Layer 482 . . . Freefall, Stiglitz, Anti-capitalist Occupations, Eagleton, Economics, Villanelles, Douzinas, Greece, Tunisia and Gaddafi

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From BBC TV last night I learned that 600 Canadian soldiers died in 1944 in an area near Caen on the day that British and American planes bombed the city into oblivion. Obviously the bombs were not meant to kill allied troops.

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"Francis Reginald Scott, commonly known as Frank Scott or F.R. Scott, (August 1, 1899 - January 30, 1985) was a Canadian poet, intellectual and constitutional expert. He helped found the first Canadian social democratic party, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, and its successor, the New Democratic Party."

 - Wikipedia

"Scott's father instilled in his son a commitment to serve mankind, a love for the regenerative balance of the Laurentian landscape and a firm respect for the social order. He witnessed the riots in the City during the Conscription Crisis of 1917."

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A villanelle is a poem with only two rhyme sounds. The first and third lines of the first stanza are rhyming refrains that alternate as the third line in each successive stanza and form a couplet at the close. A villanelle is nineteen lines long, consisting of five tercets and one concluding quatrain.

"Dear Heather" is Leonard Cohen's eleventh studio album, released in 2004.

"Villanelle for Our Time", the album's 7th track, was recorded on the 6th May 1999, shortly after Cohen's return from the Mount Baldy Zen Center. It is an improvised jazz recitation of an F.R. Scott poem.

Villanelle For Our Time

From bitter searching of the heart,
Quickened with passion and with pain
We rise to play a greater part.
This is the faith from which we start:
Men shall know commonwealth again
From bitter searching of the heart.
We loved the easy and the smart,
But now, with keener hand and brain,
We rise to play a greater part.
The lesser loyalties depart,
And neither race nor creed remain
From bitter searching of the heart.
Not steering by the venal chart
That tricked the mass for private gain,
We rise to play a greater part.
Reshaping narrow law and art
Whose symbols are the millions slain,
From bitter searching of the heart
We rise to play a greater part. 

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UzvVOy0Dq8

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It's been an eventful month. 600 anti-capitalist camps have sprung up in cities around the world. Libya's civil war has raged to its end. Gaddafi has been captured and shot. The citizens of Tunisia are voting today for a new post-revolutionary government . . .

Some say there's a ridiculous number of competing parties seeking election for their candidates in Tunisia. Maybe - however - this is how an anarcho-syndicalist democratic system should work: through there being a large number of parties, or syndicates, representing every possible point of view, that must genuinely communicate, discuss, persuade, negotiate and compromise. How can this be worse than a two-party system in which both the parties espouse basically the same conservative ideology?

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Joseph Stiglitz is one of the most intelligent men on our planet. In 2009 he published a book called "Freefall - Free Markets & the Sinking of the Global Economy". (Now a Penguin @ £9.99) Stiglitz was the Chief Economist at the World Bank and won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001.

Paul Mason said this in the New Statesman -

"If anyone is going to produce a bold new economic theory and vision to guide the centre left beyond the financial crisis, it's going to be Joe . . ."

David Smith said this in The Times -

"Freefall is a spirited attack on Wall Street, the free market and the Washington Concensus."

Chuck Leddy said this in the Boston Globe -

"Freefall is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the roots of the financial crisis."

So the question you have to ask yourself is - do you NOT want to understand the roots of the financial crisis, the reasons for the banking collapse, and what should be done now and in the future?

"Freefall - Free Markets & the Sinking of the Global Economy". Penguin  £9.99

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Here's an extract from the preface of Freefall:

"In the Great Recession that began in 2008 millions of people . . . lost their homes and jobs. Many more suffered the fear and anxiety of doing so . . . A crisis that began in America soon turned global, as tens of millions lost their jobs worldwide - 20 million in China alone - and tens of millions fell into poverty. This is not the way things were supposed to be.

The Great Recession . . . has shattered illusions. It is forcing [many of us] to rethink long-cherished views. For a quarter century, certain free market doctrines have prevailed. 

This book is about a battle of ideas, about the ideas that led to the failed policies that precipitated the crisis and about the lessons that we take away from it. The battle between capitalism and communism may be over, but market economies come in many variations and the contest among them rages on. 

Managing the crisis is only my first concern; I am also concerned about the world that will emerge after the crisis. We won't and can't go back to the world as it was before.

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Terry Eagleton's another very clever guy, and a Distinguished Professor of English Literature. Hot off the press is a new book of his called, "Why Marx Was Right".
Yale University Press  £16.99

"The crisis has at least meant that the word 'capitalism,' usually disguised under some such coy pseudonym as 'the modern age,' 'industrialism' or 'the West,' has become current once more. You can tell that the capitalist system is in trouble when people start talking about capitalism. It indicates that the system has ceased to be as natural as the air we breathe, and can be seen instead as the historically rather recent phenomenom that it is . . . 

A form of social life can be perceived for what it is when it begins to break down. Marx was the first to identify the historical object known as capitalism  - to show how it arose, by what laws it worked, and how it might be brought to an end.

[As for] Marxism as a moral and cultural critique . . . Alienation, the 'commodification' of social life, a culture of greed, aggression, mindless hedonism and growing nihilism, the steady hemorrhage of meaning and value from human existence: it is hard to find an intelligent discussion of these questions that is not seriously indebted to the Marxist tradition . . .

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 This is from a major article in the Guardian G2 last Friday:

Occupy London: my nights with the St Paul's protesters
The Occupy London protesters have a kitchen, a tech-tent, a library – even a football team. But do they have any answers?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/oct/20/occupy-london-st-pauls-protesters

by Patrick Kingsley

In the short term, I learn quickly, these guys want to stay here. I arrive on Tuesday, the fourth day of the occupation, and already the place seems staggeringly well organised – and growing fast. Estimates vary, but yesterday some say there were 100 tents lining the steps of the cathedral, and along its northern face. Today there are around 150. Tomorrow, maybe 200.

