Layer 445 . . . A Larger Global Consciousness, Solidarity, Unity, Defiance, Paths to Democracy, Algeria, Egypt and Learning How to Demonstrate

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More excellent photos here -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/gallery/2011/feb/11/egypt-protest#/?picture=371625685&index=0

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A Larger Global Consciousness
What I like about Al-Jazeera is that its presenters and the people who contribute to its coverage seem to have no great egos, are good communicators, and are extremely knowledgeable about their subject matter, without having a particular axe to grind.

The format of the programmes is less about achieving "balance" than it's about targeting the truth - as any fair-minded and intelligent person might perceive it. Unlike the British (and American!) media they have no compulsion to bring on tedious neo-conservatives to drone their way through the usual rubbish on any given topic or event - for the sake of 'balance'. If we want to hear right-wing bullshit - well we know where to go in order to get it.

Similarly there's no space on Al-Jaz for people advocating violent solutions to political problems. There are no ranting pseudo-Marxists or fundamentalist jihadis.

The other great thing is that it's not Euro-centric or North American. It's bloody good to hear the voices of journalists, commentators and intellectuals from North Africa, the Middle East, Asia, etc, talking about things from a global perspective.

The exciting news this weekend is that people in Algeria are now out on the streets - protesting against their regime, which is similar to the Mubarak regime in virtually every respect. Thousands of police personnel have been deployed against the protesters - just as they were in Egypt on their initial 'day of rage'.

There was a brilliant programme yesterday on the al-Jazeera website showing how citizen activists have been carrying out training programmes on how to demonstrate peacefully - putting a strong emphasis on unity, discipline, planning, clarity about aims, how to get people to turn out, etc. It's what might be called training in the key skills needed for emotional, social and spiritual intelligence.

I loved the intensity, energy, commitment, seriousness, unity and determination of the people featured in the film. They have a kind of controlled rage about them - an attitude that says, "Don't get mad - get even." But they're not interested in power for power's sake - they're interested in poverty, oppression, inequality, torture and corruption - and how to get rid of these evils from their societies.

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Yesterday Egypt, today Algeria

This was the slogan of the brave protesters in Algiers on Saturday, making the first breach in Algeria's wall of fear

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/12/algeria-egypt

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Amnesty International

http://www.amnesty.org.uk/

We are ordinary people from around the world standing up for humanity and human rights. Our purpose is to protect individuals wherever justice, fairness, freedom and truth are denied.

Egypt: Stand in solidarity and defiance

As events unfold in Egypt, please join us pledging solidarity with their calls for freedom and basic human rights. Today we held a rally in Trafalgar Square Today as part of a global day of action in support of the people of Egypt, and the wider Middle East and North Africa. We stand in defiance against all those who try to suppress the growing movement of people standing up for their rights, facing down injustice and offering hope for a better world.

We can all do our bit towards keeping up the momentum for worldwide engagement.

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Hosni Mubarak is gone, but can Egypt's digital revolution unite the country?

Twitter and Facebook played an integral role in helping to topple Hosni Mubarak, but if Egypt is to be reformed, the online momentum of recent events must go beyond mere protest

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/13/hosni-mubarak-egypt-digital-revolution

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Twitter's five-year evolution from ridicule to dissidents' tool
People laughed in 2006 when Twitter started. Now it's hard for me to imagine life without it

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/feb/13/twitter-mainstream-dissidents-protest

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Anti-Christ

Blair on the Marr programme this morning said that he's discovered during his time in the Middle East in the past couple of years that religion is very important to people who live there. Well fucking hell - the man's a genius. No wonder we needed him as our PM for 10 years. Who'd have thought? Thanks, Tone, for your brilliant insights. What a pity that Tone believed for so many years that Muslims didn't really feel that religion was important to them - not like it is to Christians, obviously.

It's interesting how the media, who befriended him and schmoozed him for so long, continue to believe that Blair's opinions are worth listening to - when everybody else just wants to see the bastard locked away for war crimes and for being such a neo-con psychopathic prick. The man's a total fuckwit - always has been - and it's almost unbearable listening to that slimy 'tone' of his ever again.

