Layer 520 . . . A Sense of Shared Purpose? Poverty and Progressivism in the USA

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An interesting comment on the Guardian website:

jonniestewpot
I've just watched Panorama on BBC. America is fucked.

This is under an article headlined

The re-energised US left has much to teach its dismal European counterparts

Moving from retreat to re-tweet, US progressives have linked the personal and political to create a sense of shared purpose

by Adam Price

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/feb/13/reenergised-us-left-dismal-european-counterparts

In Europe the city's aflame, but America's Athens, Philadelphia, city of the founding fathers, has lit a very different touchpaper: its Occupy movement is the first in the country to announce it's running for Congress. Whether or not 29-year-old Nathan Kleinman beats the moderate incumbent, it says something about a new spirit of opportunism on the American left.

In December, a poll by the Pew Research Center found support for socialism now outweighs support for capitalism among a younger generation of Americans. In 2012 so far, in a spectacular series of victories, American progressives have taken on big oil, Hollywood and (some people's version of) God, winning every time.

The European left, meanwhile, is in freefall . . .  What has gone so badly wrong for the Euroleft, and what can they learn from the US?

The killing off of the internet censorship bills Sopa and Pipa in January, despite big-battalion backing by the entertainment industry, and Bank of America's binning of a proposal to charge for debit-card usage at the height of the Occupy Wall Street protests, were internet-fuelled successes. The US left, it seems, has gone from retreat to re-tweet in just a few short years.

The progressive revival may be tech-enabled, but it's far from tech-driven. The real social web these movements have created is a web of values, a vision that somehow connects with people at an emotional level, joining the dots between the personal and the political to create a sense of shared purpose – though often using new digital tools.

The American left learned their emotional intelligence the hard way in the culture wars of the 70s and 80s, when good arguments seemed powerless against ignorance and prejudice. During the Bush era, Democratic thinkers like George Lakoff and Drew Westen started the push-back by teaching progressives the importance of "framing". Yet Karl Rove and the Republicans already had that playbook and used it with devastating efficiency.

The real secret to progressive success is a 68-year-old professor called Marshall Ganz, the Mark Zuckerberg of activism, who dropped out of Harvard to organise migrant workers in 1965 only to return almost 30 years later to finish his degree and teach a new generation what he'd learned in the field.

Ganz's work has inspired a myriad movements, from Obama's grassroots campaign in 2008 to the world's first trade union for models. At the core of his teaching is the idea that leaders must build a public narrative explaining their calling, a sort of progressive elevator pitch in three parts: why they feel called to act (story of self), how this act relates to the audience (story of us) and what urgent challenge this action seeks to address (the story of now).

Political therapy for Ed [Miliband] will never solve the wider problem: a European left that is tired, dull, top-down and moribund. The American left, historically weak, is by necessity decentralised and diverse. This once meant disorganisation and division. But it's managed to find a new coherence across geography and generation.

Technology allowed the anti-Keystone Pipeline campaign to connect Nebraska farmers with DC environmentalists. But connecting people across time is just as important. A phalanx of institutes funded by philanthropists and the remarkable breakaway SEIU union have built a repository of knowledge of how movements win, creating what Forbes writer Giovanni Rodriguez calls "fast history", accelerating the pace of change.

Today's American left is where the old world of community organising and the new world of social media meet. The dismal official European left, by contrast, has neither invested in their past, nor in their future, discarding their history, ignoring new technology. Our only hope, if Obama, as looks likely, is re-elected, is that he might perhaps consider a new Marshall plan, to rebuild a left in Europe that's everywhere in ruins.

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The Panorama programme referred to by jonniestewpot was broadcast on Monday night.

America's homeless resort to tent cities

Panorama's Hilary Andersson comes face to face with the reality of poverty in America and finds that, for some, the last resort has become life in a tented encampment.

Just off the side of a motorway on the fringes of the picturesque town of Ann Arbor, Michigan, a mismatched collection of 30 tents tucked in the woods has become home - home to those who are either unemployed, or whose wages are so low that they can no longer afford to pay rent.

Conditions are unhygienic. There are no toilets and electricity is only available in the one communal tent where the campers huddle around a wood stove for warmth in the heart of winter.

Ice weighs down the roofs of tents, and rain regularly drips onto the sleeping campers' faces.Tent cities have sprung up in and around at least 55 American cities - they represent the bleak reality of America's poverty crisis.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_9694000/9694094.stm

According to census data, 47 million Americans now live below the poverty line - the most in half a century - fuelled by several years of high unemployment.

One of the largest tented camps is in Florida and is now home to around 300 people. Others have sprung up in New Jersey and Portland.

Depression-type poverty

There are an estimated 5,000 people living in the dozens of camps that have sprung up across America.

The largest camp, Pinella's Hope in central Florida - a region better known for the glamour of Disneyworld - is made up of neat rows of tents spread out across a 13-acre plot.

Unemployment in America today has not reached the astronomical levels of the 1930s, but barring a short spike in 1982, it has not been this high since the Depression era.

There are now 13 million unemployed Americans, which is three million more than when President Barack Obama was first elected.

The stark reality is that many of them are people who very recently lived comfortable middle-class lives.

For them, the economic downturn came too fast and many have been forced to trade their middle-class homes for lives in shelters, motels and at the far extreme, tented encampments.

Watch Panorama on iPlayer:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01c2y2b
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Layer 449 . . . Dignity, Justice, Human Rights, Protests and Peaceful Revolutions

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One of the Egyptian protesters said, "This is not just a revolt to topple the regime. This is a revolt for our dignity and for justice."

Meanwhile, on TV yesterday, a reporter said, "Outside Tripoli he (Gaddafi) has no control whatsoever."

When people start to demand the right to some dignity and social justice, then it becomes more unlikely they will replace one set of ruling bastards with another set that's pretty similar, as has happened in Britain. If people have overcome apathy and fear, and come out on the streets to demand the right to be the rulers and not the ruled, they have reached a different level of consciousness. Awakening a higher level of consciousness is like letting a genie out of a bottle. What sort of trickery (or power) might be required to persuade it to go back in the bottle?

This past month has been amazing. Last weekend the Gaddafi regime lost control of all areas of Libya apart from the capital city. What's it going to take to put that genie back in its bottle? Incredible. At the same time the regime in Bahrain, of all places, was forced to withdraw from the central square and allow the protestors to occupy it. It was also a symbol of what's now happening that the regime was also forced to cancel its forthcoming Grand Prix - a lucrative part of the biggest capitalist circus on the planet, the benefits of which reach NONE of the Bahraini people, except maybe a handful employed at the racing circuit on minimum wages.

The previous weekend had seen the beginning of the challenge to the regime in Algeria.

The weekend before that we saw, of course, the downfall of Mubarak in Egypt.

From protest to revolution

Anger at inequality isn't confined to Tunisia or Egypt - where uprisings give a blueprint for other nations.

by Dan Hind

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/02/20112131580638716.html#

The popular uprising in Egypt is still less than three weeks old. We still cannot know how it will end - whether the ruling party will make some concessions and cling on to power within a new government - or whether a united opposition will sweep away Mubarak's apparatus. And we cannot tell what kind of regime will emerge.

The revolutions that overthrew the Soviet system in Central and Eastern Europe did not always empower the dissidents who risked the most in the struggle for freedom. Former secret policemen and their allies in organised crime often proved more adept in the years that followed than the idealists they once tormented.

But for all the uncertainty, Egypt has already shaken the region and the world. For those watching in Europe and the US, it has put an end to any lazy notion that the alternative to corrupt dictatorship in the Middle East is chaos or Islamic extremism. The worldly realists, with their regretful talk of the need for moderation, now stand exposed as power-worshipping fantasists. The Christians and Muslims crying "one hand, one hand", as they call for an end to Mubarak's tyranny have made a farce of decades of Western commentary and analysis.

Standing as one

The regime itself did all it could to encourage sectarian tension in the country, while its supporters in the West pretended it was a bulwark against religious violence. But, despite all the efforts to destroy civil society through torture and the organised suspicion of a police state, people have found each other.

Millions are being transformed by the experience of a public life without fear. In the words of one of the protestors, Wael Gawdat: "At Tahrir Square you see different Egyptians from the ones you see on the subway or the bus. No fights and no discomfort from the crowded setting. In short, Egypt is more beautiful in Tahrir Square."

The decision of the Egyptian people to take responsibility for their future - their decision to become citizens - enlivens, even delights. This is a movement that isn't being orchestrated by leaders in the way we have been led to expect. People are acting as though they are free and so becoming free. 

The Egyptians, like the Tunisians - like people all over the world - want a share in the vast wealth that their rulers and a handful of insiders have hoarded for themselves. They want dignity and a life they can call their own. For the moment they are not afraid and they are united. They are showing us the truth of David Hume’s remark that our rulers 'have nothing to support them but opinion'. The Egyptian people no longer believed the Mubarak regime was as good as any other that might be established. They have seen for themselves that there can be stability without torture.

