Portrait by Xavier Ghazi

"We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians"

"The Palestinian state cannot be the by-product of the Jewish state, just in order to keep the Jewish purity of Israel. Israel’s racial discrimination is daily life of most Palestinians. Since Israel is a Jewish state, Israeli Jews are able to accrue special rights which non-Jews cannot do. Palestinian Arabs have no place in a “Jewish” state.
Apartheid is a crime against humanity. Israel has deprived millions of Palestinians of their liberty and property. It has perpetuated a system of gross racial discrimination and inequality. It has systematically incarcerated and tortured thousands of Palestinians, contrary to the rules of international law. It has, in particular, waged a war against a civilian population, in particular children."

"Israel should withdraw from all the areas which it won from the Arabs in 1967, and in particular Israel should withdraw completely from the Golan Heights, from south Lebanon and from the West Bank."

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela

Farewell, Madiba, the fight against apartheid will go on.

Dershowitz v. Chomsky

"Dershowitz is presented, again accurately and on the basis of abundant documentation, as a dirty fighter with a readiness to twist the truth to serve his Zionist predilections, which include support for the post-9/11 drift toward authoritarian governance, and an outrageous willingness to play the anti-Semitic card even against someone of Chomsky’s extraordinary academic achievements in the field of linguistics and of global stature as the world’s leading public intellectual, who has an impeccable lifelong record of moral courage and fidelity to the truth. Dershowitz has devoted his destructive energies to derailing tenure appointments for critics of Israel and for using his leverage to badger publishers to refrain from taking on books, however meritorious, if they present either himself or Israel in what he views to be a negative light.

(Richard Falk reviews Howard Friel's "Chomsky and Dershowitz: on endless war and the end of civil liberties"

The bad old days will end: Why Oh why can't we be more Korean?

"Fewer teenage pregnancies and more teenage suicides is clearly the way to go ..."

The bad old days will end: Why Oh why can't we be more Korean?: Why are we so crap? Our national football team is a waste of space, cricket wise we are being shafted by the Aussies and now we find that ou...

(Continues here, link at the end of the post does not work)

Brace yourselves men - incoming headscarf!

Author of bookie-wookie sticks it to the Dirty Digger and all who sail in him.
I used to dislike Russell Brand intensely (cf. "bookie-wookie"), but no more. The scum he's offended will even now be raking through his dustbins, waving cheques at his ex-girlfriends, and perhaps, hacking into his phone. After all, as he points out, they appear to have learned nothing from the revelations of their criminal activities.

"More importantly these corporations, whether they're selling information or consumer goods, collude in a pervasive myth and toil to keep us uninformed on important matters such as the environment, economic inequality, and distracted by vapid celebrity claptrap. The Sun don't want an informed populace rejecting their bigoted dogma and daily objectification of women. Tescos don't want engaged and educated consumers recognising the damage that their corporate marauding does to communities, agriculture and local businesses. Their agenda is the same."

Hull is ranked number one debt hot spot in country
(Hull daily Mail)

Welcome to Hull - city of culture 2017; city of poverty 2013 (or any year you choose). The town that gets its priorities right.
And please! None of that cobblers about creating thousands of jobs; or hundreds of jobs; or jobs.

Some confused thinking here -
Domestic slavery is wrong, perhaps even a crime. Commercial and industrial slavery, however, are not only acceptable, they are to be encouraged. So we have zero hour contracts and workfare.
Where, I wonder, does the trafficking of sex slaves lie in this contradictory situation. It is, after all, a business. Perhaps Mrs. Thatcher's tutor, Sir Keith Joseph, could our guide: "We must teach the young that there is nothing immoral in making a profit". Or Milton Friedman: "a corporation cannot be ethical; its only responsibility is to turn a profit". These gentlemen would surely have approved of slavery in all its forms if it was profitable.

Someone whose appearance is almost as cadaverous as mine, but a great singer and songwriter. This is called "Avec le temps", about love that doesn't last. "Avec le temps ... vraiment ... on n'aime plus." I just bought a CD with this song on, and I'm playing it all the time.


I almost forgot to name the gent, the great Léo Ferré.
If the video isn't working, and it isn't for me, then here's the link.

This is Clancy Sigal's tribute to his old friend Doris Lessing. She took him in when he was an illegal immigrant in this country, a fugitive from the McCarthy bloodhounds in the USA.

Thanks to all of you who offered condolences. The New Republic magazine asked me for this.

The Doris Lessing I Knew: Young, Passionate, and Struggling to Keep It Together

BY CLANCY SIGAL

From her obituaries, and the serious critical assessments of her work, I hardly recognize the Doris Lessing I knew. I don’t fault the obit writers (I used to be one) or critics and admirers for attempting the tricky job of collating into a coherent narrative the Bunyanesque episodes and human contradictions in Lessing’s life and work. Indeed, it was not the later “Great Author” who I knew, but a young, romantic, passionate, fiercely ambitious single mother pounding away at a portable typewriter trying—as we all did—to keep it together. For her, that meant raising an adolescent son on her own, coping with England’s male-dominated literary establishment, and splitting her loyalties between an old-fashioned, collapsing communism and taking in the gritty gray sooty messy life in post-Blitz London.
Lest we get too solemn, she also had a wonderful sense of humor. Nothing pleased her more than to be dragged unwillingly to the local Odeon cinema showing the latest double-entendre “Carry On” low-class comedy (try Carry On Up The Khyber in cockney slang and you’ll get it) and then fall about laughing. Her famous waspishness and judgmentalism I’ll leave to others; we just had a lot of fun.
The “other” Doris I knew was a fabulous improvisational cook, a good friend, wryly skeptical comrade, temperamental lover (she had lots to be temperamental about!), a sturdy anti-racialist (without illusions about the black nationalist comrades), a fighter against the Left’s inherited philistinism and its fear of deviating artists. And—like me—a born protester.
I came to England not yet a writer. She tried to calm my fears, sternly telling me it was all “writing pains.” At the time, she claimed to be blocked on the novel that would become The Golden Notebook; I was struggling with a first book. We may have helped each other through a log jam.
It was fascinating at first to see my new, adopted country through her eyes: wary, open, generous, unillusioned, at all points sexual even more than political. What a pity The New York Times and some other newspapers, no doubt out of misguided respect, chose to illustrate their obituaries with those ghastly photos of Doris in her late “Mother Earth” incarnation! Last time we met, for a semi-date, I said I’d supervise a makeover—a new haircut for starters—which once she would have agreed to. But, sadly, she confessed she was “through with all that”, meaning sex, it was so much trouble and for what? As always, we argued. She won.
Others are more competent to deal with her work. Let me quote a friend who read Lessing in his last semester in college. “I read The Golden Notebook at age 20 & it had some huge & eerie effect on me…Out there was a writer who understood far better than I what a political life was like & what it was like to be overwhelmed by doubt & fear, but more, what grown-ups were like when they loved & hated each other. The Golden Notebook was full of the dirt & mess & craziness of everyday life, the back-&-forth of working out politics & lostness & honor on the run…the passion & wildness of it.”

Not much on the civil war in Libya in the UK media, even though the oil supply has virtually dried up.

Yet another example of Israeli heroism in the face of fearful odds.

