Layer 513 . . . Radical Movements, Global Protests, Visiting Japan, Occupy London and Banning Bonuses

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In yesterday's G2 Paul Mason had a two-page article - very sober and measured, as you'd expect from such a senior and serious journalist - reflecting on the future of the radical movements that came to prominence in 2011.

Global protests: where does the revolution go from here?

2011's anti-capitalist protests and Arab spring made everything seem possible. But will 2012 bring real change? The key is turning rebellion into coherent political vision

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/31/where-revolution-goes-from-here

If 2011 felt, at times, like a rerun of 1848 with stereo headphones, 2012 is already exhibiting some of the features that made 1849 a byword for reaction.

In Greece, the euphoria one could sense among the indignados camped in Syntagma Square last June has given way to an angry silence; to fragmented, anomic acts and the struggle to survive.

And the fundamental economic problems remain unsolved . . . 

As a revolutionary wave breaks, historically, it also breaks up. During the Arab spring and the winter of occupying public spaces, it was impossible to ignore the similarities between the youth across borders: the way they spoke and dressed, the social media they used, the music they listened to.

So what remains of the revolution? As the events recede and solidify it becomes clear that 2011 was, above all, a cultural revolution: a loss of fear in the dictatorships of north Africa; a loss of apathy among educated youth in Europe, Latin America and the US. And the revolution consisted of this: a mass rejection of the values dominant during 20 years of freemarket capitalism.

Freemarket patterns of wealth distribution created the most potent political meme of 2011 – which was not the Egyptian slogan "Bread, freedom, social justice" but "We are the 99%".

Today, among the activists who made 25 January happen in Egypt – and among those who turned Occupy Wall Street or UK Uncut into global brandnames – you find a common reluctance to engage in the dirty business of power; of the actual, the specific, the non-exhilarating work of community organising, of elections.

In short, 2012 may be the year the counter-culture accumulated by young people in the good years, and deployed in what one has called "the senseless beauty of rebellion" in 2011, finally has to concretise into a programme, a coherent vision. If it doesn't – as is obvious from Budapest to Cairo – there are plenty of other forces with coherence. And in times of economic crisis people turn to them.

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Charlie Brooker in Tokyo

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2012/feb/01/charlie-brooker-tokyo-japan-games?intcmp=122

Another fairly serious and measured piece of journalism. Good one Charlie.

I'm looking forward to hearing about the culture shock Charlie experiences when he gets back to London. Everyone should visit Japan, at least once in their lifetime. Beg and borrow money if necessary in order to do it. It'll change your way of thinking - and in a good way.

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The salaryman's guide to Tokyo

Salaryman Kuzuhara-san leads Chris Michael on a tour of the hidden Tokyo where an army of office workers get to let off steam at the end of the working day

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2012/feb/01/salarymans-guide-to-tokyo-city?intcmp=122

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Tokyo: a walk down Memory Lane - video

Omoide Yokochō - Memory Lane - developed as the eating quarter after the second world war. David Levene checks out old school Japanese delicacies such as salamander, loach and viper wine. It's all good for the stamina

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/video/2012/feb/01/tokyo-memory-lane-strange-eats?intcmp=122

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10 of the most unusual hotels in Tokyo

Tokyo has an unusual hotel to suit every taste, whether you want to spend a night in a pod hotel, at an urban onsen, or stay with a Japanese family, says Richard Smart

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2012/feb/01/top-10-unusual-hotels-onsen-pods-tokyo

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10 of the best budget hotels in Tokyo

Tokyo has a good spread of hotels at great-value rates, from traditional ryokans to cheap and cheerful business hotels in the heart of Shinjuku, says Richard Smart

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2012/feb/01/10-best-budget-hotels-tokyo
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Occupy London's eviction is a failure for the church, not the camp

The protesters about to be removed from the steps of St Paul's could have helped the cathedral find a compelling new narrative

by  Giles Fraser

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/31/occupy-eviction-st-pauls-cathedral

It's time for all good people to decide where they stand - with the bankers and the Establishment, or with the protestors. There's NO middle way in this.

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With a ban on bonuses, Fred Goodwin could even have kept his knighthood

Even bankers want the bonus culture outlawed. It's a conspiracy to extract money from firms that properly belongs to others

By Simon Jenkins

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/31/ban-bonuses-fred-goodwin-knighthood

Very well said, Simon. This whole fucked-up bonus culture is a massive scam, and needs to be made illegal - at least for 'bonuses' above, say, £2,000, whether in cash or shares. Better to get rid of the whole of this nasty nonsense.

