Rosa Luxemburg

Red Rosa also, it seems, has gone.
She is dead
And where she now lies is quite unknown.
She told the poor the truth, with such persistence
The rich expunged her from this existence.
Rest in peace.
.
(Bertolt Brecht / ‘Red Rosa’)

Rosa Luxemburg was, with with Karl Liebknecht, one of the founders of the revolutionary Spartacist League that later became the Communist Party of Germany. The Spartacist League participated in the unsuccessful Berlin revolution of January 1919. She and Liebknecht were abducted by Freikorps soldiers on 15 January 1919, and taken to the famous Hotel Adlon in Berlin where they were tortured and interrogated for several hours. They were then beaten unconscious with rifle butts, shot, and their bodies thrown into a nearby river.

At the end of the Second World War, one of her killers was captured in Berlin by the NKVD (Russian secret police); a record of his interogation is online.

She embodied political commitment, intellectual ability, and the quest for empowerment as a woman. Many of her writings are available online in English translation at the Rosa Luxemburg Internet Archive. The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation has links to versions in other languages.

Her best epitaph is the words she wrote herself only hours before her murder:

Tomorrow the revolution will already ‘raise itself with a rattle’ and announce with fanfare, to your terror:
I was, I am, I shall be!

donorgate

It’s like watching a slow-motion car crash in a movie. Or maybe one of those movies where the suspect changes his story as each new piece of evidence is revealed by the oh-so-clever detective.

And this is before we get into the bit where Yates Mawer of the Yard starts picking at apparent discrepancies between various witness statements.

Absolutely riveting.

thought for the day — belated

Migraine’s a bitch!

HMRC: FUBAR

So Alistair Darling is sorry that he has leaked — he knows not to whom — my bank details and personal information about my children.

Well, I accepted the apology from Dawn Primarolo when it took HMRC over two years to admit that I hadn’t been overpaid nearly £3000 in Child Tax Credit as they had claimed. I haven’t even gone to the Omsbudman — yet — over my latest Child Tax Credit statement that has resurrected part of that, already trice remitted, ‘overpayment’, even though HMRC still hasn’t even acknowledged receipt of my appeal after two months. So I think you should accept that I’m a fairly reasonable and tolerant guy who can discriminate between SNAFU and FUBAR.

But, Alistair, darling,  I regret to inform you that saying sorry just ain’t fucking good enough when it comes to my children. This is FUBAR; you are an incompetent wanker: get thee gone.

more on ’shared values’

At the time of the recent state visit by Saudi leader king Abdullah, Foreign Office minister Kim Howells said that the UK and Saudi Arabia could unite around their ’shared values’.

Perhaps he’d like to comment on the case of a nineteen-year-old woman who was raped by a group of seven men. She — the victim, remember —  was sentenced in October 2006 to 90 lashes; when she appealed, her original sentence was more than doubled to 200 lashes and six months in prison, apparently because she spoke to the media about the case. (source: CNN)

thought for the day

Questions From a Worker Who Reads
.
Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will find the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?
And Babylon, many times demolished
Who raised it up so many times? In what houses
of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live?
Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finished
Did the masons go? Great Rome
Is full of triumphal arches. Who erected them? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Had Byzantium, much praised in song
Only palaces for its inhabitants? Even in fabled Atlantis
The night the ocean engulfed it
The drowning still bawled for their slaves.
.
The young Alexander conquered India.
Was he alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Did he not have even a cook with him?
Philip of Spain wept when his armada
Went down. Was he the only one to weep?
Frederick the Second won the Seven Year’s War. Who
Else won it?
.
Every page a victory.
Who cooked the feast for the victors?
Every ten years a great man?
Who paid the bill?
.
So many reports.
So many questions.
.
(Bertolt Brecht)