At the beginning of the month I quoted the Wobbly slogan, "In November we remember", and the current edition of the 'Industrial Worker' has a list of Wobs who lost their lives in the class struggle. Also remembered are some non-members killed by trigger-happy cops and deputies as they fired on our Comrades.
The list starts with an unidentified IWW picket killed in explosion in 1907, and ends with FW Frank Gould who disappeared in the Philippines in 1974. There are certainly some names missing from the list, and others were unidentified. Then there were those who couldn't even be numbered as no records were kept. There were Wobblies who died at Kronstadt, men who had returned to Russia to play their part in the revolution. Likewise the Wobbly miners who worked in the Kuzbass mines until their independence became a nuisance to the Soviet authorities. Officially some stayed on in the "workers' state" and others returned to the USA. The IWW claims that an unknown number were liquidated.
How many died in the militias in Spain is also unknown, not all died fighting the Fascists. Stalin's hit squads were at work on the Republican side. A particularly chilling example of their methods is reported in the list -
September 1938, Ivan Silverman and two unknown IWWs were "forced by commies onto a bare field to face fascist machine guns".
Wobblies were killed in Canada, Mexico, the USA, and Australia. December 1916, Frank Franz and Nicholas Roland Kennedy, "framed for murder and executed during a time of IWW hysteria, New South Wales."

Tom Courtenay, son of Hessle Road, grandson of Killaloe, County Limerick, introduces us to a would-be City of Culture.
His dad was a good dancer, according to my old lady.
According to my missus this is not representative of Hull because nobody uttered the f-word.

Lifted from Martin Deane.

Who knew - eh?

Untitled poem by Ms. Margaret Rooney -

A woman in here just shouted on her son.
Jay-Z.
That's his name.
I thought I misheard, but she shouted again.
Still Jay-Z.
She's talking to him.
Still Jay-Z.
This wean is called Jay-Z.
She called her wean Jay-Z.
Even Jay-Z's maw didn't do that.

The meaning of 'wean' should be obvious from the context - right?

Addendum: I've been informed by the author that this is not a poem. Well it reads like a poem to me.

Another offense to add to the BBC's rap sheet - theft.
Once more they are caught misusing film for propaganda purposes, but this time with stolen property.

Poor old BBC - a worldwide Million Mask March on the 5th November. Cops "kettling" marchers in London; Buckingham Palace a protesters' target. And the poor old Beeb knew nothing about it. Or did it suppress all news of the event?

I just checked the BBC News website; it gets a mention there. But the thousands who blocked Parliament Square have been whittled down to a "few hundred", and no mention of the march being a worldwide event. Well done, thou good and faithful servant of the ruling class.

Then he stopped wearing his poppy. I asked him why, and he said that he didn't want to see "so many damn fools" wearing it – he was a provocative man and, sadly, I fell out with him in his old age. What he meant was that all kinds of people who had no idea of the suffering of the Great War – or the Second, for that matter – were now ostentatiously wearing a poppy for social or work-related reasons, to look patriotic and British when it suited them, to keep in with their friends and betters and employers. These people, he said to me once, had no idea what the trenches of France were like, what it felt like to have your friends die beside you and then to confront their brothers and wives and lovers and parents. At home, I still have a box of photographs of his mates, all of them killed in 1918.

(Robert Fisk)

The poppy crop was early this year. Usually it's the 1st November that the BBC orders its well-trained employees to sport the symbol of dead soldiery, and none dare disobey. But this year the last week of October was the starting point for unthinking and uncaring commemoration. Sky News too heard the bugle call to go over the top and adorn suits and dresses with the free handout. If only one individual demurred and appeared onscreen without a poppy we might believe that some thought had gone into the wearing. But no, verboten
I walked round town today and saw not one person sporting a poppy, only some old geezers in berets, medals on chests, manning a stall full of poppies and collecting boxes, but devoid of customers.
The hard sell isn't working in this burg.

"In November we remember" is a saying of the Wobblies. Here's a poem by FW Ralph Chaplin, best known for the anthem of organised labour, "Solidarity Forever". I hadn't seen or heard it before FW Viola posted it online -


Red November, black November,
Bleak November, black and red.
Hallowed month of labour’s martyrs,
Labour’s heroes, labour’s dead.

Labour’s wrath and hope and sorrow,
Red the promise, black the threat,
Who are we not to remember?
Who are we to dare forget?

Black and red the colors blended,
Black and red the pledge we made,
Red until the fight is ended,
Black until the debt is paid.

BBC Trust promotes then demotes (almost) the Working Definition of Antisemitism
Jews sans frontieres

I like Simon Kelner's belated suggestion for a title for Alex Ferguson's autobiography -
"Adding Insult to Injury Time".

Last week, the energy giants came under criticism after independent supplier Co-operative Energy said it was take on half the extra costs itself, presenting customers with a 4.5 per cent rise in January.
The mutual’s boss Ramsay Dunning, told The Independent: “The profitability level we require is less than, for instance, British Gas’s 5 per cent.”

Independent
It looks like the Co-op's 4.5 per cent rise is going to be the best there's going to be.

... and neither does the government.

Here's a comment from Dylan Jeavons' "Photoshop Politics" -


The government's reaction, Switch suppliers, but not to the one which has signalled its intention to slap on an even bigger increase. Try to find one that's only going to raise prices by eight per cent. There's sure to be one. That will be less out of your zero per cent pay increase.
Keep voting for the Global Capitalism Party folks. It's the only one allowed in our democracy.

As I zip through the television stations, moving quickly from unwatchable programme to unwatchable programme, my eyes sometimes light for a second or two on the talentless Keith Lemon, and I'm reminded of ... Jimmy Savile.

The facebook group called Republicans Against Biased BBC Coverage Of Royal News And Trivia
has written a letter of complaint to the BBC, viz. -

There are an estimated 15 million supporters of the UK republican movement, hardly a fringe group/audience I am sure you would agree ?!!! Bearing this in mind the Public Accounts Committee will be asking senior Buckingham Palace aides questions about royal spending. Just recently you covered quite substantially on your main TV news bulletins the fact that Prince Charles read out one of his favourite poems, you even went to the cringeworthy lengths of showing him reading it out. As you will appreciate the majority of the UK population (not just republicans) would find this royal trivia not newsworthy in anyway whatsoever. As you may (or may not as it would seem !!!!) be aware there are a number of ongoing issues with the royal finances, in particular the tax dodging that both the Queen and Prince Charles engage in and also the creaming off of profits from public assets (the Duchies) that they also engage in, however the main issue being the overall cost of the upkeep of the monarch and her taxpayer funded family. The BBC are quite clearly in the pockets of the palace PR machine because never are the more negative news items about the royal finances featured in your main news bulletins, they are usually (if at all) hidden away on your online news pages. Could you kindly explain why the BBC favour giving coverage to royal trivia as opposed to the more negative real news items about these royals? Will you also be covering the PAC questioning and findings?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/

The One Big Union, now open for business in Iceland.
Welcome to the IWW, Fellow Workers.

There's this kid called Adnan Januzai; born Belgium, Kosovan Albanan father, Turkish mother. Apparently he qualifies to play for England under the desperation rule. As there are less and less English-born Premier League players, and nobody in the England set-up can be bothered to do anything about it, it seems that a new rule is needed - play in England, qualify for England.

Carlos Latuff pinxit

"... the pondlife who own the Mail are in no position to slag off anybody's ancestors."
Quite so, Ray.