Rejecting injustice

They do not believe that the distribution of property is just and they do not accept the legitimacy of their government. They have changed their opinion of what is possible and right. Every day of freedom they enjoy is a message to the rest of us; things do not have to be as they are.
So the Egyptians and the Tunisians have swept away the prejudices that have so long confused and corrupted the understanding of people in the West. More than that, they have also reminded Europeans and American what political action can achieve - and what it feels like to be free.

We have long been entranced by the idea that shopping and voting once every four years for one wing or other of the pro-business party would be enough to give us the good life. Vast public relations campaigns fostered the sense that a better future could be had, if only we chose wisely from the list of approved candidates. All the while the rich have taken more and left the rest of us to struggle with insecurity, anxiety and mounting debts. The people in Cairo didn't look to charismatic politicians or party machines to do the work for them. They moved faster than their leaders.

You can do it, too

In the West, there have been stirrings of dissent as the scale of the economic crisis becomes apparent and the reassurances of the mainstream media - that good times are just around the corner, come to sound ever more threadbare. Students, and young people in particular, have already shaken off the wishful passivity of the previous generation. But for the most part the outrage and sense of betrayal have expressed themselves in ways that pose no real threat to the governing establishment or the opulent minority who control it.

The Tea Party in the United States and Conservatives in Britain promise change while working to ensure that everything that matters stays the same. The right in both countries has benefited from the failure of their centrist opponents to address the fundamental causes of recession, unemployment and social breakdown. It is as though the entire political establishment has adopted the stultifying uniformity of a one-party state. There is a bankruptcy of policy and of principle that will, perhaps, finally compel us to take matters into our own hands.

In the presidential campaign of 2008, Barack Obama never tired of telling voters they were the change they had been looking for. The people of Tunisia and Egypt have turned a clever slogan into an undeniable fact. They did not wait for permission to take action. If we want another world we must all learn from them.

Can we look beyond the stereotypes offered by our media, and see that the Egyptians and the Tunisians are now daring us to be free?

Yes, we can.

Dan Hind has worked in publishing since 1998 and is the author of two well-acclaimed books: The Return of the Public and The Threat to Reason. He is also a regular contributor to The Guardian.

Follow him on Twitter: @danhind

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Al-Jazeera:

Social networks, social revolution 


Youtube, Facebook and Twitter have become the new weapons of mass mobilisation.


http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/empire/2011/02/201121614532116986.html


Information is power, but 21st century technology has unleashed an information revolution, and now the genie is out of the bottle.


Youtube, Facebook and Twitter have become the new weapons of mass mobilisation; geeks have taken on dictators; bloggers are dissidents; and social networks have become rallying forces for social justice.


As people around the world challenge authorities, from Iran to Tunisia, Egypt to Yemen, entire societies are being transformed as ordinary citizens see the difference, imagine the alternative, and come together to organise for a better future.


So, are social networks triggering social revolution? And where will the next domino fall?


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Reflections: Egypt Revolution


Egypt's Uprising is only the first in many steps,the challenge ahead is to build a society on fair principles.


http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/02/201121414422998168.html

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What makes a revolution succeed?


While the aspirations are different, Egyptians could take five lessons from Iran's 1979 revolt.


http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/02/201121393446561799.html


On February 12, 32 years this week, Iran proclaimed its revolution a success: the Shah was gone, the military had been decimated, and a new era could dawn.


Although what followed turned out very differently than what the Egyptians are hoping for, Iran's was one of the great revolutions of the 20th century, and Egyptians might well look to it for inspiration in their effort to oust an entrenched regime and gain new rights.


Today, the Egyptian military has assumed command, with promises of free and fair elections. Does this mean the demonstrators can go home and trust their army? Egypt and Iran are very different, their aspirations and media eons apart, and, one hopes, the future the Egyptians construct will be more democratic and safe for those reaching for popular victory.


Nonetheless, for those along the Nile facing quickly changing events, the Iranian revolution offers some useful lessons.


Lesson one: Revolutions take time

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Egypt's revolution has just begun


The transition to civilian rule will not be easy - if the military are capable of delivering on their promises.


http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/02/2011213134458448460.html


"Whatever happens, nothing will ever be the same again" – Tahrir Square demonstrator.


Mubarak has fallen. February 11, 2011, has inscribed itself on the page of world history. Now the struggle for the 'heart and soul' of the revolution begins. It's a testing time, and all will be tested.


Test 1: Procedural and institutional change – the establishment of legality


At what point will the uprising be sufficiently secure from counter-revolution to begin construction of a truly transformed democratic polity? What are the minimum security requirements for its immediate defence and subsequent extension? What structural changes will have to be demanded - and fought through to a successful conclusion – in order to neutralise and dis-articulate the still formidable powers of the Mubarak state and its - temporarily silenced - backers?


Test 2: The shape and boundaries of revolutionary democracy – the contours of freedom and the struggles surrounding inclusive or exclusive participation 


How will the emergent revolution realise itself, consecrate itself? What shall be its core tasks, boundaries and limits? Who is to be included, who excluded? And on what basis, what grounds?
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Layer 422 . . . More Music, BBC4, Sister Rosetta, Hugh Masekela, Chess Records, Roots of Rock, Tests, Exams, Children Under Pressure, Education, the Oldham Verdict, Barack and Cuba

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Three wonderful programmes, back to back on BBC4 last night -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00xf8k7

The Godmother of Rock & Roll: Sister Rosetta Tharpe

During the 40s, 50s and 60s Sister Rosetta Tharpe played a highly significant role in the creation of rock & roll, inspiring musicians like Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Little Richard and Chuck Berry. She may not be a household name, but this flamboyant African-American gospel singing superstar, with her spectacular virtuosity on the newly-electrified guitar, was one of the most influential popular musicians of the 20th century.

In 2008 the state governor of Pennsylvania declared that henceforth January 11th will be Sister Rosetta Tharpe Day in recognition of her remarkable musical legacy.

 

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00s6bln

Hugh Masekela: Welcome to South Africa

South African musician Hugh Masekela celebrates his 70th birthday and reflects on his career in performance and interview, from first picking up a trumpet in the 50s through the apartheid years, exile and stardom in America, his return to South Africa on Nelson Mandela's release, and concluding with his vision of the future for his country.

The programme also features performances from his 70th birthday concert at the Barbican in London in December 2009, where he was joined by the London Symphony Orchestra, their Community Choir and guest South African singers.

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vv0zz

Roll over Beethoven - The Chess Records Saga

Chicago's Chess Records was one of the greatest labels of the post-war era, ranking alongside other mighty independents like Atlantic, Stax and Sun. From 1950 till its demise at the end of the 60s, Chess released a myriad of electric blues, rock 'n' roll and soul classics that helped change the landscape of black and white popular music.

Chess was the label that gave the world such sonic adventurers as Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Howlin' Wolf and Etta James. In this documentary to mark the label's 60th anniversary, the likes of Jimmy Page, Mick Hucknall, Public Enemy's Chuck D, Paul Jones and Little Steven, as well as those attached to the label such as founder's son Marshall Chess, pay tribute to its extraordinary music and influence.

The film reveals how two Polish immigrants, Leonard and Phil Chess, forged friendships with black musicians in late 1940s Chicago, shrewdly building a speciality blues label into a huge independent worth millions by the end of the 1960s. Full of vivid period detail, it places the Chess story within a wider social and historical context - as well as being about some of the greatest music ever recorded, it is, inevitably, about race in America during these tumultuous times.

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The Tonight Programme (ITV)  - presenter: Julie Etchingham

http://www.itv.com/news/tonight/episodes/kidsunderpressure

Kids Under Pressure

We look behind the statistics that show a dramatic rise in the level of childhood depression over the course of a generation as Julie meets a young woman who has battled with the disease through her teenage years – and she hears from her mother about what it was like to support her daughter through such difficult times.

The programme investigates whether the current education system is adequately preparing children for the challenges they face in modern society and discovers how some schools are looking at new ways to improve pupils’ social and emotional skills, such as a revolutionary scheme involving children interacting with a baby in classes, as well as a ‘happiness class’ at one public school whose head teacher is critical of the emphasis on testing in mainstream education.

Do children have enough freedom nowadays? We meet the parents who have blocked off their own road to traffic to give their kids the chance for the kind of free independent play that was once commonplace. The programme also questions mental health issues and behavioural problems children are experiencing, as well as body image anxiety.

Are our children in crisis?

Why is there continuous testing in schools?

Are we raising a generation of troubled children?

Grounds for concern - Britain was ranked bottom in a UN survey of children's wellbeing in 21 countries around the world.

Are today's kids happy? A Mumsnet survey revealed that 1 in 4 parents think their  kids are less happy than they were at the same age. "A large majority of mums and dads are worried about the education system, the freedom for kids to play, and the pressure on kids to grow up too soon."

