The eve of looking backwards and forwards

Tis that time of year, endings and beginnings, looking forwards and backwards, the eve of Janus….

I remember at some New Year’s parties I attended many years ago this was played at one minute past midnight.

And I don’t want to predict anything other than my wireless connection will carry on being useless, unpredictable and beyond useless. Yes, 2010 and wireless connection. Oh, and making sure I go to the gym consistently on a 4-times-a-week basis (at the moment it is, on average, 3…ok but not outstanding). And one of my resolutions from 2008 stipulated that I get to the cinema more often and I certainly did in 2009. Also, to enrol in one of those darn photography courses next year!

Anyway, AVPS gets into the Nostradamus swing of things with his prophecies for 2010 (Not sure about Labour scraping to victory though spot-on about the Posadas and all of a sudden an urge to write ‘calling occupants of interplanetary craft…’).

Derek offers his New Year’s resolutions though not too sure about ‘adopt a sceptic’…  Kevin gives an interesting and thoughtful political assessment of the decade.

And I would like to say well done to Guy Smallman (meant to blog about this before) for winning his legal battle against the Swiss government. Guy was badly injured by a  ‘police stun grenade’ at the G8 Summit in Geneva in 2003. Well done comrade victory for justice there!

Would also like to say good luck to PCS members organising and fighting against the proposed job cuts in Land Registry and hope 2010 will continue with their struggle against these savage cuts. Solidarity!

So here’s to 2010. Happy New Year to all you…

Hasta la victoria siempre

The political burnout

Do you ever feel burnout? I am sitting at my laptop tip tapping on the keyboard in my pyjamas feeling guilty, feeling overwhelmingly guilty and a failure. I just feel stuck to the chair, it is early afternoon and I am not dressed. This isn’t me. I don’t get up late nor do I lounge around the flat. I am usually up, around, organised and on the treadmill of activity, my worked out routine that keeps the depressive wolves away from my psyche. I should be going to this, to show solidarity to the Viva Palestina convoy but I feel unable to move from my seat to get dressed and get myself down to the embassy. The seconds are ticking by and feeling more guilty and a failure. Why can’t I just get dressed? And more to the point, why can’t I just give it a miss without feeling this overwhelming sense of guilt like I am letting the side down.

My partner says I remind him of being a Trot, part of the cadre, a foot soldier for the cause, rushing around, feeling guilty if you don’t, doing it for the movement, bursting with Leninist principle and pride, party discipline. You can take the woman out of the Trot grouping but can you take the Trot out of the woman. He is right (and he should know being an organised Trot for many years and still is but without the party affiliations). But he takes a totally different approach, less intense and more flexible. If he can’t make a protest/demo/meeting (delete whichever applicable) he doesn’t feel that guilt, just shrugs his shoulders and says, ‘next time’. He doesn’t let it overwhelm and take over his life. But like all of us he too has contradictions.

I have just been so focused on campaigning, rushing around, taking pictures, taking notes, feeling a part of something and forever struggling and fighting for a better world. And for the first time in a very long time I am sitting at the table, in the night clothes, unable to shift myself. Feeling oh so stupid, down, a bloody failure. FFS!! The other thing is that for the past year I have not had a holiday or proper rest, I have just been on auto-pilot activist. It keeps me sane. I have created a fixed routine. I enjoy being activist ‘cos I feel I am doing something useful and maybe being part of a social/political change, make a different on a personal and collective level. But sometimes the human body kinda tells you, ‘no’… I just can’t, need a rest… There will be other times to show solidarity, to take those pix and write those notes. Combined with feeling a fraud and not good enough cadre.

The other strange thing is that I have had this week off and I just don’t know what to do with it. Unwind? Relax? The only way I know how to is read lots of politico stuff and carry on campaigning. It is seriously hard trying to pull myself away from the world of politics as the lure and gravitational pull is always so strong. May sound a tad bizarre saying that but, at the moment, that’s what my life revolves around. And I think today was my way, unconsciously, saying, ‘nope, not today’… I suppose the scary thing is realising how empty your life can become, well not quite totally empty, just how certain things in your life can dominate the rest. Politics and activism, that’s seems to be my make-up.  I was, I had hoped, being wise to all this, as it has happened before. But I think I just got so utterly focused, manifesting itself in increasingly feeling positive, happy and lack of depression.