Here's a literal translation of a poem called I nGarrán na Bhile (In Garnavilla), by one 'Pleasant' Ned Lysaght. I don't know the author of the original, I've seen a name, but will settle for 'Anon.' until convinced. The point is that a literal translation can stand against a fancy reworking.

IN GARNAVILLA
(Edward Lysaght)

Have you ever been in Garnavilla,
Or have you seen in Garnavilla
The gay young girl of the golden locks,
My sweetheart, Kate of Garnavilla?

She's whiter than the swan on the pool,
Or the snow on the crest of the bending bow;
Her kiss is sweeter than the dew on the rose,
My sweetheart, Kate of Garnavilla.

Her song is more tuneful than the blackbird or thrush,
Or the nightingale on the willow bough;
Like a ship in sail on the mistless wave
I see my sweet in Garnavilla.

The original with another English version is here.

... and today is International Translation Day. I learned this fact from a book by Eduardo Galeano which was translated into English by Mark Fried.
Vladimir Nabokov wrote that "The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times more useful than the prettiest paraphrase", and he may be right. Personally, in the case of poetry in translation I like to have the literal AND the pretty paraphrase. Nabokov should have known something about translation. He did write some of his works in German originally, then took responsibility for producing the English language versions of the same works.
He also translated the Russian epic "Prince Igor" into English. I read it many years ago, and now can't remember a thing about it.
I suppose that the international auxiliary language, Esperanto, has too many powerful enemies to be considered as a solution to the problem of international communications, spoken or written. Enemies in the tradition of Hitler and Stalin who saw Esperanto is a threat to their ambitions of world domination. Today it is not necessary to imprison Esperantists and burn their books. Who reads books when there is the lobotomy box? How much Esperanto is heard on the airwaves? I can't recall when I last heard the E-word on radio or on TV.
I still think that one day, when all communication is oral, the world's population will converse in a form of pidgin English.
"... l'avenir m'épouvante", words from the tattooed bodies of French convicts in Cayenne. Somebody's going to have to translate that.

Today is "European Day of Languages", which I've never heard of before. Apparently its purpose is to encourage the learning of languages other than one's own. I heard of this on the radio this morning ,from a newsreader who went on to pronounce the term laissez-faire as "lassez-faire".
Well, I've never been one to miss the opportunity to throw some exotica into the mix. So here are some examples of less well known European languages. The English version will come at the end, in case the meaning isn't clear already.

Tuots umans naschan libers ed eguals in dignità e drets.
Els sun dotats cun intellet e conscienza e dessan agir tanter per in uin spiert da fraternità .
(Romantsch, Switzerland's fourth language, in terms of speakers)

Wšykne luźe su lichotne roźone a jadnake po dostojnosći a pšawach.
Woni maju rozym a wědobnosć a maju ze sobu w duchu bratšojstwa wobchadaś.
(Lower Sorbian, a Slavic language of Eastern Germany, once banned by the Nazis)

Totu sos èsseres umanos naschint lìberos e eguales in dinnidade e in deretos.
Issos tenent sa resone e sa cussèntzia e depent operare s'unu cun s'àteru cun ispìritu de fraternidade.
(Sardinian, or Sardu, which Mussolini claimed to be an Italian dialect)

Ситe чoвeчки суштeствa сe рaѓaaт слoбoдни и eднaкви пo дoстoинствo и прaвa.
Tиe сe oбдaрeни сo рaзум и сoвeст и трeбa дa сe oднeсувaaт eдeн кoн друг вo дуxoт нa oпштo чoвeчкaтa припaднoст.
(Macedonian, not popular with Greek fascists)

Sa e manushikane strukture bijandzhona tromane thaj jekhutne ko digniteti thaj chapipa. Von si baxtarde em barvale gndaja thaj godzhaja thaj trubun jekh avereja te kherjakeren ko vodzhi pralipaja.
(Romani, though what version thereof I couldn't guess)

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Most of the above is lifted from the www.lexilogos.com website, a language website with French and English versions. Dictionaries for many languages, plus useful phrases, proverbs, poems, songs, are all to be found there.

BONO EXPOSED AS A COMPLETE FRAUD

Some people take a little longer to catch on. Interesting rogues' gallery though.

Having time for little else at the moment I post a poem by Austin Clarke about some famous Irishwomen.

THE SUBJECTION OF WOMEN

Over the hills the loose clouds rambled
From rock to gully where goat or ram
Might shelter. Below, the battering-ram
Broke in more cottages. Hope was gone
Until the legendary Maud Gonne,
for whom a poet lingered, sighed,
Drove out of mist upon a side-car,
Led back the homeless to broken fence,
Potato plot, their one defence,
And there, despite the threat of Peelers,
With risky shovel, barrow, peeling
Their coats off, eager young men
Jumped over bog-drain, stone to mend or
Restore the walls of clay; the police
Taking down names without a lease.
O she confronted the evictors
In Donegal, our victory.
When she was old and I was quickened
By syllables, I met her. Quickens
Stirred leafily in Glenmalure
Where story of Tudor battle had lured me.
I looked with wonder at the sheen
Of her golden eyes as though the Sidhe
Had sent a flame-woman up from ground
Where danger went, carbines were grounded.

Old now, by luck, I try to count
Those years. I never saw the Countess
Markievicz in her green uniform,
Cock-feathered slouched hat, her Fianna form
Fours. Form the railings of Dublin slums,
On the ricketty stairs the ragged slumped
At night. She knew what their poverty meant
In dirty laneway, tenement,
And fought for new conditions, welfare
When all was cruel, all unfair.
With speeches, raging as strong liquor,
Our big employers, bad Catholics,
Incited by Martin Murphy, waged
War on the poor and unwaged them.
Hundreds of earners were batoned, benighted,
When power and capital united.
Soon Connolly founded the Citizen Army
And taught the workers to drill, to arm.
Half-starving children were brought by ship
To Liverpool from lock-out, hardship.
"innocent souls are seized by kidnappers,
And proselytisers. Send back our kids!"
Religion guffed.
The Countess colled
With death at sandbags in the College
Of Surgeons. How many did she shoot
When she kicked off her satin shoes?

Women rose out after the Rebellion
When smoke of buildings hid the churchbells,
Helena Maloney, Louie Bennett
Unioned the women workers bent
At sewing machines in the by-rooms
Of Dublin, with little money to buy
A meal, dress-makers, milliners,
Tired hands in factories.

Mill-girls
In Lancashire were organized,
Employers forced to recognize them:
This was the cause of Eva Gore-Booth,
Who spoke on platform, at polling-booth
In the campaign for Women's Suffrage,
That put our double-beds in a rage,
Disturbed the candle-lighted tonsure.
Here Mrs. Sheehy-Skeffington
And other marched. On a May day
In the Phoenix Park, I watched, amazed,
A lovely woman speak in public
While crowding fellows from office, public
House, jeered. I heard that sweet voice ring
And saw the gleam of wedding ring
As she denounced political craft,
Tall, proud as Mary Wollenstonecraft.
Still discontented, our country prays
To private enterprise. Few praise
Now Dr. Kathleen Lynn, who founded
A hospital for sick babies, foundlings,
Saved them with lay hands. How could we
Look down on infants, prattling, cooing,
When wealth had emptied so many cradles?
Better than ours, her simple Credo.

Women, who cast off all we want,
Are now despised, their names unwanted,
For patriots in party statement
And act make worse our Ill-fare State.
The soul is profit. Money claims us.
Heroes are valuable clay.

