Tales of Iron Ladies

The smug, self-satisfied voice of Andrew Neil continues to drone from the radio, thanks to the BBC, so it's time to string a few thoughts together on an amazing woman who's been a constant in my life for as far back as I can remember.

Aunt O is my mum's eldest sister and also my godmother. Having no children of her own she's been exceptionally conscientious in carrying out her assigned role. Last Friday evening she collapsed in her kitchen and spent a very cold night on her kitchen floor. She was found there, propped up against a cupboard, by a neighbour who called in around mid-morning the next day to drop off the one newspaper she still bothered to read - on account of it carrying the details of the following week's television.

Incredibly,she was still breathing, in spite of being almost blue with hypothermia. Later, at the hospital, it was confirmed she'd broken her left femur, just below the ball joint at the hip. It was around midnight that the orthopaedic surgeon explained to me that an operation to replace the top part of that bone was necessary, even though, at the age of 97, there was a slight risk that she wouldn't come through it.

Aunt O had been on a kind of bed in A & E for the whole of the afternoon and the evening. Thankfully my cousin J was able to be with her throughout the afternoon, and had stayed until around 10.30 when it was confirmed that a bed would 'soon' be available. I'd arrived there myself around 8.00, and found the entire waiting room in front of the reception desk overflowing with relatives and friends of the sick and the injured who'd been brought in that day.

There must have been some very sick and injured people in there, and there must have been a minimum of staff, because my aunt needed to wait eight hours before she could have an x-ray and a proper assessment. During that time her temperature had gradually risen and her blood pressure had come down. It's just as well that she's an iron lady. [An agency nurse confided that she'd never go back to work there after her latest shift because of the extremely poor organisation and management of the place, which calls itself a university teaching hospital. This was exactly my attitude after experiencing neglectful and pathetic management within certain high profile engineering businesses back in the day.]

Born right at the end of the Victorian/Edwardian era, the first few years of my aunt's life had been lived during the first World War. By the time the second World War broke out she was twenty five, married, and living still in Longford, on the outskirts of Coventry. She still recalls vividly the time of the Blitz, and taking shelter under kitchen tables as shrapnel intended for the local gas works, railway lines, factories and coal pits whizzed through her house.

She was a factory worker for the whole of her life. She was one of Coventry's army of skilled factory workers whose dexterous and tireless hands and fingers shaped and assembled metal and plastic, electronic and mechanical components, and built things of value. All gone now, of course. Even Jaguar moved away, just a few years ago - the final insult to a city that had once been at the heart of Britain's industry and commerce, and as a consequence had been bombed and battered, but not broken, during Hitler's onslaught.

Clearly Coventrians have some issues with fascists and mad politicians who have grand designs and not much concern for the lives of 'ordinary' working people. How ironic, then, that Coventry's industries were finally demolished and destroyed not by Hitler but by the Thatcher gang and their successors - who clearly had and still have no regard for those 'hard working people' who are clearly not 'one of us'. What's more, we, the people, are proud not to be one of them.

We're proud of the fact that we continue to believe that there IS such a thing as society, and that education and health care should be free, paid for from taxes, and of high quality. We continue to believe in social justice, progressive taxation, decent housing for all, and in the elimination of poverty. We continue to believe in greater equality across society, rather than a society of haves and have nots. We continue to loathe the Thatcher woman, and her legacy, and all of those who think like her - greedy, nasty, selfish, arrogant, petty bourgeois individuals with their divide and rule mentality, their elitist and snobbish attitudes, their self-regard and their assumption of intellectual and cultural superiority. As for the upper classes, working class Tories and Ukippers - let's not even go there.

It's just as well Thatcher is going to be consumed by the fires of a crematorium and that she won't have a grave we can spit on.

As for my aunt, she's doing fine. Twenty four hours after her operation she was sitting in a chair, eating a meal. She's as tough as they come. Her little house is her Ritz, and in a couple of weeks or so she'll be back here, with a higher level of support and care, regardless of what it costs. She won't feel she wants or needs that, of course, but this time she'll allow us to take better care of her, however long she may live. That's the least she deserves. Truly it was people like her who built this nation, who fought for it, and who have maintained it, in spite of the neglect, the deprivation and the denigration they continue to experience from the billionaires, the bankers, the plutocrats, the neo-fascist newspaper owners . . . and the heirs of the Iron Lady.

Layer 528 . . . Why Are South Africa's Schools Failing Their Pupils? A Lesson From History, and the Shock Doctrine

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There's a distressing story on the BBC website today about the condition of state schools in South Africa and how they're failing their pupils. It's an appalling situation. The story goes on to say that many parents, even those who are not wealthy, are now migrating their children to the 'private' sector in order to get them a decent education. Why is this happening, and can it be changed?

I remember only too well the conditions in the state schools I visited a few years ago on my one and only trip to South Africa - rotten floorboards everywhere, smashed windows and leaking roofs. In many cases there were earth floors, pitifully few books or other resources, and overcrowded classes. But the kids were amazing - so smart in their uniforms, and very eager to learn. It was distressing to see.

Does it have to be this way? Is South Africa such a poor country that it can't afford to repair the broken windows and the holes in the floors in its schools? Apparently so.

But wait a moment - which South Africa are we talking about here? Is it the one where all the pupils are black, and where the schools are situated in blacks-only areas? Too right we are. Because you can be certain that there are plenty of classrooms elsewhere, in a different South Africa, where conditions are very different indeed.

In short, what we're talking about is a multi-cultural country where the real issues are to do with social class, wealth and economics - i.e. the distribution of incomes and the economic policies of the country, which are not dissimilar to those we see in the rich countries that  long ago bought into the 'Washington consensus': 'globalisation', Chicago-school neo-liberal economic thinking, privatisation of public utilities, and the notion of trickle-down economic development. But the money doesn't quite trickle down to the townships and the rural areas - any more than it trickles down to the council estates, the 'housing projects', and the poor rural areas in countries like Britain and the USA.

Naomi Klein explains it all in her brilliant book, The Shock Doctrine.

The really annoying thing about the BBC report itself is its stupid assumption that the problem simply lies with 'mismanagement' and corruption within the school system (though that may well exist), as well as with "a highly unionised teaching profession and low morale":

Nonkqubela Secondary, is struggling with outdoor pit latrines which have fallen into disrepair, while a third of all teaching posts remain vacant.

"We used to have good results, but we are short of maths teachers, science teachers and when staff look at our facilities they decide not to come here," head teacher Khumzi Madikane laments.

He says he cannot blame parents who can afford it, migrating to the private sector. But most of his pupils are dirt poor.

Education in the Eastern Cape is in crisis, and the central government has taken over the running of the department after allegations of corruption and mismanagement.

[An old mate of mine who was working on an EU funded education development project was gently eased out of his post when he took exception to the corruption and mismanagement of petty bureaucrats and middle managers who were more interested in grabbing funds for themselves than passing them along to the schools.]

It is a sad indictment of a rural slice of South Africa which in the past century gave birth to some of the greatest minds in history, including Nelson Mandela and the late freedom fighter Walter Sisulu.

The crisis no longer a dirty little secret, with the government itself admitting that 80% of state schools are failing.

In a recent speech, Basic Education Minister Angie Motsheka revealed that 1,700 schools are still without a water supply and 15,000 schools are without libraries.

But more than 17 years after the end of white minority rule, observers argue that South Africa is struggling with more recent phenomena: Poor teacher training, corruption and maladministration, a highly unionised teaching profession and low morale.

Back in the township, opting for a private school has come with huge sacrifices for Simanye's aunt, Nokwezi.

"I've really had to squeeze myself but it is worth it - in state schools, if they have a disagreement the teachers go on strike," she says.

[Obviously in the private sector the teachers never have any issues they need to address.]

The surge of low-cost private schools shows no sign of slowing down. Thousands of other grandmothers, brothers and sisters are scraping together the funds to send a child to school.

Yet the vast majority of South African children have little choice but to opt for the local state school.

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The real story here is that in post-apartheid South Africa there is as much inequality as there was during the apartheid era, and probably even more, according to Naomi Klein's researches. Nothing really changed because the economic system runs in exactly the same way as it ran before democracy arrived there. The wealth generated within the country stays predominately within the middle and upper classes, and middle class blacks seem no more willing to pay more taxes in order to improve public services than their white counterparts ever did. Needless to say there's been no such thing as a wealth tax, a mansion tax or any steps taken to ensure that the rich elite don't offshore their wealth to avoid paying taxes. The government's income from taxes has also fallen due to rising unemployment.