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Army and protesters disagree over Egypt's path to democracy

Activists reject army appeal to leave Tahrir Square as new leadership resists pressure to hand power to civilian administration

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/12/egypt-military-leaders-fall-out-protesters

Egypt's new military administration and the pro-democracy protesters who brought down Hosni Mubarak are at odds over the path to democratic rule.

The army sought to stave off pressure from jubilant protesters to swiftly hand power to a civilian-led administration by saying that it was committed to a "free democratic state".

The military leadership gave no timetable for the political transition, and many of the demonstrators who filled Cairo's Tahrir Square for 18 days rejected the military's appeal to dismantle the barricades and go home.

They said they were waiting for specific commitments from the military on their demand for a civilian-controlled interim administration, the lifting of the oppressive state of emergency and other steps toward liberalisation.

The shockwaves of Mubarak's fall were felt across the region, particularly in Algeria and Yemen. Thousands of anti-government protesters, apparently inspired by events in Cairo, turned out in Algiers to confront the police. There were reports that hundreds had been arrested. In Sanaa, a protest by about 2,000 people to demand political reform was broken up by armed government supporters.

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Meanwhile . . .
I've been neglecting domestic matters recently - so it's worth making a note of a couple of Polly Toynbee's latest pieces:

These brutal cuts form a turbo-charged programme for accelerating inequality

Beware the tales of statistics-wielding ministers – the poorest areas will be hit hardest by the council cuts

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/11/defence-brutal-cuts-attack-lies-blame

Big society's a busted flush, but who will admit it first?

Politicians should quail: the nasty party detoxifier has not worked – and for public servants, silence is no longer an option

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/07/big-society-is-not-working

Even the pro-market Blairites know the NHS faces chaos

Alan Milburn, a former health secretary and now a David Cameron aide, has no dog in this fight. But he says the reforms are a fatal mistake

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/04/cameron-nhs-reform-dishonest

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Layer 443 . . . People Power, Peaceful Protest, Civil Disobedience, Democratic Aspirations, Serving the Public, Learning Lessons, Big Banks, and The Big Society Bail-In

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The worldwide interest and indeed the fascination with the events in Egypt reminds me of the situation we had in 1968 when students and workers took to the streets in many countries to protest about human rights, the war in VietNam, inequality, low wages, apartheit, colonialism ,  neo-colonialism, etc.

After all these ensuing years we have learnt, if we didn't know it already, that the world's problems cannot be solved through religious movements, through Marxism, through the fall of communism, through globalisation, through the shock doctrine, through Chicago-school trickle-down economics, through American hegemony, etc.

Nobody in Egypt is talking about Marxist or Islamist solutions. Nobody expects the USA to sort out the impasse.

What we see in Egypt and Tunisia is peaceful, non-violent but assertive people power demanding 'common sense' solutions - human rights, democracy, fairness, social justice, an end to poverty, and so on.

This time around we also have the phenomenon of the Internet, which enables a world-wide dialogue to take place between peoples of all countries, all cultures, all shades of political opinion. It's a phenomenon that was originally developed by academia and the military but which has inadvertently enabled us to scrutinise leaked confidential documents that reveal some of the political, military and financial conspiracies through which the power elites maintain their power.

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Trade unions: the revolutionary social network at play in Egypt and Tunisia

The media have focused on Facebook and Twitter, but the pro-democracy movements have flourished thanks to unions

  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/10/trade-unions-egypt-tunisia 

Perhaps the most overlooked factor in the demise of the authoritarian Ben Ali regime in Tunisia, and the weakening of Hosni Mubarak's grip on state power in Egypt, has been the trade unions in both countries.

While the media has reported on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook as revolutionary methods of mobilisation, it was the old-fashioned working class that enabled the pro-democracy movements to flourish.

