Too Rich

Boy its been a long time since anyone called the CP a 'far left group'. And the Luxembourg in this story ain't no Rosa.

Communist Party chair nets £20m in painting sale

It couldn't have been a greater contrast: the comrades of the Communist Party of Britain were meeting on a wet Wednesday night in one of the grottier enclaves of east London, while in an auction room in Manhattan the world's leading art dealers were on a spending spree which broke world records. Few would have guessed the unlikely link between them. But Anita Halpin, the 62-year-old stalwart and chair of the far left group, was about to become a multimillionaire.

In the last few months, unbeknown to friends and colleagues, Ms Halpin has inherited one of the most important expressionist German paintings. Yesterday, it was sold for £20.5m.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's Berlin Street Scene, a vivid vision of the claustrophobic, anxiety-inducing ebb and flow of urban life in 1913, was bought from Ms Halpin by art consultant Daniella Luxembourg on behalf of the Neue Galerie, New York.

Ms Luxembourg told the Guardian: "It's one of Kirchner's best ever works. Without the restitution claim, the probability of such a work arriving on the market is absolutely zero. There is no other painting like this in the work of Kirchner - it's so rare. The quality and rarity of it are what justify the price. When you buy a work like this, you are buying a museum piece, part of the cultural heritage of a country."

For a communist, it may seem a galling sum for 200cm by 150cm of canvas. Worse still, perhaps, for a woman with Stalinist credentials. Her inheritance was sold in a frenzied session at Christie's in New York during which Russian tycoons and American millionaires bid well through the roof of estimated sale tags. At the end of the night, the total sale had achieved $491.4m (£258m), nearly doubling the previous record of $269m at Christie's in May 1990.

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Hobsbawm Historical Revisionist

Firstly let me say that I enjoy Eric Hobsbawms historical writings. The depth and the historical materialist perspective, the breadth of the his writings whether on social rebels or jazz, working class history or on world history, his works are invaluable. He is a marxist historian, and an unrepentant one at that. So far so good. Unfortunately Hobsbawm spent most his years defending the Soviet Union and the Communist Party after Stalins fall.

While other marxist historians like E. P. Thompson moved towards the New Left abandoning Stalinism, Hobsbawm remained a true believer. Even after the pivotal event which led most of the old left to abandon the CP and create the New Left, that event was the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

Now that Soviet Union has collapsed Hobsbawm has finally admitted that the CP was bankrupt. Ironcially it is this event the one that Hobsbawm did not allow to influence his party loyalty that he writes about since this is the sixtieth anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution.

Could it have been different? :: Eric Hobsbawm: Budapest 1956

A revolution that opposed Stalinism, and was the very model of revolts that would follow it, Czechslovakia in 1968 and Poland with the Solidarity Revolts through the seventies and eighties. And inevitably the actions in Hungary would be replayed in Russia when communism there collapsed, the tearing down of statues of Stalin, the military refusing to fire on the Duma, etc.

Between 1953 and 1956 workers across Eastern Europe revolted against Post War Stalinist Russian Imperialism. As Chris Harman of the International Socialists wrote in his invaluable work about this period;Bureaucracy and Revolution in Eastern Europe.

The Hungarian Revolution splintered the Trotskyist movement as much as it splintered the Communist Parties in the West. A new analysis was developed contending that the Soviet Union was not socialist nor an alternative to capitalism but was actually a different form of capitalism, state capitalism.


These events gave succour to those in the Forth International who contested Trotsky's undying faith that the Soviet Union was a deformed workers state. It gave rise to a variety of views of state captialism in the Soviet Union, including theJohnson Forest Tendency, being CLR James and Raya Dunsevkaya, the International Socialists, and the Bureacratic Collectivist theory of Max Schactman.

During the cold war this tendency was broadly called the Third Way Tendency one that declared that both the Soviet Union and American Imperialism were a danger to the world and to class struggle. It would be the revolts in Eastern Europe like the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 that would inspire this tendency.

And it was the old guard like Hobsbawm for whom the Hungarian Revolution would be an anathema to their soft stalinism. Hobsbawm says in his review;
"Contemporary history is useless unless it allows emotion to be recollected in tranquillity. Probably no episode in 20th-century history generated a more intense burst of feeling in the Western world than the Hungarian uprising of 1956. Although it lasted less than two weeks, it was both a classic instance of the narrative of justified popular insurrection against oppressive government, familiar since the fall of the Bastille, and of David’s in this case doomed victory against Goliath."

He then proceeds to look back at the history of the period with his inside insight devoid of emotion to define why and how the revolution occured, which he blames on a deformed Communist Party and the negative influence of Stalin.