What's more, the country is still servicing massive debts that were accumulated by the apartheid regime and which were partly the reason why the National Party decided to do a deal with the ANC and Nelson Mandela - on the grounds that it was better to hang on to their private wealth (even at the cost of giving the vote to non-whites) and hand over the country's debts to a new government, rather than lose their private wealth by going down with a ship that was sinking under the weight of apartheid debt, at the same time as losing the war with the ANC.

Some quotes from Naomi Klein might help to make this clearer - pages 194 - 217 - Chapter 10 - Democracy Born In Chains - The Shock Doctrine

" . . . to be able to send your children to school and to have accessible health care. I mean, what's the point of having made this transition if the quality of life of these people is not enhanced and improved? If not, the vote is useless."
- Archbishop Desmond Tutu, chair of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission, 2001

"Before transferring power, the Nationalist Party . . . negotiated a kind of swap where it gave up the right to run the country its way in exchange for the right to stop blacks from running it their own way."
- Allister Sparks, South African journalist

[Naturally the 'blacks' referred to by Sparks were people like Nelson Mandela - who had declared an intention to nationalise industries and banks - and not the black politicians who subsequently emerged and were interested mainly in doing well out of the system themselves, not changing the system in order to promote greater fairness and equality. Many of the ANC's current politicians are as right wing and neo-liberal in their economic views as New Labour or George Osborne and his chums They have, after all, in many cases been to the same universities and had the same economics and MBA tutors.]

In January 1990 Nelson Mandela sat down in his prison compound to write a note. The note was only two sentences long - 

"The nationalisation of the mines, banks and monopoly industries is the policy of the ANC, and the modification of our views in this regard is inconceivable. Black economic empowerment is a goal we fully support and encourage, and in our situation state control of certain sectors of the economy is unavoidable."

[The ANC's Freedom Charter] enshrined the right to work, to decent housing, to freedom of thought, and most radically, to a share of the wealth in the richest country in Africa, containing, among other treasures, the largest goldfield in the world. 

"The national wealth of our country, the heritage of South Africans, shall be restored to the people; the mineral wealth beneath the soil; the Banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole; all other industry and trade shall be controlled to assist the well-being of the people," the Charter states.

What the Freedom Charter asserted was the baseline consensus in the liberation movement that freedom would not come merely when blacks took control of the state but when the wealth of the land that had been illegitimately confiscated was reclaimed and redistributed to society as a whole. 

If Mandela led the ANC to power and nationalised the banks and the mines, [then] the precedent would make it far more difficult for Chicago School economists to dismiss such proposals in other countries as relics of the past and insist that only unfettered free markets and free trade had the ability to redress deep inequalities.

On February 11, 1990, two weeks after writing that note, Mandela walked out of prison a free  man, as close to a living saint as existed anywhere in the world.

The ANC had a unique opportunity to reject the free-market orthodoxy of the day. Since there was already widespread agreement that corporations shared responsibility for the crimes of apartheid, the stage was set for Mandela to explain why key sectors of South Africa's economy needed to be nationalised just as the freedom charter demanded. 

In the years that passed between Mandela writing his note from prison and the ANC's 1994 election sweep in which he was elected president, something happened to convince the party hierarchy that it could not use its grassroots prestige to reclaim and redistribute the country's stolen wealth. So, rather than meeting in the middle between California and the Congo, the ANC adopted policies that exploded both inequality and crime to such a degree that South Africa's divide is now closer to Beverly Hills and Baghdad. Today, the country stands as a living testament to what happens when economic reform is severed from political transformation. Politically, its people have the right to vote, civil liberties and majority rule. Yet economically, South Africa has surpassed Brazil as the most unequal society in the world.

The talks that hashed out the terms of apartheid's end took place on two parallel tracks that often intersected: one was political, the other economic. Most of the attention, naturally, focused on the high-profile political summits between Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk, leader of the National Party.

The much lower profile economic negotiations were primarily managed on the ANC side by Thabo Mbeki, then a rising star in the party. 

[Later on he would become South Africa's president, and a man who refused to accept that HIV causes AIDS. "A group of Harvard scientists led by Zimbabwean physician Pride Chigwedere each independently estimated that Thabo Mbeki's denialist policies led to the early deaths of more than 330,000 South Africans. Barbara Hogan, the health minister appointed by Mbeki's successor, voiced shame over the studies' findings and stated: "The era of denialism is over completely in South Africa." - Wikipedia]

In these talks the de Klerk government had a twofold strategy. First, drawing on the ascendant Washington Consensus that there was now only one way to run an economy, it portrayed key sectors of economic decision making . . . as [merely] "technical" and "administrative". [i.e. set in stone and unalterable.]

Then it [set out] to hand control of power centres to supposedly impartial experts - economists and officials of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and the National Party - anyone except the liberation fighters of the African National Council. [Each of these 'world' bodies was essentially run by right-wing economists, many of whom had been tutored by Milton Freedman and his associates in Chicago.]

This plan was successfully executed under the noses of the ANC leaders, who were naturally preoccupied with winning the battle to control Parliament. In the process, the ANC failed to protect itself against a far more insidious strategy - in essence, an elaborate insurance plan against the economic clauses in the Freedom Charter ever becoming law in South Africa. "The people shall govern!" would soon become a reality, but the sphere over which they would govern was shrinking fast.

"We were caught completely off guard," recalled economist Vishnu Padayachee. When he learned that the central bank and the treasury would be run by their old apartheid bosses, it meant that "everything would be lost in terms of economic transformation". 

From Padayachee's point of view, none of this happened because of some grand betrayal on the part of ANC leaders, but simply because they were out-maneuvered [tricked!] on a series of issues that seemed less than crucial at the time. 

What happened in these negotiations is that the ANC found itself to be caught in a new kind of web, one made of arcane rules and regulations, [how many of us actually have a clue about GATT and IMF rules, regulations and stipulations?] all designed to confine and constrain the powers of elected leaders. As the web descended on the country, only a few people even noticed it was there. As the new government attempted to make tangible the dreams of the Freedom Charter, it discovered that the power was elsewhere. 

Want to redistribute land? Impossible - at the last minute the negotiators had agreed to add a  clause to the new constitution that made land reform virtually impossible.

Want to create jobs for millions of unemployed workers? Can't - the ANC had signed on to the GATT (the precursor of the World Trade Organisation) which made it illegal to subsidise the auto plants and textile factories.

Want to get free AIDS drugs to the townships, where the disease is spreading with terrifying speed? That violates an intellectual property rights commitment under the WTO, which the ANC joined with no public debate.

Need money to build more and larger houses for the poor and to bring free electricity to the townships? Sorry - the budget is being eaten up servicing the massive debt, passed on quietly by the apartheid government. 

Print more money? Tell that to the apartheid-era head of the central bank. 

Free water for all? Not likely. The World Bank, with its large contingent of South Africa based economists, researchers and trainers, is making private-sector partnerships the service norm.

Want to impose currency controls to guard against wild speculation? That would violate the $850 million IMF deal, signed, conveniently enough, right before the elections.

Raise the minimum wage to close the apartheid income gap? Nope. The IMF deal promised "wage restraint".

And don't even think about ignoring these commitments - any change will be regarded as evidence of dangerous national untrustworthiness, a lack of commitment to "reform", an absence of a "rules-based system". All of which will lead to currency crashes, aid cuts and capital flight. 

The bottom line was that South Africa was free but simultaneously captured: each one of these arcane acronyms represented a different thread in the web that pinned down the limbs of the new government. 

[Just as they are now pinning down Greece, and elsewhere.]

A longtime antiapartheid activist, Rassool Snyman, described the trap in stark terms. "They never freed us. They only took the chain from around our neck and put it on our ankles." 

Part of what I want to understand is how, after such an epic struggle for freedom, any of this could have been allowed to happen . . . Why didn't the grassroots movement demand that the ANC keep the promises of the Freedom Charter and rebel against the concessions as they were being made?

I put this question to William Gumede, a leader of the student movement during the transition. "Everyone was watching the political negotiations. When the economic negotiators would report back, people thought that it was technical; no-one was interested." This perception, he said, was encouraged by Mbeki, who portrayed the talks as "administrative" and of no popular concern. As a result, he told me, "We missed it! We missed the real story! And I am so disappointed in myself for being so naive."