"Even David Cameron has said that happiness is an important indicator of child wellbeing." Well - duh! Genius.

The Mumsnet spokeswoman said, "We expect children to perform in ways that we didn't so aggressively before . . . competitive pressures now appear very early on in children's lives."

The programme talked about the devastating consequences of all this for a significant minority. There's been a 70% increase in children suffering from serious emotional problems since the 1970s. We're failing to protect the children who are most at risk.

10% of all adolescents have diagnosable mental health problems. 80,000 of our young people suffer from depression. Kids who were healthy, confident and outgoing become ill as a result of adult expections for them to achieve test and exam targets. "My emotions felt out of control, and I couldn't see a way forward. I thought my parents would be better off without me. I was causing them so much misery. I was desperate. Really desperate." So said one articulate and intelligent girl. "I decided that enough was enough and I tried to kill myself."

"I love walking the dog now. It gives you space to think. It's my way of de-stressing." This young woman is now 20 and still talks about anxiety and stress. This is an appalling situation. So many of our young people are burnt out, afraid of life, troubled every day, incapable of joy, incapable of embracing life.

"It's been hell," said Anabelle's mum. "The pressures on young people are so hard. Academically there's SO much pressure. Greater than there's ever been. They find it so difficult to cope."

Of course we were treated to a look at Wellington College's "happiness classes". "The focus is on helping a child develop meaning in their own lives," said Anthony Seldon, head of the college. "Also a sense of self worth and self esteem. An ability to face the trials and problems that will inevitably be part of anyone's life."

Yes, Anthony. But PLEASE don't call them 'happiness classes'. That's just ammunition for your enemies. I do like it though when he goes on to say, "An excessive emphasis on testing is putting unneccessary pressure on our children. The whole school system is skewed towards the passing of these frankly pretty meaningless bits of paper. How sad when schools could move towards truly identifying and nurturing every single child's innate and unique gifts. Because if they're not drawn out when children are at school they'll remain dormant for the rest of their lives."

Two thirds of the parents who took part in the Mumsnet survey said there's too much testing in our schools. Sarah Teather, Minister for children and families, rather pathetically said the usual rubbish - schools and parents need feedback on how children are 'getting on', blah blah . . . As if she's never heard of continuous formative assessment for progress through clear learning targets. As if regular weekly and monthly feedback on coursework isn't far more useful than high-stakes exams.

She rather unexpectedly went on to say, "However, we do recognise that there's  a tendency in schools to teach to the tests, and that's the last thing we need. It's not good for children, and it's not good for teachers."

So why not get rid of  "these frankly pretty meaningless bits of paper" and ensure that proper systems for pupil progress tracking are put in place? Afraid that schools might 'cheat', minister? Well then - get rid of league tables as well. Do that, and there's really no point in cheating. And in any case groups of schools can organise their own verification and moderation procedures, which need cost very little in either time or money. Unlike our disgracefully wasteful exam systems.

The programme went on to consider children's needs to explore their own worlds, make their own discoveries, and just play together.
78% of parents say their children don't spend enough time playing outdoors.

Independent, non-structured activity is crucial for developing life skills, forming friendships, developing emotional intelligence, etc.

75% of parents say their working day is too long, leaving them too little time for their children.

Typical working mums and dads spend just 19 minutes a day 'looking after their kids'.

The programme also dealt with the pressure put on kids to look "attractive", "sexy", etc. And to buy and own all the 'right' gadgets and gizmos.

How do we "give children the tools they will need to tackle the challenges of growing up"?

There was mention of a "Roots of Empathy" programme on the Isle of Man - to help children to "strengthen their emotional ties to other people". The idea is to "reduce aggression and improve social skills". The children learn to "understand how other people feel - through being able to put themselves in other people's situations." Bringing babies into classrooms is an important part of this scheme.

"We're giving them the emotional literacy that will last a lifetime."

"We want them to be able to share their emotions so that we don't have so much aggression in society." Almost there. Empathy - emotions - feelings: we still have some sorting out to do.

"If our kids are happier and more considerate they'll be better able to face the challenges ahead."

Dr Tony Sewell of the charity Generating Genius appeared in the programme, talking about 'targeting the cleverest kids and preparing them for university'. Though it seems like an elitist programme, at least Sewell is advocating learning science through proper first-hand experience and experimentation. This, of course, should be available to all children.

The presenter summed up by saying, "It may now be a matter of political will to drive through the changes that could benefit ALL of our children."

MAY be a matter of political will? Let's just say the current generation of teachers and headteachers can barely even organise a boycott of KS2 SATs, so they're hardly going to drive through the major changes that are needed of their own accord. SATs have to go. Tracking systems for pupil progress in ALL areas of learning - academic, social, emotional, etc - have to be brought in. Pedagogy has to change to give all children the ability and the opportunity to learn through activity, experience and interaction. Pupils should be setting their own learning targets. All of the ideas of Paulo Freire, and of the New Learning Revolution need to be adopted. Other countries are already doing it. It's outrageous that Britain isn't.

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The Labour party still has to change

Despite the victory in Oldham, the next election won't fall into our lap. We must become the progressives' champion

by Ed Miliband

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/14/labour-oldham-progressives-champion

The first real electoral test for this Conservative-led government has revealed people's deep sense of unease about the direction in which our country is being led, and their anger at promises so solemnly made and yet so casually broken.

I believe that unease stems from misgivings shared right across Britain on the three arguments that will dominate the year ahead: the economy; the damage being done to the next generation; and the way we conduct politics. From the trebling of student debt, to capitulation on bankers' bonuses and a VAT rise squeezing working families, this government is showing it shares neither their values nor their hopes for the future.

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Oldham East and Saddleworth byelection: Trouble for the Tories

David Cameron faces the anger of the Conservative right after the party lost more than half of their votes in the constituency

Editorial

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/15/editorial-oldham-byelection-conservative-party

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This piece on Miliband is well worth a read:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/13/ed-miliband-new-labour

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This is brilliant. I was beginning to think this would never happen. Great timing Mr President - a brilliant challenge to the Tea Party mob, in the aftermath of Arizona.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/15/barack-obama-us-embargo-cuba

Barack Obama acts to ease US embargo on Cuba

President brings end to travel and finance bans in place since 1959 in move which will help his standing with American left

Barack Obama has eased America's long-standing embargo on Cuba, allowing many Americans to travel there for the first time and increasing the amounts that they can invest in the island.

Other changes announced by the president will allow all US international airports to accept flights to and from Cuba; at present, chartered flights are restricted to Miami and a handful of other airports. The moves represent an important step to rapprochement between the US and Cuba.

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Layer 407 . . . Citizens of Poverty, Washington DC, Chairman Cameron, Cuts, Reforming Zeal, Students, Trade Unions, Len McClusky, Unite, and Charlie Brooker

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Symbols of democracy, pinned up against the coast
Outhouse of bureaucracy, surrounded by a moat
Citizens of poverty are barely out of sight
Overlords escape in the evening with people of the night
Morning brings the tourists, peering eyes and rubber necks
To catch a glimpse of the cowboy making the world a nervous wreck
It’s a mass of irony for all the world to see
It’s the nation’s capital, it’s Washington D.C.

http://lyrics.wikia.com/Gil_Scott-Heron:Washington,_D.C.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgVZ4b9O34s

Gil Scott-Heron wrote this back in the days when Reagan was president. In those days it was inconceivable that a man or woman of colour could become president of the USA. So things have really changed in America, in Washington DC? Hell NO!

Listen to this excellent report on Radio 4, and ask why nothing changes.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wnyjb

In fact things get worse. Working class people in the city are even less able to live there these days. America is governed  by the rich, (supported by the middle class), for the benefit of the rich, (and the middle class). Any notion of social justice and reduction of inequality is completely out the window.

And let's not get smug about it in Britain, in London. But at least we still have some social housing, some decent public healthcare, some decent public schools. It remains to be seen how quickly this government can bring about irreversible change. They've given themselves till 2015, and are cracking on at a hell of a rate. See below.

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Chairman Cameron's regime is not a million miles from Mao

Anywhere you look in Whitehall, there's a secretary of state unleashing upheaval with reforming zeal

by Andrew Rawnsley

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/19/andrew-rawnsley-cameron-similar-mao

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Can anyone actually DO anything to prevent the neo-conservatives and the government from succeeding in their schemes?

Unions, get set for battle

We must join students in a broad strike movement to combat attempts to strangle the welfare state

by Len McCluskey

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/19/unions-students-strike-fight-cuts

Britain's students have certainly put the trade union movement on the spot. Their mass protests against the tuition fees increase have refreshed the political parts a hundred debates, conferences and resolutions could not reach.

We know the vast rise in tuition fees is only the down payment on the Con-Dem package of cuts, charges and job losses to make us pay for the bankers' crisis. The magnificent students' movement urgently needs to find a wider echo if the government is to be stopped.

