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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Revolution

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

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

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

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

Revolution 2.0 is published by Fourth Estate.

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

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

Quotes from the broadcast:

Technology has empowered people.

Media has been decentralised.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Young people are the detonators.

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

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

The force of ideas will eventually prevail.

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

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

Also speaking truth to power . . .

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

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

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Layer 258 . . . More on Spiritual Intelligence and Citizen Ethics . . . and the BBC

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After considering the state of Britain (and the State of Britain) (as characterised by our attitude to football) I've come to the conclusion that we've no chance becoming an enlightened society unless we have a critical mass of people who, through developing their spiritual intelligence (and maybe even Zen), then start to behave in ways which might be called enlightened.

The Buddha recognised that enlightenment requires meditation and putting oneself in the service of others. There's no sign of our society signing up for these things any time soon. All we have is a few glimmerings of people here and there recognising that there IS such a thing as spiritual intelligence - and that it's something that ought to be developed in all of us. As things currently stand, very few people even understand that spiritual intelligence has nothing to do with religion or a belief in a God or gods.

[See Oxzen Layers 13 - 21.
http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2008/04/layer-12-spiritual-intelligence.html]

Words and concepts associated with spiritual intelligence:

LOVE - caring   compassion   friendship  forgiveness  generosity  helpfulness  joy  kindness tolerance   sharing  sympathy   patience

PEACE -  calmness  contentment  dignity  discipline  happiness  honesty  humility  understanding  patience   reflection  self-confidence  self-control  self-discipline  self-respect
optimism

RIGHT CONDUCT -  Contentment  Courage  Dependability  Duty  Ethics  Gratitude  Good behaviour  Healthy living  Helpfulness  Leadership  Initiative  Unity  Respect  Responsibility
Sacrifice  Self-confidence  Self-sufficiency  Simplicity  Perseverance

NON-VIOLENCE -  appreciation of others  brotherhood / sisterhood  citizenship  compassion
concern for all life  consideration  cooperation  unwillingness to hurt  equality  forgiveness
global awareness  good manners  loyalty  social justice  service to others respect for people and property  unity  universal love  collaboration

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Big Moral Questions

Readers may recall that 10 days ago the Guardian and the Observer started a campaign about what they call Citizen Ethics:

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2010/02/layer-250-citizen-ethics.html

Last week Madeleine Bunting wrote a superb column in the Guardian that really ought to be read in full -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/21/ethics-failure-market-moral-code

To tackle the last decades' myths, we must dust off the big moral questions

A robust debate on ethics is crucial to the pursuit of a good society in which individuals are more than mere economic units

To many of [our] kids, equipping them for the labour market [is] the primary purpose of ­education. Any idea of it as enriching and deepening their understanding of what it is to be human and lead meaningful, contented adult lives, had been entirely lost to view.

The gap that intrigues me [is] the absence of any notion of being a good person, or of the many values that might not be able to command a market price such as being challenging, courageous, truthful, honest, spontaneous, joyful or even kind, compassionate.

The central premise of the Citizen Ethics supplement published in this paper at the weekend (the full pamphlet can be downloaded on Comment is free) is that we have lost a way of thinking and talking about some very important things. The preoccupation with market ­efficiency and economic growth has loomed so large that other activities, and other ­values, have been subordinated to its disciplines.

"You can't buck the market," said Margaret Thatcher, and no government has disagreed since. It was the adage that was used to justify soaring pay for the highest earners and stagnant earnings for the low-paid. The ­market ruled, and questions of injustice, honour or integrity were all secondary or irrelevant.

A poll for the World Economic Forum last month found in 10 G20 countries that two-thirds of respondents attributed the credit crunch and its ensuing economic recession to a crisis of ethics and values. Sir Thomas Legg declared in his final report on MPs' expenses that there had been a failure of ethics.

There's a widespread perception that social norms have subtly and gradually shifted towards the centrality of ­personal self-interest. As long as it's legal, it's legitimate; no further ­individual judgment is necessary. ­However much we may have laughed at the Gordon Gekko's "greed is good" line, we can now see how it seeped into ­powerful institutional cultures such as the City and parliament.

Citizen Ethics was a project to ask nearly four dozen prominent thinkers what this was all about. Did ethics really have a role to play, and had it failed? First, despite plenty of disagreements, on one thing there was a clear consensus: ethics are crucial. They are the underpinning to all political debate; they frame the questions we ask of ourselves and of our political economy and therefore do much to shape the answers we end up with.

They are vital to the civic culture in which both politics and economics are ultimately rooted. So, as Will Hutton will do in his book, Them and Us, out in the autumn, if we really want to understand how some of the incredible myths perpetrated over the last couple of decades have gone unchallenged, we have to go back to some basic arguments of philosophy. What is justice? Who deserves what? What constitutes human flourishing?

Too many of these questions have simply been shelved for too long. Questions of justice and reward were left to the market to resolve; questions of human flourishing were privatised. It was left to everyone to decide their own sequence of pleasurable experiences in life with little acknowledgement of how many of those depend entirely on mutual co-operation.

One explanation for this abandonment of the debate is that we lost a language in which to think and argue about ethics. Perhaps this is partly attributable to the vexed legacy of institutional religion and the long shadow it still casts. The promotion of ethical behaviour has been bound up with particular institutions, and as they decline, it leaves a vacuum of authority.

Who dares talk on this subject with confidence? It prompts fear that any such discussions are really a Trojan horse for promoting a religious belief. There's a suspicion that words such as "morality" tip us quickly into the kind of instinctive conviction made infamous by Tony Blair in which sincerity is regarded as an adequate substitute for careful reasoning.

Even the language itself is mired in a history of ­social control; morality and virtue are words that are reluctantly used, since both still convey overtones of intrusive monitoring of (particularly female) sexual behaviour.

Perhaps it is finally possible to move beyond these familiar anxieties and resume a task of ethical reasoning regarded through most of history as essential to being human. This is philosophy as the Greeks understood it – love of the wisdom to lead lives of meaning and fulfilment, not some kind of abstract game with words.

Ethics is a word that derives from two Greek words, ethos for habit and ethikos for character, and it better fits what Citizen Ethics proposes rather than "morality", which comes from the Latin word "mores" for social institutions and customs.

This is not about reasserting conventions, a preconceived code, but about reinvigorating a habit, a pro­cess of reasoning to the perennial question: what is the right thing to do? We wouldn't claim there is a consensus waiting to be found – on the contrary, our aim is to provoke a noisy debate on what kinds of habits and characters we need to run the good society.

To go back to the lovely kids in the classroom, what is the good society we want to inspire them with – beyond their future roles in the economy as workers and consumers? What habits and character can we offer them as ­conducive to deeply rewarding lives? If we don't know plenty of possible answers to that question, it's no ­surprise they don't.

• Read the Citizens Ethics pamphlet in full here

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The Battle of the BBC

Jonathan Freedland has a good column in the paper today concerning the huge row that's continuing about the BBC and its activities, and about the Murdochs' efforts to control it from afar, with the aid of the Tories, of course.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/02/rupert-murdoch-tory-media-policy

The BBC is caving in to a Tory media policy dictated by Rupert Murdoch

Mark Thompson is jumping from the second storey because he fears a new government may throw him from the roof

The BBC has decided its best strategy for self-preservation is to suffer a little pain now to avoid a lot of pain later.

The strategy review unveiled today offered up a couple of radio networks and half its web pages by way of a sacrifice.

6 Music exists partly because if it wasn't there, the market would never invent it: a specialist channel offering not the hamster's wheel of a repetitive playlist but curated, eclectic music. "Like friends playing each other bits from their record collections," Jarvis Cocker said yesterday.

