Rumsfeld and Saddam

Saddam Hussein and his co-defendants were convicted for crimes committed in the town of Dujail in 1982.

Saddam shaking hands with a beaming Donald Rumsfeld in Iraq on December 20, 1983. Is it possible that Rumsfeld and his friends were unaware of Saddam's acts the previous year? Not really.

Eyes Wide Shut (contains spoilers)

I can honestly say this is the most unusual Christmas film I have seen. However I watched it on Christmas Eve and the action all takes place during advent. There are some jolly characters in red cloaks but no beards but they are taking part in a somewhat satanic prelude to an orgy and they soon drop the cloaks to reveal that is all they are wearing apart from the occasional thong.


And the viewer/voyeur is sometimes invited to see the nudity through the eyes of a doctor – Dr Bill Harford – first the naked body of an unconscious woman whose life he saves and the naked body of an apparent suicide victim

And for all the nudity, Bill Harford’s sexual encounters are all unfulfilled. His initial encounter with Domino (a name which presages the “fancy dress” masked orgy he later attends – is interrupted by a telephone call from his wife (curse these mobile phones!) He himself turns down the offers of his deceased patient’s daughter and a fancy dress shop owner who offers him his underage daughter “for anything the doctor orders!” And at the satanic fancy dress orgy he sneaks into, he is teased and then caught and sent off with a warning.


The film is also a thriller in the more traditional Hitchcock sense of the term. There seem to be two murders but the good Doctor drops all his investigations and accepts the unlikely explanations of his rich client who turns out to have been behind one of the masks. In the end he is content to go back to his beautiful wife and keep his eyes wide shut.

The dialogue transcript is available here http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/e/eyes-wide-shut-script-transcript.html

Tories name the 12 who shaped our nation.

The Conservative education spokesman, David Willetts has announced his “nation building” History curriculum. In place of the study of history, he prefers the narrative approach (telling children little stories) about 12 chosen great people.

The list has 11 white men, three of them wearing crowns, and one white woman. It seems the black and ethnic minorities in the UK made no contribution to its history if we believe the Conservative party; and men made 11 times as great a contribution as women.

Some of the choices – based on the contribution to creation of British institutions and structures are surprising. The inclusion of Oliver Cromwell probably has Prince Charles feeling his collar – one of Cromwell’s “memorable structures” was the scaffold on which King Charles was executed.

Although there are three kings, King Henry 8th is excluded. It is unusual for the Conservative Party to assert that the Church of England is not a significant institution.

Other omissions are less surprising. The Tolpuddle Martyrs are not there – trade unions are an institution the Conservative Party would sooner forget about.

And the whole concept is cockeyed. History is not made by individuals “great” or otherwise. Nye Bevan did not single-handedly create the NHS any more than Millicent Fawcett single-handedly brought about votes for women and neither of them was stupid enough to believe they did.

It is convenient to reduce history to stories about individuals – and then pick and choose which individuals constitute “history” but the events which really shaped these islands, like the Chartist movement, involved the participation of the working class and the poor.

History is made by millions. And so is the future. As David Willetts and his merry men will find out.

Derek McMillan

The list is:

Saint Columba, 521-597 (Christianity in Britain)
Alfred the Great, 849-899 (the Kingdom of England)
Henry II, 1133-1189 (Common law)
Simon de Montfort, 1208-1265 (Parliament)
James IV of Scotland, 1443-1513 (the Kingdom of Scotland)
Thomas Gresham, 1519 -1579 (the stock market)
Oliver Cromwell, 1599 -1658 (the British Army)
Isaac Newton, 1643-1727 (the Royal Society)
Robert Clive, 1725-1774 (the British Empire)
Sir Robert Peel, 1778-1850 (the police)
Millicent Fawcett, 1847-1929 (universal suffrage)
Nye Bevan, 1897-1960 (the National Health Service)

Christmas cards with a purpose

Omar Deghayes, British resident imprisoned without charge or trial and currently being tortured in Guantanamo bay will be spending Christmas in prison while Blair and co are enjoying themselves.

The Save Omar campaign - whose only demand is that he should stand trial if he has committed any crime - are asking all supporters to post Christmas cards with anti-Guantanamo and Justice for Omar greetings to the Prime Minister and the relevant members of his cabinets. Here are their addresses:

Prime Minster Tony Blair
10 Downing Street
London
SW1A 2AA

Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
19 King Charles Street
London
SW1A 2AH

Home Secretary John Reid
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF

Yule

A speaker in assembly at a school "somewhere in Sussex" was fulminating at tedious length about the attempt to "do away with Christmas" by calling it something else.

It has always been called Yule until the Christians came along and appropriated the pagan symbols of holly, mistletoe, the yule log and the tree and called it Christmas.

Well it is a free country they can call it what they like but their synthetic indignation is irritating.

Bush's mid-term defeat cartoon

Alan Hardman's cartoon comment on Bush getting his come-uppance in the mid-term elections.

Private Armies in Iraq

The story on Channel 4 News this evening about private security firms in Iraq make one wonder whether the British death toll is being disguised. They showed the grieving family of one soldier who will get no military funeral because he signed up with a private army in Iraq.

They also quoted from one security man who was hired to protect American soldiers. I will repeat that. hired to protect American soldiers and derided their lack of security consciousness concluding "If they get killed by a roadside bomb they will have nobody but themselves to blame." For someone employed to protect them I have to say this is probably not an attitude his employer would want made public.

Moreover the idea that the American army need to be protected by security guards does nothing for their macho image.