The response of trade unions will now be critical. While it is easy to dismiss "general strike now" rhetoric from the usual quarters, we have to be preparing for battle. It is our responsibility not just to our members but to the wider society that we defend our welfare state and our industrial future against this unprecedented assault.

Early in the new year the TUC will be holding a special meeting to discuss co-ordinated industrial action and to analyse the possibilities and opportunities for a broad strike movement.

The bigger issue is winning working people to the conviction that the cuts can be stopped. It is vital to rebuild working-class confidence.

Unless people are convinced . . . that there is a coherent alternative to the Cameron-Clegg class war austerity, then getting millions into action will remain a pipedream. That alternative needs to be one the whole movement can unite around. A key part must be a rejection of the need for cuts. "What do we want? Fewer cuts later on", is not a slogan to set the blood coursing.

I would argue there is no case for cuts at all: the austerity frenzy has been whipped up for explicitly ideological reasons – to provide the excuse for what the Tories would have loved to do anyway, completing Thatcherism's unfinished business by strangling the welfare state. If the deficit is seen as a problem – it is not high by either historical or contemporary standards – a positive growth and tax-justice programme should be the main means of addressing it.

Kettling, batoning and mounted charges against teenagers have no place in our society.

And we should work closely with our communities bearing the brunt of the onslaught. That is why Unite has agreed to support the broad Coalition of Resistance established last month, which brings together unions and local anti-cuts campaigns from across the country.

The TUC's demonstration on 26 March will be a critical landmark in developing our resistance, giving trade union members the confidence to take strike action in defence of jobs and services. These are Con-Dem cuts, and this is a capitalist crisis. An attempt to blame Labour local authorities for the problem is a shortcut to splitting our movement and letting the government off the hook.

That doesn't mean Labour councils should get off free. There are, alas, Labour councillors embarking on union-bashing under cover of cuts, something we won't tolerate. Labour needs to understand that any social alternative to the present misery needs strong trade unions. And this is the moment when we have to prove ourselves.

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

Unions warn of massive wave of strikes

Unite general secretary Len McCluskey vows to work with students to fight government's austerity agenda

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/dec/19/unions-warn-massive-wave-strikes

The UK faces the prospect of widespread and co-ordinated industrial action in the new year, with the leader of the largest trade union today warning that it is "preparing for battle" with the government over its "unprecedented assault" on the welfare state.

The Unite leader's intervention comes as the prime minister is preparing for a key meeting with union leaders today. David Cameron has invited leaders of the biggest unions in the country as well as the TUC for Downing Street talks, although a spokesman for No 10 would not confirm this last night.

McCluskey is believed to be among those invited, but in a hard-hitting intervention in today's Guardian that puts Unite and its members at the forefront of the anti-cuts campaign he:

• Praised Ed Miliband for drawing a line under the party's Blairite past but called for a clearer alternative to the coalition's "austerity frenzy".

• Said student protesters have been treated as the "enemy within" in a similar way to trade union activists on picket lines in the 1970s and 1980s.

• Criticised police tactics of "kettling, batoning and mounted charges" on recent demonstrations.

• Said the trade union movement must not be paralysed by "anti-union laws" introduced in the 1980s.

• Called for a rebuilding of confidence in working-class communities that are likely to be the hardest hit by the government's plans.

• Accused the Tories of whipping up "austerity frenzy" in an attempt to complete "Thatcherism's unfinished business".

McCluskey's comments come amid a growing anti-cuts movement in the UK and across Europe, with strikes taking place in France, Spain and Greece.

In the UK this weekend protesters against corporate tax avoidance staged demonstrations in more than 50 towns and cities – under the banner of online campaign group UKuncut – arguing a government clampdown could bring in an extra £25bn in tax, greatly reducing the need for spending cuts.

Student leaders, who have organised four national demonstrations and scores of sit-ins to protest about the rise in tuition fees and the scrapping of the education maintenance allowance, are already preparing a fresh wave of protests and demonstrations in the new year.

McCluskey said the meeting in January had been organised by the TUC and would be attended by leaders of the UK's main unions. He said one of the first tasks was to "reach out" to the student protesters.

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For something a little lighter, try today's Charlie Brooker column:

How to cut tuition fees

We should teach only the useful stuff: scavenging, strangling and how to operate a water cannon

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/20/charlie-brooker-how-cut-tuition-fees

And if this doesn't start a proper debate about what education is actually FOR, then I don't know what will.

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Layer 375 . . . China, Obama, Cameron, Bush, Poverty, Defence, Gove, Education and the Washington consensus

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Heard on the radio this week:
-
"In America gun sales are going through the roof. There's a lot of anger out there . . . "

"In Brazil the newly elected president has said her first priority is lifting 20 million Brazillians out of poverty . . ."

David Cameron has told China's leaders that "they cannot shut down debate about democracy, urging them instead to recognise that political freedom, the rule of law and a free press represent the best path to stability and prosperity." Which is complete bollocks. If it's stability you want, then you look to China and not Britain and America. The type of stability we have here is between two competing versions of capitalism. So what? As for "prosperity" - I do believe it was Britain and America who were mainly responsible for crashing the world's economy and ruining millions of lives. It was only good old socialist nationalisation of those bad banks that prevented an even bigger disaster - an overwhelming disaster.

And it's China's economy that's been growing continuously and rapidly - lifting millions of their people out of poverty, just as millions in Britain and America are sinking back into poverty, homelessness and hopelessness.

Meanwhile, President Obama, touring Indonesia, said, "It takes open society and active citizens to reject inequality and injustice." Oh dear, oh dear. Has America rejected inequality and injustice? Does America really give a shit about inequality and injustice? Good try, Barack baby. Good try. Keep saying those words often enough and hope some of your folks start to embrace these tricky concepts.

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

Talking of Presidents, Jonathan Freedland had a good column in the paper today -

This bid to rehabilitate Bush must be defeated: he left a trail of destruction

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/nov/09/bush-left-a-trail-of-destruction

For Tony Blair it was sex with Cherie. For George W Bush, it's a turd from his pet dog Barney. In this season of memoirs the two leaders who so dominated the first decade of the century have been engaged in similar efforts to secure absolution by autobiography, to seek our understanding, even our forgiveness, by telling within two months of each other their story, their way.

Above all is the Blair-style insistence that, while some of the practicalities might have gone awry, his principles were sound and just.

For Bush, as for Blair, whether the actions of a leader were actually right or wrong is always secondary to the purity of his convictions. That he thought he was right is enough.

What this adds up to is a challenge for those on the centre-left in both countries and beyond.

So, with a loud voice, they have to stop this incipient attempt to rehabilitate Bush in its tracks. They need to remind the public of a record whose litany of failures is so inarguable, much of it can be evoked by names alone: Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo, Katrina, Abu Ghraib, Lehman Brothers.

They need to recall an administration that cherry-picked intelligence, that misled a nation to war on false pretences, that ignored expert advice that it didn't want to hear, that invaded a country with barely a modicum of planning, then declared Mission Accomplished.

They need to remind the world of an economic policy that gave billions to the very richest in tax cuts and turned a healthy surplus into a ballooning deficit, that allowed a deregulated Wall Street to run riot and to crash the global economy.

So yes, it's charming to read about Barney out for his morning stroll, leaving a mess on the neighbour's lawn. But that's as nothing next to the mess his master left for the world – and we should let no one forget it.

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

Mehdi Hassan wrote this:

Low pay keeps even more in poverty than the jobless

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/09/low-paid-work-never-route-poverty

Hardworking teaching assistants, dinner ladies, security guards and street cleaners are not scroungers. They are poor because they are poorly paid: theirs is not, to borrow an insidious phrase from the chancellor, a "lifestyle choice". The issue of low pay – or "poverty pay" in the words of the TUC – should, therefore, be at the heart of the debate over welfare reform. Does the coalition have a coherent plan to tackle in-work poverty; to reduce the growing number of "working poor"; to boost wages at the bottom end?

Eighteen of the 29 members of the coalition cabinet are millionaires; few have had to eke out a living on low wages.

Meanwhile, research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation suggests the gap between the minimum wage and the income needed to pay for a very basic household budget has widened. An adult working a 40-hour week on the minimum wage will earn £1,027 a month, which translates annually to £12,334 in pre-tax income. According to the foundation, however, a single person now needs to earn at least £14,400 a year to reach a "minimum income standard" and afford a socially acceptable standard of living.

Ministers are keen to discuss welfare and worklessness but have little to say about the chief cause of poverty: low pay. In opposition, Tory sources suggested the minimum wage would be allowed to "wither on the vine". The coalition's attitude towards supporting, and raising, the minimum wage, as well as improving the working conditions of the low-paid, will thus reveal whether or not we have a genuinely progressive government committed to helping the poor. These welfare reforms, on the other hand, are a distraction.