So why has Mark Thompson done it? Because he feared that if he didn't jump from the second storey window, an incoming Conservative government would push him off the roof. He is right to be anxious. The Tories have indeed signalled a hostility to the BBC that is rare, if not unprecedented, in an opposition. Why might that be? Two words: Rupert Murdoch.

Start with the BBC. Murdoch, with son James, can't stand it – regarding it, a senior figure in broadcasting tells me, as "like the Ebola virus: they can't destroy it, so they try to contain it". They dress up their opposition in pseudo-intellectual free market blather, but the reality is much earthier than that: the BBC is a rival, and therefore an obstacle to their commercial ambitions. The smaller and weaker the BBC becomes, the more money News Corp can make.

So the Murdochs constantly demand a cut in the licence fee. Last year Cameron nodded dutifully, and called for an immediate freeze in the licence fee. That would have marked an unprecedented break in the multi-year financial settlement that is so integral to the BBC's independence – preventing it from constantly having to make nice to the politicians to keep the money coming in.

Any doubters should play a game of spot the difference. Hold a copy of James Murdoch's 2009 MacTaggart lecture in one hand, and a clutch of Tory policy positions on the media in the other. Then see if you can tell them apart.

Obviously we should all get involved in this battle, and at the very least start listening to BBC 6 Music online and on digital radio, and supporting its continuation. Even the Tory Boy shadow minister now says he's going to do that.And as someone said on the radio (Radio 4) yesterday, if the commercial stations are finding it hard to compete with the BBC, OUR BBC, then they'd better start trying a bit harder. They could start by broadcasting stuff people actually enjoy listening to, and using broadcasters who don't speak to listeners as if they're morons. On the other hand, if they want to keep their mass moron constituency happy, they can carry on doing exactly what they're doing.

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Layer 252 . . . A Revolution in Publishing, Brown and Bullying, and More Citizen Ethics

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More zeitgeist.

I was talking last week to a friend about self-publishing, and how blogs, or summaries of blogs, could easily and cheaply be made available for downloading and reading on tablet reading machines like the Kindle and the iPad, and would work extremely well if they had embedded in them hyperlinks that could take readers off to websites via wireless links for further and complementary reading material.

Yesterday I came across this article from the New York Review of Books in the Observer:

Publishing: The Revolutionary Future
By Jason Epstein

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23683

The transition within the book publishing industry from physical inventory stored in a warehouse and trucked to retailers to digital files stored in cyberspace and delivered almost anywhere on earth as quickly and cheaply as e-mail is now underway and irreversible. This historic shift will radically transform worldwide book publishing.

Digitization makes possible a world in which anyone can claim to be a publisher and anyone can call him- or herself an author.

Titles will also be posted on authors' and publishers' own Web sites and on reliable Web sites of special interest where biographies of Napoleon or manuals of dog training will be evaluated by competent critics and downloaded directly from author or publisher to end user while software distributes the purchase price appropriately, bypassing traditional formulas. With inventory expense, shipping, and returns eliminated, readers will pay less, authors will earn more, and book publishers, rid of their otiose infrastructure, will survive and may prosper.

Authors, with the help of agents and business managers, will become their own publishers, retaining all net proceeds from digital as well as traditional sales. With the Espresso Book Machine, enterprising retail booksellers may become publishers themselves, like their eighteenth-century forebears.

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/apr/24/espresso-book-machine-launches]

The huge, worldwide market for digital content is not a fantasy. It will be very large, very diverse, and very surprising: its cultural impact cannot be imagined. E-books will be a significant factor in this uncertain future, but actual books printed and bound will continue to be the irreplaceable repository of our collective wisdom.

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Another entertaining and very funny column by Charlie Brooker.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/22/charlie-brooker-terry-kay-woods-adultery

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To give this next piece some context, it might be worth remembering the confession that Jonathan Aitken recently made - much to his credit - about his state of mind when he was at the peak of his time in politics, which was also the time of his downfall - "I was puffed up with too much self-centredness, self-importance and pride."

This is clearly an occupational hazard for anyone in government, and anyone who's been through the elite education system which we seem to value so very much.

Gordon Brown hit by fresh bullying allegations

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/feb/21/gordon-brown-fresh-bullying-allegations

The cabinet secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell, was tonight under pressure to launch a formal investigation into Gordon Brown's treatment of his staff after an anti-bullying helpline revealed it has received several complaints from people working at No 10. It follows publication by the Observer journalist Andrew Rawnsley of hotly- disputed allegations about Brown mistreating staff, including assertions that he swore at staff, grabbed them by lapels and shouted at them.

Lord Mandelson, flatly denied Rawnsley's claims, insisting that Brown was simply "demanding", "emotional, "and had a degree of impatience".

The claim of routine bullying was today backed up a senior former adviser to Brown in No 10, who told the Guardian: "His intense bouts of anger are unremarkable to anyone who has worked closely with him. You just have to put up with this stuff. It is part of the daily experience, almost part of the furniture. He would behave in that way constantly. He suffers from a massive paranoia and an inability to accept blame, yet he runs a blame culture that allows him to blame others.

What we see here is very simple - a man, and a whole circle of people, who are low in emotional, social and spiritual intelligence. Raging egos, puffed up pride, aggression in response to stress, and powermania.

Nothing that a few years of full-time Zen meditation and practice wouldn't sort out, though, under the guideance of a skilled practitioner.

Whereas psychopaths like Blair are too clever and cunning to get caught out being blatantly aggressive and bullying.
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Ethics and Morality

This all feeds very nicely into the intiative called Citizen Ethics that Madeleine Bunting and The Guardian are promoting, and which was launched in The Observer yesterday.

Madeleine's column in the paper yesterday was superb, and has to be read in full -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/21/ethics-failure-market-moral-code

To tackle the last decades' myths, we must dust off the big moral questions

A robust debate on ethics is crucial to the pursuit of a good society in which individuals are more than mere economic units

It's year 10's English class in a ­London comprehensive. Forty kids are debating the purpose of a school. "Teaching social skills," they suggest. Why do you need them? I ask, playing devil's advocate. "To get a job." Is that the only point of having social skills? "Yes, what else is there?" One demurs, hesitant and not entirely sure how to ­express herself. "No, there's more to life than a job. There's happiness. Social skills are needed to make you happy."

It was a fascinating illustration of how deeply the instrumentalist values of the market have penetrated our everyday thinking when kids talk in this way. "Social skills" is the type of phrase management experts dreamed up to put a market value on a set of human characteristics. Cheerful, punctual, able to co-operate, take instructions: these are all marketable skills. But to many of these kids, equipping them for the labour market was the primary purpose of ­education. Any idea of it as enriching and deepening their understanding of what it is to be human and lead meaningful, contented adult lives, had been entirely lost to view.

The central premise of the Citizen Ethics supplement published in this paper at the weekend (the full pamphlet can be downloaded on Comment is free) is that we have lost a way of thinking and talking about some very important things. The preoccupation with market ­efficiency and economic growth has loomed so large that other activities, and other ­values, have been subordinated to its disciplines.

A poll for the World Economic Forum last month found in 10 G20 countries that two-thirds of respondents attributed the credit crunch and its ensuing economic recession to a crisis of ethics and values.

Citizen Ethics was a project to ask nearly four dozen prominent thinkers what this was all about. Did ethics really have a role to play, and had it failed? First, despite plenty of disagreements, on one thing there was a clear consensus: ethics are crucial. They are the underpinning to all political debate; they frame the questions we ask of ourselves and of our political economy and therefore do much to shape the answers we end up with.

