Reading through a book of Gaelic proverbs* I took a liking to these two -

A' chuiseag a dh'fhàsas anns an otrach 's i as àirde a thogas a ceann.
"The weed that grows on the dunghill lifts its head the highest."
(I know them, I know them.)

Is sona iadsann a chumas o lagh is o léigh.
"Happy are they who have no dealings with lawyers and doctors."

An old favourite of mine is Is cliùtach an onair no 'n t-òr.
"Honour is more commendable than gold."
(The poor man's consolation)

"Gaelic Proverbs", Babi Nic Leòid.

I did not believe what I heard, it sounded as if the Palestinians were occupying Israel. There was no empathy for the Palestinians, he only spoke of the Israeli problems.
He told us that it isn’t easy to achieve peace, thanks, we know this. He spoke about universal rights – Good, those same rights apply to Palestinians.
[The Americans] are applying enormous pressure on everybody at the UN, they are using threats and coercion. I wish they would invest the same energy in an attempt to promote peace, not threats.

(Hanan Ashrawi, lifted from Angry Arab2)

"What I will not do is provide cover for the ideological descendants of those who sent children up chimneys". (Chris Huhne)
Well, not during conference week anyway.

How the impartial BBC gathers "news" on Israel/Palestine -

Bicom is the British Israel Communications and Research Centre.
Sophie Long, whoever she is, must be in line for promotion.

(via Jews sans frontieres)

Questions:
Who owns the Gleision mine?
Where is the management?
Has there been a statement about the deaths from either board or management?
If there has, I haven't seen or heard it.

<<¡Permanece la escucha!>>

Interview with Manu Chao (audio), plus videos.

Train of Thought

A bout de souffle 1959 by lesamisdejob

I have habit of bursting into song, blurting out snatches of lyrics that seem to come out of nowhere (cue for a song). "Where did that come form?" My Missus asks and I track back through the thought process that led to the lyric. There's always an explanation - a word spoken, an ad on the TV, something in the paper. If the reaction is immediate, no problem, but sometimes there's been an incubation period between reception and translation.
This morning I followed the process forward instead of retracing my steps. I saw the word dégueulasse in print. This word always reminds me of the end of the film "Breathless". "T'es vraiment dégueulasse" says the dying Belmondo to his betrayer. "Qu'est-ce que c'est, dégueulasse?" asks Jean Seberg of the onlooking crowd. Fade out.
So now I'm thinking about the picture, and a puzzle. I read somewhere that the director Truffaut had a walk-on part in the film, but I've never seen him. That leads me to another puzzle. The poet and scénariste Jacques Prévert is supposed to be among the wedding party in the film "Atalante". I've yet to catch sight of the bloke.
Then there's a head-scratcher that was answered eventually. The first time I saw Scorsese's "Mean Streets" I'm reading through the credits and I see among the musical acknowledgements "Maruzzella" by Renato Carosone.
Eh? My favourite song and I didn't hear it. Next time the picture's on the telly I'm watching and listening carefully, but nothing. OK, a third chance to see it and there it is, only just.
I'm not a fan of the film, but there are some good bits. One is played out by two of the Carradine brothers. A drunken David C. is in this club, pissed out of his skull. He gets up and staggers across to the jakes to relieve himself. A young fellow (Robert C.) gets up and follows him. What's this? A rent-boy scene, a drunk about to get rolled? No, the young fellow pulls out a pistol shoots your man dead. It's a professional killing. The victim gets it while he's having a hit-and-miss, the fate of Dutch Schultz.
What I missed first and second times of seeing "Mean Streets" was the very faint music in the background, I think from a juke box in another room. There it was, case closed.
But I'm still on the lookout for Truffaut and Prévert.

More about "Maruzzella" another time (Ricordi di una Genovesa bionda).

So all that's gone through my head because I saw a word, though I've reshuffled it, and put the solved case last instead of in between the other two. As the saying goes, I do love a happy ending. I'm keep telling myself that I'll keep a record of those Proustian processes from trigger to song, but I tell myself a lot of
things.

[Tidying up: I got the names of the Carradines wrong originally and have since corrected them.]

