Layer 537 . . . A Summer of Sport, and a New Beginning

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After four years of regular blogging Oxzen has needed a sabbatical and some time off to refresh, reflect and take stock. It's been an interesting few months. 2012 has been an interesting year.

So what's been occurring?

As far as Oxzen is concerned, since the beginning of April - a great deal of watching television. March was glorious, warm and sunny, but the rain began at the start of April. It rained almost daily throughout April, May, June and July. The wettest spring and summer on record in Britain.

Not that I'm complaining. I'd had some vague idea that the summer of 2012 was going to be glorious and I'd spend day after day sitting and walking in endless sunshine. However, in many ways it was fortunate there was little possibility of spending a lot of time outside. It's been an amazing television summer.

From the beginning of April, and even before that, it was necessary to watch the many hours of live televised coverage of the Leveson Enquiry.

http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/

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

"The first part will examine the culture, practices and ethics of the media. In particular, Lord Justice Leveson will examine the relationship of the press with the public, police and politicians."

This enquiry turned out to be a fascinating carnival of scumbags and professional liars, all rehearsed to the nth degree by their highly paid advisors and spin doctors to find every possible way of avoiding giving truthful answers to the Enquiry's questions, and if all else failed, to simply say, "I can't remember" and "I don't recall".

Leveson was supposed to examine the culture and the ethics of our media, but the use of  words like "culture" and "ethics" in relation to the majority of our predominantly nasty, supine and obsequious media is quite amusing. For "culture" read "the habitual practice of distorting the truth and whenever possible distracting the nation from anything that really matters in our national life". For "ethics" read "willingness to lie, distort, trivialise and smear; tendency to spread alarm, confusion, mystification and fear".

Throughout this spring and summer the government of Great Britain has stuck doggedly to Plan A, with all the obvious and predictable consequences. The 'rolling back' of the State and the trashing of public services has made an appalling and unnecessary economic depression even worse than it already was. The Labour party is not wrong to say that the Tories have been cutting "too far and too fast", but they are very wrong and very guilty in their collusion with the very notion that our public services should have been cut AT ALL.

Any economist with half a brain (ie those who resisted the nonsense of the neo-conservatives and the Friedmanite Chicago School) understands that in a time of recession and a failure of the private sector to invest in the British economy you need to spend MORE on public services and not LESS if you wish to avoid deflating the economy and prevent a recession from turning into a depression. For fuck's sake - we learned that lesson back in the 1930s, thanks to Keynes and Roosevelt.

For some months now we've even had the International Monetary Fund - never a hotbed of progressive liberalism - gently nudging Cameron, Osborne and Clegg towards a Plan B, and the engagement of some common sense in their economic policies. For 'common sense' read 'lack of willful stupidity and ignorance'. Even the IMF, which runs the whole globalised economy hand in glove with the World Bank, recognises that the last thing the world needs is for one its important engines of finance and potential economic growth (ie GB PLC) to crash even further into depression at a time when the worldwide economy needs reflation and growth.

What the IMF may not recognise, however, is that Cameron and Osborne, and their little chum Clegg, are acting out of an ideological conviction that cares little for world stability and economic growth. The limits of their ambitions are to ensure the prosperity of the City of London's financial institutions, and therefore of themselves and all their fat cat chums -  protected, supported and even further enriched in the face of the shitstorm that's already happening.

Contrast this with the more sensible and honest conservative leaders of Europe and the USA (i.e. Merkel and Obama) who have a real concern with the proper long-term functioning of the international capitalist system. For fuck's sake - these European conservatives are even implementing a Tobin Tax on financial transactions. Obviously our Tories will have nothing to do with this tax since it's something their pals in the City have told them they must never do.

Meanwhile the banking scandals have continued, with Barclays being busted for their criminal manipulation of Libor, RBS busted for helping drugs cartels to launder money, and now Standard Chartered busted for their well-paid assistance to Iran to avoid financial restrictions and sanctions. Ethics? In Britain? In Westminster and the City of London? Don't make us laugh.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/25/brand-osborne-is-over-recession

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Now where was I? Oh yes - the summer of television.

Euro 2012 took place between June 8th and July 1st. England, as expected, were pathetic, and were knocked out as soon as they came up against a decent team. Spain, as expected, were the winners, beating Italy 4-0 in the final.

http://www.uefa.com/uefaeuro/index.html


Wimbledon took place between 25th June and July 8th, and ended with Roger Federer's record-breaking win over Andy Murray. Roger's a phenomenon, and almost an honorary Brit. We love his decency, self-control, thoughtfulness, modesty, and of course his brilliance.

http://www.wimbledon.com/en_GB/about_aeltc/index.html


The Tour de France took place between June 30th and July 22nd. Bradley Wiggins and Chris Frome rode brilliantly, and finished in first and second places. Mark Cavendish, the other star member of the first British team to win the Tour, was also phenomenal - even though his team's support for sprint finishes was necessarily minimal, since winning the General Classification was the stated aim of the team. However, Cavendish was strong enough and fit anough by the end of the tour to win a sprint finish immediately before the final Time Trial (won by Wiggins by a mile) and also able to win for a record 4 times in a row on the final sprint-finish stage on the Champs Elysees.

http://www.letour.fr/indexTDF_us.html


And finally - the Olympics. The games took place between 27th July and 12th August. Having been drawn into compulsive watching of the Olympics four years ago by the Beijing opening ceremony, it was anticipated that these 2012 Games in London would also be addictive and compulsive. And so it turned out.

http://www.london2012.com/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/08/london-2012-beautiful-utopian-collective-dream

Bearing in mind that Oxzen is not a sports fanatic, usually watching very little in the way of live football, cricket, athletics, etc, and doesn't subscribe to any premium sports TV channels - it's been a very odd and very enjoyable summer. And there's still 10 days of the paralympics to come. In short, it's been distracting, fascinating, refreshing, relaxing, often exciting, and a lot of fun.

