Memo to self

Must update the Booksiveread2011 label - and the other one - on the blog sooner rather than later. It's getting ridiculous.

In mitigation, I have had my reasons for this particular tardiness.

I'd hate for the geeks, dweebs and enormously successful nerds hanging out at Mountain View, California to think that this car crash of a novel was the last thing I'd read.

If it had been, it could have laid claim to being the most important novel I'd ever read . . . the novel that stopped me from reading novels ever again.

Dubbed Twist and Crawl

And with this, it was nine.

Down and out in the sidebar

What the hell happened to my old George Orwell link? That was a brilliant resource that seems to have gone awol.

Until further notice, this link will have to do.

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.

The Magazine Wrack and Gobby Bastards . . .

. . . are a couple of new sidebars that I've added to the blog. (Scroll down the page to see what I'm getting at.)

Pretty self-explanatory and they will be updated when the mood takes me.

Tweaking the template

Apparently - if you look right - you can now subscribe to my blog. Why you would want to, I have no idea. Maybe you're a relative, or an SPGB spotter or maybe you have impeccable taste in popular music. Thing is, I've just described someone who doesn't ring any bells.

And it gets better. You can now subscribe to all the comments on the blog. Yep, all seven of them. Just read one a day, and that way you can drag things out for the full week.

People Just Want To Dream

Adding those sidebar links back one post at a time (3)

Got the hair dryer treatment form AVPS's Phil in the comment box a few posts ago for my laxity in restoring the blogroll in good time, so this post's just for him. As a wannabe Menshevik Internationalist (Brooklyn Cell), I know my place in the great scheme of things when a Bolshevik (Burslem Branch) pulls you out of the dustbin of history for a quick admonishing.

Still adding the blogrolls back in stages - if nothing else, it's a good excuse to check out blogs again - and this post focuses on the political blogs sidebar. They come under the umbrella title of 'People Just Want To Dream' for no other reason than the fact that it's the title of one of my favourite Microdisney songs and I had to get an impossibilist dig in there somewhere.

Being the lazy type, I've fallen back on Andy Newman's Top 101 Left Blogs post from last September, to reintroduce the blogroll. Those were the halcyon days of British Left blogging when the Shiraz Socialist bods were still on speaking terms with Socialist Unity blog, and the SWP's rank and file had yet to truly fall out of love with Gorgeous George.

Who'd have thought back then that those times qualified as the good old days?

Socialist Unity Blog - Andy Newman and friends. Yeah, I know, you're supposed to be dismissive about the blog. Andy Newman is a supposed megalomaniac . . . the blog did a flip on Gorgeous George . . . it's soft (or hard?) on China's imperial adventure in Tibet . . . yada yada yada.
What can I say, it's a readable blog that is regularly updated and for every four posts that aren't my cup of tea there's one that's of interest. And you have to have a sneaking admiration for anyone who's able to put a rocket under the collective arses of the SWP's Central Committee. Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of political chancers.

I like the fact that there is ongoing series of reviews of political films on the blog - films both old and new - and Andy's review of Lindsay Anderson's 'If' from a few month's back caught my eye.

Splintered Sunrise - Excellent blog from Ireland. No idea who the blogger is but I understand that he is an ex-SWPer who retained his sense of humour and knows where the bodies are buried. Very gossipy, very well written and very funny.
He also does a nice line in blog post titles. 'Everything I need to know about Leninism, I learned from midnight movies' is a particular favourite.

Stroppy Blog - Is Stroppy Blog one word or two? A socialist-feminist blog with three or four contributors, ranging from Labour Left types to the AWL to the SSP. Gets immediate kudos for not taking blogging too seriously.
This recent post from Cat on the Scottish Socialist Party's commitment to free public transport caught my eye because it reminded me that the Campaigns Dept of the SSP nicked the best marketing idea that the SPGB ever came up with. Now, if only they would up the chutzpah by nicking our socialist politics. I'd need never leave my armchair.

