Layer 468 . . . The IMF, Strauss-Kahn, Hattie Carroll, Naomi Klein and Bob Dylan

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IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn refused bail on sex assault charges


Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who denies the charges, remanded in custody in New York over fears he might flee the US

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/16/dominique-strauss-kahn-medical-examination-court-hearing

As far as Oxzen can see the IMF is still a New York-based ultra-powerful right-wing institution controlled by individuals who have aligned it with the doctrines of the notorious Chicago School of Friedmanite economics. For several decades it has forced governments throughout the world to privatise public assets and impose austerity on their citizens (a la New Labour and New Tories who did it without any external encouragement or direction - simply for fun and profit) in return for receiving emergency loans, etc. Read what Naomi Klein has to say about the IMF:

IMF Go to Hell


The IMF had its chance to run Argentina [ETC!]. Now it's the people's turn. 

http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2002/03/imf-go-hell

Naomi also has plenty to say about the IMF in her book, The Shock Doctrine, which, of course, everyone should have read by now.

"The IMF has three trademark demands - privatisation, government deregulation, and deep cuts to social spending . . . " [P9]


"The colonisation of the World Bank and the IMF by the Chicago School [graduates] was a largely unspoken process, but it became official in 1989 when John Williamson unveiled what he called "the Washington Consensus".  It was a list of policies that he said both institutions now considered the bare minimum for economic health - "the common core of wisdom embraced by all serious economists". These policies, masquerading as technical and uncontentious, included such bold ideological claims as "all state enterprises should be privatised", and "barriers impeding the entry of foreign firms should be abolished". When the list was complete it made up nothing less than Friedman's neoliberal triumverate of privatisation, deregulation/free trade and drastic cuts to government spending. Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist of the World Bank and one of the last holdouts against the new orthodoxy, wrote that "Keynes would be rolling over in his grave were he to see what has happened to his child [the IMF]". [P.163]


"The IMF's official mandate was still crisis prevention - not social engineering or ideological transformation - so economic stabilisation needed to be the official rationale. The reality was that in country after country the international debt crisis was being methodically leveraged to advance the Chicago School agenda, based on a ruthless application of Friedman's shock doctrine." [P164]

Sounds familiar?

Wikipedia says -
The IMF sometimes advocates “austerity programmes,” increasing taxes even when the economy is weak, in order to generate government revenue and bring budgets closer to a balance, thus reducing budget deficits. Countries are often advised to lower their corporate tax rate. These policies were criticized by Joseph E. Stiglitz, former chief economist and senior vice president at the World Bank, in his book Globalization and Its Discontents. He argued that by converting to a more Monetarist [ie Friedmanite] approach, the fund no longer had a valid purpose, as it was designed to provide funds for countries to carry out Keynesian reflations, and that the IMF “was not participating in a conspiracy, but it was reflecting the interests and ideology of the Western financial community.”

Now, Mr Strauss-Kahn is a member of the French Socialist Party (!) and has apparently made a pretty good fist of managing the financial current crisis, insofar as he's advocated the expenditure of reserves [ie OUR money] on propping up the financial institutions, banks and indeed whole countries, such as Greece. What's not clear [to me at least] is whether he's also been calling for re-regulation of financial institutions, and indeed the nationalisation of banks and finance houses. And if not, why not?

Something happens to people who rise to positions of enormous power - people like Thatcher, Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Blair, and, possibly, Strauss-Kahn. Either they start to feel omnipotent and godlike, in which case they assume the right to think and to do whatever they like, or else their latent psychopathic tendencies completely take over and they feel no limits on their desires, impulses and need for personal gratification.

This story instantly brings to mind the lyrics of Bob Dylan's song,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYM4WYFAiLg&feature=related

Play the video and listen to the words -




The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll


William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll
With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger
At a Baltimore hotel society gath’rin’
And the cops were called in and his weapon took from him
As they rode him in custody down to the station
And booked William Zanzinger for first-degree murder
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain’t the time for your tears


William Zanzinger, who at twenty-four years
Owns a tobacco farm of six hundred acres
With rich wealthy parents who provide and protect him
And high office relations in the politics of Maryland
Reacted to his deed with a shrug of his shoulders
And swear words and sneering, and his tongue it was snarling
In a matter of minutes on bail was out walking
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain’t the time for your tears


Hattie Carroll was a maid of the kitchen
She was fifty-one years old and gave birth to ten children
Who carried the dishes and took out the garbage
And never sat once at the head of the table
And didn’t even talk to the people at the table
Who just cleaned up all the food from the table
And emptied the ashtrays on a whole other level
Got killed by a blow, lay slain by a cane
That sailed through the air and came down through the room
Doomed and determined to destroy all the gentle
And she never done nothing to William Zanzinger
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain’t the time for your tears


In the courtroom of honor, the judge pounded his gavel
To show that all’s equal and that the courts are on the level
And that the strings in the books ain’t pulled and persuaded
And that even the nobles get properly handled
Once that the cops have chased after and caught ’em
And that the ladder of law has no top and no bottom
Stared at the person who killed for no reason
Who just happened to be feelin’ that way without warnin’
And he spoke through his cloak, most deep and distinguished
And handed out strongly, for penalty and repentance
William Zanzinger with a six-month sentence . . .
Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now’s the time for your tears.

...................................................

