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 Loss of Liberties. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Loss of Liberties. Show all posts
Friday, 7 June 2013
Friday, 1 July 2011
The Political Assassination of Dominique Strauss-Kahn - Cui Bono?
Well, there it is... the alleged sexual assault case against former head of the International Monetary Fund and French Presidential candidate Dominique Strauss-Kahn is beginning to fall apart - less than a week after right-winger and pro-Chicago school Christine Lagarde is confirmed as his replacement at the IMF, and after his Chicago-school IMF deputy and former JP Morgan insider John Lipsky managed to force through the stiff "national asset confiscation" austerity plan on the hapless Greek people.
But what just happened? And why?
During his tenure at the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn committed two cardinal boo-boos from the point of view of the world's corporate bankster cartels. First, he suggested that in the current climate of bailouts and endless money printing, perhaps it was wrong to expect the taxpayers of the world to lose their homes, savings, and jobs to pay off *all* the gambling debts of the big international banks themselves. Perhaps, he suggested, some of the bondholders of the banks should pay *some* of the cost, too. After all, this is capitalism, and it was they who'd decided to gamble their money, and the value of your investment may go down as well as up.
Well, that's not how the banksters see it. If the value of their investment goes up - hurrah! They're the masters of the universe, and they make shedloads of money and take massive bonuses for their great knowledge and talent. But if the value of their investment goes *down* - nooo! It's not their fault - they just lost a bet, why should they have to pay? No, in that case, the taxpayers of the world should have to borrow loads of money to pay off the banksters' debts now, then spend the next 20 or 30 years paying it off. If not - the banksters assured us - the sky would fall, and the world as we know it would come to an end. It's a classic gangster protection racket: "Give us your money, or the economy gets it!" That's what 21st century capitalism is!
So, strike one against DSK. You never, ever, tell the banksters they're going to lose money.
Second, DSK had begun to suggest - in response to cries of "foul!" from China, Russia, Brasil, India, and a host of other countries, that the IMF might be able to create a kind of "virtual world currency". The reason for this was that the Bush and Obama administrations, in introducing QE, or "quantitative easing", had been rapidly devaluing the *current* global reserve currency, the US dollar. This meant that all those nations (like China, Russia, Brasil, etc, etc) that kept lots of their money in dollars were losing out hand over fist - effectively they were footing the bill for the US dollar's devaluation. DSK was a firm supporter of what's called "Strategic Drawing Rights", or SDRs, which are a kind of virtual currency composed of a basket of other international currencies. If the rest of the world agreed to accept SDRs as a replacement for the US dollar to keep all their foreign reserves in, the US government (and the banksters) would be seriously compromised in their ability to devalue the dollar and force other nations to effectively pay off their debts.
Strike two. You never, ever, tell the US govt or the banksters the dollar is not the global reserve currency.
But what was the third strike?
This is where current French president Nicolas Sarkozy comes in. It's widely reported that Sarko's administration has a huge intelligence gathering network (paid for by French taxpayers) gathering dirt on his political opponents and often conducting smear campaigns against them - the recent bouts against both former French PM Dominique De Villepin *and* former French President Jacques Chirac are good examples of this. Dominique Strauss-Kahn was / is a popular, left-leaning member of the socialist party who was widely expected to oust Sarko and become French president in 2012. Over the weeks and months leading up to the DSK / IMF scandal, DSK himself indicated he was being targeted in smear campaigns by Sarko, and even warned that someone might try and ensnare him in a "honey trap" or sexual scandal.
Today, 1st July 2011, the case against DSK is starting to unravel. The political assassination hatchet job has been done: he has been removed from the IMF, and somebody *far more* compliant to the bankster pro-dollar lobby has been installed in his place. Christine Lagarde belongs to the "Chicago school" of economic thought, the same school whose proponents and ideas were largely responsible for the current economic collapse in the first place. She can be relied upon to give countries like Greece a hard time, and ensure that the IMF doesn't cause problems for the US dollar devaluation or bankster bailouts and widening austerity throughout the western world.
But there's still a window in the French presdential campaign. Theoretically, for the next 2 weeks, a released and acquitted DSK *could* conceivably still announce his candidacy for the French presidency. Remember that number: 2 weeks. After Bastille Day, the race is closed, no more bets, rien ne va plus.