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Only Britain can beg for scraps from China and tell them how to behave

David Cameron says he will drum up trade in China, and tackle human rights. It is an exercise in bluff concealing hypocrisy

by Simon Jenkins

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/09/britain-beg-china-bluff-hypocrisy

How do you beg the Chinese for money and yet hold your nose and tell them how awful they are?

The British empire may be dead, but a nagging desire to rule the world, or at least tell it how to behave, is embedded in the genes of every British politician.

Cameron seems overwhelmed these days by the evils and injustices of other peoples.

Such grandstanding diplomacy may give Cameron a statesman-like buzz . . . but it makes no difference to the plight of the persecuted Chinese, except possibly to exacerbate their persecution. Meanwhile, it risks undermining whatever benefit to trade might come from the visit.

One day perhaps China will have enough of this posturing and send a return delegation to London. Before discussing British lingerie exports, the Chinese will profess a "deep concern" at Britain's prison overcrowding, control orders, housing benefit reform and [lifting the] cap on student fees. They will "raise awareness" of Abu Hamza's detention, the persecution of asylum-seeking children and house flipping by MPs.

Perhaps Cameron could lend Beijing his admirable Mr Gove, to advise on the dictatorial centralisation of the Tibetan education service.

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Simon Jenkins wrote this brilliant piece a few days ago -

Does Britain really need the military?

Our armed forces were made to fight in conventional wars and cannot meet the real threats to modern Britain. So why must we pay £45bn for something that's so obsolete?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/nov/05/does-britain-need-the-military-army-navy-raf

Six months ago I proposed in the Guardian that if Britain was short of money it should cut defence. I did not mean reduce defence, or trim defence. I meant cut it altogether. We are desperately short of money and absolutely no one is threatening to attack us now or in the foreseeable, indeed conceivable, future. Besides, as we have seen this past week, other ways of ensuring security make more pressing claims on us. We just do not need an army, navy or air force. So why are we paying £45bn for them?

Britain as a sovereign state is less "under threat" today than ever in my life, indeed less than ever in its existence. That is to the credit of recent generations of British governments. But this means we do not need a defence that has been successfully rendered obsolete.

The chief threat to me today, if at all, is from crime. Yet we are appalling at combating it. Obsessed with punishment, we neglect crime prevention. To guard me from unreal foreign attack the government spends £45bn, but to guard my home and hearth from crime it spends just £6.4bn, and badly. I am defended against crime, including terrorist attack, not by an army, navy or air force, but by vigilant acquaintances of the criminals, by an alert school and mosque, by the police and by the apparatus of intelligence, espionage and diplomacy.

The truth of the matter is that our defence spending is misdirected and extravagantly out of date. We are deploying cold-war weapons against occasional outrages by fanatics with no capacity to cause the state harm.

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Reported in the Evening Standard:

Michael Gove is bullying us into becoming an academy, says head

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23895366-michael-gove-is-bullying-us-into-becoming-an-academy-says-head.do

Brian Lloyd, head of Kelsey Park sports college in Bromley, said his school was the subject of a hostile takeover supported by the Government.

Hundreds of parents are campaigning for the all-boys school to be taken out of local authority control and turned into an academy run by the Harris Federation.

The move is supported by Education Secretary Michael Gove but the Tory-run council does not want to give up control of the school and neither does Mr Lloyd.

He said his school has been denigrated during the campaign, which he said is designed to be a “quick win” for Mr Gove. Mr Lloyd said: “The way in which this is being dealt with is very hostile. I would like parents to trust me and give me a chance. I have 1,000 boys in my school and nobody has complained to me about the way it is being run.”

He added: “We are a happy, successful, good school and every year we get some outstanding grades. But we are getting to the stage where we feel we are being pushed into a corner because Gove wants us to be an academy.”

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It's time to reject the Washington consensus

In Seoul, the G20 summit has a chance to ditch the dogma which has held back the developing world

by Ha-Joon Chang

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/09/time-to-reject-washington-seoul-g20

The G20 summit takes place this week in my home town of Seoul.

Now the initial crisis response is over, the G20 is looking for a mission. My fellow Koreans want that to be development, especially of the world's poorest countries. But before welcoming this agenda, we need to ask what kind of development the G20 should promote.

An obvious place to look for inspiration is the recent history of the host country. In my lifetime Korea has lived through one of the greatest development miracles – half a century ago, its annual per capita income was around £50, less than half that of Ghana at the time. Today, it stands at £12,000, putting it on a par with Portugal and Slovenia. How was this possible?

Korea of course did things that most people agree are important for economic development, such as investment in infrastructure, health and education. But on top of that, it also practised many policies that are now supposed to be bad for economic development: extensive use of selective industrial policy, combining protectionism with export subsidies; tough regulations on foreign direct investment; active, if not particularly extensive, use of state-owned enterprises; lax protection of patents and other intellectual property rights; heavy regulation of both domestic and international finance.

The G7 was always remarkably reluctant to recommend these "heterodox" policies and insisted that the "Washington consensus" package of opening up, deregulation and privatisation was the right recipe for everyone.

Korea today wants the G20 to focus on a lengthy shopping list of development issues: infrastructure; private investment and job creation; education; greater access to rich country markets by poor countries; more inclusive finance; building resilience to financial or weather shocks; food security; governance.

The Korean experience shows that sustainable export success over a long period of time, for which the country is justly famous, requires protection and nurturing of "infant industries" through selective industrial policy, rather than free trade and deregulation. And there is no mention of land reform and other measures for asset redistribution, which created social cohesion that made development in Korea sustainable.

If these gaps can be addressed, the Seoul meeting could mark a watershed – the start of a new, realistic and historically literate approach to development, after decades of misguided market fundamentalism.

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Layer 278 . . . Springwatch, Hazlitt, Essays, Familiar Subjects, Bomb Power, A New Treaty, Social Attitudes, Meditation, Zen and Sutras

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Lots of trees in blossom in the local streets and parks. The willows around the village pond have just started to leaf. It was a warm day of brilliant sunshine, and people suddenly looked relaxed and friendly.

The sunflower seeds
Put in pots two days ago
Are shooting already!

Plenty of water under the bridge since April 5th 2008 and the beginning of Oxzen's blog. Two long years. And still no completion of the review of 2009!

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In Our Time - Radio 4

Melvin's prog yesterday focused on William Hazlitt.

He was an original diarist/essayist/social commentator. No doubt he'd be a blogger if he was around now.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rtd0g#supporting-content

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00rtd0g/In_Our_Time_William_Hazlitt/

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

Hazlitt is best known for his essays, which ranged in subject matter from Shakespeare, through his first meeting with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, to a boxing match.

What is less well-known, however, is that he began his writing life as a philosopher, before deliberately abandoning the field for journalism. Nonetheless, his early reasoning about the power of the imagination to take human beings beyond narrow self-interest, as encapsulated in his 'Essay on the Principles of Human Action', shines through his more popular work.

Hazlitt was a 'Metaphysician', a philosopher and a "champion of the truth ". He had rebellious republican views.

Born Maidstone.
Father was a unitarian dissenting minister.
A political radical, he saw Jesus as a great moral teacher, not the son of God.

Dissenters set up their own higher education academies
Hackney was the centre of dissenting education - the New College.
He studied Shakespeare and contemporary politics. Also philosophy and painting.

He thought he had a really original philosophical idea - a key idea that our personality is not a given and fixed soul, and goes through stages of development. We have the capacity for imagination and disinterestedness.

He was enchanted by Coleridge preaching at his father's church - and felt in touch with new ideas and the intellectual life.

He became a journalist and essayist - or order to describe his philosophical insights.
Supporter of the French revolution and Napoleon.

Reacted against those who thought all action is governed by self-interest and sensual gratification. Said what drives us is a love of good, and not a love of self.

Wrote about anything that captured his attention and imagination. "He animated everything with extraordinary gusto." He chose familiar subjects and everyday life.

Was a great admirer of Shakespeare, and helped to raise his status in Britain.

Became infatuated with his landlady's 18 year old daughter, Sarah Walker.
Fell crazily in love - being a great romantic and idealist.
He was devastated to discover that his feelings for her weren't reciprocated.

When he wrote about his infatuation in a book called 'Liber Amoris', a self-revealing memoir, he was visciously attacked by his opponents and enemies.

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This is important -

Obama hails nuclear treaty as new era in relations with Russia

US and Russian presidents in Prague to sign agreement that will cut two countries' nuclear arsenals

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/08/barack-obama-nuclear-treaty-medvedev


Our giant step towards a world free from nuclear danger

This treaty shows the strength of America's commitment to global disarmament – and to our national security

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/apr/07/world-nuclear-danger-treaty-america

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The current edition of the London Review of Books carries a superb review, by Stephen Holmes,  of a book called Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State,  written by Garry Wills.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n07/stephen-holmes/salute

It's a truly terrifying account of the power that's wielded by the President of the USA, who can  blow up the world anytime he or she chooses. It's a real life version of Dr Strangelove.