Dominique Strauss-Kahn allegedly raped a maid
In his New York hotel bedroom that she was a'cleaning
He came out of his bathroom and stood there stark naked
He grabbed her and hit her, and he raped her
And the cops were called in and his name took from him
As they rode him in custody down to the station
And booked Dominique Strauss-Kahn for all of his sex crimes -
But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Take the rag away from your face
Now ain’t the time for your tears

..................................................................

Bob's written an interesting piece on his website, on his China gigs -

http://www.bobdylan.com/news/my-fans-and-followers

Allow me to clarify a couple of things about this so-called China controversy which has been going on for over a year. First of all, we were never denied permission to play in China . . . 

So much for the right-wing press - who have, let's say. . .  issues - with Bob, and with China.

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Layer 447 . . . The Rights of the Child, Education, Michael Morpurgo, Schools, the Dimbleby Lecture, Lessons in Hate and Violence, and the Need for Apologies.

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Continuing with yesterday's economics theme, the following articles are very good summaries of the case for Keynesian approaches, and the case against Friedmanite economics:

The Economy: We Are All Keynesians Now

Friday, Dec. 31, 1965

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,842353-1,00.html

from 2008

The End of the Age of Milton Friedman

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-madrick/the-end-of-the-age-of-mil_b_94228.html

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Children and Education

The wellbeing of children, the brainwashing & indoctrination of children, the education of children, and the abuse of children, are subjects that every one of us should be concerned with and pay attention to.

I'm still seething about that insane 'Tiger Woman' and her abuse of her own children. [see last blog] I'm even more seething about people like her who encourage other parents (and teachers) to put extreme pressure on children to achieve academically at the cost of their overall wellbeing, at the cost of their right to a proper childhood, and their right to a proper education.

I'm now seething at a programme that was broadcast by Channel 4's 'Dispatches' team this week -

Lessons in Hate and Violence

Dispatches goes undercover to investigate allegations that teachers regularly assault young children in some of the 2,000 Muslim schools in Britain run by Islamic organisations.

The programme also follows up allegations that, behind closed doors, some Muslim secondary schools teach a message of hatred and intolerance.

The programme is presented by reporter Tazeen Ahmad.

Dispatches: Lessons in Hate and Violence will not be available on 4oD at this time, due to an ongoing police investigation concerning subjects featured in the programme.

http://www.channe4.com/programmes/dispatches/episode-guide/series-80/episode-1

There are clips of the actual programme on the website, where Salahuddeen Ali has commented:

Great documentary. I am a muslim and I find this issue of muslim teachers/schools abusing children worthy of broadcast and investigation. As a muslim child growing learning the Quran, I was beaten and whipped. This is a fact. I read many muslims comments saying they're unhappy about this report. Well I hope they realize that when abuse is applied to children in their faith schools it will not be hushed down in respect to their image. Children's rights are above any faith, group or agenda. Thank you for this brilliant work.

Mohammed Abdullah commented:

Although I have not watched the full program I believe it is right to bring these issues to the forefront just like one would do with racism. Indeed there are preachers in Mosques and Madrasa's preaching Islam without the proper knowledge of the subject. We can deny the truth much as possible but these problems do exist I myself have experienced this. Those preachers only have a tunnel vision of religion and do not have a broader knowledge of this world. Those preachers who spread hatred, corruptions and mischief in the land they need to be bought to Justice. Al Quran Surat Al-M?'idah: Chapter 5: Verse 33: gives clear punishment for those who Spread hatred, Corruptions and Mischief on the land. I would like to praise TAZEEN AHMAD for this brilliant work.

The programme had used hidden cameras to film teachers and teachers' assistants barking at children and indoctrinating them about the vileness of non-Muslims - shouting at children who weren't concentrating hard enough on their Koran-reading. Worse than this, they were shown kicking and slapping children for not working hard enough.

The children worked in isolation - not speaking to or collaborating with any of their peers in their learning.  During unsupervised break times some of the children were aggressive and abusive to one another.

But let's be clear - this model and this pattern of learning exist in many other schools throughout the country, where children learn through didactic instruction, learn by rote, learn in isolation, and have an unbroken diet of uncreative, meaningless cramming.

It's a disgusting fact that more and more children learn in ghetto schools of one sort or another - instead of learning alongside children of all backgrounds and abilities. This is something the 'free schools' idea is meant to promote. The Tories have been searching for ages to figure out a way of giving public money to private and independent schools in order to reduce private tuition fees, and this a perfect wheeze for doing it. These people really do have a sense of entitlement to exclusive schools which are subsidised by public taxation, and which are run by the parents whose children benefit from them. People like Toby Young want control of the curriculum, the management, the recruitment of staff, and the style of teaching - and they don't give a toss about what more enlightened people say about the learning and wellbeing needs of children. Their sole aim is to have a neighbourhood school for their own children, run by the parents, which doesn't charge fees, and which will guarantee 'rigour' and a smooth passage to the Oxbridge college of their choice.

These schools may be less hate-filled than those shown on the C4 documentary, but just as negative in their effect through causing fragmentation of the system, entrenching privilege, promoting ghettoisation and destroying the rights of children to a proper childhood and an enjoyment of school and of learning itself.

........................................

Morpurgo

Michael Morpurgo is an exceptional human being, and a great champion of the rights of children. He was rightly given the honour of delivering the Dimbleby Lecture on BBC TV this week.

