Manuscripts Don't Burn!

The Political Assassination of Dominique Strauss-Kahn - Cui Bono?

2011-07-01T16:55:00.001+02:00

Well, there it is... the alleged sexual assault case against former head of the International Monetary Fund and French Presidential candidate Dominique Strauss-Kahn is beginning to fall apart - less than a week after right-winger and pro-Chicago school Christine Lagarde is confirmed as his replacement at the IMF, and after his Chicago-school IMF deputy and former JP Morgan insider John Lipsky managed to force through the stiff "national asset confiscation" austerity plan on the hapless Greek people.

But what just happened? And why?

During his tenure at the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn committed two cardinal boo-boos from the point of view of the world's corporate bankster cartels. First, he suggested that in the current climate of bailouts and endless money printing, perhaps it was wrong to expect the taxpayers of the world to lose their homes, savings, and jobs to pay off *all* the gambling debts of the big international banks themselves. Perhaps, he suggested, some of the bondholders of the banks should pay *some* of the cost, too. After all, this is capitalism, and it was they who'd decided to gamble their money, and the value of your investment may go down as well as up.

Well, that's not how the banksters see it. If the value of their investment goes up - hurrah! They're the masters of the universe, and they make shedloads of money and take massive bonuses for their great knowledge and talent. But if the value of their investment goes *down* - nooo! It's not their fault - they just lost a bet, why should they have to pay? No, in that case, the taxpayers of the world should have to borrow loads of money to pay off the banksters' debts now, then spend the next 20 or 30 years paying it off. If not - the banksters assured us - the sky would fall, and the world as we know it would come to an end. It's a classic gangster protection racket: "Give us your money, or the economy gets it!" That's what 21st century capitalism is!

So, strike one against DSK. You never, ever, tell the banksters they're going to lose money.

Second, DSK had begun to suggest - in response to cries of "foul!" from China, Russia, Brasil, India, and a host of other countries, that the IMF might be able to create a kind of "virtual world currency". The reason for this was that the Bush and Obama administrations, in introducing QE, or "quantitative easing", had been rapidly devaluing the *current* global reserve currency, the US dollar. This meant that all those nations (like China, Russia, Brasil, etc, etc) that kept lots of their money in dollars were losing out hand over fist - effectively they were footing the bill for the US dollar's devaluation. DSK was a firm supporter of what's called "Strategic Drawing Rights", or SDRs, which are a kind of virtual currency composed of a basket of other international currencies. If the rest of the world agreed to accept SDRs as a replacement for the US dollar to keep all their foreign reserves in, the US government (and the banksters) would be seriously compromised in their ability to devalue the dollar and force other nations to effectively pay off their debts.

Strike two. You never, ever, tell the US govt or the banksters the dollar is not the global reserve currency.

But what was the third strike?

This is where current French president Nicolas Sarkozy comes in. It's widely reported that Sarko's administration has a huge intelligence gathering network (paid for by French taxpayers) gathering dirt on his political opponents and often conducting smear campaigns against them - the recent bouts against both former French PM Dominique De Villepin *and* former French President Jacques Chirac are good examples of this. Dominique Strauss-Kahn was / is a popular, left-leaning member of the socialist party who was widely expected to oust Sarko and become French president in 2012. Over the weeks and months leading up to the DSK / IMF scandal, DSK himself indicated he was being targeted in smear campaigns by Sarko, and even warned that someone might try and ensnare him in a "honey trap" or sexual scandal.

Today, 1st July 2011, the case against DSK is starting to unravel. The political assassination hatchet job has been done: he has been removed from the IMF, and somebody *far more* compliant to the bankster pro-dollar lobby has been installed in his place. Christine Lagarde belongs to the "Chicago school" of economic thought, the same school whose proponents and ideas were largely responsible for the current economic collapse in the first place. She can be relied upon to give countries like Greece a hard time, and ensure that the IMF doesn't cause problems for the US dollar devaluation or bankster bailouts and widening austerity throughout the western world.

But there's still a window in the French presdential campaign. Theoretically, for the next 2 weeks, a released and acquitted DSK *could* conceivably still announce his candidacy for the French presidency. Remember that number: 2 weeks. After Bastille Day, the race is closed, no more bets, rien ne va plus.

Manuscripts Don't Burn believes this is where we see how much of a role Sarko played in the political assassination. If he's able to stall the case for another 2 weeks - keep DSK in the USA, even if released and bail returned - until 14th July, with a shadow hanging over him, then he'll be unable to run for the presidency. In that case, it's reasonable to conclude that Sarko has been a leading player in the assassination. If *not*, and DSK is released unconditionally in the next few days, all charges dropped, and is able to announce his candidacy, then Sarko hasn't been strong enough to call the shots, and it looks like the IMF lobby had the upper hand in the assassination.

We wouldn't like to put money on it.

Either way, the hatchet job is done. Greece is stuffed, the bankster riches are increasing hugely, and the rest of us are slated to foot the bill. Expect more of the same.

What a darker place the world has become over the past ten years. Those of us raised in the latter part of the 20th century still like to think of our governments and the authorities as benevolent and well-meaning. But we shouldn't forget: governments can change. Countries can change. And very quickly: in 1926, Weimar Germany was a vibrant, liberal society with a sparkling and progressive culture; by 1936, the darkness of Nazism was strangling the life out of the country. In 1912, Russia seemed to be moving towards liberal democracy; by 1922, it had been decimated by war, revolution, and civil war, and faced decades of totalitarianism.

Manuscripts Don't Burn imagines people in those countries didn't believe it could happen to them either.

The Sound of Jackboots...

2011-04-14T10:11:00.004+02:00

As we embark very earnestly now on their blatant attempt to recreate the 1930s, Manuscripts Don't Burn would like to note recent attempts by the UK corporate government to stoke the fires of racism, stereotyping, and xenophobia in an attempt to distract the undereducated disenfranchised masses from the growing economic horror unravelling around them.

After thirty years of demolishing the education system, it's hardly surprising many in the UK today do not know their history well enough to know this scapegoating racist crap for what it is. The UK has been a multi-cultural, multi-racial society for half a century, a mongrel nation enriched by countless cultures over many centuries.

An act of political legerdemain, mass misdirection to blame a minority for the country's woes rather than the real culprits, the banksters who are leading us back to the future.

Stoke the fires. Unfurl the flags. Get ready for the Two Minutes' Hate. The economy is going down the tubes, and the government wants you to attack ANYONE except them. Time once again for a scapegoat...

Libya - The US vs China Agenda

2011-04-05T10:08:00.002+02:00

(Paraphrased from Paul Craig Roberts' comment on the Zerohedge website. With thanks and credit to Paul.)

In the 1930s the US, Great Britain, and the Netherlands set a course for World War II in the Pacific by seizing Japan’s bank accounts in their countries that Japan used to pay for imports and cut Japan off from oil, rubber, tin, iron and other vital materials. Was Pearl Harbour Japan’s response?

Now Washington and its NATO puppets are employing the same strategy against China.

Protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, and Yemen arose from the people protesting against Washington’s tyrannical puppet governments. However, the protests against Gaddafi, who is not a Western puppet, appear to have been organized by the CIA in the eastern part of Libya where the oil is, and where China has substantial energy investments.

Eighty percent of Libya’s oil reserves are believed to be in the Sirte Basin in eastern Libya, now controlled by rebels supported by Washington. As seventy percent of Libya’s GDP is produced by oil, a successful partitioning of Libya would leave Gaddafi’s Tripoli-based regime impoverished. http://www.energyinsights.net

The People’s Daily Online (March 23) reported that China has 50 large-scale projects in Libya. The outbreak of hostilities has halted these projects and resulted in 30,000 Chinese workers being evacuated from Libya. Chinese companies report that they expect to lose hundreds of millions of yuan.

China is relying on Africa, principally Libya, Angola, and Nigeria, for future energy needs. In response to China’s economic engagement with Africa, Washington is engaging the continent military with the US African Command (AFRICOM) created by President George W. Bush in 2007. Forty-nine African countries agreed to participate with Washington in AFRICOM, but Gaddafi refused, thus creating a second reason for Washington to target Libya for takeover.

A third reason for targeting Libya is that Libya and Syria are the only two countries with Mediterranean sea coasts that are not under the control or influence of Washington. Suggestively, protests also have broken out in Syria. Whatever Syrians might think of their government, after watching Iraq’s fate and now Libya’s, it is unlikely that Syrians would set themselves up for US military intervention. Both the CIA and Mossad are known to use social networking sites to foment protests and to spread disinformation. These intelligence services are the likely conspirators that the Syrian and Libyan governments blame for the protests.

Caught off guard by protests in Tunisia and Egypt, Washington realized that protests could be used to remove Gaddafi and Assad. The humanitarian excuse for intervening in Libya is not credible considering Washington’s go-ahead to the Saudi military to crush the protests in Bahrain, the home base for the US Fifth Fleet.

If Washington succeeds in overthrowing the Assad government in Syria, Russia would lose its Mediterranean naval base at the Syrian port of Tartus. Thus, Washington has much to gain if it can use the cloak of popular rebellion to eject both China and Russia from the Mediterranean. Rome’s mare nostrum (“our sea”) would become Washington’s mare nostrum.

“Gaddafi must go,” declared Obama. How long before we also hear, “Assad must go?”

The American captive press is at work demonizing both Gaddafi and Assad, an eye doctor who returned to Syria from London to head the government after his father’s death.

The hypocrisy passes unremarked when Obama calls Gaddafi and Assad dictators. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the American president has been a Caesar. Based on nothing more than a Justice Department memo, George W. Bush was declared to be above US statutory law, international law, and the power of Congress as long as he was acting in his role as commander-in-chief in the “war on terror.”

Caesar Obama has done Bush one step better. Caesar Obama has taken the US to war against Libya without even the pretense of asking Congress for authorization. This is an impeachable offense, but an impotent Congress is unable to protect its power. By accepting the claims of executive authority, Congress has acquiesced to Caesarism. The American people have no more control over their government than do people in countries ruled by dictators.

Washington’s quest for world hegemony is driving the world toward World War III. China is no less proud than was Japan in the 1930s and is unlikely to submit to being bullied and governed by what China regards as the decadent West. Russia’s resentment to its military encirclement is rising. Washington’s hubris can lead to fatal miscalculation.

Government Lies: the So-called "Recovery"

2010-01-27T12:26:00.001+01:00

Just amazing the amount of bollocks that's being touted around by complicit media stooges saying the depression is now over and we're now in some kind of miraculous "recovery".

Absolute craven tosh. This thing has hardly begun yet. The Big Collapse is still proceeding apace. Inflation is finally working through the system, so we're getting price increases again, and increasing stock market, etc, etc, and the media bangs on crowing how brilliant this all is - a bit like saying the fire of Rome was good for keeping us all nice and warm, or starvation's fine cos we could all do to lose a bit of weight. Asinine nonsense.

Next up we're seeing the Option ARM and Alt-A mortgage crisis during the course of this year, which will make subprime seem like a cakewalk. Sovereign debt crisis, when the smoke and mirrors don't work any more - collapse of the pound and likely the dollar. Massive inflation, wiping out everyone's savings. Exchange controls. Repatriation of silver and gold. Unemployment (the *real* unemployment, not the "actively seeking work and receiving benefit" bollocks they try and palm us off with) about to really kick-in and exceed 20%. It won't be soup kitchens this time - it'll be "vouchers". The banks are still hiding their insolvency; the next laugh is that they're going to want more, MUCH more. Governments are printing money; the rest of us are being told by a corrupt media that we should all stick our heads in the sand because it's all getting much better, when in fact it's steadily getting MUCH worse, and these bastards in charge are making it so in exchange for stuffing their pockets and buying some short-term political gain.

Amazing how much bullshit the media talk. Either they're as corrupt and self-serving as the government and banksters, or they're terrified of what they can see and determined to spout propaganda in the vain hope some hapless prole swallows it and maybe - just maybe - if we all wish hard enough the Bad Man might leave us alone.

We're fed up of your lies. We've seen this coming for years, and so far it's all playing out according to plan. Thankfully, we no longer have to rely on you media "experts" for our information... "Jobless recovery"? Arse...

UK Election Campaign - Government ups "terror level"

2010-01-23T12:18:00.002+01:00

"Terrorist attack is highly likely" claim marks start of UK election campaign.

Yup, it's election time again - and just like clockwork the security services have raised the terror alert to make sure everyone is suitably frightened. Also, BAE Systems (you know - the ones who took all those Saudi bribes which we're not allowed to investigate because of national security?) have landed a big contract to spy on the British population in their back gardens using remote surveillance drones, so there's plenty of reason to ramp up the fearmongering there too.

Imagine - 9 years and Osama Bin Laden apparently still alive. Isn't it good the government is spending our taxes on spying on us? Maybe he's hiding in someone's garden shed in Surbiton?

Freedom of Speech includes those we despise

2010-01-05T11:56:00.002+01:00

Today, the Home Secretary is ready to ban a provocative anti-war march in Wootton Basset, reports the Daily Mail and other press organs.

Remember this day. Voltaire once said, "I do not agree with a word you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it". Today that principle died in the UK. For years we've accepted provocative marches like the Orange men, CND, BNP, whatever, as the price to pay for living in a liberal democracy. Today, thanks to lots of jingoist, outraged fear and loathing propaganda and Daily Mail bigotry, we've given up yet another of our civil liberties.

Here's what Chomsky says: "If you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don't like. Stalin and Hitler, for example, were dictators in favor of freedom of speech for views they liked only. If you're in favor of freedom of speech, that means you're in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise."

Freedoms are always hard-won, and easily lost. Here goes another one. Remember - the next time you want to protest, or exercise your freedom of speech, you may no longer be allowed...

Yemen: A Front Too Far?

2009-12-30T16:49:00.002+01:00

This is a very interesting development. For some time Saudi Arabia has been involved in the Yemeni civil war, fighting on the side of the Yemeni government against the "insurgents". For the past year or so, the US has been covertly involved in Yemen on the Saudi side (in its usual role as global mercenary), undertaking "cadre" operations to train up the counter-insurgency teams there.

An interesting coincidence, then, that the Detroit wannabe turrist bomber is now being linked with Yemen, despite being Nigerian. A bit like the 9/11 guys were linked with Iraq despite being Saudi Arabian - but we digress. And now, President Obama is making it very clear that he's going to be embroiling the US very overtly indeed in Yemen in the coming months, despite the US being already committed to two other wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So who's pulling whose strings? Manuscripts Don't Burn would subtly suggest that the Saudi royal family have enormous influence in US government circles, as we know from 9/11 and its aftermath, plus their buddy-buddy relationship with the Bush dynasty. Perhaps the Saudis aren't having as easy a time of it in Yemen as they'd've liked, and are calling in US favours?

One thing's for sure: 2010 is going to be a watershed. Global trends analysts are already raising warning flags that anti-Americanism and anti-NATOism are at their peak since 9/11, and that we've pissed off so many people in the Muslim world that a major terror event is very likely on the cards. In such an event, the global economy simply isn't strong enough to withstand the shock; the gold spike and subsequent dollar crisis would likely cause the whole house of cards to collapse.

Is that what's forcing America's hand? Fighting a war on three fronts just sounds historically stupid - but maybe it's the lesser of two evils? Given that Israel absolutely seems to be itching to bomb the hell out of Iran, and Iran has already said it will strike back, Manuscripts Don't Burn is probably quietly grateful that the CIA "regime change" ops currently engineering the so-called Green Revolution in Iran appears to be bearing fruit.

Manuscripts Don't Burn is a history fan. Of reading history, that is. And we don't mind saying, the current situation looks grim, grimmer than it has since WW2. The international tensions are at breaking point, and the US seems to be thrashing around wildly in its attempts to secure energy resources into the next decade, and not giving a damn who pays the price. At the moment the global economy is a global fake, and it's only our complicit media that's papering over the cracks. But the strain is starting to show; dollar collapse, bond strikes, and preemptive wars seem the order of the day for the next 12 months.

Looking back at our predictions for 2009, we made one major mistake: we failed to reckon with how much future agony our governments would commit us to in order to stave off pain today. When faced with the need for painful restructuring, our governments continued to borrow (print) money, plunging us (the taxpayers) into intolerable debt for the next generation, if not more. The depth of the irresponsibility has been breathtaking, exceeded only by the willing blindness of the gullible proles swallowing the party line and refusing to see the reality of where we're headed.

So - what's it to be? Chaotic collapse? Preemptive war? Global default (probably starting with the US and UK)? Trade wars? As usual, impossible to say. But one thing seems clear: 2010 will be the year of the Black Swan, the unpredictable straw that breaks the camel's back. This time next year, the Second Great Depression will be truly underway, and people may even be permitted to speak its name in public. After that, it's only a matter of time before gold repatriation kicks in again, commodity prices continue to deflate, and currency inflation reduces people's buying power to Depression levels.

It's not looking like a good year...

Global Consciousness Glimpsed From a Distance

2009-12-20T10:44:00.002+01:00

A lot of what's happening in Copenhagen and elsewhere at the moment reminds Manuscripts Don't Burn of H.G. Wells' "The Shape of Things to Come", when a clumsy, ad hoc, and largely self-interested bunch of airplane flyers kick and scream and gradually drag the world towards a single government. The government they create isn't necessarily any good, and is eventually superceded by something a darn sight better after a period of dissatisfaction and revolution, but it *started* there, as the first sign of a nascent global consciousness appeared.

Manuscripts Don't Burn gets a similar vibe out of Copenhagen, the financial collapse (accidental or engineered), the post-Cold War struggle for who defines the New World Order, and the shenanigans following the collapse of the Berlin Wall. At the moment the Old Guard and the military-industrial-financial complex are still desperately trying to call the shots, and hold most of the cards, but institutions and concepts are being born at the moment which are radically different from what's gone before. We don't doubt that the corporate fascists would *love* a global government on their terms, but the very fact that political and economic action on a global scale is even conceivable speaks volumes.

We're not dewy-eyed and messianic about this. Like most times of great change this is going to be chaotic, violent, and dangerous. But it's interesting at least to see something potentially positive peeking through the cracks. Manuscripts Don't Burn has no doubt at all that we WON'T get our shit together to stave off the worst effects of the climatic instability facing us (regardless of whether we're responsible or not, it's still happening), and millions will starve, be rendered homeless, and so on. But possibly Copenhagen will mark the start of regular summits where the chaotic, disunited rabble of the global community can get together for regular rows, coercion, and chest-thumping - and maybe muddle-headedly navigate us through the turbulence ahead. Cause for optimism? Individually, no. Collectively... well, that's up to us all.

End of Days...

2009-12-14T12:48:00.002+01:00

There's a strange mood about in the UK these days. A strange sense of denial, of "apres-moi-le-deluge", of hysterical ignoring of the thundering juggernaut about to crush everyday life in the UK beneath its feet.

In 2009 the slow-motion economic crash continued unabated. Pensions were destroyed, wages fell, and the UK economy entered a deflationary depressionary spiral as imports (oil, gas, food) prices inflated. Unemployment rose, taxes rose, public debt exploded out of control as more and more money was siphoned out of the economy and into the pockets of fat cats and corrupt corporate banksters. The wool continued to be pulled over the eyes of the public, bread and circuses on TV, artificial news in the media, blatant lies from the corporate government.

A sense of unreality often precedes pivotal events. The French revolution, the Russian revolution, the Nazi takeover, the Great Depression; and now the Long Depression, and likely collapse of the UK. Everywhere you look, wealth is being withdrawn from the UK. The signs of catastrophe are everywhere; the UK is worse than bankrupt, and there is nothing to bail it out with. The corrupt corporate government is conducting a scorched earth policy, hosing the public with impossible future debt and giving it all to their corporate chums, while lying to the people that it's all for their own good.

History will look back on this period and condemn us for our inactivity, our flagant stupidity right in the face of all evidence that we are being sold down the river.

Manuscripts Don't Burn increasingly sees in the blogosphere statements like "oh, please, just get it over with", "stop making it worse", "time to get a grip". In some ways, that would be wrong. This time, it looks like the UK will have to collapse completely, lose all its arrogance and hysterical self-deception, to be able to face up to the *massive* job of rebuilding which will have to be done. Tragically, by then the thieving bastards who caused this collapse will have made off scot-free, laughing with glee as the poor proles shoulder the burden for a generation or more.

2010 is going to be a very interesting year...

The Bloodless Civil War finally speaks its name

2009-11-08T12:04:00.003+01:00

Six months after Manuscripts Don't Burn last posted on the developing "Bloodless Civil War" in the West, the UK Guardian and Observer newspapers have finally begun to speak out about this elephant in the room - that our government is on the ropes, thanks to the attacks of the corporate fascist business interests, including big banksters and media tycoons.

Let us be under no illusions about this Civil War: we are LOSING. We are well on the road to fascism in the UK - the corporate fascists, through their control of the media, have distracted the public's attention away from their fraudulent theft of BILLIONS of UK taxpayer current and future earnings, and focussed them on the mere PENNIES which the MPs (admittedly greedily, foolishly, and in bad faith) have been squeezing out of the system.

The result is an emasculated government, unable to resist the inroads of the corporate fascists, who can set baying mobs of proles on them at the drop of a headline. It's an extremely worrying situation when the government is fighting the interests of the corporate fascists AGAINST the interests of the people it's supposed to represent.

It's truly alarming how history repeats itself. Just when you need a government strong enough to resist the corporate fascists in big business and media from removing even more of your civil rights and pouring ever of your taxpayers' money into their back pockets, you have a government which must waste its time utterly on the defensive as the corporate media instigate witch-hunts about cleaning bills and decorating expenses for *PENNIES*, while BILLIONS UPON BILLIONS of pounds disappear unaccountably into private pockets. Focus on people's natural resentment for authority, distracting them from the biggest corporate heist in history.

"Hey - MP! Give us some more BILLIONS in bailout money, or we'll get our mates to run some more articles about your twenty-grand expenses, your career will be toast... heh heh heh."

You can see where all this is heading. Next stop: a nice clean corporate revolution to replace all these shoddy MPs with some nice shiny people who all the papers and television stations say are brilliant, so of course they must be. And who just happen to be great friends with those nice businessmen. And in the meantime, your savings shrink, prices soar, and you spend the next 2 generations paying off the money you're giving to the corporates while your standard of living heads back to the thirties.