Mac Uaid - Socialist Resistance blogger who, if you listen to some SWPers who are still smarting from the Respect implosion, was the mini-me to Andy Newman's Doctor Evil during the big fall out.
Socialist Resistance? Bona fide Fourth Internationalists. The Mandel franchise and everything. Socialist Resistance has at various times been known as Socialist Outlook and the International Socialist Group. Best known for Ken Loach's man crush on its leader Alan Thornett.

They're currently doing the eco-socialist bit, and some critics (who aren't members of the SWP) have sneered that they went from being the democratic fig leaf for the SWP in Respect Mark 1 to the socialist fig leaf for Galloway and others in Respect Renewal. All jolly japes, very incestuous and convuluted, and makes US daytime soap operas look like Chekhov by comparison.

No, I don't know what that previous sentence meant either.

Dave's Part - Consistently readable blog from Dave Osler. His excuse for consistency is that he is a properly trained journalist . . . which most of us would consider cheating. He's been known in the past to write the only readable columns in otherwise dry as sawdust left journals - hello Red Pepper and Labour Briefing - and I got the shock of my life one time when I was watching the news on American TV one time, and his voice piped up as a talking head expert on some shipping disaster:

Me: That voice on the TV has left comments on my blog.

Kara: Yeah, but not for the longest time.

Me: . . .

Kara: yes?

Me: . . . He's a reformist. He's busy.

Check out his latest post, 'Why Tony Benn is wrong to back David Davis', and work your way down.

Shiraz Socialist - The Don Quixote and Sancho Panza of UK left blogging but nobody can work out if Jim D is Quixote to Volty's Panza or the other way around. I guess it depends what day you click on their blog.
Jim D is a long time AWLer and Volty was an AWLer when I knew him at London University ten years ago but the blog has an independent streak to it. How else can you explain the perverse insistence on blogging about jazz?

Check out Volty's post on why he'd vote for Obama if he was living in the States. Then check out this YouTube clip of Barack wrapping himself in the flag. It'll end in tears for Volty and the rest.

Hat tip to Will Rubbish for the YouTube clip.

The Scottish Patient - Kevin Williamson's blog was always a favourite blog in the sidebar. He's currently blogging mostly about his new radio show/podcast, which I have downloaded but I've yet to listen to. I promise that I will . . . if only for the Jimmy Shand techno crossover tunes.
I'm sure come the start of next season the blog will be ticking over once again with posts aplenty about the hibbees but in the meantime here's a picture of the red and white tablecloth Kev was using earlier today to mop up his tears.

Random Pottins - A blog that I really should click on more often. Good heavyweight journalism on subjects that I don't know enough about. I loved this wee snippet lambasting Frank Furedi from Pottins's post on the RCP turned Sp!ked mob:

"Furedi himself had written under his academic hat criticising the "safety culture", and complaining that trade unions were devoting too much attention to their members' safety at work. I could not help reflecting that, in a bourgeois democracy at least, the casualty rate among university professors was nothing like that in the building trade." [From 'Pirates, spies and cultural advisors']

Ian Bone - Bash Street Anarchism from Britain's second most famous anarchist. Big on expletives, capitalised letters and knockabout humour. He also mixes footie and politics better than me. BASTARD anarchist.

The Early Days of a Better Nation - The personal blog of Sci-Fi novelist Ken MacLeod. Being a proper writer, he doesn't blog that often but when he does it's usually interesting. (That's my half-arsed way of saying that with his background in science fiction, I only understand about 55% of what he's havering about.)
The good news is that he once voted for the SPGB. The bad news is that it looks like the SPGB is the one group on the left that he's never been a member of. Go figure.

A Very Public Sociologist - The bastard that prompted this overextended bullshit post. I'd consign him to hell if he wasn't already there. Awful taste in music but a very good blogger for all that. Nice take on self-reflection in his political life posts and I also like his branch notes posts. If I ever decide to politicise my blog, I'll steal use Phil's as a template.

I never mentioned it at the time but I will now: I liked Phil's post on the radical film maker, Peter Watkins, from a few months back. So much so that I cut and pasted the piece over to the unofficial Socialist Standard page on MySpace.