Concerning Clancy Sigal, to whom* I referred in my last post, and whose surname I managed to misspell.
I first encountered the gent's writing in the Guardian in 1959 0r 60. He had an article in the paper about London youth gangs. It was a piece of participant observation, he driving around with some gang members looking for bit of action. He claimed that he'd been accepted by the young blackguards because he had the right hairstyle, known in those days as the French schoolboy cut.
From the article I learned the the gangs were divided ethnically between 'Turks' (Irish), 'Spades' (Blacks) and 'Bubbles' (Greek Cypriot); fascinating stuff.
A couple of years later I came across a book bearing the Sigal name, "Weekend in Dinlock". This is a great yarn, probably a fictionalised account of a real person and his community. He is a miner who is also a talented painter. The narrator tries to persuade him to turn professional, without success, because real men hew coal.
"Weekend in Dinlock" is a story of northern working class life and attitudes that rings true, and it was written by an American. Funny that.
The next work of Sigal's that I encountered was "Going Away", seemingly fictionalised autobiography. The narrator, a fugitive from the McCarthy bloodhounds, crosses the United States from California to New York with the intention of emigrating. He looks up old comrades on the way and meets one person whose conversation induces a paranoid reaction; our narrator is close to breakdown.
I also got a copy of another autobiographical novel, "Zone of the Interior" which I have yet to read. This features a fictionalised version of Sigal's friend R.D.Laing, the unorthodox psychiatrist and hip guru of the 1960s. Laing's "Bird of Paradise" was an essential feature of every "progressive" student's bookshelf in the sixties, along with Marcuse's "One-Dimensional Man". Add a poster of Che, and one's trendy-lefty credentials were assured.
I've never seen the film "Frida", whose screenplay Sigal had a hand in, and, with luck, I never will. But I do enjoy reading articles etc., by the old class warrior.
Strange that neither the linked article or C.S's wikipedia entry mention the association with Doris Lessing.
Interesting to learn that 'Clancy' stands in for his real name, Clarence, his mother having named him for Clarence Darrow. I've always thought Clancy+Sigal an exotic hybrid.

*There's posh!

Good old Clancy Segal on good old Joe Hill, in the Guardian.

Can it be? That PM Cameron has joined his role model, Blair, on the list of British war criminals?

And, yes, this is a war. This has never been the enforcement of a No Fly Zone UN . resolution 1973 with the clause 'all necessary measures'Let's be real here. 'all necessary measures' falls beneath the No Fly Zone' edict and does not allow a situation of war. The NATO allies immediately when beyond the UN resolution and began an areal war and they began killing civilians almost immediately. This was, quite obviously, never meant to be a humanitarian effort.

Everything that NATO has done in Libya has been illegal.

WAGING A WAR OF AGGRESSION
Kellogg-Briand Pact, 1928, Art. I. The High Contracting Parties solemnly declare in the names of their respective peoples that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it, as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another. Art. II. The High Contracting Parties agree that the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them, shall never be sought except by pacific means.

HELPING REBELS IN A CIVIL WAR
Convention on Duties and Rights of States in the Event of Civil Strife, 1928, Art. 1. To forbid the traffic in arms and war material, except when intended for the Government, while the belligerency of the rebels has not been recognized, in which latter case the rules of neutrality shall be applied.

CONSPIRACY TO WAGE WAR
Nuremberg Charter, 1945. Crimes against peace: namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy the accomplishment of any of the foregoing . . .

PROPAGANDA FOR WAR
Civil & Political Rights Covenant, 1966, Art. 20. (1). Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law.

SECRET CONTRACT AWARDS tolls imposed for the benefit of the State, he shall do it, as far as possible, in accordance with the rules in existence and the assessment in force, and will in consequence be bound to defray the expenses of the administration of the occupied territory on the same scale as that by which the legitimate Government was bound.

FUNDING MERCENARIES
Mercenaries Convention, 1993, Art. 5. (1). States Parties shall not recruit, use, finance or train mercenaries and shall prohibit such activities.

I see that David (or Dave) Cameron has described critics of his Libyan adventure as "armchair warriors". I should think so too, when the man's been out there in the desert, ducking bullets and leading from the front. More appreciation please.
I think he should have a medal struck for himself. His place in our military history is assured; Gordon of Khartoum, Lawrence of Arabia, Montgomery of Alamein, Cameron of ... NATO HQ.

