Democratic Martinism*

OK, it's patently obvious that neither my heart nor my head are in blogging mode at the moment, and me merely using the blog as a data entry site for films and books I've watched and read this year is a poor substitute, but I would be doing the (past) spirit of the blog a disservice if I didn't at least mention the hot news on the left blogging front back in Britain: Lindsay German has resigned from the Socialist Workers Party after 37 years of membership!

In the (present) spirit of the blog, I can't be arsed going into the whys and the wherewithals of how someone went from being one of the leading members of the SWP and the Stop the War Coalition to being part of the opposition rump Left Platform in the SWP that was routed by the spectacularly unimpressive Martin Smith in the little matter of a couple of years but if you follow the links below (or ask me kindly in the comments box), I'm sure it will all become clear:

AVPS Phil had the scoop of Lindsay German's resignation.

The ferocious commenting (and cries of schadenfreude) is naturally enough taking place over at Socialist Unity blog. (228 comments at the last count.)

Splintered Sunrise provides the kremlinology.

Ian Bone provides the best visual gag about the strained correspondence between Lindsay German and the SWP's National Secretary, Martin Smith, which led to her resignation.

Breaking news on a late Wednesday night affecting the British Far Left means that once again the former king's of the hill, the Weekly Worker, have been out-scooped by a lowly blog. Through gritted teeth, they insert one line into this week's online version of the Weekly Worker to try and give the impression that they've got it covered. They're fooling no one.

A sitemeter sighting lets me know that an old post of mine, concerning Martin Smith, has a broken link and I'm able to correct it accordingly. If you want to get the full sense of comic dread of an SWP now led by Mr Smith, have a peep at this old article from the aforementioned Weekly Worker, which concerns his actions in expelling a dissident member of the SWP in Bedfordshire. We're in Dario Fo land.

Now, back to 365Watch and rereading old books.

*Kudos to Robert in Splintered Sunrise's comments box for 'Democratic Martinism'

Mixing footie with non-market socialism?

I'm suitably intrigued.

As much as I'd like to think that my sitemeter sighting has uncovered a hitherto unknown connection between midlands footie and non-market socialism - Romeo Zondervan and Martin Jol sent by Cajo Brendel to the Black Country in the early 80s to form a Council Communist cell, perhaps? - I'm guessing the person googling was looking for this 'William' Morris.

Maybe they'll pop back to the blog and put us all straight?

'Riot, Revolt and Rebellion in the pre-Modern World'

I've yet to watch this video of Gwynn Thomas speaking on the subject of 'Riot, Revolt and Rebellion in the pre-Modern World' from this year's SPGB Summer School, but as someone from Stockholm has just stumbled across the blog after typing 'youtube spgb' into the google search engine, it would be a bit piss-poor of me if I didn't post this video up pronto whilst my tea is steeping:

Enjoy Johannes. You can see the other parts of the talk at the following link.

Hat tip to Rob W and Dave C for making and sharing the video of the talk.

Gnome Chomsky

A festivus present for the anarcho-reformist in your life this choming Christmas:

Place it in their returned garden of eden. Possibly next to a hitchens post. (Now that would have been something.)

Popbitch provides more details for the must have anarcho-consumerist ornament for next year's ten year anniversary of the guerrilla gardening spectacle in Parliament Square.

PS - Whilst I'm on matters Chomsky; What's with 'Noam Chomsky' plus 'broken english' all of a sudden? What does my sitemeter know that I don't?

PPS - The same company would also like to interest you in a Monkish Howard Zinn for good measure:

What do you mean you don't have 134 dollars going spare?

It's official . . .

. . . apparently it seems that my most devoted reader is googlebot. If only it would leave a comment every once in a while.

The Californian one. Not the European one. The latter is still blanking me because of that regrettable incident with diggit.

The Branches That Meet in Caffs

I'm intrigued. Tell me more.

Insert your rewritten Dexys Midnight Runners song title here. I've already had a go. (See above.)

Latest on Chomsky

In his office . . . at MIT . . . sucking on a polo mint . . . searching in vain to find a clip of Willie Donachie scoring a spectacular own goal for Scotland against Wales in a 1978 Home Championship International on YouTube.