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Layer 510 . . . Revolutions, Start The Week, the Force of Ideas and the Power of Truth

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The following sentences are from a blog by Oguejiofo Annu which Oxzen quoted last January (Layer 426) -

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2011/01/layer-426-tunisia-martyrs-markets.html

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

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

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

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Little did we dare to believe that the downfall of the tyrants in Egypt and Libya would be witnessed before the year was out.

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Revolution

The whole of this morning's Start The Week on Radio 4 was on the subject of revolution.

On Start the Week Andrew Marr talks revolution. Wael Ghonim explains how social networks played a vital role in the Arab Spring. His Facebook page,'We Are All Khaled Said', which featured the death of a young Egyptian, inspired a new generation to fight oppression. Mary King, Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies looks back to earlier struggles in eastern Europe, and the journalist Paul Mason explores how far the worldwide economic crisis and growing inequality lie behind the new revolutions.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01b90br

WAEL GHONIM
The call for a mass protest on January 25th last year - the start of Egypt's revolution - began from the Facebook page, Kullena Khaled Said. It was a page created to highlight the fate of a young man beaten to death by the police in Alexandria. But as events changed across the Arab world, it became a focus for hundreds of thousands of protestors demanding an end to Mubarak's rule. Its creator was Wael Ghonim, a Google executive, who used his knowledge of technology and the love of his country to inspire a generation of young Egyptians to demand change.

Revolution 2.0 is published by Fourth Estate.

PAUL MASON
From Tahrir Square in Cairo, to the streets of Athens, to the avenues of Madrid, to Westminster and St Paul's, 2011 saw an uprising against regimes and systems of government almost unprecedented in world history. Journalist Paul Mason visited many of the places where revolutions were 'kicking off' and spoke to many of the new generation of revolutionaries. So who are these people and how significant was the world economic crisis in triggering such widespread social and political unrest?
Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions is published by Verso.

MARY KING
In 1989 revolution spread throughout Eastern Europe, toppling the dictatorial regimes in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Romania. Out of all of these countries only Romania overthrew its old regime through violent action. A lifelong advocate of peaceful protest movements and a civil rights activist with Martin Luther King, Mary King argues that armed struggle is ultimately less successful. She looks at the parallels between the recent Arab Spring and the Autumn of Nations two decades ago.

Quotes from the broadcast:

Technology has empowered people.

Media has been decentralised.

We're seeing processes of disorientation as the dominant neo-liberal economics model (globalisation) falls apart.

The degree of 'preparedness' of the people is the key to successful peaceful revolution.

The revolution in the USA is more about culture and behaviour - 'people power' - driven by the anger and the condition of the American poor and the poverty-stricken masses. (Paul Mason)

Governments are having to learn to listen, and can no longer ignore the will of the people.

Activists around the world have read the autobiography of Gandhi and have learnt the methods of non-violent struggle - from South Africa to Georgia; from the Ukraine to the Phillipines.

The revolution in Egypt was directly inspired by the Tunisian revolution. People saw what was possible! (Through direct non-violent action.)

Discontent has been driven by the breakdown of the neo-liberal economic model. (Paul Mason)

[The technology of] communication is phenomenally important for mass non-violent movements. (Mary King)

The majority of people are fed up with a world run by rich people FOR rich people.

The protests we're seeing are a reaction to the bankrupting of states.

People in some countries are finding it hard to survive due to food economics - caused by commodity price inflation and asset price inflation.

Many slum dwellers can't even afford bread and sugar.

Young people are the detonators.

Sustained long-term mass action needs established self-sustainable groups (students, unions, churches and mosques) and the use of general strikes. (Mary King)

The American civil rights movement learnt how to be effective from Gandhi.

The force of ideas will eventually prevail.

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In his autobiography (Page 47) Gandhi wrote about the power of truth amd morality :

"One thing took deep root in me - that morality is the basis of things, and that truth is the substance of all morality. Truth became my sole objective."

Also speaking truth to power . . .