 People always impatiently ask what the occupiers' "demands" are, and why collectively they seem unwilling, or unable to provide quick-fix solutions. These questions miss the point. First, there are lots of occupiers, all from different social and political backgrounds, who understandably need time to thrash out what it is they want to achieve together. The camp gives them that time. Second, if there's one thing that does unite almost all of them, it's their rejection of capitalism – although they are wary of how they couch this. Nevertheless, a huge "capitalism is crisis" banner hangs over the entrance to the site; they're not interested in making petty demands on a system they see as irreconcilably flawed. If anything, the camp itself is their demand, and their solution: the stab at an alternative society that at least aims to operate without hierarchy, and with full, participatory democracy. And to be fair, in its small way, it kind of works.

Wail Qasim, an 18-year-old politics student: "You can go to the ballot box every five years, but politicians don't actually represent your view. So the importance of this kind of space is in the way it brings together people to open up a dialogue about building an alternative." 

Blogger Steve Maclean, 31, is slightly more pragmatic: "We're forming a space where people can come together and crystallise all of what we think. Out of this more concrete ideas can be formed."

Bear, who co-ordinates the kitchen, runs catering at festivals. He, incidentally, as he picked his way over a few crates of donated fruit, gave me the most nuanced view of what he hopes the camp will achieve: "We're not going to create the answer here, but we can effect a change by leading by example, by showing people that an autonomous, democratic community based on social rather than financial cooperation can work."

The tech team is one of 15 autonomous sub-groups at the camp, each with responsibility for a particular area. There is a group that deals with the camp's donations; there are the food, and "university" teams; the police negotiation group; legal, which has enlisted a friendly QC, in case of future trouble; recycling; outreach, which distributes flyers about the camp, and is planning a politics workshop for schools; music, art, and entertainment; a cathedral liaison team, which is tactfully dealing with its increasingly wary clergy; and a media team, for dealing with people like me.

Almost everyone's involved in something and, crucially, there's no hierarchy – or there's not supposed to be. The teams meet once a day and agree things by consensus, in a discussion "facilitated" (but not led) by a different member of the group each time. Their decisions are announced every lunchtime at a pan-camp logistics meeting – once again ideally facilitated by different people, to avoid anyone gaining too much influence. But the main meeting of the day is the general assembly. Held at 7pm, it's attended by 400-500 people and aimed at political discourse and camp strategy.

Most of the occupiers don't think this is a problem that can be solved by a few tweaks to [financial] regulation. They think it's a systemic problem not attributable to a single group. It's a problem with capitalism.

At the back of the crowd, the suit standing next to me leans in to say something. "So what answers have they got?" is what I expect him to say. After all, he's a former investment banker now studying for an MBA. But Nikita – "yes, just call me Nikita" – surprises me. "Even if they don't have a solution, people still have the right to say 'no'," he says, pausing between each word. "It's only once people start saying 'no' that we will start thinking about what the solution could be."

Sleepless at Occupy London Stock Exchange - video


http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/video/2011/oct/20/occupy-london-stock-exchange-video

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Greece's lines now are clear
The Greek elite that tried to push through policies on the back of a deficit it fuelled stands alone and accused

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/20/greece-lines-clear-elite

by Costas Douzinas - Professor of Law at Birkbeck College

Greece is split in two. On one side are politicians, bankers, tax evaders and media barons supporting the most class-driven, violent social and cultural restructuring western Europe has seen. The "other" Greece includes the overwhelming majority of the population. It was in evidence yesterday when up to 500,000 people took to the streets; the largest demonstration in living memory. The attempt to divide civil servants (ritually presented as lazy and corrupt) from private sector employees (the "tax evading" plumbers) has misfired. The only success the Papandreou government can boast is the abolition of the old right-left division – replaced by a divide between the elites and the people.

It is as if the Greek elites desired the debt to orchestrate the wholesale destruction of the welfare state and transfer of public assets to private hands.

The Papandreou government will stand accused of incompetence and moral cynicism. Every authoritarian regime dreams of radically changing society. This government's mission was to replace care for others with indifference, hospitality with exploitation. They failed, and now only a thick blue line separates the elite from the outraged people.

Thursday's demonstration ended tragically with the death of a trade-unionist. The last vestiges of governmental legitimacy are gone and the government will follow soon. The democratic deficit from which political systems suffer everywhere is irreversible in Greece. The responsibility of the "other" Greece is to devise a constitution of social justice and democracy for the 21st century. This is what Greece can offer to the world.

Other articles by Costas Douzinas:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/27/greece-bailout-eu-neocolonialism


Greece is standing up to EU neocolonialism


The usurious conditions of the Greek bailout reveals Brussels' colonial mindset – but Athens is showing citizens can resist

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/15/greece-europe-outraged-protests

In Greece, we see democracy in action


The public debates of the outraged in Athens are the closest we have come to democratic practice in recent European history

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/01/austerity-europe-left-alternative


Austerity? There is an alternative – a new project for Europe's left


Our initiative aims to show there is an alternative analysis of the present situation rather than the misery and injustice of austerity


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/28/hunger-strikers-greece-asylum-seekers


These hunger strikers are the martyrs of Greece


Asylum seekers willing to die in the face of expulsion after shame and exploitation bear witness to a higher truth than life

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/07/greece-protest-democracy-government


Greek protests show democracy in action


A minister described Greek civil disobedience as 'anomie' – but it is legitimately reclaiming our democracy from failed institutions

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/31/europe-depends-shared-humanity-culture


In London and Athens, protesters are rekindling the true European spirit


The idea of Europe must go back to a democracy that resists fake economic orthodoxy and false monoculturalism

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Layer 365 . . . Anger, Protests, Solidarity, Debt, Austerity, Economic Illiteracy and the Defence Review

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Les Evenements de 2010

There was an excellent comment on CiF on the article by Mark Weisbrot about the events in France:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/oct/20/france-protest?

jlresq

Message of Solidarity with the workers and students of France from the exploited masses of the United States

We, in the United States, know better than any people in the world that the neo-liberal model is in equal measure: 1. exploitative 2. an abject failure.

