us: every day, I wish I had been killed. – What do you suppose Noor Djan thinks when you say you want to improve his security?
Ninety-one women were left widows by the attack. Most of them are now dependent on charity. So is Leila. Both of her young sons were killed. One used to look after the field, the other looked after the cow. Now she has to find a way of providing for her young daughters. What do you suppose these women think when it is argued here that the intention is to help the women in Afghanistan?

Bulbul was unable to stop her three young grandchildren from running to the river with the others. She sat opposite me with tears in her eyes and said that, unlike many others, she at least received her grandchildren’s remains and was able to bury them.

Meeting with the bereaved made clear to me that, whether you want to accept it or not, Germany is involved in a war against the ordinary people of Afghanistan.

(Applause from the Left Party)

It is in particular my colleagues from the SPD and the Greens that I am addressing when I say: when you take your decision on the new mandate, bear in mind that however you justify the war, you are today deciding on life and death.

(Applause from the Left Party – the Members of the Left Party parliamentary group hold up banners)

Extra Legend

Money crept up on us. The word started cropping up. People were frightened by it. It’s easy to see now, but you used to think of money as something almost magical, it moved around, it did… things, but you could never understand it. It was like god to the Catholics. I suppose bankers must have been the priests.

Anyway, the point is there was no money, practically. Money means wealth. As everything had ground to a halt there was no wealth being generated. People went out, I went out every day to find things. Someone would have a bit of food, you might have, I don’t know, some boots or candles or some light bulbs. You’d meet and you’d swap.

When people got down to making things or doing stuff it got a bit more complicated. Say you had a team of Wombles like the one I was in (am still in). We’d go to, say, the printers. We’d have X amount of paper to recycle for them to use. We might want more equipment, hammers, soldering irons, fresh tires or petrol, or we might want personal items, stuff for consumption, food, water, clothes or medicine.

The point is we couldn’t simply barter with a printing plant. The communes started co-ordinating trade with these things called promissory notes. Basically they were little IOUs stamped with the seal of the local commune. So we’d go to, say, the print plant on the Isle of Dogs with… X amount of paper for recycling and they’d give us a promissory note entitling us to an agreed amount of, say, medicine from the Tower Hamlets commune stores (if that’s what we were asked to get).

You can see the problem there right away. Even with the best of intentions, how did we know we were swapping like for like? In time these notes had to act as a form of money. Once things became All-London, so to speak, this became one of the big problems. Then, what did you do with the rest of the country… trade-wise?

What were we going to base our money on? Some suggested sand, basically pulverised rubble. But then there was so much of it you could just go out and grind yourself some money. Some said we should use copper. There was loads of wreckage about, miles and miles of copper wire. But there was never enough to kind of store. It was the opposite problem. I mean, we were melting down one and two pence coins to make electrical wires… there was that little about.

There were no copper mines. There were coalmines. I was surprised, the places we heard of reopening. Pretty soon there was coal on the way back from Wales and Yorkshire. Back in the summer there was a militia expedition down to Kent. It was useful, two birds with one stone. Not only did we manage to secure the countryside for growing we were also able to restart two Kentish mines.

The national assembly eventually decided to issue money based on coal stocks. It’s not a perfect system. There’s never been an estimate of what’s used out there. I’d guess the majority of individual transactions are still done by bartering. Still all the big projects, so to speak, are funded with coal money.

There’s still this argument that we should do away with money. We really should, in the long term. You’d be a fool not to see the danger. No one, like, owns the means of making money, but even so some get paid more than others. If you’ve got skills, if you’re, say, a doctor, or if you’re doing a difficult dangerous job like mining, you get paid more. We’ve had to introduce a basic income tax to sort of even it out, but there are plenty of ways round paying.

Every sneaky fucker’s trying to print their own money, or claiming they’ve got bigger coal stocks than they actually have. All the communes that don’t have access to the mines secretly suspect the ones that do. There’s panic whenever a seam collapses anywhere.

There’s been this counter suggestion that we issue money based on corn. It’s not a bad idea. Our main surpluses are in food and water, i.e. they’re the things we can distribute now without resorting to some kind of market. Roll on the Thames tidal barrage I say.

“Philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it"...

... Is the snappiest version of Marx’s eleventh thesis on Feuerbach. On a 101 level it is an anti-philosophical statement and, on that level, it’s not a totally bad thing. One of the reasons why I’m a member of the SWP is it is big enough to define itself by the effect it has on the outside world, not its theoretical differences with other groups; an attractive thing.

But we know we ignore philosophy at our peril. The theses were first published as an appendix to a pamphlet called Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of German Classical Philosophy. The pamphlet proper concluded by saying the inheritor of German philosophy is the German working class, which at the time (1880s) was the leader of the world working class.

This dovetails very nicely with Gramsci’s discussion of the organic intellectual. Capitalism saw the rise of new varieties of intellectual, intimately linked with particular classes rather than a caste, with roles closer to organising than theorising. The days of the individual philosopher (if there was ever truly such a thing) were over. Past philosophy could only be extended and enriched by a collective philosopher (a parallel to Gramsci’s Modern Prince).

We do ourselves a disservice if we forget which philosophy powers which particular movement. Small example: the methods and results of, say, a trade union bureaucrat (sectional), a rank and file syndicalist (corporate) and a revolutionary socialist (hegemonic) differ despite their being motivated by ostensibly the same aim.

So, how's the slow death of human civilisation treating you?

Some things to amuse us on the slow spiral toward cold infinity. Apparently it's 2-0 to Match of the Day versus Gordon Brown.

Gordon Brown is a sports fanatic whose passion for Raith Rovers, the football team he has supported since childhood, is a matter of public record. But the BBC has barred the prime minister from appearing on its Sunday night Premier League highlights programme Match of the Day 2, saying it is too close to an election to have him on as a guest.

He could just cut out the middle man and bowl up pissed to an EDL demo. I wouldn't put it past him. The above Brown bashing was all the rage this time last year. Now it seems the two main parties are almost neck and neck (nationally and especially in marginal seats). Is there no beginning to the excitement?

Talking of excitement, vote now, should Rush Limbaugh move to Costa Rica? Poor Costa Ricans you might say, and you'd probably be right. Can we have write in suggestions? How about the surface of Venus? Meanwhile the OECD has confirmed what 30 years of neo-liberalism has taught us, Britain has the worst record of social mobility in the developed world.

Remember, if you see a member of the EDL out and about, catch it, kill it, bin it.

Future Legend

Worse than the darkness, worse than all the vigilantes and The Bishop, the hunger nearly tore us apart. It’s, I don’t know if you’d say it was ironic, but in the first few days and weeks we hadn’t eaten that well since, I don’t know.

I was in hospital when the supermarkets were picked off. I remember coming home, Tracey and Lilly (and a few others) were arguing with some of the neighbours about what to do with all this food. Things had been difficult for quite some time, the mass unemployment, the illness, prices going through the roof.

Neither Tracey nor I was ever unemployed, but we still had to budget. You had to think, “can I have this, can we afford this, can we make it last a little longer”? Then, of course, there were those on the dole.

I remember an old friend of ours, Gareth, a computer programmer. He’d been laid off. He told me one Friday in the pub (after I’d bought him a drink, mind you) he had £8 to see him through to the following Wednesday. So it was no surprise, I thought, that people eventually just… took what they needed.

I was at the first estate meeting I’d been too where people were discussing how to divide up the food. The majority seemed to want it divided up equally between houses, with a little extra going to the elderly residents, which seemed fair enough to me.

However, Tracey and Mr Petersen from the TRA had managed to corner a lot of the stuff coming in. They had it stored under lock and key. They were arguing that the food should be centrally rationed. There was still heaving violence. The shops plainly weren’t being stocked. None of us knew when or where we would find food again. We had to look ahead, conserve what we had until the situation returned to normal, when fresh supplies came in. We shouldn’t start hording like the supermarkets had been.

This also made sense. When I arrived the meeting had been getting quite heated. One guy was shouting threats at the TRA, rounding on Tracey. I guess he suddenly noticed I was there, because he backed down a little.

It kept going to a vote and the result kept being in favour of equal division. Despite this I think people started feeling a little bit guilty. They knew there was something right about what Tracey was saying. So there was a compromise (Tracey filled me in later, I thought she was very diplomatic about the whole thing). The food was divided up, though not before it was catalogued. It was then delegated to Tracey to form a permanent team to look for food.

For the next few weeks we found more and more food and other… supplies. It was abundant. It was everywhere. All the perishables got eaten or used first. Oh, man, there was so much clothing going round we didn’t know what to do with it. Anyway, the longer-term stuff, rice, flour, dried fruit, potatoes and such got stored down in the hall (by this time we’d rigged up the storage room as a giant fridge).

Time went by and, of course, the hunting about for food was less and less successful. We felt, at least I felt we were doing ok. We had a commune covering all of Hackney, Waltham Forest, Haringey and Tower Hamlets. You know, it was tough but no one was starving. There were stories about black-marketers, hoarders and rip off merchants going round peddling back of the lorry stuff.

The official line, such as it was, was against this. The local militia was always confiscating stuff from hawkers. But, as time passed there was more and more pressure on our supplies (it was tough keeping stuff refrigerated, let alone frozen, what with the intermittent power).

Little bits would go missing here and there. Even on the estate people would hoard little bits here and there. There was one big break in where we pretty much lost everything. A number of estates were hit and the fuckers mostly got away. Fortunately they were stupid fuckers, who came round the borough the following day trying to sell back what they’d stolen.

We started… jailing people and confiscating their stuff. In one case we kicked someone out of the commune altogether. This lad, I say ‘lad’ he was about twenty, had joined a gang targeting old people. Basically getting in with them, pretending to help but stealing stuff as they went. This went on for quite a while. They got a bit greedy though, I think, and tried it on with Mr Petersen. He was a bit too sharp and caught them in the act.

It was funny… funny strange, not funny ha-ha, but we had to set up our little own justice system. The lad was tried in front of a full meeting of the commune, Mr Petersen saw to it. He was the also the one who pushed for expulsion. Even so, I don’t know if it was the right thing.

The situation eased a little once we started making contact with the wider world, especially outside London. We were quite well placed to trade. We had a good supply of water. Hackney had a number of good wells, plus on our estate we had a good water distillery. The windmill on the marsh meant we had a good supply of electricity also/. Basically we had a good surplus we could trade, although, speaking of which, we did have a little trouble to begin with.

There were several wells dug around the borough. It seems, somehow, pretty much all the water supply was destroyed or contaminated (I remember there was that mysterious pond which rose up out of nothing and sunk a hole in part of Hoxton). The point is we had to rely on what we could find (or buy in).

There was a well dug round the back of our estate. Unlike the food it was very easy to ration the water. For a start there was plenty of it. We always boiled our water before we drank it. It was a funny thing, getting used to that, not being able just drink from the tap. Despite this, we all, everyone I knew got weird stomach pains and diarrhoea in, like, the first week or so. You got used to it after that.

When we started trading the water was treated centrally in this factory we rigged up over in Cambridge Heath. After it was treated the water was bottled. But, by this stage, we started boiling it in herbs, all varieties. It was… odd; like something between tea and (if we sweetened it) squash. So, if you like, we all became tea drinkers.

Once we made contact with parts of the country things improved a little. Even so, we were liable to run out of various, very important things at difficult times. There were more arguments, more episodes, shall we say, over food than anything else. Everybody was hoarding something, or at least it seemed like they were. This lack of… sustenance left people tired and more prone to illness as well. Old Man Petersen died of, well it was natural causes but… it was exhaustion.

We all buried him together. It was so sad. But there was little time for sentiment. We then we went to divide up his useful effects. It turned out he’d been hiding little stocks, mostly hard bread and cheese and little bits of this pork soup concoction he’d been keeping in jars round his house.

We didn’t really turn the corner until we began… growing our own. The marshes were drained, dug up and seeded with crops. Lilly, I am so proud, she led a team that claimed London Fields. Meanwhile I spend the half the summer months guarding the cattle put out to graze on Victoria Park.

I don’t think any of us at the start thought we’d be turning to agriculture to survive. We had some help from outside but it was mostly trial and error… a lot of error. We survived, and in one piece… and that’s something.


---------


The job seemed to sort of come together, converge. Everyone talks about the Dead Zones, where there was total destruction but there was damage, abandonment and neglect everywhere. Where the Knights were unopposed, for however long, they wrecked havoc. If they had overrun the city I doubt there’d be much of worth left standing.

The first people to go picking through the remains were straight scavengers looking for things to use or swap. This wasn’t paid any regard at the beginning, as things developed they became a nuisance. You had these communes and workplace groups forming, you had plans, needs… bottlenecks and so on. Half the time getting anything done or fixed was spent looking for either raw materials or sometimes people.

So you were liable to get sent out with a list of stuff to find. If you could get a car or a truck or even a bike it’d save a lot of time. As the fuel supply started running low we often resorted to horse and trap or occasionally lugging the stuff ourselves. I say that, we usually had first or second dibs on petrol, diesel, gasohol and so on.

The typical Womble was a sort of cleaner/scavenger/repair man (or woman, mustn’t forget). I was roped into it I suppose because of my background in computing. I brought it up during a survey round my local commune. I think they thought computing meant electronics. I didn’t really know much about the finer points of repairing or putting together electronic systems, but I winged it and it seemed to work. You learned as you went.

A typical example would be… the school we recovered. It was a three-week job, about a hundred or so people, up in Edmonton. A gang of Knights had wrecked the school. I think it was quite a mixed, liberal place. There must have been some motivation behind the attack. They clearly tried to burn down a number of buildings but that hadn’t worked so they smashed as many rooms up as they could. There were bullet holes all over the place, blood, piss, graffiti.

We found a couple of bodies, half eaten, half rotted, which we couldn’t identify (although they were both adult). There was a long trail of dried blood, leading to a ultility room, broken rope round their legs. There was dried blood sprayed on the floor. They'd clearly been hung upsidedown and beaten not nice.

The computer room was a tip. There was glass and plastic everywhere. The idiots had mostly gone for the monitors, kicking them and chucking them about, although the computer stacks took a fair few blows as well. They were mostly old HP and Intel processors (they must have been second hand at the time). I had good assembly manuals for both. Once the room was cleared out repairing the stacks was relatively simple.

I didn’t have enough spare parts to repair all the monitors. I managed to adapt some bits from, you know, old TVs. There was a glassmaking gig we knew started up in Newham, so I put in an order for them to make some usable screens. There was a little delay as some of the workers there jibbed at how much stuff they were being asked to do on credit, but when they heard it was for a school they got down to it. The commune also had access to a fair old greenhouse on Muswell Hill, which had a nice tomato crop… that also helped loosen the logjam, I think.

While we were there I also helped the electricians connect up an immediate power supply (the usual deal, some solar panels backed up by a petrol generator). They had plans to connect it to the wider grid feeding off the marsh windmills. Also all of us helped in repairing any damage to the building (or removing stuff that couldn’t be repaired) plaster, beams, bricks, insulation and so on.

One thing I was amazed by was how much we could recycle. I mean, I don’t know if we’ll ever be completely self-sufficient in everything, but, for example, I saw what the printing plants were doing with all the paper and ink, recycling, separating. They were almost paper factories. You hardly ever go short of paper, and man do people get through paper.

The other thing that stuck in the mind was clothing. It was from a report to the wider London commune. You don’t think about things like that, where does my clothing come from, shoes, shirts and stuff? There was a time, I remember, when good clothes were expensive, quite hard to come by. I remember it being discussed at meetings.

There was a vast amount of clothing looted in the beginning. Like with most things, as we got more organised people were sent out to look for particular items, which were kept by the communes for future use. This worked for a fair old while, six months or so. But there was a lot of pilfering. Just as stocks ran down a black market sprang up.

The stuff was mostly stolen, although, I know it was wrong but I remember, on a day off, looking for some good boots. It was one of those flash markets that appeared from time to time, usually in old shopping centres. There was a rumour of one coming to Ridley Road, in Hackney. I went and saw a stall packed with fresh leather boots, all sizes, mostly unworn. It turned out I couldn’t afford them. Where they’d come from I could only guess.

It couldn’t have been long after the second Knights rising but a fresh factory popped up in Neasden, I think it was a group of young Asian women. They’d managed to get a clothing factory where they used to work going again. They had good supplies of wool, some cotton too. They even hooked up with a plastics factory that had found a way of making it from coal from the Kent seams (which I didn’t know were being mined again) and were making plastic fibres.

So they started offering their services to the rest of London. They even trained others up, started new plants around the city. So that problem was solved.