I was about to write something about last night's abysmal and embarrassing Olympics closing ceremony, but on reflection I won't. No point in ending this particular piece on a negative and sour note.

Laters.

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Random tracks of the day, thanks to Media Player:

Papa's Got A Brand New Bag - James Brown
Turn, Turn, Turn - The Byrds
Happiness is a Warm Gun - John Lennon/Beatles
Blues to Elvin -  John Coltrane
Work  -  Bob Marley

Layer 517 . . . LibDems, the NHS Bill, and Banker Bashing

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Yesterday Oxzen was out and about on the sunny streets of downtown Bermondsey when . . . what should he espy other than a flock of Liberal Democrats, gathered together on a pavement, looking as if they were about to go a-canvassing with their clipboards and leaflets.

Having walked past them it was tempting to go back and accost them with a few questions:

"What are you people doing about opposing the NHS bill?!"

"When are you going to demand the bill is abandoned?"

"Why is your party allowing Clegg and Cameron to go ahead with the bill?"

"Don't you realise that the likes of Tim Montgomerie and his conservativehome blog have called for the bill to be abandoned? Don't you people realise your party is now well to the right of the Tory heartland?"

"Do you really want to see NHS services farmed out to make profits for the private sector?"

But I didn't.

Sometimes, though, you have to admire Simon Hughes:

Lansley should be replaced after health bill becomes law, says Hughes

Lib Dem deputy leader says health secretary should 'move on' to enable government to put NHS controversy behind it

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/feb/12/lansley-replaced-health-bill-hughes

A leading Liberal Democrat sparked renewed speculation about Andrew Lansley's future when he said David Cameron should find a new health secretary after the health bill becomes law.

The Lib Dem deputy leader, Simon Hughes, said he believed Lansley needed to "move on" in the second half of this parliament so the government could put the controversy over the NHS reforms behind it.

Hughes's comments will not be welcome in Downing Street, where Cameron has been defending Lansley in response to calls from the influential ConservativeHome website for him to be replaced and an anonymous briefing from a No 10 source saying the health secretary should be "taken out and shot".

Speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, he said: "I'm clear we need to move on from this bill. My political judgment is that in the second half of parliament it would be better [for Lansley] to move on."

When asked whether he was saying Lansley should be replaced, he confirmed that he was, but also accepted that he needed to be "careful about the political sensitivities of this coalition".

Although Hughes is not a minister, he is the most senior figure in the party to call for Lansley to be replaced.

He spoke out as Labour stepped up its attack on the health reforms, releasing an internal Department of Health letter saying too many patients were facing delays because trusts were failing to meet waiting time targets.

The coalition finds itself under fire on many fronts. The Mail on Sunday reported that McKinsey, which has received almost £14m from the government for work on the NHS, paid for health regulator staff from Monitor – including the chairman, chief operating officer and director of strategy – to attend lavish events.

A YouGov poll for the Sunday Times showed only 18% of people said they supported the NHS reforms. It revealed that 48% opposed them, with 34% saying they were not sure.

http://conservativehome.blogs.com/

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Why we need more banker bashing

Banks are the biggest scroungers of public money – solutions will not simply materialise if we don't keep up the pressure

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/07/why-we-need-more-banker-bashing

by Sunny Hundal

Banking reform has been pitifully weak. If the crash were to happen again tomorrow, the government would have to bail them out again. They remain leveraged up to their eyeballs; remain "too big to fail" and too inter-connected to each other so most can't be allowed to go bust. Without public anger there is no impetus to push banking reforms further, which the Conservatives are stridently resisting and Labour is still reluctant to push too far.

Banker bashing begs a wider question – if finance has become the life-blood of modern economies, why can't we exercise more control over such a vital industry? Consider this: we pretend that banks are private businesses that should be allowed to run their own affairs. But they are the biggest scroungers of public money of our time. Banks are lent vast sums of money by central banks at near-zero interest. They lend that money to us or back to the government at higher rates and rake in the difference by the billion. They don't even have to make clever investments to make huge profits.

Far from being the pinnacle of free market capitalism, banking is full of sorry executives who keep asking for more handouts to protect their deliberately bloated businesses. The solutions won't materialise if we go back to how things were. Public anger has grown because it is starting to dawn on middle England that while the rest of us are paying for the crisis, the people who caused the crash want to go back to 2007. Even the Daily Mail is starting to reflect this impatience. This recession is already longer than the 1930s and the stagnation will continue for maybe a decade. For from being over, the nightmare for the Goodwins and Hesters is just getting started. And quite rightly too.

Good comments by moretorybullshit and others beneath this article.
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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 484 . . . The Olympic Family, Fuckwits, Gridlock, Protests, St Paul's, Fundamental Change and Putting Down Roots

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The Olympic Family

What an unfortunate expression. What can it possibly mean? At last night's meeting/briefing for 'the Hackney community' (ugh) presenter after presenter kept talking about The Olympic Family. What they actually mean is - all of those entitled to drive or be driven along the "Olympics Only" vehicle lanes leading to and from the various Olympic sites: competitors, officials, bureaucrats, etc. It'll be interesting to see whether people like the Royal Family will become honorary members of The Olympic Family. These road appropriations will be in force from 6.00am to midnight every single day for more than three weeks. And if millions of regular road users can't be persuaded to either a) go away or b) just stay put at home during those weeks, then gridlock is guaranteed. And that's not speculation - that's official.