Well, as long as they put some scapegoat MPs in the stocks and let you pour your hatred on them, it's okay, isn't it?

Recipe for coup d'etat: discredit the current government; create conditions of extreme poverty, instability, unemployment; foment disorder; identify scapegoats; step in and "restore order". Manipulate the proles correctly and they'll cheer you all the way, and even volunteer to make their own chains...

So what can we do? The key to this dilemma is in our own minds. Time and again Manuscripts Don't Burn sees accusations flung of being "left-wing" or "right-wing" as the chaos intensifies. But this is the point: these days, the old right wing vs left wing dichotomy is yet another corporate-sponsored straw man.

Let's repeat that: this isn't about left-wing versus right-wing.

There are many things which unite all of us across the political spectrum against the usurpation of our political system by corporate interests, and promoting a false opposition between "right wing" and "left wing" serves only to divide us when we shouldn't be. It serves the corporate interests perfectly to encourage the illusion that we should fight one another, not them.

The dichotomy today is not between right wing and left wing, but between corporate corruption, and elected government. Corporate corruption doesn't care what shade of political colour it goes by - that's just window-dressing, witness the fact that it currently makes no odds whether new labour or tory are in power. Corporate corruption wants to remain in the shadows, distracting us with lights, smoke, and mirrors of the familiar pea-under-the-shell of so-called parliamentary democracy. We have a one party corporate state masquerading as a two-party democratic one. Plus the Lib Dems, the only party with any real policies - and look what the corporate media nobblers have done to them - no one will vote for them with a barge pole.

Until we realise that it's our democratic system we're actually fighting for, and not some ephemeral old-fashioned right vs left, the corporates will continue to win, leaving us dazzled and distracted.

All believers in a democratic system, right wing or left wing or whatever, need to join forces to kick these bastards in the nuts and reclaim our country. All else is delusion.

Bring back Glass Steagal. Prosecute these bastards. Dismantle the corporate fascist machine of big business-government-media before it finally tears our society apart.

Ironic it's the anniversary of the Wall. They're building another, right now, and we're letting them.

But Manuscripts Don't Burn says this: we're onto you, you bastards. Spread the word. This will not stand.

The Second English Civil War has begun

2009-05-28T15:13:00.001+02:00

Manuscripts Don't Burn would like to comment on the (currently) bloodless civil war developing in the United Kingdom.

Up until the moment the economy began to collapse, the UK had been increasingly ruled by a cartel of government / civil service, media and press barons, and big business - a particularly chummy form of corporate fascism. Recently that cartel has started to come apart at the seams, and we are witness to (and in many cases victims of) the fallout.

Where did it start?

The media used to be so *friendly* with the government, towing the party line and casting positive spin on its antics as it sucked up to the banksters. Alternative voices were squashed, all in the name of "growth", "profit", and "efficiency". The media were the public face of big business (indeed, being OWNED by big business, they could be little else), but as big business began to own government, too, the media increasingly showered praise on the political class. One, big, happy corporate fascist dictatorship, milking the proles and living off the fat of the land.

Then, at some point the government started to clamp down on public freedoms, in preparation for the inevitable economic collapse. 911 was the catalyst; it postponed the recession which the 1998 crisis should have precipitated, and gave governments breathing space to put draconian laws in place. Somewhere that crossed over to include press freedoms, and investigative journalists were laid off in their thousands. As recently as the G20, the government tacitly authorised our out-of-control police force to beat up journalists at the G20 et al. And all the time, public pressure mounted on the government to take actions which ran counter to what big business wanted to see - endless bailouts, and the distribution of wealth from the poor to the rich: the usual solutions to a depression.

So - the tax hike for the high earners. A sop to the masses. More than hurting the pockets of media and press barons, and banksters alike (although the latter are still stuffing their pockets with "windfall" bailouts as quickly as they can), that stung the corporate fascists' pride. How dare this government act against them! Don't they know who they work for? Almost immediately afterwards, the "expenses scandal" breaks out. A status quo which has existed for decades is suddenly in the spotlight, and the government is in the media's firing line.

Coincidence? No such thing. It's a power struggle, a confused, crappy struggle, between short-sighted greedy vested interests. The factions aren't even clear-drawn; there are parts of the government fighting the media and the banksters, parts collaborating, parts just trying to get by any old how whilst they stuff their pockets and head off to better climes.

At times like this, beware of distractions. Beware, too, of being manipulated. The media, instructed by their press baron owners and bankster chums, *want* the government pilloried until it backs down or collapses.

And heaven forbid we should get media-led political reform. Guess whose benefit that would work towards?

Not ours, comrades. Not ours. None of this is for our benefit - it never is.

No Revolution, please, we're British

2009-05-23T09:52:00.004+02:00

Aren't we living in strange times? You know when something is DEEPLY wrong when the Daily Telegraph starts calling for revolution. You know you're being manipulated into something unspeakably unpalatable when conservative broadsheets start talking about ditching a political system 300 years old for something more "efficient". Now where have we heard that before...

Britain's political system is hardly modern or forward-thinking. It's a muddle-headed hybrid of old and new, traditionally held together by a dose of common sense and respect for past and hope for future. However, as we've seen, it's open to terrible abuse.

The classic sign of a society's descent into banana republic territory is the abandonment of the principle of the universal applicability of the Law. When politicians get away with fraud, the police with assault, and the banksters with outright treasonable theft, and nothing is done, while the rest of us are fined and harrassed for putting our rubbish in the wrong bins, you know we've lost the plot. And then when the SAME politicians and their corporate media overlords start wittering about revolution, you know the game's afoot: the abandonment of lawful government stands before us, the hysterical seizing of a political and economic free-for-all which will lay this country waste.

Manuscripts Don't Burn believes the UK stands on a knife edge. The media is profoundly culpable in manipulating the public to a point where we're ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Doesn't anybody know their history? No, of course not: 30 years of educational denudation has put paid to that. Revolutions are DISASTROUS, people! Wake up! They're invariably led by a small cabal of middle-class business interests whipping the masses up into a frenzy, and serve to replace one lot of predictable bastards with another, wholly unknown and unpredictable lot. Let's have a think about revolutions for a moment, and see how successful they were: English Revolution, led to Cromwell and the banning of Christmas; French Revolution, led to cultural carnage and the dictator Napoleon; the Russian Revolution, led to 70 years oppression; the Nazi Revolution - 'nuff said; the Chinese Revolution - 30 million dead; the Cambodian Revolution - Pol Pot and the Year Zero; the Iranian Revolution - hanging gays from the top of cranes. We could go on. There's ONE - maybe - example to counter this litany of chaos and disaster: the American Revolution, which chucked out the British monarchy and started the Great American Experiment. But perhaps that failed with the coup d'etat after Kennedy's death; it's a little too early to say.

Get the message? REVOLUTIONS DON'T WORK.

So what does? TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION. The rule of law MUST be reaffirmed. And, of course, that's the last thing the politicians, police, and banksters want. So, instead, they're trying to con us into abandoning our social system and delivering our futures lock, stock, and barrel into their authoritarian hands.

As students of history, Manuscripts Don't Burn doesn't hold out much hope for a happy outcome for the UK. Economically bankrupt, it's about to enter a political Dark Night of the Soul. Our only hope is that in 10 or 20 years time, when it emerges from its suffering, it'll emerge as a more grown-up, responsible, and less hysterical society. Something a little more... European...

Good luck everyone.

Cor... ain't it quiet?

2009-04-21T17:16:00.004+02:00

Is it us, or has everything suddenly gone quiet on the economic cataclysm front since Obama's Imperial Passage? Sure, we've had plenty of police brutality and slanderous emails to keep our salacious palates slaked, but - erm, hello? The global economy, vanishing up its own backside with a dreadful, schlupping sound? Anybody?

Noooo... It's the elephant in the room. Manuscripts Don't Burn would like to break radio silence following the media fanfare today that - Thank God! - we've finally had a month where we've ACTUALLY had deflation, despite the corporate media and government banging on incessantly about how HUGE the danger is. And we only had to cook the books a bit! Huzzah!

Here's our question: is anybody out there actually experiencing deflation in their everyday lives? Mmm? No. Thought not. Next question: is anybody out there actually experiencing humongous inflationary problems with council taxes, utility bills, even food, whilst their wages / salaries / pensions / incomes remain static, if not falling? Whoa there! Thought so!

Yup, they're lying to us again. And we're swallowing it. Doesn't anybody *read* histories of the Great Depression? We're now heading for the nightmare scenario: falling wages and out of control inflation. God help those of us who have debt.

Bottom line: in order to justify stuffing their pockets with taxpayers money past, present, and future, it's necessary for the Powers That Be to convince us all there's a terrible, terrible danger for life, liberty, and the Safety of the Whole Goddamn World if they don't. And deflation is the bugbear.

Ask any economist who isn't on the payroll of the corporate fascists. A bank is failing? Let it fail. We'll have 12 months economic mayhem as all the banks go bust, then we'll straighten out. But no - capitalism is all about the socialization of the losses of the rich, ie the poor people pay for the rich people's losses by increased taxes. So that's what we're being forced to swallow, like it or not. This way, the agony will drag out for the next 3 years, churning through the real economy, creating massive unemployment, collapse, civil unrest, shortages, misery, and probably down and out rationing, war, and clamp-down. Then, when we finally hit rockbottom and we've finally given absolutely everything we've got to the Corporate Feudalists, and are all much, much, poorer, we'll have a nice decade of austerity and backbreaking work to build it all up again. Lest we forget? Don't make us laugh.

Here's another one, a "Lest We Forget" for the 21st century: BOHICA. Bend Over, Here It Comes Again.

Beware Chancellors saying it'll be over by Christmas! Just as well that nice Mr Obama is such a smiley, smiley man. Lovely. Ration coupon, anybody? Or how about a nice war bonds? Got to do your bit!

THE BIG LIE

2009-01-29T23:14:00.002+01:00

Time to roll out the old Goebbels quote:

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.

The lie we're being told now is the biggest in our lifetimes. It's the biggest crime Manuscripts Don't Burn has seen in the UK in all our lives. It's so big, so brazen, and so obvious, most people would rather not see it at all.

We've said it before in these pages and elsewhere, and doubtless we'll say it again: the rich bastards are re-appropriating all the country's wealth. They're stealing your assets from you. It's the biggest redistribution of wealth in the UK since the Second World War. It reverses the post-war redistribution of wealth from rich to poor - since 1980 with Maggie's "reforms" we've been seeing a gradual retrenchment, a transfer of wealth *backwards*, from poor to rich. Via cheap mortgages, plentiful debt, and now this manufactured economic crisis, we are being returned to an economic status quo of roughly pre-WW1 proportions. Vast numbers of us are being reduced to poverty; to miserable indentured tenancy in cramped slums; to precariousness, illiteracy, malnourishment, and ill-health.

And it is DELIBERATE. Make no mistake. This is not the government going "oops! we accidentally screwed up the entire economy beyond all recognition, ah well you'll have to pay for it for the next couple of generations whilst we give all your money to these nice banking chaps". No - this is no "whoops, missus" moment - this is clear, damning evidence that the British corporate government is NOT ACTING IN THE INTERESTS OF ITS POPULATION.

We'll stop now. It's as clear as day. But well-meaning folk keep trying to give those Nice Mr Government people advice on how they can make it all better. THEY DON'T WANT TO. THEY'RE GIVING YOUR FUTURE EARNINGS TO THE RICH.

It's like turkeys voting for Christmas.

Ask Not What Your Banks Can Do For You...

2009-01-21T13:45:00.002+01:00

People keep assuming that this disastrous situation is some kind of accident. That our political leaders have somehow been terrible silly-billies and - oops! - accidentally impoverished most of the population of the UK for a generation to come and given all the money to a bunch of cut-throat rich bastards. Whoops! Golly - how silly of them! Can't think what came over them...

This situation is deliberate, and unfolding correctly. Thirty years ago Maggie commenced a great redistribution of wealth in the UK, from the poor to the rich, reversing the more egalitarian redistributions which had taken place since the Second World War. This "great redistribution" has continued steadily since, with each successive government simply being clerks and spokespeople for the big business and landed interests who pushed onwards with this redistribution at all costs. This so-called "collapse" is simply another stage in this process.

We now face a return to the pre-war status quo - possibly even pre-WW1 status quo - of a vastly impoverished majority living lives of indebted indenture in squalid tenements whilst a minority corporacy pull the strings of government and economy. And, to recap, none of this is accidental - it's been happening gradually, over the past generation.

The problem is of course that most people are trying to resolve this situation as if it is some big, silly mistake, some oops-missus accident that just accidentally happens to land BILLIONS of taxpayer pounds in the pockets of the super-rich, at the head of an unprecendented massive transfer of assets (property, etc) from poor to rich.

Let's be clear: we will achieve no solution whilst we treat this situation as an accident. The government, the banks, the corporacy, are managing this so-called collapse in their own interests, and simply foster talk of fixes as a distraction whilst sequential bailouts transfer ever-increasing amounts of wealth into their pockets at our expense.

We will only resolve this situation once we recognise that the "system" is ACTIVELY BEING MANAGED AGAINST OUR OWN INTERESTS. Tony Benn, bless his cotton socks, once said that the best thing about democracy was that it was possible to change government without bloodshed.

Not this time, Tony. This time, they're even making us pay for our own handcuffs...

Manuscripts Don't Burn is afraid civil disobedience or abject submission are the only "choices" here. Knowing the mindset of the British, we (along with hundreds of thousands of others) have provisionally liquidated our assets and left the country... We see no need to starve in an open prison and be forced to pay for the privilege.

Economic Collapse: Golem XIV summarises the situation again

2009-01-19T10:56:00.003+01:00

On this historic day, Manuscripts Don't Burn would like to present Guardian commentator GolemXIV's excellent summary of the UK government's latest bailout plan. Thank you GolemXIV! The lunatics are indeed running the asylum; we see dark days of protest and bloodshed ahead.

*****

This could be the most expensive suicide note in history!

This plan is exchanging a possible run on the banks with a possible run on the whole country, its tax base, and its currency.

Let's be clear about what we are insuring. We are going to insure stuff that the insurance world refuses to insure. How great is that. Insurers such as AIG did insure this stuff. Only problem is AIG itself is bankrupt. Bailed out three times already for over $100B and still dropping like a stone.

We are going to insure securities and derivatives based on Mortgage and corporate debts. Very many, if not most, originated in the US. By definition all these debts are close to worthless. And yet we are going to guarantee to pay the morons who bought the assets - or derivatives based on the value of those assets - either the full price tey paid or something near to it.

Which raises the question - To what level are we insuring them? If it's up to the full face value then as a nation this is a suicide note. I can only hope the insurance is based on a much lower valuation of but shares. But my guess is that even if there is a lower valuation it will still be suicidally high. Only the higher value will please the 'markets'. AKA the people who created the mess in the first place.

Why are they doing this? The reasoning is that the banks are going to continue to take massive losses. They all know this. The governments don't want to have to pay huge lumps of cash to cover these losses before they have to. Cash injections are large lumps. Insurance is only paid as and when each 'asset' has to come to the market and be declare formally dead. So insuring means we don't have to make one vast lump payment.

The down side however, is that our potential losses are potentially unlimited.

I know Darling says they will look at the assets and declare a limit. Yeah fine. But in practical terms the insurance plan will only 'restore confidence' if it is seen to work over the long term going forward. Which means even if they declare a limit, when we reach that limit they will be force do t extend it. For if they don't then all the money spent up to that point will have been wasted. SO the government will tell us we can't waste all the money spent so far, we must 'see it through'.

I know they banks will 'pay' us a premium. But that premium will be paid with the cash we gave them 6 months ago. So they won't be paying anything.

We don't have any of the money we are pledging. And what is more we are not going to be able to borrow it. So we are going to print.

*****

The Great Depression Phase 2 - The Crash Quickens Pace

2009-01-19T10:51:00.002+01:00

This morning, the British government announced its plans to insure all the crap debt the UK banking system has taken upon itself, effectively bankrupting the country. This is a historic moment: rather than a rapid, precipitous collapse, and a possible rebuilding in a 2-5 year timeframe, resulting in a new economic status quo where the reckless fat cats have gone to the wall in accordance with their beloved "market forces", our supine government has once again shown its loyalty is to big business, and not to the British electorate. It has elected to give unlimited guarantees to the debt-ridden financial sector, thereby turning a 2-5 recession into a Depression which will last a minimum of 10 years. The last time the UK took on a debt liability of this size was the Second World War: it took 50 years to pay that off. This at least is what we are looking at again.

Manuscripts Don't Burn has said this again and again: the biggest wealth transfer in history, from poor to rich, continues apace, reversing all the social egalitarian successes of the post-war era. When the dust settles, we will be back in 1910, with most of the population living as impoverished tenants working off indenture and grateful for the crumbs thrown from the tables of the rich.

But first - the collapse of sterling, hyperinflation, and national bankruptcy. Only now does the tip of the CDS iceberg begin to heave into view.

The fat cats are stuffing their pockets with what little is left of taxpayers' assets, and presumably leaving these shores like rats deserting a sinking ship. Manuscripts Don't Burn took its "assets" and left the UK years ago for saner climes - mene mene tekel upharsin being scrawled everywhere we looked.

And then, of course, the ship sinks. Sauve qui peut, because NOBODY else will.

Life on Mars

2009-01-16T13:32:00.002+01:00

Quite a remarkable event is transpiring in the British media today. Yesterday evening, a NASA press conference announced they had "probably" found life on Mars. In typical NASA speak, they refused to give qualitative confirmations, banging on about the need for verification, confirmation, more research, more evidence, but as everyone knows, the only way NASA will ever confirm life on Mars is if they actually have a little green guy in a bottle they can shake at the cameras of the world.

So, everyone with an ounce of sense and perception - and a knowledge of how the scientific process actively mitigates against definitive statements - understood yesterday's press conference to be saying: "We think we've found signs of life. We're not absolutely sure, but we're really excited, and we think all other Mars missions should now be dedicated to confirming our findings".

Epochal. World-changing. And completely ignored in the UK (and, indeed, global) media with the exception of The Sun. Not wanting to be a conspiracy theorist, Manuscripts Don't Burn would like to ask: what the hell are the rest of you guys on? We've more than likely just found life on Mars, and you're banging on about Liverpool footballers and Foxy Knoxy's trial?

Congratulations, UK media. You have now achieved a state of permanent irrelevance. Life goes on elsewhere, apace, but not on your pages!

An Alternative New Year Message...

2009-01-01T13:50:00.002+01:00

The media is awash with prognostication today, most drawing on some pre-war "all pull together" subtext either suggesting that everything's about to collapse and go to hell in a handcart, or that somehow, magically, a solution will appear if we all just knuckle under and do as we're told.

Manuscripts Don't Burn doesn't think any of this is anywhere near good enough. We have an emergent global civilization, enough technology and sophistication to resolve world poverty, hunger, destitution, and homelessness at a fraction of the cost of the cynical jobs-for-the-boys of the War on Turr, and instead we piss it all up against the wall and congratulate ourselves for being so liberal with our irrigational generosity.

We need a slap in the face, now more than ever. Just as our economic miracle is about to catapult us into poverty, civil unrest, and the danger of yet-another artificially instigated war (to wipe out the old surpluses and generate some REAL demand...), Manuscripts Don't Burn would just like to offer a lone voice, crying out amidst the censorship of cacophony that the modern world has become. In Kafka's The Trial, Josef K happens by "chance" into a cathedral, where a preacher is waiting for him in the pulpit. Josef K approaches, passive-aggressive, "what are you looking at", "I'm doing everything I can". The preacher leans over from the pulpit, his face an appalling picture of horror as though seeing a man walking blindly over a precipice, and cries "WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?"

Manuscripts Don't Burn would like to offer this post in the same spirit.

The time is overdue for us to realise that all of us in Western Civilization are guilty of a singular failure of imagination. The levels of technology and sophistication we have achieved could - TODAY - be being used to ensure that basic food, shelter, utilities, education, and healthcare for the whole globe should be unconditionally free and a basic human right. To ensure that once these rudimentary basics of life are finally given free, gratis, for granted, we could all get on with the real business of life - personal development, societal improvement, evolving into what we believe we should be, rather than floundering in the muck.

We should be disgusted with ourselves, that instead of embracing this bright new future, we have voluntarily opted to remain in a stagnant late Capitalism where a bunch of cynical criminals are allowed to manipulate our societies with artificial war, conflict, and scarcity, so that all of our wealth- and livelihood-creation is syphoned off into their bottomless fat cat pockets, and the rest of us have to keep buggering about spending all of our pointless days scrabbling around for a roof over our heads and enough food for eat - when in reality there is of course already plenty to go round.

The time is long past for a collective decision that this IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH, and we finally have to pull our fingers out, take responsibility for our civilization, and do something about this absurd situation of self-imprisonment and self-impoverishment in the name of some dodgy outdated ideology.

Our civilization has the power to GET BRAVE AND CREATIVE AGAIN; the strength to say no to crapness and cynicism, to dare to dream to aim for something better.

Sometimes in history we reach turning points, when a brave hand and a willing imagination could take our civilization a quantum leap forward. We had one after the Second World War; the history of the past 30 years have been one of the retrenchment of the old guard to try and tear down those hard-won social and cultural achievements in the name of a divisive inequality. Here we are again; this time, the odds are stacked against us, and the reactionaries have their pockets wide open to receive the last few drops of blood they can squeeze out of us. Hands up who's prepared to keep assuming the position?

Our Predictions for 2009...

2008-12-28T12:04:00.002+01:00

In the spirit of "New Year Messages", divining from the entrails of the dead economy, and the general prognosticating fever of the end-year period, Manuscripts Don't Burn would like to indulge in a little lighthearted speculation about what the coming twelve months might hold in store for the UK.

In 2009, the media will become almost hysterical about how marvellous it is for everyone to tighten their belts, pull together, and learn to darn our own socks. Words like "tempered in the fires of adversity", "school of hard knocks", and "Dunkirk spirit" will turn most tabloids into soggy repetitive clones.