Though the signs were there and I didn’t heed them. Though the biggest strangest part of this was the realisation that I didn’t know what to do on my days off. How bloody strange? I paced the flat thinking of what I should do mainly ‘cos I felt a cripplingly sense of emptiness, what do I do? How to get away from things without the need to constantly need for activism and campaigning? I just couldn’t get over how surreal it was… And sometimes, I know this to be true, is that I come alive  when I am active, politicking and protesting but I am not very good at knowing what to do when I am not. Engaging with people can be overwhelming and sometimes I just want to hide away from the world. Like now.

I believe in what I do, I believe in the politics, campaigning and the activism ‘cos I am a Socialist and believe in a better equitable world but sometimes, with me, that’s all there is, I kinda lack form and shape. My way of engaging is through the politic. And sometimes I feel like a rounded individual with spirit and confidence and then I can feel so gutless and one-dimensional. I also believe that I have been doing this since I was 15, on and off, actually back then I was more dogmatic, determined and die-hard Trot so at least I have mellowed with age and not so revolutionary inclined. But yet….

So here I am in my pyjamas with my iPod stuck in my ears (I am a walking advertisement for Apple Mac) writing this, watching the seconds tick by, feeling less guilty though still having that voice in my head telling me I am a failure (where’s the Leninist spirit, comrade?!) but still feeling something is lacking.

Oh yeah, happy New Year… Lots of political activism, struggles and campaigning 2010!!

The one-sided class war

Class war has made the headlines recently regarding electoral strategy. I have sympathy with what Paul has to say on the matter here. NL has a totally distorted understanding of ‘class war’ and a contradictory one at that because they have adhered to the ideology of neoliberalism. The Tories, according to Danny Blanchflower, will be waging economic class warfare but who paved the way for them? In reality, this is an attack on the global working class. Neoliberalism is class war personified. And that’s the thing with all these articles, what is meant by class? And more fundamentally class? That’s one of the reasons I agree with Paul’s post as he is right when he says:

The reason the working class got called the working class is that it was the class defined by its economic role in capitalist society, and its relationship to the bourgeoisie.  The working class works and is exploited (or is part of the surplus army); the bourgeoisie owns.

Until the different between economic relationships and socio-cultural identification (and self-identification) is grasped properly by the Left, we’re not going to get that far.

And what precisely is NL’s election strategy, have they got one? It is all just empty rhetoric, gesture politics, Brown’s witterings about Cameron’s posh background. And undoubtedly there are divisions in NL. What a to-do! The problem is that NL has worshipped at the altar of neoliberalism for far far too long. Twelve years they had to implement redistributive and equitable policies that could have truly transformed society but they chose a very different political path. And NL are definitely part of the problem.

There’s a recession and unemployment…. and a crisis in capitalism? But as we have seen the FTSE 100 gaining strength. And as David Harvey eloquently argues:

What happened in the US was that 8 men gave us a 3 page document which pointed a gun at everybody and said ‘give us $700 billion or else’. This to me was like a financial coup, against the government and the population of the US. Which means you’re not going to come out of this crisis with a crisis of the capitalist class; you’re going to come out of this with a far greater consolidation of the capitalist class than there has been in the past. We’re going to end up with four or five major banking institutions in the United States and nothing else. Many on Wall Street are thriving right now. Lazard’s, because it specialises in mergers and acquisitions, is making megabucks. Some people are going to be burned, but overall it’s a massive consolidation of financial power. There’s a great line from Andrew Mellon (US banker, Secretary of the Treasury 1921-32), who said that in a crisis, assets return to their rightful owners. A financial crisis is a way of rationalising what is irrational – for example the immense crash in Asia in 1997-8 resulted in a new model of capitalist development. Disruptions lead to a reconfiguration, a new form of class power. It could go wrong, politically. The bank bailout has been fought over in the US Senate and elsewhere, so the political class may not easily go along – they can put up roadblocks but so far they have caved in and not nationalised the banks.

And as Naomi Klein succinctly argued: During boom times, it’s profitable to preach laissez faire, because an absentee government allows speculativebubbles to inflate. When those bubbles burst, the ideology becomes a hindrance, and it goes dormant while big government rides to the rescue. But rest assured: the ideology will come roaring back when the bailouts are done. The massive debts the public is accumulating to bail out the speculators will then become part of a global budget crisis that will be the rationalization for deep cuts to social programs, and for a renewed push to privatize what is left of the public sector. We will also be told that our hopes for a green future are, sadly, too costly.