The highlight of the meeting was a woman in the audience who stood up to make the following contribution:

"A few years ago I was in Australia with my son at the time of the Olympics, and I went to spit on the floor. My son said, 'Don't do that - you'll get a £1,000 fine - and you can also get fined £1,000 for dropping litter'. And now I think this is a REALLY GOOD IDEA and we should DO IT HERE. This could really make the Olympics better for EVERYBODY."

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It turned out there was gridlock in the car park of the community centre where the meeting was taking place. There was a classic moment when it was announced that a car was blocking the entrance to the car park - and a description of the car and its registration number was duly read out. Nobody moved. We all know what happens in this situation - out of sheer embarrassment for being humiliated and for being shown up as a fuckwit you let the meeting move on, and after a decent interval you quietly get up and move your car, or whatever. "Don't worry", said the oragniser, "We'll all look to the front so nobody's going to turn round and look at you!" And then a guy stood up on the front row - and went out to move his car.

Doesn't bode well for the London Olympics.


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Will the anti-capitalist movement have grown stronger by the time the Olympics begin, and if so - with what consequences? Or will the protesters simply get hoovered up from the streets and detained for the duration?

I've just heard an item on the radio saying that the Bishop of London has said it's time for the anti-capitalist protesters camped outside St Paul's Cathedral to leave. In response to this, the Canon of St Paul's, Dr Giles Fraser, has apparently threatened to resign if the protest camp is forcibly closed down. Previously he said this -

"I remain firmly supportive of the right of people peacefully to protest. But given the strong advice that we have received that the camp is making the cathedral and its occupants unsafe then this right has to be balanced against other rights and responsibilities too. The Christian gospel is profoundly committed to the needs of the poor and the dispossessed. Financial justice is a gospel imperative. Those who are claiming the decision to close the cathedral has been made for commercial reasons are talking complete nonsense."

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This is from last Wednesday's Guardian:

The Occupy movement has lit a fire for real change


Establishment praise for the Occupy protests reflects anxiety at public anger – which needs to be turned into political pressure


by Seumas Milne


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/19/occupy-movement-fire-for-change


It's not hard to see why the Occupy Wall Street protests have gone global. What kicked off a month ago in relative obscurity – drawing inspiration from this year's Spanish indignados occupations and the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia – has now spawned protests in more than 900 cities around the world. The only surprise is it didn't happen sooner.


Three years after the banks that brought the west's economies to their knees were bailed out with vast public funds, nothing has fundamentally changed. Profits and bonuses are booming for financial oligarchs and corporate giants, while most people are paying the price of their reckless speculation with falling living standards, cuts in public services and mounting unemployment.


Coming as this crisis has done – at the end of an era of rampant deregulation that has created huge disparities of income and wealth, concentrated in the hands of the top 1% and secured by politicians bought by corporate interests – a backlash against those actually responsible was well overdue.


While the protesters were originally ridiculed as unfocused, or denounced by leading Republicans as "mobs", they are now championed by the media establishment – including the New York Times and Financial Times – on both sides of the Atlantic. Obama has made friendly noises, while his officials say they now plan to "run against Wall Street" in next year's presidential campaign.


In a climate where plutocrats like Warren Buffett are meanwhile begging to pay higher taxes, it's a clear sign of elite anxiety at the extent of popular anger and an attempt to co-opt the movement before demands for more fundamental change get traction.


Something similar seems to be going on in Britain where – against a steady drumbeat of lobbying scandal and escalating unemployment – police and the conservative Daily Mail have so far both given the City occupation outside St Paul's Cathedral a notably easy ride.


There's no doubt that these occupations echo both the spirit and organisation of the anti-corporate movement that erupted in Seattle in 1999. The tactic of occupying a symbolic public space (as opposed to strikes, sit-ins and marches) can be traced back to Greenham Common in the 1980s through a string of often dubious "colour revolutions" over the past decade.


But it's this year's drama in Tahrir Square (acknowledged with an Egyptian flag at the London camp) that has given it such evocative power. And while the 1990s anti-capitalist globalisation protests took place at a time of boom and speculative frenzy, today's occupations are targeting a global capitalism in the deepest crisis.


Which is why they have such a clear sense of reflecting the common sense of the age. What both movements now and then also share is an intense commitment to direct democracy and the influence of an "autonomist" opposition to engagement with mainstream politics – seen as a central part of the problem, rather than any solution.


In that, of course, they're in tune with millions. But when it gets to the point of resisting making direct political demands at all – an issue of controversy this week among US protesters, with some arguing "the process is the message" – that would surely limit the protests' impact.


The Occupy movement has already changed the political climate in the US. Some commentators argue that's enough – and it's up to politicians and wonks to turn the theme of economic justice into policy. But that would be to hand the initiative to the very system the protesters reject – and limit the scope for making common cause with others resisting austerity and corporate greed.


Not only that, but any demands need to be a good deal more radical than "independent regulation" if they're to make sense of the call for fundamental change and action to tackle the crisis: democratic ownership and control of banks and utilities, say, and wealth and transactions taxes for a start.