As working men and women in Egypt became increasingly vulnerable to exploitation and a deteriorating quality of life, the only legal trade unions – the ones affiliated to the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF) – proved worthless. The result of all of this was an unprecedented wave of strikes across the public and private sectors that began in 2004 and has continued to the present day. During the first four years of the current strike wave, more than 1,900 strikes took place and an estimated 1.7 million workers were involved.

As one worker in a fertiliser company put it, the effect of going on strike was to convince the employer "that they had a company with human beings working in it. In the past, they dealt with us as if we were not human."

The strikes began in the clothing and textile sector, and moved on to building workers, transport workers, food processing workers, even the workers on the Cairo metro. The biggest and most important took place back in 2006 at Misr Spinning and Weaving, a company that employs some 25,000 workers.

The state-controlled ETUF opposed these strikes and supported the government's privatisation plans. A turning point was reached when municipal tax collectors not only went on strike, but staged a three-day, 10,000-strong sit-in in the streets of Cairo, opposite the prime minister's office.

This could not be ignored, and the government was forced to allow the formation last year of the first independent trade union in more than half a century.

Pro-labour NGOs played a critical role in providing support and guidance to these strikes and protests. As a result, they were targeted by the regime, their offices closed and leaders arrested. The best known of these groups is the Centre for Trade Union and Worker Services (CTUWS), which has been around since 1990.

Groups such as the CTUWS in turn enlisted the support of trade unions in other countries, and that support was invaluable – particularly in persuading the government to ease up on repression.

Those links with the international trade union movement have proven critical in recent days as well. When the Mubarak regime tried to cut off Egypt from the internet, CTUWS activists were able to phone in their daily communiques to the AFL-CIO's Solidarity Centre in Washington. The messages were transcribed, translated from the Arabic, and passed on to the wider trade union world using websites such as LabourStart.

In sharp contrast to the last seven years of Egyptian labour unrest, the Tunisian trade unions played a kingmaker role during the end phase of the uprising.

After decades of lethargy, docility and state domination of the General Tunisian Workers' Union (UGTT), Tunisia's largest employee organisation –with roughly half a million members – helped not only eradicate Ben Ali's regime, but determined the shape of the post-Ben Ali government.

Working-class Tunisians were animated by the same goals as their Egyptian counterparts; namely, the desire to secure dignity and respect, bring about real political democracy, and improve their standard of living.

Cultivating democracy in Tunisia, and Egypt requires two pre-conditions. First, workers' organisations must remain independent of state control. Second, to blunt the Iranian model, Islamists must be barred from hijacking free trade unions.

This helps to explain the worries of Habib Jerjir, a labour leader from the Regional Workers' Union of Tunis: "That's the danger," he said. "I'm against political Islam. We must block their path."

Economic democracy played a decisive role in Tunisian society before the Jasmine revolution. Ben Ali swiftly suffocated free and democratic trade union activity during his 23-year domination over organised labour (1987-2011). But he could not extinguish democratic aspirations among workers.

There are no exact parallels, but much of this reminds us of what happened in Poland in 1979-80. There, as in Egypt and Tunisia, we saw a mixture of a repressive, single-party state with trade unions that functioned as an arm of the ruling party. But there was also a network of NGOs that quietly worked behind the scenes, in workplaces and communities.

The result was the 1980 strike at the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, the formation of Solidarnosc, and the end not only of the Communist regime in Poland but of the entire Soviet empire.

Today's pro-democracy revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia are the culmination of that process, and where it will lead we cannot predict – though Poland does provide an appealing model.

The pressing point is that experts misjudged the tumult in Egypt and Tunisia largely because they ignored and overlooked the democratic aspirations of working-class Tunisians and Egyptians. To understand why so many authoritarian Arab regimes remain fragile, one need to only to look through the window on to the court of labour relations.

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The Big Society Bail-In brings protest to your local bank

Civil disobedience is back in Britain, and UK Uncut want to show that it's our society that is too big to fail – not our banking system

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/10/uk-uncut-big-society-bail-in

by Ruth Griffiths

Look through the newspapers this month and two points will become immediately clear. First, the government is cutting, privatising and changing the very nature of social security and public goods that were won through the 20th century. Every aspect of what was fought for by generations seems under threat – from selling off the forests, privatising health provision, closing the libraries and swimming pools, and scrapping rural bus routes.