They are vital to the civic culture in which both politics and economics are ultimately rooted. So, as Will Hutton will do in his book, Them and Us, out in the autumn, if we really want to understand how some of the incredible myths perpetrated over the last couple of decades have gone unchallenged, we have to go back to some basic arguments of philosophy. What is justice? Who deserves what? What constitutes human flourishing?

Too many of these questions have simply been shelved for too long. Questions of justice and reward were left to the market to resolve; questions of human flourishing were privatised. It was left to everyone to decide their own sequence of pleasurable experiences in life with little acknowledgement of how many of those depend entirely on mutual co-operation.

One explanation for this abandonment of the debate is that we lost a language in which to think and argue about ethics. Perhaps this is partly attributable to the vexed legacy of institutional religion and the long shadow it still casts. The promotion of ethical behaviour has been bound up with particular institutions, and as they decline, it leaves a vacuum of authority. Who dares talk on this subject with confidence? It prompts fear that any such discussions are really a Trojan horse for promoting a religious belief. There's a suspicion that words such as "morality" tip us quickly into the kind of instinctive conviction made infamous by Tony Blair in which sincerity is regarded as an adequate substitute for careful reasoning.

Even the language itself is mired in a history of ­social control; morality and virtue are words that are reluctantly used, since both still convey overtones of intrusive monitoring of (particularly female) sexual behaviour.

Since most of the contributors to this pamphlet express their commitment to ethics without any reference to religious practice, perhaps it is finally possible to move beyond these familiar anxieties and resume a task of ethical reasoning regarded through most of history as essential to being human. This is philosophy as the Greeks understood it – love of the wisdom to lead lives of meaning and fulfilment, not some kind of abstract game with words.

Our aim is to provoke a noisy debate on what kinds of habits and characters we need to run the good society.

To go back to the lovely kids in the classroom, what is the good society we want to inspire them with – beyond their future roles in the economy as workers and consumers? What habits and character can we offer them as ­conducive to deeply rewarding lives? If we don't know plenty of possible answers to that question, it's no ­surprise they don't.

Wonderful stuff, Madeleine.
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Synchronicity and Comedy Corner

There was possibly the best-ever panel for this week's Just A Minute on R4 - Paul Merton, Sue Perkins, Tony Hawks and Graham Norton. This particular comedy show can be quite dull if the panellists aren't extremely sparky, quick-witted and off the wall.

We seem to be in a real golden age of comic talent right now, just as the sixties were a golden age for original musical talent. Programmes like this one show just how naturally funny the performers are, since they have to be very spontaneous and original, without any scripts or planning. Sue Perkins and Paul Merton are phenominally talented, and Messrs Hawks and Norton aren't far behind.

During the programme the subject of Edwin Drood came up - via Paul Merton going into a spiel about Ernie Wise appearing in a West End play based on Dickens' story of Edwin Drood. Immediately before listening I'd been doing today's quick crossword - 17 across: Dickens' unfinished mystery tale (5,5)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00qtt8c/Just_a_Minute_Series_56_Episode_8/
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Layer 226 . . . The Thick of It, The Game of Politics, Refraining From Harm and Modern Beauty

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There's a beating-up in the press today for Brown and Cameron, and it's forced both of them to apologise for their actions. Namely? Using Remembrance Day for photo-opportunities - behaving like publicity-crazed actors on a poppy-strewn stage in the so-called 'Field of Remembrance' outside the Abbey last week.

Without proper permission they both went into the 'Field' in order to “inspect” the crosses and poppies that had been put there to commemorate those who have died in the Middle East wars. Cameron went in first with his personal photographer, prior to the service, and having got wind of this Brown scuttled in there when the service was over, accompanied by his wife and a film crew, which was shooting on behalf of the press corps. “Inspecting”. Gazing earnestly at the crosses and the poppies.

Thanks to “The Thick of It” on the BBC we have a much sharper appreciation of what goes on within the inner circles of the political leaders. The sense that even the senior members of the government and the opposition are just actors and performers, acting to scripts provided by strategists, speech writers, political analysts, image makers, PR consultants, rapid response units, private secretaries, press secretaries, focus groups, pollsters, and assorted over-opinionated dickheads.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qgrd

This, of course, doesn't invalidate the view of politics given by “Yes, Minister”, which made us aware that government ministers are also manipulated, maneuvered, thwarted, hoodwinked, fed bullshit and led astray by devious professional civil servants up to the level of Permanent Secretary.

What we now understand about politics is that it is indeed the 'art of the possible', and that honesty, integrity and good intent will always be trumped by ambition, competing egos, deviousness, ruthlessness, stupidity, vested interests, and the  hunger to have and to hold power.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1229917/Brown-Cameron-apologise-Abbey-turning-Poppy-Day-contest-photo-ops.html?ITO=1490&referrer=yahoo

The Thick of It last night showed the Minister and her Tory opposite number taking part in a Radio 5 Live debate, with them and their various advisors and hangers-on being viciously verballed and bullied by their respective handlers, strategists and spin supremos. The sheer awfulness and nastiness of it all is brilliantly portrayed. And let's not kid ourselves that this is an exaggeration and a caricature. It's not. This is how the game's played in our sophisticated times.

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Refraining From Harm.

How To Practice – Chapter 4 – The Dalai Lama

Buddha teaches us how to find refuge from suffering and limitation, but the chief refuge, or source of protection, is found in the states of realisation achieved through practicing morality, concentrated meditation, and wisdom.

Buddhist scriptures recommend that you hide your good qualities and achievements like a lamp inside a vessel. You should not advertise them unless there is a great purpose in doing so.

Buddhists do not ask for happiness. Happiness comes from putting [spiritual doctrine] into practice. Buddha teaches the actual refuge – how to practice the doctrine – but the main responsibility lies in your own implementation. To create the foundation for an eventual spiritual state devoid of suffering and limitation we need to engage in the following practice:

1)    Identify the 10 nonvirtues (see Layer 225)
2)    Identify the 10 virtues (which are the opposites of those nonvirtues)
3)    Abandon the former and adopt the latter.

Limitation in dress is the practice of contentment regarding clothes. [Monks and nuns are limited to one set of robes] The same is true for adornments. It is a mistake to think that it is really worthwhile to spend more on food, clothing and adornments just because you have more money. Rather, spend more on health and education for poor people. This is not forced socialism but voluntary compassion.

Also, it is essential for monastics to be satisfied with adequate shelter. An elaborate home is not allowed. This is called contentment with regard to shelter. Lay people can adopt this practice by reducing the neverending quest for a better home and for the furniture and decorations in it.

Examine your attitudes toward food, clothes and shelter. By reducing expectations you will promote contentment. The extra energy which is released should be devoted to meditation and to achieve cessation of problems.

We should be contented in material areas, for those are bound by limitation, but not with regard to the spiritual, which can be extended limitlessly.

With regard to compassion and altruism there is no limit, and thus we should not be content with the degree we have.

Practicing the morality of individual liberation is also helpful in increasing mindfulness and introspection.

The practice of morality of individual liberation also fosters tolerance and patience. Buddha said that patience is the highest form of asceticism, and through it one can reach nirvana. For monks and nuns there are four qualities of patience and tolerance to maintain:

•     If someone pushes you around, you should be tolerant, patient.

•     If someone shows anger to you, you should not respond with anger.

•     If someone hits you, you should not strike back.

•     If someone embarrasses and insults you, you should not answer back.
  

Usually my advice to beginners is to be patient; have fewer expectations of yourself. It is most important to be an honest citizen, a good member of the human community. Whether or not you understand profound ideas, it is important to be a good person wherever you are right now.

The essence of the Buddha's teaching can be found in two sayings:

•    If possible, you should help others.

•     If that is not possible, at least you should do no harm.