Do not be fooled by The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and The Financial Times, which for decades have heralded the American economy and free markets as the greatest engine for growth and prosperity. For the wealthiest, perhaps, as their accountants steal all they can - but for the rest it's nothing but a death trap The workers, the poor, and the middle class lead lives of steep decline, unbearable debt loads, isolation. 60 to 80 hour work weeks, wages so low that room and board become a luxury, no health care, no education, starvation by obesity. And no voice for the average man or woman.

And yet we know the score - the bankers and the wealthy broke the rules then stole the wealth - and then you're asked to give them two more years of your life, to cover the costs of their uncontrolled avarice. Two years now, schools for prisons later. Say Never!

Here, we didn't take the streets and were routed - and now the anger of the masses is being directed against themselves - the morbid stench of fascism rising.

The revolt in France, in contrast, represents unified humanity, the hope of a decent world, of prosperity, shared wisdom, true solidarity.

Neo-liberalism cannot tolerate people who demand control over their lives - yet people who do not control their lives are slaves. Do not become pliant and defeated like the American working class, slaving away at Wal Mart for sub-poverty wages. Heed our warning, raising the retirement age is just the beginning. They will take everything they can – your union, pension, education, home, and life.

The streets of France are again the beach-head for humanity's resistance. Here's where we turn the tide against the unrelenting offensive of global capital.

People of France do not give in, you are standing up for 99.9% of the people in the world. We need you to win. Defeat Sarkozy! Defeat Greed!

Please spread the message of solidarity to the workers and students of France from the people of the United States as far and wide as possible!!!

Here's a link to the article:

http://www.indymedia.org/en/2010/10/942460.shtml

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Tariq Ali wrote this in G2:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/oct/19/protest-against-cuts-french

Why can't we protest against cuts like the French?

Many thousands have protested in France against cuts; we have a proud history of dissent in Britain, so why aren't we on the streets?

The French – students and workers, men and women, citizens all – are out on the streets again. A rise in the pension age? Impossible. The barricades are up, oil supplies running out, trains and planes on a skeleton schedule and the protests are still escalating. More than three million people a week ago. Hundreds of thousands out this week and more expected this weekend. And what a joyous sight: school students marching in defence of old people's rights. Were there a Michelin Great Protest guide, France would still be top with three stars, with Greece a close second with two stars.

What a contrast with the miserable, measly actions being planned by the lily-livered English trade unions. There is growing anger and bitterness here too, but it is being recuperated by a petrified bureaucracy. A ritual protest has been planned, largely to demonstrate that they are doing something. But is this something better than nothing?

Perhaps. I'm not totally sure. But even these mild attempts to rally support against the austerity measures are too much for dear leader Ed Miliband. He won't be seen at them. The rot of Blairism goes deep in the Labour party. A crushing defeat last year might have produced something a bit better than the shower that constitutes the front bench. Balls the bulldog might have gone for the jugular but he has been neutered. Instead, the new front bench is desperate to prove that it could easily be part of the coalition and not just on Afghanistan.

There is growing bitterness and growing anger in England, too, but not much else so far. It could change. The French epidemic could spread, but nothing will happen from above. Young and old fought against Thatcher and lost. Her New Labour successors made sure that the defeats she inflicted were institutionalised.

This is a country without an official opposition. An extra-parliamentary upheaval is not simply necessary to combat the cuts, but also to enhance democracy that at the moment is designed to further corporate interests and little more. Bailouts for bankers and the rich, an obscene level of defence expenditure to fight Washington's wars, and cuts for the less well off and the poor. A topsy-turvy world produces its own priorities. They need to be contested. These islands have a radical past, after all, that is not being taught in the history modules on offer. Given the inability of the official parliament to meet real needs why not the convocation of regional and national assemblies with a social charter that can be fought for and defended just as Shelley advised just under two centuries ago:

Ye who suffer woes untold

Or to feel or to behold

Your lost country bought and sold

With a price of blood and gold.

[. . .]

Rise like Lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number,

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you.

Ye are many, they are few.

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Jonathan Freedland writes about the root causes of the national debt, and a more enlightened economic strategy for dealing with it:

Osborne will escape public wrath if Labour lets him win the blame game

The myth needs nailing that Brown, not bankers, caused our economic woes. Then the case against cuts can be made

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/19/osborne-public-wrath-labour-blame-game

In France, they are already rioting on the streets. An estimated 3.5 million of them, according to one trade union estimate, from Lyon to Paris to Nanterre, either striking, marching or taking direct action in fury at changes to their pensions. Within hours, they had closed down schools, disrupted the travel network and prompted alarm about the nation's fuel supplies.

Contrast that with the scene that played out in London at the same time. Here, a demonstration against the cuts to be announced in full by George Osborne tomorrow brought a few thousand activists to wave their banners and chant their chants in Parliament Square. The closest they got to a threat was when Unison's Dave Prentis warned: "If the government doesn't listen to us today, they won't have heard the last of us." Storming the Bastille, it wasn't.

