tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-274692482011-04-21T13:18:21.435-07:00free hobgoblinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17503314268295860601noreply@blogger.comBlogger21100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27469248.post-1146663196241041252006-05-03T05:45:00.000-07:002006-05-03T06:33:16.250-07:00<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6623/2894/1600/me%20and%20darren%20demo.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6623/2894/320/me%20and%20darren%20demo.jpg" border="0" /></a>That's us in earlier days looking suspiciously happy. It had to end in tears. Nobody could be <em>that</em> cheerful selling papers on a demo. I mean: it breaks one of the fundamental laws of the universe: paper-selling is a device by the leaderships of leninist organisations to tire out the rank and file so they have no energy for asking awkward questions. What do you mean you're selling it because you <strong>love</strong> it? You think it's <strong>beautiful</strong>? You made it all yourself? You're proud of it? You believe what's in it? No, No and a thousand times NO. That is not possible.<br />So what did happen?<br />When I work out how, I will post our statement onto the Red Party site. Till then, this is my purely subjective explanation. The universe, miffed at our flauting its law, bit back. We were too few, too marginal, too poor, too humanly vulnerable. Producing papers is exhausting. Not for nothing do the old men of the left gobble up the young of their species, chomping them into malleable mash - someone's got to do the work of producing, distributing, selling, financing, promoting - it's the left's very own sweatshop industry. We wanted to do the work of both the leadership and the led. It was too much.<br />I don't want you to take from that, that it was a doomed enterprise, that we were wrong to try.<br />The Red Star <em><strong>was</strong></em> beautiful, intelligent, democratic, something to be proud of. Its beauty was down to Manny Neira's brilliant design. Its intelligence was down to commitment of all our contributors to write the best, clearest, most thought-out prose they could (and our editing to bring out their best). We didn't (well, hardly ever) run written-in-your-sleep predictable (oh so predictable) mush just because we wanted 'something on x'. People wrote because they felt passionate or puzzled, wanted to persuade or to ponder - and I think it showed. And we really did <strong>welcome</strong> debate. We printed articles we didn't agree with - and got stick for doing so.<br />I'd do it again tomorrow. Just give me a grand, a band of brothers and sisters, and a following wind...<br />Till then. There's this blog. And Red Star Commando (<a href="http://redstarcommando.blogspot.com/">http://redstarcommando.blogspot.com/</a>).<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/27469248-114666319624104125?l=freehobgoblins.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>free hobgoblinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17503314268295860601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27469248.post-1146659711431857232006-05-03T05:23:00.000-07:002006-05-03T05:35:11.436-07:00I feel like I'm starring in my own idiot-comedy film. I want to post my thoughts on Why I Hate Election Day. I would post it on Red Star Commando where my erstwhile Red Party comrades have their blog. BUT I DON'T KNOW HOW. so I have created a new blog from scratch. You know what this means? Tomorrow when I want to post something to this blog I won't know how. so I'll have to start a new one. and so on. an infinite Groundhog Day iteration of technical illiteracy.<br />I am, as John (Lennon) and George (Galloway) so famously repeated, not the only one. It is no surprise then that there are now more blogs than atoms in the universe - just one of the multitude of bent numbers brought to you by Stats R Us<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/27469248-114665971143185723?l=freehobgoblins.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>free hobgoblinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17503314268295860601noreply@blogger.com0