Manuscripts Don't Burn believes this is where we see how much of a role Sarko played in the political assassination. If he's able to stall the case for another 2 weeks - keep DSK in the USA, even if released and bail returned - until 14th July, with a shadow hanging over him, then he'll be unable to run for the presidency. In that case, it's reasonable to conclude that Sarko has been a leading player in the assassination. If *not*, and DSK is released unconditionally in the next few days, all charges dropped, and is able to announce his candidacy, then Sarko hasn't been strong enough to call the shots, and it looks like the IMF lobby had the upper hand in the assassination.
We wouldn't like to put money on it.
Either way, the hatchet job is done. Greece is stuffed, the bankster riches are increasing hugely, and the rest of us are slated to foot the bill. Expect more of the same.
What a darker place the world has become over the past ten years. Those of us raised in the latter part of the 20th century still like to think of our governments and the authorities as benevolent and well-meaning. But we shouldn't forget: governments can change. Countries can change. And very quickly: in 1926, Weimar Germany was a vibrant, liberal society with a sparkling and progressive culture; by 1936, the darkness of Nazism was strangling the life out of the country. In 1912, Russia seemed to be moving towards liberal democracy; by 1922, it had been decimated by war, revolution, and civil war, and faced decades of totalitarianism.
Manuscripts Don't Burn imagines people in those countries didn't believe it could happen to them either.
But what just happened? And why?
During his tenure at the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn committed two cardinal boo-boos from the point of view of the world's corporate bankster cartels. First, he suggested that in the current climate of bailouts and endless money printing, perhaps it was wrong to expect the taxpayers of the world to lose their homes, savings, and jobs to pay off *all* the gambling debts of the big international banks themselves. Perhaps, he suggested, some of the bondholders of the banks should pay *some* of the cost, too. After all, this is capitalism, and it was they who'd decided to gamble their money, and the value of your investment may go down as well as up.
Well, that's not how the banksters see it. If the value of their investment goes up - hurrah! They're the masters of the universe, and they make shedloads of money and take massive bonuses for their great knowledge and talent. But if the value of their investment goes *down* - nooo! It's not their fault - they just lost a bet, why should they have to pay? No, in that case, the taxpayers of the world should have to borrow loads of money to pay off the banksters' debts now, then spend the next 20 or 30 years paying it off. If not - the banksters assured us - the sky would fall, and the world as we know it would come to an end. It's a classic gangster protection racket: "Give us your money, or the economy gets it!" That's what 21st century capitalism is!
So, strike one against DSK. You never, ever, tell the banksters they're going to lose money.
Second, DSK had begun to suggest - in response to cries of "foul!" from China, Russia, Brasil, India, and a host of other countries, that the IMF might be able to create a kind of "virtual world currency". The reason for this was that the Bush and Obama administrations, in introducing QE, or "quantitative easing", had been rapidly devaluing the *current* global reserve currency, the US dollar. This meant that all those nations (like China, Russia, Brasil, etc, etc) that kept lots of their money in dollars were losing out hand over fist - effectively they were footing the bill for the US dollar's devaluation. DSK was a firm supporter of what's called "Strategic Drawing Rights", or SDRs, which are a kind of virtual currency composed of a basket of other international currencies. If the rest of the world agreed to accept SDRs as a replacement for the US dollar to keep all their foreign reserves in, the US government (and the banksters) would be seriously compromised in their ability to devalue the dollar and force other nations to effectively pay off their debts.
Strike two. You never, ever, tell the US govt or the banksters the dollar is not the global reserve currency.
But what was the third strike?
This is where current French president Nicolas Sarkozy comes in. It's widely reported that Sarko's administration has a huge intelligence gathering network (paid for by French taxpayers) gathering dirt on his political opponents and often conducting smear campaigns against them - the recent bouts against both former French PM Dominique De Villepin *and* former French President Jacques Chirac are good examples of this. Dominique Strauss-Kahn was / is a popular, left-leaning member of the socialist party who was widely expected to oust Sarko and become French president in 2012. Over the weeks and months leading up to the DSK / IMF scandal, DSK himself indicated he was being targeted in smear campaigns by Sarko, and even warned that someone might try and ensnare him in a "honey trap" or sexual scandal.