The fact is that private soldiers, who will get no flag-draped coffins going home, are very convenient for Bush and Blair.

Animal Rights on BBC2

I have just been watching a scientist on BBC2 comparing Animal Rights protesters with terrorists and explaining that all medical advances have been brought about by animal experiments in the past which proves conclusively that there will never be an alternative in the future.

His case was undermined just a little by the way he was puffing away on a cigarette throughout. Obviously all those experiments proving that beagles get cancer if you force them to smoke were lost on him.

I am not an animal rights supporter - I stroke the cat occasionally but that is about it. I do know that equally serious scientists are seeking alternatives to the old fashioned methods of animal experimentation.

Paranoia Paedophilia and other things beginning with P

I do have a concern about behaviour which my father or his would have regarded as innocent sending parents into a panic which they blatantly enjoy.

A pupil was leaving a football match at our local park. I asked him what the score was and got a mouthful of abuse from his mother. Then they left. Then they came back and she said that her poor son had told her that I was his teacher and she apologised. She still didn't see anything wrong with abusing - with glee - any adult who so much as spoke to her son.

And this wasn't one of those Sun readers who attack paediatricians because of limited reading ability. This was an articulate, concerned but just a bit paranoid parent.

Socialism 2006

Socialism 2006 looks like being an excellent weekend on November 25/26th. We've got a wider range of speakers and debates than ever - something for everyone.

There should also be an opportunity for Socialist Party teachers to meet on the Sunday to discuss union work.

The details of the event are on the website
www.socialism2006.net
You can also buy tickets online at that site.

White poppies

A lot of fuss about newsreaders being made to wear poppies. I thought the idea of charity was it was voluntary. A lot of people choose to wear poppies and they think the money is going to a good cause.

My mother always wore a white poppy. She made it herself. People celebrated the end of the war. It was only later that the generals and the politicians decided to make 11th November into a celebration of the glory of .... politicians and generals.

And the idea that people fought for the freedom to be forced to wear a poppy is not fascism but it is a bit ironic.

The state has money to wage war. To look after the victims of war apparently is a job for charity. What if it were the other way round. What if the state looked out for the victims of war but the generals had to hold charity drives to buy cluster bombs?

Boycott Israel

“I lost my sister, my brother-in-law and five of my nieces and nephews this morning. I feel nothing now; I can’t find the right words. All I know that the attack wasn’t a mistake. Israel fired six shells, how can that be a mistake? Israel wants to push us from our homes, but we will stay. This is our land.”

-- Omar Thamena, 46, engineer

“A third of unarmed Palestinians killed during IDF operations in the Gaza Strip since the abduction of Gilad Shalit have been minors, according to a new report prepared by Physicians for Human Rights, to be published Wednesday. Between June 27 and October 28, 247 Palestinians, including 155 civilians (63 percent) were killed by the IDF. Among the civilians killed, 57 were minors. This figure does not include minors who were armed.”

-- Haaretz, 8/11/2006

“We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.”

-- David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A Biography by Michael Ben-Zohar


I do not know whether boycotting Israel will halt its genocidal policy towards the Palestinians. I do not know whether the boycott of Apartheid helped to bring it down.

I do know that the ANC called for the boycott of Apartheid; I do know that Palestinians have called for a boycott of Israeli produce.

I also know that not supporting Israel or not supporting Apartheid is simply refusing to be an accomplice.

Israel does not use suicide bombers against unarmed civilians. It uses long-range artillery and it apologises once in a while. That does not make it morally superior does it?

Bernie Sanders - first socialist senator?

The victory of Bernie Sanders in Vermont shows the potential for someone who stands against the millionaires to gain support. Right wing republicans cannot afford healthcare, right wing republicans cannot get their kids through college - they want someone to look after their economic interests.

He approved of the idea of millionaires voting against him - it is in their class interests to do so!


Bernie described socialism on Democracy Now! as follows:

"Well, I think it means the government has got to play a very important role in making sure that as a right of citizenship, all of our people have healthcare; that as a right, all of our kids, regardless of income, have quality childcare, are able to go to college without going deeply into debt; that it means we do not allow large corporations and moneyed interests to destroy our environment; that we create a government in which it is not dominated by big money interest. I mean, to me, it means democracy, frankly. That's all it means. And we are living in an increasingly undemocratic society in which decisions are made by people who have huge sums of money. And that's the goal that we have to achieve."

Bernie is not a member of the CWI and his view of socialism is more on the Scandinavian model. Nevertheless his victory does show what is possible.

Cheney on torture

According to the US TV program "Democracy Now!"


"Vice President Dick Cheney has apparently confirmed US interrogators engage in water-boarding – an outlawed practice that creates the sensation of drowning. The admission came during an interview on a right-wing North Dakota radio program on Tuesday. Cheney said he agreed with a listener’s comment that terrorists should be dunked under water if it could save American lives. Cheney added: “that's been a very important tool that we've had to be able to secure the nation." A spokesperson denied Cheney had endorsed waterboarding and said he was referring to broad interrogation procedures. Water-boarding is barred under international treaties that prohibit torture."

Water boarding is a technique the CIA have directly copied from the Gestapo. Don't it make you proud?

An Excellent Mystery

Although I don't usually review "whodunnits" (and look away now if you don't want to know!) Ellis Peters' books are interesting as an insight into aspects of medieval life - not least into the monk/pharmacist Cadfael's extensive knowledge of herbs.

The restrictions on Cadfael's knowledge which would come of him being a medieval monk are circumvented by his earlier life as a crusader and as a sea captain.