And all the while the newspapers and tv channels will be desperately trying to distract everyone's attention away from the huge, turd-bomb of an elephant in the room: that the UK is in the throes of economic collapse, and the rich bastards are desperately stuffing their pockets and getting the hell out like rats leaving a sinking ship. Bailouts will proliferate, funnelling public money into private hands at an ever-increasing rate. Banks will repossess willy-nilly, and there will be no recourse other than... another government bailout.

The ship probably won't sink in 2009 - that'll more likely be 2010-11, after a long period of near lawlessness, rationing, food queues, power shortages, utility breakdowns, hunger, disease outbreaks (which will never *actually* be found to be due to the uncollected rubbish piling up in the streets) and civil unrest, which will be dealt with EXTREMELY violently by the police and army and consistently blamed on "anarchists" and "terrorist sympathisers". Thousands of British, students, unemployed, and concerned subjects of her majesty will be locked up without trial during these grim days. Tasers will be used on anyone so much as waving a placard. "I've done nothing wrong so I've nothing to fear" will be exposed as the cowardly sham it is.

Finally, once all the wealth that can be extracted has been extracted and the corporate fascists are safely installed in their heavily-defended tax havens, the EU will be called in to mop up the whole sorry mess. Like with East Germany in the nineties, Europe, despite having suffered its own knocks in the global depression, will shoulder the immense debt burden of putting what's left of England back on its feet again.

The only remaining question will be: will the huge landowners in England, who basically "own" us all anyway, go peacefully, be bribed with new laws which let them keep their millions of tax-free acres behind gated compounds, or have to be strung up before they'll let the rest of us get on with rebuilding the country? That one remains to be seen.

Either way, next year is unpleasant. The year that everything starts to go to hell.

Oh - and "abroad": Israel, Iran, Pakistan, India, China, US... There'll be lots of emotive news programs on Sky TV telling us how we should feel about the citizens of country X getting blown up by country Y - horrified, justified, indignant, or just plain "it's all a long, long way away and doesn't affect me..." Likely we'll all be far too busy to care - same goes for climate change too.

The most terrifying thing about "abroad" will be the out-and-out refusal to engage productively with Russia, which will continue its slide towards aggressive national socialism, bashing everyone over the heads with threats to cut off the gas and eventually the oil. It's an unending irony that, just as following WW1 the victors hammered Germany into the ground rather than rebuilding and extending hands of cooperation, thereby reaping disaster two decades down the line, the international community, led by the nightmare BushCo, saw fit to avenge itself on the fallen giant of the Soviet Union in the 1990s and try to ruin and dismember it, rather than offering the hand of understanding and friendship. Now, once again, just at the moment when we should be really paying attention and engaging diplomatically, we'll leave the Russians to stew as they suffer their own "Consequences of the Wall Street Crash", and similar to Germany in the 1930s, we'll reap the whirlwind as their society lurches to a vengeful right-wing extreme government intent on restoring national pride, whatever the cost.

Historians will wonder how we were all so blind. But we weren't, were we? It's not rocket science. It's just that we didn't *do* anything about it, dithering tomnoddies blustering about bugger-all... The tragedy of humankind is that it is so easily induced to forget...

Chronicle of a Rape Foretold: Economic Collapse 2008

2008-12-18T17:21:00.003+01:00

It's interesting that the majority of debates on the ongoing economic collapse start from the assumption that the task facing our governments is to manage our economies in the interests of the majority of its citizens, and that their actions and dialectics revolve around the best way to achieve this. And that, poor dears, they've made a bit of a mess of it this time.

A wider perspective gives us no grounds for this assumption. Governments rarely work for the benefit of their populations, but rather for the most effective exploitation of their populations for the benefit of the small minority of the faction currently controlling those governments, unless forced by threat of violence and social unrest to do otherwise. This isn't conspiracy theory; Manuscripts Don't Burn would argue it's the tacit common sense working agenda of the political classes, but one which our corporate- and government-controlled media do not like to see discussed.

The situation we're facing today is planned. It's been in the offing for thirty years; the gradual and insidious redistribution of wealth from bottom to top, reversing the more egalitarian redistributions following WW2 (in the face of the Soviet ideological opposition - however illusory that turned out in the long run). One has only to speculate on the relative wealth of a typical family between now and, say, thirty years ago to realise that today's families are considerably worse off, working harder, and carrying greater debt than our parents' generation. Money is flowing upwards, being concentrated into the hands of a small minority calling itself "big business", who themselves control the governments and electorates via "oligarchical intimidation" (witness Mandy's recent "interview") and media propaganda. The future is one of austerity and indenture for the masses, whilst the elite lounge on their yachts preaching about how it's important for us all to "make sacrifices". Haw-haw-haw.

The goal here is nothing more and nothing less than a return to the pre-WW1 status quo of quasi-fascist social organization, with a vast and easily-exploited workforce providing 99% of the labour in return for 1% of the wealth. Anything else foisted upon us by the mock-discussions in the corporate media is just smoke and mirrors to distract us whilst they rob us of our birthright.

We can engage in these pretend debates as much as we like (should we inflate our savings into non-existence or not? what kind of perpetual indebtedness and indenture do we want? which tyrant are we going to vote for - Mr Bad or Mr Crazy? ooh - the breathlessness of choice!), but we're simply parrotting the intended obfuscations which have been given to us in this distracting, irrelevant discourse. The real business of course continues apace, hoovering up the wealth and leaving us bereft, hyperinflating our currencies out of all value and centralizing the concrete assets - in the form of land and resources - in the hands of the "business" elites, leaving us with nothing but handfuls of worthless paper. There's nothing short of actual violence that we can do to change that, for all our self-important "debating" and hot-air. Witness Greece as a foretaste of what's to come in all Western societies in the coming years, when the security forces use lethal force to stifle anyone who dares protest. These anti-terror laws and snooping bills weren't there to "protect" us after all... who'd'a thunk it?

"The Federal Reserve is utterly terrified." Give us a break - yeah, Manuscripts Don't Burn is sure those private and discrete, unaccountable billionaires are quaking in their boots at the prospect of us having to give them all our possessions AGAIN. Terrified to bits. Wouldn't you be? What a joke.

Angry, us? Does it show?

Thanks to GolemXIV on the next wave of the crash...

2008-12-16T20:56:00.002+01:00

Manuscripts Don't Burn hasn't posted here lately, as you'll doubtless be aware - but we'd like to post a copy of a fellow blogger, GolemXIV, from the Guardian website today. Thanks, GolemXIV!

"The point is there is nothing of any consequence the gov or the BoE can do about deflation. The deflationary forces are just too amssive.

Just take a look at the next wave appraoching the beach.

Next year, 09, we get the first spike of the next TWO classes of american mortgages to start defaulting. Sub-prime is almost all through by early 09 but Alt-A and the even more toxic Option ARMs will start to make the headlines.

Nearly 4 Million small businesses in the US have Alt-A and of them 1.2 Million are ALREADY 60 day delinquent. As for the ARMs you really don't want to even look.

For those who don't know ARMs are mortgages where for an introductory period you can CHOOSE how much to pay or not pay all the way down to pay nothing. WHat you don't pay gets added on to your mortgage up to 125% of the loan. Then this new HUGE amount gets put on to a MUCH higher rate.

The market expects massive default rates.

This will mean even more massive write downs. This is part of why the banks have been hoarding all the cash we gave them.

So cutting a percentage point or two or messing about with a couple of VAT points really is about as impressive as getting your todger out, thinking you'll piss on that forest fire inferno and show it who's boss."

Manuscripts Don't Burn has been reading GolemXIV's comments attentively throughout this historical crisis. So far, he's been spot on every time. Interesting times...

US Elections: Dare we even hope...?

2008-11-05T09:30:00.003+01:00

Manuscripts Don't Burn is going to shed its customary cynicism and world-weariness today. The times are too few when one can do so legitimately, and it would be wrong not to take this rare chance to talk about something which has become a very rare commodity in our political lives today. Hope.

Now, after the election, is the most difficult time. After 8 years of cynicism, we have the tiniest chance to dare to hope again.

Is Obama for real? Or is he just another puppet for the corporate feudalists? Will he let us down like the New Labor victory of Tony Blair in 1997 let the people of the UK down? They promised us a new age - and delivered a New World Order. It is no surprise we find it hard to dare to believe...

Will the neocons even let Obama serve? After JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King, after 911, Guantanamo, Abu-Ghraib, is it any wonder why we look for snipers in the shadows, grassy knolls, false flags? There are 11 weeks still to go before the inauguration... a lot can still happen. We are still holding our breaths.

To have hope back after so many years of cynical Machiavellian hopelessness and neocon PNAC warmongering, exploitation, and trashing of human rights and the constitution, is almost too much to bear.

But there you have it - hope is back on the agenda.

For once, Manuscripts Don't Burn will not stoop to pouring cynicism and scorn on this historic day. We will give him a chance. Over to you, Mr. President...

US Elections: Raising the spectre of the "Stolen Election"

2008-10-24T09:06:00.003+02:00

The media have been buzzing over the past few days with talk of possible irregularities in the upcoming US elections. The BBC are reporting a Warning over US election problems, suggesting record numbers turning out to vote and the new (and still dodgy) voting machines could cause havoc on the day. The Daily Telegraph is even more candid: Police fear riots if Barack Obama loses US election, explaining how SWAT teams are in place in Democratic areas to "deal with" problems should Obama's 5-13 point lead somehow mysteriously vanish and McCain end up the winner.

Manuscripts Don't Burn boils this down to a simple question. After the extremely dubious results of the last two US elections, which international observers were not allowed to attend, is the BushCo corporacy going to let go of power to a Democrat, particularly a populist bi-partisan Kennedy figure like Obama. It's a tough call. On the one side, with the economy on the verge of total collapse once the Credit Default Swap tsunami arrives (probably in January), it's not going to be an easy ride for whoever is running the country. However, the possibilities of increased authoritarianism which economic collapse brings is bound to appeal to the Cheney mindset, even if the increasing potential for heavy-handed control comes at the price of economic chaos.

So, twisting our arm, Manuscripts Don't Burn predicts that McCain - Palin will just scrape a victory, by the skin of their teeth, and Obama, like Gore and Kerry before him, will step back from contesting the results "in the interests of national unity". The media will attribute this to a "massive Republican grassroots response" and "increased voter turnout turning opinion polls on their heads". Yes, there will be huge irregularities, yes, the Diebold voting machines will be hammered for having no paper trail, yes, there will be riots and blood on the streets, but, at the end of the day, we don't believe BushCo will step down without a fight.

Of course, there is one good reason why Obama might still win - corporacy support. Despite the fact that he'll be prosecuting numerous banksters over the fraud of the economic collapse, he is possibly better for business right now than BushCo's endless expensive wars. A period of economic and political stability right now would allow the corporacy a breathing space to gather itself together for the next stage of the putsch - large-scale currency and regulatory trading blocs - and possible calm the increasingly restive masses with some acceptable leftist window-dressing and "I'm on your side" emoting. But that might presuppose that the corporacy actually gives a damn, which more and more it appears not to - witness the recent heavy-handed mass arrests during the Republican convention.

So, Manuscripts Don't Burn hazards a McCain win, whilst praying for Obama. The only other factor is the American people. Thank heavens the corporacy hasn't been able to disarm these guys yet, unlike the heavily surveilled masses in the UK.

The Pakistan Gambit (6): Pakistani Govt defies US

2008-10-24T08:55:00.004+02:00

Things are moving quickly in Pakistan. Yesterday, the Guardian reported, the Pakistani parliament overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for dialogue with extremist groups and an end to military action.

The US is unlikely to take this sitting down. There have already been a dozen US missile strikes inside Pakistan since September, and a ground assault, fuelling anti-US sentiment. But the US is clear on what it expects the Pakistani strategy to be. "Pakistan needs to and is attacking insurgents in its northern areas," said Patrick Moon, a deputy US assistant secretary of state. "Sanctuaries for Afghanistan Taliban in Pakistan complicate our security operations. Pakistani Taliban and other extremists such as al-Qaida are posing a threat to the stability of Pakistan."

But where do these Pakistani Taliban come from? Well, under a treaty with the tribes of northern Pakistan, the Pakistan army was not originally allowed to enter the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (a legacy of the British Raj). However - and note the savage irony - this accord broke down in 2004 under US pressure calling for al-Qaida bases to be disrupted. It sparked a tribal insurrection and pushed the locals towards extremism, creating a Pakistani Taliban.

The "Pakistani Taliban and other extremists" which the US is demanding the Pakistani government attacks are a direct result of US policy in Pakistan.

Manuscripts Don't Burn awaits the US response with interest. We would expect some major terrorist atrocity inside Pakistan, or perhaps even an attempt on the government. A military coup looks ever more likely.

Growth Junkies: Why we are here in the first place

2008-10-23T15:39:00.004+02:00

Manuscripts Don't Burn continues to pillage the Guardian website today as extremely sound analysis of the financial meltdown develops. Next, blogger SocialistMike, furthering GolemXIV's analysis of the CDO tsunami with an analysis of the relentless capitalist drive for growth - what got us into this insane situation in the first place.

SocialistMike:

"Golem is right about the CDS nightmare hanging over the financial system, but doesn't touch on why we are in the crisis.

"It is because of over-production of commodities and a resulting over-extension of commercial activity and credit. Profits are great in the upturn and it is all reinvested in more machines, more warehouses and transport, more commodities and yet more profit. Soon markets become saturated as the workers producing the goods, whose wages have been held down to boost profits (trickle down etc), can no longer afford to buy what they produce and have to turn to credit, supplied by the very same growing profits of production and retail.

"We have a circuit of capital: investment, consumption, profit, reinvestment. The more profit the more loan capital is available for more credit, both to producers, distributors and consumers. The more loan capital is available the harder it is to find profit from actual production so speculation in credit and future profits starts, based on the loans that producers give to sellers, that sellers give to consumers, on what commodities and assets are expected to return in the future, etc etc. Paper money (meaning bonds, shares, futures, commercial paper etc) comes to replace and equal real money in tradeable value producing more 'profits' that need to be reinvested but with nowhere to go except back into ever higher levels of abstracted speculation in paper. But suddenly the cracks in reality can no longer be covered up. There is a dawning realisation that most of this credit will not be paid back, that it alone is supporting the whole of production and comsumption. Panic ensues.

"Crises are always caused by the same thing - an unequal distribution of the proceeds leads to over production relative to consumption as each capitalist and investor seeks the hightest profit for themselves in a reducing sphere of opportunity.

"Capitalism forces all of us - bosses and workers - to dance to its tune. There is no choice for a capitalist in an upturn - they must competitively reinvest for greater profit or be eaten alive thereby bringing on the crisis - or a downturn - their capital is tied up in unsold commodities and credit is suddenly unavailable from the banks so there are firesales and firings, cutbacks and economies all contibuting furhter to the crisis.

"They must act as a herd; there is no room for reason and objectivity at any stage of the capitalist process of production for any of those involved in it, which is everyone."

*****

Manuscripts Don't Burn has constantly argued against our society being structured for the benefit of the economy (as a mathematical construct) rather than for the benefit of its members - which invariably leads to the nonsense we see today. As Gandhi famously said, what's so great about growth anyway? Growth is the mantra of late Imperialist capitalism, and it needs to be exposed for the hollow, inhuman dogma it is. In its drive for ever greater "efficiency", more and more people are laid off, fewer people are asked to do more work, prices are cut, and eventually no one can afford the goods they are producing. Hey presto - 2008, and people are buying their food on credit cards.

Manuscripts Don't Burn notes the increasing howls of anger and outrage from around the world as the powers that be stuff their pockets and jump the sinking ship whilst the rest of us are left to drown. We also note the increasing polarization into extreme left and extreme right in public opinion - so wearyingly familiar. Dumbing down the education system so that no one knows their history may make people easier to control, but it does mean we just keep on making the same old mistakes.

Manuscripts Don't Burn can see no option other than a re-creation of the labor movement, with all the government oppression, thuggery, and violence that entails. The labor movement and union power was not created because it was "just", "right" or "cool" - it was created because people were starving and the rich-sponsored police clubbed down anyone who complained. Tony Benn once lauded our system for being able to change government without there being blood on the streets: Manuscripts Don't Burn fears those days are over, and agitation and mobilization is the only way out. Every now and then it behoves a generation to fight for the lives of those still to come; Manuscripts Don't Burn had hoped to get through without it happening to us. Sadly, it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

The Tsunami Offshore: the on-coming CDS meltdown

2008-10-23T12:46:00.005+02:00

The blogosphere has been buzzing the past few weeks with talk of the huge Credit Default Swap tsunami currently being held offshore by the global bail-out. Speculation is that it'll come crashing in shortly after the US elections - the stability of which is the main reason our futures have been hocked.

This morning blogger GolemXIV posted the following summary of where we're currently at on the Guardian website. Manuscripts Don't Burn cannot better it, so with due credit to GolemIV, we'd like to post it in its entirety. You can see the original here.

"We are entering the second and more dangerous phase of this financial melt down. As corporations begin to go down the CDS and CDO's written on their debt will blow up.

"When they do, the holders lose massive amounts of money. They are losing often 90 cents in every dollar. Most of the institutions making these losses are also still highly leveraged. This means a small loss is enough to force them to have to raise more real cash to cover their losses and replace their capital holdings.

"To raise the cash they have to sell assets, call in debts or seek yet more help from the governments.

"Selling assets is depressing the value of those asset types on the market making all the other holders of that kind of asset a little bit poorer. Bringing them, in turn, a little closer to having to sell themselves.

"Calling in debts forces those from whom you call in the debts closer to bankruptcy. This is the situation with Gmac the finance arm of GM. It is virtually bankrupt and may file very soon. To stave that off, Gmac is forcing the GM dealers to whom it has loaned money to pay up. They are starting to go bust. They default on loans and round we go.

"Sovereign nations have been offering themselves as the backstop to every bad debt brought to them. If they don't stop NOW they will find their own debt, sovereign national debt, is down graded. This may happen to US national debt quite soon.

"Once that happens we are facing a Bond market dislocation. After that I won't be writing any more as there will be no point.

"This is NOT a liquidity crisis it is a Solvency crisis. The banks are insolvent. They know it. It is why they won't lend. The only lending they are doing is on the basis of the real cash the governments have injected. The governments have essentially created little banks inside the carcasses of the banks who are still poisoning the financial stream with all the worthless and toxic debt backed paper they refuse to admit is worthless.

"The banks and governments have refused to admit these assets are worthless. Refused to force them out and to take the losses and begin to rebuild.

"All that is happening is the real worthlessness of the paper is leaking out slowly as one entity after another is poisoned and goes under. Basically the stuff is putrefying and leaking out.

"This isn't rocket science. Even though the bankers would like you to think it is.

"Imagine a group of men walking across an ice sheet. They are roped together for safety. Or as the financial world characterizes it - to spread the risk. Great in theory. But each man is carrying an anvil of debt. One man, lets call him Lehman, falls through. The ropes tighten, everybody stops still. No one can move. Lending stops.

"What they should do is collectively put down their anvils and let them slip down the hole Lehman made. Huge losses but the ice is safe, then hole doesn't widen. But none of them will do this. Each is convinced that one day their anvil of debt will turn to gold and they'll be rich once more. So they stand there slowly dragging each other towards the hole.

"As they get pulled closer together, their combined weight threatens to crash the entire ice sheet. The bad news is WE are all living on that sheet."

The Pakistan Gambit (5): Who Pays the Piper...

2008-10-23T11:54:00.002+02:00

Manuscripts Don't Burn is noting with interest the continued development of the Neocon strategic agenda in the Middle East / Iran / Pakistan / Central Asian region, as Pakistan is now brought to its knees due to financial aid to the country having been stalled since June. Last week President Zardari travelled to China, having expressed reluctance to seek US financial aid due to the political strings attached - following recent US incursions into Pakistani territory, including bombing of civilians, schools, etc, on the border, overt pro-Americanism is a political no-no. China clearly said "no" (now why would they do that?), and now Zardari finds himself having to eat his words and go cap-in-hand to the IMF asking for his very own bail-out.

And the cost of all this? An estimated $6bn - cheap given the recent $700bn bank bail-out. And, in return, the US would be able to impose "conditions" rather unpleasant to the democratically elected Zardari.

Manuscripts Don't Burn would playfully like to offer the following scenario: the IMF approach, whether successful or not, will trigger further huge political instability in Pakistan, with, in all likelihood, Zardari shortly falling from power, to be replaced by a far more compliant pro-US non-elected military governorship. With UN oversight, of course, and a nice big fat "peacekeeping force" to make sure everything goes according to plan. Unless, of course, Mr Zardari is willing to play ball, and assume the position...

Or, well, maybe we just have to invade Pakiranistan after all...

Welcome to the Revolution...

2008-10-22T14:03:00.003+02:00

Today our societies suffer from a massive disconnect between the world we *think* we live in, and the world we actually live in. Thanks to the propaganda fed to us every day of our lives, we think we live in a "modern" world of democracy, freedom of speech, and individual liberty. In actual fact we live in a world which is barely post-feudal, encumbered by Imperialist caste systems and hierarchies, and switching over from late Imperialism to proto-fascism (call it "corporate feudalism" if you will) during our lifetimes. Note the distinct lack of words like "freedom" and "democracy" in the above.

Marketing and window-dressing is all - the virtuosity of spin. Even in the Middle Ages, when people were chopping one another up on the flimsiest of pretexts and with alarming alacrity, the prevailing dogma was a Candidean "all for the best in the best of all possible worlds", that the state was structured "as God ordained it", and that the world was one of universal brotherhood and love. When of course nothing could be further than the truth. It should give all of us pause when we blather on about freedom and democracy - the West is a loose mercantile coalition of one party states masquerading as two party states. The reason the US elections pretty much fall 50/50 each time is because people vote pretty much randomly - there are no real issues to distinguish them. "What color chains do you want today?"

To paraphrase Orwell, revolution never comes from the "proles". Western history documents several so-called revolutions - English in the 17th century, American and French in the 18th century, a close call Europe-wide in 1848, the Russian in 1905-17, Chinese in 1949, etc, etc. In none of these were the leaders from the working class; quite the opposite, they were from the disgruntled mercantile classes, looking to remove the glass-ceilings of inherited privilege. And they worked - but only by recruiting the proles to their side by LOTS of egalitarian-sounding marketing.