Today, 1st July 2011, the case against DSK is starting to unravel. The political assassination hatchet job has been done: he has been removed from the IMF, and somebody *far more* compliant to the bankster pro-dollar lobby has been installed in his place. Christine Lagarde belongs to the "Chicago school" of economic thought, the same school whose proponents and ideas were largely responsible for the current economic collapse in the first place. She can be relied upon to give countries like Greece a hard time, and ensure that the IMF doesn't cause problems for the US dollar devaluation or bankster bailouts and widening austerity throughout the western world.
But there's still a window in the French presdential campaign. Theoretically, for the next 2 weeks, a released and acquitted DSK *could* conceivably still announce his candidacy for the French presidency. Remember that number: 2 weeks. After Bastille Day, the race is closed, no more bets, rien ne va plus.
Manuscripts Don't Burn believes this is where we see how much of a role Sarko played in the political assassination. If he's able to stall the case for another 2 weeks - keep DSK in the USA, even if released and bail returned - until 14th July, with a shadow hanging over him, then he'll be unable to run for the presidency. In that case, it's reasonable to conclude that Sarko has been a leading player in the assassination. If *not*, and DSK is released unconditionally in the next few days, all charges dropped, and is able to announce his candidacy, then Sarko hasn't been strong enough to call the shots, and it looks like the IMF lobby had the upper hand in the assassination.
We wouldn't like to put money on it.
Either way, the hatchet job is done. Greece is stuffed, the bankster riches are increasing hugely, and the rest of us are slated to foot the bill. Expect more of the same.
What a darker place the world has become over the past ten years. Those of us raised in the latter part of the 20th century still like to think of our governments and the authorities as benevolent and well-meaning. But we shouldn't forget: governments can change. Countries can change. And very quickly: in 1926, Weimar Germany was a vibrant, liberal society with a sparkling and progressive culture; by 1936, the darkness of Nazism was strangling the life out of the country. In 1912, Russia seemed to be moving towards liberal democracy; by 1922, it had been decimated by war, revolution, and civil war, and faced decades of totalitarianism.
Manuscripts Don't Burn imagines people in those countries didn't believe it could happen to them either.
Tuesday, 5 April 2011
Libya - The US vs China Agenda
(Paraphrased from Paul Craig Roberts' comment on the Zerohedge website. With thanks and credit to Paul.)
In the 1930s the US, Great Britain, and the Netherlands set a course for World War II in the Pacific by seizing Japan’s bank accounts in their countries that Japan used to pay for imports and cut Japan off from oil, rubber, tin, iron and other vital materials. Was Pearl Harbour Japan’s response?
Now Washington and its NATO puppets are employing the same strategy against China.
Protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, and Yemen arose from the people protesting against Washington’s tyrannical puppet governments. However, the protests against Gaddafi, who is not a Western puppet, appear to have been organized by the CIA in the eastern part of Libya where the oil is, and where China has substantial energy investments.
Eighty percent of Libya’s oil reserves are believed to be in the Sirte Basin in eastern Libya, now controlled by rebels supported by Washington. As seventy percent of Libya’s GDP is produced by oil, a successful partitioning of Libya would leave Gaddafi’s Tripoli-based regime impoverished. http://www.energyinsights.net
The People’s Daily Online (March 23) reported that China has 50 large-scale projects in Libya. The outbreak of hostilities has halted these projects and resulted in 30,000 Chinese workers being evacuated from Libya. Chinese companies report that they expect to lose hundreds of millions of yuan.
China is relying on Africa, principally Libya, Angola, and Nigeria, for future energy needs. In response to China’s economic engagement with Africa, Washington is engaging the continent military with the US African Command (AFRICOM) created by President George W. Bush in 2007. Forty-nine African countries agreed to participate with Washington in AFRICOM, but Gaddafi refused, thus creating a second reason for Washington to target Libya for takeover.
A third reason for targeting Libya is that Libya and Syria are the only two countries with Mediterranean sea coasts that are not under the control or influence of Washington. Suggestively, protests also have broken out in Syria. Whatever Syrians might think of their government, after watching Iraq’s fate and now Libya’s, it is unlikely that Syrians would set themselves up for US military intervention. Both the CIA and Mossad are known to use social networking sites to foment protests and to spread disinformation. These intelligence services are the likely conspirators that the Syrian and Libyan governments blame for the protests.
Caught off guard by protests in Tunisia and Egypt, Washington realized that protests could be used to remove Gaddafi and Assad. The humanitarian excuse for intervening in Libya is not credible considering Washington’s go-ahead to the Saudi military to crush the protests in Bahrain, the home base for the US Fifth Fleet.