If Padayachee is right and the ANC's own negotiators failed to grasp the enormity of what they were bargaining away, what chance was there for the movement's street fighters?

Gumede points out that most people simply assumed that no matter what compromises had to be made to get into power, they could be unmade once the ANC was firmly in charge. "We were going to be the government - we could fix it later."

What ANC activists didn't understand at the time was that it was the nature of democracy itself that was being altered in those negotiations, changed so that - once the web of constraints had descended on their country - there would effectively be no later.

After a decade of ANC rule, millions of people had been cut off from the newly connected water and electricity because they couldn't pay the bills. 

As for the "banks, mines and monopoly industry" that Mandela had pledged to nationalise, they remained firmly in the hands of the same four white-owned megaconglomerates that also control 80% of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. In 2005, only 4% of the companies listed on the exchange were owned or controlled by blacks. 70% of South Africa's land, in 2006, was still monopolised by whites, who are just 10% of the population.

The ANC, once it became the government, accepted the dominant logic that its only hope was to pursue new foreign investors who would create new wealth, the benefits of which would trickle down to the poor. Once countries have opened themselves up to global market's temperamental moods, any departure from Chicago School orthodoxy is instantly punished by traders in New York and London who bet against the offending country's currency, [we're talking casino capitalism here], causing a deeper crisis and the need for more loans, with more conditions attached [and which, needless to say, are loans only offered at very much higher rates of interest].

Thabo Mbeki had spent many of his years of exile studying at the University of Sussex, and while the townships of his country were filled with tear gas, he was breathing in the fumes of Thatcherism. 

According to Gumede, Mbeki took on the role of free-market tutor within the ANC. The beast of the market had been unleashed, Mbeki would explain; there was no taming it, just feeding it what it craved: growth and more growth. [i.e. profits]

So, rather than calling for the nationalisation of the mines, Mandela and Mbeki began meeting regularly with Harry Oppenheimer, former chairman of the mining giants Anglo-American and De Beers, the economic symbols of apartheid rule. 

The financial press offered steady encouragement for this conversion: "Though the ANC still has a powerful leftist wing," the Wall Street Journal observed, "Mr Mandela has in recent days sounded more like Margaret Thatcher than the socialist revolutionary he was once thought to be." 

Mbeki convinced Mandela that what was needed was a definative break with the past. The ANC needed a completely new economic plan - something bold, something shocking, something that would communicate that the ANC was ready to embrace the Washington Consensus.

Only a handful of Mbeki's closest colleagues even knew that a new economic program was in the works. "All were sworn to secrecy and the entire process was shrouded in deepest confidentiality lest the left wing get wind of Mbeki's plan." 

In June 1996 Mbeki unveiled the results: it was a neoliberal shock therapy program for South Africa, calling for more privatisation, cutbacks to government spending, labour "flexibility", freer trade and even looser controls on money flows. According to economist Stephen Gelb, its overriding aim "was to signal to potential investors the government's (and specifically the ANC's) commitment to the prevailing orthodoxy." To make sure the message was loud and clear to traders in New York and London, at the public launch of the plan, Mbeki quipped, "Just call me a Thatcherite."

[As things turned out] Mbeki's plan failed to attract long-term investment; it resulted only in speculative betting that ended up devaluing the currency even further. [These markets and currency traders are not complete fools: they're smart enough to understand that Chicago School economics are pure right-wing fantasy and bullshit, which will only send their adherents and the policy makers up shit creek.]

Nelson Mandela has cited the [apartheid] debt burden as the single greatest obstacle to keeping the promises of the Freedom Charter. "That is 30 billion rand we did not have to build houses as we planned, to make sure that our children go to the best schools, that unemployment is properly addressed and that everybody has the dignity of having a job, a decent income, of being able to provide food and shelter . . . We are limited by the debt that we inherited."

Despite Mandela's acknowledgement that paying the apartheid bills has become a disfiguring burden, the party has opposed all suggestions that it default.

What makes the ANC's decision to keep paying the debt so infuriating to activists is the tangible sacrifice made to meet each payment. For instance, between 1997 and 2004 the government sold 18 state-owned firms, raising $4 billion, but almost half the money went to servicing the debt. In other words . . . instead of nationalising the "mines, banks and monopoly industry" . . . it was doing the opposite - selling off national assets to make good the debts of its oppressors.

In the end, South Africa has wound up with a twisted case of reparations in reverse, with the white businesses and industries that reaped enormous profits from black labour during the apartheid years paying not a cent in reparations, but the victims of apartheid continuing to send large paychecks [and white pension-fund payouts] to their former victimisers. And how do they raise money for this generosity? By stripping the state of its assets through privatisation. The dismantling of the state and the pillaging of its coffers continue to this day.

More than a decade since South Africa made its decisive turn towards Thatcherism, the results of its experiment in trickle-down justice are scandalous:

* Since 1994 the number of people living on less than $1 a day has more than doubled, from 2 million to 4 million plus.

* Between 1991 and 2002 the unemployment rate for black South Africans more than doubled, from 23% to 48%.

As leaders like Mandela traveled the globalisation circuit it was pounded into them that even the most left-wing governments were embracing the Washington Consensus: the communists in Vietnam and China were doing it. Even Russians had seen the neoliberal light - at the time the ANC was in its heaviest negotiations Moscow was in the midst of a corporatist feeding frenzy, selling off its state assets to apparatchiks-turned-entrepreneurs as fast as it could. If Moscow had given in, how could a raggedy band of freedom fighters in South Africa resist such a forceful global tide?

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And those, ladies and gentlemen, are the real reasons why a great many of South Africa's schools have broken windows, rotten termite-ridden floorboards, leaking roofs and a shortage of teachers. Nothing fundamentally to do with truculent teachers' trade unions or even bad management and local authority corruption. Not really. It goes much deeper than that. It's the economy, stupid. Plus stupidity, cupidity, naivety, rapacity and inequality. Thatcherite indeed! Trickle down!

Layer 491 . . . The Churches of England, A Debate, The Media, Rowan Williams, John Sentamu, the Moral Agenda, Taxes on Bankers and Jarrow Marchers

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I went to church last night - and I've never before seen a church so packed, with every pew taken and with extra seats needing to be brought in. A very lovely church it is too - St Peter's has been the parish church of De Beauvoir Town since 1841.

No need to worry - Oxzen hasn't had a moment of revelation and decided to follow The Lord. Indeed not. The Church of England is going through some interesting times, with its two archbishops saying some very enlightened things these past few days, but Oxzen still sees no reason to convert to a belief in God.

Last night St Peter's hosted the third "Hackney Debate":

"George Alagiah chairs a discussion on media regulation and ownership, phone hacking and journalistic ethics, and public responsibility."

The speakers were Nick Higham, James Anslow and Suzanne Moore - all of them (and George) residents of Hackney.

George Alagiah strikes me as a lovely man and someone with enormous intelligence, together with superb communication skills.

The three speakers all seemed very inclined to accept the status quo with regard to media regulation and the Press Council - i.e. no more regulation, no more control on media ownership, no statutory body to monitor the activities of the press and media. None of them seemed to speak with any great passion about the appalling British media and its collusion with governments to keep our politics, our economics and our financial system going along the same old track. There was even praise for Murdoch and the tabloids generally.

Even Suzanne Moore oozed complacency - telling us that if we don't like the tabloids and the right-wing press then we can find better news reporting and comment elsewhere on the Internet. Maybe she's right - maybe it's not even worth complaining about the power of the right-wing press to dominate the national conversation, since there's nothing we can effectively do about it.

Personally I'd have preferred to listen to platform speakers who could show similar outrage to that expressed by several members of the audience. Maybe if you have a regular column in the Mail on Sunday AND a column in The Guardian, as Suzanne does, you're a bit beyond outrage.

http://stpeterdebeauvoir.moonfruit.com/#/debate/4556340694

Respect to the Reverend Julia Porter-Pryce, who's the driving force behind making this particular church relevant to its community, and has opened up her church to be a venue for these public debates. It's a great venue, and even had wine on sale before and during the debate.

Have a look at the St Peter's website to find out more about what they're doing for the community -

"transforming its Crypt into a real community asset - a thriving centre for social interaction, creativity, cultural expression and community support. We're making the space fully accessible, flexible, practical and welcoming. It's home to the cold-weather night shelter, a thriving community cafe and many groups promoting creativity and healthy living." 