He could launch the kind of devastating attack the world has never seen. He doesn’t have to check with anybody, he doesn’t have to call the Congress, he doesn’t have to check with the courts.

  -  Dick Cheney, Fox News 21 December 2008

In passing the 1946 Atomic Energy Act, Congress granted the president unsupervised authority over the bomb, ‘for such use as he deems necessary in the interest of national defence’. The ‘nature of the presidency,’ Garry Wills writes, ‘was irrevocably altered by this grant of a unique power’. An uninhibited ‘crisis presidency’ was now ‘poised for hair-trigger response to nuclear threat’ and, by virtue of the president’s ‘sole authority to launch nation-destroying weapons’, imbued with a kind of superhuman aura.

Wills calls this ‘Bomb Power’ and claims that it has excited fantasies of omnipotence in the White House and reduced Congress to a spectator. Among the public, it fosters a cult, elevating the president from commander in chief of the military to commander in chief of the nation, enjoining all American citizens to spring smartly to attention and salute.

Wills’s ruminations about ‘the great mystery’ of the president’s ‘power over the very continuance of the world’ may seem excessive, but he’s channelling, so he claims, Dick Cheney, who appears to believe that the president, by virtue of his control of the nuclear bomb, is freed from all constitutional – and even ordinary ethical – restraints. The meaning of Cheney’s boast to Fox News is clear: the existence of the greater power – to kill hundreds of millions of civilians – implies that of the lesser power, to torture suspected terrorists. Wills startlingly concurs with this view: ‘Cheney was right to say that the real logic for all these things’ – torture, indefinite detention without trial and so forth – ‘is the president’s solitary control of the bomb.’ His backing of the use of torture, extraordinary rendition and black sites where torture was practised all serve to demonstrate, according to Wills, that the ‘monopoly on nuclear war that was given at the dawn of Bomb Power was now extended to all aspects of war’.

It's a long article, but well worth a read.

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This one is definitely a good read, and a superb, thought-provoking review -

Stefan Collini

Blahspeak

    Unleashing Aspiration: The Final Report of the Panel on Fair Access to the Professions

    British Social Attitudes: The 26th Report
   
    An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK: Report of the National Equality Panel


http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n07/stefan-collini/blahspeak

It will serve early 21st-century Britain right if it becomes known as ‘The Aspirational Age’.

To those who can use the word ‘aspirational’ without wincing, this might seem high praise. It connotes endeavour, making something of oneself, trying – as an older idiom had it – to improve one’s station in life. Glossed in this way, the term might seem blameless, a near universal human disposition, but in the past few years ‘aspirational’ has been used to pick out something more specific, something symptomatic of a particular moment in the development of social attitudes in Britain. There is now, according to some commentators, an ‘aspirational class’, rather uncertainly located within a traditional hierarchical social structure, but composed of people who probably had working-class parents, who hope to have professional or managerial-class children, and who want more of ‘the good things of life’. But they want, it is said, to attain these goals without taking on the trappings and snobberies that historically went along with moving into a higher social class. An edge of ressentiment lurks under ‘aspiration’, not the old ‘Jack’s as good as his master’ kind, which acknowledged social position while claiming it was not the whole of life, but a more relativist kind, confident that ‘no one has the right to say what someone else ought to do or think.’ Any other view of the matter is damned as ‘elitist’. As these attitudes assert and impose themselves, we are encouraged to talk not merely of an aspirational class but of an ‘aspirational society’ at once insistently egalitarian and aggressively competitive.

Politicians of all parties are committed to giving the aspirational society more of what it is thought to aspire to; indeed, an inflationary tendency in our public language has seen these objects of desire elevated to the status of a ‘right’. This is partly the verbal flotsam thrown up by the market populism of the Thatch-Lab pact of the mid-1990s. But it also has to be seen as evidence of a deeper shift in the ways we conceive of our social relations. The emphasis on ‘aspiration’ is one symptom of the abandonment of what have been, for the best part of a century, the goals of progressive politics, since, as an ideal, the ‘aspirational society’ expresses a corrosively individualist conception of life. Three recent semi-official publications throw some light on the relation between this conception and the reality of contemporary British society.

Also worth reading is

Don’t Look Down
Nicholas Spice

    Family Britain 1951-57 by David Kynaston
    Bloomsbury, 776 pp, £25.00, November 2009, ISBN 978 0 7475 8385 1


Triumph of the Termites
Tom Nairn

    The End of the Party: The Rise and Fall of New Labour by Andrew Rawnsley
      Viking, 802 pp, £25.00, March 2010, ISBN 978 0 670 91851 5
    What Went Wrong, Gordon Brown?: How the Dream Job Turned Sour edited by Colin Hughes
      Guardian, 294 pp, £8.99, January 2010, ISBN 978 0 85265 219 0
    Broonland: The Last Days of Gordon Brown by Christopher Harvie
      Verso, 206 pp, £8.99, February 2010, ISBN 978 1 84467 439 8

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Can meditation stop me getting angry?

New evidence suggests that meditation helps anxiety and depression. But what about serial bad temper?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/apr/08/tanya-gold-meditation

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More from 'Zen' by Manuela Dunn Mascetti

Zen's preference is to commemorate the everyday and the colloquial.

Zen stories are known as sutras, a word initially used for the sermons of Buddha, but later also applied to the words exchanged between Zen masters and their disciples. Zen sutras present vivid pictures of the vast, multilevel, intercommunicating reality experienced by the enlightened. They are anecdotes of lives, facts, teachings, and events of real-life monks and nuns. As such, they are both ordinary and extraordinary, and allow readers to view enlightenment within a down-to-earth context.

The aim of Zen practitioners, and story tellers, was not to escape from the world, but to achieve the kind of detachment and insight that would enable them to become immune to worldly entanglements. At the same time, it would allow them to function in the world with immense compassion, as they strove to bring enlightenment to others.

Zen stories, sutras, parables, proverbs and sayings run like a clear mountain stream from the past to the present to quench our spiritual thirst and cleanse our minds. One of the things that made Buddha's teachings so radical was his emphasis on personal experience. He repeatedly encouraged people to "come and see" for themselves - not to rely on scriptures, beliefs or faith. Thus Zen developed its own unique contours and a set of beautifully tailored techniques for use in obtaining a direct experience of one's true nature - satori ("enlightenment" in Japanese).

ON MINDLESSNESS

An ancient worthy had a saying: "To look for the ox, one must seek out its tracks. To study the path, seek out mindlessness. Where the tracks are, so must the ox be."

The path of mindlessness is easy to seek out. So-called mindlessness is not being inert and unknowing like earth, wood, tile or stone; it means that the mind is settled and imperturbable when in contact with situations and meeting circumstances; that it does not cling to anything, but is clear in all places, without hindrance or obstruction, without being stained, yet without dwelling in the stainlessness.

"Just get to the root, don't worry about the branches."

Emptying the mind is the root. Once you get the root, the fundamental, then all kinds of language and knowledge and all your daily activities as you respond to people and adapt to circumstances, through so many upsets and downfalls, whether joyous or angry, good or bad, favourable or adverse - these are all trivial matters, the branches.

If you can be spontaneously aware and knowing as you are going along with circumstances, then there is neither lack nor excess.

TA HUI

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TEND THE OX

At all times in your encounters with people and responses to circumstances you must not let wrong thoughts continue.

In the old days Kuei Shan asked Lazy An, "What work do you do during the twenty-four hours of the day?"
An said, "I tend an ox."
Kuei Shan said, "How do you tend it?"
An said, "Whenever it gets into the grass, I pull it back by the nose."
Kuei Shan said, "You are really tending the ox!"

People who study the path, by controlling their thoughts, should be like Lazy An tending his ox, and then gradually a wholesome ripening will take place of itself.

TA HUI

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Layer 248 . . . . Wars of Words, Economics, Assassination, War in Helmand, Obama and the Dalai Lama

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Remember the letter to the Sunday Times from "20 top economists", none of whom the average punter had ever heard of, a fair gaggle of whom are currently based at the LSE?


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article7026234.ece

These guys were demanding an immedate slashing of the budget deficit that has been caused by the conspiracy of the City, Wall Street, New Labour, Old Tories and the Washington Consensus - which resulted in The Great Financial Bubble and its subsequent implosion. In other words - they want an immediate return to the rotten and despicable voodoo economics that got us into the shit in the first place.

Well - having waited for some time for a response from our more enlightened economists, it seems to have finally arrived.

Firstly, yesterday, there was this article in the Guardian written by the Master of Balliol College, Andrew Graham, no less:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/17/economy-debt-public-sector-recovery?showallcomments=true#end-of-comments

Beware the calls for hasty cuts

The would-be instant deficit slashers ignore the risks of triggering a double-dip recession

Their letter was seriously misleading – and their prescription for deficit reduction is not only unhelpful but potentially dangerous.

Far from being a problem, the public deficit is essential.

