Layer 350 . . . Mexico, Drugs, Revolution, Britain, Smashing the State, The Pope, Religion, SEN and Patience

.
It's real autumn - tomatoes continuing to ripen, chilli peppers, sunflower seeds harvesting, apples, pears and damsons from friends' trees, etc.

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

Someone on the radio said he'd learnt the secret of happiness from a food container: Stand Upright in a Cool Place.

Two challenges here. How to stand upright. Finding a cool place to make your stand.

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

Continuing with thoughts about Mexico and revolutionaries -

Mexico's modern revolutionaries

As Mexico marks its 1810 and 1910 uprisings, 2010's upheaval is likely to be about drugs, not politics

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/sep/12/mexico-revolution-drugs-uprising

This week sees the 200th anniversary of Mexico's war of separation from Spain; in addition, 20 November marks the centennial of Mexico's landmark revolution, the first mass uprising of the underclass in the Americas. The coincidence of centennials has given breath to the hypothesis that Mexico explodes every 100 years in social upheaval, and some leftists are eagerly expecting renewed fireworks in 2010. Indeed, conditions are ripe for revolution here: 70% of Mexico's 103 million population teeter on and around the poverty line.

Revolutions don't happen unless the working class is angry. Electricity workers recently mounted a mass hunger strike (they lasted 90 days) in the main plaza of Mexico City to protest at the loss of their jobs to privatisation.

Today full-scale urban warfare rages on the streets of Juárez – over 1,800 citizens have been slain in the first eight months of the year in firefights between drug gangs and the Mexican military. Car bombs detonate on downtown streets and the mansions of the wealthy are looted and torched. Narco-commandos attack police stations and army barracks, carrying off artillery, and prisoners are broken out of jails much as they were by revolutionaries a century ago.

The Mexican military and the US North Command – for which Mexico is the southern security perimeter – have long expected the narco-gangs and leftist revolutionary bands to coalesce. But revolutionaries in their armchairs complain that revolutions must have ideologies and display class allegiances: this narco-insurrection seems to be all about barbaric killing and taking power, not the liberation of the working class.

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

The drugs issue is hotting up. Even The Economist is running major features on the arguments in favour of following Portugal and decriminalising drugs. Portugal now has one of the lowest levels of drug use in Europe, according to The Economist.

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

Meanwhile, back in Britain, it seems it's the government itself that wants to start a revolution:

Yes, the coalition wants to smash the state. That's good

The misery of cuts will grind the government down unless it boldly declares the ideology behind its spending plans

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/12/coalition-smash-state-cuts-ideology

This is an ideological government with a plan for a smaller, less centralised and more liberal state. The left dreads the obvious fact that spending cuts are central to this plan – and they are. The left senses that the government is staging a cultural revolution against social democracy – and it is. The coalition does not want to make mild adjustments to the old order. It intends to smash it.

To say that cuts are being forced by necessity and nothing more, is to imply that when fatter times return ministers will reverse them. Nobody who knows the leaderships of this coalition believes that. Much of what the government must do to balance the books it would have wanted to do even if they were in balance.

The point of reducing spending is to change the state, not just spend less.

There's a kamikaze spirit in this government's soul. Ministers seem strangely pacified by the prospect of their possible political doom. New Labour feared unpopularity so much it became timid. This government has written unpopularity into the script. This has freed it to do things it would never have risked in fiscal peacetime. It is why change seems reckless and fast. The coalition feels a revolutionary duty to be brave. It should be proud of that.

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

HOWEVER . . .

Financial markets are still ruled by instant gratification

Two years after the collapse of Lehman Bros, it's hard to find much sign of the fundamental reforms we were promised

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/sep/13/economics-recession-globalisation-rebalancing-reform

The crisis exposed the structural weaknesses of the bubble years and policymakers said what they always say at this point in the economic cycle: never again. Faced with evidence of the fragility of globalisation, they announced that the system required fundamental reform. At this juncture, it is appropriate to assess how they have been getting on.

The Demand for Immediate Gratification.

Andrew Haldane, Bank of England executive director for financial stability, said recently in Beijing that rapid gains in economic growth in the modern age were accounted for by patience: investing for tomorrow meant sacrifice today.

"Studies have shown that happy people save more and spend less," he argued. "Happy people also take longer to make decisions and expect a longer life. In short, they are patient. These patterns are connected and reinforcing."

