sociology

WELL DONE BARCELONA – NOW WIN THE FINAL

Well done Barca. I was absolutely delighted to see Chelsea lose yesterday. It was about negative football against positive football. It was also about different modes of organisation and guess what – the good guys won [dodgy decisions aside].

When I am asked what team I support I obviously say Celtic. When asked what other teams I like I usually use the old joke ‘Celtic reserves’ although nowadays that should be Celtic under 21s I suppose. Most Scottish supporters are the same about their clubs. This is in marked contrast to somewhere like Italy where people support their local team but will also choose one of Milan, Juve or Inter to support.

However, I have a soft spot for Barcelona for a few different reasons.

• One of their managers [Jack Greenwell, 1917-24] shares the same name as me and may be a distant relation as he comes from the same neck of the woods as one of my grandfathers [long dead so I can’t ask him – we also have a Champions League/European cup winner in the family but he is a very distant relation from me and I have never met him].

• I like the way they usually play an attacking and exciting style of football.

• There is a similarity with the Catalan political situation and that of Celtic with the Irish-English Scottish-English problems.

• They succeed despite the best efforts of the establishment in the state they currently play in.

But in particular, I like the way that the club is organised. Yes, they have overpaid, spoilt idiots running about on the pitch like every other big team but it is a team that is owned by the fans and the president of the club is decided by an election.

This leads to something like them having UNICEF on their shirt and actually PAYING UNICEF for the privilege and giving them other money besides.

This is what I have always wanted Celtic to be like. The fans of Celtic see it as a community. We all feel that our club is different from others. From the history and the beginnings as a charitable organisation, the way the fans behave and the way people rally round when we lose one of our own – it is a very special thing for us.

But I think I am not the only one with whom it rankles that our club is run by some pretty ruthless people. I am fairly sure that John Reid would not have been appointed chairman if the fans had a vote. It made me fairly annoyed that when I was watching the otherwise fairly good Official History that the club recently produced that in the early part of it they seemed to be trying their best to shoehorn the words ‘business acumen’ or similar in so much that it sounded like a New Labour party political.

Some Celtic fans have shares in the club but about the most they get for it is better opportunities to spend money and the chance to have a question fudged at the AGM. Recent efforts to have fans representatives on the board have been rebuffed.

Unfortunately the way the club is currently run means that a system like Barcelona’s is a long way off for Celtic but it is something that the fans should be shooting for.

One look at Barca will show you that there is more than one way to run a club and that a community or supporter controlled model is no barrier to success.

It was reported yesterday that the fans of Stirling Albion are trying to buy the club at a price of 40 quid each. I dearly hope they succeed. If they do, I might change my second [well ok, third] team to Stirling Albion.

And well done again Barcelona – truly more than a football team.

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For a translation of this article COPY THE BINARY then CLICK HERE and translate.

GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL

If you haven’t already seen it I urge to watch your way through the three-part documentary based on the work of Jared Diamond called Guns, Germs and Steel.

It contains some excellent information and a more than interesting theory.

My only criticism is that often documentary makers feel the need to make this sort of thing some kind of ‘personal  journey’ for the author of whatever book it was, presumably because they feel we are too stupid to understand the information if it is presented in any other way.

That was also the annoying thing about An Inconvenient Truth, which the creators of South Park defined correctly as a “Powerpoint presentation”. Don’t know about you but I am not interested in the personal whining of someone who was involved in atrocities, whether he cares about climate change or not.

Anyway, the first part is below and the other two are on googlevid…

DON’T MENTION THE NON-WAR

Something nice for Valentine’s day I think…

It is so often said that war is natural part of human behaviour that many people just accept it. Conflict or disagreement certainly might be, but full-on war is a different matter.

Most people know about the 1914 Christmas Truce in WW1 when the British and German soldiers played football and exchanged gifts (note for some American readers – WW1 started in 1914, not 1917 and WW2 started in 1939, not 1941).

This is usually presented as a one-off – a freak occurrence, but that simply isn’t true. It also happened in 1915 with the Germans and the French and in 1916 there was a truce on the Eastern front.

When I was at school and computers were in their 64k stage we were given a programme to play around with in one history lesson. Extremely basic though it was, the idea was that you were the British General deciding what tactics you could use to defeat the Germans in World War 1 given the tactics and equipment of the time.

The trick was that although it was possible to win the game, it wasn’t possible to do it without a bloodbath on both sides. I think it in its own way, it was meant to be a little anti-war statement.

However, the game didn’t give you the option of simply not attacking and not attacking was the way that many people survived in World War One.

In the earlier stages of the war informal truces sprung up all over the place. Both sides would aim artillery far and wide, this was understood as an offering of peace and reciprocated. In many places it then became a kind of game. Snipers would aim to miss but in a showing-off ‘look what I can hit’ way. This was partly to pass the time and partly to warn that if the truce was broken then there was a capability of reprisal. Contrary to popular belief the conflict was very low-intensity in many places at different times. There are many eyewitness accounts of the soldiers apologising to each other for firing too near.