Rise of the morons

Having almost succumbed to a fever of speculation, now covered in welts of bad debt, languishing on a drip feed of government (meaning public) money. Global capital has risen from its death bed and it's coming for your BRAINS!

More precisely, the world's major banks have been fed on wealth that hasn't been made yet. Since bad debt has been bought up on the state's credit card it may seem reasonable the state pays it off. But as is normal for a recession costs are up and income is down. What to do, what to do?

Well, in Britain the government that was all about education, education, education, the knowledge economy, high-tech industry, the media, y'know, Cool Britannia, whizzy computers, bright lights... sorry, I digress. The government that began by putting education at the heart of its agenda is now cutting £449 billion from higher education. One particularly dumb example, Britain's only paleography chair is to be cut from KCL (Paleography is the study and deciphering of ancient texts). The majority of these are kept by the British Museum. If this study is canceled the majority of these texts will remain undeciphered, withered chunks of rock.

It may not yet come to pass, mind you. The Leeds lecturing staff won significant gains against their management before their strike even got underway. Sussex University staff have also voted overwhelmingly to strike over proposed cuts (some of their students have occupied in part of the campus support and been attacked by the police for doing so).



The morons are coming with clubs.

This is all very interesting. But, wait there. The wackiest proposal is yet to come. Germany has become a mini China. It has spent the last economic cycle producing large quantities of commodities for export around Europe, sustaining the boom by buying up portions of foreign national debt. Crucially, German banks hold a lot of Greek debt.

What happens in Greece is very important to German capital. That's why a pair of right-wing politicians have come up with a grand scheme: sell off your islands. They go as far as to suggest selling the Acropolis and Parthenon.

"Those in insolvency have to sell everything they have to pay their creditors," [Josef] Schlarmann told Bild newspaper. "Greece owns buildings, companies and uninhabited islands, which could all be used for debt redemption."

It's great, isn't it? We can have the McCropolis or Disneyland Greece, Hercules Goes Bananas... the possibilities are endless. Our rulers will destroy everything of value, they'll unpick the very fabric of civilisation and say, "sorry, we need to turn a profit" with a quick shrug.

What to do, eh? Bummer.

Nobrainworkinmahedtoday

Even so, check this out, an excellent interview with Ben Goldacre of Bad Science. Also, apparently, the EDL have threatened to burn down Dudley mosque on April 4th. Call me old fashioned, but I remember the good old days when threatening such things was a crime. Be there to stop them.

Riffing on America's weird brigade

Slightly old (but I'll tack it onto something up to date) Sarah Palin has come out in favour of revolution:

The US is "ready for another revolution", Sarah Palin told conservative activists last night in a keynote speech to the first national tea party convention in Nashville which also roundly condemned Barack Obama.

Now, all sorts of things are called 'revolutionary' (I even tried a revolutionary new toothpaste once) it remains to be seen what kind of revolution she wants to see. At first glance it appears to be anarchistic:

Palin suggested that the [Tea] party should remain leaderless and cautioned against allowing the movement to be defined by any one person. "This is about the people" and "it's a lot bigger than any charismatic guy with a teleprompter," she said, a dig at Obama.

Mildly ironic as:

The former Alaska governor, who resigned from office last summer before completing her first term, didn't indicate whether her political future would extend beyond cable news punditry and paid speeches to an actual presidential candidacy.

All she offered was a smile when a moderator asking her questions used the phrase "President Palin." That prompted most in the audience to stand up and chant: "Run, Sarah, run!"

Gary Younge today chews over the fat of the Tea Party. It is a "dynamic force, but it is still unruly and incoherent".

At the Conservative Political Action Conference a week ago, the libertarian Ron Paul won the straw poll with 31% of the vote. Announcement of his victory by the very crowd that had just endorsed him was greeted with jeers and boos. At the Tea Party convention a few weeks ago, large numbers stayed away in protest at everything from Palin's speaking fee to the costs of registration. Luntz has advised them to stop comparing Obama to Hitler and be more strategic in their choice of enemies and allies, but to little avail. "They don't want to be told," he says. "They don't want to be lectured, they don't want to be advised, educated, informed".

It seems like the basic, zoological fury of the potato people. They are a wealthy, anxious mob in search of a Caesar, a Bonaparte or, perhaps (whisper it) a Hitler. Is this the foundation of American fascism?