In case you missed it, take a look at this previous blog about Paul Mason's book:

Layer 504 . . . Kicking Off Everywhere, Global Unrest and a Viral Revolution

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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 480 . . . Summer Was Cancelled, The Arab Spring, Libya, A People's Army, Comedy, Music, Intelligence, Musical Genres

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The rain lashes down; there are shouts and squeals from the children who are out playing peacefully in a nearby garden. Barely ten minutes ago I was contemplating sitting outside to read the newspaper. Then the rain hammered down in a sudden, heavy discharge - out of the blue, you could say. This is the way it's gone this summer, and with my son's birthday and the late Bank Holiday looming up I suddenly realise summer is over - before it ever started.

We had a perfect winter followed by three months of perfect Spring followed by three months of absolutely crap so-called summer. Can we now assume we're about to have a perfect autumn?

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This has been the year of the 'Arab Spring'. Revolutions have rolled back and forth across most of North Africa. Tripoli is for the most part now in the hands of the revolutionaries (the so-called 'rebels') - Libya currently has no government, and Gaddhafi has gone into hiding. It seems like only a matter of time before the mad colonel is captured and a new government is formed.

The revolutionary army in Libya has been something to behold - guerillas in everyday clothing moving fast in improvised vehicles - cheap pickup trucks cheaply converted into carriers of heavy weapons - powerful multi-barrel anti-aircraft guns used to devastating effect on regular army tanks, artillery and fortified positions. There's no way the regime and its regular forces could have anticipated being up against such an effective armed uprising.

The Tunisian and Egyptian non-violent revolutions must remain the models for all future uprisings of citizens against despots and their corrupt regimes, but the events in Libya must surely give food for thought to any current despots who think they can put down legitimate demands for change through the use of armed force.

Of course NATO air power made a huge difference to the speed with which the revolutionaries in Libya were able to move, but there are those who claim that the revolution would have taken place and would have been successful in Libya without the support of NATO, sooner or later.

It'll be interesting to see what level of support the citizens of other countries - such as Yemen and Syria - get from the Libyan revolutionaries - if and when it's required. Once the people of Libya have control over their own financial resources and oil revenues it'll be interesting to see how they use those billions - for their own benefit and also for the benefit of their Arab brothers and sisters.

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"Most good comics are obsessed with music." So said Mark Steele on Chain Reaction (Radio 4) this week. Interesting observation. Good comics (and humourists, such as Ian Hislop) are highly intelligent, witty people. But why should intelligence correlate with a love of music? This brings to mind a previous blog about Einstein and his obsession with music, which he played as a means of expression for emotional and spiritual release.

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2009/10/layer-200-art-einstein-music-human.html

Oxzen has also previously noted that most of the desperately dull, self-obsessed celebrities who wander on to Desert Island Discs clearly care nothing at all for music, and have no musical taste.

Personal observation also tells me that the people I enjoy spending time with all have good or great collections of music, and they need to listen to (and sometimes play) music every day of their lives.

At the top of the pyramid of self-actualised people are lovers of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, John Lee Hooker and BB King. You don't get to be seventy years of age and still play massive concerts that sell out all over the world and also achieve critical acclaim unless you have some special quality and something important to communicate. Intelligent lovers of good music recognise this, and respond to it.

Of course the likes of Cliff Richard are also still performing and making records - but that's another story.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b013gfnh/Chain_Reaction_Series_7_Kevin_Eldon_interviews_Mark_Steel/

Have a look at the previous programme featuring John Cooper Clarke here -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01390bf/Chain_Reaction_Series_7_John_Cooper_Clarke_interviews_Kevin_Eldon/

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Michaelangelo Matos is a name to conjure with. Mr Matos this week has a whole page in the Guardian's music and film supplement to tell us about musical genres - "an exhaustive catalogue of music's phrasemakers and trendsetters". And a right load of anoraky rubbish it turns out to be. There's a fair bit of stuff in it I didn't actually know - but then again, I didn't want to know it and have already forgotten it. I've spent years avoiding musical 'trends'.

There's also stuff in the article that's just plain wrong. The only interest was in finding out that, according to Matos, Rhythm & Blues "came to be" in 1947 "when Jerry Wexler began using it to denote the kind of postwar black pop that he went on to pioneer with Atlantic Records."

In the first place, the output of Atlantic was rhythm & blues and soul music - not 'black pop'. But the more important point is that rhythm & blues was being played way back before WW2 - by the likes of the sublime Louis Jordan, Cab Calloway, T-Bone Walker  and Slim Gaillard.