And as Naomi Klein argued to protesters in New York, the movement will also need democratic structures and institutions if it's to put down roots rather than fizzle and burn out. 


The form and focus of these protests already varies widely from country to country: in Chile, they originally concentrated on free education, but now the target has expanded to include banks and GM crops. Across Latin America, where the revolt against neoliberalism first began more than a decade ago, it has been alliances of social movements and political organisations that have proved most successful in turning protest into economic and social change.


But there is of course no automatic link between large-scale protest and any radical political breakthrough: Spain has been convulsed with occupations and strikes – and is expected to elect a rightwing neoliberal government in reaction to the socialist government's austerity. The populist right can take advantage of mass disaffection as well as the left.


But in just a few weeks the Occupy movement has helped bust open the political class veto on the scale of change demanded by the crisis – and now that opportunity needs to be seized.

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Major meetings are taking place today concerning the Euro crisis.

Seumas Milne wrote this excellent piece a couple of weeks ago:

The class interests at the heart of David Cameron's plan


The Conservative party is effectively the political wing of the City of London. No wonder it can't lead Britain out of this crisis


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/05/david-cameron-conservative-party-city-of-london


"Our plan will work", was all the prime minister offered by way of reassurance yesterday. But that judgment already looks flaky. And most people in Britain aren't reassured. Nor are Cameron and Osborne's old friends at the IMF, which yesterday called on countries able to borrow at low interest rates, such as Britain and Germany, to "consider delaying" their cuts programmes.


The IMF has argued Britain could afford to raise its debt by 50% of GDP without triggering a crisis. But the Tory leaders show no signs of budging. Osborne's "credit-easing" plan to boost bank lending to businesses simply reflects the failure of his Project Merlin to achieve the same thing.


Not even its most enthusiastic advocates imagine such an intervention will turn round the collapse in investment or demand. But still the government shrinks from using its control of two of the biggest banks to boost investment and lending directly.


Osborne instead came up with a new growth plan: make it easier to sack workers, while requiring them to pay £1,000 for an unfair dismissal hearing in an employment tribunal – refundable only if they win the case. There's no serious evidence that extending the qualifying period to claim unfair dismissal from one to two years will create jobs. 


Signed off by Vince Cable, it also reveals the limits of Liberal Democrat restraints on Thatcherite recidivism. But more than that, it casts some light on the class interests at the heart of this government's response to the crisis.


Cameron and Osborne's refusal to change course is partly driven by ideology, of course, and a determination not to weaken in any way the private grip on the major levers of economic life. But there's something else, more quintessentially Tory, about it.


"If this party is anything, it's the party of small business and enterprise", Osborne told the Conservative faithful in Manchester this week. But that's not the whole picture. As the figures published at the weekend by the Guardian underline, the Tories are first and foremost the party of the City of London and financial engineering. More than half the party's £12m donations in the last year came from the City and banking. Its most lavish donors were hedge funds, financiers and private equity firms: the very interests which drove the financial sector over a cliff in 2007-8.


Now, the Tories' intimate links to banking are hardly new – even if the funding grip has tightened. But a government in the hands of what is effectively the political wing of the City of London takes on a more dangerous significance when bankers and financiers are almost universally recognised to have both played the central role in creating this crisis – and in perpetuating it.


It's not just slashing the rate of corporation tax for banks, or delaying the milk-and-water Vickers bank ringfencing proposals till 2019, or refusing to clamp down on bank bonuses in the teeth of public hostility or vetoing a financial transactions Tobin tax. It's the refusal to intervene directly in banking and finance to drive recovery that most starkly reveals whose interests the government puts first.


None of this, of course, has stopped Cameron talking earnestly about being "completely dissatisfied with the banking industry's behaviour", or the need to "encourage good business practices", or his determination to "crack down on tax evasion". In fact, despite the Tory leaders' withering dismissal of Ed Miliband's call last week for a new "economic system", it's striking how much they have echoed some of his language.


No doubt they've registered the polling that shows most people agree Britain is dominated by "fast-buck capitalists" and "predators, not producers". The problem for the Tories is that those are also their most enthusiastic supporters and paymasters.


If Miliband really intends to break with the 30-year-old "Thatcher settlement", one Conservative cabinet minister told me this week, it would be a highly significant political shift. "But I don't think that's where the British people are," he added, "they just want us to sort out the mess of the last five years". As the crisis deepens, however, it's becoming ever clearer you can't do one without the other.

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Layer 478 . . . The Bigger Picture, Global Financial Crisis, Economic Policies and Will Hutton

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Last night the riots kicked off in Manchester, and continued in Birmingham and the West Midlands. The rest of the world looks on in amazement.

There's so much happening here that it would be easy to miss the bigger picture - the global financial crisis and the failure of economic policies. It's worth repeating - if we intend to create a better and more prosperous society it's crucial that we all pay attention to and understand the essentials of economics.

Thank heavens then for Will Hutton, who's been the wisest and most consistent voice on economics and finance since the start of the 1990s, at least. Anyone who wants to stay informed really needs to read his weekly pieces in the Observer. The latest column is one of the best-ever:

Our financial system has become a madhouse. We need radical change

As a new global crisis looms, and political paralysis worsens, genuinely bold solutions are required to overcome the malaise

The financial system has become a madhouse – a mechanism to maximise volatility, fear and uncertainty. There is nobody at the wheel. Adult supervision is conspicuous by its absence.