Second, the banks are doing just fine. February is bankers' bonus month; Barclays announces their gifts to themselves on the 15th, with its chief executive, Bob Diamond, expecting £9m just for him. While RBS is due to transfer its £900m bonus pool into the pockets of high-earning bankers on the 25th. These bonuses should make the disgrace of the MPs' expenses scandal look like chicken feed and are another demonstration of just how much we really are not all in this together.

The two, of course, are linked. Because it was our broken banking system, with its greed and reckless gambling, that caused the crash. The National Audit Office has reported that at its peak, the amount of support provided to the banks reached nearly £1tn. In 2009 alone, £131bn of public money was spent keeping the banking industry afloat – and taxpayers continue to spend money supporting the banking system. But instead of asking the banks to pay for their crisis, it is the public who were asked to support the banks that are now being made to pay a further price.

The £2.5bn so-called "raid" on the banks is a levy of around 0.075% of their balance sheets. That's pathetic. Since 2007 and the Northern Rock crash, it's been abundantly obvious that the banking system is unjust to the core: from exorbitant bankers' bonuses to gambling on debt, from massive tax loopholes to holding the country to ransom with their threats of moving to Zurich. Before the crisis, after the crisis, it's as if we've learned nothing:

 the banks still serve themselves, not the public.

Over the past four months UK Uncut has grown from a meeting in a pub to hundreds of high-street acts of protest against tax avoiders, highlighting the £25bn dodged in taxes every single year by some of the most wealthy individuals and profitable corporations. Combine this clamping down on tax avoidance with truly tough action on the banks and you've got

a genuine alternative to the cuts agenda.

It is simply a lie to say that the only way to reduce the deficit is to sacrifice essential public services, which support some of the poorest in our society. There is an alternative, but the government doesn't want to talk about it because they have got the same agenda as the banks:

making the poor pay the way for the rich.

This is an outrage and it has to be stopped.

UK Uncut has launched the Big Society Bail-In.

On 19 February we will be targeting Barclays, and on 26 February we will turn to RBS.

Civil disobedience is back in Britain, and it is on your local high streets.

Just like with Vodafone and Topshop, anyone can get involved, because tax-avoiding corporations and banks have put their outlets and branches everywhere. Every time a library is closed, every time a hospital is privatised,

there's somewhere nearby where people can protest – your friendly local high street.

Together, we're going to change those high-street branches into schools, libraries, gyms and forests.

We're going to show that it's our society that is too big to fail, not our broken banking system.

It's going to be fun, but it's also going to be hard work, because this isn't just about Twitter – it never was. It's about on the street, grassroots, getting-in-the-way politics, the same politics that won women suffrage, defeated the poll tax and could stop the cuts.

It's about telling your friends, your co-workers, your children, your mum.

It's about knowing why our welfare state is being attacked and targeting the right people in response.

Everyone should do what they can do to make this happen.

Come on the UK Uncut protests this month, and also make sure you're taking to the streets on 26 March.

Let's make the banks pay for their crisis.

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Layer 426 . . . Tunisia, Martyrs, Markets, Mohammed Bouazizi, Democracy, Councils, Bureaucrats and Activists

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A Jasmine Revolution?

The Tunisian market trader who killed himself by setting himself alight in a public street was the 'martyr' who  began the recent Tunisian people's uprising or revolution. This was a man who'd had more than he could take from corrupt, stupid and incompetent officals and officers of the local town council.

http://www.egyptsearch.com/forums/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=15;t=003943

by IronLion

Mohammed Bouazizi: The Muurish Tunisian Martyr Who Toppled the Tunisian Government

Since a young man named Mohamed Bouazizi poured petrol over himself on December 17 and set himself alight in front of the office of the Governor of his region, life turned upside down in Tunisia and the fires that he lit has burned until it engulfed the entire country from town to town.