For all that, Phil's still on the SPGB's shitlist for the article he wrote on us in a former political life. Phil will one day discover that bound volumes of the Socialist Standard are not just for reading.

Adventures In Historical Materialism - SWP blogger who goes by the pseudonym of 'Snowball'. Has been known to melt in the comments box of other blogs when asked awkward questions but I don't think that's why he's got that user name.
I haven't just linked to him to knock him down. A genuinely interesting blog which is a great source for links to labour history and he has an excellent sidebar. (I'm always jealous of a good sidebar.)

As the footie's still consuming my thoughts, here's a link to an old post from 'Snowball' on football and politics, 'Histomat's guide to the World Cup'. I'm sure it will raise a few hackles.

Where's my smelling salts?

Adding those sidebar links back one post at a time (2)

Trying to get the 'Thank You For The Music' sidebar up and running again. Some old faces make a reappearance and there's also some new kids on the blogroll. Sorry for the delay . . . I'm a slow listener.

7" From The Underground - Excellent vintage blog from (I think) Italy. The emphasis is on post-punk, cold wave and 'minimal synth', so don't expect any Dr Hook out takes. The emphasis is on bands and individuals from mainland Europe, so think on that when you were shaking a leg to Ryan Paris and FR David back in the eighties, there were bands out there doing Depeche Mode . . . but better.

Chromosome Damage - Nine times out of ten the music posted on this blog is too esoteric or too raucous for my tastes - a Gummo Soundtrack, anyone? - but bookmark it for now as it will come in handy the next time a music meme does the rounds. The musos' won't know what's hit them.

Fritz Die Spinne - The subheading for this music blog is 'The mad ramblings of one music obsessed old goth', but please don't let that scare you off. I've already shone my torch into the blog, and I promise: there's no Fields of the Nephilim lurking in the shadows. Very similar in tone and period to the 7" From The Underground blog, so if you've already clicked on that blog and liked what you saw, you're in for a further treat.

Hooligan's Lament - Excellent music blog with an emphasis on all things Celtic (Keltic, not Seltic) and/or folky. Whoever HL is, he recognises the genius that is Roddy Frame and that's good enough for me.

Sons Of The Dolls - In short, guitars . . . guitars and more guitars. Anything from punk to pub rock to rock and roll to alternative country. Perfect cousins need not apply nor look in. The synthesiser would have been banjoed across their bounce quicker than you can say, 'Where can I plug in my fairlight?'

Take The Pills! - Excellent music blog with an especial emphasis on C86 and the generation inspired by it but it's so much more. At the last count, the label on the blog for twee had 235 entries. That's a lot of hot sugary tea whichever way you look at it.

The Post Punk Progressive Pop Party - For obvious reasons, aka as '5P'. An 'On this date in 80s music history blog'. Well, in truth, more like a 76-84 music history blog. How else will you know when it's Stiv Bators (posthumous) birthday? What day in history did The Stranglers release 'Golden Brown'? Or, the clincher, who wrote Lene Lovich's minor hit 'New Toy'? But how come there's no mention of Blue Rondo A La Turk? Were they really that bad?

More linkage to follow.

Adding those sidebar links back one post at a time (1.5)

One of my absolute favourite music blogs is no more. Not 100% sure what happened, but I think it involved Julian Cope's back catalogue and someone getting mightily pissed. So, Spinster's Rock, RIP.

That's the sad news. The glad news is that the bloke behind the Rock, Nolan Micron, - is that an anagram or his scientologist name? - has started up a new blog by the name of Castles In Space. The byline for the new blog is 'New House. Same Shit', which, coincidentally, will be the exact same words I'll be using after the next General Election when 'New Conservatives' unseat 'New' Labour from the Government benches.

With his new blog, NM promises more music, mixes and cassette rips. The least you can do is promise to bookmark his new blog.

Adding those sidebar links back one post at a time (1)

Better late than never:

The World Socialist - Semi official blog for the World Socialist Party of the United States. Maintained by the same comrade who also does the WSPUS MySpace page, and the blog is mostly made up articles originally posted on the MySpace page.
The most recent article on the blog is a reprint of the 2004 Socialist Standard article, 'Democracy and 'democracy''.