What is required is a paradigm shift in the way we think and act. The idea transfixing the west is that governments get in the way of otherwise perfectly functioning markets and that the best capitalism – and financial system – is that best left to its own devices. Governments must balance their books, guarantee price stability and otherwise do nothing.

This is the international common sense, but has been proved wrong in both theory and in practice. Financial markets need governments to provide adult supervision. Good capitalism needs to be fashioned and designed. Financial orthodoxy can sometimes, especially after credit crunches, be entirely wrong. Once that Rubicon has been crossed, a new policy agenda opens up. The markets need the prospect of sustainable growth, along with sustainable private and public debt.

As the IMF's chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, has suggested, if the options are public and private default, continuing bank weakness, economic stagnation (perhaps depression), or inflation, then the least bad option is to accept inflation, but to manage it within bounds.

Since inflation will happen anyway as governments seek the least bad way out, the choice in reality is whether to accept and manage it or not. Once debt is at a sustainable level and growth has resumed, then the world's financial system can be redesigned to avoid a repeat, and price stability restored.

This is the truth that cannot speak its name: as a senior financial policy official told me, even to raise it at home or abroad merely as an issue for debate is to invite universal disapproval. But truth must be faced. Britain should provide a lead – both for its own economic fortunes and to set the new international standard. As a minimum it should announce a new programme of quantitative easing, in effect printing money; insist the Bank of England uses the money it prints to buy the broadest range of private debt; and immediately replace the 2% inflation target with a target for the growth of money GDP – so getting Britain off the hook of its unpayable private debts.

The markets have issued a stark warning. The old common sense is killing the western economy and Britain's with it. We must now act to save ourselves.
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Layer 476 . . . World Markets, States of Emergency, Turmoil, Panic, Infidels and Union Sundown

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"World Markets In Turmoil" screams today's main headline atop the Guardian. And we're not talking here about fruit and veg. No friends, we're talking about the big one here - the next great meltdown of our wonderful globalised capitalist system. Wonder what's going to happen this time to protect the wealthy and the powerful? - what more can the wretched of the earth possibly suffer in order to protect the wealthy and the powerful? Wonder . . . and be afraid. Be very afraid.

Market turmoil carries echoes of August 2007


There was the stench of panic in the air again on Thursday. Are we heading for Meltdown 2?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/aug/04/market-turmoil-august-2007


Someone on Newsnight last night was talking about the inevitable collapse of the Eurozone - but not till after the dollar collapses, which will be any moment now.


Financial markets: State of emergency


In 2007 the world financial system suffered a near death experience. You could have been forgiven for thinking that it was happening all over again

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/aug/04/financial-markets-state-of-emergency


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For some reason, today felt like a day to listen to Dylan's "Infidels" album.

"An infidel (literally "one without faith") is one who has no religious beliefs, or who doubts or rejects the central tenets of a particular religion - especially in reference to Christianity or Islam."

How about belief in capitalism? Faith in 'the markets'?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infidels -

"Beginning with Infidels, Dylan ceased to preach a specific religion, revealing little about his personal religious beliefs in his lyrics. In 1997, after recovering from a serious heart condition, Dylan said in an interview for Newsweek, "Here's the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don't find it anywhere else...I don't adhere to rabbis, preachers, evangelists, all of that. I've learned more from the songs than I've learned from any of this kind of entity."

This is a truly great album, containing many great songs - Jokerman, License To Kill, I and I,  Sweetheart Like You, Don't Fall Apart On Me Tonight - all of which are fabulously beautiful and inventive musically and melodically, as well as lyrically. There are two tracks that are regular bluesy rockers as far as the music goes - Man of Peace and Neighbourhood Bully - but also have outstanding lyrics.

And then there's Union Sundown -

Well, my shoes, they come from Singapore
My flashlight’s from Taiwan
My tablecloth’s from Malaysia
My belt buckle’s from the Amazon
You know, this shirt I wear comes from the Philippines
And the car I drive is a Chevrolet
It was put together down in Argentina
By a guy makin’ thirty cents a day


Well, it’s sundown on the union
And what’s made in the U.S.A.
Sure was a good idea
’Til greed got in the way


Well, this silk dress is from Hong Kong
And the pearls are from Japan
Well, the dog collar’s from India
And the flower pot’s from Pakistan
All the furniture, it says “Made in Brazil”
Where a woman, she slaved for sure
Bringin’ home thirty cents a day to a family of twelve
You know, that’s a lot of money to her


Well, it’s sundown on the union
And what’s made in the U.S.A.
Sure was a good idea
’Til greed got in the way


Well, you know, lots of people complainin’ that there is no work
I say, “Why you say that for
When nothin’ you got is U.S.–made?”
They don’t make nothin’ here no more
You know, capitalism is above the law
It say, “It don’t count ’less it sells”
When it costs too much to build it at home
You just build it cheaper someplace else


Well, it’s sundown on the union
And what’s made in the U.S.A.
Sure was a good idea
’Til greed got in the way


Well, the job that you used to have
They gave it to somebody down in El Salvador
The unions are big business, friend
And they’re goin’ out like a dinosaur
They used to grow food in Kansas
Now they want to grow it on the moon and eat it raw
I can see the day coming when even your home garden
Is gonna be against the law


Well, it’s sundown on the union
And what’s made in the U.S.A.
Sure was a good idea
’Til greed got in the way


Democracy don’t rule the world
You’d better get that in your head
This world is ruled by violence
But I guess that’s better left unsaid
From Broadway to the Milky Way
That’s a lot of territory indeed
And a man’s gonna do what he has to do
When he’s got a hungry mouth to feed


Well, it’s sundown on the union
And what’s made in the U.S.A.
Sure was a good idea
’Til greed got in the way


Copyright © 1983 by Special Rider Music


Nearly 30 years old, and as relevant today as it was back then. Only more so.