Summary for Daily Practice

•     Notice your attachments to food, clothes and shelter, and adopt monastic practices of contentment to a layperson's life. Be satisfied with adequate food, clothing and shelter. Use the additional free time for meditation so that you can overcome more problems.

•     Develop a strong desire to refrain from harming others either physically or verbally no matter whether you are embarrassed, insulted, reviled, pushed or hit.

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You should never, ever forget to turn the TV off after watching Andy Marr's early morning politics programme on Sundays. If you do you will become irritated beyond belief by the stuff that comes on in the God slot. There they were this morning, discussing 'angels' in front of a studio audience – media whores Cristina Odone and Kelvin McKenzie and pals – talking about whether angels exist, whether you can communicate with them, what they do for us, etc. Of course they exist. As do fairies, pixies, leprechauns, elves and hobbits. And God, of course.

Odone had two novels published, The Shrine and A Perfect Wife. She contributed to Why I am still a Catholic.

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Modern Beauty - Ugly Beauty

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00p4g60

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2009/11_november/03/beauty.shtml

Has beauty disappeared from modern art? Several influential modern thinkers insist that it has. And this belief has inspired them to publish a clutch of recent books which claim that modern art is no longer capable of capturing true beauty: that beauty has gone from art.
Art critic Waldemar Januszczak fiercely disagrees, believing that great art is as interested in beauty as ever.
Art's search for beauty has manifested itself in depictions of the idealised female form, glorious landscapes, lovely flower studies and perfectly arranged renaissance altar pieces - but where does this search continue today?

Januszczak's a strange guy. I'm not sure he's really got much to say about art which really adds to the sum of human knowledge and enlightenment. He filmed a lot of the programme in and around Venice, and rightly said it's a place one should go back to as often as possible, preferably out of the main tourist season.

Sample quotes from the programme -

Talking about the ancient weathered walls and surfaces - “Old things can have a beauty that's been earned.” [Grace?]
“Growing old gracefully is one of the sternest tests that life sets us.”

“Permanent change is what life's all about.”

“We should stop trying to make sense of everything. We need the inexplicable. We need mysteries. Art's purpose is to nourish our imaginations.”

Carl Andre said, “All materials are interesting. But most people are matter-blind. They don't know what things are made from.”

Jeff Koons said, “The highest state that art can take you to is the acceptance of everything.”
[Possibly he's talking about non-attachment]
And, “We should follow our interests and focus on them. There's nothing else you can do in life.”

Yoko Ono believes that all of her work has a vibration that has a positive effect on the world.

Anish Kapoor

Good vibrations ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Anish Kapoor was one of the artists featured in the programme. It's no surprise he has a beautiful website:

http://www.anishkapoor.com/

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

I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue is back - a new R4 series on Mondays at 6.30, repeated midday on Sundays.

Sample comment - "The Kennington Oval cricket ground . . . so called because it's built in the shape of a cricket ground."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnwb

Layer 223 . . . World Philosophy Day, Greeks, Stranglers, Floyd and Spiritual Intelligence

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 Today is World Philosophy Day, and it's synchronicity time again. Last night – had discussions with friends about the film 300 - tales of ancient Sparta. This morning, 9.00am, Radio 4, In Our Time: Melvyn Bragg and various pals were talking about . . . Sparta.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300_%28film%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparta

Also on the radio (R4) this morning – a news item about introducing 'philosophy' into the school curriculum.

How can schoolchildren be introduced to thinking in a philosophical way, rather than just learning by wrote? Peter Worley, founder of the Philosophy Shop which introduces young children to philosophy, and Anthony Grayling, professor of philosophy at Birkbeck College London, discuss how philosophy can be made to appeal to children.

“wrote?” - whooooops!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/listen_again/default.stm

Reasoning

Grayling and co discussed the way in which 'philosophy' lessons develop thinking, speaking, listening, communication and concentration. These are even more fundamental skills than literacy and numeracy.
Deepening understanding, learning how to ask important questions, considering the wisdom of the ages. Learning that it takes effort to answer difficult questions, like 'How can I be happy?' 'Is there a God?' 'What is beauty?' Learning that some questions don't have easy answers.

Grayling reminded listeners that Jim Rose's curriculum review has said that it's vital to promote the capacity to carry out research, to make connections between things, to evaluate information, and to think creatively. To generate ideas, and to critically evaluate them.

Philosophy is essentially thinking about thinking, about why we think what we think, and about whether our thinking is valid.

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

More synchronicity.

Last week, down in Devon, I chatted to friends about the pub/restaurant in Tuckenhay that used to be owned by Keith Floyd – The Maltsters. All this week on Radio 4 – the serialisation of Keith Floyd's autobiography as the Book of the Week. What a bizarre guy. I always wondered how he appeared from nowhere to become a huge TV star. He's an amazing character, but a rubbish writer. He writes exactly the same way as he talks. The talk is great. The writing isn't.  “Just being Floydie.” He did 23 TV series.

He was very keen on Vietnamese food, and described filming in Vietnam, including a visit he made to the 'food store' at the back of a restaurant, where there were many cages containing bats, cats and rats. Also frogs and cobras. Now there's food for thought. We now have a very large Vietnamese community in London, and lots of Vietnamese restaurants in places like Hackney. Ratney. Makes you think.

Incidentally, one of the best and funkiest things about Floyd was the choice of music for his programmes, examples of which are on the Book of the Week 'listen again' iPlayer – different tracks at start and end, Waltzinblack and Peaches..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00nsp2k
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qftk

Floyd was a big fan of rock group The Stranglers: the tracks "Waltzinblack", an edited version of "Peaches", and an instrumental version of "Viva Vlad" were used as theme music for most of his TV programmes.[3] Former Stranglers guitarist and vocalist Hugh Cornwell used to play guitar at Floyd's restaurant during his student days in Bristol and the two remained friends. In his book Floyd's Cockney Cuisine, Floyd also claimed to be a huge fan of 1980's punk/indie act Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine. - Wikipedia

The Stranglers were a great band, and produced several classic tracks, like Peaches, No More Heroes, Golden Brown, Hanging Around, Waltzinblack, Nice n Sleazy, and The European Female (Celebration Of), which has a great melody and fabulous guitar and keyboard licks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bn8se4LXhY  - The European Female
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2iWGRgIz_g
http://www.lyricsbox.com/stranglers-lyrics-european-female-z6rnllj.html

The band also recorded a great version of the Kinks' “All Day and All of the Night” - an all-time rock classic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akysLe8vi4c&feature=related
On this video there's a funky horn section . . . .  but does that make them a jazz-punk rock band? Answers on a postcard to Anthony Julius. And it's a MUCH better track than 25 or 6 to 4.

Walk On By  -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXHToM3qt6w&feature=fvw
    a superb performance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFPEbeMdTng&feature=related
    great shots of JJ Burnel and Hugh on guitars, but keyboards solo missing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1363thA73Q&feature=related
    crap video quality but great keyboard solo

The Walk On By(Edit) on Spotify has fantastic sound quality.

The Stranglers also recorded 96 Tears - a great cover of the original by Question Mark and the Mysterians.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Question_Mark_&_the_Mysterians

The group is best known for its song "96 Tears," a garage rock classic recorded in 1966 that reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and would go on to sell over one million copies and receive a BMI award for over three million airplays. ? and the Mysterians was perhaps the first band to be described as punk rock[1], and also may be the first Latino rock group to have a general audience hit record in the United States. The group named itself after the 1957 Japanese science fiction film The Mysterians, in which aliens from the destroyed planet Mysteroid arrive to conquer Earth.

(Aretha Franklin has a superb cover of 96 Tears on Spotify!)