But patience does not always triumph. When impatience takes control, we save less and borrow more. We take snap decisions, thinking little about long-term consequences. This sort of behaviour, as Haldane noted, reaches its apotheosis in the financial markets. "Most traders' brains harbour the impatience gene. Often they harbour little else."

So, it would be a real sign of progress if there was evidence that the gods of the financial markets were re-learning the virtue of patience, thus setting an example to mortals. The sad fact is nothing has changed. The business-as-usual mindset makes the case for reform even more compelling.

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

Simon Hattenstone's interview with Sinead O'Connor is well worth a read. It seems she's a total believer in God and Jesus, but hates the Pope, who arrives here tomorrow, and the whole of the Christian hierarchy of priests and bishops.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/10/sinead-oconnor-pope-visit

Sinead O'Connor: 'The Vatican is a nest of devils'

When she tore up the pope's picture as a protest against child abuse, people thought she was loopy. But Sinead O'Connor – former pop star, priest, newly married mother of four – won't say 'I told you so'

She says, apart from her children, her ordination is her greatest achievement. "I am proud that I did listen to that voice inside me rather than be intimidated by men telling me you can't be a priest. One ought to be more concerned in obeying what the Holy Spirit inspires you to feel rather than what a bunch of men in fucking dresses are telling you to do or not do."

I'm still trying to work out her position – she loves God, but despises Catholicism? She shakes her head. "No, what I think is wrong is that the people running the show are misrepresenting what Catholicism actually is ... what I'm talking about is the highest echelons of the Vatican't as I call it."

"The way they've behaved just in the last 20 years, over this issue of sexual abuse, shows they don't give a shit. They feel untouchable. And to me it seems they don't believe in God at all. Because if you did believe you couldn't stand in front of that spirit covering up and moving priests and doctoring reports to psychiatrists and not telling them there was a suspicion of abuse, you just couldn't do that."

"OK, the abusive priests have been dealt with and that's very important, but now what has to be dealt with is the criminality of the cover-up." She says it has to go to the very top – after all in 2001, Pope Benedict, as Cardinal Ratzinger, issued an updated edict instructing the world's bishops to silence all abuse allegations or risk being thrown out of the church. "The Vatican is a nest of devils and a haven for criminals. It's evil, the very top of the toppermost is evil."

O'Connor is clear what has to happen – those responsible have to go. "And when all the those guys stand down we should take back the church for us." Would she like to see a democratically elected pope? "Do we need a fucking pope? Why do we need a pope? Christ doesn't need a representative. Ten years from now the church will be nothing resembling what it has been."

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

Also on the subject of the Pope and religion:

The pope's priestly model: a rabid, self-harming tyrant

The Catholic priesthood needs radical reform. Yet Benedict looks to a cleric who banned dancing and whipped himself nightly

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/sep/10/pope-benedict-xvi-catholicism

What has the pope done about the crisis? What he hasn't done is to initiate reforms based on inquiries into the culture of the total clerical crisis. His solution to the complex problems of clericalism is to ask seminarians and priests to emulate a French priest called Jean Vianney, who died 150 years ago.

Last year Benedict was on the verge of proclaiming Vianney as the patron saint of parish priests, the model for a purer, healthier, irreproachable priesthood. In a scolding letter to the Irish clergy earlier this year, the pope asserted that following the life of Vianney would redeem Ireland's disgraced, abusing clergy. At every opportunity he has promoted Vianney as exemplary.

The promotion of Vianney seems to me the most backward-looking of this pope's initiatives, which include bringing back the Latin mass, routinely denouncing homosexuality, and declaring the ordination of women a great sin.

What is the holy father thinking of, promoting this self-harming, narrow-minded tyrant as a solution to the problems of paedophile priests? Even by a mild interpretation, we should infer that priests must turn parishes into spiritual ghettoes where all secular influences are banned. Masochistic displacement activity, the punishing of the flesh, is proposed as a substitute for personal maturity and integrity.

In other words - spiritual intelligence.

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

Special Educational Needs in the press today, and on the 'Today' programme this morning:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/14/special-education-needs-school-young

'Special' education comes in many different guises

Some school students need extra support to liberate them from the constraints with which their world tries to strap them down

Young people in our schools, particularly challenging inner-city schools, do need special educational provision to liberate them from the constraints with which their world attempts to strap them down.