The sun's taken longer to go down than Bob may have imagined when he wrote this song - thanks to the development of computers and the Internet, thanks to the chicanery of the bankers, thanks to Reaganomics and the consolidation of wealth in the hands of the already wealthy, thanks to the growth of China, India, Brazil, etc. But going down - it most certainly is.


It's not dark yet . . .


 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZgBhyU4IvQ


http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/not-dark-yet


. . . but it's getting there.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpRKstHl7Y0&NR=1

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Layer 450 . . . Class War, Economic Fundamentalists, The City's Mafiosi, Pambazuka, Changing the World and Blessed Unrest

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It seemed strange to be blogging about the competing economic theories of Keynes and Friedman recently (Layer 447) - as if anyone's really interested? However, Michael Tomasky wrote this piece for the Guardian last week -

So this is the Tea Party's endgame. No government

In 1995 Clinton and Gingrich were always going to deal. But these economic fundamentalists don't want compromise

As the liberal commentator Jonathan Chait observed last year, America is in a new culture war, but "this culture war is not over social issues – it is over economic ones".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/feb/23/tea-party-endgame-no-government

Over the last 30 years – during which time overall union membership has gone from about 25% of the workforce to barely 11% - the richest 1% have seen their pre-tax incomes nearly quadruple while median earners have stayed flat.

Were the Democrats cleverer and braver, citizens would broadly know these facts. But most Americans have no idea of the massive class war – stealing from the bottom and the middle and giving to the very top – that has been waged over the last three decades. Instead, they appear to know, or "know", that Barack Obama has governed from the hard left, that unions are piggy, and that an uprising of Tea Party patriots has been all that stands between the good old US of A and a kind of Muslim-Marxism state.

In such an atmosphere, the right can move with impunity.

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Why omerta still suits the City's mafiosi

Banks will begin the process of reform when their employees aren't penalised for speaking out

by Nick Cohen

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/20/nick-cohen-banks-reform-whistleblowers

'Why are we so hated?" the City asks with increasing nervousness as it begins to realise that its gaudy allure is fading. "Because you wrecked our prosperity and then stole our taxes," is the short answer it will hear during the coming weeks as bankers pick up £6bn in bonuses.

The national consensus holds that the City is being "rewarded for failure" and, for once, the national consensus is right. Most understand, too, that in the cases of RBS, Halifax and the other bailed-out banks, the financiers are engaged in a theft of public money beyond the dreams of a mafia crime family. What we must grasp if there is to be serious reform is that the bonuses are rewards for cowards as well as for failures.

Inside Job opens this week and the title of Charles Ferguson's intelligent and quietly angry documentary on the causes of the crash hints at the destructive effects of fear and secrecy. The world does not experience a financial meltdown without insiders realising that the system is going haywire.

We need to break up a system that rewards those who bite their tongues because it suits their private interests and punishes those who speak their minds in the public interest. We need to recognise that we live in a half-free country, where we have freedom of speech at home but not at work; where people pride themselves on their freedom to criticise politicians, but dare not criticise their employers.

A minimum programme would include the outlawing of gagging clauses in redundancy settlements, the lifting of the limits on the compensation whistleblowers can receive from employment tribunals, a ban on financial institutions using the libel law, the appointment of compulsory worker-directors to corporate boards and the establishment of a statutory regulatory body that can punish bankers who fail to protest against misconduct.

The banks are as great a threat to our national security as a foreign enemy. We collect intelligence on hostile powers. Why should we not collect it on the hostile City?

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Pambazuka News

http://pambazuka.org/en/

Egypt and the revolution in our minds

by Nigel C. Gibson - activist and scholar

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/70972


Egypt: How to overthrow a dictator

by Samir Amin

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/71173

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How to Change the World: Marx and Marxism 1840-2011 by Eric Hobsbawm


[Review in the LRB by Terry Eagleton]


http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n05/terry-eagleton/indomitable


How to Change the World is the work of a man who has reached an age at which most of us would be happy to be able to raise ourselves from our armchairs without the aid of three nurses and a hoist, let alone carry out historical research. It will surely not be the last volume we shall be granted by this indomitable spirit.


Eric Hobsbawm, who was born in the year of the Bolshevik revolution, remains broadly committed to the Marxist camp – a fact worth mentioning as it would be easy to read this book without realising it. This is because of its judiciousness, not its shiftiness. Its author has lived through so much of the political turbulence he portrays that it is easy to fantasise that History itself is speaking here, in its wry, all-seeing, dispassionate wisdom. It is hard to think of a critic of Marxism who can address his or her own beliefs with such honesty and equipoise.


You cannot speak of what free men and women are bound to do in certain circumstances, since if they are bound to do it they are not free. Capitalism may be teetering on the verge of ruin, but it may not be socialism that replaces it. It may be fascism, or barbarism. Hobsbawm reminds us of a small but significant phrase in The Communist Manifesto which has been well-nigh universally overlooked: capitalism, Marx writes ominously, might end ‘in the common ruin of the contending classes’. It is not out of the question that the only socialism we shall witness is one that we shall be forced into by material circumstance after a nuclear or ecological catastrophe. Like other 19th-century believers in progress, Marx did not foresee the possibility of the human race growing so technologically ingenious that it ends up wiping itself out. This is one of several ways in which socialism is not historically inevitable, and neither is anything else. Nor did Marx live to see how social democracy might buy off revolutionary passion.


