Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in enlivend's LiveJournal:

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Saturday, May 18th, 2013
11:47 am	Sick of state violence and the threat of war In the May 18th 1986 issue (inexplicably and illegibly decorated in the style of a Nigel Molesworth diary) of Red Rag: A US flag is burned at a demonstration in London against the bombings in Libya. A straight looking American appears out of the blue with a couple of newsmen, brushes his hair for the camera and gives the one-liner: "these people say they are against terrorism, but what are they doing about it?". Labour is reluctant to oppose the Housing & Planning Bill which will give local authorities like Reading Borough Council the legal right to sell entire estates to private developers and evict all tenants who refuse to move; the period for which people are not allowed to claim unemployment benefit if they have left a job voluntarily (for example, in response to sexual harassment or racist abuse) is raised to 13 weeks; customs officials have seized books which they claim are "indecent or obscene" from Gay's the Word bookshop; the Real Time Collective is busy; Victorians are making a comeback; and Labour's new policies offer so much more than revolution could ever hope to achieve. (Comment on this)
Saturday, May 4th, 2013
8:11 am	May 1st, 1886 In the May 4th 1986 issue of Red Rag: It's May Day (well, give or take) and the International Proletariat throws back its collective shoulders and bursts into song; Thames Valley Anarchists have issued their latest pamphlet "Vote labour and still die horribly" in time for next week's elections; and this copy of the Rag is printed with special radioactive ink, which changes colour to red in the presence of gamma rays. In the event of a positive result, contact 0800 100 100 (freephone). (Comment on this)
Friday, May 3rd, 2013
6:27 pm	Ravenbrook has recovered and open-sourced MLWorks MLWorks is an "industrial strength" Standard ML compiler and integrated development environment, developed by Harlequin in the 1990s. Ravenbrook Limited (whose directors were members of the original MLWorks team) acquired the rights to MLWorks on 2013-04-26 and have open sourced the project. Source code is under the BSD license on GitHub. (Comment on this)
Saturday, April 20th, 2013
11:02 pm	Greenham '86 In the April 20th 1986 issue of Red Rag: The unemployed are exhorted to on strike by withholding their Mass publicity of events at Greenham has died considerably over the last year; with the dwindling of coverage, numbers of women at Greenham have dwindled; the women are tired and some need a break and to get away for a while, but they won't leave; Greenham cannot be left unattended; those that remain have the same determination as when the camp was first set up; there is a strong spirit between the women, a closeness that cannot be explained. Back in Reading the Conspiracy is on the move; in Westminster the Fowler review of the Social Security is set to drastically reduce the resources of people claiming all sorts of benefits - anything fron disabled peoples' benefits to single payments. As I left I asked what wanted bringing next time I came. The reply wasn't food or clothing but "more women". (Comment on this)
Saturday, April 6th, 2013
12:18 pm	How The Unemployed Can Go On Strike In the meaningful April 6th 1986 issue of Red Rag: The unemployed are exhorted to go on strike by withholding their availability for work. To have any impact this symbolic gesture must be carried out en masse. Once 4.5 million unemployed people have withdrawn their availability for work the government will have no choice but to continue paying the unemployed and so this single act of defiance is transformed into a concrete power held in the hands of the unemployed. No longer will we fear the government and its oppression. The unemployed will become aware of their own strength. From here it will be a short route to a realistic dole payment. (Comment on this)
Saturday, March 23rd, 2013
12:11 pm	The point was to make history jump In the March 23rd 1986 issue of Red Rag: The Student's Union at Bulmershe is instructed to totally obliterate the phrase "Nelson Mandela Building" from its headed notepaper, failing which disciplinary action will follow including suspension of the Union's two sabbatical officers; there's something of a link between dramatic increases in the level of Council rent and a 277% rise in arrears; the South-East Women's Conference proved that women really are doing things for themselves; someone's conspiring in Reading; the Stonehenge 86 Campaign are to meet with the Chief Constable; and there are now several different anti-statist or anti-capitalist groups in the locality: Reading DAM, Revolutionaries of Everyday Life, Industrial Myths of the Near Future, Discordians, Bracknell Anarchists, Thames Valley Anarchists and the Airstrip One Liberation Army. Some of these groups do not exist and never have. But most of them appear to have contributed their opinions to Red Rag recently. Was this South Africa or Chile? Neither, it was Wapping, Britain 1986! 6,000 print workers sacked. Union monies sequestrated, riot police attacking peaceful demonstrators, all to preserve the freedom of that British press, i.e. the freedom of the likes of Murdoch, Matthews and Maxwell who control 80% of the British newspapers to print their lies and filth and accumulate their millions. (Comment on this)
Saturday, March 9th, 2013
1:02 pm	International Womens Day to Anniversary of South Street Dole Office Squat In the elegant tabloid March 9th 1986 issue of Red Rag: An anniversary squat of the old Unemployment Benefit Offices in South Street provides accommodation and workshop space for International Womens Day, in advance of pending demolition to make way for 16 French cottage lookalike sheds. Weekly Saturday night mass pickets of Murdoch's Wapping plant (bring a packed lunch & warm woollens); whether or not to tell the Social that you're co-habitating; all that is dippy in the libertarian-chic milieu; and news that the Rag might fold due to lack of involvement and funding which is greeted enthusiastically by the Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police. "These people have been getting up my nose for years with all their pranks. Now that they could be going, we can look forward to running things as we really want to." (Comment on this)
Saturday, February 23rd, 2013
11:40 am	Welcome To Their Brave New World In the February 23rd 1986 issue of Red Rag: With all-party support the Drug Trafficking Offences Bill defines sharing illegal drugs as "possession with intent" and compels judges to confiscate all property held by the defendant within the last five years; Nicholas Fairburn MP hopes that the Obscene Publications Bill will prevent people from watching "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"; the private shop on Southampton Street is picketed for Valentine's Day; staff at the Chronic have been reduced to the wretched (and illegal) practice of making up artwork by photocopying pages of the Letraset catalogue and cutting out the required letters; there could be more confusion; and Oxfam stops banking at Barclays. (Comment on this)
Saturday, February 9th, 2013
10:28 am	The Sun Never Sets on British Justice In the February 9th 1986 issue of Red Rag: Irma and Patrick are relatively strict Rastafari and believe in the minimum of contact with white society; they and their children are pushed from one damp bed and breakfast joint to another; their baby gets sick and stops eating; Patrick goes to the Registry Office to register the birth and so make it possible for an NHS doctor to treat the child; he is refused help because he doesn't have a doctor's certificate for the baby; the child dies and, both convicted of neglect, Irma is put on two years probation while Patrick is sent to Fairmile Hospital for unlimited psychiatric treatment. 6,000 workers of Rupert Murdoch's press empire strike, are sacked and replaced by "scabs at Wapping"; the Conspiracy aims to relieve monotony of performing arts in Reading and have fun doing it; the myth perpetuated by state, nihilists and some Red Rag contributors, of anarchism as implicitly violent must be broken down; and you can hack into the Shire Hall mainframe just by walking into Reading library: no password required. New technology is simply a cover, workers' organisation is Murdoch's real target. (Comment on this)
Saturday, January 26th, 2013
7:54 pm	I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass In the January 26th 1986 issue of Red Rag: Rag Doll is to be demolished to make way for over 60,000 square feet of office space; Reading's other newspapers are every bit as local as the local branch of McDonalds; the Diggers walk of 1986 is headed for Molesworth; with your own cardboard cutout cat you could be a Pope for life; Moscow is late with its gold shipment; and Here and Now become There and Then. (Comment on this)
Saturday, January 12th, 2013
9:32 am	International Year of Peace In the January 12th 1986 issue of Red Rag: in its manual for use against the government of Nicaragua, the CIA prints a guide to making Molotov cocktails; the New Statesman copies their graphic and later Red Rag reprints it. But this is a quiet news week in Reading and both the Post and Chronic lead with "Fury at DIY Bomb Guide", failing to mention any CIA connection and taunting local police to find a charge to throw at the Rag. Far from being a week of spontaneity and creativity, Abiezer's solstice celebrated apathy and distorted anarchy; girls who take a taxi home are "asking for it"; after a 5 year campaign by Friends of the Earth the Department of Transport relents on its plans to cut the M40 through Otmoor; and they're shooting the pigeons in Reading. (Comment on this)
Saturday, December 22nd, 2012
9:02 am	Why it wasn't worth printing an issue of the Rag in late December In the December 22nd 1985 issue of Red Rag: nothing that grabs my attention whatsoever. Occasionally this happened. (Comment on this)
Saturday, December 8th, 2012
10:05 am	Pädophilenbewegung In the December 8th 1985 issue of Red Rag: under the heading "Living in Communes" (which shows how thoroughly anyone from the Rag read this article before printing it), there's a hand-written rant about - uhm - children's liberation. Our commune is a refuge for young people who escape from homes, psychiatric torture chambers and nazi parents... Children are not playthings for bored and lonely mothers to pamper. One of their demands: Our right to enjoy our own bodies and to choose who we mix with. No laws that punish loving sexual relationships among and with children. The address given is Indianerkommune, Nurenberg, Germany; a cursory search nowadays links this organisation directly to a long-established "Paedophile Movement": The Indianer Commune existed from 1976, firstly headquartered in Heidelberg, then in Nurenburg, calling itself a "children's rights initiative" and working in favour of paedophilic sex. (http://de.wikipedia.org) Red Rag never (to my knowledge) fact-checked its stories. Doing so for this article, over the distances involved, would have been very difficult. But, whatever our individual involvements in this issue, we must acknowledge responsibility for the printing of a piece - neither challenged nor rebutted in later issues - which encouraged young, vulnerable people to put themselves in danger. (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 24th, 2012