The only drawback in this novel is that everyone is just too nice to be true - even the villains. The way Peters deals with homosexuality in the monastery is at least sensitive although there is a bit of cheating (no I really will try not to give the plot away here).

However the book passes the test: it keeps the reader guessing (and wasn't I smug that I guessed aright!) and it is written with the economy of words which makes it readable but enough detail to make me want to read more Ellis Peters books.

STOPP it!

School Teachers Opposed to Performance Pay has been relaunched in view of the government's intention to tighten the pay regime in schools so that teachers who are "merely satisfactory" are not to get annual increments. They do mess around with the language don't they. Satisfactory is a grade you would give to someone who was doing OK not to someone who ought to be penalised.

http://stopperformancepay.blogspot.com/2006/10/postponed-for-year-year-to-build.html

Apparently stopp also stands for Society of Texans Opposed to Private Prisons! We're with them!

General Dannatt

I was wondering about sending General Dannatt an invitation to join the Stop the War Coalition. He is saying what everybody else is saying - we are doing more harm than good in Iraq now - bring the troops home before any other mother has to mourn the loss of her child.

Of course the General is most concerned that British Imperialism should still have an army intact and he would probably support other colonial wars if the casualties were "acceptable".

Nevertheless his remarks give the lie to the current spin from Downing Street which boils down to "forget the lies we told to get into this war - we need to stay now or there would be a bloodbath". The General thinks otherwise.

Static by Amy and David Goodman

Static
Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back
By Amy and David Goodman
ISBN: 1401302939
Published by Hyperion Books

Amy Goodman hosts the radio, TV program and website Democracy Now! which provides a platform for the voices of dissent in the United States. David Goodman is an award-winning investigative journalist.

I have to warn you that the first half of this book is worse than a nightmare because the stories it tells are true. Like the story of Maher Arar who was abducted by the FBI at JFK Airport on his way home to Canada, sent to Syria where he was put in a cell the size of a grave and tortured repeatedly and brutally.

Ironically when he was released without charge a year later, Bush made a speech denouncing the “Dictators in Iraq and Syria and their legacy of torture, oppression, misery and ruin.”

Horrific though it is, this is an excellent book for socialists to have to hand. It is full of facts and figures about issues from the systematic use of torture by the United States, media manipulation, the illegal surveillance of US citizens, the profiteering from war, denial of free speech and of course the horrors of the Iraq war itself.

However the second part of the book is inspiring. Beginning with Sindy Sheehan who set out to find out for what “noble cause” her son had died in Iraq the book gives example after example of people fighting back.

These are not always people with a fully-rounded political program. Many start out as pro-war until they see the realities for themselves. One was a man who joined the Marine Corps in 1999 as an artilleryman “to blow things up.” Now he leads anti-war protests.

Both as a source of facts and a source of inspiration this book is well worth buying. Or get your local library to get a copy so other people can share it.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde
ISBN 0745139302

Also available online here

It would be difficult to provide spoilers for this novel because most people know practically from the title the conceit of the narrative: Dorian Gray has his picture painted, the painting degenerates and ages while he retains his youthful good looks.

This is not a moral book although it is about morality. Victorian times were full of improving novels which would tell the reader to do good things and never do bad things. Unusually Oscar Wilde invites the reader to *think* about good and evil.

The main characters were all reflections of Wilde's personality. He had the same reputation as Lord Henry Wotton as a man who makes brilliant epigrams which are at variance with the moral dictums of the time.

He wanted to remain young and beautiful like Dorian Gray and he sought to be an artist in the field of literature as Basil Hallward is in the field of painting.

There is an astonishing homoerotic theme to the relationships given the Victorian world in which homosexuality was illegal and certainly no novelist could openly allude to it.

The victorian society was very like Dorian Gray with the appearance of innocence and the reality of corruption. Prostitution and drug addiction were rife in a society with apparently strict moral rules.

The reluctant cannibal

Boris Johnson is still refusing to apologise for his remarks about the people of Papua New Guinea being cannibals.

He thinks schoolboy jokes about Papua New Guinea and cannibalism are still funny. He was presumably misled by Flanders and Swan's "The Reluctant Cannibal" which contained the memorable line "If the Good Lord had meant us not to eat people, he wouldn't have made us of meat." Of course Flanders and Swan had wit and style and musical ability whereas Boris Johnson is Boris Johnson.

I can imagine an eve of poll election broadcast showing the Shadow Higher Education's more memorable stupidities - his attack on the people of Liverpool and his parlous performance on "Have I got News for You". In all seriousness is that what you want running the country? Is this the kind of thing the universities should be teaching?

Kelly Osbourne supports Tony Blair

Kelly Osbourne has spoken in support of Tony Blair as he struggles to maintain his well-paid job.

She decided to voice her opinion on the British Prime Minister as he is hit with demands to leave his position - many from his former close supporters.

"She told Contactmusic: "The way I see it, we've voted this guy in to run our Government and we can't just turn against him. It must be the hardest thing in the world to run the country - I know I couldn't. Poor Blair. That said, I always try to stay out of politics."

Perhaps she was right in her decision to stay out of politics. Tony Blair needs her support like a hole in the head. He is paying the price for his lies over Iraq. Thousands of others have paid a much higher price.

The latest rumour is that he will stand down when the weapons of mass destruction are found

Socialism 2006

Socialism 2006 is a weekend of discussion and debate hosted by the Socialist Party, taking place on 25 and 26 November 2006.

Socialism - is society still divided into classes, can socialism be achieved in a globalised world, could a socialist-planned economy save the planet?