The result is a real danger of creating precisely the conditions for the double-dip recession that will scuttle the present signs of recovery.

In response Oxzen posted this on CIF -

There needs to be an all-out effort to help voters and and those with very little knowledge of economics and economic history to understand better the fundamental differences between the two main schools of economic opinion and philosophy. In other words the general public and the electorate really need to understand what they're voting for. Andrew Graham's column helps to do that.

With Osborne and Cameron you get a continuation of New Labourish 'compassionate' Thatcherism with regard to many social issues, but even more hard-line Chicago School ideology with regard to economics and finance. A hung Parliament that's controlled by 'reformed' Labour and the Lib Dems working together at least keeps open the possibility of the kind of progressive policies and reforms that this country and the world in general urgently need.

Today there's not one but two letters in the press, with signatures from about 60 of our more serious and sensible economists, refuting the ideas set out in that original letter.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/feb/18/spending-cuts-economists-deficit

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1252137/Now-60-economists-defend-Darlings-spending-cut-plans.html

NB Joseph Stiglitz (Nobel prizewinner) and David Blanchflower (who correctly forecast the financial crisis) are in this team!

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Other excellent columns in the Guardian yesterday:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/17/teenage-pregnancies-conservatives-numbers-mistake

Never mind the data. Teen parents simply must be bad

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/18/dubai-hamas-murder-uk-israeli-ambassador

This is no ripping yarn, but a murder to fan more conflict

The media may revel in a Mossad hit, yet Britain's response to a plot that could threaten its own citizens has been craven

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/15/hamas-gaza-israel-palestinians

Talk to Hamas

As Israeli soldiers we hang our heads in shame over last year's attack on Gaza's civilian population. Dialogue, not war, is needed

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/16/israel-left-cultural-political

The silence of Israel's liberals

The gulf between the country's cultural and political life will continue to widen unless the left wakes from its paralysis

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/17/torture-spies-judges-secret-services

We need judges to investigate our spies, not spies to berate our judges

To keep us safe and free, a new government must set up a judicial inquiry into the entanglements of our secret services

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/18/british-government-dubai-mossad

Israeli assassinations: passports to kill

Our government seems to be fine with letting the Israeli secret service wage its war with Hamas under a British flag

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/18/in-praise-of-bringing-it-home-tax-avoidance

In praise of ... bringing it all back home

The court of appeal has ruled that a multimillionaire should not be excused from a £30m tax bill. The times, they are a changin'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/feb/18/cooperative-conservatives-public-service-policy

Fig leaf of co-operative Conservatism

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Also well worth a read this week - an article by playwright David Edgar

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/16/bbc-top-talent-pay-excess

If only the BBC behaved less like bankers and more like my local council

The broadcaster should reassert its public service values, rather than aping the status-obsessed largesse of the City

I heard on the radio yesterday someone saying that the BBC is "trampling the aspirations of the private sector". Well - good.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/16/afghanistan-war-taliban-protest


Why is our anti-war outrage muted at this Afghan folly?

Even the doubters seem to be giving this military intervention one final chance, but there is little confidence it will succeed

As far as Oxzen is concerned, Obama has done the best he possibly could with a totally impossible situation. It's the same as the USA did in Vietnam when faced with a horrendous unwinnable war - grab as much of the available land area as you possibly can with a 'surge' of your forces, pretend to 'hold' the so-called government-controlled areas with local troops substituted for American troops, and then pull your US troops out pronto, knowing full well that within months or even weeks those indigenous Afghan troops will either melt away, join the rebels, or be defeated when the locals decide to come out of hiding and take over.

Here we have the Americans telling the Taliban they're massing forces and about to 'surge' into Taliban-held areas, having already said that American troops will be withdrawn from the country within a year ot two. So what are you going to do if you're a Taliban? Take to the mountains and hang out there for a while until the Americans and their allies have cleared off. I would.

Of course lots more lives are going to be lost, but this is the least-bad option available to Obama, who certainly wouldn't have started from where he is now given any choice in the matter. He was one of very few people who had the vision and the intelligence to vote against invading Iraq in the first place. At least have some faith in him now and give him some credit for being able to figure out the right way to go in the present circumstance.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/19/china-us-obama-dalai-lama

China complains to US about Obama-Dalai Lama meeting


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/feb/19/dalai-lama-obama-china

The Dalai Lama and the president

President Obama finally met the Dalai Lama. And once again, the activities of a softly-spoken monk roused China's anger

As far as Oxzen is concerned, President Obama and the Dalai Lama are two of the wisest and most spiritually and emotionally intelligent human beings currently alive on this planet. Their sanity and commitment to world peace are outstanding. Any face to face meetings they may have are merely signals to the rest of us that they have a warm and positive relationship. They no doubt understand one another from reading each other's books and speeches. For the sake of all of us it's to be hoped that they have other regular channels of communication through which they can discuss the world's biggest problems. Both understand very well that the creation of a more peaceful planet depends on dialogue and compromise rather than aggression and bullying.
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Layer 242 . . . More Stocktaking - January 09, Part One

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How much has changed since the start of 2009?

In January 2009 Oxzen said

[Obama and his team can] “start to redress the unbelievable inequalities that exist through the USA, through a modern-day New Deal - building decent housing for the poor, and decent schools for the nation’s children. They can also put funds into proper health care for those who need it, and decent hospitals and clinics for every section of the population.

No wonder the poorest sections of society feel a sense of excitement and anticipation. This can really happen. As Obama bravely said - what’s wrong with spreading the wealth around a little?” [Oxzen – Layer 109]

Simon Jenkins said -

If there is one sentiment that should have died in 2008 it is faith in the collective intelligence of Whitehall. The economic forecasters league table for 2008 was published last week and, of the 42 pundits listed, no public authority was in the top half. The Treasury came in at 37th and the IMF was bottom.

This is the mob that brought us City deregulation and the house-price bubble. Yet I doubt if a single one has been upbraided, let alone sacked. The entire Bank of England monetary policy committee is still in office - except for the only one who called the recession correctly, David Blanchflower, who has mysteriously been stood down.

Banking is a profession that excels at making money for itself. For 10 years it mesmerised Blair and Brown, who showered it with tax loopholes, offshore profits, PFI contracts and vacuous government consultancies. Ministers and bankers enjoyed a revolving Whitehall door.

Frustrated ministers are still expecting the City to rescue the economy in 2009, continuing to trust it with the public's money to an extent that they will not trust the public. They seem unaware that bankers do not rescue economies. They rescue banks.

…..................................................................

Radio 4 news had a lead item on a new survey which highlights the fact that the English white working class feels abandoned, resentful and betrayed. As well they might. They also complain about unfairness, lack of decent housing, and unequal resource allocation . . .

Oxzen said,

We could have [changed] these things years ago if this government had done its job properly and not squandered huge landslide victories and a massive mandate for change.

Franklin Roosevelt spoke about the Depression being caused by selfish and callous wrongdoing by financiers and bankers. How come our Prime Minister can’t bring himself to use similar language?

Hazel Blears was still in office and talking her usual shit.

Christine (Nessa) Gilbert was talking about getting rid of boring teachers – having been one of the main New Labour players in a decade of forcing teachers to work in ways that were the opposite of interesting, relevant or inspiring.

Oxzen said

According to last night’s edition (of Panorama) there are 750,000 Primary school children who regularly disrupt their class. Some of them have deep-seated social and emotional problems, whilst some of them are clearly reacting against teachers who fail to connect and stimulate, and a curriculum that’s for the most part unengaging and downright boring, meaningless and uncreative.

Alan Gibbons said in a letter to the Guardian -

It is not because dull people become teachers. Most student teachers start out enthusiastic. The reason far more lessons are routine than when I trained as a teacher is that now there is in place a rigid tracking and testing regime that remorselessly marginalises creativity and fun. The whole Sats apparatus has been grotesquely wasteful and demotivating. Children are most engaged when lessons are challenging and fun. Being constantly drilled for tests causes the very disenchantment Gilbert highlights.

The Guardian reported on £100,000 salaries failing to attract candidates for headship.

…..................................................................

The media was full of reports of Israel's horrendous and murderous attack on Gaza. Oxzen wrote -

There was a major demonstration in London this weekend against what’s taking place in Gaza. We learn from the media that demonstrators were treated roughly, and possibly very harshly indeed, by the police. Thank goodness there are still people, young and old, who are willing to speak out and put themselves on the line to show their anger at what’s happening in Gaza.

What happened to them is absolutely nothing compared with what’s happening in Gaza itself:

“Incessant bombardment, no electricity, no water, and the hospitals are overflowing - how Gaza was torn apart”, says the Guardian headline.

…........................................................................

Michael Meacher called for the government to nationalise the banks -

The banks are making monkeys out of the government. After hoovering up all this Treasury largesse to prop up their balance sheets, the banks are still - despite the crash they have now visited on the real economy - determined to save themselves rather than the customers they exist to serve.