In this year's Richard Dimbleby Lecture, Michael Morpurgo explores the increasingly urgent issue of children's rights, and investigates the wrongs that young people have to endure.

One of Britain's most popular children's authors, Morpurgo has written over 120 books and more recently he has become a campaigner on behalf of children, both at home and abroad. In this role he visited the Middle East where he witnessed, first hand, the difficulties children face in times of conflict.

His most well known book, War Horse, was recently dramatised to great critical acclaim and it is now being made into a Hollywood feature film by Stephen Spielberg.

Related Links

    * Wikipedia: Michael Morpurgo (en.wikipedia.org)
    * Michael Morpurgo: Home (www.michaelmorpurgo.com)
    * BBC Scotland: Authors Live - Michael Morpurgo
    * BBC News: Entertainment & Arts: Michael Morpurgo on War Horse and beyond
    * BBC News: Entertainment & Arts: How to operate a War Horse puppet
    * IMDb: War Horse (www.imdb.com)
    * BBC News Magazine: How children's war fiction has changed

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ymf57

Seven days left to view this.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00ymf57/The_Richard_Dimbleby_Lecture_15_02_2011/

The Rights of Children - summary of the lecture

UN Convention on Children's Rights - do we live by it?

Only two countries have yet to ratify this convention - Somalia and the United States.
 
The right to survival, access to healthcare, liberty and education

These rights are woefully neglected.

3.5 million of our children in the UK are mired in poverty.

Some of the most vulnerable have been appallingly treated.

We must tackle the impoverishment, neglect and exploitation of children.

The Yarls Wood detention centre - a deeply shameful institution - injustice was done to children put in this prison.

"Motherland" - a play by Natasha Walters.

"12 big men banged on our door. They took us to a police station."

We lock up asylum-seeking children, even though they are innocent of any crime.

The rights of children are flagrantly ignored.

"Are we doing the best for our children? No - and we are all to blame."

Librarians are the unsung heros of the book world. Unglamorous
people like this make a real difference to children's lives.

The younger the children, the less status for the people involved. Primary school teachers are the worst paid.

We have a short-term target-driven mindset. We need to go back to the needs of children. We need children to burn brightly and shine.

What we actually do is corral them and stifle them - we put them in places where success and failure [in tests and exams] is all that counts . . . Fear of failure is what does the most damage. We're like Mr Gradgrind in Dickens' 'Hard Times', whose notion of education was to ram 'facts' into children's heads . . .

We may not beat children any more, but I wonder how far we've moved on since Gradgrind . . .  We still have classes that are twice the size they should be - far too big for teachers to make proper relationships, particularly with children who are already disengaged and alienated.

New Zealand ranks 4th in the OECD education rankings, and doesn't have league tables. Finland ranks 2nd, and children there don't begin formal schooling till the age of seven. Britain ranks 20th.

We must remember that we are preparing children NOT simply for employment, or for the common good, but for the difficult decisions they will have to make in their personal lives, for the moments when they will have to take responsibility for themselves and for others, when they will be tempted to have inappropriate sex, or to take drugs, or to bully someone, or carry a knife, or throw a brick through a window . . .

There is no league table for mature behaviour, for the quality of relationships, for self-worth and for self-confidence.

The quality of their relationships is the most important factor in any child's life.

We must allow children to go 'off-piste', and we must trust them.

Forget the league tables and the targets, and let's break free of the shackles of a narrow curriculum - it's time to focus on the commitment and the talent of the people who touch our children's lives.

But we can't leave it all to the teachers. People from all walks of life can make a contribution.

Let's have more trips, visits and outings, more time in theatres, concert halls and museums, and let's get them out into the open air, tramping the hills . . . all this should be an integral part of their education, a right of every child - not an extra. It will pay dividends in the end.

What we absolutely do NOT need is to be closing down our libraries, cutting down our youth services and our provisions for special needs . . .

Let's give children the time to dream, to listen and to learn.

Too many of us, and too many children, are disengaged and alienated.

I shall continue to speak up for the rights of children as best I can.

"I hope you understand the enormity of my fury."

"One day we will apologise for Yarls Wood, and for the bureaucracy of neglect."

Very well said, Michael. 

..................................

One day we, the English - not the Scots or the Welsh, since they don't have them - will apologise for SATs, for league tables, for bureaucratising and micro-managing teaching and learning, for national 'strategies', for the narrowing of the curriculum, for depriving children of their right to learn in a stimulating and creative environment - learning at their own pace, pursuing their own interests and passions, finding their own voices, developing all their intelligences, developing the habit of joyful lifelong learning.

How many of us have continued to speak up for the rights of children, in spite of the pressures to ignore them, in spite of the pressures to return to Gradgrindism? How many  have kept their heads down, for fear of government agents and inspectors, for fear for their futures in their careers and in education? How many have been bullied and cajoled into silence, and how many have been converted willingly into the education Newspeak, and the language of attainment, SATs, value added, strategies, NLS, NNS, targets, payment by results, monitoring, challenge and all the rest?



How many parents and how many paid professionals have even a half of Michael Morpurgo's vision for children, and even a tenth of his determination to stand up for children's rights?

How many need to hang their heads in shame?
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Layer 446 . . . Genius, JMK, Hating Liberals, Understanding Economics, Friedman, Will Hutton, Elephant Mothers and Education

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John Maynard Keynes was a liberal, and was a member of the British Liberal party.