1214.jpg

This changed of course when the officers – the ones far removed from the front line that is – heard about it. They were appalled by this sort of behaviour and devised new tactics like surprise raids and so on which destroyed the fragile trust that opposing soldiers had built up.

After the war of course it was the generals that had insisted on the continuation of mass random slaughter that were awarded medals and had statues of each other erected. Of the officers in the field who insisted on pressing on, well, many of them were shot in the back by their own side as they advanced toward the opposing army.

In many societies around the world in pre-industrial times the object of war was not the genocide of the opposing group but rather the humiliation. From some of the Native Americans to societies in Africa, actual fatalities were very unusual. Some sources even describe what is essentially a high-intensity game of tag (involving a smack with a stick). In other places a tit-for-tat, one of yours for one of ours kind of conflict often persisted over a long time but without an eruption into absolute warfare.

It may be that there is a part of our genetics that leads us toward conflict but it is certainly not the cause of the mass slaughters that have happened through history. Rome wanted to conquer, other groups wanted to live and let live. Genghis Khan would wipe out thousands, other groups at the time didn’t.

It is demonstrably untrue that the Romans and other groups throughout history that have and are conducting mass slaughter and conquest on the genocidal scale are genetically diverse enough from those living next to them to have a different set of genetic imperatives, so it must be societal conditions that lead to this kind of behaviour. And as we all know, societal conditions can change.

Why mention all this today?

Today is an anniversary. Not valentines day, but the anniversary of an atrocity carried out by British and American forces in World War 2 – the bombing of Dresden which occurred on the night of the 13th/14th February 1945 when the war was nearing its end. Dresden was not regarded as a strategically important city, which is why it hadn’t been bombed up until then. Russian troops were also closing in on the city.

The BBC, in their ‘On This Day‘ section are showing the report from 1945 and there is a little section which says..

The Dresden raid caused a public outcry. Even Winston Churchill, who had urged Bomber Command to attack east German cities, tried to dissociate himself from it.

However, they miss an important part out. They say that explosives and ‘incendiary bombs’ were dropped, which is true. What they don’t say is phosphorus was dropped – a chemical weapon. Eyewitnesses reported that the temperature was so hot in some places that in the wreckage of homes were found puddles of metal that had once been pots and pans.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote brilliantly about this in his book Slaughterhouse 5. He was a prisoner of war in Germany at the time.

Oh, and the BBC neglected to mention for a long time that white phosphorus was used recently in Fallujah. This was despite the fact many people were giving them evidence and urging them to. Even when they did mention it it was very brief.

TALKING KKK-RAP

All through the story the immigrants came
The Gael and the Pict, the Angle and Dane
From Pakistan, England and from the Ukraine
We’re all Scotland’s story and we’re all worth the same
(From ‘Scotland’s Story’ by the Proclaimers)

Some of the KKK propaganda cites Scotland as having the ‘racial purity’ that they long for. Some websites suggest that some of the founding members of the KKK were Scots who had emigrated to the US. Whether this is true or not is beside the point. You can find a few mindless, moronic bigots in any country, or any race or religion. The myth of Scotland being a ‘racially pure’ country is one I would like to explode if I can.

“The Scottish Nation is generally acknowledged to have come together between the sixth and fourteenth centuries, absorbing several races in the process of creating what certain individuals like to think of as the pure Scot. In fact, there is no such being. The early Scots were a post-Roman Gaelic-speaking people who invaded and settled the west coast, known then as Dalriada, having travelled over the sea from Ireland, and before that, it is fancifully suggested, although not as yet proven, the Middle East.”[i]

The proponents of this middle-east link point to the similarities between traditional Scottish and middle-eastern music and instrumentation as evidence. If this is true, and you claim your link to Scottish heritage, then YOU ARE AN ARAB. The possibility of a middle-east link doesn’t upset me at all, but if you are a KKK type then you should start thinking. Ha ha.

The burning cross symbol is another thing that various racist groups have tried to attribute to the Scots…

The “Fiery Cross,” as KKK groups call it, is vaguely linked to an apparently real Scottish practice immortalized by Sir Walter Scott in his 1810 poem “The Lady of the Lake.” But really, the Klan picked it up from the movies.

In Scott’s poem, a small, handheld wooden cross is carried from village to village to announce a meeting of the clans for war. The cross was fiery only at first; it was extinguished with the blood of a sacrificial animal before making the rounds as a charred object. (Most likely it was the X-shaped cross of St. Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland.)

Scott’s story was copied by Thomas Dixon for his bizarre 1905 novel “The Clansman,” a highly romanticized tale of the original, pre-Civil War KKK. Obsessed with the incorrect notion that the KKK had been founded by secret Scottish group, Dixon had them carrying the Fiery Cross around.[ii]

I don’t know if this is true. Maybe it was used as a way for the clans to meet for war. If it was, there is still a difference between that and a group of cowardly thugs using it to intimidate an innocent person.

In the 19th century there was another wave of Irish immigration and in the earlier part of the 20th there were many new waves of immigration from Poland (to get away from Hitler), Italy (to get away from Mussolini) and Lithuania (for all sorts of reasons). Most of the Lithuanians changed their names to make them more Scottish.