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During the first phase of the St Paul's site occupation, the head of the Church of England very wisely kept out of the debate about the camp, the occupation and LSX. He's now speaking out.

Oxzen has previously commented very favourably on Archbish Rowan Williams -


http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2011/06/layer-471-essays-rowan-williams-new.html

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2011/06/layer-472-alfie-bowe-songs-and-singers.html


Occupy London: archbishop of Canterbury backs new tax on banking


Rowan Williams says the protest at St Paul's shows 'widespread and deep exasperation with the financial establishment'


http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/nov/02/occupy-london-archbishop-canterbury-tax?


The archbishop of Canterbury has outlined a package of political and financial measures needed to take forward the "moral agenda" of Occupy London campaigners encamped outside St Paul's Cathedral.


Backing a new tax on banking, Rowan Williams said the protest against financial inequality and banking excesses had been seen "by an unexpectedly large number of people as the expression of a widespread and deep exasperation with the financial establishment that shows no sign of diminishing".


Endorsing the idea of a "Robin Hood" tax on financial transactions, he said: "There is still a powerful sense around – fair or not – of a whole society paying for the errors and irresponsibility of bankers; of impatience with a return to 'business as usual' – represented by still-soaring bonuses and little visible change in banking practices."


Williams stepped into the debate as another senior figure in the Church of England, the bishop of London, Richard Chartres, told the Guardian that the protesters' voices chimed in with "alarm bells ringing around the world about the connection between finance and ethics and human flourishing".

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Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams calls for new tax on bankers


The Archbishop of Canterbury has thrown his weight behind the St Paul’s Cathedral anti-capitalist protesters as he called for a new tax on banks.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8863794/Archbishop-of-Canterbury-Rowan-Williams-calls-for-new-tax-on-bankers.html


“The demands of the protesters have been vague. Many people are frustrated beyond measure at what they see as the disastrous effects of global capitalism; but it isn’t easy to say what we should do differently. It is time we tried to be more specific,” Dr Williams said.
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Archbishop Sentamu targets City greed

He suggests denying honours and the Queen's Awards for Industry to fat cat firms; and an interesting way of embarrassing tax avoiders

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/the-northerner/2011/nov/05/sentamu-archbishop-of-york-st-paul-s-camp-corporate-greed-city-of-london?

The Archbishop of York, Dr. John Sentamu, has spoken out about the greed which provoked the St Paul's camp. Typically, he makes two practical suggestions [which can be read here - http://www.archbishopofyork.org/articles.php/2238/archbishops-call-to-re-establish-a-fairer-society]

Changes in public attitudes can take place quite quickly.  Over the last few decades racism has lost its respectability and is seen as unacceptable.  The same applies to homophobia (the irrational fear of homosexuals) and discrimination against women.  My belief and trust is that a society which has shown itself capable of making such rapid changes to attitudes in these areas will also prove capable of recognising that our society will work best when we recognise that as human beings we are all, fundamentally of equal worth and members of one society. 

Let us do it. Let us do it now.

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Archbishop of York attacks high-paid executives


Dr John Sentamu has attacked the salaries of top executives saying that huge differences between the rich and poor "weaken community life and make societies less cohesive".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8871631/Archbishop-of-York-attacks-high-paid-executives.html


Archbishop of York John Sentamu attacks executive pay

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-15605385

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Jarrow marchers complete journey


A group of activists who have recreated the famous 1936 Jarrow March for Jobs will complete their 330-mile journey by highlighting the growing "crisis" of youth unemployment.


Dozens of people have taken part in the trek from the North East to London, where a rally on Saturday afternoon will be addressed by politicians and union leaders.


Youth Fight for Jobs, which organised the march, will hand in a petition to 10 Downing Street calling for a huge Government job scheme, apprenticeships, the reinstatement of the Education Maintenance Allowance, the reopening of axed youth services and action on tuition fees.


Spokeswoman Claire Laker Mansfield said: "Young people have shown that far from being lazy or scroungers, they want a future with decent jobs and education. The marchers have received huge support up and down the country. People have fed them, put them up and made it clear they back our demands.


"We think it is unfair that in the 21st century young people are facing long-term unemployment. There are almost a million young people out of work, and the jobs market is not getting any better."


Great-grandchildren of those who took part in the original march 75 years ago were among those taking part in the protest march, which started on October 1.


In 1936, 200 jobless men marched from Jarrow in north east England to London with a 12,000-name petition calling for government action to create jobs.

- UK Press Association

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5i0bboHKNDe1XKO4DBFEe5hD6JJTg?docId=N0466781320418717584A

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Layer 446 . . . Genius, JMK, Hating Liberals, Understanding Economics, Friedman, Will Hutton, Elephant Mothers and Education

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John Maynard Keynes was a liberal, and was a member of the British Liberal party.

Right wing and neo-conservative Americans hate all liberals, for reasons it's important for the world to understand.

JMK was a genius who received worldwide recognition for his work in economics - and yet very few of us have even heard of him, let alone educated to know about his work so that we understand his ideas even at a very basic level.

This is a level of ignorance we should be ashamed of. It's like having no knowledge of science whatsoever - like not even knowing that water can both evaporate and freeze depending on its temperature; like not knowing that matter is composed of atoms and molecules; like not knowing that micro-organisms can cause sickness and death.

The right-wing economic theories of Keynes-haters like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman have caused social devastation, sickness and death on a massive scale, but very few of us understand why.

Keynes was a political and ideological individual in that he wished to rid the world of the evils of poverty, unemployment, ignorance, greed, hyper-inflation, extreme inequality and unfettered capitalism. These are goals which are shared by all true liberals and socialists, who also understand that government of the people by the people and for the people has a massive role to play in putting the needs of "society" into political policy and practical action.

All true conservatives, like Hayek and Friedman (and Bush, Palin, George Osborne, oligarchs, bankers and the majority of financiers) hate the idea of being governed by the will of the people - hate the idea of collective action to end poverty and social injustice, hate the idea of regulating the activities of the rich and the super-rich.

Barak Obama is hated by American conservatives and Republicans because he's regarded as a liberal or even a socialist - since he advocates tackling poverty and extreme inequality, and wishes to re-regulate capitalism for the benefit of the people as a whole. He's hated because he expresses disgust at a world in which most people are undereducated and unnecessarily impoverished whilst a small elite live in conditions of unnecessary and unimaginable wealth and luxury. Obama wishes to 'spread our wealth a little more fairly'.

Conservatives do not. Conservatives love speculation, casino capitalism and financial bubbles because these things enable them to get even richer - at the expense of the poorer and the more ignorant sections of society. Conservatives hate the very idea of taxation and will do everything possible to avoid paying their share of it. Conservatives love the idea of a 'flat tax' which means that everyone pays (roughly) the same amount of tax, regardless of their abilty to pay.

So what did Keynes discover, and what did he say? Hands up everyone who hasn't a clue! Yes - you there at the back! Before jumping to Keynes' 'The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money', consider these quotes -

Ideas shape the course of history.

It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

It would not be foolish to contemplate the possibility of a far greater progress still.

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.

For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.

A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.

Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering what average opinion believes average opinion to be.

Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.

I do not know which makes a man more conservative - to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past.

I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal.

If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid.

Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.

Most men love money and security more, and creation and construction less, as they get older.

Nothing mattered except states of mind, chiefly our own.

Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others.

The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward.

The biggest problem is not to let people accept new ideas, but to let them forget the old ones.

The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems - the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behavior and religion.

The decadent international but individualistic capitalism in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war is not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not beautiful. It is not just. It is not virtuous. And it doesn't deliver the goods.

The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.

The disruptive powers of excessive national fecundity may have played a greater part in bursting the bonds of convention than either the power of ideas or the errors of autocracy.

The importance of money flows from it being a link between the present and the future.

The social object of skilled investment should be to defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance which envelope our future.

Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_General_Theory_of_Employment,_Interest_and_Money

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That's probably enough Keynes and economics for today. Tomorrow we can consider the fact that Chicago-school Friedmanite economics has, for very obvious reasons, come to dominate political and economic discourse throughout the world - to the extent that a whole generation of politicians like Blair, Brown, Osborne, Cameron and Clegg have grown up in lectures and seminars where their tutors have deliberately set out to discredit Keynes and indoctrinate the ideas of Friedman and Hayek. Most of the civil service leadership and a new generation of political "special advisors" also seem to have taken MBAs which were mainly or totally free-market Friedmanite Chicago-school in their approach. And you don't get your MBA unless you subscribe to the globalisation/trickle-down/free-market/deregulation/small-governernment/low-taxes bullshit.