Right wing and neo-conservative Americans hate all liberals, for reasons it's important for the world to understand.

JMK was a genius who received worldwide recognition for his work in economics - and yet very few of us have even heard of him, let alone educated to know about his work so that we understand his ideas even at a very basic level.

This is a level of ignorance we should be ashamed of. It's like having no knowledge of science whatsoever - like not even knowing that water can both evaporate and freeze depending on its temperature; like not knowing that matter is composed of atoms and molecules; like not knowing that micro-organisms can cause sickness and death.

The right-wing economic theories of Keynes-haters like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman have caused social devastation, sickness and death on a massive scale, but very few of us understand why.

Keynes was a political and ideological individual in that he wished to rid the world of the evils of poverty, unemployment, ignorance, greed, hyper-inflation, extreme inequality and unfettered capitalism. These are goals which are shared by all true liberals and socialists, who also understand that government of the people by the people and for the people has a massive role to play in putting the needs of "society" into political policy and practical action.

All true conservatives, like Hayek and Friedman (and Bush, Palin, George Osborne, oligarchs, bankers and the majority of financiers) hate the idea of being governed by the will of the people - hate the idea of collective action to end poverty and social injustice, hate the idea of regulating the activities of the rich and the super-rich.

Barak Obama is hated by American conservatives and Republicans because he's regarded as a liberal or even a socialist - since he advocates tackling poverty and extreme inequality, and wishes to re-regulate capitalism for the benefit of the people as a whole. He's hated because he expresses disgust at a world in which most people are undereducated and unnecessarily impoverished whilst a small elite live in conditions of unnecessary and unimaginable wealth and luxury. Obama wishes to 'spread our wealth a little more fairly'.

Conservatives do not. Conservatives love speculation, casino capitalism and financial bubbles because these things enable them to get even richer - at the expense of the poorer and the more ignorant sections of society. Conservatives hate the very idea of taxation and will do everything possible to avoid paying their share of it. Conservatives love the idea of a 'flat tax' which means that everyone pays (roughly) the same amount of tax, regardless of their abilty to pay.

So what did Keynes discover, and what did he say? Hands up everyone who hasn't a clue! Yes - you there at the back! Before jumping to Keynes' 'The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money', consider these quotes -

Ideas shape the course of history.

It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

It would not be foolish to contemplate the possibility of a far greater progress still.

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.

For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.

A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.

Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering what average opinion believes average opinion to be.

Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.

I do not know which makes a man more conservative - to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past.

I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal.

If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid.

Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.

Most men love money and security more, and creation and construction less, as they get older.

Nothing mattered except states of mind, chiefly our own.

Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others.

The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward.

The biggest problem is not to let people accept new ideas, but to let them forget the old ones.

The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems - the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behavior and religion.

The decadent international but individualistic capitalism in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war is not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not beautiful. It is not just. It is not virtuous. And it doesn't deliver the goods.

The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.

The disruptive powers of excessive national fecundity may have played a greater part in bursting the bonds of convention than either the power of ideas or the errors of autocracy.

The importance of money flows from it being a link between the present and the future.

The social object of skilled investment should be to defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance which envelope our future.

Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_General_Theory_of_Employment,_Interest_and_Money

.............................................

That's probably enough Keynes and economics for today. Tomorrow we can consider the fact that Chicago-school Friedmanite economics has, for very obvious reasons, come to dominate political and economic discourse throughout the world - to the extent that a whole generation of politicians like Blair, Brown, Osborne, Cameron and Clegg have grown up in lectures and seminars where their tutors have deliberately set out to discredit Keynes and indoctrinate the ideas of Friedman and Hayek. Most of the civil service leadership and a new generation of political "special advisors" also seem to have taken MBAs which were mainly or totally free-market Friedmanite Chicago-school in their approach. And you don't get your MBA unless you subscribe to the globalisation/trickle-down/free-market/deregulation/small-governernment/low-taxes bullshit.

Homework for today is to read up on John Maynard Keynes from a variety of sources, eg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/keynes_john_maynard.shtml

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/TUkeynes.htm

..........................................

Those wishing to read around this subject should also have a look at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/sep/15/politics


http://www.davidhilfiker.com/docs/Economics/The%20Shock%20Doctrine%20-%20summary.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine

http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/the-book

http://www.scribd.com/doc/16090536/Klein-The-Shock-Doctrine-2007-Synopsis

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Ignorance is an evil weed, which dictators may cultivate among their dupes, but which no democracy can afford among its citizens.
William Beveridge

Scratch a pessimist and you find often a defender of privilege.
William Beveridge

The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of common man.
William Beveridge

..........................................


Will Hutton

It's impossible to overstate the need to read Will's book, The State We're In. Here's a man who never abandoned his allegiance to Keynesianism even during the dark days of Thatcherite triumphalism and the pre-bust days of neo-conservatism.

His last three or four pieces in the Observer are also well worth looking at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/16/will-hutton-bankers-bonuses

Bringing the bankers to heel must start right here, right now

Big Finance has to be brought under control or outrageous bonuses will still be paid and there will be another crisis

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jan/23/ten-ideas-for-better-britain

Ten ideas for a better Britain

Here are ten challenges for the Labour party to rediscover its radical edge

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/30/will-hutton-davos-world-economic-reform


Where are the leaders who will reform the world's economy?

The world financial system needs a radical overhaul, though last week's cosy Davos conference suggested otherwise

........................................