Mr Bouazizi an indigent, indigenous, black Tunisian university graduate had no job in what was suppposedly an enlightened and prosperous African country. He could not find employment anywhere, much as he tried, and he had body and soul and family to cater for.

His plight echoed the hapless fate of so many thousands and thousands of young Tunisians, seduced by the promises of western education, yet frustrated and thwarted by a visionless, un-productive, corrupt power structure which dominated the country and suffocated creativity and innovation.

The power-elites of Tunisia are indeed guardians and door keepers for the elites of the vampires of the western society. They manage the plantation on behalf of the absentee landlords who own the bonds, the shares and the all other wealth generating resources.

So Mohammed Bouazizi became an itinerant vegetable and fruit vendor in order to keep body and soul together without resorting to criminality. This was despite his university degree. That is like working as a flea-market trader after graduating with an M.B.A. from an elite university.

But the powers of the vampire system entrenched in Tunisia would not let him be. The law demanded that he needed a license in order to pursue even so lowly a livelihood. He could not hawk fruits and vegetables to keep body and soul together unless he was able to pay a ridiculous sum of money to corrupt city officials as administrative fees for the license he was required to have.

All that sounds good and fine until one asks where the supposedly indigent, unemployed, penniless university graduate was supposed find this money for this license. A Catch-22 situation.

So he took a chance, and began hawking his wares which he had bought on credit from kindly neighbours. He had also taken out loans from his friends and family to buy the used fruit-cart that was to serve as his place of business. He might have hoped perhaps to begin paying down his loans as well as the license fees after making some sales and saving up cash.

Alas that was not to be. The police accosted him on his first day out working. He was told that even that business outlet he was hoping on, was denied to him as he did not have a vendor’s licence. He begged for time from those officials but they laughed after him.

They then took all his wares, and took down his cart and hauled everything away. The fruits would be shared by the Police thugs, the cart would be kept until reclaimed upon the payment of a penalty as well as the license fee. Bouaziz stood there and watched his livelihood destroyed in a twinkle of an eye.

And they slapped him and beat him up when he bothered to voice his protest. Maybe because they thought he was just another faceless black Tunisian.

And they took his cart away. What was he to do, in the land of his birth, the home of his Muurish ancestors? No food, no job, no buying or selling without the license of the beast, just hunger, cold and despondence. Of course there was always the prison, with its violation of the human spirit waiting for those youths who dared to turn into criminality.

Then the angel of judgement who had been watching this whole incident possessed the heart of Mohammed Bouaziz. And outrage became incensed, and a fire was kindled in his heart. A fire so strong it would burn down everything….

So Mohammed went home and got a gallon of gas. And he went and stood in front of the sumptious mansion of the rich, fat governor of his home region, he doused himself with petrol gas and set himself on fire.

And passerbys captured the image of this young man burning in a raging fire of mental and spiritual frustration. It was on Youtube and Tweeter, Google and ten thousand blogs. And the world saw the unseen fires, daily destroying the youths of Tunisia and Africa as a whole. Mohammed incidentally did not die in the fire. After suffering thrid degree burns to 98% of his body, he survived another gruesome three weeks in hospital before succumbing to his wounds.

And the youths of the world were enraged. But the youths of Tunisia got caught by the blaze set by Mohammed Bouaziz. The fires lit by Mohammed began to grow.

At first the youths of his home town protested in rage and began burining cars and tyres and buildings. The police tried to stop them.

Then Mohammed finally died an agonizing death after three weeks in the hospital.

During his burial in his home town of Sidi Bouzid, the youths chanted chants of war and vengeance. Ths government shook, the fire kept on burning. There were more protests.

During Bouazizi’s funeral, it was reported that marchers chanted “Farewell, Mohamed, we will avenge you. We weep for you today, we will make those who caused your death weep.”

Riots:

The fires began to blaze much more intense after his burial.

At first, protests overtook his home town, Sidi Bouzid, a town in the
agricultural interior that had clearly not benefited from Tunisia’s economic growth, created by tourism, foreign investment and a small reserve of oil.

Then it spread to other cities and towns of Tunisia.