There will be a wide range of seminars with lively discussion and debate.
3-5 pm Saturday 25 November 2006
10-4.30pm Sunday 26 November 2006

Smart Bombs - a short story.

As he got on to the tube train, rubbing shoulders with the men and women, almost tripping over the push chair, his mind was filled with those other men and women; people stranded without food in the rubble of their homes, bearing bloodstained makeshift bandages, searching without hope for loved ones among the slain.

These people did not know what that was like. They were going to find out.

The train pulled out of the station. It was crowded, he had to stand. One or two people eyed his rucksack and then looked away. If they only knew.

Today his family were going back. They had no comfortable lives, no smart suits and mobile phones and ipods. They didn’t have to “imagine no possessions.” They had the clothes they stood up in and those needed a good wash. Their home might be there. Mr Blair and Mr Bush might have sent over one of their smart bombs to destroy it. How smart is that?

If it was gone they would camp near the rubble of their house and try to rebuild their lives, just like before…and the time before that. The smug faces around him hid minds which did not know what that was like.

This was a war of the rich against the poor. The rich have always been at war with the poor. And they conscript the poor to fight their battles.

And suddenly he realised there were men in flak jackets on either side of him. A gun to his head and the carriage was being evacuated. They pushed him to the ground and held him down. Then they were kicking him and shouting questions at him. The contents of his rucksack were strewn all over the carriage.

And then the policemen were laughing and they stood on the sheets of paper. “What the fuck is this? Bloody poetry? Do you think you can win a war with ideas?”

He didn’t say anything but inside his head he whispered, “yes.”

Public Service Private Profit

Dispatches last night was a detailed expose on the private finance initiative. It is reviewed here:

Socialist Teachers' Blog

Channel 4 website

Dispatches on PFI

Dispatches on Channel 4 on Monday 14th August was a detailed expose on the costs of PFI to the public services.

The government can borrow money cheaply, PFI means that the public sector has to pay a higher rate of interest. However once a hospital, road or school has been constructed a much lower rate of interest is possible. This enables PFI companies to refinance their loans and make millions, sometimes hundreds of millions. Under pressure they might sometimes pay back a fraction of this to the taxpayer.

Liam Halligan compared PFI to going on a shopping spree with a ludicrously expensive credit card. The amounts do not appear on the government’s books but there will be an almighty payback in the future. Any student with a loan will know just how that feels.

Financiers openly talk about “sweating” resources. Once they have a guaranteed income stream from the government they can seek to minimise their costs. The program showed one example after another of corners being cut in PFI projects. The public institutions can complain as much as they like, they are locked into 25 or 30 year contracts with the private sector willy nilly!

The program also showed in detail how companies like HSBC legally avoid paying UK taxes on public sector contracts. For example, they have transferred a £311 million Home Office contract into an offshore fund .

They also detailed how companies can manage to tell their shareholders they are making a profit and the taxman they are making a loss. The profits seem to disappear into subsidiaries which do not have any employees but manage to provide “management services.”

Some opf these companies are making an extortionate 123 percent on capital investments. Instead of locking them up for profiteering, New Labour award them further contracts.

Liam Halligan has done an excellent job exposing this public scandal. How interesting that HSBC and numerous other financial institutions refused to buy advertising space around this program!

It was not his job to provide a political alternative to PFI but this is all grist to the mill for the Campaign for a New Workers Party.

Relief at foiling of terrorist plot

There is a sense of relief that an apparent terrorist plot to blow up aircraft has been foiled. It will be a bit of a nuisance for people who have to carry GTN (which is actually nitroglycerine!) for angina. I do not look forward to explaining that one. However it seems a price well worth paying.

Unfortunately there has been an unsubtle focus on the muslim community which is irrelevant. Calling Osama Bin Laden a muslim is like calling the Rev'd Ian Paisley a Catholic. The constant linking of "terrorist suspect" and pictures of mosques is not subtle.

The Nazi newspaper, Der Stürmer used to show pictures of synagogues alongside pictures of rats for the same reason. What Der Stürmer did was to take every crime which was committed by a Jew and use it as a way to label all Jews as thieves, rapists and murderers.

And of course the old "innocent until proven guilty" palaver is replaced with a journalist muttering "alleged" occasionally.

The terrorists are making repression and the loss of civil liberties easier.

Terrorism is the other side of the coin from repression. The government can use terrorism as pretext to take away old fashioned "pre 9/11" concepts like freedom of speech or trial by jury.

If they didn't have terrorist plots then they would have to invent them. You can bet good money Dr John Reid will end up with much more power when all this is over and done with and he will be oh so reluctant to relinquish it.

Fake "war on terror" in Lebanon

The "war on terror" happens to be a war of rich nations against poor nations, with terrorism as a pretext.

Bush and Blair have no objection to terrorism - for example the terrorism of the Contras or Posadas, when it serves their purposes. The rulers can claim no high moral purpose.

Now they must be laughing up their sleeves as they arm the Israeli Defence forces to the teeth and send them off to fight their battles for them. In this war there will be no embarrassing death tolls of American or British soldiers, no irate mothers camping out to demand to know why their sons have been killed.

It is all being done by proxy. The terrorists are doing the imperialists' dirty work for them by providing a pretext and the imperialists are boosting the terrorists. In Lebanon people could understandably see Hezbolla as a resistance movement, the only people apparently fighting back as the American proxies kill civilians.

At the moment Israeli and Lebanese civilians are the main victims. And Blair is enjoying a nice holiday.