In this week's column Will raises some really key issues which are as much about education and schools as they are about economics, society and finance, insofar as they deal with innovation, creative thinking and imagination.

Don't be blinded by the web. The world is actually stagnating

If we want to step up the pace of invention, there has to be a huge shift in the way we think

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/feb/13/will-hutton-innovation-must-be-encouraged

Western policymakers were bullied by the financial oligarchs into believing that the market is magic. Thus banking could become a deregulated global market, privileged ahead of all other forms of economic activity. Innovation was left to look after itself. What were seen to matter were lower regulations, lower taxes and reduced worker entitlements – not using the state to build the ecosystem in which innovation, experimentation and investment flourish as had been done through the early part of the 20th century, even until the free market revolution.

If we want to step up the pace of invention, there has to be a huge shift in the way we think.

This is a huge ask. For 30 years or more the consensus has been that governments necessarily and always fail – and only markets succeed. But reality is beginning to intrude. Even the coalition government, wedded to the old-time religion, is finding that if it wants a growth strategy it has to do what used to be prohibited – design markets and build institutions that innovate.

An innovation strategy is being devised. Invention and innovation, we are discovering, are much too important to be left to the tender mercies of markets.

What Will doesn't emphasise, and what's hugely important, is that our education system nowadays doesn't even set out to help young people develop the skills that they, and we, desperately need. Our schools concentrate almost entirely on coaching children to pass tests and exams. Parents hire tutors to cram their kids to get better grades - even in piano and guitar playing. Grades are currency - the wealth of youth with which they purchase places at colleges and universities.

Meanwhile they're failing to develop the more crucial life skills - critical thinking, imagination, creativity, innovation, communication, team-working, and so on.

Of course we can't (and shouldn't) mark and grade and categorise these higher aspects of learning, which need continuous practice and encouragement from birth if they're to flourish.

The Chinese, the Finns, the Danes and a few others have understood the importance of a type of education that releases young people to develop their full potential. We have not. We once led the world in progressive education, but the conservative counter-revolution long ago killed off all innovation and progressive thinking in most of our schools.

We're now a stupid country led by stupid people and brainwashed by a mainly stupid media into thinking stupidly about children and education. How long will it be before people wake up and see the truth? How long before children are allowed to have a proper childhood and grow up as fully developed human beings?

.....................................

The human race needs elephant mothers, not tiger mothers

Where is the appreciation that we are social animals in Amy Chua's competitive approach to parenting?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/feb/13/tiger-mothers-parenting-children

by Peter Singer

Many years ago, my wife and I were driving somewhere with our three young daughters in the  back, when one of them suddenly asked: "Would you rather that we were clever or that we were happy?"

I was reminded of that moment last month when I read Amy Chua's Wall Street Journal article, Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior," which sparked more than 4,000 comments on wsj.com and over 100,000 comments on Facebook. The article was a promotional piece for Chua's book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which has become an instant bestseller.

Chua's thesis is that, when compared with Americans, Chinese children tend to be successful because they have "tiger mothers," whereas western mothers are pussycats, or worse. Chua's daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to watch television, play computer games, sleep over at a friend's home, or be in a school play. They had to spend hours every day practising the piano or violin. They were expected to be the top student in every subject except gym and drama.

Chinese mothers, according to Chua, believe that children, once they get past the toddler stage, need to be told in no uncertain terms when they have not met the high standards their parents expect of them. (Chua says that she knows Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Irish, and Ghanaian mothers who are "Chinese" in their approach, as well as some ethnic-Chinese mothers who are not.) Their egos should be strong enough to take it.

Stanley Sue, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, has studied suicide, which is particularly common among Asian-American women (in other ethnic groups, more males commit suicide than females). He believes that family pressure is a significant factor.

Chua would reply that reaching a high level of achievement brings great satisfaction, and that the only way to do it is through hard work. Perhaps, but can't children be encouraged to do things because they are intrinsically worthwhile, rather than because of fear of parental disapproval?

Chua's focus is unrelentingly on solitary activities in the home, with no encouragement of group activities, or of concern for others, either in school or in the wider community.

Tigers lead solitary lives, except for mothers with their cubs. We, by contrast, are social animals. So are elephants, and elephant mothers do not focus only on the wellbeing of their own offspring. Together, they protect and take care of all the young in their herd, running a kind of daycare centre.

If we all think only of our own interests, we are headed for collective disaster – just look at what we are doing to our planet's climate. When it comes to raising our children, we need fewer tigers and more elephants.

Copyright: Project Syndicate 1995–2011

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I agree with all of the above - I'm 100% behind the idea that we should educate children to become socially, emotionally and spiritually intelligent - but again it's important to stress the disastrous effect of indoctrinating young people into believing that competitive grade-getting is more important than learning to be creative, imaginative, innovative and critical thinkers.

Children also need guidance in setting their own learning directions and agendas, and encouragement to look within and think critically about what's there - to overcome negative and destructive ego-states.

Ego-driven hyper-competitive people like Amy Chua need to read some Chinese philosophy and try to cultivate some wisdom instead of mere academic attainment. They also need to be charged with being abusive to children.

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Layer 347 . . . Blair, Chang, O'Rourke, 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism, and Eating The Rich

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The vile bastard Blair has a new book in the shops from today - yet again claiming that New Labour was 100% correct in all its policies and decisions.