It is an amazing read, certainly one that he would not have nor could have written at the time or for years after. But fifty years later he too as a marxist historian can finally give this pivotal event in Communist Party history its due, devoid of emotion.

The Hungarian Revolution led to contradictory trajectories in Western Politics, it furthered the Cold War and the rise of the neo-fascist right, with its exiles coming west full of venom for Stalinism and full of venomous anti-semitism.

Perhaps the best way to begin the history of the uprising is with the miserable state of the Hungarian Communist Party during World War Two. Since briefly establishing the only Soviet republic outside Russia in 1919 (with the enthusiastic support of the young Hungarian movie industry under Alexander Korda, Michael Korda’s uncle), the Party had been scattered and reduced by domestic repression, Stalin’s terror and its own internal quarrels, and several times had actually dissolved. Gati claims that by 1940 there were barely more than two hundred activists in Hungary and fewer than fifty reliable survivors in Moscow, with the result that one of Stalin’s four Magyar postwar proconsuls (Rákosi, Gerö, Révai and Farkas), all incidentally Jewish, had to be transferred from the Czechoslovak to the Hungarian Party.


And amongst disenchanted Trotskyists like Shactman and Burnham it led them to the right and they became the ideological forefathers of the neo-cons. It subesequently led to the collapse of the CP in Europe and North America and the rise of the New Left.

These political tendencies are still very much with us today even after the collapse of the Soviet Union and fifty years after the Hungarian Revolution. And even if it is late in the day it is nice to see Hobsbawm belatedly reflect on this pivotal event in the history of the Cold War.


See:

An Honest Politician

50th Anniversary Hungarian Workers Revolt

Book Review:BEHIND THE TIMES The Decline and...

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Polyamory Is Good For The Genes

But bad for the males. But with multiple partners it is likely more male babies would survive to replace them. While it is not truly polyamory it is the earliest form of polgamy, that of polyandry where a female has many mates. It is also the form of human sexual relations in what Engels called primitive communist societies.

Free loving mums have healthier babies

Promiscuous females are more likely to give birth to fitter offspring than their monogamous sisters, an Australian study shows.

Paternity tests showed that the sperm of some males was far more successful than others, and most importantly, that babies fathered by these males were twice as likely to survive, said Fisher.

Despite the advantages to the species from free love, males usually died due to exhaustion and aggressive encounters with other males after a single, torrid mating season.

Also see:

Free Love

Marx on Bigamy

Whose Family Values?

The Sexual Revolution Continues

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Goose and Gander

Spot the contradicition. Right wing blogging Tories support Alberta Seperatism but call Quebec Nationalists traitors. Hmm whats good for the goose is good for the gander.

Separatists are traitors.
08-11-06, 6:50 pm @ Gperson

If you support a movement or group which does promote the separation of citizens from this country based on language ethnic or cultural reasons you are a traitor not to mention racist and hate criminal and should be stripped of your Canadian citizenship. The Natives in Quebec did offer to support Quebec's sovereignty movement if Quebec

The difference between Quebec seperatism and Alberta Seperatism? Quebec is a French Nation, Alberta is an Oil Nation. The former offends the english chauvinists in Ontario. The latter meets with their approval cause Alberta folks are WASPS.

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Chinese Fat Cat

Not the first billionare in China but a real fat cat.
'Monster' Cat In China Weighs 33 Pounds


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One Child One Dog

In China where population control is in place it appears that they have now expanded the policy to include dogs. Doggone! China's canine crackdown First it was one child. Now authorities say Beijing families will be allowed only one dog.
In a one party state you get to have one kid and one dog.
But you can still have lots of cats.

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Canadian Tire Can Do It

Canadian Tire is providing Canadians with Solar and Wind Power generators, commercially available energy solutions.

Something that the Conservatives deny being able to provide Canadians. Maybe we should privatize the Environment Department and make Environment Minister Rona Ambrose a Canadian Tire employee in the Solar/Wind department.

What Canadian Tire provides commercially the New Conservative Government of Canada eliminated, that is subsidies to taxpayers to retrofit their homes to be more energy efficient.

Coming to a neighbourhood near you geo-thermal solutions. Unfortuantely only if you live in Manitoba though.

AirX 400W Wind Generator

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Delivers 400W of power at wind speeds of 45km/h

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30-ft. Wind Turbine Tower Kit

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Designed for use with 400 W wind turbine (11-1861)

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Whisper 100 Wind Turbine

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950W of power at 45km.hr winds

$2,999.99

Eliminator 6.5 W Folding Solar Panel

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The world's highest-efficiency thin-film solar panel

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120W Solar Panel

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Delivers 120W of power in peak sunlight

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Eliminator Solar Panel, 30W

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Ideal for charging battery banks in a Renewable Energy System to power tools, appliances and equipment

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Eliminator Solar Panel, 5.5W

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Ideal for trickle charging any vehicle battery to ensure easy-startup

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Eliminator Solar Panels, 2.2W

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Ideal for maintaining vehicle batteries to ensure easy-startup;

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Eliminator Solar Panel, 15 Watt

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Eliminator Solar Panels, 1.8 Watt

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12 Watt Eliminator Folding Solar Panel

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Delivers up to 12 W, 800 mA of solar power

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See:

Ambrose

Environment

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Three Blind Mice

Stem cells let blind mice see again Now if only they could make right wingers see the truth. Embryonic stem cells are neccasary for research.