"When a team from the BBC Panorama programme visited Chile in November 1973, staff at the British embassy secured them 'maximum co-operation from the junta'.
"The embassy was optimistic about the slant of the documentary, which included interviews with members of the Anglo-Chilean business community speaking approvingly about the coup. A British embassy official wrote: 'The balance of the programme should be 60 to 75% favourable to the new regime.' The embassy was not so pleased with a World in Action Granada TV team that arrived at the same time. The same official wrote: 'I gathered that the WIA producer … came to cover torture and shootings … Granada's activities were certainly known to the junta whose press secretary told me that they had been seeing 'things they should not see'.' An FCO official back in London scrawled on the letter: 'Ominous news about the World in Action film'."
(Guardian)

Good old "World in Action"; same old right-wing BBC.

Shout this from the rooftops – high hopes after Crossrail blacklisting campaign
(Pete Murray, Union News)

“Nothing will ever be given for free. This shows that it happens when we fight.”

The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: BBC Middle East website

The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: BBC Middle East website: "Raffi Berg was promoted to head the BBC website's Middle East desk earlier this month, having already worked as a journalist wit...

I'm having a clearout at the moment, old books, old newspapers. I came across a Guardian film and music section and wondered why I kept it. I opened it and read this article on the French New Wave. I'm guessing that it's why I held on to the paper. Joe Q. enthuses about some of my favourite films here, and so I quote -

"Not all the new wave films were good, and not all have stood the test of time, but the ratio of good to bad and great to good was high enough to make it an unprecedented moment in the history of cinema. No one in the year 2009 will make a better film than Les Quatre Cents Coups (The 400 Blows), Hiroshima, Mon Amour, or Jules et Jim. No one will make a more daring film than Pierrot le Fou, Alphaville or Weekend. No one will make a more adventurous film than Paris Nous Appartient (Paris Belongs to Us) or a more influential film than A Bout de Souffle (Breathless). No one will make a more anachronistic, stranger film than Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg). And no one will make a nuttier film than La Chinoise or Le Gai Savoir (Joy of Learning). This was not a wave, it was a tsunami."

A Bout de Souffle was an influential film, though Joe Q's hindsight opinion of it as "dull and sophomoric is not far off the mark. I would add pretentious. And yet there is one (at least) saving grace, the pairing of Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg - perfection.

BBC editor urged colleagues to downplay Israel’s siege of Gaza
(Amena Saleem)

Remember Frank Muir's description of Joan Bakewell as "the thinking man's crumpet"? That sort of language would not be acceptable in polite circles today, but it was meant as a compliment, and I'm sure Ms. Bakewell didn't object too strongly at the time. Autres temps, autres moeurs, as they say.
So how would I describe Ms. Abby Martin? Her "Breaking the Set" is a regular feature on "Russia Today". She doesn't pull her punches. I'll just call her the angry leftie's commentator of choice.

A NEW NAME? NO THANKS, SAY A UNITED FRONT OF HULL CITY SUPPORTERS

25th August

At dawn on this day in 1944, Paris went crazy.
The Nazi occupation was over.
The first tanks and armoured cars had entered the city a few hours before. "Is it the Americans?" people asked.
The names scrawled in white paint on those tanks and armoured cars were: 'Guadalajara', 'Ebro', 'Teruel', 'Brunete', 'Madrid', 'Don Quijote', 'Durruti' ...
The first liberators of Paris were the Spanish republicans.
Defeated in their own land they fought for France.
They were convinced that Spain's rescue would follow.
They were wrong.

(Eduardo Galeano, "Children of the Days: a calendar of human history")

That parcel of rogues known as the Adam Smith Institute are demanding the abolition of the minimum (and minimal) wage. They make the preposterous claim that lower wages will mean that employers who object to paying the minimum wage would take on more workers if they were not burdened by these outrageous wage bills.
Come off it! Wages are falling year upon year; is there any sign of growth in employment or a steady fall in the number of people out of work?
And yet people like the BBC give these thimble-riggers a hearing, a chance to air their propaganda, even refer to them as a "think-tank". Lower taxes, lower wages, no protection for the workforce. Yet no mention of the handouts and subsidies being thrown at the tax-dodging profiteers. That's a bit of the old Adam that doesn't suit the thimble-riggers or their paymasters.

"We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate: [When workers combine,] masters: never cease to call aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted with so much severity against the combinations of servants, labourers, and journeymen."
Adam Smith

"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary."
Ibid.

"We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of wages but many against combining to heighten it."
Ibid.

"The master can hold out longer than the man ... in the long run, the workman may be as necessary to the master as the master is to him. But the necessity is not so imminent."
Ibid.

In my opinion Adam Smith was an honest man whose ideas have fallen among thieves.

BBC censors the Smashing of Guardian’s Hard Drives

Last night I watched a documentary on BBC4 about John Cooper Clarke. One of the poems he read was called "Things are going to get worse", about growing old. It was funny, and a little poignant*. I wanted to link to it online; couldn't find the whole thing, only a few lines. There is film of him reciting the poem. And the gent has a website on which some of his verse is published.
When I first saw JCC on the telly I suspected him of being a phoney. I thought he must be some Oxford product putting on the Mancunian accent. People with accents like that don't do poetry, I thought, but no, he's the genuine article, Northern Urban Working Class.

When I was at school I hated poetry, couldn't see the point. I changed schools when I was nine and went to a primary that could only be described as "dog-rough". The kids weren't interested in learning. Their education took place outside of the school, mostly thieving. Yet there was one thing they loved - poetry. I just didn't get it. "Can we do a poem, sir?" Was a regular cry. If permission was granted they would recite the stuff they'd memorised, sometimes in unison. I remember a favourite was called 'The Lion-Tamer' and they'd give it the full strength.
"I CRACK my pistol, LASH my whip
to quell the angry lion"
Great emphasis was put on 'crack' and 'lash'. I don't remember any more of the poem, except 'cage of iron' which was the rhyme with 'lion'. I was bemused and couldn't remember any of the poetry. Another favourite began with the words "I sprang to the stirrup ...", and 'sprang' got the treatment in that one.
Then there was the kid who sat next to me. Every now and then he'd hand me a book of poems, and say "See if I've remembered that right". He'd reel off some poem he'd memorised and I checked that he was word-perfect. Why? What did he do with those poems after he'd learned them? Where did he deliver them? Who listened? He came from a family that always had at least one member doing time.
Not all poems were acceptable however. I remember a teacher was reading "The Highwayman" to the class. That poem contains an attempt to represent the sound of horses' hooves [hoofs?] with the word 'tlot'. Now this was near enough to 'plop' to cause some mirth.

"Tlot, tlot upon the highway"
(read the teacher)
"Tlot, tlot in the echoing night.
Tlot tlot upon the highway..."

"The, horse was having a shite"
came a suggested rhyme from the back of the class.
The teacher tore down the room, dragged some poor kid out to the front, and beat him about the head. The lad protested his innocence, "It wasn't me, sir." To no avail, the teacher had to reassert his authority, and quick; no time for investigation.
I don't think we 'did' that poem again.

Just to show that poetry can appeal to young working-class males, but the subject has to be right. Plenty of action, and it's got to rhyme. At least it did in my schooldays. Even then there were those who didn't get it - me for instance.

*Afterthought: 'poignant' may not be the word I wanted. 'Disturbing'?