Schools have a duty to provide these young people with the tools to enable them to break free from these constraints, to drive up self esteem, aspiration and expectation, and to take their rightful place at the table of learning.

Schools and teachers cannot do this alone. It is a multi-agency agenda of skilled professionals working alongside the most committed, hardworking, diligent and skilful teachers that can create this climate of success.

.

Layer 345 . . . Devo, Zapatistas, Naomi Klein, Marcos, Joumana Haddad, More Football and No More Forgetting

.
Devo

"When up or down, light and dark, progression and regression are viewed not as opposites, but as contraries, different manifestations of the same basic energies, then devolution becomes not only possible, but viable."

The name "Devo" comes "from their concept of 'de-evolution' - the idea that instead of evolving, mankind has actually regressed, as evidenced by the dysfunction and herd mentality of American society. - Wikipedia

I'm not sure why I started looking into Devo's musical history - I think it was because of a half-heard snippet on the radio recently. They're a weird bunch, Devo. Can't argue too much with their philosophy though. The very idea of bands having something coherent to say about life, the universe and everything, some sort of challenging philosophy, is pretty unusual these days, apart from odd exception such as Manu Chao.

Devo reckon that most people live in a state of constant anxiety, possibly even fear. This is part of the reason why most people are unable to think logically, critically, coherently and abstractly. Another reason is due to not having any education or training that would help them develop critical, abstract and coherent thinking. But where are the political parties that have identified and highlighted this fact? say Devo.

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

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

Zapatista

Glancing through some old Guardian magazines this morning I noticed an article by Naomi Klein, written in 2001, which focused on the Zapatista movement in Mexico – it’s history, philosophy, membership and leadership. This seems synchronous with recent Oxzen musings about Che, Cuba, Chavez, and Oliver Stone’s movie about left radicalism in South America – ‘South of the Border’.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/mar/03/politics

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_of_the_Border_%28film%29

The unknown icon

Next week, rebels will march on Mexico City demanding rights for the country's indigenous people. But they will not fire a single shot, for this is a new kind of revolution. Naomi Klein describes the appeal of the Zapatistas and their 'voice' Subcomandante Marcos.

The caravan, nicknamed the "Zapatour" by the Mexican press, is being led by the council of 24 Zapatista commanders, in full uniform and masks (though no weapons), including Subcomandante Marcos himself.

Perhaps only a man who never takes off his mask, who hides his real name, could lead this caravan of renegades, rebels, loners and anarchists on this two-week trek. These are people who have learned to steer clear of charismatic leaders with one-size-fits-all ideologies. These aren't party loyalists; these are members of groups that pride themselves on their autonomy and lack of hierarchy. Marcos - with his black wool mask, two eyes and pipe - seems to be an anti-leader tailor-made for this suspicious, critical lot. Not only does he refuse to show his face, undercutting (and simultaneously augmenting) his own celebrity, but Marcos's story is of a man who came to his leadership, not through swaggering certainty, but by coming to terms with political uncertainty, by learning to follow.

Having failed as a Marxist missionary, Marcos immersed himself in Mayan culture. The more he learned, the less he knew. Out of this process, a new kind of army emerged, the EZLN, the Zapatista National Liberation Army, which was not controlled by an elite of guerrilla commanders but by the communities themselves, through clandestine councils and open assemblies. "Our army," says Marcos, "became scandalously Indian." That meant that he wasn't a commander barking orders, but a subcomandante, a conduit for the will of the councils. His first words said in the new persona were: "Through me speaks the will of the Zapatista National Liberation Army." Further subjugating himself, Marcos says that he is not a leader to those who seek him out, but that his black mask is a mirror, reflecting each of their own struggles; that a Zapatista is anyone anywhere fighting injustice, that "We are you".

Marcos himself - the supposed non-self, the conduit, the mirror - writes in a tone so personal and poetic, so completely and unmistakably his own, that he is constantly undercutting and subverting the anonymity that comes from his mask and pseudonym. It is often said that the Zapatistas' best weapon was the internet, but their true secret weapon was their language. In Our Word Is Our Weapon, we read manifestos and war cries that are also poems, legends and riffs. A character emerges behind the mask, a personality. Marcos is a revolutionary who writes long meditative letters to Uruguayan poet Eduardo Galeano about the meaning of silence; who describes colonialism as a series of "bad jokes badly told", who quotes Lewis Carroll, Shakespeare and Borges.

