The Second English Civil War has begun

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

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

Where did it start?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No Revolution, please, we're British

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.

US Elections: Dare we even hope...?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Growth Junkies: Why we are here in the first place

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

SocialistMike:

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

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

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

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

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

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

*****

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

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

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

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

Keeping it local - the only way democracy can work

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stitched Up - The New One Party State

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

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

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

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

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

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

Compulsory Voting as a means to Electoral Reform

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

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

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

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

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?