Unfortunately, he doesn't find the clip he wants but he does stumble across this gobbet of Gordon Legge from the blog - where Legge mentions Donachie's said own goal in a short story - and he proceeds to rifle around the top drawer of his desk to see if he still has that Barnes and Noble gift card that Howard Zinn sent him last birthday.

The book looks good, and if he can get it second hand, he'll have enough left over on the gift card to also purchase a second hand copy of Colin Shindler's 'Manchester United Ruined My Life'. he feels it's time to look back on the good bad times when Man City used to be a football club.

Footnotes. FOOTNOTES. It's a post on Chomsky, so there must be footnotes . . . even if they're made up. (No, that isn't a sly dig on 'The Chom' before someone - ANYONE - write in.

*Chomsky looking for the Donachie own goal was probably prompted by this blog on classic own goals in today's Guardian.

**I thought I'd label the screen grab as 'Chomsky + own goal', so the blog will probably be getting its first visit from Little Green Footballers once the google alert goes viral.

***'The Chom' Made that one up myself. If Hitchens can be *involuntary vomit* cited as 'The Dude', then Uncle Noam can be now be known as 'The Chom'. What does it matter if it sounds like a chocolate bar? Probably just means I'm hungry.

****Proof read posts before posting. Then your hershey bar will taste better.

Raleigh for socialism

It has to be said that there are some strange types on the web

Looking for this bloke.

'Young Rosa'

A gentle nudge from my sitemeter and the latest post from Louis Proyect's blog reminded me of this old post from the blog.

That's not what's important. What's important is that you take time out to read the article/interview, “With the hard disk full of socialism”, linked to in the original post.

I'm truly humbled that there are such brave people in the world.

"stan bowles souness notting hill"

Whatever can it mean? I'm suitably intrigued.

Hunting four Shankly

Has Bill Shankly died or something?

The sitemeter keeps throwing up hits from people who've found the blog via typing in 'bill shankly t shirt socialism' into the google search engine. Poor bastards are looking for this, but instead they're stumbling across this past doggerel from the vaults of the blog.

Yes, I did have the t shirt - the long sleeved version - and rather than it making the intended everyman political statement, it looked more like I was going to a fancy dress party dressed as a post box.

A Thought

What's the odds that either Tommy Sheridan or Terry Christian have been talking about or wearing the Shankly socialist T shirt in the Celebrity Big Brother Household? I'm guessing the former as Sheridan's a hun by all accounts and TC is a Man Utd supporter.

Buddha being looked up in Suburbia

If the constant rattling of my sitemeter is anything to go by, they must be teaching a course in Hanif Kureishi's 'Buddha of Suburbia' up at State University of New York at Stony Brook at the moment. End of term papers, perhaps?

Come on people. You don't want to fail your end of term paper. Jump over to wikipedia like any normal lazy arsed student would do back in the day.

We three tunes . . .

A cursory glance of the sitemeter tells me that Christmas is nearly upon us. I know this because people keep gatecrashing the blog in their search for this seasonal singalong.

I'd long since allowed the mp3 link to expire to that particular new wave classic, but in the spirit of giving I've reupped both that song and my other favourite tune for this coming period at this old link.

Please enjoy, but not just yet. I'm feeling giddy with goodness. It's like I've been bludgeoned over the head with a copy of 'It's A Wonderful Life' by Andy Williams, and in my current dazed state I'm also stuffing this new(ish) Christmas classic in your stocking:

Wild Billy Childish & Musicians Of The British Empire, The - 'Christmas 1979' mp3

I've posted the songs early enough to allow you to learn the words in time for Christmas Carolling around the family casio on Christmas Day. That special time that comes but once a year . . . just after you've belched the remnants of the Christmas dinner into the dining room air and just before Cousin Wayne falls out with Auntie Yvonne over who's controlling the remote control. this year.

Before I go, the cut and pasted disclaimer:

The Secret Melody of the Class Struggle's policy on the mp3s posted

As well as the rants about politics and footie, I do from time to time post mp3s on the blog. These are for sampling purposes only, and are only up for a limited time. I hope that you like the songs as much as I do, and support the artists featured by buying their albums, DVDs and coffee table books.