Why the difference? You could write a learned thesis on the contrasting political traditions of the two countries, how the French take to the streets at the merest tweak to their welfare arrangements. But there is another explanation that goes beyond British habits of passivity. Right now, even those people who fear and loathe the government's cuts don't blame the government.

If Labour's spending was so wildly out of control, why did the Tories promise to match their plans, pound for pound, all the way until November 2008? Why didn't Osborne and Cameron howl in protest at the time?

Could it be because things were not actually that bad? A quick look at the figures confirms that, until the crash hit in September 2008, the levels of red ink were manageably low. The budget of 2007 estimated Britain's structural deficit – that chunk of the debt that won't be mopped up by growth – at 3% of gross domestic product. At the time, the revered Institute for Fiscal Studies accepted that two-thirds of that sum comprised borrowing for investment, leaving a black hole of just 1% of GDP. If the structural deficit today has rocketed close to 8%, all that proves is that most of it was racked up dealing with the banking crisis and subsequent slump . . .

This is why Ed Balls was right to declare in his summer Bloomberg lecture – which remains Labour's most robust effort yet to redirect the finger of blame away from itself – that "it is a question of fact that we entered this financial crisis with low inflation, low interest rates, low unemployment and the lowest net debt of any large G7 country".

In other words, the position was relatively sound until the crash struck. The coalition would prefer voters forgot about that event; they mention it only rarely. But in this era of collective short-term memory loss, it is worth reminding people that the financial crisis was not limited to those territories ruled by Gordon Brown: it was global, it was systemic and it was caused by the larcenous greed of bankers.

Some will say that Labour, nevertheless, bore some particular responsibility – if not for the crisis itself then for Britain's exposure to it, not least through Brown's indulgence of the City and light-touch regulation of finance. Some can say that – but not the Tories. The only problem they had with Brown's deregulation is that there wasn't more of it.

The real source of the deficit: the colossal borrowing Labour had to undertake in order to prevent the crash of 2008 engulfing the entire economy. It had to pump money into the economy to prevent a recession turning into a depression, to prevent the spiralling unemployment, house repossessions and bankruptcies that had accompanied previous downturns, to stop the banks collapsing.

It will require great boldness for Labour to make this case. It amounts to rehabilitating the deficit itself, asking voters not to see it as some evil monster that has to be slayed immediately – but rather as the price that had to be paid to prevent unemployment tripling, interest rates galloping and the economy falling off a cliff. Lots of countries, from the US to Japan, have paid it with deficits of their own – or does the coalition think those are all Labour's fault too?

Only once this case is made can Labour go on to make its wider critique of the coalition: arguing that the government's response to the deficit is panicked and hysterical, that the surest way to enlarge, not reduce, the deficit is to cut in the midst of a downturn, that growth and jobs have to come first, that serious spending cuts are wise only once the economy is back to health.

This is the argument Labour has to win.

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Joseph Stiglitz, past recipient of the Nobel prize for economics. wrote this:

To choose austerity is to bet it all on the confidence fairy

The mystical belief is that a smaller deficit will lead to an investment boom. What Britain really needs now is another stimulus

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/oct/19/no-confidence-fairy-for-austerity-britain

The Keynesian policies in the aftermath of the Lehman brothers bankruptcy were a triumph of economic theory. In Europe, the US and Asia, the stimulus packages worked. Those countries that had the largest (relative to the size of their economy) and best-designed packages did best. China, for instance, maintained growth at a rate in excess of 8%, despite a massive decline in exports.

We should be clear. Most of the increase is not due to the stimulus but to the downturns and the bank bailouts. Those in the financial market are egging on politicians to ask whether we can afford another stimulus. I argue that Britain, and the world, cannot afford not to have another stimulus. We cannot afford austerity. In a better world, we might rightfully debate the size of the public sector. Even now there should be a debate about how government spends its money. But today cutbacks in spending will weaken Britain, and even worsen its long-term fiscal position relative to well-designed government spending.

Thanks to the IMF, multiple experiments have been conducted – for instance, in east Asia in 1997-98 and a little later in Argentina – and almost all come to the same conclusion: the Keynesian prescription works. Austerity converts downturns into recessions, recessions into depressions. The confidence fairy that the austerity advocates claim will appear never does . . .

Austerity is a gamble which Britain can ill afford.

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Simon Jenkins, as ever, is excellent on excessive defence spending:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/19/raf-target-cybernerds-drones-defence-review

Defence review: So, the RAF is going to target cyber-nerds with drones?

Years of capitulation to the defence industry has led to this absurd review, where 'threats' and solutions do not match

Sit down gently. Read Monday's list of "threats" facing modern Britain, and then read yesterday's list of how the coalition proposes to meet them. Next you should walk to the nearest wall and bang your head against it, hard, until you have counted to £45 billion.

The two lists simply do not match. The first so-called tier one threat is "attacks on cyberspace and cybercrime". The second is "international terrorism". The third is a foreign crisis "drawing in Britain", and the fourth is a natural hazard – "such as severe coastal flooding or an influenza pandemic". None of these constitute a military threat to the security of the realm.

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Layer 240 . . . Superbowl, The Who, Gil Scott-Heron, Joseph Stiglitz, Bankers, Finance, Fairness, Values, the Flood Tablet, and Nick Clegg

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Having somehow slept through most of the first half of last night's Superbowl, currently an annual ritual, I woke up right on the stroke of half time, just in time for the entertainment. Last year it was the incredible Bruce and the E Street Band blasting out the best mini-concert ever. Tonight it was the turn of The Who.