After WW2 new groups arrived from India, Pakistan, China and surrounding countries and the Caribbean. In the later part of the 20th century there have been more people coming from Africa. They are all welcome.

Apparently ‘Braveheart’ is required viewing at some of the KKK meetings. I would like to spoil the fun by pointing out that the majority of it is not true.

Now I am more of flag-burner than a flag-waver but I also see that the Scottish flag is being used by these people…

ONE of the fastest-growing white supremacist groups in the United States has hijacked the Saltire [the Scottish flag) to symbolise its struggle for a political system run by Celtic “kith and kin”.

Scottish tourists visiting Florida and the southern states on holiday have been warned that displaying Scotland’s national flag on their clothes now runs the risk of association with the extremist followers of the League of the South.

Kate Smith, who is researching nationalism at Glasgow University, said: “I think the league’s hijacking of the Saltire could cause the average American citizen to confuse our nation’s flag with right-wing extremism.”[iii]

This seems to be a parallel with what happened to the Swastika, which, before Hitler hijacked it was an Indian symbol promoting good luck.

Whilst this nation has its problems with racism just like anywhere else, some of us are trying to deal with them. One of the steps in this is to explode the myth of Scotland as a pure-white country and a haven for racists. It isn’t. We don’t want your false history, false propaganda, displaced anger and vile attitudes foisted onto us. This country is, has been and always will be a country of immigrants. We like it that way.

[i] http://www.electricscotland.com/world/english/scots.htm
[ii] http://archives.stupidquestion.net/sq111402.html
[iii] http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=525&id=1060392002

COMMONWEALTH GAMES

The coverage of the reaction of the public to Glasgow winning the bid for the 2014 commonwealth games seemed to be coming from a different planet.

The most common attitude I was getting from people was one of being massively underwhelmed[1] by the whole affair.

What was absurd about it was that in workplaces all around the country arrangements were made to make sure the decision was broadcast immediately after it was made. 

In my own place of work there was a directive issued that all TVs had to be turned to the correct channel for the announcement. Similarly, bus and train stations had to make the announcement. 

What were they expecting1.jpg? Scenes of jubilation akin to VE day? People throwing each other in fountains and filling them with wine [tonic variety]?

I took a look out to the canteen where the TVs are in my place of work just to see what happened.

NOT ONE person even noticed. They all just carried on eating their lunch.

This is not the picture painted by the BBC which went into its full voice of the nation mode as it told us about scenes of jubilation that absolutely no one I know saw, joined in with, or even really cared about.  

They showed the above picture, saying that 2000 schoolchildren were there celebrating. I am prepared to bet that they were taken there by their schools who in turn were invited to do it by the city council as a photo op and were probably happier about the day off than anything else.  

The plan is to use the games as an opportunity to regenerate the east end of Glasgow. Whilst this is a decent goal in and of itself the history of regenerating that area has not been a particularly succesful one and the ability of events of this kind to provide useful developments for a city is overhyped.

Lets take a look at the history…

After World War 2 many European cities followed a particular path of regeneration. This was a necessity after the bombing and havoc wreaked by the war.

Roughly put, the inner cities were cleaned up and gentrified. Many excellent buildings that could have been saved were knocked down and the poorer people who lived in many of these places were moved out into newly built housing schemes on the outskirts of the cities in question. This happened in many places.

However, once moved to the newly built places many problems became apparent. Although the housing was built, appropriate facilities were not. There was a lack of jobs and those who had work usually had to go into the cities to get to them. This should not have been such a problem apart from the fact that it also took a long time to put working public transport links into the new areas.

Furthermore, the new houses were not well built and soon fell into disrepair – if you walk around Glasgow now you will find that the 100 year old buildings are doing fine and look good and the majority of the ones built in the 50s and 60s are derelict or just about to be.

It is in many ways opposite to the model in the USA in that in Europe the inner part of the city tends to be the most looked after and is often extremely beautiful whereas a lot of the suburbs are in disrepair. In the USA it seems to be the suburbs doing well and the inner cities in disrepair.

The strategy adopted after WWII is still at the roots of many of the social problems that Europe faces. Many people have been moved out of town, disenfranchised and left in substandard housing in an area with no facilities. If you want to look at the reasons for things like the Paris riots then this is one of your starting points.

Is this, or something similar, going to happen again in the east end of Glasgow? I hope not, but we will have to wait and see. Many terrible, pointless and frankly stupid things have been done in the name of ‘development’.

It is also very likely that a few people will make themselves a lot of money out of the games but the impact on the city as a whole and the east end in particular will not necessarily be positive. Again, I hope the games do have a positive outcome for the city but I am not at all convinced they will.

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Games Monitor is a site that takes a look at the impact that major events have on cities. The picture it presents is that in contradiction to the claims that are made when a city is bidding for a major event, the outcomes of hosting a major event are not always good.

[1] I have heard of people being overwhelmed and underwhelmed before but never anyone being actually ‘whelmed’. There was an old Wodehouse line “I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled“