Palestine

Are you surprised that in the deplacement of an entire population

some see terrorism as method in the venting of frustration

that if you bomb their fields it’ll lead to mass starvation

and fundamentalism rises where there’s no means of education

You may replace the indigenous by a fabricated state

but then watch as the decades entrench the policies of hate

whilst contracts for rebuilding are served up on a plate

but future structure for the people is going to have to wait

illegal settlements see no habitation fall

and the irony of “peace” for how they named that fucking wall

the international community doesn’t give a shit at all

for the IMF and World Bank are not at poverty’s beckon call

It’s a clash of civilisation, so they would have us believe

but no-one asks when the nukes from Tel Aviv will leave

nor how many more parents will their dead children grieve

for tanks and a full-time army are e’er a match for RPGs

will you stand for those who have no voice out there in Holy Land

will you offer them at very least a firm committed hand

will you speak of the use of phosphorus that legally is banned

or will you let the Zionists keep burying them in sand

Song Of The Day ~ The Social – UK Gothic

The Beginning Is Nigh

Extraordinary rendition and covert operations

homogeneity of news from the television stations

hegemony of politics drifting ever further right

policemen breaking doors down in the middle of the night

Hatred for asylum seeker and economic refugee

as the politicians fight for who is most like the BNP

Terrorism, Islam, slow pull-out from Iraq

but stop their oil again old son and you know that they’ll be back

Unemployment rising and the economic crunch

bank employees laid off with directors out to lunch

government pisses taxes in billions down the drain

and yet it still has not derailed their pension gravy train

The banking sector cancered by the tumor of its greed

whilst the great majority scratch around for no more than chicken feed

demonstrators asking for them to hear what we have said

the answer comes from police files as to why a man is dead

Labour and the Tories fighting over right-wing ground

and if you read the media you’d think there were no other sound

dissent consigned to history in this post-protesting age

newspapers running populist bile and adverts on every page

It’s time a new day dawned and we had a system we might trust

and one that comes before this one has reduced us all to dust

it’s not too late to make that change, remember Rosa Parks

proof if it were needed of when courage leaves its marks

And if you stand beside me friend you know we aren’t alone

and life for us is more than being a capitalist’s drone

the power we will have together brings the system to its knees

we can start by removing Sellafield and replacing it with trees

Song Of The Day – Portishead – Sour Times

G20 Aftermath – What Is To Be Done?

When considering such questions as what to do now one must decide whether this is to be ‘blue sky’ thinking unfettered by cynicism or prejudiced by what one think might happen or to be realistic and try to fashion ideas based around current thinking.  As I have myself criticised the current thinking and those who continue to limit themselves by trying to come up with solutions from inside a very small box I have to try at least to look at the former strategy.

Climate change is something that must be looked at.  One could sit and argue as to how much of the statistics are true, whether or not we have already passed the tipping point, when exactly fossil fuels will run out but this totally misses the point.  Such arguments are only really pertinent when one is considering simple short-term economics, there is every reason to look to change the nature of our oil-based high carbon economy because in the long run sustainability and renewable energy makes better sense than not.  It is also an excellent time to use the great many unemployed, there are consturction workers currently being paid by the state not to work when at the same time there are a great many who do not have a home, this would appear to be a marriage made in heaven, it would enable the state to stop paying to house people in shelters and B+Bs and temporary accommodation whilst using the skills and the labour of people it would be having to pay for anyway.  Add to this the re-enfranchisement of the builders themselves.  This type of example works in a number of cases, during a recession, especially in this country with the almost extinct manufacturing industry there are a large number of disused factories, these can be used for things that would otherwise be waiting around for the premises in which to build them.  A policy of using these factories to subsidise renewable energy and build wind turbines, solar panels, Hydro Electric Power components and tidal equipment would be an excellent use of the land and the facilities and mean that production could start sooner rather than later.  There are the mechanisms to do all this, it is the will that is lacking.

In essence the financial crisis could have proven to be the best thing that happened to the world, especially to the United States, it would be all too easy for the American electorate to feel that the job is now done, the Bush administration is now gone and a new dawn is heralded with a “Yes, we can” mentality.  However this is only the start, the USA must seek to rebuild international relations on trust not bullying and military might, it must seek to adjudicate struggles on judicial and humanitarian grounds and to do so it must first sign up for the same responsibilities that it expects other nations to do namely the international criminal court.  It must put the issues of Cuba, Venezuela and Palestine behind it and acknowledge that the policies of America first do not only harm other nations but they will come back to bite America itself in the arse.

Likewise for other nations the economic meltdown should be the proof, if any further were needed, that the current system of free market within large conglomerate fortresses and the mortgaging of multiple generations futures to business is to go into the future utterly blinkered and disregards the lessons of history as well as ignores the present.  When Groucho Marx went to his broker in 1928 and said he did not understand how the share prices continued to rise he was given the answer that it was now a global economy and therefore things were different to how they had been before.  In October 1929 when Wall St crashed people said then that this couldn’t be happening, people’s previous access to easy credit dried up and brokers called in the loans and threatened to sell all stocks if they weren’t repaid, which most couldn’t be and this fuelled the crash.

It appears though that the politicians are no more inclined to learn these lessons than the bankers are, content to expect that things will come good in the end.  What they fail to look at is the lives of those too irreparably damaged by the downturn to be able to benefit from any upturn.  These people are the great economic collateral damage of capitalism, and since armies show no mercy in that regard so one should not expect any from the armies of bankers and politicians on the take who sit around tables like First World War generals charting the positions of where people will be wiped out.

Is another world possible – well it must be, after all one existed before capitalism so there is nothing to suggest one cannot exist after it, and a great many would say the sooner we go down that road and seek it the better.  I cannot think of a better way to finish than with another Einstein quote:

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.“

Song Of The Day ~ Kings Of Leon – Genius

To Strike Or Not To Strike

There are clearly some who still cling to the belief that it should be possible to sit down with the university senior management over a cup of tea and a scone and have a nice reasoned discussion about why they should not make staff redundant, why they should pay an acceptable wage and consider spending money on keeping the quality of education paramount and not on the external look of the campus and the complete wedding of education to enterprise.  Now this might all be very convivial and perhaps might have worked say 50 years ago, though that is questionable, but I remain aghast that there are those naive enough to believe that management will listen to this approach at all now.  Education is no longer managed by a cliquey group of senior professorial men, it is run by a different clique of ex-corporate men and the odd woman of the same ilk who want to bring the efficiency they feel they presided over in the private sector and use it to corporatise the public sector.

I am confident that most people in educational institutions both academic and non-academic staff take the job more seriously than their private sector counterparts and value a position that allows them to work for what they see as the greater good and therefore the students as very much part of that.  When it comes to any thought of industrial action the academics and academic-related union UCU members are extremely reluctant to do anything that might have a denigrating effect on the quality of the education of their students and this is voiced in both public and private time and again.  There is never any action taken where it is the primary intent to use the students as pawns but there is a very pertinent question of what action can be taken to act as leverage over what is becoming an increasingly dogmatic and repressive management in UCEA, the employers mouthpiece, who very often do not represent the views of all the universities they are supposed to but rather than more powerful ones?

Any action the UCU takes is likely to cause some disruption, that is kind of the point of industrial action, but the action itself is merely the means and not the ends, it is ideally a final card to play in negotiating a settlement in a dispute to voice the opinion that there are certain principles one is not prepared to compromise on.  One may also choose to see the long-term goals of staff who do care very much about the university and therefore many generations of students as being perhaps a little more important than the views of one set of students alone.  It is an uncomfortable trade-off but one that has to be made in struggles across the globe and history, the needs of the many do generally by default outweigh the needs of the few.  Let us not forget that a great many of the staff in academic institutions have seen students and senior management come and go for decades and will continue to do so.  Furthermore although one might expect any current crop of students to be opposed to anything that they feel hinders them the UCU dispute in 2006 had the support of the national NUS just as the UCU had strongly supported the NUS in opposing tuition fees.  Locally things are often more barbed, lecturers being subjected to abuse by their students, or being pleaded with to break the strike so as not to impact their studies.  Local NUS president’s have even been known to issue their own personally subjective viewpoints expressing sentiments such as that the action might mean a student misses the one key lecture that results in him getting a 2.2 rather than a 2.1.

Students at the moment seem to have forgotten exactly what it is they come here for.  If it is for a place on a graduate recruitment scheme, ie as the tick box that enables them to get the job they think they want then institutions might just as well pack up and go home and leave it to the fast-track degree specialists and online services which can do this job better.  Universities are about education, they are not about vocational training schemes and if we as a society forget that then we are doing our students a far worse disservice than any strike action for we are setting them up for a wave of mid-life crises the like of which this country has never seen.  No-one is currently talking about withholding student’s education in the UCU action, students and/or their parents have paid for an education and they have received this, what is in question is whether or not they will receive on time the validation that they have understood this education, this very much makes each individual’s reasons for being here quite clear and in the open.  Lectures are often crucial but they are to be given in the context of students who are interested in the subject and reading up on it.  If the reading is done correctly and diligently then frequently the lecture is merely a handy way to see that information analysed and disseminated.

There is, as everyone knows, a turbulent financial climate at the moment however this has led to a large increase in the number of student applicants leading to estimates that nearly 30,000 will be turned down due to there not being enough places available.  It is therefore madness for universities now to be further lessening places by closing departments across the board and it is essential that the employers and the government ensure that this does not happen.

Better pay for university staff across the entire sector will benefit the students in a number of ways:  Fair remuneration for the job maintains morale, one cannot pay the rent and the bills purely on the desire to do a good job within the sector.  It also means that the university can recruit the best people to do the job without the salary being seen as a hindrance to employment.  Conversely the lack of fair salaries will lead to a great many leaving the sector entirely and their expertise and continuity will be lost.  This cannot be good for students or the colleagues left behind who will have to take on a much greater workload.  In an age when other provisions such as pensions that might have been seen as offsetting the salary gap are under threat it becomes all the more important that the package in the here and now is commensurate with the work staff are doing.  It is easier for those on high academic grades to feel that they are already paid a very comfortable wage but one must not forget that a great many colleagues are not as lucky not just the lower-paid UCU members but the large number of members of other unions such as Unison and Unite.  Joining a union is ensuring justice for all not just top-slicing for the few.

Finally there is the issue of loyalty, being a member of a union is not just about what you can get the union to do for you, it is not just an insurance service for when the shit may hit the fan in an individual’s professional circumstances.  Union activity is about collective action and bargaining, knowing that it is not only right but also more efficient for people to ally together to safeguard the jobs and conditions of their comrades.  No-one complains when pay rises are achieved or conditions safeguarded as a result of union action and negotiation, sometimes it is necessary to give something back and give the union the support that gives them a strong position to take to the table.  Not to do so undermines the union not only now but for a long-time in the future, weakness will always be capitalised on because the aftermath of disunity will herald a wave of attempts to erode rights that have been hard-fought by past colleagues.

I have my reservations about a strike, I have grave ones about the management of the media battle based on past experience and I am concerned that there appears to have been no serious thought given as to what the alternative will be in the event of a ‘no’ vote.  Nonetheless I feel that the threat of industrial action to maintain pay, conditions and the jobs of employees now and in the future is worth voting ‘yes’ for and I believe it would be grossly irresponsible to vote any other way.

Song Of The Day ~ Les Gars – Nice Way To See Things

A Time For Real Heroes

Whilst you’d be hard-pressed in the UK now to escape The Sun and Jeremy Clarkson’s campaign for improved conditions and recognition for the soldiers returning from Iraq there is a distinct absence of mention for the former Flight Lieutenant Malcom Kendall-Smith, the court-martialled RAF doctor who refused to follow orders when he was to be deployed to Basra.

Dealing with army casualties is a difficult moral dilemma, for whilst one can feel sorry for anyone whom has incurred injury, the armed forces is one of those professions where such is very much part of the job.  It is, or should be, known as part and parcel of joining up that the principle purpose of the armed forces is armed conflict.  It is therefore somewhat rich that we the taxpayers whilst already paying part of our money for the armed forces should now have to come up with further money for individuals returning from an illegal war and of whom the army has largely washed its hands.  This is of course nothing new, once a soldier is past operational usefulness the army’s ‘resources’ always seem somewhat stretched as the many victims of Gulf War Syndrome can attest to.

The case of Malcolm Kendall-Smith is kept quiet for very different reasons as it raises the very real dilemma many soldiers may face at stages during their career when called upon to participate in military activity that they may not believe in, that may be immoral, illegal or both.  Kendall-Smith had made a considered decision about his moral obligations as to serving in the conflict, having been a tutor in moral philosophy at a New Zealand university, one is to presume he would have considered the arguments very carefully indeed.  After studying the arguments for and against the invasion he declared that he did not want to be complicit in an illegal war and tried to resign from the RAF.  Rather than the usual course of shortening his RAF contract Kendall-Smith told his court-martial ”I would, in fact, refuse the orders as a duty under international law, the Nuremberg principles and the law of armed conflict”.  This might seem like a more head above the parapet method than the quiet resignation of his commission but having decided to make the stand I think it is both understandable and laudable that Kendall-Smith chose to take the flack for doing so.  He may not however have anticipated the full fall-out of his decision.

We might have thought that we have come a long way since shooting victims of shell-shock and imprisoning conscientious objectors during WWI and using the COs for slave labour in WWII.  We might also have thought that the days of blind obedience to orders no matter what they were without any thought of consequences were also thankfully over, the Nuremburg Principles following the trials of the Nazis coupled with the Geneva Convention should have ensured this.  However there is still very much a subjective interpretation as to when these principles are applied and this is often decided by the military themselves which is very much a lunatics and asylum situation.

Although Principle IV of the Nuremberg Principles states that acting under orders of a “Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law,” the judge advocate in the court-martial case, Jack Bayliss, rejected Kendall-Smith’s claim that by serving in Iraq he could be complicit in a crime of aggression. Such a crime “cannot be committed by those in relatively junior positions such as that of the defendant. If a defendant believed that to go to Basra would make him complicit in the crime of aggression, his understanding of the law was wrong,” Bayliss said.  Furthermore he accused Kendall-Smith of an “amazing arrogance” and said the sentence was intended to make an example of him.  ”Obedience of orders is at the heart of any disciplined force.  Refusal to obey orders means that the force is not a disciplined force but a disorganised rabble.  Those who wear the Queen’s uniform cannot pick and choose which orders they will obey. Those who seek to do so must face the serious consequences.“

Kendall-Smith was found guilty on all five charges of disobeying orders, and sentenced to a penalty of eight months in prison. As well as the jail sentence, which he served in a civilian prison, Kendall-Smith was ordered to pay £20,000 towards his defence costs, which had been covered by legal aid which was to come from his personal savings of £20,000.  The campaign to help him pay these punitive charges received no media attention whatsoever.  Kendall-Smith himself was released in June 2006 under curfew until September and banned from speaking to the media until December.  There is no record of his case in the mainstream media after this point.

At the same time a similar case was being heard in Canada denying refugee status to an American soldier who wished to conscientiously object.  Jeremy Hinzman was told by the judge, Justice Anne Mactavish that “An individual must be involved at the policy-making level to be culpable for a crime against peace … the ordinary foot soldier is not expected to make his or her own personal assessment as to the legality of a conflict. Similarly, such an individual cannot be held criminally responsible for fighting in support of an illegal war, assuming that his or her personal war-time conduct is otherwise proper.”  These two statements from judges are especially interesting because there is nothing in the actual Nuremberg principles that states this and therefore their information must come from elsewhere, but where, it is not cited in their speeches and must one presumes be a legal interpretation and not a binding legal principle.

This is of course a completely different logic to that used at the trials in the aftermath of the holocaust.  In the Nuremberg trials if it was asserted that one could have known what was taking place then the lack of active participation was not a defence, thus the directors of Krupp AG and IG Farben were convicted of war crimes even though they themselves were not the ones who used the cannisters of Zyklon B that had been manufactured.  Likewise many SS officials who could not be proven to have taken active part in mass slaughter were complicit in knowing that such actions had been taking place without themselves doing anything to stop it.

At what point therefore does one become of low enough rank not to have to face up to the moral questions that implementing an order might present?  People still accuse ordinary German citizens during the 1940s as having been complicit in the holocaust because “they must have known what was going on and they did nothing to stop it.”  However how many people here have sought to speak out over extraordinary rendition, or the internees at Guantanamo Bay, Bagram Air Base or Abu Gharaib prison?  The fact is we have become very complacent with our rights and we assume they will always be protected, Germany shows quite clinically how this can very quickly become the case, and it does so in the context of an increasingly galvanised nationalism on the back of a disastrous economic climate.

Ring any bells?

Song Of The Day ~ The Boxer Rebellion – Semi-Automatic

G20 Protests Part 3 – Ring-Fenced Knowledge And Laissez-Faire Solutions

If one needed any further indication that the G20 is formed of leaders who cannot think out of the box then the announcements of the ‘achievements’ of the summit have pretty much illustrated it as graphically as it could have been.  In fact it would be difficult to see how they could have been less broad-minded in their thinking choosing instead to tinker with the existing system that has at best allowed the current mess and quite probably been the root cause of it.

The largest ‘beneficiaries’ of the G20 plans appear to be the IMF which has been pledged around $500bn and the World Bank which receives the rest of the major subsidy, whilst the WTO is potentially going to be responsible for ensuring a lack of protectionist policies by countries seeking to concentrate on their own local economies at the expense of free trade from their partners.  This is supposed to stop the richer countries batoning down the hatches for their own good removing production from their poorer neighbours and imposing draconian tariffs and barriers on the exports of developing world countries.  Of course the idea of the US or the European Union playing fair by these rules is pretty laughable in the light of recent trading events, they cannot even play nicely with each other let alone with the rest of the world.  That the trade paper tiger of the WTO should be the body supposed to be doing something about this merely shows the absolute laissez-faire(!) attitude the world powers have for these objectives properly being met.

There will now be an “overdraft system for the world” which will be presided over by the IMF.  The means with which it will be done is via special drawing rights which have been improved by $250bn but these sums are split up into the groupings as to the voting rights of the IMF which means the largest countries will have the largest share, so not only will the nations of the developing world be getting only a possible share of crumbs from the table but they will have to pay them back.  This is pretty crass stuff, at the same time as we are hearing about sub-prime lending, what Mark Thomas calls “Shit Plus”, and at the same time as we are told we are in too much personal debt and have borrowed beyond our means, now there is supposed to be a fanfare about the richest nations on the planet offering a few scratchings by the same method to tether the poorest countries into economic servitude.  Lest one forgets the IMF does not merely apportion money according to needs, it applies conditions, massive cuts in public spending, privatisation of industry etc etc etc we’ve seen the agenda here in the West and it hasn’t exactly done much for the stability of the economies here let alone anything for the populations.  However it does provide Western corporations with a gilt-edged chance to get in and buy some 3rd world state assets at rock-bottom prices.

Bob Geldoff also showed his establishment credentials by being inside the ExCel centre rather than outside with the protesters, who were kept at more than arms length to prevent any chance of their message being heard and ’spoiling the day.’  This is the same Geldoff who seems able to switch his vitriol on and off conveniently like a well-maintained tap, eulogising the promises of the G8 in 2005 and claiming it to have been a great victory whilst in the company of the pompous grandees, whilst branding the protesters and the detractors idiots.  The same Geldoff who then some time later came round to the detractors point of view when he realised that the promises were not worth the paper it hadn’t been written on, and did so without any sense of shame or apology for those he had insulted before.  Geldoff was back in his schmoozing guise, affecting the facade of a man who was there for the poorer nations and not for his own self-image.

When asked about the protests Geldoff said globalisation was no longer abstract, it isn’t exactly clear what he meant by this in terms of context, whether this meant there was no point in protesting about it any more or whether he had been hitherto under some misapprehension that globalisation had yet to take hold properly.  Geldoff claimed that whilst there was justifiable reason for people to protest against the bankers they must at the same time also protest against themselves because they had “sucked on the tit of free money.”  This is at best disingenuous and callous bigotry and frankly is quite staggering insulting for an extremely wealthy man who pontificates from within the system with his showbiz friends but refuses to use his influence or his intellect to question the neo-liberal agenda that has been the cause of the problems of this financial catastrophe.  I am unsure whether most people will see it as I do but I am certainly not aware of free money being handed out for the good of the populous in any way shape for form.  I am aware of loans that get more punitive in their interest rates as troubles increase.  I am aware of banks throwing overdraft facilities at people and then levying them punitive charges at the minorest of transgressions.  I doubt somehow that Geldoff has been forced to live in this world.  He also seems not at all to understand just how private enterprise works, namely that private companies demand profit and for investment therefore they require more back than what they have put in.  The only free money that I have noticed is that which we the taxpayers have been forced to give to the banks.  We have been led to believe that this is a form of nationalisation, that we may have some stake in the banking sector but any detail as to what this stake is has been extremely scant in its detail.  The fact is this is not nationalisation it is subsidisation, we have no stake, we have not changed the personnel, we have not enforced changes to their modus operandi, , we have not even been able to properly cap their salaries or golden parachutes.  Were this deal to have been done in the private sector someone would be saying that we got shafted.

Next the G20 leaders have pledged to be committed to stamping out tax havens which it is estimated cost the UK alone £100 billion in unpaid revenue.  However on closer scrutiny their methods of doing so appear to be as comprehensive as their commitment to the developing world.  The Secretary of State for International Development Douglas Alexander responded on BBC’s Newsnight to questioning from Jeremy Paxman on tax havens by saying that Britain could not act unilaterally as the money would simply go elsewhere.  He did not explain what it was that Britain benefited from these companies being offshore that made up for the huge loss in tax revenue, nor did he explain his obvious lack of faith in other countries zeal to stamp out the tax havens to give these state larcenists no safe haven.  Furthermore there was no response when on the same program Mark Thomas pointed out that even the UK government buildings were now owned offshore, a revelation even Paxman seemed amused by.

So in conclusion when the dust has settled and the rhetoric sifted through what we actually have from the G20 is a situation whereby having paid a huge sum of our tax money to the banks, when we have already been told there was no more money for public services, for state pensions and for healthcare now we are to pay a great deal more money (for where else is this $1.1 trillion supposed to come from?) so that our governments can do it all over again.  Ever feel you might have been had…?

“There’s an old saying in Tennessee – I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee – that says, fool me once, shame on – shame on you. Fool me  - can’t get fooled again.“

Song Of The Day ~ Tears For Fears – Everybody Wants To Rule The World

G20 Protests Part 2 – The Beginning Is Nigh

As many thousands took to the streets of London last week to protest about the utter shambles the economic situation has been allowed to become.  It seems best summed up by the words of Einstein (as quoted also by Mark Thomas recently) “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.“

The media was quick to claim that whilst the demonstrations started peacefully as soon as “masked groups” turned up the atmosphere was very different.  The masked individuals they were referring to were those in black bloc which is a fairly common dress for those on marches, there is a lot of collective logic for it as it prevents the individual identification of some members who might otherwise be singled out for police attention both in the present and in the future.  One can choose to see it as a gang looking to cause trouble but I would be interested to know if any who would use that characterisation have ever actually seen any in black bloc cause specific trouble.  I am aware there have been incidences in Seattle and Genoa where damage has been mooted out on Starbucks and Gap premises, however these were protests involving a large number of black bloc participants, I have been on a number of demonstrations where people have been in black bloc and I am yet to see them as the ones who have started any trouble at all.  In fact the pictures that I saw of the trouble in the city showed a distinct lack of anyone in black bloc and seemed to be a scattering of individuals no more than 5 in number at any time surrounded by an absolute phalanx of photographers who seemed to be in an extremely organised formation.  Having been on marches and seen things occasionally get out of hand I can say with some surety that at least in my experience one thing that rarely happens is any pre-planned organised chaos.  Most of the time something sparks things off and some follow, others do not.  It would be staggeringly coincidental if rows of photographers had sat waiting at a particular window and that happened to be the one that was broken.  Furthermore the only person I have spoken to who was present at the time it was going on have said that whilst one person egged another on there were many voices calling for them to stop.  I doubt somehow the photographers were in the latter group.  The dispersal of people from a sparking point rarely makes national newsworthy pictures.  Most of the protesters I know are well aware that it only takes the odd action of a couple to be the entire story the media will focus on, leaving out the peaceful participation of thousands to concentrate on the actions of a handful.

I also wonder if one took a general cross-section of society and put them in that situation if there would ever be a group that was entirely without its idiots.  Certainly when one take thousands of police officers in my experience the results are far more brutal, the damage however being mooted out on people and not property.  In all the footage I saw on the mainstream media there were no signs of masked groups actively participating in anything violent, there were scenes of police charging with batons raised, scenes of individuals shouting in anger at the police lines, scenes of police kicking protesters who were already on the floor and scenes of groups of no more than 3 or 4 people causing damage to the bank buildings.  There were reports of injuries but largely on the side of the protesters, I did see in the Evening Standard  a photo of policeman who had allegedly been blooded but the photo was interesting because the blood was on outside of his helmet and jacket and didn’t seem commensurate with any wound he would have sustained.  Other than that I have heard of no other specific police casualties, though of course they have not yet had time to assess those that might have been stung by bees or tripped over whilst on patrol yet, I have heard about many protesters being badly injured including one man who died whilst caught near a police penning of the crowd around Bishopsgate.  It was said by official sources initially and by a subsequent police post-mortem that the man, Ian Tomlinson, died of “natural causes”, Tomlinson was 47 so this seemed somewhat unlikely.  Demonstrators have claimed that the problem was that medical attention was not able to reach Tomlinson soon enough and he was therefore untreated, other eye witnesses have said that he had been beaten by police shortly before he collapsed, and the Police Complaints commission are having to look into the case.  Whatever the reasons he thus becomes the first physical fatality of the London G20 protests.  Whilst it may not be as immediately newsworthy as someone being shot by police like Carlo Giuliani in Genoa in 2001 this event does show two rather critical points, the first is that the police are quite indiscriminate in their actions, Tomlinson was not himself taking part in the protests, he was not a young “anarchist” or in black bloc, he had not been seen creating any damage so could not have been singled out for any retaliatory action.  Secondly the speed with which the official police post-mortem issued its statement is somewhat indicative of a quick cover-up, and were it not for the fact that some witnesses recognised that the official line may not be anywhere close to the truth we might never be any the wiser.

This is not the first time, the Jean Charles De Menenzes case showed how a police action can go horribly wrong resulting in the murder of an innocent young man who effectively was only in the firing line because he was not white-skinned.  This should have illustrated once and for all that anti-terrorism measures are an infringement of human rights that are a great many steps too far and allowing the police to in any way conduct their own investigation into such a case was tantamount to not only allowing the lunatics to take over the asylum but giving them the budget for the next year as well.

In the words of Benjamin Franklin “Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”

This is only the start of the anger and backlash against the bankers and the politicians that back them up.  As we are forced to provide more and more of our tax money to bail out financial institutions that are riddled with corruption and the corrupt there will be a greater number of people who feel that enough is enough and will join the dissenters.  However this means that this is only the start of the problems with the means by which the state chooses to protect itself, it’s going to get nasty comrades, Chris Knight was right.

Song Of The Day ~ Stiff Little Fingers – Bloody Sunday

G20 Protests Part 1 – Academic Freedom… Except For Anarchists

The University Of East London is not seen by most in the know as exactly a haven of democracy or free-thinking.  Recent years have seen much the same corporatisation of the institution that is mirrored across academic campuses all over the country but UEL has been at the forefront of bringing this to the boardroom in a recent coup to oust the Vice-Chancellor by the board without any following of due process and in a manner that would not have been out of keeping with the banking sector.

It was therefore a pleasant surprise that the University management agreed to host the Alternative G20 Summit, which, were this one not to take place would leave that at the ExCel centre in London very much the only show in town.  Professor Chris Knight, an academic at the institution, was very much instrumental in the bringing together the event and co-ordinating a rich plan of events and speakers that was to take place on Wednesday 1st April.  The event was seen as something of a showcase of alternative thinking to the laissez-faire capitalism that was to be taking place literally down the road and a real chance for the university to put itself on the national and international map, the profile of the speakers very much represented this with figures from across the social and political spectrum due to speak on economic, political and environmental matters.

Shortly before the event the University had a change of heart and decided that far from allowing the event to take place on campus they were going to be shutting down the entire Docklands campus for the two days surrounding the ExCel event.  As usual the “security” gambit, and “on advice from police” was used to justify the actions.  It was decided that the alternative summit would go ahead anyway.

Hence Tony Benn, Mark Thomas, Lindsay Germain, Oliver Tickall and many others were to be seen on the lawn in between the two campus buildings from 5pm until 9pm holding forth with a megaphone that was rushed in from some SWP activists who had been demonstrating elsewhere, and speakers were forced to try to hold their own against a steady procession of flights taking off from city airport some 500 or so yards away across the water.  The reputation of UEL as a repressive corporate-minded institution caring more about revenue and image than it did about education and debate was preserved.

What was a step into greater unknown territory, as if denying eminent visitors from across the country the right to speak were not enough was the treatment of one of its own.  Professor Knight was suspended from duties whilst the university “conducted an investigation into his comments.”  Professor Knight had been interviewed in the Sunday Times and his story has since been picked up by a number of sources including the BBC.

Professor Knight is quoted as saying “We are going to be hanging a lot of people like Fred the Shred from lampposts on April Fool’s Day and I can only say let’s hope they are just effigies.  To be honest, if he winds us up any more I’m afraid there will be real bankers hanging from lampposts and let’s hope that that doesn’t actually have to happen.”  He goes on to say that the protests might “get nasty.”  This has prompted the university to suspend Professor Knight under the pretext that his comments were inciting violence.  This is a ridiculous claim, I was present at the summit when an occupation of the UEL library was discussed, there were plenty there who would have been prepared to take matters into their own hands, Knight was the voice of calm, the library had one more chance to respond to the Earth hour calls to switch the lights off and Knight was prepared to give them that chance in the hope that no further action would be necessary.  His “I hope it does not come to that” stance seemed pretty endemic of most of the crowd, but determination remained that something had to be done and it was more a question of the crowd having differences in their tipping point as to when things could no longer be done by rational law-abiding means.  Professor Knight was nowhere near the radical end of that spectrum but was certainly committed to demands being met having himself been suspended from his job and seen a great conference that he had worked hard for almost derailed at the eleventh hour.  Frankly under those circumstances I found his restraint somewhat admirable.

When describing the mood of the nation with regard to bankers, who are still claiming profane salaries, pensions and bonuses that were bad enough when paid for by customers but utterly sickening when paid for by the taxpayer, as people being angry enough to take it out on the bankers by perhaps hanging the real ones from lampposts within the context of a planned protest by hanging effigies from lampposts is something spontaneous and is called wit, there was an attempt to shame the bankers many of whom are totally unabashed at their actions, as anyone watching those bankers waving £10 notes at the protesters in London can testify to.  Without any sense of remorse for what they have done how could anyone expect them to behave any differently with our money than they did with the company’s money beforehand.  Amusingly some sharp commentator in the crowd ridiculed the bankers by saying it was clear what a mess they had made of things as three years ago they would have been waving £50 notes at the crowd.

Anyone who has ever been on a political march knows that there are risks of things “getting nasty” this generally occurs when the police either pre-emptively strike and pen large numbers of people into a confined space for a long period of time, or a couple of idiots either over-exuberant, a bit pissed up, or extremely naive decide to take things into their own hands.  The police retaliation for this is usually swift and generally brutal and this can be clearly seen with their actions during this week, at no point did I see demonstrators charging police with weapons however I did see police charging the crowds swinging their truncheons around indiscriminately and kicking protesters who had already been dropped to the floor.  I fail to see any reason why someone who has already been dropped to the ground can represent any sort of a threat that may validate these actions

Is Chris Knight a 66 year old professor of anthropology therefore really as dangerous as the actions against him would appear to suggest?  Those who think are dangerous enough in the modern world, the status quo relies on apathy, ignorance and fear in order to survive, anyone who questions what is supposed to be a consensus by default is therefore opening up the system to scrutiny that it cannot withstand, anyone who teaches others to question it is perhaps the most dangerous sort of dissident for therein lies perhaps the true seeds of a revolution.  The question should not be whether Chris Knight is dangerous but bearing in mind the establishment is now clearly scared for whom they are going to come next?

Song Of The Day ~ The The – Angels Of Deception

Mediawatch – Illiterasee, Dissleckseah And Deepreshun

According to Manchester MP Graham Stringer dyslexia is a myth and is more down to functional illiteracy and a breakdown in the teaching methods in education.  Dyslexia is, says Stringer “a cruel fiction, it is no more real than the 19th century scientific construction of ‘the æther’ to explain how light travels through a vacuum.”  To backup his argument Stringer states that were dyslexia to exist then countries such as South Korea and Nicaragua would not be able to achieve literacy rates of nearly 100%.  This would appear to highlight where the MPs argument comes a cropper namely a confusion between the very different terms of illiterate and dyslexic.

The trouble with any perceived mental disability is it is always more difficult to understand and categorise than a physical one. People can see physical disability and therefore feel less ambiguity in their categorisation of it and how they react to it.  It is clear what is required of them, a wheelchair user needs access in order to get to work and whilst it has taken a long time and a great deal of lobbying from the disabled action groups there is now a little more acceptance into the mainstream now that to try to sweep the problems of a large swathe of the population under the carpet is not acceptable.  When it comes to mental issues the problems are not always clear-cut and due to a serious gap in their understanding amongst the majority of the population the solutions are often neither known nor understood.

Taking depression as an initial example, when one considers not only that it is estimated that 1 in 4 of the population will suffer from some form of illness categorised as depression but that if current trends persist it will be the world’s second most disabling condition by 2020, this is by anyone’s notion a big question.  Depression is the largest and most widespread of mental conditions but perhaps only because it is rarely looked at in its sub-categories.  The depressed like the dyslexic and sufferers of other mental conditions move unnoticed amongst the population at large furthermore they are as diverse a group as those with any one physical disability.  Dyslexia like OCD and Depression are rather catch-all terms that refer to a varied set of conditions that manifest themselves in different ways and to different extremes.  If you see it more as a sliding scale rather than a binary switch, it isn’t a question of whether you have or have not but rather if you have just where in terms of severity and specifics you happen to fit.  Many people may have mild forms of such conditions and do not necessarily recognise it themselves because it is not severe enough to really impact on their daily lives, often they have coping mechanisms that they have built up over many years sometimes unaware of how modern technology may now have progressed enough not only to identify certain facets of their condition but also to greatly ameliorate their circumstances.  The medical profession is often culpable for not being aware enough of the breadth of the symptoms, how to recognise them, and the way they can impact on sufferer’s lives, they are generally only interested in the severest of cases and the nature of funding of the NHS provides only for the treatment when conditions are severe enough to require the sufferer to have been forced to consult the doctor often due to the impact having got out of hand.

As science has advanced so has our desire to understand more of these conditions and their causes and thus the ability to identify them on paper has increased, for example it is stated that ten times more people suffer from depression now than did so in 1945. This has led perhaps to some people’s perception that suddenly we have a whole load of sufferers of something that never used to exist, rather than an acknowledgement that it always existed but hitherto there were not the same methods to diagnose and treat it.  Just because people used to think the Earth was flat and do not any more does not mean it used to be flat until we discovered otherwise.

I have been educated to a decent standard and have a language degree, my dyslexia is quite mild but I do still have problems that non-sufferers might find difficult to understand. I know the difference between the words your, you’re and yore just as I do the words their, they’re and there but on occasions I write an incorrect one and because my mind presumes I will have written the correct one, as it understands the context in which I wish to use it, it doesn’t pick it up on a proof-read, and of course neither does a spell checker because the word exists.  In addition to this I have nemesis words such as separately, Mediterranean, innate, asinine and rhythm amongst others – even in writing these words now I only spelled innate correctly first time around, Mediterranean I played about with the various combinations until I hit one that wasn’t then underlined and rhythm I had to admit defeat on after multiple goes and look up in the dictionary.  Personally I do not believe I am stupid nor is my memory so poor as to forget everything, it is just that there are certain blind spots no matter how many times I look up its spelling my brain cannot retain it for the next time I need to use it, this can happen on a weekly basis the frequency of usage is irrelevant.  This is not about illiteracy or a lack of ability it is about little foibles in the ways our brain learns and holds information and in turn learning how best to work within those parameters to make the best of what we have. If more emphasis was put on identifying what people can do and nurturing it and helping cope with the things they find more difficult by using the strengths, rather than excluding them from what they cannot perhaps we would not be having this rather eugenic-like discussion where those who have been given many advantages try to justify their position by claiming that those who have less have either only themselves to blame or are simply not capable.

In the 1970s my parents were told I was educationally sub-normal, the effect this could have had on my education would have been profound had my mother not moved me to a different school. I sincerely hope we are not going back to the educational dark ages again where those that do not or cannot conform to the ever-more limited confines of the system are left floundering so that institutions can exempt themselves from the “detrimental” effecto n their results.

Stringer has at the root of his argument, if we wade through the shite, a much more cogent point, namely that we have in what we think of as our “civilised” society a serious problem with literacy and this in turn is having a substantial increase on the disenfranchisement of the population, leading inevitably to higher crime, drug use, lack of social cohesion and social responsibility.  This in turn whilst perhaps not being the root cause of depression is certainly not going to aid any sufferers of it, likewise dyslexia is a condition that worsens when the sufferer is under greater stress.  Coupled with this is a society and thus a school system obsessed with classifications, be it statistical analysis of student’s progress to Offsted report results and in this climate the option of a ‘diagnosis’ of a condition can exonerate them from the blame of a child having slipped through the net.  I have seen this myself where it is taken as a given that a child suffering from certain conditions cannot and will not conform to the stereotypes of their age group and can be statistically removed or taken into consideration when it comes to any ratings of that school’s progress.  However as I believe I can personally vouch for just because one is dyslexic does not mean one is not perfectly literate or that one does not posses the ability to become literate.  To presume this would be like presuming that a depressive will never be happy, or someone with only one leg will not be able to move themselves around.

Stringer loses his point by turning on the symptom of the problem rather than the cause of it.  He does not make an attack on what we as a society have done to our education system by devaluing it to a piece of paper with meaningless numbers and exams sat parrot fashion.  A system of check boxes that reward conformity and engender a materialist viewpoint that seeks only to do enough to guarantee career progression at the end of it.  This is not what education is for, one only has to look at the state of those coming out of it to see that, precious few have gained anything from it in real terms and most do not truly know themselves no have the ability to question others.  Using the media as its backup it is the education system that has perhaps been the greatest proponent in the preservation of the status quo and the true realisation of the notion described by Chomsky as “manufacturing consent.”  Those who dissent, or those who cannot learn assent quickly enough are a liability.

*(And by the way whoever invented the word dyslexia was clearly not a sufferer themselves!)

Song Of The Day ~ Blakfish – Preparing For Guests

So You Think You Know What Happens Next…?

Barring a major unilateral turnaround in the economy or Gordon Brown appearing on X-Factor singing a barnstorming version of  Robbie Williams’ ‘Angels’ it appears fairly clear that the Conservatives will win the next election and David Cameron will be the next Prime Minister.  The parallels with the transformation of the Labour Party under Tony Blair are quite evident, even down to using much of the same PR machine that Labour used to mastermind their metamorphosis into the party that was elected in 1997.  Certainly the Cameron publicity machine has been in overdrive with interviews and appearances almost ubiquitous, and yet amongst the commentators and the observers as well as for some of those of us lay members and interested parties there remains a nagging question about what Cameron and his new “Compassionate Conservatism” really stand for.

Cameron wants to be all things to all people, this is fairly natural as an opposition politician does not wish to alienate voters who may mean the difference between overall majority and landslide victory, moreover his own political career and stature rests very much on the Tory victory, for failure now would rank alongside the greatest political defeats in British history.  However to allow the party an almost unimpeded run into government as appears to be happening is tantamount to not contesting a opposition lineout in rugby on your own five metre line and not expecting your opponents to score a try.  If the public are mindful to remove the Labour party because they disagree with their politics or their decisions would it not be prudent to ensure that the opposition have a tangibly different way of doing things?  Thus the onus is on the electorate and the Fourth Estate to find out just what the country may be letting itself in for, and the truth is that few of them seem at all bothered.  Dissatisfaction with the incumbent and vacuous promises have won British elections before and look likely to again and this spells serious trouble.  The Metropolitan Police have already predicted a middle-class “Summer of Rage” against the economic problems and if this is to come to pass the analogy of 1978 will be almost complete, economic meltdown, trouble with the unions and workforce etc.  The stage is set for a perceived ‘Summer of Discontent.’

What bothers most British people at the moment, and therefore likely to “inform” their decision on who to vote for, are the old chestnuts such as the economy, immigration, unemployment, crime and taxation.  It would be nice to think people may care about the welfare state, healthcare, pension provision, education and social cohesion but these tend to be very much more marginalised than the big isolationist dogmas.  I say isolationist because the key points I have listed above fall into 2 very distinct categories, the first list contains the ‘me’ items, ie specific concepts that affect me personally and the second the ‘us’ items ie concepts that affect us much more as a whole.  That may sound far-fetched when you look at wooly tag words such as economy and crime but people are not worried about the overall rate of crime in general, they are worried about whether or not they, and most often their property, is really safe.  Likewise the economy is of interest in terms of what it means to their pay packet, their house price and how much the contents of their trolley or their fuel tank is going to cost not what it may mean to the family next door or in the next city.  Likewise in taxation, the primary concern is not whether tax revenue is spent wisely and for the good of society and public services but just how much they are going to have to pay from their wage.  I believe you can tell a lot about a society if you look at which of these concepts are more important to people.

It is difficult to believe that the Tories would have handled the economy very differently, the precedent in recent times is 1992 where billions of pounds of taxpayers money was pumped into sterling in an unsuccessful attempt to prop up the currency.  The Conservatives are a party wedded to business and the city, they have hitherto been given credence as a safe pair of economic hands, but this mantle has come from the city financiers and analysts who are as resistant to changing the status quo as the Conservatives are.  One could say that one of the reasons Britain has faced such a severe hit from the economic downturn is because the Conservatives did not seek to carry out any far-reaching reform of the financial institutions and sector in general in the wake of the last recession and Labour have merely continued that inaction.  Even when openly criticising the government little is given as to what would have been done differently had the Tories been in charge, Tory grandee Chris Patten has stated that he never thought he would be voting on nationalising the banks but he offers no idea as to how that situation would have been avoided by his party and was himself in the government that presided over Black Wednesday in 1992.  Norman Lamont, astonishingly now in the House Of Lords, is also quick to criticise anyone else’s handling of the economy and even quicker to forget the quite catastrophic mishandling of it that he himself made of it as chancellor in 1992.  The man bends like a reed in the wind suiting his answers to the questioner concerned, implying loyalty where necessary and dissent where expedient.  Why are these people trotted out, why do such imbeciles have any relevance?  During the current crisis one has not seen David Cameron leading the calls for a salary cap on the directors of nationalised UK banks, nor to suggest that huge bonus payouts and golden parachute pension plans are an anathema to the outgoing directors of failing businesses, so whilst Cameron in public is keen to ride on Barack Obama’s coattails through the wind of change, he is a reactionary in every sense of the word.

Perhaps some of the electorate are under the impression that the New Conservatives have learnt the lessons from the fall of the old guard.  However in a recent program conducted by the then inside man Michael Portillo interviewing his former cabinet colleagues the matter of the Poll Tax was mentioned.  All were quick to infer that they had told Thatcher it would be a bad idea and that she had lost touch with the electorate but critically none seemed to understand just why this met with the level of vitriol that it did in 1990.  Their summations suggested that it was because it involved charging people that had not paid before, like women in the home etc who had previously let their breadwinning husband pay the rates.  Leaving aside the very misogynistic element of this stereotype not one of these dinosaurs suggested for a moment that the tax itself was hated because it was utterly iniquitous in its foundation and draconian in its implementation.  Households of two adults and a child of eighteen still at school that had once paid £250 for their annual rates were expected to pay £1200 without prior notice and without any amelioration of circumstances or amenities, others in single-occupancy in large houses found themselves no longer paying for what they received in their area but a flat-rate based arbitrarily on the levy of the incumbent council.  (I must at this point declare vested interest – I was one of the eighteen year olds still in full-time education expected to pay without having the luxury of any wage.  I refused on principle and my local council sent a summons to my then address in the United States for a court appearance that had taken place whilst the letter was in transit.)

Cameron is the master of talking a good game, one would expect it, he went to Eton and Oxford obtaining the best education money can buy whilst also coming from a wealthy family that gave him every advantage to succeed in life.  It is easy for someone with such a background to eulogise about opportunities and fairness as he himself has rarely seen the daily adversity most of the country contends with, it would be like expecting the Queen to have a handle on how it is to live when you’re waiting for a decision on housing benefit.  There are examples of those coming from the establishment turning their back on the established system and all its flaws, such as Tony Benn who renounced his title and held cabinet office in a comparatively left-wing Labour government in the 1970s, but these are very much the exception rather than the rule.  Cameron is no radical and delving into his past as well as his present illustrates this quite graphically.

His stance on immigration ticks every box, he wishes to make clear that “immigration has been good for Britain” right that’s kept the immigrants and moderates happy, but also “there must be more controls” thus keeping the rapid xenophobes in their cages.  How does Cameron expect to square these two points of view, he will inevitably alienate one faction the question is which?  Arguably this question also impacts very much on the economy, many migrant workers work below the minimum wage and a great many businesses will feel that being forced to consider British labour in the current financial climate will put unnecessary pressure on their ability to survive.  They tried the same trick when the minimum wage was to be introduced and almost succeeded in derailing it, companies claimed, without a sense of irony, that if they were forced to adopt a minimum wage for their workers they were likely to go out of business.  Very few did.  This was also legislation under a Labour government, the Conservatives had many opportunities to implement it before but had always ducked it claiming that they would not bow to trade union pressure.  Now they have pledged that they will not abolish the minimum wage, which is hardly sign of any commitment to eradicate poverty and more to do with the fact that to abolish it would be seen as a U-turn and necessitate a huge amount of bureaucracy for the companies involved

The Conservatives have before tried to convince the electorate that those who wear leopard print can change their spots.  Anyone who witnessed the apparent Damascine conversion to the forces of moderation that Michael Portillo wished to have us believe will know what I mean here.  The difference between Portillo and Cameron is that Portillo had form, he had held office, he had been questioned very specifically about policy before and in that regard we knew what they were really thinking.  Cameron has not held senior office and neither have many of his front bench team, however the old faithful working behind the scenes have.  A working group headed by former cabinet minister Francis Maude is already planning the Tories first months in office and the decisions they will take but we hear little about what these decisions will be.  If the old guard are making the decisions then do the british electorate really believe that to go back to 1992 would be a good idea, or do they believe Cameron will disregard these views as he seeks to plot a new course?  Either way to vote Cameron and the Tories in now is equivalent to placing Johnathan Aitken in charge of the Press Complaints Commission or Jeffrey Archer in charge of Culture, Media and Sport or to put it another way not just letting the lunatics take over the asylum but in fact run the asylum system at a national level.  I may well have just predicted the first Tory government cabinet reshuffle!

Song Of The Day ~ Bricolage – Flowers Of Deceit