We are facing a similar Revolution today. Twenty years ago the Cold War began to crumble. Since then, the old guard have struggled to stay in power - finding us a new Bogey Man (in a beard and turban this time) to drum up population-controlling fear, and desperately trying to keep the old oppositional us-and-them confrontation going to feed the military-industrial complex which drove 20th century history from start to finish. With the most Orwellian of irony, the old world order even tried to sell itself to us as the New World Order. Some people bought it; someone always does.

But there is a bunch of mitteltier rebels out there trying to break the NWO glass ceiling; and it's the merchants, again. There are resources *everywhere* available for exploitation today, and the corporate feudalists want to *get at them*! In every Western country over the past decade we've seen corporate interests and government interests gradually become the same - actually the definition of fascism - but in clear opposition (most of the time) to the OWO/NWO.

Hence today's Revolution. The OWO/NWO is collapsing under the weight of its own inertia; in its place, a much more agile corporacy, perhaps not quite global yet, but heading in that direction. As with most Revolutions, its going to be disturbing to the peace of all of us for a while, but, uniquely, perhaps, this time, our New Masters, the corporate feudalists, would like to keep us Consuming and Producing just as before - it's simply the agenda that's changed. There's been a coup d'etat in the West.

Tragically, the rest of us are left blinking in the rubble, clutching our smoke-and-mirrors dreams of a free modern world of liberty and fraternity in tatters to our chests. To quote Starship Troopers (!), the only freedom any of us ever really have is figuring things out for ourselves. Bitter comfort, when you may be losing your house and savings to "historical necessity".

The trouble with Marx is that Lenin gave us the idea we could shortcut the historical dialectic, somehow jumping from "post-feudal late Imperialism" to "socialism-building-communism" in one fell swoop, hurdling possibly centuries of social development in a single bound. The aftermath of the Russian revolution gave the lie to Leninism. But Marx is still in there - we inch one step forwards, as capitalism comes face-to-face with its own contradictions when placed on a global stage. Now we get to post-capitalism - a kind of managed version of what we had, with hopefully some greater social controls. But, dang, is this social progress thing ever a slow business...

HG Wells in "The Shape of Things to Come" predicted total economic collapse and a century of rigorous self re-education before our society could reach some form of sensible organization. Here at Manuscripts Don't Burn we think that's optimistic; last week the US spent TEN TIMES the sum it would take to deal with global hunger on a "bailout" of its banking system, so we have a way to go yet before the era of universal brotherhood dawns.

Perhaps this is the eternal paradox of the intellectual. The world *could* be a paradise, if only people were... well, different... not like they are... weren't people, basically... if only they were more like us here at Manuscripts Don't Burn... oh, bother... ;-)

In this hinterland of history at the tale end of the Middle Ages, we can offer only this advice, from a dear friend who happens to run a Swiss bank investment company in the City in London: Keep it local. Show, don't tell. Create functioning communities and networks *where you are*. Sidestep the corporacy and create your own alternative system. Rebel in small things; don't watch advertising; don't follow the demands of the herd to be "alternative" in acceptable ways. Keep smiling, and crack targeted jokes. Never just mumble and let another overt oppression take place.

As the ex-mayor of London said, if voting changed anything, they'd abolish it.

Cause for hope or despondency? Manuscripts Don't Burn votes for Hope - at the price of eternal vigilance. Our civilization has a long way to go yet before it reaches the place our propaganda tells us it's already at. But that's no reason not to keep heading in that direction. It *is* the right direction.

Economic "Crisis": The Great Redistribution Continues Apace

2008-09-23T09:42:00.002+02:00

The current state of the global economy - ie what happens to us all in the West - is only a crisis from the perspective of those on the receiving end. For the powers that be - the big banks, global corporations, and major landowners, everything is proceeding according to plan.

What we're witnessing is a particularly blatant episode in the huge redistribution of wealth from poor to rich which has been going on since the 1980s, reversing the more egalitarian post-war redistributions of the 50s and 60s. The poor are being divested of their ability to buy and hold property at an alarming rate, their "savings" are about to be destroyed by extremely high inflation, future education, welfare, public works, and healthcare budgets have just been spent in advance in the "bail-out", and assets with any concrete value are being placed into the hands of the mega-rich.

The future for most of us is indenture - lifelong indebtedness to the banks in return for a roof over our heads, little different from the indentured serfs and tenant farmers of the Middle Ages.

What floors us here at Manuscripts Don't Burn is the scale of their blatant audacity - not only harnessing the media-government complex over the past 20 years to ensure astronomical indebtedness amongst the population, but then actually forcing them to pay *twice* by "bailing out" the toxic debt which their pea-under-the-stone "trading instruments" have excreted. You couldn't make it up - as Dubya has so famously said, "You can fool some of the people all of the time - and those are the ones you should concentrate on".

Why aren't people rioting in the streets? Our allegedly-elected government has finally admitted it's in bed with big business and working directly against our interests, and we just roll over and turn the telly on?

Thank God at least our governments have been repealing our civil rights and introducing all that draconian "anti-terror" legislation. That way, they can club us down and lock us up when we start protesting at our coming homelessness and hungriness, and it'll all be legal!

Ignorance is Strength, indeed.

The Pakistan Gambit (4): Do As You Are Told

2008-09-23T09:36:00.001+02:00

CUI BONO?

Get a map. Look at all the countries surrounding Iran, and think of the best way of geographically isolating a country which you can't - yet - invade. You need: Iraq, Georgia, Afghanistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan... and Pakistan. Dominos, falling, year by year.

As we reported, by this time last year the USA was operating forces covertly within Pakistan despite protests by the Pakistani army. Increased instability within national borders, resulting in unrest, factionalization - the usual destabilization tactics.

Last Friday / Saturday, after 12 months of political turmoil, the new Pakistani government issued a clear statement that infringements on their sovereignty by "foreign powers" (guess who?) were unacceptable.

Hours later, a "bomb" destroys the hotel where a secret meeting of the Pakistani government was due to happen, but fortunately changed at the last minute. Message: TOE THE LINE. WE CAN GET YOU ANYTIME.

Yesterday, the Pakistani army start firing on US troops unilaterally and illegally crossing their borders.

Draw your own conclusions. Here at Manuscripts Don't Burn, we're comparing and contrasting every other CIA covert ops destabilization campaign since the war.

Regime change, anyone?

Oh, no, hang on, it's the TERRORISTS. Riiiiiight... Always is, bub. We're the good guys, remember, whoever we kill.

The Strip-tease of the Search for Life on Mars

2008-05-28T09:31:00.002+02:00

The search for life on Mars has become such a drawn-out and elaborate strip-tease that many of us are forced to conclude that NASA (etc) are already sure they've found it, and are simply preparing the ground socially for the announcement. Now, even the Pope is pretty sanguine about ET, and has said it all fits into God's great plan, which should sort out the concern of a large chunk of the global population.

30 years ago, an announcement of alien life might have had unpredictable social consequences. Now, Manuscripts Don't Burn is pretty sure most Brits would barely register the news, as long as sports and soap opera broadcasts weren't interrupted.

The sad fact is that science is still a minority patronage game for governments, much as it has ever been, and has to scrabble for the leavings from the budgetary table. No matter how excited science enthusiasts may get, most people are just not bothered, and will simply parrot a number of socially-acceptable cliches to cover their lack of interest (to whit, the BBC HYS entries).

The end result is a painfully slow pace of research, and an equally slow uptake by the social consciousness, ideally with minimal social upheaval. Only the rapid spread of the internet has got out of control from this perspective - and now the world's governments are trying, with clumsy threats and propaganda, to persuade the world's people to agree to put the genie back in the bottle.

Manuscripts Don't Burn for one would be absolutely delighted to see yet more evidence of life on Mars. However, we are pretty much convinced it's already Out There, and lots of it, so it would just confirm what we already think...

The simple truth is that exploratory entrepreneurialism is not the traditional forte of governments. What we really need is a Bill Gates or Richard Branson to get on board and kick ass - we already have the know-how to be out there in the solar system right now, with bases all over the place and plenty of resource exploitation to pay for it.

Tho, with the obsessive secrecy of our governments, Manuscripts Don't Burn wouldn't be surprised if we were already doing it...

Irrelevant diversions as the price of food rockets...

2008-05-05T13:48:00.004+02:00

The average UK family is facing a £1700-a-year utility and food bill increase over the past 12 months - that on a £20K gross salary. For most of the population, regardless of what the government says, actual experienced inflation is running at 10-15%.

It's inevitable, we are told. Poor harvests. Overpopulation. Global warming. "The era of cheap food is over." "We all have to tighten our belts and pull together - it'll be like the war again. It's the New Austerity."

Bullshit.

The elephant in the room is that we have food riots all around the world and looming shortages / starvation because a bunch of brokers are being allowed by supine governments to create a bubble in commodities (ie FOOD) to try and claw back some of the money they lost in the subprime fiasco (after they'd been "allowed" to flog off the backup foodstores we'd set aside to prevent this sort of thing happening).

It's not global warming, it's not overpopulation. Our governments are allowing private individuals to speculate with the global staple food and energy supply. Irresponsible laissez-faire and lack of planning is the crime, that and the fact that the media are not shouting the truth from the rooftops.

But, hey, this is corporate feudalism - it's cool if people die, as long as the brokers keep making their millions. We can always blame it on global warming and overpopulation! The poor saps will never cotton on till it's too late - then they'll be too hungry to do anything about it.

Buy coffee! Buy rice! Buy wheat! The price is gonna rocket once the people start dropping!

*****

Support material: Truthout.org, "Making a Killing from Hunger"

Olympic blackmail brings China into line

2008-04-03T09:48:00.002+02:00

The Daily Telegraph reported this morning that China has revealed to the UN details of Iran's "secret nuclear program". How wonderfully decent of them, we are told, that they've shown sense and kicked these Mad Mullahs in the nuts as they so rightly deserve. Hurrah!

Naturally we are not given the opportunity to comment on this piece of "news". So, just for fun, Manuscripts Don't Burn would like to present an "alternative" interpretation of this shock cooperation by the nefarious... we mean cuddly... or is it nefarious... damn... Chinese... Remember folks - we're at war with Eastasia, we've always been at war with Eastasia...

Dick Cheney has a matter of months left in office, and the eastern Med and Red Sea are teeming with a recently much-bolstered US naval presence (presumably to ensure fishing and sunbathing expeditions continue unmolested...). He's declared openly that Iran is in his sights, but the military disagree, and have started resigning. Even the intelligent reports don't help Deadeye Dick in his mission to "Save Tha Werld...", so we need something a little more weighty. Something that will stick in the UN. But Russia and China won't play ball - Dick, mate, you can't just go blowing shit up cos you want to. It's where we get our oil...

Then, quite out of the blue, riots break out in Tibet. China blames the Dalai Lama and friends for stirring things up. Surely not that nice man in the orange dress and glasses who's always smiling? Suddenly, the west is talking about boycotting the Olympics, which China has been pouring dosh into and spinning into the biggest propaganda event of the century. At last - a lever which might just budge those Intractable Chinese.

Suddenly the Chinese turn up with all this evidence that the Iranians are bomb-crazed loons hell-bent on bombing us all back into the stone age (hang on... sorry, I think that's someone else...). The crime? Iran has "obtained information on how to manufacture nuclear-armed weapons". What - you mean they Googled it? Get away! That's just unfair! Of course, we in the West are too afraid to Google it anymore, lest we get spirited away for a few years' holiday in Guantanamo, but those Evil Mullahs just don't care - they LIKE orange jumpsuits, for Chrissakes! They Google everything - they just refuse to be censored like good God-fearin' patriots.

Well, more fool them. Googling shit is a crime, now, punishable by Nuclear Destruction by Deadeye Dick. Watch this space as the hysterical media machine ratchet up the pressure for the Iranian gambit. Dick *could* leave it for his idiot-grinning corporate successor to follow up, but our suspicion is that he wants to press the buttons himself. Manuscripts Don't Burn puts its money on an attack before year-end.

The Pakistan Gambit (3): US Predator Drones active inside Pakistan

2008-03-17T12:20:00.003+01:00

The Guardian reported this morning "suspected" missile attacks by US predator drones in Wana, South Waziristan. As many as seven separate missiles are reported hitting two houses in the town, killing at least 20 people, including "several" Al-Qaeda militants - indicating mostly civilian casualties. The attacks are reported to have been preceded by the characteristic buzzing sound of the unmanned US drones, although both the US and Pakistani governments retain a policy of not recognising the politically inflammatory unmanned drone attacks.

Manuscripts Don't Burn would just like to note this event in passing as confirmation of our earlier comment (see December's entries) that the US military was about to enter Pakistan and engage militarily, despite American denials and the vociferous outrage of the Pakistani army to the contrary. Interestingly, the Guardian report mentions an unusual admission by the Saudi government - remembering of course that Bin Laden is a Saudi and most of the 9/11 pilots were Saudis - that at least 3 of its nationals had been deported from Pakistan for being there "in an illegal capacity" - doubtless Al-Qaeda members there. Saudi Arabia continues to be the primary source of so-called Al-Qaeda agitation, and yet has never been held to account - doubtless because of the royal families very close ties with the Bush family and its enormous financial holdings within the USA (this being the country which beheads rape victims, remember, and with whom Jack Straw declared we share so many common values...).

The US continues to intervene militarily in its gradual geopolitical game of Middle Eastern oil hegemony (in which we count Pakistan as a key player in connecting with Afghanistan and helping in the encirclement and isolation of Iran). Now, thanks to its interference, Pakistan is a no-go area for westerners. Well done, men. Next we will doubtless see the case being made for a more robust presence in Pakistan in order to make it safe for foreigners...

Jim Rogers on CNBC: Abolish the Federal Reserve and Stop "Socialism for the Rich"

2008-03-16T11:11:00.002+01:00

Interesting times bring strange bedfellows: Manuscripts Don't Burn today finds itself standing in solidarity next to straight-talking arch-capitalist Jim Rogers as he unequivocally condemns the appallingly corrupt bailout of Wall Street at the expense of the rest of us. It's clear now that the enormous capital transfer into the hands of the rich and the corporate is damaging the global economy and screwing up life for the rest of us for at least the coming decade, and we need top figures like Jim Rogers to point out the blindingly obvious - the Wall Street bailouts are not capitalism. Capitalism would let the investment banks go bankrupt, would let the recession in as the inevitable part of the economic cycle. The enormous Federal Bank bailouts we are seeing now simply postpone the recession, and exacerbate its intensity, and look like a mad scramble to bailout the rich and the incompetent with money which could otherwise be used to better effect before the shit finally hits the fan.

Strange bedfellows indeed. Manuscripts Don't Burn finds itself agreeing with Jim Rogers: abolish the Fed. Bernanke resign. Let these incompetent parasites go bankrupt. Clear out the dead wood and start with something more responsible - if these guys believe they are capitalists, then let the market deal with them. For the rest of us - the long-suffering public - give us some public banks who we can trust to look after our money.

No to corporate feudalism. No to socialism for the rich.

Unreported: Housing Benefit Applicants Dispersed by Riot Police in Florida

2008-03-16T10:13:00.005+01:00

Manuscripts Don't Burn believes that this is where our job gets tricky. The number of watershed events of police oppression against our populations is rising above a number which can be easily reported, and of course is being ignored by our supine mainstream corporate media. Nevertheless, we'll attempt to pick up on what we regard as key, symbolic events and record them here. Just click on the "What They Don't Want You To Know" in the "Length and Breadth of the Shaft" column on the right hand side of your screen to see news items which the media strenuously want to ignore.

On Wednesday, March the 12th, the Palm Beach Post reported the shocking news that a crowd of 500 housing benefit applicants in Palm Beach had been dispersed by police in riot gear when application forms ran out earlier than expected.

Two people were arrested and six to eight people hospitalized for exhaustion during the ordeal.

Hundreds of people, mostly mothers who had spent more than eight hours in line - all night, in other words - were forced to leave the property at 2333 W. Glades Road by 30 Boca Raton Police officers, including SWAT team members, who walked toward the crowd in unison holding their police shields up about 10:30 a.m.

By the end of the operation, in which mothers with children were dispersed by riot police for having got angry at waiting all night for housing benefit application forms, only to be turned away, police declared they were satisfied with the operation and happy that "no one got hurt".

Hang on! No one got hurt? Women and children at a benefits office being dispersed by riot police?

Be under no illusions, people. This is what the draconian laws removing your civil liberties have been for over these past few years. Food is running out. Inflation is raging. Unemployment is hidden and epidemic. The crash has now started and is gathering pace. Try and protest, and this is what you face - riot police, or worse. Don't forget those enormous internment camps Dick Cheney's Halliburton has been building! Click here for the official Halliburton press release and here for the analysis.

For Manuscripts Don't Burn, one of the most telling comments came from Shayla Williams, 22, of West Palm Beach, who was angered by the police tactics.

"This place is going to get shot up later," she yelled to officers. "They can't treat us like this."

Tony Benn once said the benefit of our society was that, for the first time in history, we could change our government if we didn't like it without there having to be blood on the streets. Manuscripts Don't Burn wonders what Mr. Benn would say today.

Keep the flame, guys, and remember: manuscripts don't burn - you can't kill an idea. Spread the word.

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results of 2008 Election Early

2008-03-15T17:40:00.002+01:00

Manuscripts Don't Burn would like to thank our friends at TheOnion.com for this priceless piece of reporting... You keep the flame, guys.

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

Blatant Graft Brings the West to the brink of Economic Collapse

2008-03-15T09:28:00.006+01:00

Sometimes, when reading the papers, it's easy to get the impression that all this economic chaos and impending suffering and hardship is some Act of God. The way the papers paint it, it's as much a surprise to the Powers That Be as to the rest of us. Heavens to Betsy, they say, how could things have come to this? It was all going so well - none of us saw this coming...

Go to hell. The coming wipeout of our decent standards of living and social freedoms is horribly deliberate, and the result of a policy more than a generation old to reverse the social and economic levelling which followed WW2 and replace it with a blatant unfairness and pseudo-feudalism reminiscent of the late 19th century - before We the Proles got organised and demanded our share of the cake.

Whilst the supine press continue to hem and haw and wonder how things could have gone so terribly wrong, Manuscripts Don't Burn would like to express its anger and disgust, and enumerate some facts which may help shed light on events unfolding in the US and which will ultimately impact the freedoms and standard of living of all of us in the West, and indeed beyond. Not only is what is currently being called "the sub-prime crisis" a deliberate product of US government policy, it is merely the latest episode in the tightening of the noose of the New World Order, and the US government itself (in the person of The Dear Leader, BushCo) is managing the shenanigans in a way which - to those of us of purer mind - appears deeply criminal. Bearing in mind that this is merely the latest episode, Manuscripts Don't Burn would like to observe:

1. In an unprecedented use of the legal power of "federal pre-emption," BushCo recently ordered the individual states of the US to NOT enforce their consumer protection laws, thus allowing banks to practice "fraudulent conveyance" or "predatory lending" as it's defined under US law. In other words, BushCo didn't just turn a blind eye to what the banks were up to, they actively enabled the whole sub-prime bullshit that led to this bail-out.

2. Eliot Spitzer - the "bane of Wall Street" - was in Washington in February to launch a campaign to take on and investigate the financial alchemy of the Bush regime, and some of the biggest financial powers on the planet.

On the night of February 13 when Spitzer made the stupid choice to order some saucy take-out in his Washington Hotel room, he had just finished signing these words for the Washington Post about predatory loans:

"Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye."

Spitzer said in the headline, that Bush was the "Predator Lenders' Partner in Crime." The President, said Spitzer, was a fugitive from justice.

3. Last Wednesday, the 12th March, Carlyle Capital went bankrupt. Carlyle Capital is an offshore subsidiary of the Carlyle Group, who have some powerful friends: James Baker, Senior Counsel; notable partners, former and past: George Bush, the Bin Laden family, John Major and more dictators, pirates and presidents than you've had hot dinners. The Federal Bank acted swiftly and Bernanke dumped $200 billion on the poor little suffering bankers. They got the public treasure, and got to keep all those houses too. As a result, every mortgage sharking operation shot up in value on Wall Street.

The very same day the bail-out was decided - what a coincidence! - the man called "The Sheriff of Wall Street" was cuffed, and Eliot Spitzer was silenced.

4. Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, paid Washington DC prostitutes to put him in diapers, yet the Senator was not exposed by the US prosecutors busting the pimp-ring that pampered him. Naming and shaming and ruining Spitzer - rarely done in these cases - was made at the "discretion" of Bush's Justice Department.

So, BushCo creates financial turmoil, breaking the law yet again. It gets away with it - yet again - and yet again simultaneously enriches all their friends in the ruling class. Meanwhile, the poor move into their cars.

Is it us, or is anyone else seeing a pattern here?

Keeping it local - the only way democracy can work

2008-02-27T14:23:00.002+01:00

The Guardian is running an article today bewailing the disappearance of a crucial local government layer in British society, to the degree that our first port of call for what should be local government concerns these days is actually the police. It's debatable just how much clout village and local community councils ever had, but there is absolutely no doubt that confidence in the institution of democracy - people running their own communities, for themselves, has evaporated almost entirely in Britain today.

The UK has had whatever feeble democratic institutions it originally had perniciously eroded over the past 30 years, and individuals now need to start to fight back by forming their own grassroots local democratic groups and bypassing the undemocratic top-down no-say "system". Looking elsewhere in Europe shows the picture is very, very different.

Manuscripts Don't Burn is based in Normandy, in a tiny commune of 180 individuals. This rural commune possesses an elected mayor and an elected commune council of 10 people, who everyone knows on first name terms, and who pretty much know everyone in the commune. The commune council has direct control over a sizable chunk of the local community tax. Each year they host a New Year's presentation where they explain how their share of the local taxes which everyone has paid in have been spent around the commune, and how they plan to spend in the coming year. Each person in the commune has the opportunity to ask questions directly of the people spending their taxes, to protest, or to organise petitions to spend the money in other ways if they disagree. About 80% of the commune turn up at such meetings, and involvement is high.

If Manuscripts Don't Burn has a local problem which needs dealing with, one goes to the mayor. He is able to escalate things as high as he needs to, and makes himself available for meetings with commune members for two 3-hour sessions a week - it's rarely necessary to wait more than 30 minutes before sitting down to talk to him, face to face.

Manuscripts Don't Burn has tried to explain the British "system" to the French, only to be met with shock. "But if that is your system, how are you represented?" was their universal response.