The Stranglers' great keyboards sound was down to Dave Greenfield:

“In July 1975, an advertisement in ‘Melody Maker’, produced one Dave Greenfield, keyboard player. Dave had already played in a large number of bands and it was immediately obvious to the others that he was a natural addition to the line-up. The unusual inclusion of swirling keyboards at the time was to give the band a very distinctive sound, setting them apart from their contemporaries.”

http://www.stranglers.net/b_ground.html

The original Stranglers’ line up began to coalesce during 1975 and brought together four individuals with very different backgrounds and interests. This diversity was probably a factor in keeping them together during the band's first phase (up until 1990).

Jet Black was a terrific drummer, and the twanging bass was so distinctive because the bassist, Jean Jaques Burnel, was originally a classical guitarist:

Jean Jacques (JJ) Burnel, was introduced to Jet & Hugh through a chance hitch hiking incident. Although an accomplished young classical guitarist, he had never seriously considered a music career -- his main passion being Karate. His ambition at the time had been to travel to Japan, in order to further his development in this martial art. JJ has since fulfilled this ambition and currently teaches at his own Dojo in the UK. His other passion, maintained throughout his career, was, and is, for motorcycles.

Hugh Cornwell was a Biochemistry graduate from Bristol University who had gone to Lund University in Sweden to pursue research. Here, he formed a band called ‘Johnny Sox’ with two American draft dodgers and a Swede. Disillusioned with the politics of research (and with a desire to make the band succeed) he persuaded the other members that London was the place to be; they arrived in London - minus the drummer - in early 1974.

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

“A documentary Keith Meets Keith[8], featuring actor and comedian Keith Allen interviewing Floyd, was broadcast on Channel 4 on 14 September 2009 and watched by nearly one million people. In the programme, Floyd admitted that away from the cameras, he often drank too much out of loneliness. It later emerged that Floyd had collapsed and died shortly before the broadcast.”

Incidentally, Rattus Norvegicus is a classic Strangler's album, and the Stranglers' website is called The Rat Lair. So there.

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

Anyway, as I was saying, it's World Philosophy Day, and as my contribution I'm going to post some more extracts from the Dalai Lama's 'How To Practice' – 'The Way To A Meaningful Life'.
http://portal.unesco.org/shs/en/ev.php-URL_ID=12341&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
http://portal.unesco.org/shs/en/ev.php-URL_ID=12911&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
http://www.temoignages.re/world-philosophy-day-2009-devoted,40108.html

First, though, readers might like to visit (or revisit) what I've already posted from this book in previous Layers:
http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2009/08/layer-181-meaningful-life-how-to.html
http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2009/08/layer-182-responsibility-humanity.html
http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2009/08/layer-183-grace-character-basics-all.html

The last paragraphs I posted on Oxzen say,

Since it is through sustaining mindfulness that you achieve a calm abiding of the mind, the practice of morality must precede the practice of concentrated meditation.

Looking at the three practices – morality, concentrated meditation, and wisdom, - we see that each serves as the basis for the next. Therefore all spiritual progress depends on a foundation of proper morality.

Part 2 of the book is simply called Practising Morality:

Identifying the Scope of Suffering

Overview of the Types of Morality

The main principle of Buddhist morality is to help others and, if that is not possible, at least to do no harm. This fundamental commitment to non-violence, motivated by concern for others, is central to the three types of morality in Buddhism.

1. The morality of individual liberation (the subject of this chapter) is mainly practiced by refraining from physical and verbal actions that cause harm.    
2. The morality of concern for others – called the morality of Bodhisattvas – is mainly practiced by restraining the mind from falling into selfishness. The essential point is to refrain from self-cherishing, but also to refrain from ill deeds of body and speech.
3. The morality of Tantra centres around special techniques for imagining a fully developed state of body and mind effectively helping others. It provides a way to transcend our limited perception of our bodies and minds so that we may perceive ourselves as shining with wisdom and compassion.

Tell that lot to the Spartans.
….............................................

And as a final contribution to World Philosophy Day, something that appeared first appeared in Oxzen in Layer 181:
http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/

About Buddhism

The greatest achievement is selflessness.
The greatest worth is self-mastery.
The greatest quality is seeking to serve others.
The greatest precept is continual awareness.
The greatest medicine is the emptiness of everything.
The greatest action is not conforming with the world's ways.
The greatest magic is transmuting the passions.
The greatest generosity is non-attachment.
The greatest goodness is a peaceful mind.
The greatest patience is humility.
The greatest effort is not concerned with results.
The greatest meditation is a mind that lets go.
The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances.

Atisha (11th century Tibetan Buddhist master)

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Layer 218 . . . Remembrance, Spiritual Intelligence, Education, Finland, Ofsted, Haringey and Role Models.

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It's 11.00am on the 11th November and all over the country there's a 2 minute silence. Harry Patch, the last surviving soldier who fought in the trenches is now dead. But still we remember.

Is there really a place in a cathedral service for God Save The Queen? Have all our monarchs really been gracious and noble? And will they be in the future? I wonder who decides these things.

Archbishop Rowan Williams looks splendid in his robes as he preaches about poverty and injustice, political stability and international cooperation. He's talking about the recreation of shattered idealism. He's talking about facing life with vision and courage. He's talking about powerful moral clarities. He's talking about value and meaning. He's talking about selfishness and superficiality. He's talking about honesty and dishonesty. He's talking about trust and hope and love. And then he talks about bringing the reality of God closer.

No wonder we fail to develop proper measures of spiritual intelligence in ourselves and others when the issue is continually muddied and confused by talk about God - as if we can't have spiritual intelligence without this primitive urge to invoke a God.

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

Here's a report on how a proper system of education works:

It's by Warwick Mansell.

Finnish schools succeed because teaching is valued

Innovation in Education conference In Finland, just one in 10 applicants wins a place to train as a teacher, and all take master's degrees

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/nov/09/finland-values-teaching

Truly comprehensive schools that do not set or stream pupils and see teachers as valued experts form the basis of the world's most highly-regarded education system, a Guardian conference was told today.

Finland, whose pupils have been the top performers in international tests run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, puts equity in the way it treats children as among its top priorities.

It also benefits from the popularity of teaching in this country of only 5.3 million people. Just one in 10 applicants for teacher training is successful, and all teachers take masters' degrees.

Timo Lankinen, director-general of the Finnish national board of education, told the first Innovation in Education conference in London that much of the country's success stemmed from its decision in the 1970s to introduce a comprehensive secondary structure.

He said: "This has been our biggest innovation, and it is one of the reasons for our success."

The key to promoting innovation in education was trust in teachers, said Lankinen, pointing out that Finland has no inspection system, national tests or league tables.

He added: "We see that this creates a virtuous circle around teaching. It means that teachers are very active in the development of education. Nationally and locally, we want to support them at every stage."

The 200 conference attendees were asked to vote electronically on what they thought were the biggest obstacles to innovation in education.

They listed "fear" at the top, followed by "government policy", "Ofsted" and "lack of money", although two thirds were optimistic overall about the potential for creative thinking.

Lord Puttnam, the film-maker, Labour peer and former chairman of England's General Teaching Council, told the conference that ministers' fear of tabloid headlines should also be on the list.

He said: "Another obstacle occurred to me: government fear of the Daily Mail, which is real. I have seen several potentially very innovative and very interesting things sadly thrown into reverse because of fear of an unwanted and unwarranted headline."

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

Ofsted in Need of Special Measures?