The Guardian reported -

The leaders of France and Germany [have] issued a stark warning to Washington and the global financial community that Europe would lead the way in restructuring the global financial system and ushering in a more "moral" form of capitalism.

Both leaders stressed the need for Europe to play a significant role at the summit of G20 nations in London in April, when the group of leading and emerging countries will hammer out ways of reinforcing the architecture of global regulation.

Sarkozy gave a characteristically frank verdict on the role of the US in future negotiations. "Let's be clear: in the 21st century it is no longer a single nation who can say what we must do, what we must think," he said, adding that Britain's place in the economic discussions was with her European allies "and not just with the US".

Speaking at a conference in Paris on the future of capitalism, the leaders of the EU's powerhouse member states agreed on the need to make long-term changes to the old financial order, which Sarkozy said had been "perverted" by an "amoral" form of unbridled finance capitalism. Hailing the "return of the state", the right-wing market liberal said he hoped a more responsible model of global finance would emerge from the wreckage of the current crisis.

The Associated Press [said] that Sarkozy and Merkel are calling for a new form of capitalism.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the system "cannot continue as it is" and called for better-regulated financial markets.

Tony Blair called for a new financial order based on "values other than the maximum short-term profit."

Oxzen said -

[This] is interesting, since I don’t remember the bastard B-Liar saying any such thing when he was running the government. Talk about the wisdom of hindsight. Will Hutton said all of this in 1995, in The State We’re In, but NuLabour paid it not the least bit of attention.

….....................................................................

Oxzen wrote -

The Guardian had a wonderful centre-pages photograph yesterday showing an aerial view of the Olympic site in the vicinity of the main stadium - the whole place looking like a hive of activity. To the right of the photo you can see the high-level footpath/cyclepath that’s still open, and from which you can see clearly into the site. You can access this footpath from the River Lea, and I strongly recommend a visit to see the work in progress, regardless of what anyone may think about the Olympic movement and its ludicrous costs - this is a hugely important moment in the history of the East End.

…........................................................

The United Nations voted for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza (with only the USA abstaining), but the assault on the Palestinians continues, with no reduction in the shelling and bombing whatsoever. It’s Israel against the world, with only the USA abstaining.

15,000 people gathered in Hyde Park to protest against the Israeli bullying and butchery and shelling of schools. Demonstrators marched on the Israeli embassy, many of them carrying shoes for the purpose of throwing thereof. That Iraqi guy has really started something.

Naomi Klein is urging the rest of the world to treat Israel like the apartheid state it has become, and impose cultural isolation and economic sanctions.

…......................................................................

Social mobility and inequality seemed to be the buzz words.  Lots of talk about why very bright working class kids with decent exam results who still fail to get into the best jobs or enter the professions.

Liam Byrne MP [was] popping up everywhere, from Radio 4 to Newsnight, talking about the need to invest lots more in Nursery and Early Years education, in apprenticeships, and in measures  that will give the children of working class families better access to the professions.

Oxzen said,

“He’s also taking about ensuring that more jobs are created that have skills training attached. All of which is very welcome, but should have been tackled by NuLabour a decade ago.”

Polly Toynbee wrote about  the social mobility White Paper, and said,

Here comes startling news. The social mobility white paper published today will propose legislation of extraordinary radicalism - simple, fundamental and profound. It should have been Labour's guiding light for the last 11 years - but better late than never.

The government will create a new over-arching law creating a duty on the whole public sector to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor. This single legal duty will stand as the main frame from which all other equality legislation flows. Race, gender and disability injustices are all subsets of the one great inequality - class. It trumps them all. The gap between rich and poor in Britain is greater than in almost all rich nations, putting the UK with the United States among the most unequal.

This new duty to narrow the gap would permeate every aspect of government policy. Its possible ramifications are mind-bogglingly immense - as astonishing as Tony Blair's promise to abolish child poverty: it will make that pledge more achievable by 2020.  [Oxzen Layer 113]

…..............................................................

A Guardian editorial said -

Mr Obama intends to flood the world with diplomats rather than pilotless drones. But here too he will have to be selective. The search for peace in Palestine must come higher up his agenda. After what has happened in Gaza in the past fortnight, saying that Israel has the right to defend itself is not enough. The US has to reset the parameters within which the next Israeli prime minister, probably a Likud one, operates. Washington can do this. It provides the smart bombs, the X-band radar and the spare parts of the F-16s that Israel uses. Israel should be told: if you use our weapons, you play by our rules.

…........................................................................

So that was the first part of January 2009. And how much has changed?

Reconstruction hasn't even begun in Gaza. Israel won't allow in any building materials, and apparently neither will Egypt. I read somewhere that Egypt is even considering building its own wall to prevent access to Gaza. Clearly the Egyptian leadership has no more liking for Hamas than the Israelis, and therefore does nothing to assist with humanitarian aid for families and children.

The has been no proper 'New Deal' in the USA. As Joseph Stiglitz said this week, there should have been massive projects to improve public housing, schools, infrastructure and technology, and this hasn't happened. Neither has a national health service been set up. All that the health care proposals would do is allow more of the less well-off some access to affordable health insurance.

Bankers have continued to rescue banks, rather than the economy or citizens. The bastards have even continued giving themselves massive bonuses, even though they'd have no banks to work in had it not been for public bailouts using OUR money. As for proper nationalisation – forget it.

The English white working class still feels abandoned, resentful and betrayed, still lacks decent housing, and is even more likely to vote BNP as even more jobs disappear.

Christine Gilbert is still running Ofsted, and schools are still subject to a terror regime of management by targets and league tables, and payment by results. Children go on being excluded because they continue to crack up and not cope with schools where there is so much pressure, and so little joy or caring.

We're still waiting for any signs of a 'moral capitalism' appearing.

Obama appears to have made no impression on the Israelis. The theft of land in the Palestinian territories continues, more settlements have been built, the wall stays up, poverty and destitution in Palestine get worse.

And here's Jim with the weather, as Bill Hicks would have said.

More tomorrow.
…........................................................

Further to Oxzen's comments yesterday about whether millions of people were actually worse of at the end of the decade than they were at the beginning, both in absolute and in relative terms, I saw this today on the counter of my newsagent, on the front page of the Daily Mail -

A generation in denial: Millions face retirement poverty because they've remortgaged their homes and saved too little

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1249783/A-generation-denial-Millions-face-retirement-poverty-theyve-remortgaged-homes-saved-little-seen-pensions-dwindle.html

Millions of people approaching retirement are being hit by a crippling combination of large mortgages and no savings.
Those aged between 55 and 64, known as 'pre-retirees', have been unrealistic about their pensions and are living in a state of denial about their finances.
Parents are remortgaging their home to give money to their children to help them on to the property ladder. Others use their house as a 'cash machine', taking out money to put into a business, fund a better lifestyle or pay off debt.

In another blow to those approaching 65, research reveals that even pensioners who have saved have been hit by a 70 per cent collapse in their retirement income in the past ten years.

Two research reports make a mockery of the myth that older people are debt-free and enjoying themselves with extra cash to spend on holidays, eating out and other treats.

The Aviva research found there is 'a growing disparity' between the haves and have-nots, with some pre-retirees enjoying the good life - although they are in a minority.

Clive Bolton, a director at Aviva Life, said the research painted a 'worrying' picture of people approaching retirement who cannot afford to stop working.

Record numbers of elderly people are working, with this number set to climb. At present, 1.4million people over state pension age - 60 for women and 65 for men - have jobs.

Last year, a record number of pensioners were plunged into insolvency, with the number of 'penniless pensioners' rising faster than any other age group - up 44 per cent.

In 2008, 4,816 pensioners were declared insolvent. Last year, the number ballooned to 6,952, and it is expected to reach 8,000 this year.

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Greece

Today thousands of people are out on the streets in Greece, and there's talk of revolution. People are determined to resist government plans to cut wages and jobs at a time when the people can plainly see the profits of the bailed out banks going stratospheric again. Workers are saying that they won't stand back like the people of Ireland did whilst the government carried out the usual shock-doctrine catastrophe-capitalism "solutions".

Greece is an interesting country. It has a history of intervention by outside forces subverting and preventing a socialist movement taking power.

After liberation, Greece experienced a bitter civil war between communist and anticommunist forces, which led to economic devastation and severe social tensions between rightists and largely communist leftists for the next 30 years. The next 20 years were characterized by marginalisation of the left in the political and social spheres but also by rapid economic growth, propelled in part by the Marshall Plan.

King Constantine's dismissal of George Papandreou's centrist government in July 1965 prompted a prolonged period of political turbulence which culminated in a coup d'état on 21 April 1967 by the United States-backed Regime of the Colonels. The brutal suppression of the Athens Polytechnic uprising on 17 November 1973 sent shockwaves through the regime, and a counter-coup established Brigadier Dimitrios Ioannidis as dictator. - Wikipedia

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