"Hull City is irrelevant...it is common. I want the club to be special. It is about identity. City is a lousy identity. 'Hull City Association Football Club' is so long."
Thus spake Assem Allam, owner of Hull City AFC, but not the owner of the KC Stadium, and there's the rub. Allam doesn't give a fiddler's fart about Hull City, or the City of Hull. His takeover of the club was, he thought, a step towards acquiring the stadium. The city council wouldn't sell, and Allam has turned nasty.
"City is a lousy identity." Tell that to Manchester City, Leicester City, Birmingham City. Maybe we should call our town Madinat-al-Allam, and the self-serving little creep will be happy with that.
I'm not a supporter of Hull City, but I am a supporter of the City of Hull, and if some money grubber runs it down there is a solution. There's always Cairo, but it seems he wasn't happy there. So why not go and live among the Asian Tigers whose largesse he craves.
Some people talk of Allam as a saviour, I see him as an opportunist.

A few years ago I predicted that slavery would become legal in the UK. My thinking was that the government (any government, any party) would legislate to allow people in debt and unable to extricate themselves to undertake unpaid work for their creditor(s) until the debt was paid off.
I was right about the return of slavery, but wrong about the reason for its return.

We have just learned that there are about one million workers in this country on zero-hours contracts. This means that those workers are bound to a company but guaranteed no earnings. It means that their main income is provided by the taxpayer in the form of benefits. It means that their employer has no responsibility toward them, but has total control of their allotted work time whether they work or not.
The government has being pretending that there are 250,000 zero-hour slaves nationally, which would be enough of a disgrace for anyone with a social conscience. The fact that they were lying about the numbers tells us that even those soulless rats know that this is an abominable state of affairs.
The zero-hours slavery puts the "welfare to work" form of slavery in the shade, but let's not forget those hundreds of thousands of slaves also working for dole money.
In addition to the Sklavarbeiter there's something like 2.5 million on the dole and yet to be enslaved. Is anybody working in this country, whose economy, according to our criminally insane Chancellor of the Exchequer, is recovering nicely, thank you, from the great bank rip-off? Well, there are who are keeping a lot of slaves from starvation while the slavers pay little or no taxes on the vast profits they are removing from this sceptred isle.
In the immortal words of the loathsome Hughie Green, "Wake up, Britain!"

I still haven't written off the slavery as debt repayment idea. It could come. Another money-saving scheme I'm predicting is euthanasia for the no longer productive aged. Thanasia really, as there's nothing 'eu-' about killing people off.

Qatar’s Bay’ah to the Saudi King » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

Qatar’s Bay’ah to the Saudi King » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

"At a recent meeting of the Association of Orthodox Jewish scientists and the Columbia Center for the Study of Science and Religion, it became clear that Jewish curiosity has provided sufficient genetic material to give a perfectly clear negative answer: There is no support in the genomes of today’s Jews for the calumnious and calamitous model of biological Judaism. Though there are many deleterious versions of genes shared within the Ashkenazic community, there are no DNA sequences common to all Jews and absent from all non-Jews. There is nothing in the human genome that makes or diagnoses a person as a Jew."
Robert Pollack, "The Fallacy of Biological Judaism"

No doubt I've written this before on these pages: Jew is a religion, Israeli is a nationality, Zionist is a an adherent of a political movement. One can be a Jew without being an Israeli or a Zionist. One can be an Israeli without being a Jew or a Zionist, one can be a Zionist without being a Jew or an Israeli. It may be possible to be a Zionist without being an apologist for genocide or ethnic cleansing, but it must be difficult, like being a socialist in the Labour Party.
When I was young to speak of a Jewish race was anathema. It was to parrot the propaganda of the recently defeated Nazis. But the necessity of justifying the creation of the zionist state has resulted in the kindred of Nazism's chief victims adopting the Nazis' discredited ideas on race.

The Preamble to the Constitution of the Industrial Workers of the World - in Welsh

Nid oes gan y dosbarth gweithiol na’r dosbarth cyflogi unrhyw beth yn gyffredin. Ni all fod dim heddwch tra fod newyn ac angen ymysg miliynau o bobl sy’n gweithio, a bod elit bychan; y dosbarth cyflogi, yn cael yr holl bethau da mewn bywyd.

Mi fydd rhaid i’r frwydr barhau rhwng y ddau ddosbarth yma nes bod y gweithwyr y byd yn trefnu fel dosbarth, yn cymryd meddiant o’r dulliau o gynhyrchu, yn diddymu’r system cyflog, ac yn byw mewn cytgord â’r Ddaear.

Gwelwn fod y canoli o rheolaeth diwydiannau gan llai a llai o bobl yn gwneud hi’n anoddach i’r undebau llafur ymdopi gyda grym cynyddol y dosbarth cyflogi. Mae’r undebau llafur yn meithrin sefyllfa sy’n caniatáu i un set o weithwyr gael eu ddefnyddio yn erbyn set arall o weithwyr yn yr un diwydiant, a thrwy hynny helpu trechu ei gilydd mewn rhyfeloedd cyflog. Ar ben hynny, mae’r undebau llafur yn helpu y dosbarth cyflogi i gamarwain y gweithwyr yn y gred bod gan y dosbarth gweithiol buddiannau sy’n gyffredin gyda’u cyflogwyr.

Gall yr amodau hyn cael eu newid a gall ddiddordeb y dosbarth gweithiol cael eu cadarnhau dim ond gan sefydliad a ffurfiwyd yn y fath fodd bod ei holl aelodau mewn unrhyw un diwydiant, neu yn yr holl ddiwydiannau os oes rhaid, yn pallu gweithio pryd bynnag fod streic neu cloi allan sy’n digwydd o fewn unrhyw adran ohono, felly mae’n golygu bod anaf i un yn anaf i bawb.

Yn lle yr arwyddair ceidwadol, ”Ddiwrnod o gyflog teg am ddiwrnod o waith teg”, mae’n rhaid i ni ysgrifennu ar ein baner yr arwyddair chwyldroadol, “Diddymu’r system cyflog.” Cenhadaeth hanesyddol y dosbarth gweithiol yw i ddinistrio cyfalafiaeth. Mae’n rhaid i’r fyddin o gynhyrchu gael eu trefnu, nid yn unig y frwydr bob dydd gyda cyfalafwyr, ond hefyd i barhau i gynhyrchu pan fydd cyfalafiaeth wedi cael eu diddymu. Drwy drefnu diwydiant, rydym yn ffurfio strwythur y gymdeithas newydd o fewn cragen yr hen.

"Safe in our hands".

Copyleft Gerald Ack

I heard on the Radio that on the day the new-born Windsor was brought out of the hospital*, the BBC 24 news channel had a camera filming the hospital door for two hours, and that's what viewers saw on their screens for two hours. As I avoided all news programmes that day I cannot confirm the story, but, knowing the BBC, and its current off the scale sycophancy level, I'm prepared to believe it.

*£1,000 a night, courtesy of the British taxpayer.

There's an article in today's Guardian by someone from Hull attempting to dispel the "myths and half-myths" about our town. I won't link to it as I don't think much of it. The article is pushing for Hull's bid to become 'city of culture'. I pray that the bid fails (I'm sure it will) because the cost to the ordinary citizen will just add to our woes.
The comments to the article include a plug by a Hull blogger for his site. I took the bait and liked what I saw. So here it is.

For my cyberstalker. It'll give him an erection.

Kad Achouri, Liberté a poem of Paul Eluard -

" ... pour la première fois dans l'histoire du monde, proposé aux hommes ce qui est l'une des conditions essentielles du bonheur, la liberté."

I don't know who's responsible for this. I lifted it from Gerald Somers.

I wonder if John Inverdale's old man told him, "Listen son, you're not very intelligent and you'll never get a job where tact and diplomacy are required, but you did go to a public school. You'll have no trouble getting a job at the BBC"?

PARADISE
"I've been to Liverpool, and compared to Liverpool Hull is Paradise."

Hull boxer Tommy Coyle, in response to the badmouthing of our beloved city by Derry Matthews of Liverpool, who is Tommy's opponent this weekend. The fight is for the Commonwealth Lightweight title, and is on a bill topped by Hull's golden boy, Luke Campbell. This will be Luke's first professional fight.

Looking for my eyebrows.
They are disappearing. I was warned that the treatment I'm getting for the Bengal Lancer would cause me to lose my body hair, but not the hair on my scalp. Well, the underarm hair has gone; that on arms and legs has virtually disappeared; and the hair surrounding the family jewels is looking sparse. Still as long as I keep my clothes on I won't frighten the horses.
What the consultant, nurses, didn't mention was facial hair, but it appears to me that the brows are disappearing, lashes too may be getting thinner.
I'm no body fascist but I have to admit that men without eyebrows and eyelashes look rather sinister to me. Am I going to end up fearing to look in a mirror (never a morale boosting experience)? Add that worry to the misery of increased weight, and I feel entitled to a heavy bout of self-pity. Who knows, maybe depression is on the cards. It seems at the moment that the only way is down.
Last week I made it to 75 years, three-quarters of a century, but I didn't feel well enough for a good piss-up, just shared a few beers with my elder son who had a day off work. This weekend I'm going to cop for a bottle of eau-de-vie, turn on the music, and get rat-arsed.

I repeat -

"I'm not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker." Barack Obama.
Lying bastard. If Edward Snowden takes a flight from Moscow, or wherever he is, US warplanes will be shadowing that flight. They will probably buzz it, and attempt to divert it and force it to land on US territory, or on some US helot state territory (EU, Baltic, etc.).
He was a hacker when he worked for the surveillance state, so some hackers good, some hackers bad. Who decides? Why, Barrack Obama - who else?

"Corsica non avrai mai bene." Old Napoleon is supposed to have said this as the ship carrying him to Elba passed the island of his birth. Did he still use Italian, or Corsu, at this time in his life? I doubt it. I wonder who was there to hear his utterance.
Bene or male (Don't Corsicans say bè?) the island is going to be in the news at the weekend.
Cavendish for the first yellow jersey - of the competition and of Cavendish - sprint finish. That's the plan. "Vedremo che vedremo", as, I'm sure, Napoleon never said.

UK media are informing us that the nine climbers murdered in Gilgit-Baltistan were killed by Islamic militants. What a relief it must be for their families to know that they weren't the victims of terrorists.
It turns out that 'militants' were Taliban, who are about to engage in negotiations with the Frankish invaders of Afghanistan. Well no, these were Pakistani Taliban, not those gentlefolk of the Afghan Taliban.
No negotiations with terrorists, but they can talk with militants.
The Taliban know that the Franks are going to scuttle off anyway, but being gentlemen (as we've just learned) they're giving them a chance to save face.
So what of al-Qa'ida? Now that they are allies of the Frankish infidels in Syria, do we stop calling them terrorists? At the moment, it seems, the "accepted terminology", Dude, is "units of the Free Syrian Army".

Correction, 25.6.13: I've done it again, misquoting. Walter Sobchak's phrase was "preferred nomenclature", not "accepted terminology". I should take my deteriorating memory into account and check before "quoting".

"I don't bloody BELIEVE it!" (Victor Meldrew)

This morning I got my free TV licence through the post, a little perk for those who reach the age of 75 years, as I do in a few days. I'm covered for three years.

This morning I opened my paper and read the headline, "Pensioners face losing free TV licences".

Media reports today that 18 independent experts investigating a 10-year period (2002-2012) for the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child accuse Israel of routinely abusing Palestinian children, including torturing those in police custody & using some as human shields. Most of the estimated 7,000 Palestinian children arrested, interrogated, & incarcerated were charged with throwing rocks which can get a child up to 20 years in jail.
According to the report, many children in custody are brought before military courts in leg shackles; others are held in solitary confinement for months. It also reported that between January 2010 & March 2013 alone there were 14 cases of Israeli soldiers using Palestinian children as human shields to enter potentially dangerous buildings or stand in front of military vehicles to deter rock throwing. Soldiers convicted of forcing a 9-year-old child at gunpoint to search bags suspected of containing explosives received a suspended sentence of 3 months & were demoted.
The report also calls attention to the hundreds of children killed & thousands injured by Israel’s periodic murderous bombing assaults on Gaza as well as the violence of Israeli land confiscations, unlawful settlements on Palestinian lands, construction of the barrier wall, & destruction of Palestinian homes & livelihoods which “constitute severe & continuous violations of the rights of Palestinian children & their families.”
The UN agency may be just catching up to what Palestinians have been alleging & photojournalism has been documenting for nearly 65 years but it has handed the Palestinian solidarity movement a mighty weapon against the violence of the Zionist monstrosity called Israel. Nothing could more powerfully damn the Zionist project than the torture of children.
Zionists of all persuasions & their supporters need to ask themselves if this is the kind of thing they want to be identified with, if there is anything salvageable in such a state, if it’s possible to save some aspects of Zionism & trash the worst aspects. In fact, this utter debasement is the political logic of Zionism & the entire edifice on which the state was built. Support Palestinian solidarity by boycotting all Israeli products (barcode beginning 729)!

(Copyleft Mary Scully)

A handy piece of information I picked up listening to the news on my local BBC station -
People with diabetes were once twice as likely to die of the disease than people without diabetes.

"Shome mishtake here shurely." (Private Eye)*

*Corrected. In spite of being a regular reader of the magazine for decades I managed to get this supposed editorial comment wrong.

"I'm going to tell you something. I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business. I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria.
"This was in Britain not in America. Britain was organizing an invasion of rebels into Syria. They even asked me, although I was no longer minister for foreign affairs, if I would like to participate."

Roland Dumas, former French Foreign Minister

Two stories about my native city on the Yorkshire TV news today.
First, a big increase in shoplifting resulting from people stealing basic foodstuffs in order to feed themselves.
Second, Hull's determination to throw away millions in a futile attempt to become 'city of culture'.

Turning on the state broadcasting service this morning I heard the man Humphreys declare the situation in Syria is "the worst human tragedy of our time". What time is that, Humphreys - this week?
In my time there was World War 2, and millions dead. Suharto's coup in Indonesia, a million dead. The Iraq war goes on, though the slaughter is now perpetrated by locals instead of invaders. We know the Yanks and the Brits didn't keep count of the dead but others did, and the number was higher than in Syria. The children dying of hunger and disease in a disaster created by the oil-grabbers - who's counting? No 'human tragedy' there. NATO brings freedom and democracy by the same methods as the Assad regime's dealing of death and destruction. Funny that.

Copyleft Dylan Jeavons

The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: 90% of Gaza's water is unfit for human consumption...

The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب: 90% of Gaza's water is unfit for human consumption...: " "Forty-six years ago today Israel's occupation of Palestine began. Six days of war has turned into 46 years of occupation,...