Socialism Or Your Money Back - SPGB's blog maintained by Graham in Denmark, Rob in Norway and Matt in Livingston. I believe the GB stands for Global Blogging. Sadly, the SPGB blog and the Socialist Standard are still to get on the same page but maybe when the blog get it's fourth member (from Cape Verde) everything will fall into place.
Recent posts include a look back at the assassination of Robert Kennedy, 'Labour embraces militarism' and 'Is Big Brother necessary?' In answer to the last question, they should have cancelled the show after Brian won the second season.

Socialist Courier - A blog maintained by SPGB comrades in Scotland. Regularly updated, the posts on the blog are like the comrades who pen them: short, to the point and prone to sarcasm.

Socialist Banner - A WSM blog that focuses on politics, society and class struggle in Africa.

Let's Have Socialism - aka as 'isn't it about time we tried socialism?'. this is the personal blog of Graham, an SPGBer living in Denmark. The blog has an emphasis on the environment, socialism, death metal and the pain of being a Gillingham FC supporter.
On what would have been his 80th birthday this weekend, Graham has a big fuck off post on Che Guevera. And I do mean 'fuck off'.

More padded out posts to follow.

"Give yourself an ulcer."

Slowly, but surely, adding the links back onto the sidebar. I should take the opportunity to add new links (and delete the old) but my head's a bit spaced at the minute.

So, as an alternative, I thought I'd take the opportunity to highlight material from the re-added links for your delectation. This particular post relates to that bloc of links that are the primarily politically but, for the musos amongst you, you might get the Gang of Four reference in the sub-heading. Click on them once, click on them twice, click on them three times:

World Socialist Party of the United States website

A few days ago, I posted a link to this article on Barack Obama and his long term working relationship with Reverend Wright on the blog that had penned by a comrade in Chicago. It had originally appeared on the WSPUS website, which continues to post good material stateside from a *cough* World Socialist perspective.

The same comrade also recently posted the following article, We work harder but get poorer in the U.S. on the website. Worth checking out. Worth getting angry about the continuing sad state of affairs.

Socialist Party of Great Britain website

The reason I started this bullshit blog in the first place. Sort of.

Downloads of old pamphlets (scanned in a few myself); education documents from yesteryear; and a growing archive of Socialist Standard back issues. If you're in possession of a laptop and a super-sized colostomy bag, you need never leave your armchair ever again.

Industrial Workers of the World

If you don't know who the IWW are, could you please make sure you close the door of the blog on the way out.

Not technically an officially endorsed IWW piece, but the Labor historian, Staughton Lynd's article, Another World Is Possible, does appear on the IWW website and does provide an interesting historical context to that knotty question of labor organizing and union democracy in the US.

I was hoping to see Staughton Lynd speak at the recent Left Forum conference in NYC but his flight was delayed. This will have to do for now.

Wobbly City

Newsletter of the NYC branch of the IWW. The latest issue covers the recent May Day/Immigrant Rights march and demonstration in New York City.

Socialist Standard@MySpace

Not so much 'Socialism with a human face' as 'Socialism with an impeccable taste in music'. But you knew that already.

Latest new/old post on the page is a chapter - How To Achieve Socialism - from the last century SPGB pamphlet, 'From Capitalism To Socialism - how we live and how we could live'.

Thought I would post it on the page after Danny Lambert - did I mention he was visiting NYC for a couple of days? - mentioned that a recent acquired SPGB sympathiser thought it was the best exposition of socialism that he had ever read.

If I remember rightly, the main author of the pamphlet was the late Pieter Lawrence. He really was a fine and lucid writer.

Marxist Internet Archive

You want Martov? They've got Martov . . . You want Pannekoek? They've got Pannekoek . . . You want Fitzgerald? They've got Fitzgerald . . . You want Grant and Cliff? Here, have some sawdust prose and a bendy stick.

Labour Start

"Where trade unionists start their day on the net."