If Washington succeeds in overthrowing the Assad government in Syria, Russia would lose its Mediterranean naval base at the Syrian port of Tartus. Thus, Washington has much to gain if it can use the cloak of popular rebellion to eject both China and Russia from the Mediterranean. Rome’s mare nostrum (“our sea”) would become Washington’s mare nostrum.
“Gaddafi must go,” declared Obama. How long before we also hear, “Assad must go?”
The American captive press is at work demonizing both Gaddafi and Assad, an eye doctor who returned to Syria from London to head the government after his father’s death.
The hypocrisy passes unremarked when Obama calls Gaddafi and Assad dictators. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the American president has been a Caesar. Based on nothing more than a Justice Department memo, George W. Bush was declared to be above US statutory law, international law, and the power of Congress as long as he was acting in his role as commander-in-chief in the “war on terror.”
Caesar Obama has done Bush one step better. Caesar Obama has taken the US to war against Libya without even the pretense of asking Congress for authorization. This is an impeachable offense, but an impotent Congress is unable to protect its power. By accepting the claims of executive authority, Congress has acquiesced to Caesarism. The American people have no more control over their government than do people in countries ruled by dictators.
Washington’s quest for world hegemony is driving the world toward World War III. China is no less proud than was Japan in the 1930s and is unlikely to submit to being bullied and governed by what China regards as the decadent West. Russia’s resentment to its military encirclement is rising. Washington’s hubris can lead to fatal miscalculation.
In the 1930s the US, Great Britain, and the Netherlands set a course for World War II in the Pacific by seizing Japan’s bank accounts in their countries that Japan used to pay for imports and cut Japan off from oil, rubber, tin, iron and other vital materials. Was Pearl Harbour Japan’s response?
Now Washington and its NATO puppets are employing the same strategy against China.
Protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, and Yemen arose from the people protesting against Washington’s tyrannical puppet governments. However, the protests against Gaddafi, who is not a Western puppet, appear to have been organized by the CIA in the eastern part of Libya where the oil is, and where China has substantial energy investments.
Eighty percent of Libya’s oil reserves are believed to be in the Sirte Basin in eastern Libya, now controlled by rebels supported by Washington. As seventy percent of Libya’s GDP is produced by oil, a successful partitioning of Libya would leave Gaddafi’s Tripoli-based regime impoverished. http://www.energyinsights.net
The People’s Daily Online (March 23) reported that China has 50 large-scale projects in Libya. The outbreak of hostilities has halted these projects and resulted in 30,000 Chinese workers being evacuated from Libya. Chinese companies report that they expect to lose hundreds of millions of yuan.
China is relying on Africa, principally Libya, Angola, and Nigeria, for future energy needs. In response to China’s economic engagement with Africa, Washington is engaging the continent military with the US African Command (AFRICOM) created by President George W. Bush in 2007. Forty-nine African countries agreed to participate with Washington in AFRICOM, but Gaddafi refused, thus creating a second reason for Washington to target Libya for takeover.
A third reason for targeting Libya is that Libya and Syria are the only two countries with Mediterranean sea coasts that are not under the control or influence of Washington. Suggestively, protests also have broken out in Syria. Whatever Syrians might think of their government, after watching Iraq’s fate and now Libya’s, it is unlikely that Syrians would set themselves up for US military intervention. Both the CIA and Mossad are known to use social networking sites to foment protests and to spread disinformation. These intelligence services are the likely conspirators that the Syrian and Libyan governments blame for the protests.
Caught off guard by protests in Tunisia and Egypt, Washington realized that protests could be used to remove Gaddafi and Assad. The humanitarian excuse for intervening in Libya is not credible considering Washington’s go-ahead to the Saudi military to crush the protests in Bahrain, the home base for the US Fifth Fleet.
If Washington succeeds in overthrowing the Assad government in Syria, Russia would lose its Mediterranean naval base at the Syrian port of Tartus. Thus, Washington has much to gain if it can use the cloak of popular rebellion to eject both China and Russia from the Mediterranean. Rome’s mare nostrum (“our sea”) would become Washington’s mare nostrum.
“Gaddafi must go,” declared Obama. How long before we also hear, “Assad must go?”
The American captive press is at work demonizing both Gaddafi and Assad, an eye doctor who returned to Syria from London to head the government after his father’s death.