Any bands or artists featured who don't want their music to be associated with bad taste in politics and dodgy football shorts, please email me and I'll take the mp3s down pronto. No hard feelings at my end, and *cough* thank you for the music.

Voorburg, Zuid-Holland

He wasn't expelled. He dropped out of activity, and was lapsed by his Branch (with much regret) many months later.

Visit again.

Monday moaning

Imperial College: who are you?

UPDATE

Don't mind me. A random ramble fuelled by a lack of sleep and an Owen permanently glued to my left arm. Here's a random 25 by way of recompense:

Not a duff track in sight. K-Tel would be very proud.

Still curious to know who Imperial College is, though. I'm not that sleep deprived.

Barbara Cartland cassette

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (63)

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 63rd of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1333 friends!

Recent blogs:

Freedom from profit

To Dream the Impossibilist Dream

News from Here

Coming Events at SPGB Head Office, 52 Clapham High St, London SW4 (nearest tube: Clapham North):

Saturday 20 September, 6pm

Which Way the Revolution - What are our differences?

Ian Bone (Class War) and Howard Moss (Socialist Party)

Forum followed by open discussion.

Chair: Bill Martin (Socialist Party)

A Season of Free Film nights from Sunday 14th September to Sunday 23rd November at 52 Clapham High Street, London.

All films start at 4 p.m.

Sunday 14 September: Animal Farm

Sunday 28 September:
Who Killed the Electric Car?

Sunday 12 October: Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on trial

Sunday 26 October:The Corporation

Sunday 9 November: Zeitgeist

Sunday 23 November: The War on Democracy

Quote for the week:

"This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. ... An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career." Albert Einstien, in Why Socialism?, 1949.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

On A Raised Beach

A new template, a name change and a welcome back to the blogger who now goes by the name of 'Brigada Flores Magon'.

Remember reading this passage years ago in a book whose title I can no longer remember (it was someone quoting McNair, rather it being McNair's biog of Maxton itself), and I'm glad that's it finally found its way onto the net.

What's another reference to Red Clydeside and the once vibrant radical traditions of the East End of Glasgow in the current hurly burly of the blogosphere? The more the merrier, as it will all disappear from blogsearch come July 25th.

'Point of order, Comrade Chair.'

Further to this post from a few hours ago, I feel a clarification is necessary.

It wasn't a case of me typing 'SPGB wankers' into the google search engine to see what came up. (I got past such political juvenilia months ago.) It was a genuine sitemeter sighting.

Some bounder looked upon the vast majesty that is the interweb, the trillions upon trillions of pages of knowledge and wonder and decided that the most important thing to discover was what pages would be placed in his lap if he typed 'SPGB wankers' into a search engine.

The SPGB Control Commission is now pursuing the matter. From the screen grab below, they've been able to discern that he is residing in Glasgow, uses Internet Explorer and that he doesn't spend nearly enough time on the blog of the 'only SPGBer in New York'.

I'd like to further speculate that he is a Partick Thistle supporter, has been known to drink Bellhaven and thinks that REM are a much better band since the drummer, Bill Berry, left.

Have you noticed how these speculations always come in three's? I believe it has something to do with quoracy.

Self-hating SPGBer or enemy of the working class?

Who was it at the back who shouted out "both"?

New Search Toy

Found via the sitemeter comes finderFACE, ". . . a homegrown web site devoted to keeping tabs on people in the public eye here in the UK. Every day the site scans Google News, Amazon Products, Flickr Photographs, YouTube Videos and Blog Posts to provide all content relevant to a person on a single page."

Amazingly enough someone found the blog via a John Terry post. Who'd have thunk it?

Just typed in "George Galloway", "Tommy Sheridan", "Noam Chomsky" and "John Rees" and nothing came up. Nada. Can you believe that? Doesn't finderFACE realise that those are the four most important people in the internet universe? Granted, I only reached that conclusion myself after doing a survey of Harry's Place, Kamm-buy-hooray-yah and er, that's it, but surely the decentists wouldn't lie to me?