That's not strictly true in my case. Every morning, when I first log on, I click on the BBC News website in the hope of seeing those magic five words.

But enough about me submerged sociopathic tendencies, Labour Start really is an indispensable resource for those of us that recognise that there's this wee thing called class war that is being waged 365 days of the year . . . and that we're getting our arses kicked at the moment.

Recent stories covered on website include American union-busters arrive in Britain; The brutal murder of labour leaders in Honduras; & Police terrorism on May 1st in Istanbul.

NYC Indymedia

Good site if you're wanting to know what's going on in the radical fringe in NYC. The following link has a good selection of pics from the recent May Day march/event in NYC.

Be warned: some of the contributions to the site can be a bit sketchy at times. For reasons unknown, in lefty terms, there's a sizeable contingent of Maoists in NYC. Yeah, I know, bollocks with icing in top. Which commissar told them that they could put down their little red book and pick up a laptop?

John Gray - For Communism

You want Mattick? They've got Mattick. Wait, I've already down that schtick a few links above.

John Gray - For Communism is an old website that hasn't been updated for a bastard age, but it continues to be a good stop off point if you get your rocks off checking out the like of Paul Mattick and Otto Ruhle, and if you like to size up Henri Simon, Karl Korsch and Jean Barrot for good measure.

Good Cajo Brendel hunting.

Interactivist Info Exchange

One of those sidebar links that I never click on often enough. It almost goes off my radar, despite its close proximity, and then when I look in again I realise what a fascinating website it actually is.

Granted, my inner thick kid can be easily intimidated by articles that would be rejected by the Editorial Committee of Aufheben for being too wordy, but sometimes you just have to dive in head first with a dictionary in one mitt and a copy of 'Can dialectics break bricks?' in the other mitt.

No ready made links this time. If you're going to chance it, I can only wish you the best of luck and offer to sell you a demo ready w.o.m.b.l.e outfit that I bought at an Anarchist Bookfair couple of years ago. It turns out that I didn't need it after all.

Resistance mp3

According to Volty over at Shiraz Socialist blog, the SPGB's hostility clause should preclude me from being able to link to such a website. I mean, after all, it's hour after hour of talks by SWP apparatchiks from various Recruitathons down the years.

No jokes about cures for insomnia. No gibes about spotting the fake proletarian accents. Just an excellent idea which I wish more groups - HELLO SP-fucking-GB - would rip off with their own mp3s, you tube clips and shadow puppet theatrics.

New Internationalist

This really should be in another section of the sidebar, and will probably get moved at a future date. I'm guessing that it got planked here because it was one of the first links I ever put on the blog. (When the blog still had pretensions of seriousness - wow, that was a heady five minutes.)

Used to subscribe to the hard copy of the magazine many years ago when I was a night worker at a warehouse in Hemel. The newsagent would give me the strangest looks on those once a month mornings' when I asked if my copy had arrived yet. But, you know, it was nothing compared to the dirty looks I would get from the newsagent a few doors down - liked to spread my left wing reformism around in those days - who I would get my ordered copy of Tribune from. It obviously wasn't enough that I would put my hands up in mock surrender every week, declaiming 'I don't agree with the editorial. I just get it for the Phil Evans cartoons'. She would still look down her nose at me. Those Labour Left Briefing types can be real judgmental bastards sometimes.

But back to the New Internationalist, I always had a soft spot for its essential decency (an underrated quality at the best of times), its photojournalism, for introducing me to the incomparable Eduardo Galeano, and for its reviews of all those albums that I will never ever want to listen to.

Its latest online issue - it's always a couple of months behind - is a special on ethical travel.

Counterpunch

Gets up the noses of people in a way that the Guardian's Comment is Free can only dream about. Claims to be a newsletter, but it's really a blog. Why be shamefaced chaps?

Of course I don't read every article. Too many of the bastards, and more often than not they can be a bit light on the political brain. (No, I don't know what that means either.)