Meanwhile, our appalling Ofsted regime, and its discredited HMCI Christine Gilbert, stagger on into further disrepute:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/nov/10/ofsted-apology-shoesmith-case

Ofsted apologises for initial failure to find report drafts in Shoesmith case

Regulator ordered to explain delay by judge in case over sacking of children's services head following Baby P death

The children's services watchdog was forced to apologise today for making a "serious and deeply regrettable" mistake in failing to disclose potential evidence in Sharon Shoesmith's high court case over her sacking in the wake of the death of Baby P.

A judge described the late emergence of the documents from Ofsted as "very unsatisfactory" and ordered the regulator to give him "chapter and verse" on why it had said no draft versions of a scathing report into children's services at Haringey council, in north London, could be found, only for them to turn up last week.

The evidence includes 70 pages of handwritten notes by one of the inspectors. They were already with the regulator but were only discovered by an in-house lawyer working on a freedom of information request after the hearing in October had ended, the court was told.

In her judicial review , Shoesmith said the way the Joint Area Review was carried out breached the rules of natural justice. She alleged that Ofsted failed to allow her to comment on the report before publication, and that the way the body handled it reflected pressure from the children's secretary, Ed Balls.

At a specially convened hearing today Mr Justice Foskett gave Ofsted two weeks to ensure there was no other material that should have been presented to the court. He had planned to rule this week on Shoesmith's attempt to have her sacking from her £130,000-a-year post last December declared unlawful, but said the documents meant the judgment would be delayed until nearer to Christmas, or possibly later.

"It's not fair on any of the parties ... and frankly it's not fair on me either," he said of the possibility that not all the information was available.

Ofsted said : "We very much regret that this has happened. We have apologised unreservedly to the court and other parties. Unfortunately mistakes sometimes happen and whilst this is a serious one and deeply regrettable, we have nothing to hide." Foskett ordered Ofsted to pay the legal costs of today's hearing and said the taxpayer-funded regulator must also meet the cost of Shoesmith's lawyers going through the newly disclosed evidence.

He demanded "a full explanation" about the way requests from Shoesmith's lawyers for information about the existence of the draft reports were dealt with. First they were "batted away", then the reports were said not to exist, "and now they do", Foskett said.

The court heard that Shoesmith's legal team had twice requested drafts of the Jar and been told they were not relevant. They asked a final time on the last day of the court hearing last month, after the Guardian reported a whistleblower's claim that a separate report had been secretly downgraded, but were told Ofsted had been "unable to locate any further drafts".

The emergence of the documents was a "source of very considerable concern", he told the court, and Ofsted's submissions showed "very serious failings" over its duty of candour and response to requests for information.

So is there any chance that Ofsted might now be put into Special Measures and its Chief Inspector forced to resign? Taking into account the way it was hoodwinked by Haringey Children's Services into giving them a favourable report, when all along Haringey's social services and child protection system were a shambles?

Don't hold your breath. Don't forget HMCI Gilbert's married into the New Labour mafia.

Though I don't blame Shoesmith for suing for damages, since she was clearly someone on a steep learning curve who was doing her best in a tough job. Not unless she was party to Haringey's hoodwinking of Ofsted, that is.
.....................................................................

The Value of Role Models

On a more positive note, I've been thinking about the importance of having sporting heros who are positive role models that exemplify physical, spiritual, emotional and social intelligence. I've written previously about my admiration for Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton, and also about Stuart Broad.

In the Guardian this week there's another major article on Broad, who could become not only a brilliant all-rounder but also be a beacon of intelligence and decency for any young person who comes across him.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/nov/10/stuart-broad-england-south-africa

In the same centre page spread in the sports section there's a feature article on the new WBA heavyweight champion, the amazing David Haye. I heard him speaking on the radio a couple of days ago, after his remarkable victory at the weekend, and it was obvious that he's someone who resembles his own hero, the incredible Muhammed Ali, in more ways than one.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/nov/10/david-haye-america-unification

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/nov/08/david-haye-nikolai-valuev1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_haye
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHNmeusCbhg&feature=related
Never mind the actual sporting prowess - the importance of these people as role models is seen by how well they match up with Maslow's list of the characteristics of fully evolved human beings - see Layer 20 - http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2008/04/layer-20-fully-evolved-humans.html
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Layer 214 . . . Part Three . . . Mel's Journey into Darkness and Ignorance, Obama and City Bonuses

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Well done The Guardian for giving Ed Hussain space in the paper to lambast the appalling Melanie Phillips.

The personal jihad of Melanie Phillips

In her McCarthy-style paranoid parallel universe, the Spectator columnist views every Muslim a potential Islamist terrorist

Melanie Philips's zealotry and ignorance frighten me. How did we produce a public commentator filled with such anger, venom and hatred?

I believe in the human ability to change and, in that hope of helping Melanie see the the flaws in her analysis, I met with her several times in private and appealed to her to stop blaming Islam and Muslim scripture for (the decidedly un-Islamic phenomenon of) terrorism. Why would she and her acolyte Douglas Murray not cease attacks on Muslim scripture that were based on bin Laden's understanding of Islam? And why would they not support Islam's inherent pluralism and recognise that Islam per se is not the problem, but iconoclastic interpretations of it.

With Melanie and Douglas, I probably failed. Just as humans can travel to enlightenment, they can also journey into darkness and ignorance.

Melanie has gone from being a tree-hugger during her Guardian days to ranter about climate change "totalitarians". And worse, seeing conspiracies and dangerous links where there are none. What else explains her suggestion in last October's Spectator magazine that President Barack Obama "adopts the agenda of the Islamists" and is "firmly in the Islamists' camp"?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/oct/31/melanie-phillips-islamism-spectator

Lots of good comments on CiF after this article, like this one from royj68 -

The reason i can't listen to the moral maze anymore.Taking lessons in morality from Melanie Phillips:hilarious.

And from notsuperstitious -

Don't forget the Melanie Phillips definition of 'anti-semitism' i.e. anyone who dares question that maybe, just maybe, the Palestinians have a right to their own state, perhaps should not be subject to apartheid restrictions in their own land with their resources and land stolen from them, and in fact deserve to be treated and viewed as human beings rather than the unpleasant brown stuff you sometimes tread in.

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Talking of Obama -

Much remains for Obama to do – but what's remarkable is how much he has achieved in the face of financial crisis – by Ian Williams
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/oct/30/barack-obama-usforeignpolicy

After Obama's election I wrote here: "It may not be the second coming, but to use the eschatological phraseology of the Palins of this world, it is certainly the end of the reign of the Antichrist." I also recalled what I'd said during the campaign: "The world looked upon these elections as an IQ test for the American public. The electorate has aced the test. It has put centuries of racism behind it and elected a president who shows signs of knowing where the rest of the world is."

Frankly, while still far from euphoric, I feel vindicated. The coalition of not-so-covert racists, teabaggers, birthers and defenders of Medicare against the state should be a reminder to the purist Obama-detractors of the left just who could instead be staffing the US government now.

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

There's talk today about how Obama seems to have failed to create any positive change in the Middle East and Israel. It looks to me as though having appointed Hilary Clinton he's more or less had to allow her to go softly softly into the region and more or less be led round in circles by the various parties there.

However, there will surely come a point when he'll have to say in a big speech what he expects to see happening henceforward, and what the consequences will be as far as America is concerned if the Israelis continue to take the American billions and give nothing in return except piss-taking and a contemptuous refusal to cooperate in any enlightened way.
.......................................

Time for a windfall tax on bonuses

We need to transform the banking sector by reasserting democracy and bringing the business elite to account

by Jon Cruddas and Jonathan Rutherford

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/31/bank-bonus-windfall-tax

The Christmas bonus pay-out by the City is forecast to rise to £6bn. This excessive reward for market failure is morally and politically unacceptable. So today Compass is calling for a windfall tax on bankers' bonuses.
A minimum tax of 25% on banks' bonus funds could net £1.5bn to create jobs for young people and help to develop the future green economy. The government must show political leadership and act decisively because there are larger issues of democracy and economic development at stake.