Soon they grew closer to the capital.

By this week, students were openly burning posters showing the face of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, the president and chief gate-keeper of Tunisia. A venal self-promoting little man, this politician had been in the thick of Tunisian government for more than 50 years. He had been president for 23 years achieving nothing for his country but deeper enslavement in IMF and western financial bondage.

The police had killed 23 by their own account, at least 66 by Thursday morning by that of International Federation of Human Rights Leagues, a France-based group.

The students then resorted to the use of fire bombs, and sometimes small arms. Chaos was spreading . . . the fire set by Mohammed kept on burning.

Then Mr Ben Ali began getting criticisms from the nervous absentee landlords in Europe watching the going ons in the plantation.

Then Mr Ben Ali blamed and fired Mr. Rafik Belhaj Kacem as interior minister – the position he himself held when he seized power for overreaction to the protests.

Mr Ben Ali also announced that all protesters who were not guilty of crimes would be freed.

But by then students were no more afraid of the police and other security agencies. Police curfews were routinely ignored, and the shooting.

On Thursday night, outraged citizenry of Tunisia all across the demographic spectrum came out and moved to the centre of the capital demanding the resignation of the government and the presidency.

It appeared that the entire regime, was under direct threat. The power-elite made a quick concession. The chief front man Ben Ali president of the republic was to be sacrificed . . . as an effort to control the fires that Mohammed Bouaziz first lit.

On January 14, President Ben Ali fled the country amid escalating violence and opposition . . .

The entire Africa and middle east is taken by surprise. Strong men and presidents are quietly sweating it out and considering their counter strategy. The commentators say this fire has the potential of blazing outside the borders of Tunisia as it moves like a forest firestorm to burn down the oppressive power structures of Africa and Middle East.

Rasta Livewire will keep you posted as this fire blazes on . . .

Oguejiofo Annu
January 15 2011

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Coincidentally this week I went to a public meeting organised by the Chatsworth Road Traders and Residents Association. The officers of the association fed back to a packed hall the latest news on the campaign to run a regular market in Chatsworth Road.

Following the successful 'trial' markets on three Sundays before Christmas, more than 40 traders are now keen to run stalls. It seems nine local councillors are all very much in favour of a regular market. We heard The Council's Cabinet Member responsible for markets says she's in favour of a regular market. The Mayor apparently goes along with his Cabinet colleague.

So why the negative, frustrated, gloomy tone at the start of the meeting? We kept hearing that "the Council" is dragging its feet. "The Council" is stalling on arranging a meeting with the pro-marketeers. "The Council" doesn't really want a new market.

How so? The Council surely consists of the elected members, who are clearly all in favour of a new market.

The problem, of course, lies not with the elected members of the council but with its paid bureaucrats, its so-called officers, its departmental managers, and so on. Possibly a problem with its chief officers as well - right up to Director and Assistant Director level.

There are broadly two types of people who work for local authorities - who work for US - we, the people. The good ones see themselves as public servants, and work hard - often too damned hard - to provide effective services for the public.

The bad ones are lazy, selfish, unimaginative, bureaucratic, dull, time-serving, self-serving dimwits. These are the local civil servants who drive the rest of us crazy. These are the ones who bore everyone to the point of being comatose in meetings. These are the ones who talk in jargon and gobbledegook, and deliberately mislead and confuse good people who are trying to do good things. The are the ones who drive good people crazy - even to the point of giving up altogether, and in the end . . . suicide.

We all need to wake up and give such bureaucrats no more credibility and respect than they deserve. We should make formal complaints about them more often - whenever necessary. We should demand respect from them. Plus clear language, positive intent and positive effort.

We'll get the public servants we deserve if we don't force them to be better. They work for US. We need groups of citizens to get together, decide what they want and need, and demand to have those things. Not just sit back and let bureaucrats tell us what we're going to get. Or even let local councillors, who are often led by the nose by their 'officers', tell us what we're going to get.

It's brilliant when local groups of people, like this one,  work together on behalf of their communities to encourage citizenship, activism, cultural enrichment, better facilities, better provision, etc.