A helpful hint to a searcher -
www.thelatinlibrary.com
Addendum (5th Sept.) more Latin (and other) texts at -
http://intratext.com

"So a UK minister has used a video on a government website to express government policy on Palestine and the Board of Deputies of British Jews has told him not to do that. And he has dutifully removed the video from the site.
"We now have two front page articles in the most recent edition of the Jewish Chronicle boasting of a Jewish lobby group's ability to effect government behaviour and policy. Next week perhaps there will be a couple of front pages telling us that it is antisemitic to speak of a Jewish lobby.
"In fairness to Jews like me, it should be called the zionist lobby and the Board of Deputies should make it clear it only represents a zionist perspective. But of course honesty has never been the best policy for zionists and honesty is certainly not going to be the policy of either the Board of Deputies or the Jewish Chronicle any time soon."

"I'm back and I'm proud." (Gene Vincent)

Not proud really, not humble either, but the above is the only quote I know containing the words "I'm back".
I suppose it's symptomatic of a lack of confidence in one's own writing that it's found necessary to quote others. I quote, with no sense of irony; " ... as judges shelter their knavery by precedents, so do scholars their ignorance by authority: and when they cannot reason, it is safer and less disgraceful to repeat that nonsense at second hand which they would be ashamed to give originally as their own." (John Horne Tooke, "Epea petroenta or the Diversions of Purley", 1829, though I found it in R. H. Harris's "A Short History of Linguistics", 3rd ed., 1990)
Gene Vincent was playing on the Black Power Movement's slogan about being black and proud.

I've been communing with the shades of my ancestors in the Kingdom of Fife. Or more prosaically, visiting birthplaces and trying to enter locked graveyards. I pointed out places of import to my grandchildren; "our ancestors once lived and worked on the land where those posh houses stand", etc. The response, "Can we go to the shops?" (Granddaughter). "Can we go to the beach?" (Grandson). Never mind, I tried. God loves a trier, as the old folks say.

AWOL, but, like Dugout Doug MacArthur, I shall return.

HERON TOWER DISPUTE SETTLED

The IWW has reached an agreement which has secured full-payment of the London Living Wage with back pay until May 2011, the staff shortage to be filled and confirmation of the trade union rights of workers. Further discussions are underway on a recognition agreement with the IWW.
As result the IWW Cleaners Branch and London Delegates Committee has cancelled the demonstration called for tonight at the Heron Tower. We thank all trade unionists and fellow workers for their solidarity and support.
Once again the independent workers union the IWW has shown that direct action and solidarity of all union members in support of each other achieves results in the interests of our members.

My granddaughter told me about the dyslexic devil-worshipper who sold his soul to Santa, so I told her about the dyslexic, agnostic insomniac who lay awake all night wondering if there's a Dog.
Turns out she doesn't know what an agnostic is and my incoherent attempts at a definition were of no help.

In fact the demonstration is at 5pm tomorrow, ‎110 Bishopsgate.

I liked the headline on Russia Today about the US embargo on* Cuba -
"Close but no cigar"

*(Thinks: should that be "embargo of Cuba"?)

(Image via Lansbuy's Lido, ex Ian Bone)

Workers Solidarity interviewed Hackney local and education worker, Alex Carver, about the roots of the London riots. Alex is a long standing activist in the IWW union, housing struggles in the East End, and the big left events since the start of the recession, most recently the M26 Militant Workers Block and the J30 Strike project. He was a direct witness to the rioting on Monday. Here he tells Workers Solidarity why he thinks that the riots are best understood by looking at class rather than race.

You went down to have a look at the riots, were you not afraid of being beaten and mugged? From media scare-mongering that's what would be expected by most people.

Well, I had no idea what to expect exactly, which is why I went, but no, I wasn’t – and I'm not scared by the riots now. I'm not about to glorify them either, but this is not the start of a new dark age.
What's happened in the rioting is an understandable reaction to the way things are set up – I’m reminded of the famous bank robber Willie Sutton answering the question ‘why do you rob banks?’ with ‘because that’s where the money is’. The kids robbed the shops because that's where the stuff is. They attacked the cops because they'd stop them. It was simultaneous, it was not two groups of people, one with a beef against the cops and another with light fingers – it was one group of mainly young people. They didn't attack each other, rape people, mug people - I was able to walk freely amongst them in my shirt and slacks straight from work; lots of people who were obviously not rioting walked with the crowd in daylight – many have said the mood turned later on but actually I stayed with it with a friend, who was also not dressed to fit in, until after midnight.
I understand things have been much nastier in other places; in Hackney at least, enough of the community were unafraid to go out and talk to the youth, even being supportive and sympathetic, to stop its total destruction.