According to Wikipedia

Although Jordan began his career in big band swing jazz in the 1930s, he became famous as one of the leading practitioners, innovators and popularizers of "jump blues", a swinging, up-tempo, dance-oriented hybrid of jazz, blues and boogie-woogie. Typically performed by smaller bands consisting of five or six players, jump music featured shouted, highly syncopated vocals and earthy, comedic lyrics on contemporary urban themes. It strongly emphasized the rhythm section of piano, bass and drums; after the mid-1940s, this mix was often augmented by electric guitar. Jordan's band also pioneered the use of electric organ.

With his dynamic Tympany Five bands, Jordan mapped out the main parameters of the classic R&B, urban blues and early rock'n'roll genres with a series of hugely influential 78 rpm discs for the Decca label. These recordings presaged many of the styles of black popular music in the 1950s and 1960s, and exerted a huge influence on many leading performers in these genres. Many of his records were produced by Milt Gabler, who went on to refine and develop the qualities of Jordan's recordings in his later production work with Bill Haley, including "Rock Around The Clock".

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

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

As for T-Bone Walker, Wikipedia says

By 1942, with his second album release, Walker's new-found musical maturity and ability had advanced to the point that Rolling Stone claimed that he "shocked everyone" with his newly developed distinctive song upon the release of his first single "Mean Old World", on the Capitol Records label. Much of his output was recorded from 1946–1948 on Black & White Records, including his most famous song, 1947's "Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday Is Just as Bad)".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-Bone_Walker


On the origins of rock n roll Matos says this -

Radio plays a big role in the history of the term rock'n'roll itself – though it had been used in blues records dating back to 1922 (Trixie Smith's My Man Rocks Me with a Steady Roll, for example) and, as Preston Lauterbach's superb new book The Chitlin' Circuit makes clear, was basically everyday talk in postwar R&B: Roy Brown's 1947 Good Rockin' Tonight (later cut by Wynonie Harris and, on his second single, Elvis Presley); Wild Bill Moore's We're Gonna Rock, We're Gonna Roll (1947); the Dominoes' Sixty Minute Man (1950) ("I'll rock 'em, roll 'em all night long").

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/aug/25/origins-of-music-genres-hip-hop?INTCMP=SRCH

The late 1940's may have seen the birth of electric rock n roll, delivered by Gibsons and Fenders, but it had a very long gestation period, thanks to all those brilliant pre-war jazzers and blues people.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Ruth Griffiths

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

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

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

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

 the banks still serve themselves, not the public.

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

a genuine alternative to the cuts agenda.

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

making the poor pay the way for the rich.

This is an outrage and it has to be stopped.

UK Uncut has launched the Big Society Bail-In.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's make the banks pay for their crisis.

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

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A Jasmine Revolution?

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

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

by IronLion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Riots:

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

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

Then it spread to other cities and towns of Tunisia.

Soon they grew closer to the capital.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oguejiofo Annu
January 15 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Here's a little thing for Gove to consider:

The Devastation of Facts

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

 http://www.suite101.com/content/important-themes-in-hard-times-a112950
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Layer 421 . . . People Power, By-Election, Miliband, Obama, America, Wikipedia and Intelligence

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Tunisia

"A lesson in people power - from the Arab world!" said the Channel 4 correspondent. Non-violent demonstrations "led by the secular middle class" have deposed the President, who has now left the country.
The protests were over unemployment, rising prices, lack of proper democracy, and State repression.

Interesting lesson . . .

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By-Election Non Shock
So the Oldham and Saddleworth result turned out pretty much as expected. So what?

I watched the studio discussion after the results came in. The Tory talking head was decent, but witless, and said nothing of interest or impact. The Labour guy was also uninspiring. This was worrying - the fact that Ed Miliband thinks so highly of Sadiq Khan and yet he seems callow, unprepossessing and lacking in style as well as substance. Of course Ed thinks that Khan, being of minority ethnic origins, is a good choice to speak after an election in an area such as O & S. He's not. He's another young politico burning with ambition and guile, and not much else. At least that's what comes across from the TV. Not an attractive personality. Not a good speaker. Not convincing.

The LibDem guy was the most interesting in that he simply twaddled on about the LibDem vote holding up - which was clearly not the case. Why let him get away with it? It's perfectly obvious that it was tactical Tory voting that kept the LibDem vote somewhat respectable. Why bullshit about this? Why not just admit that  thousands of Labour voters who either abstained or voted LibDem in order to get rid of Brown and New Labour are now back in the fold? Why not admit that thousands of people, including lots of first-time voters, who voted LibDem in order to break the Lab-Con monopoly are appalled at what the LibDems have done within the coalition, and will never vote for them again?