Homework for today is to read up on John Maynard Keynes from a variety of sources, eg

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

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/keynes_john_maynard.shtml

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/TUkeynes.htm

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Those wishing to read around this subject should also have a look at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/sep/15/politics


http://www.davidhilfiker.com/docs/Economics/The%20Shock%20Doctrine%20-%20summary.htm

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

http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/the-book

http://www.scribd.com/doc/16090536/Klein-The-Shock-Doctrine-2007-Synopsis

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Ignorance is an evil weed, which dictators may cultivate among their dupes, but which no democracy can afford among its citizens.
William Beveridge

Scratch a pessimist and you find often a defender of privilege.
William Beveridge

The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of common man.
William Beveridge

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Will Hutton

It's impossible to overstate the need to read Will's book, The State We're In. Here's a man who never abandoned his allegiance to Keynesianism even during the dark days of Thatcherite triumphalism and the pre-bust days of neo-conservatism.

His last three or four pieces in the Observer are also well worth looking at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/16/will-hutton-bankers-bonuses

Bringing the bankers to heel must start right here, right now

Big Finance has to be brought under control or outrageous bonuses will still be paid and there will be another crisis

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jan/23/ten-ideas-for-better-britain

Ten ideas for a better Britain

Here are ten challenges for the Labour party to rediscover its radical edge

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/30/will-hutton-davos-world-economic-reform


Where are the leaders who will reform the world's economy?

The world financial system needs a radical overhaul, though last week's cosy Davos conference suggested otherwise

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In this week's column Will raises some really key issues which are as much about education and schools as they are about economics, society and finance, insofar as they deal with innovation, creative thinking and imagination.

Don't be blinded by the web. The world is actually stagnating

If we want to step up the pace of invention, there has to be a huge shift in the way we think

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/feb/13/will-hutton-innovation-must-be-encouraged

Western policymakers were bullied by the financial oligarchs into believing that the market is magic. Thus banking could become a deregulated global market, privileged ahead of all other forms of economic activity. Innovation was left to look after itself. What were seen to matter were lower regulations, lower taxes and reduced worker entitlements – not using the state to build the ecosystem in which innovation, experimentation and investment flourish as had been done through the early part of the 20th century, even until the free market revolution.

If we want to step up the pace of invention, there has to be a huge shift in the way we think.

This is a huge ask. For 30 years or more the consensus has been that governments necessarily and always fail – and only markets succeed. But reality is beginning to intrude. Even the coalition government, wedded to the old-time religion, is finding that if it wants a growth strategy it has to do what used to be prohibited – design markets and build institutions that innovate.

An innovation strategy is being devised. Invention and innovation, we are discovering, are much too important to be left to the tender mercies of markets.

What Will doesn't emphasise, and what's hugely important, is that our education system nowadays doesn't even set out to help young people develop the skills that they, and we, desperately need. Our schools concentrate almost entirely on coaching children to pass tests and exams. Parents hire tutors to cram their kids to get better grades - even in piano and guitar playing. Grades are currency - the wealth of youth with which they purchase places at colleges and universities.

Meanwhile they're failing to develop the more crucial life skills - critical thinking, imagination, creativity, innovation, communication, team-working, and so on.

Of course we can't (and shouldn't) mark and grade and categorise these higher aspects of learning, which need continuous practice and encouragement from birth if they're to flourish.

The Chinese, the Finns, the Danes and a few others have understood the importance of a type of education that releases young people to develop their full potential. We have not. We once led the world in progressive education, but the conservative counter-revolution long ago killed off all innovation and progressive thinking in most of our schools.

We're now a stupid country led by stupid people and brainwashed by a mainly stupid media into thinking stupidly about children and education. How long will it be before people wake up and see the truth? How long before children are allowed to have a proper childhood and grow up as fully developed human beings?

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The human race needs elephant mothers, not tiger mothers

Where is the appreciation that we are social animals in Amy Chua's competitive approach to parenting?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/feb/13/tiger-mothers-parenting-children

by Peter Singer

Many years ago, my wife and I were driving somewhere with our three young daughters in the  back, when one of them suddenly asked: "Would you rather that we were clever or that we were happy?"

I was reminded of that moment last month when I read Amy Chua's Wall Street Journal article, Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior," which sparked more than 4,000 comments on wsj.com and over 100,000 comments on Facebook. The article was a promotional piece for Chua's book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which has become an instant bestseller.

Chua's thesis is that, when compared with Americans, Chinese children tend to be successful because they have "tiger mothers," whereas western mothers are pussycats, or worse. Chua's daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to watch television, play computer games, sleep over at a friend's home, or be in a school play. They had to spend hours every day practising the piano or violin. They were expected to be the top student in every subject except gym and drama.

Chinese mothers, according to Chua, believe that children, once they get past the toddler stage, need to be told in no uncertain terms when they have not met the high standards their parents expect of them. (Chua says that she knows Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Irish, and Ghanaian mothers who are "Chinese" in their approach, as well as some ethnic-Chinese mothers who are not.) Their egos should be strong enough to take it.

Stanley Sue, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, has studied suicide, which is particularly common among Asian-American women (in other ethnic groups, more males commit suicide than females). He believes that family pressure is a significant factor.

Chua would reply that reaching a high level of achievement brings great satisfaction, and that the only way to do it is through hard work. Perhaps, but can't children be encouraged to do things because they are intrinsically worthwhile, rather than because of fear of parental disapproval?

Chua's focus is unrelentingly on solitary activities in the home, with no encouragement of group activities, or of concern for others, either in school or in the wider community.

Tigers lead solitary lives, except for mothers with their cubs. We, by contrast, are social animals. So are elephants, and elephant mothers do not focus only on the wellbeing of their own offspring. Together, they protect and take care of all the young in their herd, running a kind of daycare centre.

If we all think only of our own interests, we are headed for collective disaster – just look at what we are doing to our planet's climate. When it comes to raising our children, we need fewer tigers and more elephants.

Copyright: Project Syndicate 1995–2011

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I agree with all of the above - I'm 100% behind the idea that we should educate children to become socially, emotionally and spiritually intelligent - but again it's important to stress the disastrous effect of indoctrinating young people into believing that competitive grade-getting is more important than learning to be creative, imaginative, innovative and critical thinkers.

Children also need guidance in setting their own learning directions and agendas, and encouragement to look within and think critically about what's there - to overcome negative and destructive ego-states.

Ego-driven hyper-competitive people like Amy Chua need to read some Chinese philosophy and try to cultivate some wisdom instead of mere academic attainment. They also need to be charged with being abusive to children.

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Layer 420 . . . Libraries, Social Hubs, Closures, Philistines, Pedlars of Fear, Securocrats and New Labour Nasties

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It's now beginning to feel like the bad old days of Thatcher and the Nasty Party. Every day the blood starts to boil at the sheer awfulness, meanness and stupidity of government.

This week it's the continuing effects of unnecessary cuts in spending, the rise in prices caused by increasing VAT, the money wasted on goverment spies, the closing of libraries, and so on.

The closure of libraries is appalling. You can just sense the glee of the local bureaucrats and politicians, all of them presumably card-carrying members of the Provisional wing of the Daily Mail, who are rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of shutting libraries - which from their point of view is a triple whammy.

1) Sod the working classes and their inability/unwillingness to buy their own books and computers, and to rent their own broadband.

2) Stop paying the salaries of librarians, and spending a fortune on new books.

3) Sell off valuable premises in some prime locations, thereby bringing even more money into their coffers.

Of course this works wonderfully for central government as well - being able to pass on the blame for library closures to local government, on the grounds that they didn't directly order the closures, and in any case they suggested that libraries could be run by 'volunteers'.

Have a look at this excellent article by John Harris, and learn more about the essential role of local libraries as community 'hubs', and the key role of librarians:

Librarians: 'We do so much more than shelve books and say shhh'

The Tories clearly don't know how much libraries do. Cuts will threaten the very social bonds they claim to want to promote

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/11/north-yorkshire-libraries-cuts-closures-big-society

Fifteen minutes south of Scarborough is Eastfield Community Resource Centre – opened four years ago, to serve one of the area's most disadvantaged communities. In addition to lending out books, what would once have been a mere library has obeyed the modern demand to transform itself into a "hub", and provides what might look to a lot of people like the raw materials of social mobility: internet access, parent and toddler groups, space and resources to help with school homework, meeting rooms and more.