Churchill’s Hour

Churchill’s Hour
Michael Dobbs
ISBN 0753124386

This is the third historical novel by Michael Dobbs in the Winston Churchill series following Winston's War and Never Surrender. Dobbs has mined the seam of Churchill’s larger than life personality, the cult which grew up around him during the war and added some rather fanciful conspiracy theories from his own imagination.

I won’t spoil it for you by detailing the clever and just-about-possible “inside stories” which exist in these books. What I will say is that the most incredible events in Churchill’s Hour are the landing of Hitler’s deputy in Scotland and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour – you really couldn’t make them up.

The intelligence or lack of it surrounding Pearl Harbour has always been a mystery and few people have been able to penetrate what was going on in Rudolph Hess’s brain at the best of times.

The truth in these books really is stranger than the fiction.

Tommy Sheridan 1 Rupert Murdoch 0

Rupert Murdoch, millionaire and muckraker, won't engage in an honest debate over the ideas of socialism. He prefers to concoct stories about socialists. He received a beating from Tommy Sheridan in court. The News of the World claimed their story was "substantially true" - which is a legal way of saying that it wasn't actually true but a bit like the truth. The verdict of the jury was that it wasn't even that!

The full text of Tommy Sheridan's speech after beating the News of the World in court follows.


"On behalf of my wife and I, can I first of all thank my two sisters and John Aberdeen, from Orkney, for being the best amateur legal team in the world.

"We have over the last five weeks taken on one of the biggest organisations on the planet, with the biggest amount of resources to pay for the most expensive legal team, to throw nothing but muck against me, my wife and my family.

"Well, brothers and sisters, what today’s verdict proves is that working-class people, when they listen to the arguments, can differentiate the truth from the muck.

"The working-class people on the jury who have found in our favour have done a service to the people of Scotland and have delivered a message to the standard of journalism that the News of the World represents.

"They are liars and we have proved that they are liars.

"I could never have conducted this case without the loyalty and support of my wife, my mother, my father, my sisters, my family and thousands upon thousands of working-class people in Scotland who want me to get out of this court and start fighting for the things that matter most.

"Against poverty and inequality in Scotland, and against war and against nuclear weapons.

"Those are the things that matter most, brothers and sisters, and I assure you we will retire for a few days to spend some quality time with our 14-month-old daughter, whom we have had to be apart from for most of the last five weeks, and that’s been the largest and most difficult thing to countenance.

"We’ll spend some time, quality time, with our daughter Gabrielle over the next few days but then I guarantee you, the people of Scotland who believe in their hearts in justice, who believe in their hearts in fighting poverty and inequality and who believe in their hearts in the need to fight against war, I’ll be back on the streets calling for the Israeli troops to stop killing innocent people in Lebanon, calling for the scrapping of nuclear weapons and to call for an independent socialist Scotland

"I want to finish, brothers and sisters, by saying one thing. Gretna have made it into Europe for the first time in their lives, but what we have done in the last five weeks is the equivalent of Gretna taking on Real Madrid in the Bernabeu and beating them on penalties, that’s what we’ve done."

Against the slaughter in the Lebanon

National demonstration
Saturday 5 August: Assemble 12 Noon
Speakers Corner, Hyde Park, London
March to Parliament Square for rally

A game of chess

White Black
1. c2-c4 e7-e5
2. N-c3 N-f6
3. g2-g3 d7-d5
4. c4xd5 Nxd5
5. N-f3 N-c6
6. NxNd5 QxNd5
7. d2-d3 B-e6
8. B-d2 O-O-O
9. B-g2 Q-b5
10. N-g5 Qxb2
11. BxN b7xBc6
12. NxBe6 f7xN
13. Q-c1 Q-b6
14. Q-c4 R-d5
15. O-O B-c5
16. e2-e4 Bxf2+
17. RxB R-f8
18. Ra1-f1 R-d6
19. B-b4 RxRf2
20. RxRf2 R-d4
21. Qxe6+ K-b7
22. B-c3 Rxd3
23. Qxe5 Q-e3
24. B-a5 R-d6
25. K-g2 c6-c5
26. R-b2+ K-a6
27. Bxc7 R-d2+
28. RxR QxR+
29. K-h3 Q-h6+
30. K-g4 Q-g6+
31. K-f3 Q-f7+
32. K-e3 c5-c4
33. Q-c5 K-b7
34. B-e5 g7-g6
35. Q-b5+ K-c8
36. Q-c6+ K-d8
37. B-f6+

Ted Grant 1913-2006

Ted Grant

I was sorry to read about the death of Ted Grant in The Socialist 27 July. I first met Ted in 1968 when I was 16. One of his strengths was his ability to patiently explain the fundamental principles of Marxism to young and inexperienced socialists. I didn’t feel patronised. For him the movement and the ideas were all important; he was painstaking and perfectionist in relation to ideas and fond of open debate.


I ended up working with Ted and the others (in a very minor role) with Militant. He was not the easiest of people to work with but the role of Militant in that period is well-documented and we were all caught up in the work and the ideas and consigned personalities to their proper place.

He will always be remembered as someone who kept the ideas of Marxism alive under the most difficult of circumstances in the UK.

But Militant grew. It was very far from being a “one man band” like some of the “piddling little ultra-left sects” Ted used to laugh at. And in the heat of the Poll Tax campaign and the struggle against Thatcher, new tactics were called for.

When I knew him, he was fond of saying, “Events, events, events will teach the broad masses of the working class more than any pamphlet or manifesto.” And events (the symptoms of the degeneration of New Labour) were to invalidate the position he came to adopt – seeking signs of life in the corpse of the Labour Left. He remained wedded to a tactic which was doomed to failure.