Marx was an artist of sorts. It is often forgotten how staggeringly well read he was, and what painstaking labour he invested in the literary style of his works. He was eager, he remarked, to get shot of the ‘economic crap’ of Capital and get down to his big book on Balzac. Marxism is about leisure, not labour. It is a project that should be eagerly supported by all those who dislike having to work. It holds that the most precious activities are those done simply for the hell of it, and that art is in this sense the paradigm of authentic human activity. It also holds that the material resources that would make such a society possible already exist in principle, but are generated in a way that compels the great majority to work as hard as our Neolithic ancestors did. We have thus made astounding progress, and no progress at all.

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Blessed Unrest

http://www.blessedunrest.com/

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Layer 448 . . . The Magic of Music, Education, Beatles, Chords, Phonics, Egypt, Dignity, Courage, Death and Tax Avoidance

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All You Need Is Love - The Beatles

Sky Arts 1 is re-running the Tony Palmer series of classic documentaries - All You Need Is Love: The Story of Popular Music. Last week it was the programme about the Beatles - their rise and shine.

It's taken me years to  understand the magic of the Beatles's MUSIC. Yes - they were dynamic, funny, good-looking, loveable moptops - but what was so special about their music?

They sang well, they could do incredible harmonies, they were great individual vocalists, they wrote good lyrics, they recorded good songs, they were influenced by great rhythm and blues and rock n roll artists - but was there a special quality in the music itself?

It's dawned on me that their early records were powerful and arresting through being very simple - using a standard chord pattern (I - IV- V) - but using those chords in an inventive and playful way. They also played songs in upbeat major keys - never minor keys in those early songs.

What this means in practice (I think I now understand) is there's something special about those three-chord sequences, spacings and patterns. Common examples are E A B(7); A D E; C F G; G C D; D G A; - all using chords based on the 1st, 4th and 5th notes of a given key ( E, A, C, etc,) but not necessarily played in aphabetic order.

This will all be completely obvious to anyone with any musical knowledge, but I'm not writing for the few who are musically educated. I'm writing in the hope of encouraging the far bigger number of people who've had NO musical education to pick up a guitar or sit down at a keyboard - chording their way to an improvised accompaniment to their voices singing the melodies. And singing is good for the soul.

Schools are failing their kids if they don't show them how simple it is to play the basic major and minor chords on guitars and keyboards, and don't teach the chord structures of the world's greatest rock, pop and blues music.

As for the early Beatles albums, they really only contained a few great songs. Lots of good ones - but few really great ones, which were very carefully sequenced on the vinyl for maximum impact.

Please Please Me
The first Beatles album very cleverly began and ended both sides with its 4 strongest tracks.

I Saw Her Standing There - E  A B7

Please Please Me - C F G

Love Me Do - G C D7

Twist And Shout (by Phil Medley & Bert Russell) - D G A

Four very different songs, but each of them following the chord formula I IV V. It just works. Waka waka.

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

With The Beatles
Side Two is the heart of the With The Beatles album. In the middle it has "You Really Got A Hold Of Me, by Smoky Robinson, and "I Wanna Be Your Man" (E A B7), which was written by John & Paul (and given away to the Stones for a hit single). Good, solid stuff. But the tracks that grab you are the first and the last on the second side - Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven" (E A B7) and the climax of the whole album - Berry Gordy's "Money" ( E A B7 ). 'Beethoven' is a joyful announcement that the times they were a'changing. John's vocal on 'Money' is a leering, sarcastic, ironic challenge to the orthodoxies of the day - we could see clearly the wink and the joke in Gordy's lyrics. It's a great song, which Lennon obviously loved singing.

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

Chuck Berry, of course, was the king of the 3 chord rock n roll classics - Beethoven, Johnny B Goode (E A B7), Rock N Roll Music (D G A7), Sweet Little Sixteen (C F G), Maybelline (A D7 E7) , You Can't Catch Me ( D7 G7 A7) , and so many others. No other songwriter of the day was more prolific than Chuck; no-one wrote so consistently with such wit, and nobody performed with more charisma and originality. Bill Wyman says going to watch Chuck Berry perform on stage changed his life forever, and Bill was a founder member of what's arguably the world's greatest ever (and most enduring) rock and roll band. To have been a massive influence on both the Beatles and the Stones, and on both the Lennon-McCartney and the Jagger-Richards songwriting partnerships, is an incredible achievement.

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

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Education News

Just when you think the levels of stupidity in our education system have touched rock bottom, along comes someone to send you into even deeper pits of despair.

Say hello to the Schools Minister, Nick Gibb MP.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/education-12509477?SThisEM 

Reading test for six-year-olds to include non-words

A number of made-up words such as "koob" or "zort" are to be included in the government's planned new reading test for six-year-olds in England.

The UK Literacy Association said the plan was "bonkers" as the purpose of reading was to understand meaning.

Note the past tense here. Clearly the purpose of reading is no longer to understand meaning.

This former chartered accountant is about as ignorant as it's possible for an 'educated' person to be.

New minister Nick Gibb upsets teachers – already

Disciplinarian Gibb says he'd rather see an Oxbridge graduate with no PGCE teaching physics than a qualified teacher with a degree from a 'rubbish university'

With his penchant for old-fashioned discipline in schools – complete with strict uniform policies and rules that pupils should stand when teachers enter the classroom – it was never likely to be long before Nick Gibb provoked the ire of the profession.