On the day I visit, four staff members are seeing to the needs of a steady stream of people. The shelves bulge with titles that point to horizons well beyond these parts: David Remnick's Obama biography, The Bridge; a rich work of pop-cultural scholarship entitled Dylan's Visions Of Sin; and a coffee-table study of Matisse. "You can't learn everything at school," one local tells me; this place surely offers instant proof.

In Somerset, 24 out of 40 libraries may soon close. In Doncaster, 13 of the 26 are under threat. The same applies to 20 out of 43 libraries in Oxfordshire, 7 of the 12 in Conwy, 23 of the 32 in Cornwall, and 9 of the 11 on the Isle of Wight. The noise of protest grows greater by the day: do not be surprised if pockets of local dissent soon fuse together, and cause no end of problems for both national and local government.

Why can't Cameron, Clegg, Pickles and co understand that this kind of thing makes this country look utterly pathetic in the eyes of the rest of the world - or at least the parts of it that aren't run by similar Philistine arseholes whose greed and selfishness are the key components of their DNA? Admittedly those sorts of people are the ones who tend to rise to the top in politics - in all countries - but anyone with a shred of decency and intelligence surely understands that for a country as wealthy as Britain to be CUTTING BACK on library provision instead of expanding it is a vile act of cultural and social vandalism. Obviously this sort of thing increases social divisions, instead of reducing inequality. It reduces people's prospects of lifelong learning instead of increasing them. It reduces social cohesion instead of increasing it. It destroys social capital instead of multiplying it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/culture-cuts-blog

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It might be worth also taking another look at this article from a while back:

Our libraries are at risk - just when we need them most

Lean times are already bringing cuts in services, with little heed to the vital role they play and how they shape futures

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/02/libraries-closures-recession

Also refer back to the article by Catherine Bennett commented on in Layer 389 back in November:

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2010/11/layer-389-closing-libraries.html


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You should also take a look at this piece by Simon Jenkins this week:

The state's pedlars of fear must be brought to account

Why have a private firm run police to spy on a few greens? The Ratcliffe Six case is a warning story of securocrats out of control

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/11/police-reform-mark-stone-terrorism

The picture of the Ratcliffe Six, who appeared to be "greens" from central casting . . .  recalled Chesterton's satire on the early Met police special branch, The Man Who Was Thursday, in which all the members of the "supreme anarchist council" turned out to be policemen. So, are the greens all policemen, and if so what is their game?

Mark Stone, aka Kennedy, clearly had a good job. He could climb trees, buy drinks, sleep with girls, shout at the fuzz and chain himself to nuclear power stations, all on the taxpayer. The only thing that went wrong was a bad attack of Stockholm syndrome. Kennedy fell in love with the enemy. He started worrying about global warming, which was not in the script.

Running Kennedy – let alone his colleagues – cost the taxpayer £250,000 a year, or £1.75m over seven years. Whether tree-hugging and the occasional trespass constituted threats to national security is moot. A gilded sledgehammer was clearly being deployed to crack a few nuts. They were not a serious terrorist threat. The denouement was a costly fiasco. This is what happens when authority has too much money and no one in charge to impose a sense of proportion.

It is significant that Kennedy did not work for any police force. He worked for a murky organisation called the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU). With a budget of £5m this operates as a branch of the National Domestic Extremism Unit (NDEU) which, in turn, works alongside the National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit (NETCU). Ask where this stands, and you will be told it reports to the Association of Chief Police Officers' Terrorism and Allied Matters Committee, codenamed Acpo(TAM).

Only those who have tarried in the foggy corridors of the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice and the Metropolitan police can have any notion of the Orwellian extravagance of these places. Agencies, units and groups cruise shark-like round the feet of terrified Home Office ministers. Their staffs, expenses, overtime and accommodation are crammed into London's Scotland Yard and Tintagel House. If challenged, they incant their motto: "We keep you safe."

Kennedy's bosses in the NPOIU work for Acpo, but this is not what it seems. It is not, as its name suggests, the police officers' staff club, nor is it a public body of any sort. It is a private company, incorporated in 1997. It is sub-contracted by Whitehall to operate the police end of the government's counterterrorism and "anti-extremism" strategies. It is thus alongside MI5, but even less accountable.

As a private company, Acpo need not accede to Freedom of Information requests and presumably could distribute its profit to its own board. The whole operation is reminiscent of the deals set up by the Pentagon with private firms to run the Iraq and Afghan wars, free of publicity or accountability. There is no more vivid testament to the illiberalism of the Blair regime than these eccentric arrangements. They were all approved by the likes of David Blunkett, Charles Clarke, John Reid and Jacqui Smith.

These people are the real baddies in this story - Blair, Blunkett, Clarke, Reid and Smith. Every one of them a nasty piece of work - plotters, careerists, authoritarians, eliteists, bullies, egomaniacs and all-round arseholes. No more interested in civil liberties and justice than they are in socialism and greater equality in our society. New Labour through and through. It's mainly thanks to them - their negligence, acquiescence and positive intent - that the system became what it clearly is now, and which somebody needs to do something about as a matter of urgency. So step forward Teresa May . . .

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Layer 408 . . . Winter Solstice, Julian Assange, John Pilger, Education, Spiritual Intelligence, Affluenza, Inequality, and Zen

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It's the Winter Solstice, and a lunar eclipse. We couldn't see the eclipsed moon this morning, which seemed to be the actual point, really.

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Julian Assange

Speaking on Radio 4 this morning Mr Assange said,

"Capable, generous people don't create victims; they try to prevent people becoming victims."

Very well said, Mr A.

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John Pilger has been working hard to support Julian Assange. His new website is here:

http://www.johnpilger.com/

The documentary he produced for television recently is still available here on the itv.com  website:

http://www.itv.com/itvplayer/video/?Filter=198443

http://www.itv.com/presscentre/presspacks/johnpilgerthewaryoudontsee/default.html 

Here are some key facts from the programme:

The killing of civilians is a war crime.

In WorldWar 1 just 10% of deaths were civilians.
In World War 2 they were 50%.
In Vietnam they were 80%
In Iraq they were 90%

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This video, on the Guardian website, is well worth watching:

Jody McIntyre: 'What the government are trying to do is to widen the gap between the rich and the poor'

Activist Jody McIntyre on inequality, political process, and the student demonstrations

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/video/2010/dec/20/jody-mcintyre-student-protest

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Thinking about inequality, Christmas, and Taoist philosophy, I had another look at Layer 74, which focuses on values, affluenza, and education. In particular it suggests we all buy and read Oliver James's book, 'Affluenza'. Will Self said this about it:

“Oliver James is our foremost chronicler of what ails us. Affluenza should be mandatory reading for everyone, but especially those in politics, business and the media who are intent on upping our society’s dosage of toxic affluence”.

Ideal for Christmas presents.


http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2008/09/layer-74-be-strong-education-and.html

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Thinking about Assange's statement, above, and the true spirit of Christmas, I think it might be worth thinking again about this passage from Layer 148:

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2009/04/layer-148-phoenix-hall-tokyo-spiritual.html

I’ve reached the conclusion that in true Zen style it might be easier to describe what spiritual intelligence and enlightenment are NOT, rather than describe what they ARE.

They’re the absence of malice, spite, viciousness, violence, anger and hatred. The absence of racism, sexism, snobbery, elitism and other forms of prejudice and self-aggrandisement.

It’s the absence of greed, envy, jealousy, pettiness and unpleasantness. It’s the absence of exploitation, abuse and other forms of immoral behaviour.

Some of these things can be attributed to a lack of social and emotional intelligences, but through the grace of spiritual intelligence we see the need to work on our current levels of these other intelligences in order to raise them higher.

Through spiritual intelligence we aspire to make ourselves and our world a better place. We aspire to raise levels of wellbeing and enlightenment in ourselves, and crucially to assist in raising them for others, since in order to live well ourselves we need others to also live well.

As the story says, it was impossible for Siddartha to find contentment and happiness when he was aware of the sufferings of others. Through doing what we can to assist others to overcome ignorance, want and suffering we enjoy happiness and wellbeing ourselves as a kind of by-product.

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And let's keep in mind this is where we're all heading, hopefully:

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2008/04/layer-20-fully-evolved-humans.html
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Layer 385 . . . Ireland, Tax Piracy, IMF, Shock Doctrine, Terrible Neighbours, the PFI Racket, Nick Clegg, Social Mobility and New Fangled Progressives

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Royal wedding date set for 29 April

Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding will take place on Friday 29 April at Westminster Abbey

Exciting. Not.