Tony Blair on Gordon Brown: 'Analytical intelligence, absolutely. Emotional intelligence, zero'

Tony Blair writes in his memoir that Gordon Brown 'lacked political instinct at the human gut level'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/aug/31/blair-book-gordon-brown-rivalry

The words black, pot and kettle come to mind, and not just because the eponymous Martin is the author of this piece.

Yesterday Polly Toynbee wrote another excellent column:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/30/vain-venal-has-beens-mandelson

Labour's vain, venal has-beens should bow out and shut up

They just can't stop themselves, yesteryear headline addicts, locked in the old quarrels, oozing sectarian malice to their last gasp.

Mandelson's book has been an occasion to reflect on the damage he has done to Labour over the years . . .

Mandelson's sole historic quote – being "intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich" – became lethally emblematic of New Labour's infatuation with super-money.

Power and money sent their compasses spinning, Blunkett and others were seduced too, so many of the Blair entourage now retired to . . .  worlds of lucre.

How could Mandelson be a Labour person, yet spend his leisure hours with tax-exile Tory bankers or powerful Tory society hostesses, Labour's natural enemies? Choosing such friends debased politics – was it just a day job like any other, forgotten in the evenings or on holiday, not a conviction or a way of life? No wonder voters turn cynical if all the party tribalism, the ideology, the fury and passion was only play-acting after all . . .

Why never raise tax on the richest, as boardroom pay rose by 30% a year and bankers' bonuses soared? How did a Labour government let inequality slip backwards in those golden years?

Had Blair taken the Jimmy Carter ascetic route, devoting himself to good works, keeping no more than his sizable pension, he could have done himself and Labour honour. Neither Miliband is tainted with money fascination, but both need to recognise how much of that past needs vocal rejection.

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Heterodox economics refers to the approaches, or schools of economic thought, that are considered outside of mainstream, that is, orthodox economics. Heterodox economics is an umbrella term used to cover various separate unorthodox approaches, schools, or traditions. These include institutional, post-Keynesian, socialist, Marxian, feminist, Austrian, ecological, and social economics among others. These views may be contrasted with the framework used by the majority of economists, commonly referred to by its supporters as mainstream and by critics as orthodox or conventional.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterodox_economics

Sorry about that. Bear with me.

Ha-Joon Chang (Korean: 장하준, Hanja: 張夏准, b. South Korea in 1963) is one of the leading heterodox economists specialising in development economics. Currently a Reader in the Political Economy of Development at the University of Cambridge, Chang is the author of several influential policy books . . .  Wikipedia


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha-Joon_Chang

Ok - I'll get to the point. Dr Chang has a semi-regular column in the Guardian, and it's well worth reading. Oxzen proposes that anyone who has a vote and who could therefore influence the outcome of the next election has a duty to inform themselves about economics and finance. I'll come to P.J.O'Rourke and his book 'Eat The Rich' later.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/hajoonchang

In his book Kicking Away the Ladder (which won the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy's 2003 Gunnar Myrdal Prize), Chang argued that all major developed countries used interventionist economic policies in order to get rich and then tried to forbid other countries from doing similarly. The World Trade Organisation, World Bank and IMF  come in for strong criticism for this kind of ladder-kicking which is, according to Chang, the fundamental obstacle to poverty alleviation in the developing world . . .       - Wikipedia

Following up on the ideas of Kicking Away the Ladder, Chang published Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism in December 2008. Chang argues that unregulated international trade (free markets) has very rarely succeeded in producing economic development, and has a far worse record compared to interventionist policies. He cites evidence that GDP growth in developing countries was higher prior to external pressures recommending deregulation and extends his analysis of the failures of free trade to induce growth through privatisation and anti-inflationary policies. Chang's book won plaudits from Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.                -  Wikipedia

Dr Chang's latest book is called 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism.

We lost sight of fairness in the false promise of wealth

Acceptance of inequality rests on assumptions that 'free markets' make us all richer in the end. Growth figures tell it differently

Debates about inequality show no sign of going away. But the moral arguments are rarely extended far enough . . .

Virtually no politician challenges a basic, erroneous premise that inequality is a price worth paying for a more efficient market system that enriches us all.

The simplistic, free-market view of the Thatcher-Major era said equality of opportunity is all we need for a fair society.

If no one had their market participation blocked . . . the result should be accepted as fair. Today many people, both on the left and the right, recognise that this is not enough. We can accept the outcome of a competitive process as fair only when the participants have equality in basic capabilities; the fact that no one is allowed to have a head start does not make the race fair if some contestants have only one leg.

Children who do not have some minimum level of nutrition, healthcare, and education cannot grow into fully capable adults. The Sure Start programme of the last Labour government and the coalition's pupil premium are based on recognition of this fact, although neither are of sufficient scale and depth to make a fundamental difference.

If we accept children should not be penalised for things beyond their control, shouldn't we accept the same for adults? Most people become unemployed through events such as a financial crisis. And yet, despite that, we insist on punishing the unemployed.

But even giving adult workers second chances does not take us far enough towards a fairer society. We have to question an assumption that has dominated economic thinking over the last three decades – namely, the belief that maximising market freedom is the best way to generate wealth.

From this assumption came the argument that even committed egalitarians should let markets rip, because that would give them the maximum wealth to redistribute. In Britain, the natural "progressive" conclusion was the New Labour strategy that you regulate the City as little as possible because that will maximise the wealth it generates, which means more money for equality-enhancing programmes like Sure Start.