The hypocrisy passes unremarked when Obama calls Gaddafi and Assad dictators. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the American president has been a Caesar. Based on nothing more than a Justice Department memo, George W. Bush was declared to be above US statutory law, international law, and the power of Congress as long as he was acting in his role as commander-in-chief in the “war on terror.”
Caesar Obama has done Bush one step better. Caesar Obama has taken the US to war against Libya without even the pretense of asking Congress for authorization. This is an impeachable offense, but an impotent Congress is unable to protect its power. By accepting the claims of executive authority, Congress has acquiesced to Caesarism. The American people have no more control over their government than do people in countries ruled by dictators.
Washington’s quest for world hegemony is driving the world toward World War III. China is no less proud than was Japan in the 1930s and is unlikely to submit to being bullied and governed by what China regards as the decadent West. Russia’s resentment to its military encirclement is rising. Washington’s hubris can lead to fatal miscalculation.
Saturday, 23 January 2010
UK Election Campaign - Government ups "terror level"
"Terrorist attack is highly likely" claim marks start of UK election campaign.
Yup, it's election time again - and just like clockwork the security services have raised the terror alert to make sure everyone is suitably frightened. Also, BAE Systems (you know - the ones who took all those Saudi bribes which we're not allowed to investigate because of national security?) have landed a big contract to spy on the British population in their back gardens using remote surveillance drones, so there's plenty of reason to ramp up the fearmongering there too.
Imagine - 9 years and Osama Bin Laden apparently still alive. Isn't it good the government is spending our taxes on spying on us? Maybe he's hiding in someone's garden shed in Surbiton?
Yup, it's election time again - and just like clockwork the security services have raised the terror alert to make sure everyone is suitably frightened. Also, BAE Systems (you know - the ones who took all those Saudi bribes which we're not allowed to investigate because of national security?) have landed a big contract to spy on the British population in their back gardens using remote surveillance drones, so there's plenty of reason to ramp up the fearmongering there too.
Imagine - 9 years and Osama Bin Laden apparently still alive. Isn't it good the government is spending our taxes on spying on us? Maybe he's hiding in someone's garden shed in Surbiton?
Tuesday, 5 January 2010
Freedom of Speech includes those we despise
Today, the Home Secretary is ready to ban a provocative anti-war march in Wootton Basset, reports the Daily Mail and other press organs.
Remember this day. Voltaire once said, "I do not agree with a word you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it". Today that principle died in the UK. For years we've accepted provocative marches like the Orange men, CND, BNP, whatever, as the price to pay for living in a liberal democracy. Today, thanks to lots of jingoist, outraged fear and loathing propaganda and Daily Mail bigotry, we've given up yet another of our civil liberties.
Here's what Chomsky says: "If you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don't like. Stalin and Hitler, for example, were dictators in favor of freedom of speech for views they liked only. If you're in favor of freedom of speech, that means you're in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise."
Freedoms are always hard-won, and easily lost. Here goes another one. Remember - the next time you want to protest, or exercise your freedom of speech, you may no longer be allowed...
Remember this day. Voltaire once said, "I do not agree with a word you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it". Today that principle died in the UK. For years we've accepted provocative marches like the Orange men, CND, BNP, whatever, as the price to pay for living in a liberal democracy. Today, thanks to lots of jingoist, outraged fear and loathing propaganda and Daily Mail bigotry, we've given up yet another of our civil liberties.
Here's what Chomsky says: "If you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don't like. Stalin and Hitler, for example, were dictators in favor of freedom of speech for views they liked only. If you're in favor of freedom of speech, that means you're in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise."
Freedoms are always hard-won, and easily lost. Here goes another one. Remember - the next time you want to protest, or exercise your freedom of speech, you may no longer be allowed...
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.
Thursday, 28 May 2009
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.
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.
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.
Thursday, 1 January 2009
An Alternative New Year Message...
The media is awash with prognostication today, most drawing on some pre-war "all pull together" subtext either suggesting that everything's about to collapse and go to hell in a handcart, or that somehow, magically, a solution will appear if we all just knuckle under and do as we're told.
Manuscripts Don't Burn doesn't think any of this is anywhere near good enough. We have an emergent global civilization, enough technology and sophistication to resolve world poverty, hunger, destitution, and homelessness at a fraction of the cost of the cynical jobs-for-the-boys of the War on Turr, and instead we piss it all up against the wall and congratulate ourselves for being so liberal with our irrigational generosity.