Manuscripts Don't Burn has no answer to this question. The UK public, quite simply, are not represented in their government, at any level: it is a travesty to call the system democratic. The UK is a one-party state masquerading as a two-party state, pure and simple.

Saudi Prince threatened "another 7/7" over BAe Investigation

2008-02-16T09:55:00.005+01:00

The Guardian yesterday reported something which to many of us has been obvious for some time - that the Saudis have had a lot more to do with events such as 911 and 7/7 than our cringing media have dared say. Court documents released yesterday have revealed that during the official British investigation into the BAe / Saudi bribing scandal in 2004-2006, Saudi Arabia's rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted.

Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced "another 7/7" and the loss of "British lives on British streets" if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence.

Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations that he himself took more than £1bn in secret payments from the arms company BAE.

He was accused in yesterday's high court hearings of flying to London in December 2006 and uttering threats which made the prime minister, Tony Blair, force an end to the Serious Fraud Office investigation into bribery allegations involving Bandar and his family.

The threats halted the fraud inquiry, but triggered an international outcry, with allegations that Britain had broken international anti-bribery treaties.

Lord Justice Moses, hearing the civil case with Mr Justice Sullivan, said the government appeared to have "rolled over" after the threats. He said one possible view was that it was "just as if a gun had been held to the head" of the government.

Manuscripts Don't Burn notes for the moment that this revelation is receiving little attention in our Supine Corporate Media - including a grovelling article on the BBC site which would be funny if it weren't so serious, suggesting that it was the BAe inquiry posing the danger to lives rather than the Saudi threats - understandable given that woman-beheading Saudi Arabia is an enormous investor in BushCo and a country with which we share "so many common virtues", in the NuLabour government's words. Consequently we would like to present this information here - for posterity's sake.

Who Will Rid Me of this Turbulent Website - Economic Indicators Site Closed Down

2008-02-15T10:28:00.005+01:00

There is an Inconvenient Truth known as the Economic Indicators website at www.economicindicators.gov, a site run by the US government providing free-of-charge data on the state of the US economy. As Forbes has explained, the site provides an invaluable service to the public for accessing US economic data:

This site is maintained by the Economics and Statistics Administration and combines data collected by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, like GDP and net imports and exports, and the Census Bureau, like retail sales and durable goods shipments. The site simply links to the relevant department’s Web site. This might not seem like a big deal, but doing it yourself–say, trying to find retail sales data on the Census Bureau’s site–is such an exercise in futility that it will convince you why this portal is necessary.

As of March 1 this year, the Bush administration is going to CLOSE DOWN this website due to "budgetary constraints". Yeah, right... As if "budgetary constraints" affected anything that BushCo did. And, in any case, as those of us who know anything about the production of websites is concerned, EconomicIndicators.gov costs almost NOTHING to run - the only "budget saving" would be if BushCo decided they weren't going to collect the stats at all, which is hardly likely... But, as we all know, the "budget" has nothing to do with it - it's the fact that this information is being made freely available to the global public.

Henceforth, this free economic data will NOT BE AVAILABLE TO YOU, although you'll be able to pay (through the nose) for "bulletins" detailing bits of the economy that BushCo want you to know about.

Again and again, the pieces add up. Freedom of information in the Anglo-Saxon Empire is being systematically closed down, to general apathy. We keep a record here of how it was done - in case it should prove useful to posterity. We can always hope.

Mr Bush - the time for glorifying yourself will soon be at an end.

Arrested at gunpoint for listening to an MP3 player

2008-02-14T12:40:00.003+01:00

As a testament to the police state the UK is rapidly turning into, and the extent to which the media is colluding with this, Tuesday's "Metro" is reporting a shocking incident in which a man was arrested at gunpoint, bundled into a police van, and locked up, having had his fingerprints, mugshot, and DNA samples taken - all of which now are on a permanent database, along with the information that he was "once arrested for a firearms offense".

The reason for this? When waiting for a bus, the 28-year old man had taken his black Philips MP3 player out of his pocket to change tracks. Another person in the bus queue had panicked, thinking the man had taken out a gun, and phoned 999. The police immediately sent a firearms squad to "bring the man in".

This could easiy have been another Menezes event - if the man hadn't been white, but instead Asian, perhaps he would have been shot on sight "just in case". Either way, this event just shows how paranoid the UK public have become, and how heavy-handed the police are now freely allowed to be. And an innocent man now has a criminal record.

Manuscripts Don't Burn notices that none of the major news channels have even so much as touched this story. We post it here, like so many other stories, together with the link (above), to preserve it from vanishing without a trace.

Multi-million Pound Study States the "Bleeding Obvious"

2008-02-14T10:02:00.003+01:00

The Guardian reports today that the Sutton Trust, an "influential charity", whatever that is, has discovered that university tuition fees in the UK actually favour rich families, and have been dissuading poorer students from going to university because of "fear of debt".

This kind of pseudo-revelatory bollocks really angers Manuscripts Don't Burn. In fact, Manuscripts Don't Burn is offering itself up as a "Blindingly Obvious Think Tank" for government ministries and "influential charities" to save millions of pounds in future when researching the f*cking obvious. If you want to know whether water is wet, the pope catholic, or whether setting yourself on fire is likely to hurt, just call Manuscripts Don't Burn - we'll send you a 700-page feasibility study and multimedia-sexy Powerpoint presentation in a fraction of the time of Accenture and at a fraction of the cost... For F*ck's Sake...

University Tuition fees are one of the shameful legacies of Thatcher's social engineering program which the NuLabour coup did nothing to expunge, and which since its inception has done its job to increasingly dumb down the Proles and leave a generation of young people intellectually frustrated and unable to afford education whilst the like of Hatfield Polytechnic (the "University of Hertford") are packed out with thousands upon thousands of A-level students pretending to do media studies degrees on mummy and daddy's bank account.

You may have already guessed it from our tone, but Manuscripts Don't Burn represents one of the thousands who, in times past, would not have been allowed to go to university by its parents if it entailed racking up tens of thousands of pounds worth of debt before the age of 20. And quite rightly so. Education is not a privilege - it is a right. It is not something which we have to buy; we, and our parents, grandparents, and all taxpayers and disenfranchised folks for generations past, have already more than paid for it - education is owing to us.

The social engineering of university tuition fees is all the more horrible because of its short-sightedness. No longer does the UK have a sufficiently skilled workforce; no longer to the desperately cheapened "A-levels" count for anything when entering university; no longer does a BA mean what it did a generation ago - not when they're two a penny. We now have to look abroad for our doctors, dentists, engineers, technicians. The UK, by this and other dismal methods of social engineering, is hollowing itself out, turning itself into a shadow, in which all looks well when seen on paper, but outside, in the real world, things look terribly, terribly different.

So remember - the next time you're about to spend millions of pounds on a survey to find out the bleeding obvious, think of Manuscripts Don't Burn.

Tune in next week for: Why Lending Thousands of Pounds to Penniless People on State Benefits is a BAD IDEA and not a Viable Method of "Structured Investment".

Rowan Williams: Media Stooge

2008-02-09T12:20:00.000+01:00

The Archbishop of Canterbury has attempted to say something sensible about the status and future of Muslim culture in the UK. Unfortunately, he has said it publicly. About Muslims. Big mistake.

This entire issue is an excellent example of what's wrong with Britain at the moment, and why so much of Britain's government is being carried on behind closed doors. The new reality, it seems, is that whatever you want to do, just do it, but for God's sake don't try and talk about it.

Anyone who wishes to propose mature and serious debate about an issue in Britain has to have an army of spin doctors to couch it in terms which won't send the mass media off wetting themselves in a blind, hysterical frenzy and misrepresent the hell out of whatever was said. So people stop bothering. What *is* the point of bothering? What's the point of trying to talk about things, when the media will just tear you apart and splatter you all over their pages in their hysterical attempts to sell papers. It's what they do.

If it was necessary for the media to roll in the gutter p*ssing themselves and grovelling for our money in order to sell papers, they'd do it. It's nothing to do with news - it's the hysterical production of equally hysterical demand, nothing more. And our democracy has it as a terminal disease. The mass media is collaborating in screwing our country into the ground. Cui bono?

A lot of issues need discussing in modern Britain: global warming, joining the Euro, immigration, corporate corruption, decentralisation, and many, many more. But they won't be. They're perceived by the media as boring, stick-in-the-mud topics which require at least a small exercise of the grey matter to contribute to, and therefore f'all use in selling papers. And in our increasingly uneducated and asinine culture, it's so much easier for the media to scream their heads off with easy-to-swallow knee-jerk meaningless soundbites before tuning into wall-to-wall Eastenders and celebrity dancing / hiking / cooking / what-the-frack-ever programs than actually trying to get people to concentrate on an issue for more than five minutes. Which suits the shadowy backers of the shadowy government which *really* runs the show just fine.

And so democracy dies. Not to the sound of tumultuous applause, but to indifference, and the frantic changing of channels...

...and the lighting of cigars, and satisfied smiles, in oak-panelled rooms far, far, from public view. Nemo custodiet ipsos custodes. And they like that just fine.

Now Optional: the Rule of Law

2008-02-06T15:19:00.000+01:00

The Soviet Union had many marvellous and enlightened laws, on paper. So did Nazi Germany, and so do many dictatorial and tin-pot third world regimes today. But the presence of a splendid body of law means nothing if the uniform, unbiassed application of it cannot be relied upon. It has been one of the major bugbears stopping social advancement in the former Eastern bloc, the simple fact that whilst there may be laws condemning corruption, state appropriation of property, theft, nepotism, and all manner of graft, those laws have for years simply been sidestepped by those in a position to do so for their own benefit, and misapplied again when it has stood in their favour. Nothing, and no one, stands to ensure the uniform and unavoidable application of the law.

This is the rot that is facing the UK today - the inability to guarantee the enforcement of the laws which regulate and guarantee our freedoms. The lack of investigation into 7/7, Dr Kelly, the Menezes murder, honours for sale, the Saudi-BA bribery allegations, the lost details of half the population, and countless, countless other incidents, are what is sending us down the dark path we're currently treading. Scandals which in the past would have brought down governments are ignored, and there is no recourse.

In Pakistan, lawyers and the judiciary chose to make a stand, and suffered for it. This is what we need in the UK; action from just those people have explicitly and individually sworn to uphold justice in the UK. Their silence now only abets those who wish to sweep the remnants of it away. If the process can be stopped anywhere, it is at the root which is being invisibly chopped away.

The simple truth is, in the UK today, if you have money or power enough, the law doesn't apply to you anymore. And for the rest of us, who assume we are still protected by that very law, we should realise too that it can no longer be relied upon when we need it.

Deconstructing the War on Terror

2008-01-30T18:52:00.000+01:00

AnthropoidApe, a fellow contributor to the Guardian's Comment Is Free pages, today offered a deconstruction of the BushCo term "War on Terror" which sums up perfectly the geopolitical game today. We at Manuscripts Don't Burn cannot better AnthropoidApe's word-perfect commentary, and so, with great thanks to him, we would like to present it here for amusement, and also for posterity:

"Plenty of people have pointed out that the term "War on Terror" is incoherent (because you can't make war on a tactic) and oxymoronic (because war IS terror).

The term is Orwellian because it is chosen by powerful criminals to dress up their crimes as virtue.

Nevertheless, the term bears analysis. It's not a stupid or trivial throw-away line. The term "War on Terror" is a core slogan for the US regime and despite some effort they have never been able to replace it with anything better. It remains a key term in the neocon lexicon because it attempts to redefine "war" in a neocon way.

The "War on Terror" purports to fight a tactic instead of a concrete opponent because it is not really a war. The "War on Terror" has no realistic, achievable war aims. There is no prospect of it ending in victory, and even the conditions of such a victory are not concretely specified. It is predicted and intended to go on and on and on... for the foreseeable future.

In short, the "War on Terror" is not a war but a political regime. It is the military dictatorship of the Commander-in-Chief of the United States over his country and the world. The "War on Terror" is another name for the "Pax Americana" - because War is Peace - and you are either for it or against it.

The "War on Terror" regime is organised as a full dictatorship despite the survival of republican institutions in the USA and of world institutions like the United Nations. "War on Terror" ideology subordinates those institutions to the will of the Decider, just like the political institutions of the Roman Republic, shells of which lived on under the emperors. The Bush dynasty autocrat George the Second in his glory and majesty gives orders to the US people, to the UN Security Council and to other sovereign states, with no trace of embarrassment. In his own thinking he is king of the world.

As part of the "War on Terror", the dictator abrogates any laws or human rights whatever with impunity. That principle is what passes for the legal basis of the regime and its application is exemplified by detention without trial, by official kidnappings, torture and disappearances and by the genocidal imperialist conquest of Iraq.

The Cheney-Bush gang want to call their regime a "war" because they need political and legal cover for their spree of crime and violence. The notions of "war" and "wartime" sustain the domestic climate of fear and chauvinism that they strive after.

On the other hand, they want none of those trappings of the "old" concept of war in which both sides are belligerents of equal standing. No, any violent resistance to their ("anti-terror") violence must be illegitimate.

Employing the legal category of "prisoner of war" and respecting the international laws of war centred on the Geneva Conventions would cramp the imperial style. Instead those laws are flouted and we are provided with a new conceptual apparatus and a new euphemistic terminology: "unlawful combatant" (=POW), "enhanced interrogation techniques" including "sleep management" (=torture), "extraordinary rendition" (=kidnapping and deportation to torture), "ghost detainee" (=disappeared person), "black site" (=secret prison) etc. The asymmetrical term "War on Terror" fits right in because it recognises the US (with a retinue of vassal allies) as the sole legitimate belligerent and constructs all the Empire's armed opponents as criminal "terrorists" rather than warriors.

In short the "War on Terror" is called a war simply to licence large-scale aggressive violence and international diktat by the US regime.

In the non-rhotic NZ dialect, "War on Terror" sounds just the same as "War on Terra" and a friend of mine always writes it that way. It's apt: the only way to construe the "War on Terror" regime as a real war is to see it as a world wide, long term and often violent conflict over whether the US empire will by divine right rule and pillage our planet forever or whether other nations will also be independent and sovereign. In other words, a war of the US neocons against all the peoples of Terra.

I'm backing Terra to win."

- AnthropoidApe on the Guardian website, 30th January 2008

Ron Paul - Attracting some flack at last

2008-01-17T11:05:00.000+01:00

After polling well above Giuliani and Thompson in the US caucuses this month, the mainstream media have finally started to take notice of Ron Paul's existence. Without any press coverage whatsoever, he has been able to gain between 6-10% of the vote in every poll so far. However, up until the last few days he has been studiously ignored by the media. Only now have they chosen to see him - and that only to start mudslinging at this uncompromising right-winger who seems determined to give the US establishment a damn good dressing-down, or die trying.

It's clear that Ron Paul is persona non grata to the corporate feudalists in the US and UK - alone amongst the electoral candidates currently on view he stands against big business control of the US. You can watch him on Youtube - he speaks sensibly and honestly. He refuses to pander to the hysterical PC demands of the media - if a subject is many-sided and complex, he will go with that and discuss it. Issues in life are often grey - the corporate media insist that everything should be simplified to soundbite black and white and marketed to the viewer in dumbed-down packaging.

So Ron Paul is anathema to the "establishment"; as people begin to notice him, we will see some serious shit being thrown his way. The entire US propaganda machine will be mobilised against him - just watch it happen.

Ron Paul raises real issues. You may not agree with him (Manuscripts Don't Burn DOES NOT!), you may think he's a nut, but his presence in the American electoral debate is the best damn thing for sensible discussion of the perils posed by the increasingly monolithic, brainwashing, and corporate media-military-industrial complex currently shredding the US constitution and annihilating the reputation of a country which only a few decades ago was admired around the world.

Sometimes, when a political situation becomes so grim it needs a radical overhaul, an individual appears who stands for an ideal which transcends political divisions and promises - actually promises, and not with some dreary predictable media-approved spin - to stop the rot and restore the rule of law.

Manuscripts Don't Burn is left-wing, and disagrees with almost every detailed policy Ron Paul represents. Except one: that individual freedom in America is an endangered species. America is being screwed by the corporate feudalists, the constitution is in tatters, people are more oppressed, threatened, and worse off than they've been for years. The cultural capital, the intellectual, economic, and political heritage, and the international goodwill which America has built up, and deserved, over two centuries of championing the best and brightest of political, social and economic structures, is now being pissed down the drain by a bunch of control-freak totalitarians whose only interest is to steer the world into war and destruction to line the pockets of arms manufacturers and military contractors who don't give a damn for anything but their own continued hegemony.

In such a dark state of affairs, even Manuscripts Don't Burn recognises that Ron Paul is the only person standing up to them. He'll probably be assassinated by a "lone gunman" if he ever gets anywhere near being elected, but till that time we will vote for his platform. There simply isn't anyone else who isn't in the pockets of the corporates.

Oh - and the UK? Makes no difference. The UK government is what the US government tells it to be. Period.

George MacDonald Fraser on The State of the Nation

2008-01-15T17:32:00.000+01:00

This is definitely a first: Manuscripts Don't Burn is actually posting a link to an article in today's Daily Mail!

Seemingly unaware of the crashing irony, today's Daily Mail published an edited extract from the late George MacDonald Fraser's "The Light's On At Signpost", in which MacDonald Fraser surveys the enormous changes which have taken place in Britain since the time of his birth, between the Wars.

Manuscripts Don't Burn recommends this article. As great fans of the Flashman series, we cannot help but admire MacDonald Fraser's blunt, unforgiving portrayal of the UK's slump into a corrupt, undemocratic, Third World nation.

Just for the record, we are posting the link to this article here. More like this, please. And Rest In Peace, George, and thanks for the films and the Flashman books. We liked those.

The Long Johns - The Economic Meltdown Explained

2008-01-15T13:59:00.001+01:00

Manuscripts Don't Burn would like to present the Two Johns with their clear-as-crystal explanation of the sub-prime mortgage crisis, the results of our latest and greatest attempt to redistribute and siphon money away from the poor and back into the pockets of the rich - and just why the western world is currently on the verge of economic collapse. Well, why shouldn't one laugh? The only other options are far too horrible to contemplate...

Britain - A Country That Has Lost Its Way

2008-01-15T09:38:00.000+01:00

Something, somewhere, appears to have gone a little wrong. Everyone knows it, indeed many of us can point exactly to where the problems are, but no one seems to be doing anything about it. Prices of food, fuel, heating, electricity, water, gas, public transport are all going up well above 10% a year, and yet the government tells us inflation is 2.1%. We go about our daily business, and more and more our activities are scrutinised, every minor infraction is criminalised and penalised: fined for spending too much time in McDonald's or supermarket car-parks; fined for putting your rubbish in the wrong bin; herded into ID cards, compulsory organ donation; cameras everywhere; almost impossible queues for even basic health services; postal services which cost the earth and which have a worse track record than 50 years ago; longer working hours, for less money; commuter trains which feel like cattle waggons, and which cost the earth and which "officially" work fine though everyone knows they don't; illegal wars in far-off places for the gain of private companies; bellicose gestures and racial and religious hatred and intolerant fascist attitudes ("string 'em up!" "bring back National Service!", "it's the only language these people understand!") in the press and on the TV; health scares, food scares, terrorists, child molesters, murderers, yobs, fraudsters; fat cats, dysfunctional celebs, binge-drinking, insane levels of debt; dumbing down of news, education, the media; glorification of ignorance, cheap docusoap TV, wall-to-wall Eastenders and football teams who earn millions whilst losing games; lack of skilled workers forcing governments to import immigrant labour to make up the shortfall; UK-born citizens leaving the country in droves - 200,000 a year at last count.

We all know this. The list above isn't even complete; any of us could go on, and on, with the unending litany of what is clearly an increasingly dysfunctional society. And now we stand on the edge of a very nasty economic collapse, and pundits tell us that the UK is the most exposed country in the world to a protracted economic crisis due to the Thatcherite dream of a ruined manufacturing base, badly-skilled workforce, and almost entirely service-based economy - indeed, financial services-based.

So, what is next? What happens when you have to make the choice between eating or heating? When you can't afford to keep a roof over your head, and the bank wants it back and leaves it empty 'cos no one can afford to buy? Where do you go? It's happened before - although hardly within living memory, and not in this country for a while. It's going to come as a bit of a shock to the complacent and blase British public. But what does happen then? Increasing oppression and authoritarianism? It looks that way, in the US and the UK at least. We are fast returning to the Good Old Days of the 19th century, when the rich were rich and the poor and needy doffed their caps and were grateful for the workhouse. The gap between rich and poor has not been this severe since 1914; our coal production levels have fallen to pre-industrial levels; and decent food is once again becoming a scarce luxury for the new British poor.

Splendid job. It looks like Britain had a chance to make it out of its backward, class-ridden mire, and in the post-war years seemed to be managing, for a while. But nothing but nostalgia ties us to those days any more; look around, at 30 years of retrenchment and redistribution of wealth from the hands of the poor to the pockets of the rich, and tell us we're wrong.

The time is fast becoming ripe for a Brave New World, with a Great Leader to restore our lost pride, make the trains run on time, and purge England of its lefties, intellectuals, and funny foreigners and their funny foreign ways. Just remember, when the time comes, that we once had a chance to stop this happening...

You may think Manuscripts Don't Burn holds out little hope for the regeneration of good old Blighty. You would be right. Unless you're in the Inner Party, with loads of cash to back you up, the UK is stuffed.

Manuscripts Don't Burn shakes its head in disbelief. Does nobody read history any more? Do we forget, so easily? If so, perhaps we deserve no better.

God Bless Britain. Cos nobody else will.

The Ethical Chicken Debate

2008-01-13T10:49:00.000+01:00

Manuscripts Don't Burn has noticed an appalling amount of condescension, snobbery, and bitterness bandied around the media and blogosphere over the past week on the subject of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver's attempts to highlight the disgusting state of our battery-farmed chicken industry. Clearly there are some deep-seated issues here.

Manuscripts Don't Burn knows several people who live on the breadline and eat mostly processed food - tins, centrifugally-harvested burgers, chicken nuggets, fish fingers, etc, etc. To our knowledge little or no fresh food enters their diet. It seems that this is not untypical.