9:42 am	The burden of socialist pretentions In the November 24th 1985 issue of Red Rag: the Government's proposals on Public Order include a possible power for a police authority to claim the costs of policing a demonstration from organisers who have breached conditions imposed by the police; the last Rag carried a paid ad which included the Co-op and CRS logos and the slogan "people who care", but unfortunately the Co-op doesn't care enough to topple itself from the position of the U.K.'s largest importer of South African fruit; and seventy women march twice through Reading to Reclaim the Night: first along with the "necessary" police escort, and then after the police have gone home on a second demonstration which stops more traffic, makes more noise, and draws more attention to the marchers and their demands. (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 10th, 2012
3:42 pm	Trash Waitrose In the November 10th 1985 issue of Red Rag: the black people of South Africa have repeatedly called for a boycott of South African goods; anti-apartheid campaigners in Reading draw attention to this by filling their supermarket trolleys with Outspan oranges and then leaving the store empty-handed. The National Front have now established a branch in Reading and NF stickers have been appearing around town - some with razor blades behind them; the van is ready for another winter of regular food runs to the women of Greenham; Veggie Dining is happening again; and whatever Box Office is doing for its anniversary party is so subversive that we can't read it, let alone write it down. (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 27th, 2012
6:09 pm	Guide Book of Shame In the October 27th 1985 issue of Red Rag: under the cover of producing a local guide book, members of the Red Rag collective describe the Reading Chronicle as "a preposterous compendium of estate agents' adverts and sponsored hopping events". There were 300 arrests on the NHS anti apartheid demo on 19th October; a test for antibodies to the AIDS virus is now freely available to anyone who wants it; a new women's health group is to start shortly; Reading Gay and Lesbian Helpline publishes a report to mark six years of continuous operation; Paradise could do with a cleanup; and Red Rag takes on a style correspondent. One can hardly expect the local labour councillors to throw themselves in front of the bulldozers, because this isn't Prague 1968 and such well-respected people cannot afford to be seen to be identifying with the lumpenproletariat of the Caversham Road. (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 13th, 2012
11:38 am	Scumbags In the hastily mimeographed October 13th 1985 issue of Red Rag: half way through going to press, Red Rag receives a phone call from Acorn to say that their offset litho has broken down; the show must go on but the outcome is even less legible than usual. Minister for Social Security Tony Scumbag Newton, obsessed with the hounding of Bed and Breakfast claimants, his Benefit Regulations declared illegal by Justice Mann, is now using a Specialist Claims Unit to investigate B&B claimants in Reading. They're acting on instructions to find examples of fraud by claimants - information desperately wanted by Newton so that evidence on benefit abuse can be presented in the press, paving the way to dissolving public support for those who live in the appalling conditions which many crook landlords subject people to. The latest scapegoat in the Greenham witchhunt, Katrina Howse, is given a six month prison sentence by Reading Crown Court on framed charges; it's been six lean months since the last Veggie Dining; and Reading Between The Wavy Lines, the 1985-66 edition of the most unpronouncable and indispensable guide to Reading town, has appeared amongst rain, chaos, a Will Hay film of dubious merit and free lettuces. (Comment on this)
Saturday, September 29th, 2012
8:05 am	Radical Chic In the (Radical Chic) September 29th 1985 issue of Red Rag: it's been suggested that the police deliberately left Lozells Road to the Handsworth rioters for several hours: quite acceptable if damage was only done to the "problem" area's own facilities and fabric; and anyway most businesses in the area were small, asian-owned, and politically expendable. The new Thames Residents and Business Association pledges to fight the proposed Third Thames Bridge; Doris's party passes off with three minor injuries dealt with by first aid and no arrests; the Ecology Party renames itself as the Green Party; a creche network is not just an easy option for the ideological credibility of those lacking plausible oppression; and for the first time ever Red Rag is out of debt. (Comment on this)
Saturday, September 15th, 2012
10:35 pm	Missing, presumed Red The September 15 1985 issue of Red Rag is missing, so I can't process it. Lost? Never printed? (Comment on this)
Saturday, September 8th, 2012
10:30 am	Dan Weinreb Dan Weinreb died. He contributed to lisp for a very long time and we owe him much. He will be missed. http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2012/09/07/dan-weinreb-boston-computer-geek-community-figure-dies-of-cancer/ (Comment on this)