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Things are hotting up again on the economics and financial front. Shit hitting the fan big time in Ireland. Polly Toynbee's column gives an excellent overview:

 Ireland shouldn't get a penny until it gives up its tax piracy

Cameron says he is being 'good neighbours' with the Irish. Why, when they have been such terrible neighbours to us?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/22/no-bailout-for-ireland

Yet again the western world teeters on the edge of calamity caused by the bank-lending extravaganza that fuelled the great property bubble. Europe holds its breath. Will the market predators be halted at Ireland, or might the rating agencies knock down all the dominoes one by one, first the weak countries, then the strong? Meanwhile a Europe-wide fiscal tightening panic may yet bring about the very thing it seeks to prevent, as democracy once again falls under the wheels of finance.

What lesson has George Osborne learned since he penned a paean of praise in the Times in 2006, "Look and Learn Across the Irish Sea"? He wrote: "Ireland stands as a shining example of the art of the possible in long-term economic policymaking ... Capital will go wherever investment is most attractive. Ireland's business tax rates are only 12.5%, while Britain's are becoming among the highest in the world." Low taxes are the answer, he said.

He claims he is being "good neighbours" with our cousins across the Irish sea. What he does not say – perhaps embarrassed by all that previous praise – is that the Irish have been exceptionally bad neighbours to everyone else.

Ireland's corporation tax is 12.5%, the UK's is 28%, dropping to 24% in 2013, and the US rate is 35%. Ireland has played the beggar my neighbour, race-to-the-bottom tax game for many years. Quite why the EU tolerated this is a mystery when a fortune was poured from Brussels to Dublin to pay for a spectacular modernising infrastructure over the years. A few other large companies recently decamped to Dublin from London, advertising giant WPP for one: these are mainly virtual moves for tax purposes only, since virtually no staff go over – and certainly not the board.

But, in the view of Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK, the corporation tax rate is only a fraction of the true story, a flag to signal to global companies that they will get a phenomenal deal with an Irish relocation. Ireland's real shame is not that, like the UK, it mistook its property boom for a never-ending cash machine. What is unforgivable is its shameless status as Europe's greatest tax haven, helping to cheat tax from the world's treasuries for decades.

Ireland allows Google, Facebook, Microsoft Corp and many others to shunt profits around subsidiaries so that they escape even Ireland's own low tax rate.

Ireland allows them, quite legally, to pass the profits on to other tax havens that levy no corporation tax at all, paying only tiny sums in passing: Google put 92% of its billions of worldwide non-US profits through Dublin, and it paid Ireland just £18m.

This is a pure tax haven, with the laxest tax regime in the EU, with no controlled foreign companies rules (to limit deferral of tax).

So why is Ireland not required to put its tax affairs in order and stop cheating all those neighbours now coming to its rescue? IMF doctrine demands countries squeeze the breath out of their people with punitive cuts – and they like low or, even better, no taxes.

The IMF's purgative is an ideological brew; it learns no lessons. When its patients get worse and near death, as Ireland has done after its first terrible dose of cuts, the fund calls for more leeches, mercury and arsenic. That is, of course, the same pre-Keynesian medicine Cameron and Osborne prescribe for us. There is a week before a final settlement: will the rest of Europe really hand over their money without demanding Ireland abandons tax piracy and joins the civilised world?

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Yes - classic IMF 'Shock Doctrine' prescriptions and demands. For more on the IMF and the shock doctrine outrage, just type 'shock doctrine', IMF, Naomi Klein, disaster capitalism, etc into the Oxzen search box at the top of this page.

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The bill for PFI contracts is an outrage. Let us refuse to pay this odious debt

The great racket that was private finance now robs the taxpayer of billions that should be spent on nurses and teachers

by George Monbiot

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/22/pfi-private-finance-refuse-debt

You've been told that nothing is sacred; that no state spending is safe from being cut or eroded through inflation. You've been misled. As the new public spending data released by the government shows, a £267bn bill has been both ringfenced and index-linked. This sum, spread over the next 50 years or so, guarantees the welfare not of state pensioners or children or the unemployed, but of a different class of customer. To make way, everything else must be cut, further and faster than it would otherwise have been.

This is the money the state owes to private corporations: the banks, construction and service companies that built infrastructure under the private finance initiative. In September 1997 the Labour government gave companies a legal guarantee that their payments would never be cut. Whenever there was a conflict between the needs of patients or pupils and private finance initiative (PFI) payments, it would thenceforth be resolved in favour of the consortia. The NHS owes private companies £50bn for infrastructure that cost only £11bn to build, plus £15bn for maintenance charges.

In 1997 the British Medical Association warned: "The NHS could find itself with a facility which is obsolete in 10 or 20 years' time, but for which it will still have to pay for 30 years or more." No one's celebrating being proved right.

If a hospital no longer requires the services it contracted to buy, tough.

The cost and inflexibility of PFI is an outrage, a racket, the legacy of 13 years of New Labour appeasement, triangulation and false accounting. At first sight, it looks as if nothing can be done: contracts are contracts. What I'm about to propose is a wild shot, but I hope it deserves, at least, to be discussed. I contend the money we owe to the PFI consortia should be considered odious debt.

Odious debt is a legal term usually applied to the endowments of dictators in the developing world. It means debt incurred without the consent of the people and against the national interest.

PFI was a Tory invention but became a Labour doctrine.

There was no democratic mandate for this policy, which appears to have arisen from secret talks with companies.

Secrecy surrounded the whole scheme. To this day, PFI contracts remain commercially confidential. You can't read them; MPs can't read them. We don't know what we are being stung for or whether the costs are justified. But there are some powerful clues.

In Coventry, for example, NHS bosses originally sought £30m of public money to refurbish the city's two hospitals. When the government told them it was "PFI or bust", the refurbishment plan was dropped in favour of a scheme to knock down both hospitals and build a new one – with fewer beds and doctors and nurses – at an eventual, corporate-friendly cost of £410m. A report commissioned by the local health authority found that the scheme had been "progressively tailored to fit the needs of private investors".

To get their new buildings or services, public bodies had to show that PFI was cheaper than public procurement. The system was rigged to make this easy.

Desperate public bodies were gulled and outmanoeuvred with the blessing of central government, which sought only to keep the corporations off its back and the liabilities off its balance sheets. Was this a legitimate means of loading our schools and hospitals with debt? I don't think so.

But where else do we go with this? I've been warning about inflexible PFI contracts since 1998. I've wasted months on this mission, trying to understand and explain the most complex issue in public life. For all the good it's done, I might as well have gone fishing.

Now I see corporations squatting like great cuckoos on our public services, while officials pour the money that should have been spent on nurses and teachers into their widening bills. Yes, I'm bitter. Yes, I'm clutching at straws. Have you got a better idea?

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If anyone's interested in reading more evidence that Nick Clegg's just a Tony Blair clone, then just read this column he wrote for the Guardian yesterday:

For old-fashioned progressives, achieving income equality was the ultimate goal. For us, it is increasing social mobility

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/22/inequality-injustice-nick-clegg

Nick thinks he's a new-fangled 'progressive', when in reality all this guff about social mobility and equality of opportunity is the same old New Labour bollocks.
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Layer 382 . . . Denmark, Civilization, Education, Rousseau, Emile, Racism and Inequality

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Denmark.

Oxzen has decided to visit Denmark for the first time, and would appreciate Danish readers suggesting places to visit and places to stay in Denmark. Having said many positive things about Danish schools and Danish teachers in these blogs, Oxzen would also like to meet some teachers and visit some schools.

Oxzen reckons that Denmark is probably one of the most civilised places in Europe, and it's time to get out there and enjoy some of that civilisation.

Denmark, with a mixed market capitalist economy and a large welfare state, ranks as having the world's highest level of income equality. Denmark has the best business climate in the world, according to the U.S. business magazine Forbes. From 2006 to 2008, surveys ranked Denmark as "the happiest place in the world", based on standards of health, welfare and education. The 2009 Global Peace Index survey ranks Denmark as the second most peaceful country in the world, after New Zealand. In 2009, Denmark was ranked as one of the least corrupt countries in the world according to the Corruption Perceptions Index, ranking second only to New Zealand. In 2010, Transparency International ranked it as least corrupt country in the world, in a three-way tie with New Zealand and Singapore. - Wikipedia

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Moving on from the previous Layer's focus on Montaigne and his ideas on education, it's time to take a look at one of his fellow countrymen, who had some very similar ideas on education and pedagogy.

Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a major Genevois philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy heavily influenced the French Revolution, as well as the American Revolution and the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought. - Wikipedia

One of the great things about France is its national maxim - Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.

One of the worst things about France is its current adherence to a system of formal and didactic education, with a rigid national curriculum. Very similar to the UK, the USA, etc.

Rousseau's novel, Emile: or, On Education, which he considered his most important work, is a seminal treatise on the education of the whole person for citizenship. - Wikipedia

In Rousseau's philosophy, society's negative influence on men centers on its transformation of amour de soi, a positive self-love, into amour-propre, or pride. Amour de soi represents the instinctive human desire for self-preservation, combined with the human power of reason. In contrast, amour-propre is artificial and encourages man to compare himself to others, thus creating unwarranted fear and allowing men to take pleasure in the pain or weakness of others.

In Discourse on the Arts and Sciences Rousseau argues that the arts and sciences have not been beneficial to humankind, because they arose not from authentic human needs but rather as a result of pride and vanity. Moreover, the opportunities they create for idleness and luxury have contributed to the corruption of man. He proposed that the progress of knowledge had made governments more powerful and had crushed individual liberty; and he concluded that material progress had actually undermined the possibility of true friendship by replacing it with jealousy, fear, and suspicion.

Perhaps Rousseau's most important work is The Social Contract, which outlines the basis for a legitimate political order within a framework of classical republicanism. Published in 1762, it became one of the most influential works of political philosophy in the Western tradition. It developed some of the ideas mentioned in an earlier work, the article Economie Politique (Discourse on Political Economy), featured in Diderot's Encyclopédie. The treatise begins with the dramatic opening lines, "Man is or was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. One man thinks himself the master of others, but remains more of a slave than they."

Rousseau claimed that the state of nature was a primitive condition without law or morality, which human beings left for the benefits and necessity of cooperation. As society developed, division of labor and private property required the human race to adopt institutions of law. In the degenerate phase of society, man is prone to be in frequent competition with his fellow men while also becoming increasingly dependent on them. This double pressure threatens both his survival and his freedom. According to Rousseau, by joining together into civil society through the social contract and abandoning their claims of natural right, individuals can both preserve themselves and remain free. This is because submission to the authority of the general will of the people as a whole guarantees individuals against being subordinated to the wills of others and also ensures that they obey themselves because they are, collectively, the authors of the law.

Education and child rearing

Main article: Emile: or, On Education

“ ‘The noblest work in education is to make a reasoning man, and we expect to train a young child by making him reason! This beginning at the end; this is making an instrument of a result. If children understood how to reason they would not need to be educated.” –Rousseau, Emile. ”

Rousseau’s philosophy of education is not concerned with particular techniques of imparting information and concepts, but rather with developing the pupil’s character and moral sense, so that he may learn to practice self-mastery and remain virtuous even in the unnatural and imperfect society in which he will have to live. The hypothetical boy, Émile, is to be raised in the countryside, which, Rousseau believes, is a more natural and healthy environment than the city, under the guardianship of a tutor who will guide him through various learning experiences arranged by the tutor. Today we would call this the disciplinary method of "natural consequences" since, like modern psychologists, Rousseau felt that children learn right and wrong through experiencing the consequences of their acts rather than through physical punishment. The tutor will make sure that no harm results to Émile through his learning experiences.

Rousseau was one of the first to advocate developmentally appropriate education; and his description of the stages of child development mirrors his conception of the evolution of culture. He divides childhood into stages: the first is to the age of about 12, when children are guided by their emotions and impulses. During the second stage, from 12 to about 16, reason starts to develop; and finally the third stage, from the age of 16 onwards, when the child develops into an adult. Rousseau recommends that the young adult learn a manual skill such as carpentry, which requires creativity and thought . . .

Rousseau's detractors have blamed him for everything they do not like in what they call modern "child-centered" education. John Darling's 1994 book Child-Centered Education and its Critics argues that the history of modern educational theory is a series of footnotes to Rousseau, a development he regards as bad.

Good or bad, the theories of educators such as Rousseau's near contemporaries Pestalozzi, Mme de Genlis, and later, Maria Montessori, and John Dewey, which have directly influenced modern educational practices do have significant points in common with those of Rousseau.

Common also were attacks by defenders of social hierarchy on Rousseau's "romantic" belief in equality. In 1860, shortly after the Sepoy Rebellion in India, two British white supremacists, John Crawfurd and James Hunt, mounted a defense of British imperialism based on “scientific racism". Crawfurd, in alliance with Hunt, took over the presidency of the British Anthropological Society, which had been founded with the mission to defend indigenous peoples against slavery and colonial exploitation. Invoking "science" and "realism", the two men derided their "philanthropic" predecessors for believing in human equality and for not recognizing that mankind was divided into superior and inferior races. Crawfurd, who opposed Darwinian evolution, "denied any unity to mankind, insisting on immutable, hereditary, and timeless differences in racial character, principal amongst which was the 'very great' difference in 'intellectual capacity.'" For Crawfurd, the races had been created separately and were different species. Since Crawfurd was Scottish, he thought the Scottish "race" superior and all others inferior; whilst Hunt, on the other hand, believed in the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon "race". Crawfurd and Hunt routinely accused those who disagreed with them of believing in "Rousseau’s Noble Savage". (The pair ultimately quarreled because Hunt believed in slavery and Crawfurd did not). "As Ter Ellinson demonstrates, Crawfurd was responsible for re-introducing the Pre-Rousseauian concept of 'the Noble Savage' to modern anthropology, attributing it wrongly and quite deliberately to Rousseau.”
 

In 1919 Irving Babbitt, founder of a movement called the "New Humanism", wrote a critique of what he called "sentimental humanitarianism", for which he blamed Rousseau. Babbitt's depiction of Rousseau was countered in a celebrated and much reprinted essay by A. O. Lovejoy in 1923. In France, fascist theorist and anti-Semite Charles Maurras, founder of Action Française, “had no compunctions in laying the blame for both Romantisme et Révolution firmly on Rousseau in 1922." - Wikipedia

Wow! "Scientific Racism", eh? Who knew?

In the news today - a report on the activities and effects of the English Defence League:

English Defence League demos 'feed Islamic extremism'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11787839

Right wing groups like the English Defence League are turning parts of Britain into recruiting grounds for Islamic extremists, police have said. The EDL emerged last year and has held demonstrations in a number of towns and cities against radicalisation. But the West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit has told BBC Radio 5 live there is evidence EDL events can encourage extremists.

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Immigration: Far-right fringe exploits European coalitions
 

In the first of a series on the politics of immigration in Europe, Ian Traynor reveals how mainstream European parties appear paralysed by populism, unable to halt the rise of the far right
 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/15/europe-immigration-far-right-threat

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Ministers accused of 'not caring' about equality

http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/house_of_commons/newsid_9204000/9204015.stm

The government does not believe it has a responsibility to create a "fairer society", Labour has claimed following Home Secretary Theresa May's decision to scrap part of the Equality Act 2010.

On 18 November 2010, shadow equalities minister Fiona Mactaggart condemned the decision and claimed the government "just doesn't care about socio-economic inequality".

Not that New Labour showed a fat lot of caring, either. It was only thanks to Harriet Harman that the Equality Act belatedly saw the light of day.

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Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality  [This Land Is Your Land]

“ The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody. ”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 1754

Rousseau argues that "another principle which has escaped Hobbes" is man's compassion. This quality of man also motivates him to interact. Finally, man possesses the quality of "perfectibility," which allows him to improve his own physical condition/environmental situation and develop ever more sophisticated survival tactics. The increasing regularity and convention of man's contact with other men transfigures his basic capacity for reason and reflection, his natural or naive love of self (amour de soi meme) into a corrupting dependency on the perceptions and favor of others. Natural, non-destructive love of self advances gradually yet qualitatively into a state of amour propre, a love of self now driven by pride and jealousy rather than merely elemental self-preservation. This accession to amour propre has four consequences: (1) competition, (2) self-comparison with others, (3) hatred, and (4) urge for power. These all lead to Rousseau's cynical civil society. But amour de soi meme also suggests a significant step out of the state of nature. - Wikipedia

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