Given that for a £6 free-range chicken one can feed a family of four for 3 days (roast chicken, curry, sandwiches, soup, in that order), processed food is clearly the more expensive option. So poverty, at least, is not the reason. If anything, a lack of cooking know-how, of confidence in buying and feeding oneself, and a dependency mentality on advertising and the slop doled out in ready-meals and burgers seem to be at the root of the "burger and chips Happy Meal" obesity epidemic which is raging through the poorer sectors of the Anglo-Saxon Empire. To poor to eat? Hardly.

From the price point of view, eating real food is not exclusive or beyond the reach of "poor" people. So Manuscripts Don't Burn would like to humbly request the Blogosphere to please drop this faux "guilt trip" that it's beyond the reach of those terribly hard-up poor people and start helping people get educated about the provenance and consequences of our badly screwed up food industry. The whole idea of "well, we have to have cheap and crappy food available so the poor can afford it" attitude is offensive.

Ban battery chickens. Most of all, ban the gross profiteering the supermarket middleman extort from the chicken farmers, who receive an average of 7 pence on a £2.50 battery chicken, and, yes, we can all suddenly afford to eat meat produced in a decent environment.

And stop the class-ridden snobbery, Britain, for God's sake.

Simone de Beauvoir: The Job is Never Done

2008-01-09T11:42:00.000+01:00

Today marks a hundred years since the birth of Simone de Beauvoir, philosopher and probably the most influential feminist of the last century. Her book "The Second Sex" was indeed a seminal book: it has been banned, vilified, and heralded as the harbinger of a brave new world. The fact that so much of it seems like common sense today shows just how influential it has been.

Nowadays, reading "The Second Sex" can seem a little dated, and writers like Camille Paglia and Joanna Russ can pack a bit more punch. But, as Manuscripts Don't Burn looks around at our society today, on January 9th 2008, at the reformation of the Spice Girls sexually-oppressive "Girl Power" and the constant inculcating refrain everywhere in our society of youth, beauty, mindlessness and celebrity heralded as the One True Goal which every woman should aim for, we realise that the messages of The Second Sex still need to be repeated, loud and clear, on a daily basis.

But we live in an age where culture is defined by lowest common denominator economic figures - even philosophies have to sell well, and compete with pop music, soap opera, and the cult of mindless celebrity - where accessibility and pithy soundbites rule. Philosophies have to serve the state and conclude capitalism to be the best of all possible worlds, or be so empty, vacuous, and populist that they couldn't possibly do any harm apart from keeping philosophy students busy in our increasingly vacuous academies of business, marketing and media studies.

Paradoxically the Anglo-Saxon Empire is coming to resemble the Soviet Union in an uncanny fashion. The State has a very definite ideology, in which the media and education systems collude by excluding any alternative discourse, or at best relegating it to the lunatic fringe. Even the battleground of language is largely harnessed by the system towards reinforcing the dominant ideology, and everyone must have their state-sanctioned papers (ie be deemed "economically viable") before their work can be propagated. Living here in France, where intellectualism is not derided, and where people do not aggressively sing praises to their own ignorance to near-universal acclaim, Manuscripts Don't Burn does wonder how much further the dumbing down of the UK and US can go. "And now, Karl Marx, your starter for ten: who won the FA cup in...?"

Thank heavens, for the time being at least, for the internet, where alternative discourse remains alive and well. Small wonder the Powers That Be want to present it as such a terrible threat. One wonders what de Beauvoir would have made of it.

"To Prevent Homegrown Terrorism, and For Other Purposes"

2008-01-07T10:25:00.000+01:00

Manuscripts Don't Burn has recently read the Bill "H.R. 1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007", which passed the House back in late 2007 and is now up for Senate approval. Its stated aim is "To Prevent Homegrown Terrorism, and For Other Purposes". Ignoring that rather throwaway "And For Other Purposes" for a moment, the Bill creates a Commission of permanent unelected members tasked with surveying the US population AND worldwide Internet activity and identifying any activity which may, in any way at all, be considered to contribute towards "violent radicalisation, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence". In particular, Manuscripts Don't Burn notes the Bill's definition of "violent radicalisation" as:

"the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change"

Yup. Read it again. You were right the first time. According to this Bill, you don't actually have to DO anything. You just have to be - even a little bit - thinking about, say, becoming a Marxist. You know, the little guys with the red flags who believe in revolution? If you think any one of a number of things - in fact, if you pretty much think at all, for after all our very political and economic system is based on violence and deprivation by force at some point along the chain - then you're "It".

The Bill seems oblivious to the irony that the US is currently embarked upon a huge project of "facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change" throughout the Middle East, Africa, and doubtless Latin and South America too: no government passes Bills which effectively criminalise its own activities. No, Dear Reader, this Bill is aimed at You and I. It is designed to make us think, "heck, should I even be thinking this - I could be arrested!" When the Proles start policing themselves through fear of The Unseen Hand of Despotism, then the darkness is almost complete.

Watch this space. Thought-crime legislation is becoming all too frequent these days, and the process is far too dull and boring for most people to be bothered following. Manuscripts Don't Burn notes that this law only establishes a Commission to "identify" who these homegrown turrists, free-thinkers, and dissidents are - it conveniently leaves out what is to be done about them. That bit, clearly, is yet to come - and in the meantime Halliburton continues to build its mysterious "refugee camps" up and down the country.

The Pakistan Gambit (3): Pakistani Army Says No To US Troops

2008-01-07T09:49:00.000+01:00

Seemingly oblivious to its own overweening arrogance, the Bush administration's senior national security advisors are debating whether or not to expand CIA and US military activities to conduct "far more aggressive covert operations" in the tribal areas of Pakistan, reported the New York Times last Saturday.

The Pakistani Army wasted no time at all in reacting angrily to this complete invasion of sovereignity. "It is not up to the US administration, it is Pakistan's government who is responsible for this country," chief military spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad told AFP yesterday, as reported on the Yahoo website.

Manuscripts Don't Burn is under no illusions as to why this story broke on Saturday. As we said last month, the focus - for the time being at least - of the NWO's bogus "War on Turr" has switched to Pakistan, doubtless due to self-evident Russian and Chinese warnings that Iran for now is a no-go area for BushCo's bullying. However, Pakistan clearly is not - and it certainly isn't able to stand up for itself against the might of the USA. Again as we mentioned last month, Pakistan remains highly strategic for the oil grab currently underway by the folks at the Project for the New American Century, and is on its list of "Countries to Invade"; likewise occupation of Pakistan by American forces provides a neat encirclement of Iran, increasingly isolating that country which stubbornly refuses to implode in the face of US aggression.

Either way, Manuscripts Don't Burn would like to note the breathtaking arrogance of the Bush administration - including the delightful Mr Cheney - openly discussing options for military activities within Pakistan's internationally recognised borders, without actually informing its head of state. Musharraf, like the rest of us, doubtless learned it from the New York Times.

A clearer attempt to drive a wedge between the Pakistan's President and its army we have never seen. Divide and rule, as ever, is the name of the game, and Musharraf must be made to realise who he relies upon for his job.

Ron Paul - The Man Who Won't Go Away

2008-01-05T13:08:00.001+01:00

Well, Manuscripts Don't Burn has had to ferret around in the bowels of the online media to turn up any mention of the Presidential candidate who polled 10% of Iowa yesterday, over twice that of Rudy Giuliani. Mention of Ron Paul is being quietly downplayed.

We've decided to showcase Larry King's interview of Ron Paul, which was controversial and contentious, and made Paul look rather good, was never broadcast but relegated to a "web exclusive" in a direct-to-video moment. Manuscripts Don't Burn didn't realise the "equal airtime" law could be circumvented in this way: apparently filming a candidate and then posting a link in some godforsaken corner of the internet satisfies the requirement that you're treating a candidate in the same way as one you give prime billing on your televised news spots. That's news to us - who on earth to they think they're kidding?

You can watch the Larry King interview here - it's worth it just to hear Paul say loud and clear that he believes America's interventionist meddling throughout the world and its endless corporate wars are a complete disaster - and remember that 10% of the vote went to him.

Manuscripts Don't Burn likewise notes as interesting the fact that Fox have now started to discuss whether they should be covering him. A rather late night section from Fox questioning why they've been ignoring him so far is here.

Now, Manuscripts Don't Burn doesn't agree with Ron Paul's politics at all. But, he appears to be taking the corporate feudalists on head on, which gains him kudos in our book. In any case, in the interests of what remains of our tattered democracy, he surely needs a little more than blatant attempts at patronising belittlement by the media...

Abandon All Hope, You Who Enter Here...

2008-01-03T11:50:00.000+01:00

There used to be a joke in the Soviet Union that the Russians rounded up for execution in Stalin's purges used to ask if they had to bring their own gun. Manuscripts Don't Burn wonders if the architects of New Britain used this as their Mission Statement...

Today and yesterday the media is full of outrage and hysteria over the enormous screwup on our railways. Even more than usual, you can't get anywhere, everything's broken, and the fares have gone up. Manuscripts Don't Burn looks on from overseas at the Funny Little Island, and sadly shakes its head...

Perhaps we could ask the French or the Germans to come and run our train system for us? Just a thought... In fact, all the answers are obvious, but of course doing Something Sensible would remove all that luvverly money passing directly from taxpayers to private hands in the Great Train Ripoff, all part of the Reverse Wealth Distribution Master Plan so assiduously implemented over the last 30 years, so it'll never happen.

Manuscripts Don't Burn has a significant wager as to how much more the Great British public will take before they start rioting. It's incredible - by international standards it ought to have happened years ago - but no, the Machine has kept on piling on the bullshit, and the British citizen has just moaned a bit more and coughed up.

Manuscripts Don't Burn thinks this is a great way to make money. "Hey, we can just keep pumping these chumps for more and more, and they just keep paying! We don't even have to give them anything! Brilliant!"

What's next? A free poke in the eye with every journey? Mandatory health insurance surcharge on every ticket to cope with death by overcrowding? Outbreaks of cannibalism and feral behaviour on isolated broken down trains in the wilderness?

No wonder the rest of Europe laughs at Third World Britain. A sad, shoddy state of affairs, indeed.

Teach the Children to Kill

2008-01-02T10:16:00.000+01:00

Over the past weekend Manuscripts Don't Burn has been assaulted by yet another of those "we-can't-believe-we're-having-this-conversation" moments. This time, the issue at hand is whether it's a good idea to allow primary school children to play with toy guns (and other weapons) in school...

Hurrah for common sense at last! Manuscripts Don't Burn thinks guns in school is a great idea, especially for boys. If we can only get toy ones, then fair enough, but we think also that under proper supervision boys at primary school should also be given training with real guns, and small caliber ordnance where appropriate, and introduced to blood sports at as young an age as possible.

Additionally, elementary boxing courses and lessons in self-defense should be introduced to playschool and pre-school classes (obviously with some of the less sportsmanlike elements, such as gouging and gas attacks, taken out to protect young minds), together with marching practise, perhaps with some of our much underused retired military drill instructors, to instil a sense of camaraderie amongst the very young boys. Likewise, boisterous singing and enforced communal showers could be used to open up some of the shyer boys, and prevent them growing up into sexual deviants.

Finally, regular manhunts of one of the smaller, faster boys (this could be someone elected from amongst the boys, as an example of the benefits of the democratic approach) could be introduced to the school curriculum with only a minimal increase in medical expenses.

Taken together, all of these stirring activities could also be presented as a focus for support activities undertaken by the gels, specifically cheering from the sidelines, cooking celebratory cakes, and sewing up wounds. Gels could also be encouraged to make banners, and to vote for their favourite boy, to inculcate a spirit of decent competition amongst the lads.

It's a violent world out there, and we need to teach our children to be violent as early as possible, otherwise they will be unable to fully take part in our rich society and enjoy the unending cycle of fear and loathing, violence and oppression of which we are all so proud.

Excellent debate. Well done everyone. As you were.

Morality without Transcendent Authority? We don't think so...

2007-12-30T11:10:00.000+01:00

This morning's Guardian is having a bit of a Sixth Form moment, and is unfortunately busy tying itself up in semantic knots trying to oppose Dawkins' latest populist ramblings against the world great thinkers in the field of morality with that tired old A-level question, "Is it possible to be moral without God?" Jeez...

As ever, this argument quickly gets bogged down in semantics.

Let's cut to the chase, and drop all references to "religion", they're just too loaded with obfuscating clutter to make this discussion workable. What we're talking about here is whether human moral codes require an appeal to some transcendent authority to function effectively, and Manuscripts Don't Burn for one believes absolutely that they do.

It doesn't matter whether that transcendent authority is "religious" (ie supernatural) or not: the point is that it is superindividual. Essentially it equates to "ideology". Whether one appeals to "God", or "the State", or "human nature", or "the ideal society", "the world we want to live in", "justice", "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", whatever; the fact is simply that in order to have a functioning (ie shared) moral code you have to appeal to something other than a bunch of rough precepts grasped at by the individual. Indeed, it is precisely because they are superindividual that individuals have to take their tenets "on faith", as it were, and subordinate themselves to what is perceived to be the "greater good", "will of the people", etc. Fundamentally, this act of subordination involves the same act of faith whether it's a religious ideology or not.

The fact that Dawkins, a populist zoologist with a line in provocative aphorisms, sets himself up against Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Sartre, Derrida, not to mention the enormous host of religious writers who've put pen to paper on this subject, should give us pause. The man's clutching at straws in a world where all the evidence points to a blindingly obvious answer.

The nearest ideology we've got to a Dawkins' form of moral authority is capitalism; indeed, after due deliberation and increasing suspicion extending back several years, Manuscripts Don't Burn is now beginning to suspect that the Good Mr. Dawkins is in fact little more than an apologist for a system which is condemning most of the population of the planet to poverty, rather than an innovative moral thinker he'd like to present himself as. Time and again his allegedly profound thinking comes up with the conclusion that we're pretty much doing what we should be doing right now, which, given the state of the world, should give us all pause. In the final analysis, Dawkins' thinking is just as relative as anyone else starting from his basic premises - and it is that weakness in his argumentation that bears the seeds of its own destruction.

Civil Disobedience: Vandalised Speed Cameras

2007-12-30T10:24:00.000+01:00

Ok, time for a caveat first: Manuscripts Don't Burn is heavily in favour of penalising people for serious driving offences, people who drive like lunatics, endangering people's lives and killing hundreds if not thousands on our roads annually. People who drive dangerously should be prosecuted, full stop.

Ok, caveat over. Manuscripts Don't Burn also finds it interesting, however, that the UK - usually appallingly sluggish when it comes to active protest - has started to attack speed cameras up and down the country. This web site offers page after page of photographs of selected speed cams, set up on and destroyed by, presumably, either angry motorists, well-organised vandals (?), or people with something to say about the fact that the UK has become the surveillance capital of the world.

Whilst Manuscripts Don't Burn would never condone or encourage crime, it is nevertheless interesting to see the lumbering juggernaut that is the Great British Public finally stirring into action. In comparison with other nations, the UK public is largely inert, and generally demoralised by that pervasive "Daily Mail" hopelessness so beloved of our mass media. It takes a lot to get that passive mass moving.

Naturally this issue seems to be rather absent from the pages and screens of the mainstream media. I guess we mustn't give people ideas.

The Pakistan Gambit (2): US Troops Going In Already!

2007-12-27T20:49:00.001+01:00

Oops... looks like the timescales are shorter than we initially thought! The Washington Post has announced today that US troops are to be deployed in Pakistan early in the New Year "as part of an effort to train and support indigenous counter-insurgency forces and clandestine counterterrorism units", according to US defense officials. Haw-haw-haw. Sure they are, George...

Interestingly, the Blogosphere is filled with punters who, just like Manuscripts Don't Burn, are not buying the official line on this. Looks like you're gonna have to try harder this time, George...

Cool. Manuscripts Don't Burn is bowled over with the bare-faced brazenness of these folks - the body is barely cold, and already the troops are tooling up.

We'll keep you posted - it looks like this one is going to unfurl quickly. Should be "fun".

The Pakistan Gambit: A Classic Pincer Movement

2007-12-27T17:19:00.001+01:00

Manuscripts Don't Burn has been watching Pakistan with interest over the past month or two. The invasion of Iran, which has been on and off constantly for at least two years now, took a body blow earlier in the month with the publication of the National Intelligence Estimate which stated Iran was currently not pursuing nuclear weapons.

Naturally geopolitics doesn't grind to a halt when a strategic problem crops up - it simply seeks to accomplish its goals via a different path. Hence the massive destabilisation of Pakistan over the past half year.

Given that this is all about oil, Pakistan forms a key link in the oil supply chain from Afghanistan and the Caspian Basin. Also, now that an Iranian invasion is off the cards for the time being, it has become vital to isolate Iran as much as possible, and surround it with American troops. Gaining control of Pakistan was always on the cards for the Project for the New American Century , but things have definitely been brought forwards very rapidly with the NIE and the necessary retreat from Iran.

Manuscripts Don't Burn notes that Musharraf himself successfully instituted a state of emergency in early December and managed to change the law to bring direct control of Pakistan's nukes into his hands only - and not into those of any elected prime minister. Given the impending civil war in Pakistan, this seems like an amazingly prophetic move - except of course there are rarely any coincidences in geopolitics. Theoretically at least, no matter how bad the civil war gets, the nuclear arsenal remains in Musharraf's hands; the question now of course is how long before the UN offers Musharraf a peacekeeping force, which of course will be predominantly under American control. Manuscripts Don't Burn expects this within a few weeks at most.

The UK and US media are already painting Bhutto's assassination as linked to - surprise, surprise - Al Qaeda. Doubtless the Taliban will be implicated too. And probably Sauron, Kim Jong Il, Vlad the Impaler, and the Bastard Lovechild of Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, just for good measure. After all, we need to get some knees jerking if this thing is going to work...

Next stop - Pakistan! Let's get those Iranians surrounded, boys!

A Mormon By Any Other Name...

2007-12-27T10:07:00.000+01:00

The Guardian this morning has a thinly veiled attempt to portray presidential candidate Mitt Romney as a dangerous wacko, principally because he belongs to the Church of Latter Day Saints, or is, in a word, a Mormon.

Manuscripts Don't Burn finds this interesting. Firstly, to our knowledge Mr. Romney has not yet started any wars, or illegally invaded any countries, or approved of torture or terror activities on foreign soil. No, Mr Romney is being found guilty, ahead of trial, of believing in a different kind of God from the government approved Charlton Heston God, so beloved of the "take my gun out of my cold, dead hands" brigade.

Manuscripts Don't Burn likes this kind of discussion. It's actually touching upon something key, and terribly important and perhaps also fragile, about the American psyche. Something which, if it were to fail, would have terrible consequences for us all...

America is a young nation, with a young culture. Today, under the onslaught of the BushCo corporate fascists, it is experiencing its first attempt at oppressive aristocratic control from above (ie by the corporate government) since the War of Independence, and battle lines are developing.

America has a young, vibrant culture. There are all kinds of wacky, experimental ideas in the mix. Some of them are nonsense. Some of them change the world. America was created on a foundation of religious experimentation and non-conformism, and - Manuscripts Don't Burn agrees - you don't get much more experimental and non-conformist than Joe Smith and his Magic Stones.

Are people allowed to govern if they believe weird shit? That's kinda what democracy's supposed to be about, isn't it? Ahminejad got elected. So did Bush (arguably). And Hitler, Tony Blair, and Abraham Lincoln. So, this great social experiment we all pay lip service to isn't without risk...

We The People have a choice: we can either abdicate our responsibility and our choice of candidate and vote for who the corporate media tells us to (on the tacit understanding that they may still be a complete wacko behind closed doors), and maintain a thin, impoverished facade of "democracy", or we can wise up, stand on our principles, and realise that this is serious shit, fought for and bought in blood and sweat and tears, and vote for who WE think would run the country the best on our behalf.

In the second scenario, Mitt Romney's religion is just one part of his personality - a set of values that he openly subscribes to - that lets us judge. There are of course others - honesty, integrity, decency. Given him or Bush / Cheney, given their track record, Manuscripts Don't Burn knows who it would vote for...

One thing is certain: the world wants and needs America the Vibrant, the Optimistic, the Free in Spirit, the Great Democratic Experiment, and not America the Cynical, the Fascist, the Aggressive, the Paranoid, the Exporter of Death, Terror and Economic Chaos. That's what everyone's voting for this time round, more than ever.

Their Blatant Lies (4): More Cracks Appearing

2007-12-26T10:43:00.000+01:00

Something is up. The Times is turning into a conspiracy theorist. After months of The Guardian banging on about the inconsistencies and downright lies of the Bush administration and its Blairite satellite, and, more recently, even The Telegraph starting to bleat, albeit hesitantly, that the lines of spin emerging from the White House aren't really making sense any more, we have a raft of articles in The Times over the past few days about the CIA "torture tapes", and the clear-as-crystal implication that the White House has been deeply complicit in condoning torture and subsequently ordering destruction of tapes which may serve as evidence. In no uncertain terms, the Times is suggesting that Bush and Cheney are guilty of war crimes. This is quite a turn-up.

At the end of the day, Manuscripts Don't Burn likes to try and believe the best of people. That, despite our own muddled, confused, selfish, and often spiteful natures, deep down inside we don't really want to live lives of fear, aggression, and paranoia. That even the greediest of people realise that our fumbling attempts at birthing a decent society are better than anything the Third Reich, Uncle Joe, or Chairman Mao ever came up with.

That's why we are currently eyeing a new tendency in certain parts of the UK media with interest. First, for those of us who spend plenty of time in the Blogosphere, there is the sudden and obvious rise in the number of our American cousins reporting and commenting on the UK media sites - particularly the Grauniad, Times, and Telegraph. Manuscripts Don't Burn acknowledges the possible contribution here of the "Guardian America" initiative, a brave and potentially subversive effort if ever there was one. Many Americans seem to be realising that their own media are censoring information and debate, and are looking elsewhere for their news - and becoming alarmed at what they are finding out.

But The Times? The Telegraph? When the Ministry of Murdoch starts to whinge, a decision has been made somewhere that BushCo is "bad for business". Confucius said you should only ever go to war for economic reasons, not ideological, as ideological can destroy both itself and its foe in pursuit of its goals, whilst the powers of greed will balk at destruction of markets and producers. The current perilous state of the global economy, and more particularly the cavalier disregard shown by BushCo for the economic, political, and societal future of the USA, appears to have reached a tipping point, and Manuscripts Don't Burn is starting to sense a reaction amongst former supporters of the New World Order against its scorched earth politics.