Ok, it appears that fF is at the baby steps stage, so I'll cut it some slack. To get a flavour of it, I think I'll click on the random button to see which five celebs it will offer to me as people I need to know everything about in the here and now.

Here goes:

Franz Beckenbauer Fine. No complaints from this corner about the choice of Der Kaiser. Euro Championships starts next week, and I watched him being interviewed on an ESPN programme that is part of the build up to the tournament. The original Becks insists that the West Germany team that won the 1972 European Championship was the best ever German team. Better even than the World Cup Champions of 1974, and by the following European Championship, the West Germany team that lost to Czechoslovakia in the final on penalties were an aging team by that point. Before my time, so I'll take his word for it. OK, who's next up?

Damien Hirst Need an eye check up. At first glance, I thought it said Damon Hill. Yeah, whatever, not that bothered. See when the enfant terrible of the modern art world dies in sixty years time (see I don't wish an early death on him or anything), I'll hear the news and my first thought will be: the bloke who directed the crappest video in the history of pop music has just died. No thoughts of formaldehyde or a pharmacy will cross my mind; just that crap video for that shite song . . . which will be ironic because I will be thinking those thoughts via my disembodied head which has been preserved in formaldehyde and will be sitting on the shelf of a Futurama like Pharmacy. Moving quickly on (and away from that piss poor joke). Who's next via the random button?

David Bowie OK, what's the Thin White Pluke up to these days? I know he lives in New York but we hardly shop in the same deli. Mmm, this looks interesting, David Bowie: 'PAUL WELLER, GIVE ME MY HAIRCUT BACK!'. Never knew that Bowie and Weller have been known to have crossed words. According to the linked to NME snippet, it turns out they've traded barbs in the past in the music press but Bowie is now being concilliatory after Weller briefly left 1966 and moved his time machine to 1972 to check out some new acts. Apparently Weller digs Bowie, and he has said as much in recent interviews . . . but there's no word back yet on what he thinks of Chicory Tip. Bowie's accepted the olive branch and even said by way of a joke that Weller should give him back his haircut. That'll be the one that Weller sports today, and which Bowie claims he was wearing back in '67. Word of warning to Bowie that he is on a slippery slope with the requests to other entertainers for giving things back. As I write, there is a séance taking place in a boarding house in Westcliff-on-Sea and the ghost of Anthony Newley is asking David Bowie for his career back. Moving on to the next celeb. Maybe finderFACE will find a female celeb this time. 0/3 isn't good going.

Frank Carson Frank Carson? Who has editorial control over compiling these lists? Stuart Maconie? OK, I now know that Frank is still alive. Fair play for still cracking the funnies at the ripe old age of 81. And I now know that he's of Italian descent, and that there once was a 'Little Italy' in Belfast. What else? His nephew is on the books at Sunderland FC as a promising goalkeeper and Frank's the director of Chasetown FC. (Think I already knew that 'cos of Chasetown's recent FA Cup run.) What else can I say about Frank? . . . nope, that's it. Maybe, with the last push of the random button, the website will acknowledge 51% of the population. Here's hoping.

Napoleon Bonaparte OK John Terry . . . Der Kaiser . . . Hirst . . . Bowie . . . .Frank Carson and now Napoleon? Guess that confirms my growing suspicion that the website must be an offshot of Nuts magazine. I guess the idea is that you check out the main Nuts website for the female celebs in a state of undress and then, when the mood takes you, you click on finderFACE for a quick two minutes of blokedom. I know that if I'd clicked on the random button for another twenty clicks it would have been nothing more than a merry-go-round of Rodney Marsh . . . Michael Caine . . . Keith Moon . . . Ally McCoist . . . Jonny Wilkinson . . . Lewis Hamilton . . . Liam Gallagher . . . Jimmy Carr . . . Jeremy Clarkson . . . Roy 'Chubby' Brown . . . and Johnny Vaughan. Yeah, not impressed. Back to the matter of the little general? What's to know? Our 21lb Menshevik Internationalist Boston Terrier has a napoleon complex and there's a documentary on Abel Gance that I taped weeks ago and I've yet to get round to watching it. Cheers finderFACE for the gentle reminder.