And that’s the crux of the problem, we face an uphill struggle because neoliberalism is the obstacle, this particular ideology of the global bourgeoisie has been the most resilient and viciously rampant. An ideology that they want to continue. How have the global bourgeoisie dealt with the ‘crisis’ is by attacking the poor, attacking the public sector and the welfare state with relentless savage vicious cold hearted cuts that will reverberate for generations…

Instead we have Brown mocking Cameron’s posh background. Indeed, that is not the strategy for winning back core voters. NL has to re-connect with its core voters by implementing policies that benefit working class people. And that means kill the beast of neoliberalism because it is integral to what NL is. And all this talk of class war is eye wash because what do people mean precisely? Hell, I wouldn’t mind seeing the storming of Buckingham Palace, the overthrow of the parasitical monarchy, redistribution of wealth and turning Kensington and Chelsea into a workers’ republic but that is more of a fantasy than a reality. NL had 12 years to prove their transformative worth but didn’t (except for a few sops here and there).

They coulda/shoulda. But didn’t.

Analyse this…

I am sure I have written about this before, maybe I dreamt I had, oh who knows….

Anyway, Splintered kindly emailed me this. And because I am not doing that much, ok lazing around the place busy doing nowt, I had a go at this extremely precise and scientific ‘analyzer’ of gender. Yes, further into the realms of cod- pseudo-science.

And yes, they hazard a scientific guess, harpymarx.wordpress.com is written by a man (57%), however it’s quite gender neutral. Now I would sure love to know how they come to these conclusions, how do they predict etc. based on probability.  In the blurb says this:

It uses Artificial Intelligence to determine if a homepage is written by a man or woman. Behind the scene, a text classifier hosted over at uClassify.com has been trained on 11000 blogs written by men and women. In our lab it seems to works pretty well, we want to see how it performs on the web! We hope you like it!

A text classifier? Does that mean categorising gender specific language/words? Interesting….

Oh, and btw Splintered, we think http://splinteredsunrise.wordpress.com is written by a man (66%).

I know I know it is a bit of fun but…..

Update: Ha! Knew I had written about this…and I have. Though the previous time it was “Typealyzer” and the results were that Harpymarx was 77% certain to be written by a male “scientist” at high school level. Wow…and now only 57% certain to be written by a bloke.

Death penalty and hypocrisy

So China executed Akmal Shaiklh, the man had mental health problems but was still put to death for drug offences. And this is an obscenity.

Madam Miaow has written a very good post on the situation. Michael White’s Guardian piece makes valid points about hypocrisy and how the likes of Miliband and Brown keep schtum about the number of people the States executes, disproportionately Black, many have mental health problems and many are innocent (and here’s the schedules for execution next year).

But hey, there can’t be criticism of the States… It is the politics of distraction, ‘hey look at them not at us’… that’s why it is so hypocritical. The death penalty in any country is grotesque and barbaric and global ruling class are nothing more than a bunch of hypocritical gangsters. All of them, not select few.

And yes, if Brown likes taking the moral high ground then why doesn’t he stop Gary McKinnon being deported to the USA..

2009 in pictures – part 2

Continuation of 2009 in pictures

Demo to remember Ian Tomlinson from Bethnal Green to Royal Exchange - April 09

Massive Tamil demo - London 0409

Tamil demo - Hyde Park 0409

Outside police station around Bank of England re Ian Tomlinson - 0409

Tamil protest - Parliament Square 0409

Protest against the Budget 2009

Workers' Memorial Day 2009

May Day 09

Visteon Protest - May Day 09

Palestine Demo 09

Kettling Scotland Yard 09

Protest supporting SOAS cleaners outside Home Office June 09

UCAPV protest outside IPCC 09

Vestas Protest 09

Boris gets blocked - July 09

Vestas Protest - July 09

Rage Against New Labour - Sept 09

Protest outside French Embassy Sept 09

Stop Deportations to Iraq protest - Oct 09

Anti-war demo 1009

Reclaim the Night demo 1109

Ian Tomlinson Vigil 1209

Protest outside Israeli Embassy Dec 09

Madam Miaow, CiF and censorship

Guardian publishes John Prescott’s letter but Madam Miaow is still banned at CiF. Curiouser and curiouser. This just smacks of censorship and double standards.