A quick glance at its sidebar threw up the following articles of interest: 'An Open Letter to Michael Moore' (the gist of which is: Michael, DON'T!!!); 'Refocusing Olympic Protest' by the ever readable Dave Zirin; & 'New Labour is Dead', where Tariq Ali does British politics for a (largely) American readership. Tariq was the original 1968 Monday morning quarterback, and it doesn't look like he's retiring anytime soon.

More blog rolls to be added to the sidebar in due course.

Point of Information

Honest, the blogroll is coming back. Just being lazy.

Do Not Adjust Your Set

Will be messing about with the layout of the blog for the next few days, so apologies in advance. Nothing fancy schmancy . . . just twiddling and general tweakage.

I'll be restoring old links in due course.

Mid-Blog Crisis: Back In 15

What's that sound? Erm, it's The Sound

Slacking off on updating the Socialist Standard@MySpace blog, but at least I know the month of March is up to date. Usual deal: 32 posts. All linked to their original MySpace link and each and everyone tagged and bagged.

Choice articles include:

From the March 2008 Socialist Standard, 'Can the media be made democratic?'

From the Class Warfare blog, 'Famine or Feast? Britain alone wastes 20 million tons of food a year'

From the September 2001 issue of the Standard a correspondence with Kevin Carson, 'What's capitalism again?'

Transcript from the SPGB's 1994 Summer School, 'What Marx Should Have Said To Kropotkin'

From the WSPUS website, 'Bubble Troubles'

Originally posted on the Marx and Coca-Cola blog, JM from Seattle take on Barack Obama major speech on race, 'The Visible Man'

From the Socialism Or Your Money Back blog, an excerpt from a 1981 Socialist Standard where sympathy is expressed for Ronald Reagan on news of the attempted assassination, 'Ronald Raygun'

Much, much more availabel. Just click on the link.

Hey Zinesters

Oops, turns out Communist Headache was an ultra-left, rather than a council communist zine.

Apologies. I was working from a hazy memory of the zine that I picked up in the 56a Infoshop in south east london - which, if memory serves me right, was a molotov cocktails throw away from the old Labour Party headquarters in Walworth Road - about 10 or 11 years ago.

Now that I think about it, all I can remember about the zine was that the author - or authors - were based in Sheffield, he/they worked in a library and I'm sure that there was a drawing of an insect on the front cover that looked like it'd been cut and pasted from a school textbook. Always loved the title. For sheer imagination, it's up there with 'Proletarian Gob' and Dan Chatterton's 'Chatterton's Commune - the Atheist Communistic Scorcher'

What was I doing haunting the 56a Infoshop? I think I must have been on a hunt for a copy of the aforementioned Proletarian Gob. I really would go the extra-yard in those olden days for the obscure and badly-photocopied.

UPDATE

Turns out that typing "Communist Headache" into the google search engine does turn up more than my blog entry and a ten part article by Weekly Worker's Jack Conrad on Jesus Christ and the Dialectic of History. 'White Punks on Bordiga'? I like the sound of that. Reminds me of half-digested Stewart Home novels. I'll have to check it out when I get back.

Cheers to 'Butchersapron' for the correction.

Psst . . . .Psst . . . bottom left hand corner of the blog.

Still cross-posting articles to the Socialist Standard@MySpace blog, and I will continue to take the opportunity to flag some of the articles transferred on the blog.

However, in the meantime, I've added a new sidebar on the left side of the page - just underneath the links to Steve Coleman's 'Socialist Thinkers Series - where people I can see which months are completed and have been fully transferred from the MySpace page to the Blogger page.

At the moment only six months are listed in the column, but I'm guessing that more months than that have been completed. I just have to check through a few of the pages again to ensure that I haven't missed anything.

Trust me on this one, Sisyphus has nothing on me. The bloke was a lightweight by comparison.

Phil Evans - Political Cartoonist

I'm forever getting hits on the blog from people searching for info on the brilliant political cartoonist, Phil Evans, but because of my novice blogging skills at the time they never get a taste of Evans's work, just the blurb about his work from this old post.

Therefore, to make amends, I thought I'd repost an example of his work on the blog again - with the appropriate post title this time - to ensure that future Phil-Evans-Seekers don't miss out.

I'm good like that.