Does this mean I'm safe from the surveillance state snoopers? One never knows.

Giant US government Internet spying scandal revealed


The Washington Post and The Guardian have revealed a US government mass Internet surveillance program code-named "PRISM". They report that the NSA and the FBI have been tapping directly into the servers of nine US service providers, including Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Yahoo, YouTube, AOL and Skype, and began this surveillance program at least seven years ago.
These revelations are shaking up an international debate.
StartPage has always been very outspoken when it comes to protecting people's privacy and civil liberties. So it won't surprise you that we are a strong opponent of overreaching, unaccountable spy programs like PRISM. In the past, even government surveillance programs that were begun with good intentions have become tools for abuse, for example tracking civil rights and anti-war protesters.
Programs like PRISM undermine our Privacy, disrupt faith in governments, and are a danger to the free Internet.
StartPage and its sister search engine Ixquick have in their 14-year history never provided a single byte of user data to the US government, or any other government or agency. Not under PRISM, nor under any other program in the US, nor under any program anywhere in the world. We are not like Yahoo, Facebook, Google, Apple, Skype, or the other US companies who got caught up in the web of PRISM surveillance.

Here's how we are different:

•StartPage does not store any user data. We make this perfectly clear to everyone, including any governmental agencies. We do not record the IP addresses of our users and we don't use tracking cookies, so there is literally no data about you on our servers to access. Since we don't even know who our customers are, we can't share anything with Big Brother. In fact, we've never gotten even a single request from a governmental authority to supply user data in the fourteen years we've been in business.

•StartPage uses encryption (HTTPS) by default. Encryption prevents snooping. Your searches are encrypted, so others can't "tap" the Internet connection to snoop what you're searching for. This combination of not storing data together with using strong encryption for the connections is key in protecting your Privacy.

•Our company is based in The Netherlands, Europe. US jurisdiction does not apply to us, at least not directly. Any request or demand from ANY government (including the US) to deliver user data, will be thoroughly checked by our lawyers, and we will not comply unless the law which actually applies to us would undeniably require it from us. And even in that hypothetical situation, we refer to our first point; we don't even have any user data to give. We will never cooperate with voluntary spying programs like PRISM.

•StartPage cannot be forced to start spying. Given the strong protection of the Right to Privacy in Europe , European governments cannot just start forcing service providers like us to implement a blanket spying program on their users. And if that ever changed, we would fight this to the end.

Privacy.

It's not just our policy - it's our business.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We are working hard to offer you an encrypted email service later this year called StartMail. We have to stand up and protect our freedoms from increasing overreach from data gatherers. You've made the right choice by using StartPage.com. Now is the time to tell others!

Sincerely,

Robert E.G. Beens
CEO StartPage.com and Ixquick.com

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography now has an entry on Lily Bilocca of Hull, written by Brian W. Lavery.
A couple of things I've been told about Mrs. Bilocca by people who knew her, and disliked the media's portrayal of her.

The name "Big Lil" was foisted on her by the national press. Those who knew her called her Lily or Mrs. Bilocca.
The role of spokesperson for the trawlermen's wives was not of her choosing. Mrs B. was known on Hessle road because she spent her spare time going from door to door collecting signatures to a petition. This was for radios and radio operators to be made compulsory on trawlers, which was not the case at the time. When three trawlers were lost in one month with only one crewman surviving from all three, the women of the fishing community took action. As Mrs. Bilocca's work for trawler safety was known she was approached to take the role of the women's spokesperson.
After the campaign petered out, politicians having sidetracked the women into a parliamentary dead end, Mrs. Bilocca found that she was blacklisted. Brian Lavery touches on this in his article without using the word 'blacklist'.

The DNB can be accessed with a library card number. The entry is entitled "Lillian Bilocca".

I note that the BBC is pushing hard for action on Syria. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, any country with a Muslim majority. Buy more Yankee bombs, Cameron, the BBC wants more dead children.
Meanwhile the self-styled socialist, Hollande, is proving to be a more enthusiastic warmonger than any Tory minister. Has he got shares in the arms industry? We should be told.
Reports from refugee camps about the plight of those fleeing the west's proxy war in Syria. I don't remember the British newshounds getting so worked up over the million Iraqi refugees displaced by Bush and Blair's illegal war.

There are 60,000 people in my home town living below the poverty line. The demand on food banks throughout our United (but not all in it together) Kingdom is growing too rapidly for them to keep up. Thank you Cameron and Smirks, and a special thank you to Mr. Ed Milliband who couldn't give a shit about the poor. But keep chucking money at the Labour Party, union brothers and sisters, one day they might do something for you. No, I take that back. As long as you're chucking money at them they don't need to do anything for you - do they now?
Here's a little snippet about a food bank in Hull.

The film-maker, who appears in the film is called Sean McAllister, and he's a local gent. I caught the full film from which the clip is excerpted last week. It was worth a look. I did a search for Sean M. and found that he's a prize-winning documentary maker. I'd actually heard of one of his films, "The Liberace of Baghdad". It didn't sound like my kind of thing so I gave it a miss when it was shown on the telly. Too bad.
I asked my elder son if he knew about Sean M. and it turned out he'd been at school with him, though son is a few years younger. Small world, as some of us who prefer a small world are wont to declare.

By the way, Cod City* is still going for the 'city of culture' white elephant. Our elected unrepresentatives are spending £11 million trying to win the competition for it. I reckon about £6 million of that will go on 'consultation fees' and junkets for the bureaucrats who bar the way to the glittering prize.

*The cod are long gone, but the memory lingers on. Especially for the people who have never been here.

I've placed my partiality to the work of Kad Achouri on record before. I particularly like his treatment of poems. This track is his version of Rimbaud's "Le dormeur du val". I also like his treatment of Boris Vian's "L'Évadé", which he calls "Le temps de vivre". His rap version of Paul Éluard's "Liberté" is a firm favourite of mine, though rap languishes near the bottom of my list of musical preferences.

LE DORMEUR DU VAL

C'est un trou de verdure où chante une rivière,
Accrochant follement aux herbes des haillons
D'argent ; où le soleil, de la montagne fière,
Luit : c'est un petit val qui mousse de rayons.

Un soldat jeune, bouche ouverte, tête nue,
Et la nuque baignant dans le frais cresson bleu,
Dort ; il est étendu dans l'herbe, sous la nue,
Pâle dans son lit vert où la lumière pleut.

Les pieds dans les glaïeuls, il dort. Souriant comme
Sourirait un enfant malade, il fait un somme :
Nature, berce-le chaudement : il a froid.

Les parfums ne font pas frissonner sa narine ;
Il dort dans le soleil, la main sur sa poitrine,
Tranquille. Il a deux trous rouges au côté droit.


THE SLEEPER IN THE VALLEY

It is a green hollow where a stream gurgles,
Crazily catching silver rags of itself on the grasses;
Where the sun shines from the proud mountain:
It is a little valley bubbling over with light.

A young soldier, open-mouthed, bare-headed,
With the nape of his neck bathed in cool blue cresses,
Sleeps; he is stretched out on the grass, under the sky,
Pale on his green bed where the light falls like rain.

His feet in the yellow flags, he lies sleeping. Smiling as
A sick child might smile, he is having a nap:
Cradle him warmly, Nature: he is cold.