He is rightly honoured as a pioneer. He is not honoured by those who seek to gloss over his mistakes.

In the Moodle

In the past “Virtual Learning Environments” were regarded with suspicion by teachers as a sci fi concept in which teachers are replaced with computers. After attending Moodlemoot ’06 at the Open University, I can honestly say that Moodle, the open source course management system, is actually whatever the teacher wants it to be.

The course seminars included teachers from diverse disciplines from Science to English to Music and of course ICT who all used Moodle to teach in the way which suited them.

Although the system is based on a social constructivist model of education, teachers frequently start out using it to replicate traditional classroom activities like essay-writing, feedback and redrafting or quizzes/tests with the slight difference that these are self-marking and pupils get instant feedback. Teachers only then go on to some of the more unusual features of Moodle like Wikis, blogs, asynchronous discussion groups and podcasting.

And because it is Open Source free software, teachers can contribute to the future design of Moodle without some acquisitive corporations we could mention seeking to block them under the pretext of “business secrets”.

Moodle is now used by over 100000 registered users, including the Open University. It is free to download and use and many schools and local authorities who have poured hundreds of thousands of pounds into the coffers of Microsoft are keen to find free software.

If you want to find out more there is a website which talks about the conference and demonstrates the program at the same time. It is called http://moodlemoot.org/ and all of the conference is available as audio or video files. I recommend the audio file because the video quality will depend on the quality of your computer.

WSTA on Wikipedia

Wikipedia is fast becoming the standard online repository of all knowledge and wisdom. Although it contains much that is inaccurate, the rigorous scrutiny each new entry received from around the world means that inaccuracies do not remain on the books for long.

There is even a page about the West Sussex Teachers Association

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WSTA

And like everyone else on the internet, you can edit it.

Church school bans "Imagine"

A church school in Devon has banned children from singing the John Lennon classic, "Imagine". Obviously people have a right to their religious beliefs but this is supposed to be a free country and there is such a thing as freedom of speech. Banning songs is one thing. How long before they start burning books too?

The lyrics of this wicked song are as follows:

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

World leaders impotent to help the Lebanon

According to Democracy Now!

"The humanitarian crisis in Lebanon continues to worsen. At least 500,000 people have been displaced from their homes. Scores of roads and bridges have been hit making it hard to transport food or humanitarian aid. Recent Israeli strikes have targeted the country’s largest milk factory, a major food factory and two pharmaceutical plants. Earlier bombs hit water processing plants, power plants and grain silos. On Tuesday a convoy of two trucks carrying medical supplies donated by the United Arab Emirates was hit. The trucks were destroyed and both drivers died. The Israeli military has denied targeting the factories or aid trucks. Two ambulances were also bombed on Tuesday. They were carrying Lebanese soldiers who were injured in an Israeli attack on their base that had killed eleven soldiers. A Greek Orthodox Church also suffered a direct hit. Inside the church were civilians who had taken refuge. At least 10 people were injured. "

This is particularly horrifying for people who remember when Beirut was a byword for violence and instability and the massacres at Sabra and Chatilah where Christians murdered women and children while the Israeli army stood by with its arms folded..

The policy of brute force and ignorance has not brought peace to the middle east and yet Israel is giving it another shot with the blessing and the massive financial backing of the US. The Israeli Defence Forces are not "defending" anyone. By murdering hundreds of Lebanese civilians they are sowing the seeds for revenge attacks in the future.

The people of Israel and Lebanon are being betrayed by their governments and paying a price in blood. Imperialism cannot bring peace and its twin peaks - terrorism and Zionism - exemplify this.

Well you know what they say.

As a friend of mine put it, "Who are 'they' and how come they know so much?"

I have come in for the usual obloquy from English teachers over my use of "they" in place of the more correct "he or she". Comments have been roughly evenly divided for and against. I can honestly say that I don't use it to excess but here is the OED website on the topic:

"The English language unfortunately lacks a simple singular pronoun which does not specify gender. Various people have suggested new words to fill this gap, but none of them have caught on, or (frankly) are ever likely to: it is not practical to try to change such a basic element of the language by sheer will.

"However, children and adults alike naturally find the obvious solution to this conundrum: rather than using the formal and awkward formula 'he or she', they simply use they, especially after words such as anyone and no one which are strictly singular but often imply a reference to more than one person.

"This is not a new problem, or a new solution. 'A person can't help their birth', wrote Thackeray in Vanity Fair (1848), and even Shakespeare produced the line 'Every one to rest themselves betake' (in Lucrece), which pedants would reject as logically ungrammatical.

"If you do not find this usage acceptable, there are alternatives. You could resort to the awkward 'he or she' formula, or to the practice of writing 'he' when you mean 'he or she' (which many people find objectionable), or to recasting all your sentences to avoid the problem!"

The OED website is a mine of information on this kind of issue.

Teacher Power! A report on the National Education Conference

The first session was a fascinating speech from Mick Waters of the QCA. Most teachers think of the QCA as a very top-downwards, authoritarian body producing highly prescriptive “advice.” Mick Waters brought an entirely different perspective. While recognising the tension between national testing and local autonomy he was perfectly clear that “people in schools need to set their understandings of their children alongside the learning they should meet to create learning which is irresistible.” Unlike the run-of-the-mill bureaucrats he prefers to spend his time in the classroom working with teachers.

This set the tone of a conference which was about (apologies for the jargon) empowering teachers. Teacher power! It has a certain ring to it!