Performing on a circular stage, in the centre of the pitch (naturally) they did well. It was quite a spectacle. Radiating out from the stage was what turned out to be a huge circular “screen” - actually a series of radiating spokes of light strips, computer controlled, on which appeared various patterns and shapes synched to the music. It's difficult to describe, but the technology is very impressive (presumably very expensive) and must have been amazing for those within the stadium. Take a look, and have a listen -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PEM4uFcaF0&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La5uLfOVKaw&feature=related

I don't currently know who was playing the bass for The Who but if you listen on a good sound system (or headphones) you can tell it was impressive – almost up to John Entwhistle standards. But I still miss The Ox. It's not quite the same seeing just the two old guys, Townshend and  Daltry, taking their bows at the end, arms around one another.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oUb5iRZzpU&feature=related   -  acoustic Who

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDL8hhR2vKY  -  Springsteen and the band 2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uxJNSks2xo&feature=related


In case anyone's interested, the underdogs won – the New Orleans Saints.

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Poetry and Politics

Yesterday's Observer Review had three whole pages on Gil Scott-Heron, including its cover and pages 4-5. A man ahead of his time.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/feb/07/gil-scott-heron-comeback-interview

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/jan/24/scott-heron-new-here


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

Born in Chicago in 1949 Gil earned a writing scholarship to a New York university.

The “great pioneer of socially conscious soul and rap” has a new album out, called 'I'm New Here'.

Weirdly, and to his great credit, the guy who published Obama's two books in this country, Jamie Byng, has also republished Gil Scott-Heron's two books – 'The Vulture' and 'The Nigger Factory'. (See Layer 238)

“I was just taken aback by the voice, the words, the poetry . . . I had been raised on rock but this was just breathtaking. The seasoned voice, the wryness of the delivery, the level of irony and satire in the lyrics – the whole thing just blew me away. Discovering those songs was an epiphanic moment for me.”

Those songs include Winter In America, Lady Day & John Coltrane, Home Is Where The Hatred Is, Pieces Of A Man, The Bottle, Whitey On The Moon and The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

“As a teenager, his writing skills earned him a scholarship to the Fieldston School in New York and, from there, he went on to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, chosen, he later said, because it was where his hero, Langston Hughes, had studied. It was there he met Brian Jackson, his musical collaborator on many of the great songs that would follow.

Together throughout the 1970s, Scott-Heron and Jackson made music that reflected the turbulence, uncertainty and increasing pessimism of the times, merging the soul and jazz traditions and drawing on an oral poetry tradition that reached back to the blues and forward to hip-hop. The music sounded by turns angry, defiant and regretful while Scott-Heron's lyrics possessed a satirical edge that set them apart from the militant soul of contemporaries such as Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield.

"I still can't think of too many performers who have the intellectual range in their songwriting that takes in satire and social commentary apart from the early Bob Dylan and maybe the young Randy Newman," says Jamie Byng. "But there's also a great empathy there. Gil writes about the state of the world, but also about community, family, and the plight of the individual. And, he has never compromised. That's maybe a big part of the reason why his music never really crossed over. What he was saying was too raw, too truthful."

In more ways than one, then, Gil Scott Heron was, and remains, the great outsider, exalted by his devoted faithful, overlooked by the mainstream. His influence, though, is pervasive, though few and far between are the rappers that can make their lyrical gift, or its delivery, seem so effortless. "I work hard at it," he says, "just like I worked hard at getting my masters degree. It's not just something I sit down and do. You have to learn and keep learning."

"He sees himself as a live performer and a story teller," the album's producer Richard Russell told me last week. "Even in the studio, he brings this extraordinary energy with him, this natural, god-given ability to perform, to tell it like it is. The words just seem to flow though him.

He's a genuine artist in a way that most performers aren't anymore. He has no conception of time, no regard for money. He seems utterly free from the normal everyday burdens people carry.”

He's playing the RFH on 20th April.

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More On Emotions

Newsnight tonight had a feature on blubbing politicians (see previous Layer). It was pretty incoherent, and though I quite like the female presenter, her comments and questions left you wishing for Paxo to be on the case. He's a hard act to work alongside.

Also on the programme was writer and psychologist Susie Orbach, whose work I've always liked and respected, but even she had nothing new or interesting to say about the emotional cracking up we saw or heard about this weekend – Campbell and Brown.

There was some rubbish spoken about whether post-Diana we expect our leaders to 'show some emotion', and a slight suggestion that they can blub to order, as part of their repertoire, which is plainly ridiculous. Sure – Blair can put on a 'sincere' and 'emotional' performance when he thinks fit, but there's a world of difference between his bullshit and what we saw in Campbell's case, where the man had clearly just lost it under less than fierce questioning.

Like The Terminator, though, he'll be back.

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Start The Week

Radio 4 this morning gave us a good dose of the great Joseph Stiglitz, who was virtually the only economist to predict our great financial crisis. It's his birthday tomorrow.

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

His books include Globalization and Its Discontents, Principles of Macroeconomics, Fair Trade for All: How Trade Can Promote Development, The Three Trillion Dollar War,   Whither Socialism ?
 and 2010, Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy.

He said we now need a totally different model of capitalism, and a totally different attitude to regulation of banking and finance. Most recent economic growth was due only to the property bubble. Even he didn't imagine the extent of the bankers' arrogance and stupidity when they were gambling insanely with billions in order to make their huge bonuses.

But it's not just their mismanagement of risk he takes issue with. He points out that they clearly don't give a stuff about the morality of taking advantage of the poor and ignorant, or even the rich and ignorant.

He says we still haven't seen enough 'Keynesian' spending on infrastructure, technology and education. More needs to be spent in order to stay out of recession. (NB Cameron and Osborne.)

Incredible amounts of money are being wasted on the military – on weapons that don't work, to fight enemies that don't exist.

He also spoke about the insane level of salaries and bonuses in the financial 'services' sector – how the lure of big money is so great as to be irresistible, with the result that many bright and capable and creative people who could be of benefit to society are drawn into being hired hands in the scummy banking casinos in places like London and New York. They don't have the strength of character to resist the temptations and just do the right thing.