Many were quick to say the rioting was not political – what did you think from what you saw?

When I went through Hackney on the bus the next morning, the damage visible told an interesting tale along with what I already know: Opticians with £100+ glasses, betting shops, estate agents, JD sports, Barclays, pawn shop/crack converters, electrical goods shop, M&S, a small police outpost and a Spar garage. On the other hand we know a local independent shop was thoroughly looted (the one we stopped being torched) and at least 5 cars were grilled.
The first list of targets was done by a mobile mob who left all other shops and buildings in between - very clearly targeting places with instant value goods, impersonal chain shops - or places they had a beef with. Then the second list of targets that are more obviously anti social happened mostly when the rioting had stagnated on Clarence Road next to the Pembury estate. Choices were being made about what to hit and what not to. If we look at who rioted and how they rioted, we can find political aspects to all this, just not a political motivation.

Do you think those on the left have any useful role to play in relation to the riots?

Along with lots of other leftists I have been watching and engaging, and it has been worthwhile: and I have got a really useful idea of what the atmosphere was like - in Hackney at least – and that’s so, so important. I can’t imagine how differently people who only saw this on TV or from miles down the road feel. We have also been advising on police tactics without encouraging the rioting – it is far worse for the area, in my mind, that any kid gets sent down; dealing with someone who has done a stretch is far harder than finding a directionless rudeboy focus. We have also stopped some bad things, like friendly fire incidents with bricks, and I helped my friend put out a fire in the shop on Clarence Road – again, we didn’t get stopped, lots of the crowd ran in and helped; it was almost as if they were making up their minds. I'm terrified I'll be done for going into the shop though, I can’t imagine a judge believing I was putting out the fire whilst everyone else was pilfering the drinks.

What do you see as the main reasons people are rioting? The left, at least, is identifying racism as a major cause.

I feel quite strongly on this. It is not about race, and it’s not about the shooting either. Those are only elements in an overall economic situation. Up and down the country a racial mix of youth have been taking advantage of the chaos - together. I saw this mix personally, but you can see it on the news and internet too. People are looting because they want things. That’s economic and social, that's not some kind of misguided protest at police racism.
In fact the whole narrative of police racism is useless here. You don't nick shoes'n'brews and run from the police 'cos you feel harassed by Stop and Search, and certainly not these kids - they're scallies, rudeboys, they get stopped 'cos they're the kind of kids who do naughty things - like they're doing now. They feel harassed certainly, but they also feel fully excluded from far more than polite treatment by the cops; otherwise their behaviour is inexplicable.
Things have moved on from the early 1990s in terms of policing, but also, things were never really primarily about race rather than poverty in many of the previous famous riots. The people at the bottom of the heap are there because they came to the UK as poor migrants and have been slotted into their new society at the same level at best, or even lower most of the time. This isn’t because all half-decent jobs bar ethnic minorities; look at the difference between Bangladeshi migrants and Indian migrants in terms of earnings and social position; is white English peoples’ racism so complex that they manage to exclude Banglas but allow Indians a foot on the ladder? Of course not.
Social outcomes are primarily set by economic background, your class. Of course that ties in with ethnic groups, but it is that way round. Not the other. Some ethnic communities are poor, their poverty leads to exclusion, which leads to a disregard for the law, which leads to police attention, which leads to grievances. Of course this is also true for completely native white communities too – indeed, poverty is generally shared in mixed race communities. A legion of liars will now come out of the woodwork to try and make this about race and policing, not capitalism. Ignore them and their false 'community' - they are the problem, not the solution.
I know that saying this is considered racist by a whole range of people on the left, in education, in community organisations, in the unions. Even people with a class analysis seem to be obsessed with racism being the core oppression in the UK. I can just see how badly attempting to express what I have just said to a colleague at my school would go.
"Racism man. It's so bad. That shit's like, gotta stop? You know you cross the road sometimes: feel guilty. Police - of course they're racist, especially the coconuts who are ashamed of their blackness (that's not racist 'cos its anti police and the police are racist, see, so it's not). We need to have a long hard talk about racism, lots of awareness training, more black role models, less England flags, more Carnival; we need to kill the racist inside us. The crime figures, unemployment figures, academic figures, homelessness stats - how can you look at them and not see how racist this country is? What do you mean, class is an easily more significant factor? You definitely need to go on a course about this. I bet you don’t even like spicy food."
A lot of my parents’ generation take 'institutional racism' as a given, due to the recent history of colonialism for them and the experience of the early days of mass migration to this country. They see it as a huge issue, and are encouraged to do so by both the right and the left of every stripe, television and print media, historians and authors alike. Very few people think it is actually an easier issue than class, very few realise it is actually an easy excuse for the powers that be. We aren’t confronting the establishment with their racism, we’re letting their economic system off the hook. If they can say the riots are about racism, and they can racialise the obviously economic elements, they can muddy the water and keep public opinion divided and divisive. The right will be bolstered by indignant white people and the left will throw itself into
1) attacking the right,
2) more pointless race initiatives that actually stigmatise and divide our communities as opposed to uniting them.
What visibly unites the rioters is not race, but from up and down the country - dress code. The police see people like that and make the probably very accurate assumption about where that person is from and the kind of attitude they have - and they harass them, they stop them, they give them grief; cos they are think they are from a poor, dispossessed place both literally and psychologically - and are likelier to have committed some street crime.
Why am I not allowed to say that? That crime is linked to poverty? Are we not the left any more, and now have some kind of oppression - lead analysis of everything?