It's not good when someone has to kill himself in order to protest about local authority civil servants who are corrupt and/or failing in their duties. In that sense, Mohammed Bouazizi was indeed a martyr. The flames he lit illuminated a whole corrupt system that reached all the way up to the president of his country. His fellow citizens rose up in anger and said they'd had more than enough.

Our own government says it's committed to localism, and wants to see more activists creating a 'big society'. We shall see. The ball's in our court.

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Here's a little thing for Gove to consider:

The Devastation of Facts

Mr. Gradgrind’s oldest children Louisa and Tom are raised strictly by Facts. As they grow older, it becomes evident that their childhood was deficient. Tom becomes a lazy hedonist. Louisa finds herself incapable of normal human emotion. Without human emotions, life becomes nearly unbearable for Louisa.

 http://www.suite101.com/content/important-themes-in-hard-times-a112950
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Layer 333 . . . Radio 4, Reasons to be Cheerful, and a Big Lunch

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I heard on the radio recently someone saying, with absolute authority, "We can never get rid of aggression and jealousy in human beings . . . "

Really? The good news is that we have techniques for controlling these destructive emotions - techniques which centre on learning to be emotionally, socially and spiritually intelligent. We're just waiting, some of us, for our school system to enable our children to develop these intelligences in any thorough and significant way - and to do it day after day, throughout each day. Thank goodness it's already happening in more enlightened countries.

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Possibly the best antidotes to destructive emotions are laughter and music. People like the Dalai Lama and the Zen masters laugh a lot.

I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue is back to its very best - Mondays at 6.30 on R4. Jack Dee is turning out to be a very good choice for the successor to Humph. Maybe the humour in this programme isn't for everyone, but if you think it might be hilarious to hear two people playing "Sisters" as a duet for swanee whistle and kazoo - tune in now.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnwb

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_Sorry_I_Haven%27t_a_Clue

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Desert Island Discs was superb this week - Tim Robbins is a very interesting guy, and has brilliant taste in music. Springsteen, Joni, Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye and more.

During the programme he recalled his dad's band, The Highwaymen, and their version of Donovan's 'Universal Soldier':

http://www.lyricsdomain.com/4/donovan/universal_soldier.html

Repeated on Friday, but also on the website.

The BBC website for DID gets better and better:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00t0ztc#synopsis

Unfortunately Tim's track of Ry Cooder with V.M. Bhatt isn't available on Spotify, but I noticed other Ry Cooder classics are there - especially Theme from Southern Comfort, Get Rhythm and The Very Thing That Makes You Rich. So are The Bourgeois Blues, Across The Borderline, and The Way We Make A Broken Heart.

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Big Society, Big Lunch

This year's Big Lunch Day was Sunday 18th July. This is only its second year, but it could grow into a national phenomenon. So what is it? I hear you ask.

http://www.thebiglunch.com/index.php

The Big what?

It’s a one-day get together with your neighbours on Sunday 18th July 2010. It can be anything from a simple lunch to a full-blown street party with DJs and a home cooked feast.

Why be involved?

You’ll enjoy it. Food, music and laughter tastes, sounds and feels better with others.

The Big Lunch began life as a wild seed at The Eden Project. We believe the world can get better by working together, with nature, optimism and common sense.

We know that when people get together, we become more positive and start to sort out some serious stuff. By simply having some fun on one day in July, we can build new friendships that we can enjoy for the rest of the year.

The Big Lunch is a chance for different generations and backgrounds to hear each other out and share stories, skills and interests. It's the start of a journey into rebuilding our communities. We call this phenomenon ‘human warming’.

Make isolation history

For most of us, doing The Big Lunch is simply about having fun and sending a message to the establishment that we're not all going to hell in a handcart. But there are many of us who lead lonely lives or at least more isolated or anonymous lives than we’d like. The stats don’t make easy reading but if we want to turn them around, we need to hear them:

    * Two million more single person households by 2019.
    * More rich, poor and ethnic ghettos than ever before.
    * 7% annual drop in trust between neighbours from 2003-05.
    * Social trust in the UK halved and now among the lowest in Europe.