Britain is now the only major economy still in recession. Three decades of the ascendancy of financial capital and the dismantling of the welfare state, employment regulation and workers' rights has removed many of the economic stabilisers that act as buffers to deflationary pressure – secure jobs, decent wages and proper benefits. With our capacity to weather the economic storm weakened, millions will pay for the bankers dynastic levels of wealth by facing a sub-poverty line Christmas on the £69-a-week Job Seeker's Allowance.

Lord Griffiths, vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs, says the British public should tolerate this kind of inequality because it will lead to "greater prosperity for all". The evidence proves him wrong. A decade of booming bank profits has left the incomes of middle Britain stagnant. Between 2005 and 2006, when the financial services share of the UK's GDP increased from 8.8% to 9.4%, income poverty began to rise again.

The business model of the financial sector does not spread wealth and it does not create a significant number of jobs. It established a collusion between shareholder value and the business elite which engineered a massive transfer of wealth to the rich.

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Layer 179 Blears, Vandalism, Same Old Bullshit, Mandelson and Equality

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Enduring image of the week: Hazel (I want to spend more time with my constituency) Blears talking on her mobile phone whilst sitting in the back seat of her car, which was immobilised with four flat tyres and a smashed windscreen. "New Labour in its death throes, wrecked and useless" seems a suitable title for that particular snapshot. The tyres and the windscreen were vandalised whilst the Red Dwarf was out and about in Salford, leafletting her people. A spokesperson for HB denied that the damage was caused by someone with a grievance or a grudge, or that the incident had anything to do with a general perception that HB is a greedy, money-grubbing, expenses-fiddling little shit. Really? Yes, really. The Mighty Mouse believes it was done by bored individuals, on a warm summer's day, who had nothing better to do with themselves. They're suggesting it was a random piece of vandalism on a vehicle that no-one would have known was hers.

Well, let's just say it's quite possible that a few locals had nothing better to do with their time than smash up Hazel's car, which is seemingly, according to clips on TV news, as well known in Salford as Simon Hughes' big yellow taxi is in Bermondsey. Such a bleak "explanation" is in itself quite a comment on New Labour's 11 years in power and Blear's efficacy as an MP.

Some might say that such direct action is quite a reasonable way to prioritise your time if you're powerless and voiceless and you'd like to make a political point, leaving aside the small issue of its illegality and questionable morality. But then HB probably believes, like her NL chums, that the undeserving poor and the underclass will always be with us, not least because they're congenitally idle, shiftless and incapable of working hard to better their lot.

We can infer this is their way of thinking, since meritocracy seems to be their buzzword, and equality seems to be a word that's been deleted from the NL political dictionary of useful words and phrases. "Morality" and "ethics" seem pretty redundant as well, leaving aside Gordy's well-known 'moral compass'. People like Blears who advocated the illegal smashing up of Iraq and Afghanistan for their own political ends can hardly complain if someone decides to use similar direct action to further their own ends. There's also the wrecking of the economy, and the financial system, and people's livelihoods to consider.

Whilst remaining open-minded to the possible validity of both these explanations, I'd like to suggest a Third Way. I think it's quite possible that the damage was caused by someone, or some people, who, whilst knowing or caring very little about Blears' expenses fiddling, happen to loathe and despise her simply on the basis that she's a revoltingly smug and alarmingly mad little basket case with an ego the size of the boat she was supposedly rocking, or helping to sink.

It seems to me entirely possible that there are people in Salford who have always hated her attitude, her relentlessly fixed grin, her careerism, her Brown nosing, her uncritical and unreformed Blairism, and the part she's played in hijacking and destroying the values of a once-proud party. This is only a theory, mind you. From this distance it's difficult to say just how many Salfordians agree with those who were interviewed for TV news and stated quite clearly they despised their MP, who of course is being fully supported by her fellow New Labour activists for re-election next time around. Well they would do, wouldn't they?

------------------------------------------------------

On the subject of equality, by the way, I think it's time to reconsider the whole idea. The first thing we need to do, in order to create a more equal society, is to reassure the wealthy that nobody wants to take away any of their wealth. It needs to be made clear that the ideology of egalitarianism has nothing to do with class envy. What they have, they should be able to hold on to. If they have a nice house or two, and a nice car or two, and a fat income, then good luck to them. It's not their fault. They may even deserve it.

So the first point that needs to be made is that there's no need to be scared that socialists want to take away people's money. Except, maybe, from the incredibly, disgustingly rich. They know who they are. And they can't really complain if, after decades of being allowed to add even more unbelievable wealth to what they already own, it's time to pay more taxes. Especially to support such a transparently good cause.

As for the merely well-off and wealthy, it's important to give an assurance that New Socialism does not seek to reduce their wealth by a single penny. What needs to be clearly established is that the pursuit of greater equality, and a happier, more coherent society, is about reducing the huge gap between the wealthy and the poor in this country, and for that to happen the minimum wage needs to be raised, the poor must be enabled to live in better houses and flats, and the children of the poor must be offered a better education. And so on. That's not so threatening, is it? Especially if the already rich are guaranteed to be able to keep their existing wealth.

But not entitled to get even richer, mind. The whole point here is that in capitalist societies the rich demand the right to get even richer, whilst the poor stay poor, usually through no fault of their own, or get even poorer. We're talking now about RELATIVE and ABSOLUTE levels of wealth. And so taxation policies will need to be adopted that maintain the rich at their current levels of wealth but don't enable them to get even richer, or only with reason, whatever we agree that should be.

What's not to vote for there, especially if you're poor and working class? Surely this is something even the wealthy should want to support, so long as they stay wealthy. Strangely enough, it's what the Labour Party used to advocate when it was first established. It's the opposite of 'Lord' Mandleson being intensely relaxed about the filthy rich getting even richer.

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And now a few words about the good Lord. What a bastard. How the fuck is he now in charge of the country whilst Gordy's on holiday? What kind of fucking democracy are we that allows someone who's not only unelected but universally despised to be in charge? Or even second in command? The cynics are currently having a field day, and a right good laugh, suggesting that when Gordo quits then Mandy will slip into the top job. But of course, given the Labour Party's current constitution, and its current command and control structure, this could easily happen. Does anyone seriously doubt that Mandy still craves the PM's job, and that he's capable of drumming up the necessary support within the ranks? That's how bad New Labour really is.
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Layer 42 Results, Results, Results.

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I thought I’d said all there is to say about SATs and testing, but Anne Atkins was back on the subject on Today’s Radio 4 Thought for the Day.

Nothing new or original, really, but more emphasis being given to what a futile, nasty and destructive business it all is. She spoke about how education was originally seen as something that was for the benefit of the individual, and learning was just for learning’s sake, and for the sake of the students - not for any other purpose.

She said that we’ve come to believe that every talent can be measured, which is clearly nonsense. Even the believers in SATs don’t believe that, unless they’re complete morons. The mad satters try to maintain that SATs are just a routine, low-key, end of key stage procedure that needn’t take up a lot of time and energy -which is downright dishonest and stupid, to say the least.

Anne, on the other hand, was keen to make the point that love can’t be assessed, and neither can being a good parent. Nor can ‘character’. She concluded that any quality that can be weighed and measured is not much more than that.

I just wish I could believe that this steady chiseling away at the nonsense that we currently take to be real education is having any impact on the thinking of the people who have been promoting the system we currently have in this country. I still seriously doubt it. They embrace it like a religion, and in the absence of any inclination to properly debate an intelligent rationale for our system they will go on clinging to their fundamentalist beliefs.