Sadly that assumption has been proved wrong. After three decades of deregulation and tax cuts for the rich, growth has slowed down, rather than accelerated, in almost all countries. The world economy, which was growing at about 3% in per capita terms in the "bad old days" of widespread regulation and punitive taxation for the rich in the 1960s and 70s, has grown at about half that rate in the last three decades. In Britain, average annual per capita income growth rate was 2.4% in the 60s and the 70s, when the country was allegedly suffering from the "British disease"; but it fell to 1.7% during 1990 to 2009, after it is supposed to have been cured of the disease thanks to Margaret Thatcher's heroic struggle in the 1980s.

At the heart of this slowdown lies the free-market policy package. In developing countries it has led to breakneck liberalisation of trade, so destroying swaths of "infant" industries. In both developing and developed countries, policies to reduce inflation to very low levels have choked demand and made business loans expensive. And in Britain and the US, financial deregulation has played a crucial role in reducing growth.

Unleashing finance has enormously increased the power of mobile shareholders in pursuit of short-term profits and high dividends. The surest way to deliver these is to minimise long-term investments, such as machinery and research and development. Shareholders have encouraged such behaviour by paying astronomical salaries to managers good at making such cuts, even though they weaken the growth prospect of companies in the long run. Those shareholders don't necessarily care about the long-term future of their companies: they can always sell their shares.

If we cannot assume free-market policies to be the best at generating wealth, the British debate on equality needs a total rethink. We have to debate what our macroeconomic, industrial, financial, or even executive pay policies should be, as their exact shapes significantly affect the scale of wealth that markets create. It cannot be blithely assumed that markets know how to maximise wealth – while all we have to worry about is how to redistribute it through taxes and benefits.

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P.J. O'Rourke's book, 'Eat The Rich', is subtitled 'A Treatise On Economics'. It's been sitting unread on my shelf for about 10 years - since I picked it up in the Greenwich cheapo bookshop. PJ used to write for Rolling Stone. Good. He's known as something of a humourist and satirist. Good

O'Rourke was an early proponent of Gonzo journalism. He is considered a libertarian, and is often quoted by libertarian and anti-socialist writers and pundits. During his student days he was a left-leaning hippie, but in the 1970s his political views underwent a volte-face. He emerged as a political observer and humorist with libertarian viewpoints. O'Rourke is well known for his combination of conservative economic views and libertarian views on vice such as sex and drugs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._J._O%27Rourke

Not Good, on the whole. (Vice = sex? Sex = vice?)

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/p/p_j_orourke.html

The reason I've been avoiding this book is because O'Rourke is a smartarse, though nowhere near as smart as he thinks he is. He's a gadfly, a maverick, a jester - but ultimately a conservative stooge who would like to be taken seriously as a social, political and cultural commentator. So why buy the book? Mmmmmm. Important to know your enemy?

Eat The Rich was written in 1997 - just as New Labour were taking power. Capitalism and globalisation were in their pomp - socialism and social democracy were assumed to be defeated and defunct as political forces - especially by New Labour, who of course continued with the Friedman/Hayek/Chicago-School/Thatcher concensus - deregulation, privatisation, promotion of banking and financial 'services', de-industrialisation, etc.

O'Rourke recommended that we read, amongst other neo-conservative tracts, Friedman's books, Free To Choose and Capitalism. He goes on to say in his introduction, "The purpose of this book is to make some broad points about economics, freedom, and responsibility. If the reader examines my work too carefully he may discover I'm only a journalist. This means that when it comes to knowing what I'm talking about, I'm no different from the next person. I just get paid for the talking."

Too damned right.

The book was written as a triumphalist love letter to capitalism and globalisation. Obviously the man knows his market, and there were probably thousands who could be tempted to buy the funnyman's book at its full price. But this was way before the Big Bust, the Financial Crash - before capitalism screwed itself and needed to plead with sympathetic governments to give them lots of free money so that the whole system didn't completely crash and burn and fuck everyone on the planet.

Chapter 2 is called Good Capitalism: Wall Street (!). Chapter 3 is called Bad Capitalism: Albania.

Now here's the funny bit - the really hilarious bit. He says that capitalism works well on Wall Street because it's properly regulated! He goes on to say that capitalism doesn't work in Albania because it's corrupt and was based on an enormous Ponzi scheme!

So let's hear it for Lehman Brothers, AIG, Fanny Mae, Freddie Mac, Northern Rock, RBS, the sub-prime mortgage scandal, the property bubble, and the biggest Ponzi schemer of them all, Bernie Madoff!!!

http://www.gmanews.tv/story/120492/World-markets-tumble-on-Lehman-crash-Merrill-sale
http://www.newser.com/story/37459/lehman-crash-triggers-global-market-tumble.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/crash-shares-tumble-as-lehman-brothers-collapses-and-fears-grow-for-aig-931981.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_takeover_of_Fannie_Mae_and_Freddie_Mac
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7502310.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Madoff

Bernard Lawrence "Bernie" Madoff  is an incarcerated former American stock broker, investment adviser, non-executive chairman of the NASDAQ stock market, and the admitted operator of what has been described as the largest Ponzi scheme in history.