There was also a brief discussion about the 'John Lewis' model of employee-owned businesses and cooperatives.

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On the same programme Peter Brook spoke about the role of the theatre (and by implication the creative arts) in enabling us to see through the lies and bullshit into the true nature of our society, and see through to truth and reality.

Interestingly he also mentioned that Blair actually believes every word he says, so can he be called a liar? Obama is very different, so we can still have genuine hope, and not just pursue false hopes.

In terms of developing a culture of non-violence and tolerance – these have to be passionate affirmations of strong belief, and not just 'passive' attitudes.

A passionate criticism of bankers is needed as an affirmation of higher values.

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The Flood Tablet

Today's object in the History Through 100 Objects series was the so-called Flood Tablet – a clay writing tablet found in Northern Iraq, dating from 700BC approx.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilgamesh_flood_myth#Tablet_eleven_.28XI.29.2C_the_flood_tablet

The message of this ancient story is that we should abandon wealth, spurn property, seek our own survival, help others, and then we will in turn be rewarded. [Very similar to the Buddhist story of Siddharta?]

God brings 'the flood' because the world is full of violence. [Maybe this is what climate change is all about!]

This story marks the changeover from polytheism to monotheism. Belief in a single, rational, creative, spiritual entity.

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Radio Clegg

Nick Clegg was also on the radio, talking about many things, including his disgust at the MPs who were 'flippers' and deliberately made stacks of cash out of lying about their 'main residence' and getting wealthy at the expense of the rest of us. He pointed out that there were NO Lib Dem MPs caught up in this, and that Brown and Cameron have taken NO action against their flippers, even though it's quite clear that their capital gains have been property development at OUR expense.

It seems Clegg is keen to reduce the size of classes to 15 at KS1. Seems like a good idea to me – especially in areas where there are high levels of E2L and SEN. Interesting that very few others have paid any attention to this. I've even heard of headteachers who have increased the size of KS1 classes back to 30 on taking over a school – presumably in order to invest more resources in chasing SATs scores at KS2.

Clegg spoke convincingly about what he called shocking levels of inequality in this country, especially in inner cities in places like Sheffield. We should all care about having a fairer society, and working for a fairer country. [See other blogs on The Spirit Level].

He spoke passionately about the need for fairer taxes, and for the rich to pay more in taxes. Also – no-one should pay any tax on the first £10,000 they earn. For Clegg, fairer taxes are the most important policy issue.

Not much to disagree with there. Well to the left of NuLabour, I'd say.
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Layer 198 . . . Mansfield, Empathy, Duncan Smith, Work, Benefits, and Happiness

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Mansfield, Identity and Empathy

What makes an outstanding individual? (see also blog on Maslow - Layer 20  Fully Evolved Human Beings)

Michael Mansfield QC on Radio 4's Midweek today was promoting his autobiography and talking about the need to 'identify' with the people he's representing in court, as Libby Purves put it. He spoke about 'being able to get inside someone's skin”. Actually this isn't identification – it's empathy. You can empathise with someone who may be a completely different sort of character, living a completely different lifestyle, with very different attitudes and behavior, without needing to feel any sense of common identity, providing you have the ability to imagine what it might be like to be that person and providing you can understand why and how they do things.

Words are very precise, and we ought to make an effort to use them properly.

Empathy is the essential component of social intelligence – the ability to relate to others, to understand their feelings and motives, and to form positive relationships. Mansfield is highly successful in what he does, partly because he's able to make positive relationships with his clients, partly because he is able to empathise with them, partly because he has a strong sense of compassion, and partly because he has a burning desire to see justice done, and to make sure it's seen to be done.

He's also an effective, persuasive, convincing and fearless communicator. It's a powerful combination of social and spiritual intelligence that makes Mansfield outstanding in his field. No-one doubts he also has a very clear grasp of the complexities of the law, and all the professional knowledge that goes with the territory, plus first-class thinking skills and powers of analysis. But no-one even knows or cares about how successful he was academically. Education policy makers please note.

http://www.city.ac.uk/whatson/2009/9_sep/100909_mansfield.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/michael-mansfield-meet-britainrsquos-boldest-barrister-821976.html
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article6818799.ece
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Mansfield


The Quiet Man, Empathy and Social Justice

"On 7 December 2005, Ian Duncan Smith was appointed Chairman of the Social Justice Policy Group which was facilitated by the Centre for Social Justice. The group's aim was to "study the causes and consequences of poverty in Britain and seek practical ideas to empower the least well-off."

There was an amazing interview with Ian Duncan Smith in the 8.10 slot on the Today programme on R4 this morning, in which he talked convincingly with passion and conviction about the need to invest more money in the process of getting unemployed people into work. His point was that there's a tipping point that arises when someone is considering taking on a job and declaring earnings, since the system as it stands allows people to take home virtually no more when they take on a low-paid job than when they were unemployed but free and time rich. What does it take to make people go beyond the tipping point? At least that's my interpretation of what he was saying.

I've been thinking about this very thing for some time now. Our stupid politicians say they're desperate to get the unemployed into the habit of paid work, but they totally fail to take into account, and to factor into the equation, the loss of freedom and the reduction of time for personal and family pursuits when someone takes on a poorly paid and possibly boring job. Those things are actually worth something to the unemployed, and must be taken into account.

The answer therefore, if I heard IDS correctly, is to not ìmmediately reduce all of a claimant's benefits when they start work, so that their income becomes significantly boosted even when they're working for a minimum wage rate. I can hardly believe I heard a Tory saying this. I must go immediately and look this up on the internet, assuming IDS has published these thoughts elsewhere.