My top 50 films of the decade

Ok, here goes…this is my Top 50 films of the decade. Films that captivated, engaged, impressed and were ultimately thought-provoking. I suspect I have forgotten some films and sure you will remind me…..

And in no particular order……. Drum roll please…

1. Harry un ami qui vous veut du bien (Harry, he’s here to help)
2. Donnie Darko
3. Memento
4. Nói albínói
5. City of God
6. The Man Who Wasn’t There
7. Motorcycle Diaries
8. No Country for Old Men
9. La Mala Educación (Bad Education)
10. The Edukators (The Educators)
11. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
12. Anything by Michael Moore (cheating a tad there….)
13. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
14. Walmart
15. Amores Perros
16. Caché
17. Let the Right One In
18. Hard Candy
19. Helen
20. J’ai Vu Tuer Ben Barka (I saw Ben Barka get killed)
21. Mulholland Drive
22. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
23. Lantana
24. Collateral
25.Insomnia
26. The Dark Knight
27. About Schmidt
28. Sideways
29. Far From Heaven
30. Devil’s Backbone
31. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
32. Pan’s Labyrinth
33. 21 Grams
34. Milk
35. The Departed
36. Bourne films (cheating again)
37. Shrek
38. The Vengeance Trilogy (ok another cheat…)
39. Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2 (ok, ok, it should be 2)
40. Spirited Away
41. Requiem for a Dream
42. Wallace and Gromit: the curse of the were rabbit
43. Shaun of the Dead
44. Master and Commander
45. Inland Empire
46. Das weiße Band (The White Ribbon)
47. Juno
48. Thumbsucker
49. The Blair Witch Project
50. The Hurt Locker

Opps… at 51: Control
Opps again… as Splinty mentions in the comments… 52. Downfall. And at 53. …how could I forget this little gem which didn’t get a wide distribution…. Cypher!!!!!

Update: I should have done Top 100 as I forgot these gems as well: The Corporation, Capturing the Friedmans, Spellbound, MacLibel, Tarnation, Goodbye Lenin, Gomorrah, A History of Violence, Fear X….and Zombieland

Also have a look at Sean’s top picks for the decade and I kinda agree when he says this decade this been a golden age for documentary film making. And thanks to Tim as well.

For fox sake……

Ok, I will make a confession I am against fox hunting, I used to go hunt sabbing as a teenager, a Trot amongst a sea of Anarchists. It was a positive form of direct action.

The ban on hunting is not being enforced. The opposition to fox hunting is more than just about political symbolism. This government, if it were a true Labour government not wedded to the ideology of neoliberalism, should be able to multi-task, walk and chew gum at the same time and that includes putting forward a raft of policies that don’t shaft the poor, that never should have gone for an illegal war and a government that is transparent and democratic that resists the lure of courtier politics.

So what is wrong with the fact Hilary Benn is supporting “Back the Ban”? Isn’t the ban already in existence yet the pro-hunting lobby is evading it. The legislation is not being enforced…that’s the issue not Hilary Benn et al organising this campaign. The issue I do take with Benn et al is precisely that, it is not being enforced because of the loopholes which are being exploited.

The ban on hunting was contentious but it was clearly Parliament expressing the democratic will of the people (makes a change there) and not cooked up in Ditchley Park or somewhere similar. It is estimated that 75% of people are against fox hunting and I really don’t take to the view that it is a townie/country divide.

Why do I support the ban on hunting? Because fox hunting is a deliberate act of cruelty and a barbaric one at that. It is also used by the Tories to symbolise their devotion to a hierarchical class system that is ruling class thuggery re-affirmed and legitimised. And this will be reflected in how they deal with the working class and the welfare state. Yes, we need policies and a government that truly fights for working class people as opposed to making them suffer over a crisis that the establishment created based on their own greed. I want a society that is based on equality and fights oppression. And as part of that, I will continue my support for a ban on fox hunting. Fox hunting reflects that barbarism is that the kind of society we want?

Gaza protest: one year on

Outside the Israeli Embassy

This time last year Israel attacked Gaza, a bloody brutal savage bombardment. There was a protest outside the Israeli Embassy last year where we blocked the road around Kensington, unfortunately the cops corralled us in.

Across the road from the Israeli Embassy

This year we were penned in across the road from the Israeli Embassy, there were around 300-400 loud and vibrant people.

Gaza protest 09 - by the barrier

Gaza Protest - by the barrier

Gaza Protest - by the barrier

Young woman protester

Protesters