I’m a bad blogger. Set up a blog, drop a link in the wrong place somewhere, take the site down in a tearing hurry, go away for a couple of weeks before you can do the repairs and then get home and find the internet connection’s died…

Oh well.

I’m back. This demo is where I’ll be on Saturday. More info from the United Campaign Against Police Violence here.

Here’s Linton Kwesi Johnson having a chat with Christine in the canteen.
get it

This is France. The BBC has a slideshow of May Day protests around the world, mainly focused on the economic crisis. The police look the same everywhere…

Diam’s offers a take on France here – one that’s multiracial and anti-Sarko. If you want a rough translation drop me a line. But your French may be better than mine.
Get it here

Strikers’ rally in Union Square, New York, on May Day, 1913. Check out the multi-lingual signs – two in Italian and a couple that I assume are in Yiddish. The one in English says:

ALFRED BENJAMIN’S EMPLOYEES
Our boss claims we are satisfied
We are here to prove the contrary

More info – and more historic 1 May pics – from here.

I’ve heard that there has been a victory for the Ford Visteon workers, who have staged occupations and pickets of their workplaces after they were all sacked at a moment’s notice and their factories shut down. More later. But for now, here’s some music…

Get it here.

UPDATE: Massive May Day victory for Visteon – details here. If occupying your plant after you’ve been sacked can get you £40,000 in redundancy cash, imagine what occupying before the axe descends might do… A lesson for everyone facing job cuts.

“Out at Ford here’s what they found…” Yeah, go and play that song again!

The last British troops are on their way out of Iraq, quitting Basra in the southeast of the country.

I have been wanting Britain to get out of Iraq since it first got into the place. But somehow I am managing to contain my delight.

The UK forces have now handed control of Basra over… to the US. It is an imperial game of pass-the-parcel.

Gordon Brown has had a word or two to say. Here he is, from the Number 10 website.

Today we open the next chapter in our relations, a chapter which I preface with my deep respect and appreciation for Iraq’s achievements and my gratitude to Britain’s armed forces who have made such a lasting contribution.

What kind of lasting contribution?

Well, according to Iraq Body Count, 3,845 ordinary Iraqis have died violent deaths in the Basra area since the Iraq war began. Yeah, that should last.

The IBC map shows how the Basra deaths fit into a far higher total of around 100,000 across 12 of Iraq’s 18 provinces. Other estimates, such as those published in the Lancet medical journal, are higher still.

The Lancet put the death toll at 655,000 in 2006. Extrapolating the figures to today would put the Iraqi deaths at well over a million. The deaths figure for Basra would be many times higher than the IBC numbers.

Here’s a bit more from Gordon:

Today Iraq is a success story. We owe much of that to the efforts of British troops. Our mission has not always been an easy one, many have said that we would fail.

He must have forgotten to give his condolences.

But Brown has remembered the far smaller number of UK casualties.

A memorial in Basra, honouring the British service men and women who lost their lives in Iraq would be “preserved for ever”.

The reason the Iraqi death figures come from the Lancet and Iraq Body Count is that the occupying forces have refused to keep count or ever list the names of Iraqis who have died as a result of the US/UK war. In the Brown book of condolence you get a name and a memory if you’re British. If you’re Iraqi, you don’t.

We do know the name of one Iraqi man who died in Basra, though. Hotel worker Baha Mousa was beaten to death by British soldiers. A post-mortem revealed 93 separate injuries on his body. It took five years for the Ministry of Defence to come up with an apology and compensation.

There has been no apology – or even acknowledgement – for the rest of the IBC’s estimated 3,854 deaths in Basra, let alone the many more who have died according to the Lancet’s scientific study. Yet each of those people will be terribly missed by their family and friends, just as Baha Mousa is missed by his wife and two young sons.

The Downing Street statement has something far more important to report, however.

The PM said there was now a clear message for companies worldwide: “Iraq is open for business.”

Oh yes.

Mr Brown said the UK would begin negotiations with Iraq on investment promotion.

Iraq – now a fine investment opportunity for British capital. There’s a success story for you.

The Guardian has put up a video of Caryl Churchill’s subtle, nuanced play, Seven Jewish Children, written in January this year in response to the assault on Gaza. You can also watch it here. It’ll only take ten minutes.

I’ve got tickets to see it with some friends at the Hackney Empire next month, but it’s great that loads of people will now be able to watch it on the internet.

You can download the full text for free here. And this is the statement about performing rights.

The play can be read or performed anywhere, by any number of people. Anyone who wishes to do it should contact the author’s agent, who will license performances free of charge provided that no admission fee is charged and that a collection is taken at each performance for Medical Aid for Palestinians.

Good for Caryl. If you’re not a big performer, you can donate to Medical Aid for Palestinians anyway.

Caryl Churchill is also responsible for one of the best bit of theatre I’ve ever seen – Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, which puts the politics of the English Civil War on stage. Churchill drew directly on material from the time, including the Putney Debates. Brilliant stuff.