My own solution is along slightly different lines. When someone takes on a new job, especially if it's a dull and poorly paid job, neither the worker nor the employer knows whether they're going to be suitable and successful in the job, and during that period of uncertainty, when both are making up their minds whether the employment is going to be long-term, the benefits the individual has been receiving should not be cut. Neither should the new earner be taxed at the standard rate. There should either be a period of exemption from tax or the tax should be at 10% of earnings.

After a suitable transition period the new employee would lose the benefits income, since you can't expect double bubble indefinitely. By that time, though, relationships in the workplace will have been established, job prospects checked out, new workmates become pals, and the habit of getting up in the morning and commuting acquired. When faced with the financial, social, emotional and spiritual benefits of the new lifestyle versus returning to the old one, the vast majority are going to opt to stay in the job and not go back on unemployment and jobseeker benefits.

In a sense we'd be rewarding the unemployed just for making the effort to go out and start work, for giving up time for themselves, and for getting into the work habit – and why not? As things stand there's very little in the way or incentives or rewards for giving up one's liberty and taking on crappy, low status, poorly paid jobs, ie becoming a wage slave.

Faced with a choice of being a wage slave (and a very poorly paid wage slave), and a dropout, is it so surprising that so many choose to just drop out? Especially if they can make some money by ducking and diving. We clearly need to pay people to give up ducking and diving, or being a drug user, or being a slacker and a slob, or someone who just can't face the hassle of 'signing off' and losing benefits when they suspect they might be very quickly back on them but having to face a period of no income whatsoever whilst a new claim is processed.

I suspect very few politicians have bothered to look very closely at the predicaments and the lifestyles of the poor and the unemployed, let alone feel able to empathise with them, so respect! to IDS for spending time thinking of ways to actually help such people.

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

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

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2001/sep/03/conservatives.uk

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Sarkozy and the Quality of Life

"A great revolution is waiting for us," [Sarkozy] said. "For years, people said that finance was a formidable creator of wealth, only to discover one day that it accumulated so many risks that the world almost plunged into chaos."

"The crisis doesn't only make us free to imagine other models, another future, another world. It obliges us to do so," he said.

Measuring well-being would make France's economy, famous for its short workweek and generous social benefits, look more rosy.

"If leisure has no accounting value because it's essentially full of non-market activities like sport or culture, we put productivity below human fulfillment," Sarkozy said.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2009/09/14/2009-09-14_president_nicolas_sarkozy_wants_happiness_used_as_economic_indicator.html

It was interesting that Keith Floyd, as a bon viveur, and having written a brilliant book on French cuisine, bought a house in France and chose to spend a lot of his time there.

"Endorsing the recommendations of a report given to him by Nobel prize winners Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, Sarkozy said governments should do away with the "religion of statistics" in which financial prowess was the sole indicator of a country's [or an individual's!] state of health.

"For years statistics have registered an increasingly strong economic growth as a victory over shoperation and Development. "We need better measures of people's expectations and levels of satisfaction, of how they spend their time, of their relations with other people in their community."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/sep/14/sarkozy-attacks-gdp-focus

http://www.canada.com/Sarkozy+looks+bright+side+life/1995470/story.html

http://www2.canada.com/nanaimodailynews/news/story.html?id=1992519

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jD5xKXpv1EwzOwaST9Hphv8GD0AQ

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/09/15/sarkozy-wants-the-french-to-pursue-more-happiness.aspx

Layard and the Greatest Good – Tackling the Happiness Question 

Lord Layard is at it again this week:

"What is progress? That is the question President Sarkozy of France has posed to a distinguished commission. It is exactly the right question, and the future of our culture depends on the answer.

GDP is not the answer, and the Stiglitz commission – whose report, What is Social Progress?, is published today – is clear about that: progress must be measured by the overall quality of people's lives. At this point the commission identifies two possible approaches. One is to focus on how people feel: are they happy and contented? (This idea goes back to philosophers of the Enlightenment, such as Jeremy Bentham.)

The other is to focus on people's objective circumstances: do they have the capabilities (as Amartya Sen calls them) that are conducive to human flourishing? The commission does not choose between these approaches, and both are infinitely superior to GDP. But it matters greatly which way we choose.

It would obviously be convenient if we could identify one overarching good and, together with many Enlightenment philosophers, I believe that good is happiness.

There are many things that are highly desirable: health, freedom, love, and so on. But if we ask why they matter, we can have a discussion: if you are ill, you feel bad. The same if you are enslaved or unloved; it makes you unhappy. But if we ask why it matters if you feel bad and unhappy, there is no answer. It is self-evident.

So it is time to reassert the noble philosophy of the Enlightenment. In this view, every human being wants to be happy, and everybody counts equally. It follows that progress is measured by the overall scale of human happiness and misery. And the right action is the one that produces the greatest happiness in the world and (especially) the least misery. I can think of no nobler ideal.

So I propose a campaign for the Principle of the Greatest Happiness. This says that I should aim to produce the most happiness I can in the world and, above all, the least misery. And my rulers should do the same. This principle would lead to better private lives and better public policy. We desperately need a social norm in which the good of others figures more prominently in our personal goals. Today's excessive individualism removes so much of the joy from family life, work and even friendship."

I can't be bothered at this point to go over again the arguments in favour of making Zen enlightenment (as opposed to 'Enlightenment' enlightenment) our goal, and not the pursuit of happiness.

I'll just say this – people pursue money and material things because they believe those things will make them happy. Governments pursue the generation of money and the production of goods because they believe people need lots more of those things in order to be happy. It all depends on what you think is going to make you, and other people, happy. Chasing after happiness is dumb behaviour. There – I've said it.