No odour makes his nostrils quiver;
He sleeps in the sun, his hand on his breast
At peace. There are two red holes in his right side.

(English version, Oliver Bernard)

Cartoonist's name is unreadable - Arabic script?

"I do bitterly resent it when people of any kind are attacked because of something that is no fault of theirs - like who their parents are.
"Why should your background be held against you? It is so short-sighted.
"There are plenty of reasons for disliking people, but this tribal aversion to anyone with a posh voice is very boring."

Alexander Armstrong - chippy sort of cove - what! Yes, there are plenty of reasons for disliking people, for example, their membership of an organisation like the Countryside Alliance. Or their killing animals for pleasure.
Apparently Mr. Armstrong is known as Xander. I take it that familiar forms such as Alec, Alex, or Sandy are too lower class.

So, it has come to this - the BBC with apartheid Israel against the world. International law be damned, Jerusalem is the capital of Israel according to the zionist fantics who run the British (sic) Broadcasting Corporation.

This blog is vermin-free

No racist scum; no child-murder fantasists; no cheerleaders for long-distance mass-murder; no apologists for greed, wholesale robbery, or predation.

Some figures from this morning's news -

Amazon UK, sales income £4.3 billion
Amazon UK, tax paid £2.4 million (0.1%*)
Amazon UK , government grants received £2.5 million

Does anyone know what Amazon does to get handouts from the British people?
I suppose we should be grateful that they don't employ neo-nazis to terrorise their British employees as they do with their German workforce.

* I think it's less than that as %age of income, but that was the BBC's figure.

MAYDAY! MAYDAY! Send reinforcements, there are only four of us to take on this headscarf.

End Metroline race to the bottom: Reinstate Oscar Alvarez now!

Posted 8 May 2013

We, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) want to express our deep concern and strong condemnation of the unfair dismissal of Oscar Alvarez, Union Representative of the IWW at the West Perivale garage.
Oscar Alvarez has been a London bus driver for 8 1/2 years. He reached the 10th position nationwide in Blackpool Best Bus Driver of the Year 2007 competition, which to date is still unbeaten by any Metroline driver. But Oscar’s sacking is far from being an isolated occurrence. This is part of an escalating wave of sackings on the buses over the last few years, which has seen all London bus companies imposing terrible contracts on new starters, often without union agreement or any serious attempt to fight this ‘race to the bottom’.
Beginning in December 2012 new contracts for all bus drivers began to be rolled out, first Brentford garage and then West Perivale in February. Whereas the Brentford contracts were all accepted, in West Perivale there was a furious rejection by the drivers who refused to sign, apart from a half-dozen or so.
Oscar Alvarez was one of those drivers, bravely opposing these blatant attacks to their terms and conditions, only to be sacked soon after following a minor altercation with a car driver on the road who had cut up his bus.
What is worst, during the disciplinary that resulted in his dismissal there were a number of breaches in procedure which rendered the process unfair and disproportionate, most notably, the withholding of crucial CCTV footage which Oscar could not access prior to the disciplinary. We are certain that, far from constituting gross misconduct, Oscar’s behaviour ought to be construed as an attempt to correct the driving behaviour of a another driver who had not only endangered her own safety, but also that of her baby and other road users. As such, we urge Metroline to reconsider the merits of this case and to reinstate Oscar Alvarez.
Now Oscar needs all the support he can get in order to win reinstatement, as it was already achieved by fellow worker Gerry Downing last Tuesday 30th April following his successful appeal against dismissal. Gerry, from the Cricklewood garage, was also sacked on spurious charges. Gerry Downing is a Unite member and the Chair of Grass Roots left.
Understanding that these gross misconduct verdicts were undoubtedly management revenge for the strong reaction to the attempts to impose new contracts on all drivers, an impressive demonstration of support was gathered in a public meeting that took place last Monday 29th of April, called by the Brent Trade Union Council.
Several sacked bus drivers attended and their stories were similar; harsh dismissal decisions for what were minor incidents. And the reasons were identified by many of the speakers and from the floor; new contracts from January 2012 took on starters on far lower terms and conditions than existing bus drivers.
For these reasons it has now been articulated wide ranging support for a bus driver defence campaign as a rank and file body on the London buses to fight these increasing victimisations.
The Industrial Workers of the World joins forces with this rank and file initiative and demands not only for the immediate reinstatement of our member and union representative Oscar Alvarez, but for all the London bus drivers to keep the resistance going and REFUSE to sign any new contracts.
Whichever union you belong to, we must hold together, because they can’t force us if we ALL refuse.
For Oscar’s case, the IWW are mobilising our members and supporters by encouraging people to send letters and make phone calls this week expressing their dismay at Oscar’s sacking to the Metroline Bus Company. Supporters will also be leafleting outside the Cricklewood Bus Garage.

For all updates on the campaign actions please visit http://tiny.cc/REINSTATEOSCARNOW

TAKE ACTION. SUPPORT OUR BUS DRIVERS. END METROLINE RACE TO THE BOTTOM
REINSTATE OSCAR ALVAREZ NOW!


Groups:
London General Membership Branch
ERA
Britain and Ireland Regional Administration of the IWW.

Geography Lesson
(approved by Michael Gove)

Click on image to enlage.

First I've heard of this -

Last week, on the 25th April 2013, the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill was granted royal assent, bringing into law the government’s widely unpopular proposals to scrap employers’ 114-year-old liability for their staff’s health and safety in the workplace.
This means that the burden of proof now falls on the employee to show that the employer had been negligent in their duties towards them, rather than the employer being asked to prove they were following regulations correctly, as has been the case since the Victorian era. This is likely to result in injured workers, and the families of the deceased, being unable to claim compensation for their losses due to accidents at the workplace, seeing as the evidence needed to prove negligence is held by the employer rather than the employee – and employers guilty of negligence are unlikely to willingly hand over the proof.

Not reported by the BBC (surprise, surprise!), but who in a position of influence gives a fiddler's fart about the working clss today? Who in the mainstream media acknowledges the existence of such a class? We are the underclass, but not yet far enough under to suit the accessories to depradation running the British economy (into the ground).

Another headscarf of terror. Well done, brave warriors!

Reflecting on the picture I posted to mark International Workers' Day -
There are parts of the world where an open palm directed at someone is an insult.
I remember in Cyprus during the "Emergency" (war of liberation?), sometimes we'd be driving along, and passing some old lady, we'd get the open palm sign with fingers spread. Sometimes the fingers were bent into a clawing shape. The open hand would be pushed towards us, usually accompanied by a facial expression that left no doubt as to the manner in which we were regarded. I don't recall ever seeing the gesture made by anyone but old ladies. Maybe they felt safe from reprisal.
"The five curses" someone once explained, "that's the five curses." No enumeration or further explanation. For years I tried to figure out what those five curses were. Cyprus is a Mediterranean country so I assumed that one would be sterility, perhaps impotence. There couldn't be connection to the five senses unless we ruled out the sexual potency aspect.
It was many years later reading a book on gestures by Desmond Morris that I learned that the gesture did not convey a curse, but a sense of deep hatred.
In old Byzantium when the perpetrator of a heinous crime was captured he would be paraded in chains through the streets of the place in which his offence had been committed. The population would turn out to abuse him in various ways. One favourite method was to rub faeces, always lying to hand, in the villain's face.
That gesture directed at us, the enemy, was a symbolic faceful of shit. We live and learn.
Cheers, ladies!