NB – Budget follow-up on this post coming soon. Promise.

EDIT: Thursday 30 April – Youtube video now embedded, to replace static pic. Much better!

…an update on this post, concerning our glorious leaders’ latest budget.

While you’re waiting, here’s a song about economics.

Timing is important in police matters, so we are led to believe.

A day after the Guardian posted a video showing Ian Tomlinson had been shoved to the ground and batoned by the police before he died – and exposing the police who said they had no contact with him as liars – a massive anti-terrorism raid kicked off in the north west of England.

Coincidence? You tell me.

One minute lying brutal bastards, the next minute the heroic forces protecting us from “an alleged al-Qaida terror plot against the UK, designed to cause mass casualties”.

They arested 12 men. Of these, 11 were Pakistani nationals.

The raid wasn’t a small matter. Prime minister Gordon Brown weighed in to point the finger at Pakistan.

We are dealing with a very big terrorist plot … there were a number of people who are suspected of it who have been arrested. That police operation was successful.

We know that there are links between terrorists in Britain and terrorists in Pakistan. That is an important issue for us to follow through and that’s why I will be talking to President Zardari about what Pakistan can do to help us in the future.

Having one of his imperial moments, was Gordon there. The press were on full bark too. They did not fail to point out (more…)

A comment on the Brecht poem in this post reminded me about thoughts that sometimes cross my mind when I’m wandering around London looking at the buildings. Like in the City, where there are many big old buildings and some impressive new ones too.

They were built by slaves.

I don’t mean that the people who put the buildings up were personally enslaved. But look down years at the older institutions and finance houses there, and the foundations of their wealth came from the profits of the Atlantic slave trade and from the unpaid forced labour of enslaved people in America and the Caribbean.

Follow the money and you end up at a big stone edifice, or a soaring steel and glass tower in London. The men, women and children who were torn from Africa by the slavers might not have laid the stones, but those buildings are raised from their blood and sweat. Here are just a few with slave trade links. (more…)

Who raised it up so many times?

I have been walking around with a copy of this poem in my pocket for a while…

Questions from a worker who reads
by Bertolt Brecht

Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will find the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?
And Babylon, many times demolished
Who raised it up so many times? In what houses
of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live?
Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finished
Did the masons go? Great Rome
Is full of triumphal arches. Who erected them? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Had Byzantium, much praised in song
Only palaces for its inhabitants? Even in fabled Atlantis
The night the ocean engulfed it
The drowning still bawled for their slaves.

The young Alexander conquered India.
Was he alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Did he not have even a cook with him?

Philip of Spain wept when his armada
Went down. Was he the only one to weep?
Frederick the Second won the Seven Years War. Who
Else won it?

Every page a victory.
Who cooked the feast for the victors?
Every ten years a great man?
Who paid the bill?

So many reports.
So many questions.

First, a word from the late, great Miriam Makeba. You can get it here.

Yeah, sometimes there’s something you want to say, but it turns out someone else has already said it. Here’s a letter in the Guardian newspaper that spells out what’s been on my mind. I’ve dropped a couple of links in.

On the eve of the G20 summit in London five young people were arrested in the Plymouth area under the Terrorism Act. Their arrest took place after one young man was caught spraying anti-capitalist graffiti, a tiny act of dissent which resulted in police raids on several premises. Despite large servings of media sensationalism, not even the police claimed that those arrested posed a credible threat to the leaders of the G20. They were accused of possession of “material relating to political ideology”. The state now finds the ownership of anti-capitalist books suspicious.

Last week, just as the Metropolitan police were pressed to explain their role in the death of Ian Tomlinson, came the news that the police had broken a very convenient “terror plot” in the north-west. Initial media hysteria about a “bomb plot” has dwindled away. The “plot” is clearly less apocalyptic than the public were encouraged to believe.

On Easter Monday came the astonishing news that 140 people were arrested in Sneinton Dale, Nottingham, on suspicion of conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass and criminal damage over a “suspected plan” to target a power station. Now you don’t even have to carry out a protest to be arrested.

New Labour has slaughtered the people of Iraq and Afghanistan in the name of “liberty” and “democracy”. At the same time it has enabled the essentials of a police state to be built in Britain.

Not sure if it’s 1984 yet? Check out the police billboards now appearing in various locations on this septic isle. The image up the top was made by that james. But it is based on a real police billboard with the same photograph of an overflowing dustbin on a residential street. The original text reads:

These chemicals won’t be used in a bomb because a neighbour reported the dumped containers.

Don’t rely on others.
If you suspect it, report it.

As James Holden, maker of a truly fab DIY anti-terror billboard remix machine, explains:

This odious billboard appears in my town, encouraging me to rat on my neighbours because I don’t understand what they throw away.

Quite. A nice slideshow of alternative adverts has been provided by the wonderfully named Flickr group, They must think we’re all morons.

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.