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And then there was Ed Miliband giving a few comments this morning. Not good, Ed! Talking about voters being against the coalition on account of the VAT increases and tuition fees. For fuck's sake - these are the minor issues! He should be hammering the coalition at every opportunity about the vicious budget cuts, and their determination to shrink State spending at a moment when it's vital it should be broadly maintained (apart from legitimate cutting of waste and crap projects). He should be hammering them about their failure to do something about the bankers and their bonuses. He should be hitting them hard about their deliberate use of unemployment as a cost-cutting measure, and about the illegitimacy of this - especially as unemployment reduces the national income tax take, and requires more state spending on individual and family support. He ought to be beating on the Tories for their illigitimate radical changes to the NHS and the education systems - their Shock Doctrine do-it-all-in-the-first-six-months-without-any-consultation neo-conservative slash and burn tactics.

Wake up, Ed! You were right to stand for the leadership in order to draw a line under New Labour, and you're a bright and decent guy - but you really have to be better prepared for interviews and say the things that are really important, the things that are most likely to make an impact. Compared with highlighting the really big issues this emphasis on the VAT increase and on the decision to ensure students pay higher fees are just pinpricks in the coalition's thick skin.

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Simon Jenkins on Obama and America

The USA, as we know, is a monster. Who'd be the President of such a huge, violent, unmanageable country? What kind of people even want to be Senators and Congressmen?

Free speech can't exist unchained. US politics needs the tonic of order

If America is to speak in a way that heals, as Obama wishes, it needs the curbs and regulations that make freedom of expression real

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jan/13/free-speech-us-politics-obama

The ugly American is back. Can the handsome one do anything about it? When Barack Obama addressed a shocked nation in Tuscon, Arizona, yesterday, he deployed the only weapon left to a crippled presidency: the power of rhetorical cliche. He deployed it brilliantly.

The vitriol and inaccuracy of the campaign against Obama's public health reforms last year were like those against abortion and homosexuality. To many Europeans, the echo across the Atlantic came from a people isolated from the outside world and unable to handle today's social and scientific progress. The debate was infused with nastiness and xenophobia, as if the US was a land composed of tribes bred only to hate the outside world, and often themselves.

I was asked some time ago by a university-educated Texan, in the nicest possible way, what it was like to live in a country of "baby-killers" about to be "overrun by Muslim bad guys". I inquired where he had gained this bizarre impression of Europe, which he had never visited. It turned out his sole information about the world beyond America's shore came from Fox News. He was not stupid. But he and millions of people like him considered this source of news a sufficient window on the world. He genuinely thought American troops would soon have to save Europe from "the Arabs".

Fine. But how different is this from all those in Britain who  get their news exclusively or mainly from the Daily Mail, the Sun, the Express, etc? There are lots of people here who apparently believe that BBC news and current affairs are hopelessly biased towards the left wing. And who tells them this? Those newspapers, of course. Turn on any phone-in radio programme and just listen to these morons.

When the art historian and TV presenter Sir Kenneth Clark was asked what quality best defined civilisation, he did not answer with liberty or wealth or equality. He answered with courtesy, the framework of rules governing people's tolerance of each other, so their discourse might be creative. Most of the time, it is best for that courtesy to be informal. The best rebuttal of the politics of hate is a torrent of love – or, if not love, at least of facts.

But sometimes, as Obama said, there is a yearning "to try to impose some order on the chaos". If American politics is now going the way of wounding, not healing, it needs the tonic of order. It is the great paradox of democracy. Free speech cannot exist without chains.

Obama's full speech available here:

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

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Intelligence

I've finally got round to watching the recent BBC4 Horizon programme about 'intelligence'.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00x7cb3/What_Makes_Us_Clever_A_Horizon_Guide_to_Intelligence/

On the website the "key talent" for this programme is listed as the presenter, Dallas Campbell. Dear oh dear.

Dallas Campbell delves into the Horizon archive to discover how our understanding of intelligence has transformed over the last century. From early caveman thinkers to computers doing the thinking for us, he discovers the best ways of testing how clever we are - and enhancing it.

How "clever", eh?

No. Throughout this programme there's absolutely no attempt to differentiate 'intellect' from 'intelligence'. The script is so stupid it continuously uses the word intelligence when it actually means intellect.

IQ is of course the starting point - "the benchmark".