So, you might think a street party is the last thing you’d do to tackle crime, domestic violence, homelessness or children in poverty. But as a catalyst facing up to tough issues, it works, as anyone who took part last year knows. When doors open up, people open up and neighbourhoods open up, from sleepy hamlets to hyper estates.

Why the Eden Project kick-started The Big Lunch

We believe the world can get better by working together, with nature, optimism and common sense. We took a former china clay pit and turned it into a landscape capable of sustaining plants from all over the world to prove the point.

Ten years on, we’re developing more wild ideas to help us face up to the challenges of the toughest century on record. Global warming needs human warming. The odd light bulb here and there won’t work. Ideas like The Big Lunch just might if we join up our efforts. Change the way we live, do the things we know we should, and we’ll leave the planet in a ripe state for our children, their children, and so on.

Eden is all about projects, we believe in experiments that live, eat, breathe and with luck, thrive. Eden is a celebration of life. People say it puts champagne in your veins, which sounds a lot more fun than chlorophyll. Although Eden kick-started The Big Lunch (and are working hard to help it grow year on year), we’re resisting the temptation to own or control the day. We want to keep it organic, create a mood, a rumour.

As we said, it’s your party.

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As far as I can see, pretty much anything that Tim Smit gets involved in turns out to be pretty special - The Lost Gardens of Heligan, The Eden Project, and now The Big Lunch.

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


http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/06/food-big-lunch-production

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/tim-smit-breaking-bread-together-will-break-down-community-barriers-1658946.html

http://howtomakeadifference.net/2010/06/tim-smit/

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6719642.ece

So does the event live up to its billing? The 'lunch' I was invited to certainly did.

Seeing a typical London street completely empty of vehicles is an experience in itself. As someone said - they're surprisingly W I D E.

In the centre of the street, within a simple frame of wooden planks, a ton of sand created a brilliant beach for the kids to play on, right next to two large blow-up paddling pools. They had even covered them with a huge colourful sunshade, strung between four houses. What could be more brilliant for kids than to come out of their houses in bare feet and swimming cossies, carrying buckets and spades, and get busy on their very own beach?

Someone had set up a DJ station in front of his house, using the street's own community wi-fi to play a Spotify feed through laptops and big speakers - an amazing variety of brilliant music - all day long, and into the evening, at which point there was literally dancing in the street - some of it very tipsy.

Everyone contributed food - either in dishes and casseroles, or to be cooked on the barbeques. Feed the world!

Someone had organised a bunch of people - adults and children - to play a variety of instruments and lead everyone in singing some favourite songs. Who knew so many neighbours had such musical talent? There were guitars, cellos, recorders, drums and various percussion.

The sun shone, and people actually mingled and talked to one another. All the generations together, from four months to well over eighty. I met a young guy who has a recording studio set up at home, and an older guy who's really into the local live music scene, who readily offered to pick out some places to introduce me to. Someone else reminded me that it's really worth keeping in touch with the Vortex.

As darkness descended, sitting on the front steps of the houses, even my cynical son agreed that it was a brilliant day, and people ought to live like this every week - not just on a single day of the year. By then his own son was soundly asleep upstairs, having spent the whole day toddling from beach to pool and from person to person. His dog was also sleeping contentedly, having had endless fussing and food from practically everyone there. A very happy Staffie.

People got to know one another, and got to know one another's children, and dogs. It was a day full of sunshine, music, laughter, amusement, entertainment, conversation, good food, good beer and good wine.

Exactly as it says on the Big Lunch label.

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Big Society

David Cameron reveals 'big society' vision – and denies it is just cost cutting


http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jul/19/david-cameron-big-society-launch

Cameron also outlined three strands of the big society agenda. These included social action for which the government had to foster a culture of voluntarism and philanthropy. There was also public service reform – getting rid of centralised bureaucracy "that wastes money and undermines morale" – and community empowerment, "creating communities with oomph", the neighbourhoods being "in charge of their own destiny".

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