Make no mistake: this is not popular revolution. This is the Establishment attempting to purge itself. But at times like these, when factions begin to fight, the mobilisation of public opinion can be key. At some point, BushCo and the New World Order will demand we all side with them to combat the "enemies of the state"; at the same time, their opponents will need to unite, to articulate a single, unifying cry to rally public opinion to their side too. That will be the critical moment, when the immediate future of our society will be decided. It will probably centre on another "911 / Gulf of Tonkin" style event, and all fingers of propaganda and misinformation will appear to point at Iran.

The key question is whether the Establishment can articulate its opposition to BushCo clearly enough, and accessibly enough, to be effective when that happens. With articles appearing in the Times, the Telegraph, the Guardian, and filling the Blogosphere with their echoes, some significant cracks in the monolithic edifice of the New World Order are starting to show. But the Blogosphere is long way from the mainstream, and everyone is going to have to make a lot of noise to carry the distance...

Their Blatant Lies (3): Untouchable Corruption

2007-12-22T10:47:00.000+01:00

As the British people feel increasingly unable to do anything about the corrupt and venal corporate cabal running their "government", the Times today is running a fun little number on some of the milder revelations from the Freedom of Information act, which the current government is trying to nail up as quickly as possible.

To be honest, though, what does it matter if we know? After 911 and the Invasion of Iraq, the governments of the Anglo-Saxon Empire have shown ever greater contempt for their publics, indeed hardly bothering to try and hide things these days. After all, what are we going to do? Go to the police? Expose them in the media? Riiiight...

So, just for a bit of festive fun, here are some of Manuscripts Don't Burn's favourite revelations, courtesy of the Times. We especially like the one about Nessie...

Countries with poor human rights records and those on the front line in the War on Terror, including Iraq, were targeted by the Ministry of Defence as the most lucrative places for British arms companies to sell weapons
Politicians are spending £2.2bn a year of taxpayers’ money on private management consultants
Rich landowners top the league of EU farm subsidy payouts
Police were instructed to let off offenders with a caution if they commit any one of more than 60 types of crime, ranging from assault to some types of theft, criminal damage and underage sex.
Robert Maxwell was being investigated for war crimes and was to be interviewed by police just before he drowned
The Thatcher Government concocted a plan to search for the Loch Ness monster using a team of dolphins

Sort of makes you proud, really, doesn't it?

The War on Pubs

2007-12-22T10:12:00.000+01:00

The Guardian this morning reports on the perceived "terminal decline" in the affairs of pubs in the UK. Following the body blow of the smoking ban, Britain's once-great pub culture is emptying out, pubs closing down, and people increasingly taking advantage of McTesco's cheap booze to get bladdered at home, where at least it's still legal (for the moment) to light up.

Manuscripts Don't Burn does not believe any of this is accidental. On the contrary, the "class war", to employ a traditional, lovely old phrase of yore, is alive and well and currently hammering down Those Dreadful Oiks and keeping them in their place - hard at work during daylight hours, and locked up tight when it's dark. They've had it far too good, sergeant-major, now it's time to set things right again.

The truth is, the British establishment clearly needs the Great Unwashed to work harder and harder and to get paid less and less, if it's going to continue its plan of redistributing wealth back to the hyper-wealthy and reverse the pernicious post-war egalitarianism which has threatened Our Scept'red Isle - or, as the popular version of it goes, if Britain's going to "pay its way" and "sort out the credit crisis our idle unrealistic poor people have so rashly whacked up by borrowing all that cheap and dodgy money". And we need to keep public services to a minimum - transport, policing, lighting. We've got to keep that upward flow of capital moving...

Far better to have people staggering home late from work, knackered, to spend an hour or so in isolation, watching the propaganda box with a can of something cheap and corporately-produced in their hands. What we definitely DON'T want is people getting together and talking and socialising with one another. That's terrorist talk.

We've put a lot of effort and almost 30 years into pulling British society apart at the seams, and we're not about to stop now, especially as we're so close to finishing. Pubs are for children, now - loud and expensive, full of industrially-produced alcopops and devoid of conversation. Within a year or two, we'll have the working population so knackered, impoverished and paranoid that they'll just sit and put up with the powercuts at home - they won't dare go out. It'll be like a self-imposed curfew - cheap, too! Marvellous.

Now, if we could just persuade people to put CCTV cameras in their homes... There's a challenge...

Pole Dancing for Little Girls...

2007-12-20T10:57:00.000+01:00

The Guardian today is sat with a very po-faced and contemplative look on its face, trying desperately to work out how it could possibly be that Toy'R'Us could have made such a shocking mistake as to put a "Pole Dancing Kit" in the Toy Section for little girls.

Manuscripts Don't Burn says - "Hey, Guardian, leave the Daily Mail alone! What's it ever done to you!"

If our society can't sexualise little girls, how on earth are we going to encourage the paedophiles, who the media can then hound, lock up and write endless sensationalist prurience about to sell more copies of the Daily Mail?

It's just business. And a bloody good business too. So what if it screws up a load of kids whilst doing it - as long as it makes a huge pile of filthy lucre, then it's okay, isn't it? That's what untrammeled, unregulated capitalism's about. As the bloke in the pub said, "It's a free country, innit?"

Fear and loathing sells papers, and allows the increase in security and control measures so beloved of our current establishment. In order to have fear and loathing, you need to have enemies - scapegoats, if you will. And, these days, paedophiles are the perfectly groomed targets of the 21st century baying mob witch-hunts which impoverished and frustrated mobs need to use to blow off steam when it all gets a bit much.

But the really clever bit of mind-f*ck in this entire process, which Goebbels himself would have been over the moon with pride about, is interpellating the sexualisation of young children into mainstream culture. That creates a constant, unresolvable tension - "Paedophiles are terrible criminals and must be killed, yet my seven-year old daughter must look sexy".

No wonder when the Ministry of Murdoch and Extortion want to sell a few extras to "rent-a-mob", people queue up to point fingers at ... well, at almost anyone you tell them too, really. As long as it's not them.

Briliant. Probably one of the best since the old "She's a Slimcea Girl / Go On Spoil Yourself, Real Cream" and "Girl Power / Look Like a Slag for the Guys" attempts to unhinge the female population in the 80s and 90s.

Somebody should instigate a "Joseph Goebbels Award for Marketing Brilliance".

Even the Daily Telegraph doesn't believe it any more!

2007-12-19T12:02:00.000+01:00

It must be serious. Very serious. Even the comments on the Daily Telegraph pages don't believe the War on Terror bollocks any more. This morning, courtesy of gorgeous pouting faux-welshman Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, we have the ludicrous article entitled "Fatwa against the dollar", in which he attempts to claim that the desperate attempts of Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia (with whom we apparently share so many "values", remember...) to free themselves of their Dollar peg before it cripples their economies are not, in fact, due to the fact that the US Dollar is currently a major economic liability, but rather a plot by Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda to - yup, you guessed it - bring down the United States by engineering a run on the Dollar.

What arrant bollocks. Fortunately, saner and considerably more economic-minded individuals than us here as Manuscripts Don't Burn are in complete agreement with our sentiments, and are currently loudly saying so on the comments section of dear Ambrose's latest barking ramble. We'd just like to offer one such comment from a Mr. Johan de Meulemeester as a token of the increasing impatience the thinking world is showing towards these clumsy attempts to put some life into the limp and flaccid nonsense that was "The War on Terror":

"We don't need to debate this issue; you have opted to believe what FOXNEWS peddles and I have opted to be highly skeptical. I've heard the arguments many times that the government is too incompetent to engage in conspiracies - however history has repeatedly demonstrated that governments do engage in all sorts of evil to justify their wars etc (Reichstag fire, Gulf of Tonkin etc etc).
"Even given the above the fact is that "terror" kills less people than lightning strikes; more people die every year from stingray attacks than do from "terror". So we should all focus our efforts and government budgets on what does kill a lot of people - cancer, heart disease, pneumonia, car accidents, smoking, drinking, old age, hunger.
"The 1/2 trillion U$ budget assigned to the Pentagon every year is just a total waste ; 90% of that bureaucracy and budget should be eliminated - the remaining 10% should be assigned strictly to defending the American homeland."

So, there you have it. If nothing else, one additional consequence of the PNAC insanity is likely to be a new wave of American Isolationism once all this crap has cleared - and that, sadly, is good for no one. For no one at all.

Stitched Up - The New One Party State

2007-12-19T10:46:00.000+01:00

Democracy, if it ever existed, is completely dead in this country. Most people vote, if they vote at all, for the most nebulous, unpolitical reasons - the cut of a chap's jib, the greasiness of the other chap, or because their mum and dad voted that way. A precious few think about it first - as Thatcher said, far too few to make any difference.

The only way the Lib Dems will ever be allowed into Number 10 by the establishment is if they abandon their policies and become clones of the Tories, as New Labour have so successfully done. Otherwise, their commitment to PR will, sadly, cut absolutely no mustard with a civil service, bureaucracy, nomenclatura, government media, and armed forces who will never allow such a potentially democratic system into this country. Binary mob politics is so much easier to control - especially when there is no difference between either side.

There is only one hope for democracy in Britain, and that is a coup d'etat in either the Labour or Tory parties, and the replacement of the corrupt corporatists with someone who gives a damn about the rapidly sinking ship that is the UK. Such a coup would probably be easier in the Labour party - the historical precedent is there.

Sadly, Manuscripts Don't Burn doesn't believe it will happen. Instead, we'll lurch uncontrollably into the 2nd decade of the 21st century, which will be one of unrest and economic and social turmoil, and we may well end up with an increasingly extremist government.

In the meantime, the parties will go through their charade of business as usual, electing meaningless identikit leaders with meaningless identikit policies, whilst the real business of managing UK PLC goes on behind very closed doors indeed.

On the plus side, we're heading into uncharted and very "interesting" territory. History will have a field day with our blindness and complacency.

What Is To Be Done - Redux 2007

2007-12-18T12:42:00.000+01:00

I guess on the plus side, people are starting to wise up. But is it already too late? Hopefully, never.

Over the past few weeks, the popular blogosphere has resounded with threads pointing out that:

a.) The West, and the UK in particular, is buggered.
b.) The economy is going pear-shaped.
c.) The corporate feudalists own the government and the media, and they prioritise corporate interests above those of the people.
d.) That our own governments are the bad guys, preemptively attacking other countries to steal their oil.
e.) That we are facing a major resurgence of authoritarianism in the West, and clearly now in the UK, against which an anti-authoritarian, liberal consensus is slowly, agonisingly, coming into being.

So, we've talked about it. But, at the risk of being repetitious, what are we doing about it? Calls to "direct action" are all well and good, but what do they mean?

Manuscripts Don't Burn thinks the time is now ripe for the foundation of some kind of "Liberty Party". Some kind of concerted attempt to resist the corrupt, corporate, authoritarian control-freaks who are attempting to nail down the UK population and remove the hard-won freedoms we've enjoyed. Because the authoritarians are winning.

We don't just need a talking shop (although we need that, too). We need an organisation to resist the Authoritarians on the battlefields where they're currently winning. We need media outlets, spokespeople; we need legal specialists to oppose the endless run of anti-liberty laws which our government is steamrolling through. We need politicians to vote for, who can take on the Authoritarians in parliament and the public eye. We need champions, specialists, propagandists, journalists, TV stations, radio stations, websites, educators, comedians, voters, marchers, protestors, lobbyists, agitators; we need activists.

It's not a left-wing / right-wing thing. Manuscripts Don't Burn sees wide agreement throughout the blogosphere on that point. It's simply a battle between the muddled, confused, often frenetic reality of life in a liberal democracy (or as near as), and the dull, homogenous, strident, heavy, and oppressively calm future our government, media, and corporate system appears to be planning for us.

Time for concerted action. Because, without it, we are all just individual voices moaning obscurely on the internet. And, when they finally come to shut the internet down, they will shut us down just as surely. It's happened before; it can easily happen again. Most people who live in times like these cannot believe it is actually happening; it all seems too mad, too preposterous, to even think about. But the Reichstag has already burned down, and our liberties are being legislated away.

Their very outrageousness is the best weapon the Authoritarians have - unless it is exposed.

Compulsory Voting as a means to Electoral Reform

2007-12-18T12:13:00.000+01:00

There was a debate on the Guardian Comment Is Free pages today about the rights and wrongs of compulsory voting. Would it ever be a good idea? Absolutely, as long as, as many people on the Guardian Comment pages clearly said , "NONE OF THE ABOVE" is a viable option and tabulated accordingly.

In the UK's case, if NONE OF THE ABOVE were to win in a given constituency, that constituency would be considered to have effectively voted No Confidence in the candidates; if the number of NONE OF THE ABOVEs returned in the entire country were in the majority, then the population of the country would have voted No Confidence in all of the parties on offer.

In the first case, we have a local crisis, in the second, a national, constitutional crisis. Effectively, the population tells the government: you are not doing a good enough job - go away and come back with something better.

The UK is in dire need of this. After a number of chaotic elections, who knows - we may even come up with something democratic. Which is why of course no party in their right mind in the UK will ever let it happen. Let people decide what's going on? Heaven forbid!

Censorship and the Upcoming Battle for the Internet

2007-12-18T09:28:00.000+01:00

Those of us who grew up in the Cold War, or in its immediate aftermath, have an unfeasibly rose-tinted view of our own civilisation. The Great Commie Enemy had an ideology which on paper looked so much better - so much nicer, fairer - than ours, that for one brief blip in our history, our governments were forced to pay more than lip service to keeping their noses clean. Otherwise, how could a system which espoused rapacious and exploitative capitalism hold its own against a philosophy which preached universal brotherhood and justice? Damn, they were making us look bad...

Since the end of the Cold War, that necessity has vanished - again. No longer do we have a dream-land of fairness and solidarity to run away to, except in our minds. No longer do our governments have to pretend. And - lo! - we have a return to pre-war psychology in dealing with the benighted lands beyond the Glorious West - we invade, kill people, and take their stuff. Plus ca change - it's just that this time, it's oil. If there IS a difference, it's that the nasty machiavellianism which governments commit in our names now has the potential to appear in our living rooms and on our laptops, thanks to technology - the need for government control over how we see it has never seemed greater.

So, in a sense, one can hardly blame government - it's in their nature, like a lion tearing the throat out of a gazelle. To make it stop, we'd have to change that nature - which we seem not to have the stomach for, but obsess instead about which particular Lion we want in government, and expect that to make a difference. More fool us.

But the supine media - for that, we can justifiably blame ourselves. The loss of journalistic integrity over the past two decades has been shocking, and a betrayal of what journalism has been supposed to stand for. After decades of struggle to free themselves from attempted government takeovers and censorship attempts, we finally saw a media emerge which - in places at least - had balls enough to go for the jugular when it saw affronts against our civilised values committed by government or corporates alike.

Happy days. But, since then - again, with no ideological jousting partner of any quality - the media have once again gradually become just another branch of government - returned to the fold of pre-war jingoistic prattling and obfuscation. Small wonder they don't tell us what's going on in war zones - they barely report government activity at all, beyond parrotting press releases from the various "parties". Far better the Spice Girls and reality TV - gotta keep the bottom line in view.

But we all know this - there should be no cause for surprise. My only hope for the survival of that briefly flickering light of liberty we treasure lies in the freedom of information on the internet. Alternative media and organisational structures are possible, as we have seen.

Never mind Afghanistan: the real fighting lies ahead, for control of the internet, for active censorship of the communications we make between ourselves. For ten years or more our governments have been able to rely on the "censorship of cacophony" to drown out the occasional voice of truth or reason; now, things are coalescing out of the row of information that is the internet, and battlelines are becoming clearer. Expect the drum-beat of "threats from the internet" to resound ever louder in the mouths of politicians and the prostrate media.

In the end, it all seems to boil down to the same thing: obsessive, authoritarian control-freakery versus personal liberty. Man-in-the-White-Suit, Porter, Monbiot, Tony Benn, and the hordes of us here who will not sit silent - what a motley crowd we are! But perhaps, finally, our very diversity will be our strength.

Strange Bedfellows

2007-12-16T13:48:00.000+01:00

It's not that the left wing and the right wing don't exist anymore. It's just that their traditional opposition pales into insignificance beside the threat which faces both of them, and which must be dealt with if both left and right aren't shortly to be effectively outlawed by the new corporate feudalist authoritarianism which we see springing up all around us in these rapidly changing times.

I think the majority of us understand the problem. The government is interfering more and more; we are working harder and harder; the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting very much poorer; and the screws of fear, loathing, and insecurity are squeezing ever tighter.

The question now has to be: what are we going to do about it. I can hardly believe that our only option is to "vote Tory". I mean, those guys are the same suits as the current lot of fraudster stooges, just with different haircuts (though even those are converging...). Voting Lib Dem might conceivably find us an actual politician who actually gives a damn for anything other than his corporate paycheck, but as the corporate feudalist government's de facto Ministry of Media and Disinformation Rupert Murdoch has effectively completely squashed the Lib Dems hopes of being taken seriously for at least a generation, I see little point in that either.

Which brings us back to the million dollar question: what are we going to DO about it?

Agitate, anybody? Whilst it's still legal?

Because we all miss Rummy...

2007-12-15T00:23:00.003+01:00

As things have been getting rather gloomy on the economic and environmental fronts lately, Manuscripts Don't Burn thought it would cast a fond look back at the much-missed Donald Rumsfeld, whose capacity for fun and obfuscation brightened up the preemptive invasion of foreign countries and killing of their citizens for many of us. Ah, happy days...

The Rise Of Corporate Feudalism - Part 1

2007-12-14T09:57:00.001+01:00

The world was so simple during the Cold War. We had a paradigm which no one doubted – Western capitalism had created a false and yet easy to understand dialectic between itself on the one hand, and an invented enemy on the other – the Soviet Union. Our ideology, our political structures, our military strategy, and our economy were all based on this assumed opposition – and for over forty years it provided us with a stable and peaceful basis on which to build our society. Never mind that it was a lie – most ideologies are; the fact is, it worked, it provided a concrete philosophy for many millions to live by, and it created jobs, and power. So much power.

The end of the Cold War was a shock to the people wielding that power. Sure, the goal of our Western ideology had been to bring down the Evil Empire of the Soviets, but it was dogma more than strategy; no one believed that it would happen, and certainly not with the speed it did. All the people in power, the economic structures and systems of production and consumption of the tools of war – the arms manufacturers and dealers - which depended absolutely on the perpetuation of this false, ideological dichotomy for their survival, were suddenly struck with fear that their very reason for existence was crumbling about them. They needed to preserve their painstakingly built status quo; they needed to maintain the fiction of their invented enemy. Without it, the future was unclear, unstable, a thing of chaos and unpredictability.

Viewed in hindsight, it’s hard not to feel some sympathy with their plight. They had a system which worked – never mind the fact that it was based on a lie. To step beyond that system required a courage and a capacity for dealing with uncertainty and change which was simply beyond them. They set about finding a new Great Enemy, a new target for their ideology of Fear and Loathing, with a vengeance. Within months of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, American and British forces were in Iraq, and a new enemy was being sold to us.

None of this should have been a surprise to us. The First World War was pretty much a gambit organised by the big arms manufacturers; the “straight-line” mapmakers who drew up the new borders of Africa and the Middle East likewise were careful to build in the seeds of conflict and disaffection with every border they drew, separating family from family, splitting nations down the middle, throwing warring communities together. It was a cynical game, but there was no time for subtlety.

So how have we been sold the New Enemy? How on earth is the tired old Cold War paradigm still alive and well today, with the same hackneyed clichés wheeled out to describe completely different realities with the same alarmingly sloppy brush strokes. How did we swallow this? Could it actually be that we no longer care? After the Cold War, a window of opportunity existed to settle upon a new paradigm for a real New World Order, and we missed it. Perhaps there is still time – but now, as we stand on the brink of social upheavals caused by climate change and economic collapse, it seems likely we no longer have the stomach for brave and responsible choices. How has it come to this?

Disarming the People

2007-12-12T12:40:00.000+01:00

If a person wants to kill someone, they can go into the garden, pick up a rock, and bludgeon somebody over the head with it. They don't need a terrorist manual to tell them how, and there is no point in making "possession of a rock" a crime. Murder is the crime - it involves killing people, and no amount of legislation banning pointed sticks, large spoons, bricks, plastic bags, or whatever, will prohibit the determined psycho from acting. Arrest the guilty - don't criminalise the innocent.

Today's announcement that the UK government is about the ban the possession of katana, traditional Samurai swords, is just one more step in the disarmament of the British people and the removal of their ability to defend themselves against oppression and crime, and to make them feel ever more helpless in the face of random violence and injustice. How ever-so-easy it is for the media to find some tragically bereaved mother to rail against the physical object which took her child's life - and to call for it to be banned as a result. And how happy the government are to jump to her aid and valiantly create another criminalised activity.

There are countries in the world where the people's duty to actively resist an oppressive, totalitarian regime is enshrined in their constitutions. The USA is the greatest example, and a country where the population have before taken it upon themselves to throw out, not once, but twice, an oppressive regime which threatened their freedoms. Likely it is about to do so again.

But in England, ever since the Norman conquest, it has been vaguely illegal to own anything more offensive than a pitchfork. And with good reason - the jacqueries of Wat Tyler, William Wallace, et al, have more than once put the fear of God into our otherwise cheery oppressors. God forbid that a population should be able to resist the oppression we decide for them.

Here in France I can go into a shop in any town and buy guns, bows and arrows, suits of armour, swords, crossbows, the whole shebang. And - guess what? - does the population turn into a vast horde of bloodthirsty maniacs? Of course not. The number of guns around here is staggering - and every hunting season some poor little deer or hare or partridge gets it between the eyes. But the level of yobbish violence is nowhere near the level of dear old Blighty, with its legion of anti-violence laws. And the French remain very wary of governments intruding on their personal and private lives - and all too ready to take to the streets when a government forgets its mandate.