IQ testing brands us with "a single mark".
IQ testing was introduced in 1912. Almost a century ago, and we're still doing it.
How has our understanding of intelligence changed?
Sternberg was introduced and talked about "the testing 'industry'". Well we know all about that!
Someone called Gould talked about animal and insect 'instinctual' intelligence as being "automatic responses to cues"
Is this intelligence?
The presenter clearly thought not. He's obviously not even considered instinct as a true intelligence.
He was only interested in 'ability to solve complex problems'.
Chimps and bees were described as 'Intelligent enough to cooperate' - so there's some sort of inkling there about social intelligence, but it was quickly glossed over.
'When did we learn to think?'
"Humans alone plan ahead, dream and think. Other animals live from day to day."
How do we find evidence of the first recorded expressions of intelligence?
'Only humans create and can make sense of art.'
"Paintings and abstract art are expressions of thought."
The ability to store something outside the human brain.
Galton was convinced that intelligence is inherited.
He was a hero for Cyril Burt. Ah, yes. Dear Cyril. The Bogus Man.
He believed in Eugenics and 'good birth'.
Believed the poor should be prevented from having children. Hitler agreed.
Burt was responsible for the development of IQ tests and the introduction of the 11+.
He claimed to have tested separated twins - and claimed that genetics is responsible for 80% of IQ.
Only after his death were his results properly scrutinised.
'Clearly something was drastically wrong.'
Probably he never saw a single separated twin.
Robert Graham believed the gene pool was deteriorating. He hoped to use the 'sperm of clever men' to breed 'intelligent kids' with 'outstanding genes'.
His sperm bank was operational for nearly 20 years.
Three Nobel scientists were persuaded to donate sperm.
So are there inherited components of intelligence? No specific genes have ever been identified.
But a large part of intelligence IS inherited, according to recent research with twins. According to this programme.
Should we be engaging the minds of children in "something useful" ALL of the time?
Can other behaviours predict academic success?
Kids who defer gratification apparently do better at school.
Other variables? Parents? Upbringing? Wider environment?
"IQ tests seem to show we have an all-purpose thinking skill that can be measured."
Memory/intellect seems to be an all-round ability. (?)
What about a broader spectrum of skills, abilties and aptitudes?
Howard Gardner and his Multiple Intelligence Theory were eventually mentioned.
Gardner says we have at least 8 separate intelligences.
But there's NO agreed system for measuring them.
Writer and dramatist Bonnie Greer scored highest of a bright bunch of people when 'a wider range of skills' was considered. Joint top with a quantum physicist. But we never got to find out which skills she did well on.
Is a high IQ a predictor of longevity?
Can we use microwaves to alter the structure of the brain?
Could this be the dawn of a brave new world?


Lawks. Most unenlightening. Such a waste of a programme.

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Wikipedia

We've seen America's vitriol. Now let's salute Wikipedia, a US pioneer of global civility

For all its shortcomings Wikipedia, now aged 10, is the internet's biggest and best example of not-for-profit idealism

by Timothy Garton-Ash

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jan/12/wikipedia-us-pioneer-global-idealism

If Wikipedia's principal architect, Jimmy Wales, had chosen to commercialise the enterprise, he could now be worth billions – like Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. Putting it all under the not-for-profit umbrella was, Wales quipped to me, at once the stupidest and the cleverest thing he ever did. More than any other major global site, Wikipedia still breathes the utopian idealism of the internet's heroic early days. Wikipedians, as they style themselves, are men and women with a mission. That mission, upon which they boldly go, is summed up in this almost Lennonist (that's John, not Vladimir) sentence from the man they all refer to as Jimmy: "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge."

To suggest that this utopian goal could be achieved by a world wide web of volunteers – working for nothing, editing anything and everything, with the words they type immediately visible for the whole world to see – was of course a totally barmy idea. Yet this barmy army has come a remarkably long way in just 10 years.

We do not yet know if the shooting in Tucson, Arizona, was a direct product of the vitriolic incivility of American political discourse, as heard on talk radio and cable channels such as Fox News. A crazy man may just be crazy. But America's daily political vitriol is an undeniable fact. Against that depressing background, it is good to be able to celebrate an American invention which, for all its faults, tries to spread around the world a combination of unpaid idealism, knowledge and stubborn civility.

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I was intending to finish this blog with a piece on another TV programme about children under pressure, but that'll have to wait till tomorrow. Y'all come back now.

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