Contrary to the right wing assertion that adult stem cells can be used instead. Quotes on the Missouri stem cell measure

They are not as effective as embryonic stem cells.

Stem Cells Could Help Restore Vision

"But there's a catch," he adds. "If this scenario were to be applied to humans, one would have to obtain newly generated [photoreceptor] rods from the state of development comparable to postnatal days 3-7 in the mouse [as in the study].

"This is likely to be in the second trimester [in humans] and is clearly not feasible," writes Reh. Harvesting such cells would mean taking them from a fetus or aborted fetus three to six months into a pregnancy.

However, recent research suggests it might be possible to generate such cells from human embryonic stem cell lines under the right conditions.


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Nothing To Fear Here

Amerika is threatening to call for sanctions against the democratically elected government in Nicaragua.

Sandinista comeback alarms US

Ah freedom and democracy, that of course does not mean what you think it does when it comes from the White House. They mean freedom and democracy to accept American Imperialism. Failure to do that makes you enemies of the State.

However perhaps Americans have more in common with Ortega than they think. After all he is anti-abortion just like them.

Former supporters disillusioned by his deals with a corrupt former president, Arnoldo Alemán, and his support for a total abortion ban, backed the dissident Sandinista candidate, Edmundo Jarquin.

Opportunism is spelled O R T E G A.

The Guardian UK writes:

An editing error in the report below introduced a value judgment on the Nicaraguan presidential election with the phrase, "From a social progressive, he [Daniel Ortega] has changed into an ego-driven opportunist ..." when the original article made it clear that this was the opinion of disillusioned Sandinistas.

It was no mistake he is an opportunist.

A change of policy

· No longer advocates central planning but wants to promote "fair markets" and may renegotiate US trade agreement. Hints that landless peasants ought to receive own plots.

· Preaches reconciliation and appointed Jamie Morales, former Contra spokesman, as running mate. Paid Morales compensation for seizing his home in 1980s. Ortega still lives in it.

· Apologised to Mesqitos, a rural community whose homes were torched by Sandinistas for cooperating with Contra rebels.

· Still chummy with Cuba's Fidel Castro, and also Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, but pledges to seek good relations with all countries, including the US.

· Has abandoned secularism and embraced Catholic church.

Ortega tries to ease worries about reign

Ortega poised to return in Nicaragua

At stake is millions of dollars in potential investment, much of it from foreign companies drawn to Nicaragua by the country's cheap labour, low crime rates and decision to join the new Central American Free Trade Agreement. Many are waiting to see if Mr Ortega wins and stays true to promises to continue free-trade policies.

See:

Deja Vu

abortion


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Leaders of Tomorrow

You know how older folks always talk about you't as the future and leaders of tomorow. Well in Alberta you can be sure that these tiny tinpot tories to be, whom PC Leadership hopeful Jim Dinning wooed last year, are living up to being the future leaders of business and politics in Canada. Its good to see that wildlife is not endangered in Canda's National Parks.

RCMP breaks up Lake Louise party

Approximately 30 students from the U of A along with teams from the universities of Lethbridge, Calgary, British Columbia, Northern British Columbia and Regina were attending the 16th annual Western Business Games (WBG), which was hosted by Paradigm Promotion Ltd, a private company. The event wasn’t officially sanctioned by any of the universities and none of the teams—which were composed primarily of business students—were sponsored or supported by their universities. The U of A stopped funding WBG teams in 2001.

Marketed as a team-building session, and “the best networking opportunities available for students” in the delegate package, many of the events and activities scheduled for the weekend involved drinking, including one dubbed “The Beer Pond.”

“In terms of defending the conference itself, I can’t condone what happened because really there’s no academic content at all and it shouldn’t have any association with the school and we’ve made that clear right from the start,” explained James Matsuba, a co-organizer of the U of A team.

According to a press release issued by the RCMP, they along with other federal and provincial agencies were called out to the hotel numerous times over weekend due to WBG activities. Upon arrival, officers were confronted at times by “students walking around the hotel with open liquor and portable stereos; in underwear and G-strings.”

Of course who can blame them when you have tourist packages like this;
Ski Naked in Lake Louise


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