Remember: when all behaviour is criminalised, there are no innocents. When a sharp knife is technically illegal, and possession of fertiliser can get you banged up for possessing material likely to be of use to terrorists, remember: there was a time when you were presumed innocent first, and you had to DO something before you were considered a criminal.

Guns don't shoot protestors. Oppressive governments do.

Their Blatant Lies (2): Jack Straw "New Labour is Liberty's Champion"

2007-12-12T09:38:00.000+01:00

In a remarkable display of doublespeak on the Guardian website today, "Justice Minister" Jack Straw declared that the New Labour government has done more for human rights and democracy in Britain since we first gained the vote. Seemingly oblivious to the irony, he quotes "the last 10 years will be seen as heralding a 'quiet revolution' in the way in which the UK is governed".

Now, Mr Straw is a bright chap. So, assuming that he hasn't turned into an evil machiavellian genius or lost his marbles on some pre-Christmas shopping spree mental breakdown, what are we to make of these curious and obviously untrue utterances? Because of course they are untrue - obscenely so, in the case of:

- the massive increase in surveillance and infringement of civil liberties
- Indefinite detention without trial
- 42 days pre-charge detention
- Banning of protest within 1 mile of Parliament
- Use of the Terrorism Act to prevent legitimate protest
- National Identity Register
- ID Card
- DNA database
- NHS Spine register
- National Child database
- Kratos Shoot to Kill policy
- Heaviest concentration of CCTV cameras in the world
- Complicity in CIA extraordinary rendition
- Automatic Number Plate Recognition systems

So what is Jack actually trying to say?

Well, the answer seems to be twofold. First, his contention is that all these 3000-odd new laws are not here to circumscribe our liberties, but to describe them. If our behavioural limits are enshrined in law, then they are subsequently protected by those laws - within the limits set, of course. This is a nice legal technicality, of course, and rides on the establishment being competent to apply the law or laws in question. Sadly, however such laws tend to be honoured more in the breach - little sense having all our data on a highly sophisticated universal database, if some spod then leaves all the info in a CD on a bus seat somewhere. Stretched further, the advantage of such laws presupposes a benevolent government; naively, of course, as history throws up countless examples of laws being ruthlessly misapplied or simply ignored or sidestepped when convenient once a less than benevolent government takes power - to whit, the current US administration, South American banana republics, China, Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, East Germany, etc, etc, ad nauseam. Perhaps only a lawyer is able to believe that thousands of new laws are somehow "better" for people...

Secondly, and perhaps more personally, it is possible that Jack Straw, like many other Old Labour MPs who see themselves dragged along by an increasingly authoritarian government and dependent on it for their careers, identities, and livelihoods, Jack Straw is trying to convince himself. There was a time when Labour ideals did not constitute kowtowing to US militarism, to sucking up to property developers, or to making dissent and reasonable protest illegal. All of these things which New Labour does routinely now would have raised howls of outrage amongst Straw and his gang in the early eighties. In truth, the only reasonable action for an MP of conscience in the Labour party now is to split off and form a new party of the old Labour party ideals - equal rights, protection of the population from the inroads of unrestrained capitalism, anti-militarism, international solidarity, freedom and social justice.

But who amongst the New Labour biggies, with their impending knighthoods and vast incomes, is going to shoot himself in the foot for the sake of political principles? Well, there've been a few - Robin Cook, before his mysterious death. Tony Benn. Recent murmurs from Frank Dobson. But by far the vast majority have obediently put away their ideals and donned the party uniform of duckspeak and heads-down passivity whilst their history of liberal opposition is hosed away. Blunkett. Brown. Blair. Mandelson. Yowza.

Manuscripts Don't Burn did think Jack Straw might have been one of the good guys. Perhaps, deep down, he still is, and will surprise us yet. Perhaps, in these grim days of fear, loathing, and control, the person he wants most to convince is - himself.

Just In - TOPOFF3 Terror Drill Fake News Report from 2005

2007-12-11T10:45:00.002+01:00

This series of 4 fascinating videos have recently appeared on Youtube, and seem worth posting here just for their chillingly convincing nature. Although the source of the videos have not been officially confirmed, they purport to be from the joint US-UK-Canadian anti-terror drill "TOPOFF3", back in 2005 - and judging by this link http://www.fcw.com/print/11_16/news/88622-1.html, they certainly appear to be.

NOTE: WE'VE JUST DISCOVERED AS OF THE 28th MARCH 2008 THAT THIS SERIES OF VIDEOS HAS BEEN CENSORED FROM YOUTUBE. WE'LL TRY AND FIX THE LINKS WHEN WE FIND OTHER COPIES, BUT FOR NOW LET IT BE NOTED THAT SOMEONE HAS SEEN FIT TO DEMAND YOUTUBE REMOVE THESE VIDS...

Manuscripts Don't Burn finds the appearance of these videos interesting. Firstly, for the fact that they clearly show that the US-UK establishments consider it necessary to rehearse the media response to terror incidents - as though news is somehow something that needs "rehearsing" to "get it right". We consider this proposition deeply dubious, unless of course the purpose of "news" is in fact to act as a government mouthpiece and present the "official line" of a story. Secondly, the videos are interesting in that they show just how easy it is to fake news. Can you tell that these videos are of a fake incident? Would you be able to make that call if they appeared in the guise of live news on the TV? Thirdly, how have these videos come to be released, of all places, on Youtube? Is it with official blessing - in which case the timing, coinciding as it does more or less with the NIE, is interesting. If not - well, this has all the hallmarks of a leak.

At the moment Manuscripts Don't Burn considers this a breaking story on the blogosphere, and we'll try and find out more. One thing to bear in mind: on 911, the US military were conducting a drill involving the terrorist hijack of airplanes and attacks on New York and Washington; on 7/7 the UK intelligence services were conducting a drill involving terror attacks on the London underground: neither of these facts are open to doubt, and are a matter of public record. The uncanny coincidence that EXACTLY the same events happened at the same time as the drills should make us all view government-faked terror news reports from "anti-terror drills" with some seriousness.

As a final note, the people in this video are real - it's interesting to Google some of the main players, such as Rear Admiral David Pekoske. The powers that be are putting an awful lot of money into making sure the news agencies "get it right", this time, unlike the howlers we got on 911.

Watch this space.

Ex-Italian President: 911 Was an Inside Job

2007-12-10T20:01:00.000+01:00

In an interesting development over the past week which is likely to remain unreported by the corporate media, ex-Italian President Francesco Cossiga gave an interview to Italy's most widely read newspaper, Corriere della Sera, in which he declared "the intelligence services of America and Europe now know full well that the disastrous attack [of 9/11 - ed.] was planned and executed by the American CIA and Mossad with the assistance of the Zionist world in order to point the finger of accusation at Arab countries and induce western powers to take part in [the attacks] on Iraq and Afghanistan".

Cossiga, well known as an outspoken political commentator, first expressed his doubts about 911 as early as 2001, when he declared that the attacks "could not have been accomplished without having infiltrated the radar and flight security personnel".

Cossiga was forced to resign as Italian President in 1992 after revealing the existence of, and his part in setting up, "Operation Gladio" - a rogue intelligence network under NATO auspices that carried out bombings across Europe in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Gladio's specialty was to carry out what they coined "false flag operations", terror attacks that were blamed on their domestic and geopolitical opposition.

Cossiga's revelations contributed to an Italian parliamentary investigation of Gladio in 2000, during which evidence was unearthed that the attacks were being overseen by the U.S. intelligence apparatus. In March 2001, Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra stated, in sworn testimony, "You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple: to force ... the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security".

Coming from a widely respected former head of state, Cossiga's assertion that the 911 attacks were an inside job and that this is common knowledge amongst global intelligence agencies is highly unlikely to be mentioned by any establishment media outlets, because - like the hundreds of other ex-government, military, and air force professionals who have expressed their doubts and concerns - he can't be sidelined as a crackpot conspiracy theorist.

Latin Lessons Resurface In UK Primary Schools

2007-12-10T11:33:00.000+01:00

News is that 20 London primary schools are trying Latin lessons, under the aegis of a "Project Iris", run by teacher Lorna Robinson. Something similar is happening in Oxfordshire, where the language is also being introduced to selected primary schools.

Learning Latin these days has probably never been more fun or easier. You can read Harry Potter in Latin, Paddington Bear, Winnie the Pooh (all available from Amazon), there are books of naughty words and silly slang, dictionaries of modern words (laptop computer, milk shake, etc, etc!), and even news broadcast over the Internet in Latin (try Nuntii Latini at http://www.yleradio1.fi/nuntii/)

The fact is Latin is still highly regarded in many countries worldwide, especially outside the confines of the Anglo-Saxon Empire. There are more books written and available in Latin than many people will read in a lifetime, and plenty of excellent literature, history, philosophy, and drama. To call it a dead language is kind of to miss the point; more people speak it as a second language than speak many small countries' languages as a first, and in countries like Germany it's recently been announced that many employers look very favourably upon qualifications in Latin as they indicate inquiring and disciplined approaches to study.

Vivat lingua Latina! Let's reappropriate the Roman culture which lies at the roots of most of our "Greater European" identities from the dusty classrooms in which it has long been imprisoned! It is our shared heritage, from Iran and the Middle East to Britain and Northern Europen, to North Africa and the Mediterranean. The European Union is the single biggest attempt at political unity in Europe since the Roman Empire - it is only appropriate that we should at least consider our predecessors, and consider how they succeeded, and, most importantly, how they failed.

Oil Wars: A Deafening Silence

2007-12-10T10:18:00.000+01:00

This morning there is a total absence in the mainstream press of any mention of the comments of Iran's oil minister, Gholam Hussein Nozari, on Saturday, that henceforth Iran will no longer be accepting payments in US dollars for its oil.

Nozari, declaring that the dollar is "no longer considered a trustworthy currency", has effectively thrown the gauntlet down to Washington in a move which, when tried four years ago by Saddam Hussein, led directly to the USA's preemptive attack and illegal invasion of Iraq.

In a further move which will doubtless up the ante, Iran also signed an oil deal worth an estimated $2bn (current value) with China on Sunday, sending clear signals that those following the USA's policy of sanctions are likely to miss out on significant deals.

Manuscripts Don't Burn considers the time more than ripe for a pretext appearing for a US or Israeli preemptive strike on Iran. This weekend has seen two significant events stepping up the pressure on the US to act - will our media even see fit to report that the Iranian's are no longer trading their oil in US dollars? Are they independent enough to report the actual news, rather than just the official line?

Time will tell.

It's the Oil, Stupid...

2007-12-09T10:34:00.000+01:00

Why do we always go through the silly charade of pretending to ask ourselves "Hmm... Golly, George Bush appears to have lied, I wonder what he's up to?"

Don't we all know by now? Are we just trying to give ourselves due justification for ignoring the crimes of this lying warmonger as he drives through his "program" regardless of democracy, international will, or justice?

The PNAC website, endorsed by Cheney et al, says it clearly: the neocons are going for the oil in the Middle East. The Iraq war said it clearly: we all know there were no WMDs, and no exit strategy, and that it would nearly bankrupt the US, but we went in anyway. And Lo! - Halliburton and the US now control the Iraqi oil.

And then Iran. Drums of war throbbing away in the White House with insinuation after insinuation since 2003/4. Now we have clear intelligence reports which say there's no threat - but the White House lies to us about them and chooses to keep repeating the Big Lie over and over again anyway.

The Neocons want control of the Middle East's oil. It won't stop with Iran, there are several other candidates for takeover there yet. And if it propels the world into war, and kills hundreds of thousands or even millions of people, well, that's okay - they're a long way away from American soil, and - well, we've gotta get control of that oil.

Hmm... golly, George seems like he lied to us about the NIE. Cheney, too. Golly. What could be the reason for that? Maybe they just made an understandable mistake. Hell, they've got our best interests at heart, after all, haven't they?

Cui bono? We don't even have to ask any more - we know what these guys are up to. We're just lying to ourselves if we think we have to wonder.

It's just good ole Imperial power and resource grab. All we have to ask ourselves is: are we happy with our country lying to us and cheating us and attacking foreign countries to line their pockets? We thought it was OK in the 19th century; since WW2 we decided we were better than that. Have we changed our mind?

Their Blatant Lies: CIA "destroys torture tapes"

2007-12-08T11:58:00.000+01:00

Do you ever have moments when you think, "I can't believe I'm having this conversation"? This may be one of them.

For the past several months, the media has been debating, with its typical hysterical po-faced solemnity, "gee, do you think the USA should be torturing people to get information?" People have sat on news programs and seriously tried to argue the pros and cons. What's next? "Gee, do you think eating babies is okay?" "Is murdering your spouse ever a good thing?" For heaven's sake, Western Civilisation, what on earth have you come to?

So here's another one today: there's been a "call for a criminal inquiry" as it emerges the CIA has deliberately destroyed tapes of it engaging in torture. I should bloody well hope there'll be an "inquiry". And a prosecution and some hefty imprisonment, too, and maybe a change of government!

What is happening here? Slowly, surreptitiously, the level of barbarity we'll tolerate in our everyday narrative is gradually being increased. It's not too long ago that taking bribes, invading other people's countries, murdering scientists, graft, corruption, theft, torture, and preemptive war were considered WRONG. Period. No debate.

Now, well... and we all make faces and wring our hands... well, maybe, just once, then.... erm...

Moral relativism. Once the bottle is opened, the genie don't ever wanna go back in. Sheeeee-it - don't people ever read history any more?

A Conspiracy of Supermarkets...

2007-12-08T11:21:00.001+01:00

Erm... am I missing something? It's been announced that major supermarkets like Tesco and Sainsburys, and a host of others, made an estimated £270m out of an illegal milk pricefixing scam back in 2002, and have been fined £116m. Can someone tell me how this is a punishment?

As far as I can make out that's an overall profit for the supermarkets of £154m - a brilliant success and absolutely no reason why they shouldn't do it all again.

Which of course they are all doing right now. £1.50 for a pack of butter? Come off it...

Time to face up to it: supermarkets have been engaging in anti-competitive activity for years. They inveigled their way onto town councils throughout the country and upped the price of market stalls, to the extent that our town markets are now mostly a sad old memory, they've taken losses aggressively to push small grocers and greengrocers - even newsagents - out of business, just to create a monopoly.

Free market my arse. This is monopoly at its worst - socially divisive, coming down heaviest on the poor and elderly. The fact that it's allowed to go on at all just shows how much in the pockets of their corporate paymasters our supine government and media really are. Fleecing the people, fleecing the producers, and all for what - to give us choice? I'm sorry, I happen to think eating food is a necessity, not a choice, and a 50% rise in the price of staples in one year is not acceptable, no matter how cheap CDs and DVD players are...

Hysterical Consumption Time is Here Again!

2007-12-07T17:04:00.000+01:00

Consumption is the opium of the masses.

Behind it sits a bogus economic system which makes us work harder and harder and waste more of our lives working simply in order to continue to consume.

Without this hysterical consumption our populations could work less than 4 hours a day, less than 5 days a week, and have much more time to spend on the "important" things of life.

The fact is that a population with too much time on its hands scares the hell out of the powers that be. People with time to think might start to question the insane mess we're making of the planet and most of its population in the name of "growth". Consequently prices rise, even staple foods now, and we are trapped more deeply within this inhuman machine. The money spent on war and oppression could easily be used to provide us all with free food and accommodation.

Cue howls of protest from those who cream the profit off the misery of billions - of course they wouldn't want things to change.

Individuals can fight this. Consume less; work less. Ignore advertising. Opt out of this slavery whilst it's still voluntary, and live according to values that have a little more meaning. Forget about the latest overpriced gadgets or redecorating again; spend some time with friends and family.

The system tries to convince us we are powerless to change things: we are not. With little steps we can change the world.

The powers that be are doing a miserable job of managing our happiness. We must do better than this.

Customs & Revenue Lose 25 Million People's Details

2007-12-07T16:56:00.000+01:00

The British government has become increasingly unfit for purpose over the course of the past 20-odd years, and particularly over the past 10. Its main mandate now is facilitating the operations of its corporate paymasters, and pulling the wool over the electorate's eyes whilst it does so.

For a while, the government's crimes have been sins of omission - not caring enough to sort out education, national health, public transport, etc, etc, and increasingly inconveniencing the public whilst doing so. Now a line is being crossed, where the "government" is actively working counter to the interests of the public who it is supposed to serve - where previously we could just ignore them and hope they'd go away, now they're actively screwing things up for us...

How can you trust the government with your confidential data after this? Even supposing you could before...

I suggest we leave this bunch to continue pandering to the fat cats and corporate merchants and set up an alternative system which actually looks after our own interests rather than lines its own corrupt pockets... We could call it "democracy"...

Global Warming - Go To Sleep Everyone...

2007-12-07T16:19:00.000+01:00

Does anyone else have the feeling we're just fiddling as Rome burns?

It's already too late, guys. Those of us debating here on CiF are the tiny, tiny minority of the planetary population who even think this thing is worth talking about. Most people don't give a damn - and half of those that do are so damn terrified they just stick their fingers in their ears and sing LA-LA-LA over and over again.

There is no "solution" which we have an earthly chance of getting in place in time. We can talk about them, but it's all just hot air (pun not intended), and the climate will continue to change as it already is. Food prices are already rocketing in this part of the world from the dismal harvest this year, caused by no winter, no summer, and now - 7 months of almost constant rain and counting. It's 15 degrees C in the middle of winter, the fields are full of weeds and the bugs ain't dying...

Governments are already in crisis management. The other day here in France the national TV station's weather report said the half year rain was great for the planet cos we need loads of water, and we shouldn't worry about the unseasonably warm temperatures cos it means we don't have to use our heating as much - and that is good for the planet. You have to grin - it keeps everybody's spirits up.

The simple fact is, if things continue the global climate is going to change in completely unpredictable ways. It's no good saying "hey, I live in Europe / North America / whatever so it's just going to get warmer / wetter / nicer and I'll be fine". No one knows how individual areas will be affected - it's effectively a complete lottery. The atlantic conveyor could shut down and Europe freeze; rain and sea level rises could turn your home into a swamp; drought and warming could make your country into a desert. We're just going to have to wait and see.

The one thing that appears certain is that we're heading for a period of tremendous uncertainty. That means instability. Which means violence, whether in the form of hugely restrictied civil liberties as governments struggle to cope with famine, disease, flood, whatever; or violence in the form of forced migrations, invasions, wars, the usual shebang.

Eventually, when things settled down again, and millions or billions of people have died, the human race will find those parts of the planet which are conducive to our survival. Who knows where they will be... could be more or less anywhere.

The main problem with all these shenanigans is the speed at which they're going to happen. They've already started, although we in the West have been largely insulated from them in our cosseted free speech zones, up till now at least. And they're going to get significantly worse in our lifetimes. On the plus side, as the effects of climate change kick in, it's likely to impact our ability to cause continued damage - cities will be flooded, countries will dry out or depopulate, populations will die - and our "carbon footprint" will dwindle quite nicely.

On a mathematical level, it's all very neat, really. Things will balance out. It's the human story behind the narrative where it's going to be shocking. At some point, this rather unpredictable game of Russian Roulette is going to require we all put the gun to our heads and see if we win or lose - the best we can do is to keep as aware and adaptable as possible to avoid being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Of course I could be talking bollocks. I really hope I am, actually, but having read the evidence, looked around me, and studied human history and our traditional response to large-scale problems, I'm not hopeful. The best response right now is to join the chorus of head-in-the-sand naysayers and scream "it's never gonna happen..."

Who knows, if we all shout loud enough, maybe whatever God is up there will take notice and have mercy... You never know...

Now where did I put that violin? ;-)

The English - Just a Bunch of Criminals?

2007-12-07T16:17:00.001+01:00

148 out of 100,000 Brits are currently behind bars in the UK. In France the figure is 93, in Germany 89. We have the highest proportion of people banged away in the whole of Western Europe.

So, either the British have a fundamentally much more criminal mentality than the French and Germans (150% more) and in fact everybody else in Europe, or the British government is locking too many people up.

So which is it? Are we just much more criminal than the rest of the Yurpeans?

This is the Neeeeeeeewwwws!

2007-12-07T16:15:00.000+01:00

Disappearing Madeleine? Mohammed's Teddy Bear? Dead Darwin in Panama?

The reason these story's are inflated to fill the obligatory news slots in the media schedules is because they are CHEAP. In the constant drive for efficiency and economy, saving money and resources, real news has now become too expensive to report.

The same thing is happening all across media-land. Rather than make proper TV programs, it's much, much cheaper, and far less difficult for today's clumsily marketing-educated media studies graduate darlings, to stick a bunch of people in a room and film them arguing. Cue the birth of reality TV.

Today's schedule: some unknown woman crying on telly and saying how it's all gone wrong; some program telling you your house is too dirty / clean / large / small / badly decorated and you need to buy product X or be socially embarrassed forever; a bunch of no-hopers eating crap in a field somewhere foreign; and of course sport. And the weather - but not very accurate, cos we can't afford a satellite feed every day. Why bother investigating stuff and being creative when people will just suck up this crap instead?

The media is gradually vanishing up its own bottom. One day there will be a loud shlurping noise, a nasty smell, and an empty page where the news used to be. But it will be CHEAP.

Isn't Pope Benedict Great?

2007-12-07T16:13:00.000+01:00

You gotta dig it. Benny's declared he's gonna start dishing out plenary indulgences next.

Now, I'm as much a fan of God as everyone else here...

... but - indulgences?

C'mon, Benny! You're avin a larf!

All together now (get those hunchbacks at the back singing in tune... and The Women Taken In Adultery - a bit more

wailing please):

"When a coin in the coffer riiiiiings,
A soul from purgatory springs."

Man, you gotta feel that Martin Luther vibe. Yeah!

So the Lyrical Terrorist Gets a Suspended Sentence?

2007-12-07T15:56:00.000+01:00

Shut up, England. Don't even think. Hold no opinions which are not expressly authorised by government media channels.

All behaviour is now potentially criminalised. Possession of materials useful to criminals is an offence. This includes spoons, spades, garden fertiliser, petrol, matches, money, paper, pencils, printing devices, email accounts, and sharp kitchen implements. A detailed list of prohibited items will NOT be published. Not having committed a crime will not be accepted as absence of intent.

The security you have demanded is now mandatory. This is for your protection.
Shut up. Be content. Consume.

Sports broadcasts will continue as scheduled.