This was continued with a discussion of “personalised learning” and the somewhat ambiguous definitions available from the government. It was felt that “personalised learning” could be used to promote teacher autonomy (teacher power again) and the concept that learning should be related to the needs, aptitude and ability of the pupils. There was also a warning that “personalised learning” could be misinterpreted as a system which involved pupils interacting with computers without any teacher intervention and the delivery of education could be in the hands of unqualified staff.

Paul Crisp is the managing director of CUREE and although his presentation was heavily focussed on the research methodology of his work on mentoring of teachers, it is clear that much useful material has come out of this research which will be of use to Union Learning Reps in the future. Much of it is now available online.
click here

Elizabeth Wood of the University of Exeter talked about research on the issue of the underachievement of boys. Although she was restating much of the existing knowledge on this subject it is clearly important to go on stating it in a climate where the underachievement of boys is misunderstood. In many ways it is an oversimplification to talk about boys’ underachievement and her research was firmly based on the observation of children and her insights into the role of play. “When girls performed less well than boys it was not called underachievement. It was because they were all dumb blondes.” She has some very interesting and provocative research.

The future of the National Education Conference was a wide-ranging discussion somewhat depleted by some football game taking place at the same time.  It is proposed to promote the National Education Conference to teachers who take part in NUT Continuing Professional Development. They may well include the future leadership.

Maurice Galton’s research on “The Cost of Inclusion” tackled one of the conflicts in education at the moment. How can inclusion be helping pupils when the resources are not being provided to support the pupils being included? It is unsual for speeches to be interrupted by applause at the NEC. His remark that “these pupils have a right to be taught by qualified teachers” did receive a spontaneous ovation.

The final session of conference was a speech by Peter Mortimore who is not only an accomplished orator but also a powerful voice in educational circles. He had done a comparison between the NUT’s “Bringing down the Barriers” and the government’s Education Bill. The NUT had no input as to what his final result would be. The results are available online.
http://wsta.org.uk/mortimore.pdf

As Bill Greenshields concluded, “We are involved in a battle for ideas, every school is a fortress,”

New RIG Proposals

From August, automatic pay progression will be scrapped. You haven't been consulted about this, parliament hasn't voted for it, the NUT has not been invited to discuss it. This is another present from the people who brought us TLRs, abolished your recruitment and retention allowance and scrapped the top two points from the Upper Pay Scale.

Full documentation of proposals and deadlines are at:

http://www.dfes.gov.uk/consultations/conDetails.cfm?consultationId=1386

Click on the link and tell them what you think!

Ealing NUT have sent out a suggested resolution which schools might wish to use:

Model motion for schools/union branch meetings


New RIG Proposals*


“This meeting rejects the latest proposals on Performance Management from the government via its Rewards and Incentive Group (RIG) of social partners. We particularly regret that leaders of TUC-affiliated teacher unions (NASUWT and ATL) have met with government to agree these proposals whilst knowingly excluding the biggest classroom and head teachers’ unions.



We particularly reject:

The new mandatory three hours per year of teacher observations, on top of OFSTED or Local Authority surveillance.
The new requirement for middle-managers to determine the pay level and incremental progression of their colleagues.
The DfES’ rushed deadline for consultation of 12 July


We call on the NUT to:

a. immediately conduct a full-membership action ballot to implement NUT policy on performance management

b. seek support from the headteachers’ union, the NAHT, to implement such action if these changes are introduced in a revised School Teachers Pay and Conditions Document by September.

c. To produce press and campaign materials highlighting the detrimental effect on workload and industrial relations these proposals will bring.”



Send To:



NUT General Secretary

Hamilton House

Mabledon Place

LONDON

WciH 9BD



E-mail: s.sinnott@nut.org.uk

The problem of teaching

A poster on TES website asked for teachers who enjoyed teaching to post to a thread and got a variety of responses.

After 26 years of teaching I still don't think the kids are the problem. (And believe me I teach some *charmers*!) I still think it is the perceived failure of SMT/SLT to back you up which is the problem.

It is their *job* to support staff *contra mundum*. Remind them today. Make a note to remind them tomorrow.

And if the SMT are a problem the government and the journalists are worse because they don't appear in the staffroom periodically so I can't give them a piece of my mind :)

SMT= Senior Management Team
SLT = Senior Leadership Team

If they spent half the time doing their m**********g job as they do on dreaming up fancy names for themselves, things would be better :)

Safe in Cyberspace.

I can understand the lure of the internet as a means of making new friends. Teachers talk a lot about the dangers and they do exist. However pupils are attracted by the safety as much as the dangers. They see it as an opportunity to play with monsters at a safe distance.

You are much safer in cyberspace than RL.

IRL someone can stick a knife into you. Unless there is something seriously strange about your peripherals you don't face such dangers on your computer!

Personally I never meet anyone IRL I have met online. (I know one person who is smiling about this now - well there are exceptions to every rule A!)

Hiding behind an alias and keeping a safe distance from people they chat with; being aware that the 14 year old girl is probably a 40 year old FBI agent and realising that someone in Africa probably doesn't want to give you millions of dollars. These things are probably part of growing up and perhaps less harmful than other rites of passage like smoking behind the bike shed.

Three dead at Guantanamo. TES debate

A debate rages on this issue on the TES website. It is difficult to understand why apparently intelligent people can use the deaths in London as an excuse for torturing and abusing prisoners at Guantanamo. They certainly have an alibi and have been charged with no crime.

Omar Deghayes, for example, has had no evidence produced against him and he has been tortured by the brave American guards. There is not much excuse that they were "under battlefield conditions". They had helpless prisoners at their mercy in Guantanamo, which is not a battlefield, and they tortured them.