We need a slap in the face, now more than ever. Just as our economic miracle is about to catapult us into poverty, civil unrest, and the danger of yet-another artificially instigated war (to wipe out the old surpluses and generate some REAL demand...), Manuscripts Don't Burn would just like to offer a lone voice, crying out amidst the censorship of cacophony that the modern world has become. In Kafka's The Trial, Josef K happens by "chance" into a cathedral, where a preacher is waiting for him in the pulpit. Josef K approaches, passive-aggressive, "what are you looking at", "I'm doing everything I can". The preacher leans over from the pulpit, his face an appalling picture of horror as though seeing a man walking blindly over a precipice, and cries "WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?"
Manuscripts Don't Burn would like to offer this post in the same spirit.
The time is overdue for us to realise that all of us in Western Civilization are guilty of a singular failure of imagination. The levels of technology and sophistication we have achieved could - TODAY - be being used to ensure that basic food, shelter, utilities, education, and healthcare for the whole globe should be unconditionally free and a basic human right. To ensure that once these rudimentary basics of life are finally given free, gratis, for granted, we could all get on with the real business of life - personal development, societal improvement, evolving into what we believe we should be, rather than floundering in the muck.
We should be disgusted with ourselves, that instead of embracing this bright new future, we have voluntarily opted to remain in a stagnant late Capitalism where a bunch of cynical criminals are allowed to manipulate our societies with artificial war, conflict, and scarcity, so that all of our wealth- and livelihood-creation is syphoned off into their bottomless fat cat pockets, and the rest of us have to keep buggering about spending all of our pointless days scrabbling around for a roof over our heads and enough food for eat - when in reality there is of course already plenty to go round.
The time is long past for a collective decision that this IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH, and we finally have to pull our fingers out, take responsibility for our civilization, and do something about this absurd situation of self-imprisonment and self-impoverishment in the name of some dodgy outdated ideology.
Our civilization has the power to GET BRAVE AND CREATIVE AGAIN; the strength to say no to crapness and cynicism, to dare to dream to aim for something better.
Sometimes in history we reach turning points, when a brave hand and a willing imagination could take our civilization a quantum leap forward. We had one after the Second World War; the history of the past 30 years have been one of the retrenchment of the old guard to try and tear down those hard-won social and cultural achievements in the name of a divisive inequality. Here we are again; this time, the odds are stacked against us, and the reactionaries have their pockets wide open to receive the last few drops of blood they can squeeze out of us. Hands up who's prepared to keep assuming the position?
Manuscripts Don't Burn doesn't think any of this is anywhere near good enough. We have an emergent global civilization, enough technology and sophistication to resolve world poverty, hunger, destitution, and homelessness at a fraction of the cost of the cynical jobs-for-the-boys of the War on Turr, and instead we piss it all up against the wall and congratulate ourselves for being so liberal with our irrigational generosity.
We need a slap in the face, now more than ever. Just as our economic miracle is about to catapult us into poverty, civil unrest, and the danger of yet-another artificially instigated war (to wipe out the old surpluses and generate some REAL demand...), Manuscripts Don't Burn would just like to offer a lone voice, crying out amidst the censorship of cacophony that the modern world has become. In Kafka's The Trial, Josef K happens by "chance" into a cathedral, where a preacher is waiting for him in the pulpit. Josef K approaches, passive-aggressive, "what are you looking at", "I'm doing everything I can". The preacher leans over from the pulpit, his face an appalling picture of horror as though seeing a man walking blindly over a precipice, and cries "WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?"
Manuscripts Don't Burn would like to offer this post in the same spirit.
The time is overdue for us to realise that all of us in Western Civilization are guilty of a singular failure of imagination. The levels of technology and sophistication we have achieved could - TODAY - be being used to ensure that basic food, shelter, utilities, education, and healthcare for the whole globe should be unconditionally free and a basic human right. To ensure that once these rudimentary basics of life are finally given free, gratis, for granted, we could all get on with the real business of life - personal development, societal improvement, evolving into what we believe we should be, rather than floundering in the muck.
