The internet destroys privacy. That is its nature. It's an absolute game-changer for our civilisation. Ever since its popularisation two decades ago, it's been relentlessly opposed by the shadowy overlords who farm our labour and claim to rule over us; they've demonised it as the hiding place of terrorists, child abusers, drug-dealers and money launderers, and done everything they can to put in place systems to prevent the free flow of information - the lifeblood of the internet. The big ideological battleground of the 21st century has not been between Right and Left, but between freedom and control - democracy and authoritarianism - liberty and increasing oppression by our own governments.
It's ironic that this week, when the world has seen the biggest act of censorship in recent years, as the UK government stands to fall as a result of a scandal which is being rigorously suppressed and kept from all mainstream media outlets, that same media choose to speak out about something many of us have known or suspected for years - that our own governments are routinely spying on us in intrusive and illegal ways far in excess of anything the Soviets, Nazis, or East German stasi could ever have hoped to achieve. While harping on about how dangerous the world has become now that the people in the Third World we keep bombing have brought the fight to us - a fight that we are causing - our governments have been systematically stripping our civil rights and civil liberties, hard-won over decades of struggle by our fore-fathers and -mothers, wrenched from the hands of just those control freak overlords who now wish to put them back in place.
This is the first time we have clear, unequivocal proof of our governments' agendas, and it's all over the front pages. Our media outlets are starting to react against the creeping fascism in our societies.
It's still not too late. We can reverse this. The internet is the biggest chance for our nascent global society to evolve into an open and accountable one that we've ever had. Our governments want to turn that tool for liberty and enlightenment into a tool for endless Orwellian oppression.
We must not let them. We have only ourselves to blame if they do.
Showing posts with label Anti-Authoritarianism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anti-Authoritarianism. Show all posts
Friday, 7 June 2013
Sunday, 8 November 2009
The Bloodless Civil War finally speaks its name
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.
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.
Saturday, 23 May 2009
No Revolution, please, we're British
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.
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.
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
Cor... ain't it quiet?
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!
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!
Thursday, 29 January 2009
THE BIG LIE
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.
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.
Friday, 24 October 2008
US Elections: Raising the spectre of the "Stolen Election"
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.
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.
Wednesday, 22 October 2008
Welcome to the Revolution...
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.
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.
Tuesday, 23 September 2008
Economic "Crisis": The Great Redistribution Continues Apace
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.
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.
Saturday, 15 March 2008
Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results of 2008 Election Early
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
Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early
Thursday, 14 February 2008
Arrested at gunpoint for listening to an MP3 player
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.
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.
Wednesday, 6 February 2008
Now Optional: the Rule of Law
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.
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.
Tuesday, 15 January 2008
Britain - A Country That Has Lost Its Way
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.
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.
Thursday, 27 December 2007
A Mormon By Any Other Name...
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.
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.
Wednesday, 26 December 2007
Their Blatant Lies (4): More Cracks Appearing
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...
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...
Saturday, 22 December 2007
The War on Pubs
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...
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...
Tuesday, 18 December 2007
What Is To Be Done - Redux 2007
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.
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.
Sunday, 16 December 2007
Strange Bedfellows
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?
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?
Wednesday, 12 December 2007
Disarming the People
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.
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"
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.
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.
Saturday, 8 December 2007
A Conspiracy of Supermarkets...
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...
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...
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