Only a raving lunatic would presume that any and every opponent of injustice in Guantanamo was automatically a supporter of sectarian violence in Iraq. I do know that occupying armies expect to make use of sectarian divisions in the subject population - the whole history of imperialism shows that.

While Sunni and Shia muslims are fighting each other they are not ridding their country of the occupying force and they provide an excuse for the imperial power to stay. "We had to invade them because they are killing each other...of course they weren't before we came but what they hell!"

Three dead at Guantanamo. Suicide?

"Two men from Saudi Arabia and one from Yemen were found ``unresponsive and not breathing in their cells'' early Saturday, according to a statement from the Miami-based U.S. Southern Command, which has jurisdiction over the prison. Attempts were made to revive the prisoners, but failed."

They have been charged with no crime.
They have never been tried.
They have been ill treated and in some cases tortured.
Now three Guantanamo prisoners are dead.
The authorities - the same authorities who told us about those weapons of mass destruction - say that this was suicide and all possible measures were taken to revive the prisoners.

If someone has been imprisoned without charge or trial and without any hope of release. If they have been subjected to ill treatment and torture and the threat of a lifetime of more of the same, how can you call it suicide?

In any case the lychin' mentality of the guards has to be taken into account as well. Faking a "suicide" would not be all that hard would it?



ITN managed to devote a good twenty seconds to these deaths after about ten minutes of World Cup trivia including extensive coverage of a family watching the world cup on the TV....this was more important news as far as ITN were concerned.

About Linux and Windows XP

As a sort of public service, here is a piece of information which I picked up about Windows XP.

If you bought Windows XP and installed it on your computer, the odds are an irritating message saying "You might be a victim of software counterfeiting" will come up again and again, issuing dire threats and suggesting the solution to your problem - to all your problems - is to give lots of money to Bill Gates because the poor chap is hard up.

The solution obviously is to upgrade to Linux which is free. However if, like me, you might need XP once in a while for work, here is a work-around I came across. It is written by someone only identified as "Piece Meal":

1. Locate wgatray.exe and wgaLogon.dll on your PC. It is defaulted at c:\windows\system32
2. Boot your PC in Safe Mode and with DOS Prompt. Press F8 during boot will get you there.

3. At DOS prompt, change directory to the location of the files. (e.g. cd c:\windows\system32\ )

4. Delete the two files wgatray.exe and wgatray.dll. (rename is fine, but why keep it around?)

5. Reboot your PC and voila. Remember to turn off Automatic Updates feature, and tell it not to remind you of it any more.

Life is supposed to be normal and good.
Piece Meal on May 31, 2006 10:04 AM

Incidentally turning off automatic updates is done by going to Control Panel and selecting Performance and Maintenance, then "See Basic Information about your computer" and click on Automatic Updates.

And of course Linux is free to install, free to upgrade and does not give you nagging messages or enrich people like Bill Gates.

Mcdonalds cashes in on World Cup

A lot of my pupils (and indeed two of my sons) like watching and playing football. I think it keeps them healthier than they would otherwise be, although they seem to get a lot of injuries.

However I notice Sainsbury's are making a pretty penny selling memorabilia of "heroes of football". A hero is someone who risks his own life rescuing a child from a burning building. It is not someone who is paid an obscene amount of money to play what is after all a game?

And McDonalds are celebrating the world cup by introducing a new big mac which is 40% bigger than its biggest current burger. They will pack a belt-busting 669 calories. That is a happy meal which will make not my pupils much healthier.

A diet high in fat, salt and sugar will kill you. How many youngsters have McDonalds bumped off?

WSGFL and the Crawley course

West Sussex Grid for Learning has been very helpful. I have emailed members in Crawley and so far have 10 responses to the proposed ICT course. There are only a few places left but by emailing me you can be added to the database so that the NUT is more likely to organise courses.

This includes any people who want basic ICT training as well as the advanced course.

Oh and apologies for the Yahoo advertising which gets appended to my emails. I have put a signature which suggests people ignore it but it is the price of "free" email I'm afraid.

X Men 3

The film was likable and undemanding with some good special effects. I think some of them were a bit old. Dr. Jean Grey/Phoenix transformation was remarkably like Willow in Buffy TVS except that she kept her red hair on. I was disappointed when she pulled the Matrix trick of making the bullets stop in mid air. That was so clever when they did it *for the first time* in The Matrix but it is so old hat now.

The film had a semi-serious message about prejudice and exclusionism. The idea that you can "cure" differences between people which are not illnesses is a bit of a sideswipe at Bush and his religious cohorts who claim they can cure homosexuality. And of course there are people who accept the cure because they can't take the persecution any more.

However nothing is allowed to get in the way of the spectacle. Ian McKellen is magnificent in the role of Magneto, showing you what Gandalf would have been like if he had turned to the dark side perhaps. His clothes sense alas has not improved. Nobody could get away with *that* helmet.

Vinnie Jones is a thick thug. (no further comment seems necessary!)

Rebecca Romijn is brilliant as Mystique but we don't get to see nearly enough of her. This is not a reference to the "artistically necessary" nudity. Her character has a lot of scope for trickery and cunning plots but she loses her powers early on.

It was a bold decision to kill off Patrick Stewart's Xavier and deprive Magneto of his powers. It means any sequel will be the poorer. Possibly this was intended as a way to signal this time there really won't be a sequel? If so look out for the prequel!



IMDB refers to a mistake in the film - Wolverine's wounds disappearing. Anyone who looked during this scene would have seen them healing. Special powers. Ever heard of them?