The stupid tendency will go on parroting their idiot mantras - “We need to drive up standards . . . Too many children are failing to master basic skills . . . We need to prepare children for the jobs market . . . There is no excuse for failure . . . SATs are just 5 days of testing at the end of a key stage . . . We need to measure the performance of schools and teachers . . . High standards are not incompatible with enjoyment of school and a rich curriculum.” Bollocks - all of it.

The problem with these fuckwits is that they have no concept of what life is really like in schools where there is no critical mass of able children, and no experience of the problems of running schools where there are huge issues with the recruitment and retention of able and well-trained staff.

They have no understanding of the impact of government directives and strategies, and an Ofsted regime that cares only to analyse spurious data. They have no clue as to the way in which school managers and governors are demoralized and terrorized into turning their schools into results factories, and to hell with the wellbeing, creativity and enjoyment of school of millions of children, both the able and the less able who struggle to cope with the rigid demands of the system.

Crime and Disorder

Half an hour before the Anne Atkins piece, and also half an hour after it, there were reports on the huge amounts of money that have been spent on locking up young offenders, and on the excessive use of custody and criminalisation, with no measurable impact on crime reduction and prevention. This is the big news of the day, according to the BBC. We lock up a much higher number proportionately than any other civilized country. The cost of this custody has been met from moving money out of the education, social services and housing budgets. We’re spending £280m a year on locking up our criminal youth, and £24m on crime ‘prevention’.

Hasn't it occurred to anyone that we need to spend more money on both education and rehabilitation, as well as on better housing and proper community policing, and less on being the best friend of the USA in its imperialistic adventures and its 'war on terror'? It's a similar issue really - first you make people angry, and then you bash them over the head and put them in detention for expressing their anger in the only ways they know how.

Why are we not rehabilitating our young offenders? Why are we not reducing re-offending? Why are crime prevention measures not working? Duh! Why are we still asking these dumb questions?

Let’s go through this again. We take money away from the education and the developmental needs of young people, from work with families, and from community development. We alienate more kids by providing an education system that cares nothing for the real well-being of children - an education system that causes them to be competitive, stressed, depressed and angry with the system that brands them as failures or also- rans, which of course is what most kids are, according to our system of grading and measuring.

We take away their enjoyment of school. We pay no attention to developing children’s crucial emotional, social and spiritual intelligences. We don’t give a damn about developing creativity and imagination, let alone caring, loving and enjoying life - every minute of every day.

We drill them in classrooms where the emphasis is on competition rather than collaboration and cooperation. We reduce opportunities for creative interaction and conversation. We never let them play and learn in situations where they need to develop skills of cooperation and dialogue, where they’re allowed to work out their own problems, rivalries, jealousies, with minimal intervention from adults who know them well and are concerned to develop their individuality, and are well trained to do this.

We spend virtually no time on developing their understanding of concepts and vocabulary around human values, morality and ethics. We never let them ask questions about real issues. We give them no understanding of philosophy, let alone experience of Socratic debate and dialogue. We give them no time for proper reflection or meditation.

We drill them and regiment them and dress them in uniform. We give no encouragement towards individuality, let alone encourage them to develop their unique human ‘voice’. We exclude them from activities they genuinely enjoy, and we remove any notion of learning through play.

We exclude them from school for petty breaches of discipline, including not wearing the approved shoes and socks. We exclude permanently the less able (who are going to mess up the school’s statistics) at the first possible opportunity, often on the flimsiest of pretexts.

And we wonder why they turn out to be anti-social, angry, unable to exercise self-discipline, bitter, resentful, depressed, psychopathic and thoroughly fucked up. And that’s just the ones who do well in SATs and GCSEs.

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Children and families cope with their lives and make something of themselves in spite of, not because of, the pathetic systems of education and social support that we have in this increasingly materialistic and nasty society we’ve been creating since the beginning of the Thatcher-inspired counter-revolution against progressive values and social democratic politics.

If children and young people don’t turn out to be basket cases it’s primarily down to their own resilience and spirit, and the support they get from loving parents, and some very caring teachers who do right by them in spite of excessive work loads and demands for treating the kids like units of production.

Brain-washing the kids into conformity and willingness to cram for tests, and to do ever-increasing amounts of homework from the age of 5, is now the name of the game.

The education system is a mess, and everyone knows it, though virtually no-one is willing to admit it. It’s architects have been people like Thatcher, Baker, Blunkett, Woodhead, Barber, Blair . . . and Adonis! And now we have Balls and . . . Jim Knight! Hurrah!

The only decent Secretary of State for Education we’ve had in the past 20 years, the only one with any experience of teaching (in secondary schools only, admittedly), the only one who spoke from knowledge and conviction and from the heart, without briefing notes, has been Estelle Morris - and she resigned because the system was beyond being steered by a single individual in a proper progressive direction, and it was doing her head in. At least that’s my take on her demise.

Coincidentally she was a student in Coventry (at the College of Education, where I went to many a disco, in spite of not being a student there myself) at the same time as me, graduating a couple of years after I did. I like to think that teaching in a Coventry comprehensive school did her a power of good, at least in terms of seeing real life and real working-class kids and families from the perspective of a class teacher. Coventry was the first city to adopt comprehensive education and build new comprehensive schools. The one I attended was on a large green-field site, the first in the country, and was totally brilliant, apart from the odd teacher, like the one who tried to teach me to speak German for 5 years. And even he wasn’t a bad old boy.

Individual schools may do well by their kids in spite of the system, not because of it. The system does not encourage doing well by the kids. The system does not care about the kids. Not really. The system cares about results.

Results. Results. Results.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7411909.stm

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This is what Polly Toynbee had to say about Estelle Morris at the time of her resignation:

She never played the Westminster game. She spoke gently and intelligently, made reasoned arguments persuasively. Anyone who heard her fine speech in Blackpool - the best and the best received of the conference - knows that she has done herself a grave injustice, fatally colluding with her thuggish attackers. But in a state of meltdown, people do and say the wrong thing. "There! That proves it! She couldn't take the heat," says Westminster. Why should she - or anyone else?

Some say her unwarranted insecurity springs from her own failed education, failed A-levels and a retreat to a teacher training college at the age of 18. School failure - at 11 or 18 - often does scar for life. Even those who rise above it later can find that in adversity and under stress, lacking the false affirmation of paper qualifications, they buckle under the illusion that they are essentially stupid and will be "found out", as they were at school. (As an 11+ failure with one A-level, I should know.) People retain a mystic faith in old exam results or in the snap judgments of school reports, dogged by lazy character assassinations for the rest of their days. That is why education should always try to praise a child's talents, not brand it with failure. These things she knew well, and it made her a humane politician and a good education minister.

What made her job unendurable was the perpetual interference of Downing Street's bright young men, filling the prime minister's head with their not so bright ideas. She was never in favour of the spread of yet more faith schools. Nor was she in favour of anything that smacked of a return to selection at 11.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2002/oct/25/publicservices.gender
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estelle_Morris
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2355059.stm


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The Dalai Lama is in the House.

Visit the following page for details of what religious nutters can be like when they fall out with one another. Talk about spiritual intelligence!

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/afp/20080520/tuk-britain-china-tibet-protest-a7ad41d.html

“A Buddhist group on Tuesday announced plans to picket public appearances in Britain by the Dalai Lama, accusing him of restricting religious freedoms in his homeland and among exiled Tibetans. The Western Shugden Society, a branch of Tibetan Buddhism that reveres a god denounced by the Dalai Lama since 1996, said demonstrations were planned outside Britain's parliament and at several other locations on his 11-day tour.”