Something radical has changed in the balance of power in Mexico. The Zapatistas are calling the shots now - which is significant, because they have lost the habit of firing shots. What started as a small, armed insurrection has in the past seven years turned into what now looks more like a peaceful, and mass movement. It has helped topple the corrupt 71-year reign of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, and has placed indigenous rights at the centre of the Mexican political agenda.

This is a movement keenly aware of the power of words and symbols. Which is why Marcos gets angry when he is looked on as just another guy with a gun: "What other guerrilla force has convened a national democratic movement, civic and peaceful, so that armed struggle becomes useless?" he asks. "What other guerrilla force asks its bases of support about what it should do before doing it? What other guerrilla force has struggled to achieve a democratic space and not take power? What other guerrilla force has relied more on words than on bullets?"

The Zapatistas have come to represent two forces at once: first, rebels struggling against grinding poverty and humiliation in the mountains of Chiapas and, on top of this, theorists of a new movement, another way to think about power, resistance and globalisation. This theory - Zapatismo - not only turns classic guerrilla tactics inside out, but much of leftwing politics on its head.

Unlike classic revolutionaries, who preach through bullhorns and from pulpits, Marcos has spread the Zapatista word through riddles. Revolutionaries who don't want power. People who must hide their faces to be seen.

The Zapatista uprising was a new way to protect land and culture: rather than locking out the world, the Zapatistas flung open the doors and invited the world inside. Chiapas was transformed, despite its poverty, despite being under constant military siege, into a global gathering place for activists, intellectuals, and indigenous groups.

The strategic victory of the Zapatistas was to change the terms: to insist that what was going on in Chiapas could not be written off as a narrow "ethnic" struggle, and that it was universal. They did this by clearly naming their enemy not only as the Mexican state but as the set of economic policies known as "neo-liberalism". Marcos insisted that the poverty and desperation in Chiapas was simply a more advanced version of something happening all around the world. He pointed to the huge numbers of people who were being left behind by prosperity, whose land, and work, made that prosperity possible. "The new distribution of the world excludes 'minorities'," Marcos has said. "The indigenous, youth, women, homosexuals, lesbians, people of colour, immigrants, workers, peasants; the majority who make up the world basements are presented, for power, as disposable. The distribution of the world excludes the majorities."

The Zapatistas staged an open insurrection, one that anyone could join, as long as they thought of themselves as outsiders. By conservative estimates, there are now 45,000 Zapatista-related websites, based in 26 countries.

So it's worth asking: what are the ideas that proved so powerful that thousands have taken it upon themselves to disseminate them around the world? A few years ago, the idea of the rebels travelling to Mexico City to address the congress would have been impossible to imagine. The prospect of masked guerrillas (even masked guerrillas who have left their arms at home) entering a hall of political power signals one thing: revolution. But Zapatistas aren't interested in overthrowing the state or naming their leader, Marcos, as president. If anything, they want less state power over their lives. And, besides, Marcos says that as soon as peace has been negotiated he will take off his mask and disappear.

What does it mean to be a revolutionary who is not trying to stage a revolution? This is one of the key Zapatista paradoxes. In one of his many communiqués, Marcos writes that "it is not necessary to conquer the world. It is sufficient to make it new". He adds: "Us. Today." What sets the Zapatistas apart from your average Marxist guerrilla insurgents is that their goal is not to win control, but to seize and build autonomous spaces where "democracy, liberty and justice" can thrive.

Marcos believes that what he has learned in Chiapas about non-hierarchical decision-making, decentralised organising and deep community democracy holds answers for the non-indigenous world as well - if only it were willing to listen. This is a kind of organising that doesn't compartmentalise the community into workers, warriors, farmers and students, but instead seeks to organise communities as a whole, across sectors and across generations, creating "social movements". For the Zapatistas, these autonomous zones aren't about isolationism or dropping out, 60s-style. Quite the opposite: Marcos is convinced that these free spaces, born of reclaimed land, communal agriculture, resistance to privatisation, will eventually create counter-powers to the state simply by existing as alternatives.