What about the argument that the riot is primarily caused by poor policing and in particular police harassment?

Police visibly target visible crimes, because not only are these easier to solve but they are under pressure from the public: the kind of person who writes to their local paper cannot see fraud and rape, they see street robbery and vandalism. This means police spend most of their time focussing on kids in sportswear; what I'm saying is that this isn't the police being massively prejudiced, it's them going to where the kind of crimes they are told to deal with are.
Police harassment leads to a dislike of the police, but the explosion of disregard for the law over the last few days needs to be seen a broader phenomenon with many factors playing a role in creating the character of the riots. This is actually a far more rewarding way to look at things from a left perspective because it suggests that there are systemic problems that 'better policing' will never address.
The police are slammed again and again about the racism that must be endemic in the Force due to the figures for Stop and Search and the prison population; if they alone could do something about it, they would have. I think the truth is that demanding the figures change is just a game politicians play to complicate a straightforward class and poverty issue - that the geographic areas the prison population and kids who get regularly stopped come from, are poor areas abandoned by the political class, with demands unmet by the economy.
To say whether we think the police unfairly target people of a certain age, race, or appearance is to pointlessly put ourselves in their shoes rather than focus on the bigger issue of why crime happens. I think the important thing about police harassment here is to understand that it exists as a concept in its own right – it has a life of its own.
What matters is that we accept people in many ethnic communities, areas, and age groups, discuss police harassment and are encouraged to do so by politicians and the race industry (all the dodgy think tanks, campaign groups, 'race advisers' etc.) and the ‘community leaders’ that rub shoulders with the race industry and MPs. This is convenient for the political class, as it gets people into a proper tizzy over who is harassed and who is not, why they are harassed, who can be in the oppressed group, who has a legitimate grievance, who gets the funding for their project – etc.
Coming to this situation as someone who wants everyone to be in the same community organisations reveals just how clever the move to special interest groups by the last four governments has been. Until now it has kept a lid on things as our traditional support networks at work and at home have been destroyed along with our job and housing security. People will often yell ‘police harassment’ as a battle cry – the war is over our entire quality of life and sense of belonging.

What do you think will be the consequences after the riots?

Well I can only speak about Hackney, where no one lost their home or died. But if the looting continues nightly and Primark and M&S close down forever, what of it? What will make us happy is a choice of jobs, homes, places to spend time with our friends - not a choice of groceries and underwear. Perhaps this will help more people see that. From the flames comes clarity. The obvious inability of the cops to gain control in the last week means that hopefully we won’t talk endlessly about better policing of poverty, but address this violence by looking at what the answer really is; a society where
1) we feel included, all of us, as many as possible, and
2) where what we want isn't behind glass.