In March 2009, Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 federal crimes and admitted to turning his wealth management  business into a massive Ponzi scheme that defrauded thousands of investors of billions of dollars. Madoff said he began the Ponzi scheme in the early 1990s. However, federal investigators believe the fraud began as early as the 1980s, and that the investment operation may never have been legitimate. The amount missing from client accounts, including fabricated gains, was almost $65 billion. The court-appointed trustee estimated actual losses to investors of $18 billion. On June 29, 2009, he was sentenced to 150 years in prison, the maximum allowed.

He was charged with securities fraud, investment advisor fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, false statements, perjury, making false filings with the SEC and theft from an employee benefit plan.

Are we to assume that the rest of Wall Street, and the City of London, was squeaky clean?

Here's what O'Rourke had to say in 1997:

"Albania shows what happens to a free market when there is no legal, political, or traditional framework to define freedoms and protect market places . . . Capitalism conducted in a condition of anarchy produces some unpredictable phenomena. Albania has the distinction of being the only country ever destroyed by a chain letter - a nation devastated by a Ponzi racket, a land ruined by a pyramid scheme."

Not any more it doesn't, PJ. Not any more.

Which is to say, America, Britain and others WOULD HAVE BEEN RUINED had their governments, in the name of their people, not agreed that the banks etc were TOO BIG TO FAIL and handed them billions of OUR money - to do whatever they liked with, unfettered by any further regulations, agreements and promises. Of course there were better solutions to the crisis, such as wholesale nationalisation without compensation, which is what the banks and the bankers deserved, and what the country needed. But we couldn't possibly let CAPITALISM fail, could we? So in the event we only part-nationalised the poor basket cases that couldn't even have saved themselves even if they'd been given lots of free money - on account of holding too much toxic debt.

Of course many of our 'ordinary' people have had their lives ruined and devastated - but what the hell. At least the bankers and the fat cats were OK, even if some of them saw their assets decline in value. Let's face facts - most of the billions of dollars and pounds that were handed to Bernie Madoff and his ilk were really just the spare change of the greedy and the seriously rich. The idea of the rich fleecing those who are even richer is hardly novel. "Let the buyer beware" is the maxim of the market. No wonder Bernie didn't consider himself a bad guy.

A few more quotes to conclude:

"The Albanians didn't believe they were the victims of a scam. They believed they were the perpetrators - this being so different from the beliefs of certain Wall Street bull-market investors in the United States."

"International politicians are crowing about the free-market victories they've achieved . . .

Laissez-faire . . . seems to have displaced central planning, nationalisation, democratic socialism . . .

Stocks are only one way to bliss out with money. The bond market is also huge. Then there are commodities, derivatives, money-market instruments, and just plain money itself. More than $1 trillion of international currency changes hands every day.

You remember how in 1995 a semieducated young wanker in Singapore, fiddling with derivatives, brought England's noble, ancient Barings Bank to its knees . . . "

Indeed we do.

"The investment industry creates euphoria and panic. It moves astonishing amounts of cash around the world at startling speed with shocking results."

If only he knew then just how shocking.

"Then it pays itself fantastic amounts of money."

Still does.

"Is the investment industry just a bunch of pirates in neckties?"

Do bears shit in the woods?

"Why do we put up with this? The whole business of international finance is dumbfounding. This shit-shower of money flying around the world . . . What's in it for us? Why don't we rise up? Why don't we get rid of the capitalist system and replace it with something that's nicer and more predictable, and gives everybody an even break? What does the investment industry give to society?

"Liquidity," said the $2 billion money manager, the investment banker and the specialist broker.

If we're going to have freedom and the money to enjoy it, we're going to have to put up with the stuff in this chapter . . .

Really?

There are alternatives to the free market. Congress could pass stricter investment-industry regulations, more orders and directives . . .

But we wouldn't want that, now would we?

Wall Street's free-market capitalism is doubtless a wonderful thing and a boon to humanity, but it scares me . . . Capitalism scared me despite the fact that I was seeing it operate within a well-defined set of rules (!!) understood by all the players. And I liked the players . . .

But I was still scared.

Free-market capitalism was terrifying under the best circumstances. What it was like under the worst circumstance I couldn't imagine.(!!) And because I couldn't imagine it, I needed to go someplace that had no rules and was full of crooks.(!!) I considered Washington D.C., but Albania looked like more fun . . .

Fun!!! As Bush W apparently said - as the 'markets' were crashing and the banks were going bust, and the entire system seemed to be going belly up  - "This sucker could go down!" How much fun was that, PJ? You smug, smartass, complacent, triumphalist fucking idiot. Scared indeed. You ought to be fucking terrified.

I wonder how often he recommends reading Milton Friedman these days.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eat_the_Rich_%28book%29

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For the record, a property bubble IS a Ponzi scheme. I thought we'd realised that after the previous property crash, back in the late 80s . . .

You can only make money out of buying and selling property if you can convince people that a) they 'need' to get on the 'property ladder', and b) your property is worth more than you paid for it. If on the other hand, someone thinks  your property is about to be washed away in a flood, or flattened by an earthquake, or your neighbourhood is about to be taken over by gangsters and drug addicts, or if no-one can borrow money or get a mortgage any more, then your property is likely to be worth precisely nothing. Or nothing like the amount you paid for it . . .


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Part 2. And now for something completely different . . .

Time to lighten up -  and it's Zappa time, together with Captain Beefheart - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVUgQEnxC0g
http://www.lyricstime.com/frank-zappa-the-torture-never-stops-lyrics.html.
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