But even the new schools minister's harshest critics didn't expect him to manage it within just three days in the job.

Gibb is reported to have told officials in the Department for Education on Friday, the day after his appointment: "I would rather have a physics graduate from Oxbridge without a PGCE teaching in a school than a physics graduate from one of the rubbish universities with a PGCE."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/mortarboard/2010/may/17/nick-gibb-upsets-teachers

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On the side of the Pharaoh

It is an act of bad faith for Jews to respond to Egypt's revolution with fear instead of hope

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/feb/19/jews-israel-egypt-revolution-fear

"In Egypt it was the moral force of nonviolence, not terrorism, not mindless killing … that bent the arc of history toward justice once more." Borrowing the language of Martin Luther King, President Obama's response to Hosni Mubarak's departure invited us to see Egypt's stirring 18-day revolution not only as a political event of significance but as part of a grander moral and spiritual drama.

I recognise the notion of bending "the arc of history toward justice". It forms part of my understanding of a Judaic vision for humanity. So I was saddened by the predominantly muted and apprehensive response to these uplifting events from many of my fellow Jews in the UK and in Israel. How is it possible, I have wondered, not to be moved and inspired by the sight of a people finding its voice to join protests against decades of dictatorship, corruption, brutality and repression? Protests that were remarkably peaceful given the suppressed fury that must reside in the hearts of so many at the conditions they have had to endure.

How is it not possible to rejoice when, as in 1989, the tide of history enables a swath of humanity to liberate themselves from hard-hearted rulers and move towards a more life-affirming and just ordering of society? Is it because this begrudging Jewish response has been dictated not by a recognition of the power of the human spirit to overcome oppression, but by fear?

It's as if fear is soldered to our soul. Fear that past patterns of prejudice will be repeated and thereby determine our future. I find this kind of fearfulness both dispiriting and a betrayal of the Judaism I hold dear.

For our response to these events to be dictated by our fears, rather than our hopefulness about the human spirit, is an act of bad faith: it reneges on the spiritual vision of our Judaic heritage. In secular terms, it puts us as Jews on the wrong side of history – it puts us on the side of repression and brutality. It puts us, so to speak, on the side of Pharaoh rather than Moses. In religious terms, it fails to understand that the biblical phrase that we lovingly repeat each year when we tell our own story of liberation, "Let my people go … ", is the voice of the divine, of God, of the sacred principle that freedom from oppression is the right of every people.

That is the vision at the heart of prophetic Judaism: freedom from oppression, each person to have the opportunity to sit under their vine and their fig tree where no one shall make them afraid. Isn't that what the people of Egypt want too?

Fear is a great dictator – to overthrow its tyranny within us is a spiritual challenge. Yes, Egypt has a long way to go: the transition from military to civilian rule will no doubt be bumpy. But as a Jew I celebrate, as Obama was celebrating, the movement of the human spirit towards freedom. All that those crowds possessed was, as the Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif put it, "words and music and legitimacy and hope". We have seen what powerful weapons these can be when wielded with determination, courage and vision.

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Egyptian dignity in the face of death

It was only when we protesters risked being shot that revolution in Egypt truly took hold

by Nawara Najem

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/19/tipping-point-arab-revolution

The masses that confronted security forces were not the Facebook youth and neither were they the internet activists. Rather, they were segments of Egyptian society whose anger had been ignited by seeing the dead bodies, and so suddenly and unexpectedly they decided that they would risk being shot. Repressive forces want to kill hundreds in order to terrorise the millions, and the only way to foil such a plan is for millions to make the collective decision that they do not fear death. This was the key to both the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions.

Why did the people not fear death? No one knows. It was not only religion, because some of those who died were not believers. It was not only poverty, because many of those who faced death were from the comfortable classes. It was not only despair, as the millions who came out onto the streets were full of hope for change. Perhaps the answer is human dignity. No force, no matter how tyrannous, is able to deprive human beings of this. People broke through the fear barrier, and Christians discovered that the Muslim's are not terrorists while Muslim's discovered that Christians are not agents of the occupation. The poor discovered that they have rights and the middle classes discovered that freedom from counterfeit gains releases the soul. And discovered that they do not need either a leader or commander. Indeed, they don't even need security forces to maintain "security and stability". This revolution is a people's revolution. Whoever claims leadership of it is a liar and whoever claims to be its instigator is a vagabond. Leadership was and remains the property of the masses.

The Egyptian revolution is not yet over. The people have toppled the head of the regime and still they strive to cleanse the pockets of corruption. Let the dictatorships, international forces and beneficiaries clamour. No one can exert control over the will of nations once they have flared up.

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Middle East: Ten days that shook the world

The echo of Egypt's revolution is rocking despotic regimes from Algiers to Damascus

Editorial

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/19/middle-east-days-shook-the-world

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Corporate tax avoidance: Impoverishing the public

Bankers' determination to minimise their contribution to public funds is matched by the lavishness of the benefits they have enjoyed at public expense

Editorial

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/19/taxavoidance-barclay

It was the high priest of free markets, Adam Smith, who warned that joint stock companies encourage negligence. Limited liability is a terrific privilege for which companies ought to expect to contribute generously to the community's coffers. Many fail to do so, including banks that have only recently drawn heavily on a common resource. Whatever the spin, they are coming to be seen – in another of Smith's phrases – as "a conspiracy against the public".

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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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