Still, Layard's thing is 'happiness' – and it's his hobby horse, his political franchise. No point in arguing with him.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/13/happiness-enlightenment-economics-philosophy


Stiglitz and Wall Street

Nobel prizewinning economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote an excellent piece this week, on the anniversary of the Lehman Brothers collapse. It's worth taking time to read it in full.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/14/lehmans-one-year-after1

What went wrong? Have the right lessons been learned? I fear that our collective response has been mistaken and inadequate – that we may just have made matters worse.

Lehmans was . . . a consequence of flawed lending practices, and of inadequate oversight by regulators.

Bailing out the US banks need not have meant bailing out the bankers, their shareholders, and bondholders. We could have kept the banks as ongoing institutions, even if we had played by the ordinary rules of capitalism which say that when a firm can't meet its obligations to creditors, the shareholders lose everything.

Unquestionably we should not have allowed banks to become so big and so intertwined that their failure would cause a crisis.

[Our government] has failed to take adequate steps to restrict institutions' size, their risk-taking, and their interconnectedness. Indeed, it has allowed the big banks to become even bigger – just as it has failed to stem the flow of profligate executive bonuses.

After the fall of Bear Stearns, with rumours that Lehmans was next, the Fed and the Treasury should have done a serious job of figuring out how to manage an orderly shutdown of a large, complex institution; and if they determined that they lacked adequate legal authority, they should have requested it.

They appear, remarkably, to have been repeatedly caught off-guard.

After saying that they did not want to bail out Lehmans because of a concern about moral hazard, they extended the government's safety net further than it had ever been. Bear Stearns extended it to investment banks, and AIG to all financial institutions. Perhaps they were doing the best they could at the time; but that is no excuse for not having anticipated the problems and been better prepared.

Lehman Brothers was a symptom of a dysfunctional financial system and regulatory failure. It should have taught us that preventing problems is easier, and certainly less costly, than dealing with them when they become virtually intractable.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/14/lehmans-one-year-after1

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Carter – Obama – Racism

"The former US president Jimmy Carter has condemned as "dastardly" and "based on racism" a southern Republican's outburst during Barack Obama's big healthcare speech to Congress last week. Carter said the "You lie" interjection by Joe Wilson showed there was "an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president".

The 84-year-old said the case was part of a disturbing trend directed at Obama that has included equating the president to Nazi leaders. "Those kind of things are not just casual outcomes of a sincere debate on whether we should have a national programme on healthcare. It's deeper than that."

In an interview with NBC News, Carter attributed much of the conservative opposition to Obama to his race. "I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man.”

Dick Harpootlian, a former Democrat party chairman in South Carolina, said he did not believe Wilson was motivated by racism but added that his actions encouraged racist views. "I think Joe's conduct was asinine, but I think it would be asinine no matter what the colour of the president." Harpootlian, who has known Wilson for decades, said: "I don't think Joe's outburst was caused by President Obama being African-American. I think it was caused by no filter being between his brain and his mouth."

Surely they're both correct in their assessments.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/16/jimmy-carter-you-lie-racist

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Interesting comment on the Guardian film blog on David Lynch:

“There are too few living directors out there who can successfully translate the craziness inside their heads into compelling movie-making. Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock and Fritz Lang still inspire devotion from beyond the grave. Lynch, at 65, is only getting started.

Which is why it worries me that he's so stuck on meditation. I don't want his silence. I want his noise. So if anyone out there finds his voice, could you please hand it in?”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/sep/10/david-lynch-tribute-films-art


Chavez and South America

“I would be worried if they spoke well of me.”

Hugo Chavez –  Oliver Stone - South of the Border

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/sep/03/oliver-stone-south-of-the-border-hugo-chavez

Retirement

Max Mosley shared some interesting thoughts in an interview with Donald McCrae in the Guardian yesterday. He's agreed to stand down from the presidency of the FIA and his leading role in F1 at the end of this season, after being put under huge pressure by the F1 teams to do so, following the revelations in the New of the Screws about his sex life in S & M cellars and dungeons. (has anyone turned it into a Playstation game yet – Dungeons and Dragracers?)

He's a fascinating guy, and you have to say very gutsy (and wealthy) to fight back against the Screws and win his right to privacy case. His family background is unbelievable – Oswald and Diana Mosley as parents, involvement in his father's post-war Union Movement (successor to the British Union of Fascists) from an early age, and the loss of his only child, Alexander, from a drugs overdose, just a few months ago.

In the paper he's quoted as saying,

“Retirement will be a big relief. The work is absolutely non-stop and I always feel I haven't really done what I should've done. And I am tired of the battling. It's more or less, in different guises, the same problems with the same people and you're never going to finish. At a certain point it's time to stop. You've only got a limited amount of time left before you drop off – and do you really want to spend it solving other people's problems?"

“I'm dying to have a bit more time for myself. There are so many books I want to read and maybe I will write a book myself – because there is so much to tell."

That could be a book worth reading. I seem to be developing a strange regard for high-profile right-wing characters – IDS, Sarkozy, etc. Worrying.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/sep/15/max-mosley-formula-one-fia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Mosley

Today's musical treat, for no particular reason, is Seasick Steve:

http://www.foxytunes.com/artist/seasick_steve

click on the 'Live on Jules Holland' video. Doghouse Blues Boogie.

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

This version is probably even better, apart from the quality of sound on the voice PA.

Steve decided at the age of fourteen that the quality of life he had at home was so piss poor he'd do better to hit the road and go out on his own. There's never been a lot of money in playing the blues and boogie, unless you get very lucky. Steve's been materially poor most of his life, but rich in spirit and attitude.

Taoist Thought for Today:

Free of self-focused expectations, one is free of disappointment.
Free of self-focused motivation, one is free of regrets.

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