This is the essence of Zapatismo, and explains much of its appeal: a global call to revolution that tells you not to wait for the revolution, only to stand where you stand, to fight with your own weapon. It could be a video camera, words, ideas, "hope" - all of these, Marcos has written, "are also weapons". It's a revolution in miniature that says, "Yes, you can try this at home." This organising model has spread throughout Latin America, and the world. You can see it in the anarchist squats of Italy (called "social centres") and in the Landless Peasants' Movement of Brazil, which seizes tracts of unused farmland and uses them for sustainable agriculture, markets and schools under the slogan "Ocupar, Resistir, Producir" (Occupy, Resist, Produce).

Zapatismo, according to Marcos, is not a doctrine but "an intuition". And he is consciously trying to appeal to something that exists outside the intellect, something uncynical in us, that he found in himself in the mountains of Chiapas: wonder, a suspension of disbelief, myth and magic. So, instead of issuing manifestos, he tries to riff his way into this place, with long meditations, flights of fancy, dreaming out loud. This is, in a way, a kind of intellectual guerrilla warfare: Marcos won't meet his opponents head on, but instead surrounds them from all directions.

It occurs to me that Marcos isn't Martin Luther King; he is King's very modern progeny, born of a bittersweet marriage of vision and necessity. This masked man who calls himself Marcos is the descendant of King, Che Guevara, Malcom X, Emiliano Zapata and all the other heroes who preached from pulpits only to be shot down one by one, leaving bodies of followers wandering around blind and disoriented because they lost their heads.

In their place, the world now has a new kind of hero, one who listens more than speaks, who preaches in riddles not in certainties, a leader who doesn't show his face, who says his mask is really a mirror.

In the words of Marcos –

The kaz-dzul , the false man, rules our lands and has giant war machines,
like the boob, half-puma and half-horse,
that spread pain and death among us.
The trickster government sends us the aluxob,
the liars who fool our people and make them forgetful.
This is why we became soldiers.
This is why we remain soldiers.
Because we want no more death and trickery for our people,
because we want no more forgetting . . .

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/mar/03/extract
http://www.youtube.com/user/xlinksxaussenx

……………………………………..

Here’s another piece about a remarkable non-conformist – a woman who’s clearly bursting with spiritual intelligence, courage, and a determination fight for what’s right and to go her own way:

Joumana Haddad: 'I live in a country that hates me'

Joumana Haddad is a ferocious critic of sexism in Lebanon, and her erotic magazine has brought death threats. A new book is her fiercest attack yet on Arab culture. So what drives her?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/aug/21/joumana-haddad-interview

……………………………………………

Football Ownership

I'd meant to include this reference in a previous Layer on the state of football in Britain:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/aug/18/football-social-value-report-supporter-owned

How can football clubs capture the social value of the beautiful game?
Football still has vast social value despite financial crises. Do we need more supporter-owned clubs to restore its rightful place at the heart of communities, asks David Conn

Released earlier this summer . . . was a report that found that for all its crises and financial overkill, football remains a sport of immense social value, and its clubs – when not falling into ruin – are widely considered to be rallying points for civic pride.

Commissioned by Supporters Direct, the government-backed initiative to encourage democratic, mutual ownership of football clubs, the report documents the beneficial impact that clubs can have in their communities, and recommends a series of ways in which this can be improved.

Principally, it argues that football clubs should formally recognise their social role and adopt it as one of their core purposes . . .

The report, The Social and Community Value of Football, suggests a range of ways in which clubs might commit to having a positive impact in their communities – many, at all levels, do some of them already. They include developing local transport plans, environmental best practice, supporter volunteering schemes, opening club facilities to disadvantaged groups, operating preferential local employment and purchasing schemes, and pricing match tickets at levels that "recognise economic exclusion".

Also included is "broadening ownership structures", and this is a key element of the report, setting out the social value of clubs incorporating some democratic form of ownership by supporters.

The chief executives of clubs that were mutuals or feature large stakes held by supporters argued that their model delivered "clear social benefits", including the promotion of democracy, keeping the club linked to the community, creating stability, and even a business advantage, because of improved working relationships with the local authority.

Norrie Stewart, chief executive of supporter-owned Exeter City, describes the mutual model as an "important [ownership] alternative".

The 'mutual model' is also described these days as the 'John Lewis Model', and it's time we all thought about how many of our companies would benefit from this model of ownership.
.