We should be disgusted with ourselves, that instead of embracing this bright new future, we have voluntarily opted to remain in a stagnant late Capitalism where a bunch of cynical criminals are allowed to manipulate our societies with artificial war, conflict, and scarcity, so that all of our wealth- and livelihood-creation is syphoned off into their bottomless fat cat pockets, and the rest of us have to keep buggering about spending all of our pointless days scrabbling around for a roof over our heads and enough food for eat - when in reality there is of course already plenty to go round.
The time is long past for a collective decision that this IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH, and we finally have to pull our fingers out, take responsibility for our civilization, and do something about this absurd situation of self-imprisonment and self-impoverishment in the name of some dodgy outdated ideology.
Our civilization has the power to GET BRAVE AND CREATIVE AGAIN; the strength to say no to crapness and cynicism, to dare to dream to aim for something better.
Sometimes in history we reach turning points, when a brave hand and a willing imagination could take our civilization a quantum leap forward. We had one after the Second World War; the history of the past 30 years have been one of the retrenchment of the old guard to try and tear down those hard-won social and cultural achievements in the name of a divisive inequality. Here we are again; this time, the odds are stacked against us, and the reactionaries have their pockets wide open to receive the last few drops of blood they can squeeze out of us. Hands up who's prepared to keep assuming the position?
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.
Thursday, 23 October 2008
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.
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.
Monday, 5 May 2008
Irrelevant diversions as the price of food rockets...
The average UK family is facing a £1700-a-year utility and food bill increase over the past 12 months - that on a £20K gross salary. For most of the population, regardless of what the government says, actual experienced inflation is running at 10-15%.
It's inevitable, we are told. Poor harvests. Overpopulation. Global warming. "The era of cheap food is over." "We all have to tighten our belts and pull together - it'll be like the war again. It's the New Austerity."
Bullshit.
The elephant in the room is that we have food riots all around the world and looming shortages / starvation because a bunch of brokers are being allowed by supine governments to create a bubble in commodities (ie FOOD) to try and claw back some of the money they lost in the subprime fiasco (after they'd been "allowed" to flog off the backup foodstores we'd set aside to prevent this sort of thing happening).
It's not global warming, it's not overpopulation. Our governments are allowing private individuals to speculate with the global staple food and energy supply. Irresponsible laissez-faire and lack of planning is the crime, that and the fact that the media are not shouting the truth from the rooftops.
But, hey, this is corporate feudalism - it's cool if people die, as long as the brokers keep making their millions. We can always blame it on global warming and overpopulation! The poor saps will never cotton on till it's too late - then they'll be too hungry to do anything about it.
Buy coffee! Buy rice! Buy wheat! The price is gonna rocket once the people start dropping!
*****
Support material: Truthout.org, "Making a Killing from Hunger"
It's inevitable, we are told. Poor harvests. Overpopulation. Global warming. "The era of cheap food is over." "We all have to tighten our belts and pull together - it'll be like the war again. It's the New Austerity."
Bullshit.
The elephant in the room is that we have food riots all around the world and looming shortages / starvation because a bunch of brokers are being allowed by supine governments to create a bubble in commodities (ie FOOD) to try and claw back some of the money they lost in the subprime fiasco (after they'd been "allowed" to flog off the backup foodstores we'd set aside to prevent this sort of thing happening).
It's not global warming, it's not overpopulation. Our governments are allowing private individuals to speculate with the global staple food and energy supply. Irresponsible laissez-faire and lack of planning is the crime, that and the fact that the media are not shouting the truth from the rooftops.
But, hey, this is corporate feudalism - it's cool if people die, as long as the brokers keep making their millions. We can always blame it on global warming and overpopulation! The poor saps will never cotton on till it's too late - then they'll be too hungry to do anything about it.
Buy coffee! Buy rice! Buy wheat! The price is gonna rocket once the people start dropping!
*****
Support material: Truthout.org, "Making a Killing from Hunger"
Sunday, 16 March 2008
Unreported: Housing Benefit Applicants Dispersed by Riot Police in Florida
Manuscripts Don't Burn believes that this is where our job gets tricky. The number of watershed events of police oppression against our populations is rising above a number which can be easily reported, and of course is being ignored by our supine mainstream corporate media. Nevertheless, we'll attempt to pick up on what we regard as key, symbolic events and record them here. Just click on the "What They Don't Want You To Know" in the "Length and Breadth of the Shaft" column on the right hand side of your screen to see news items which the media strenuously want to ignore.
On Wednesday, March the 12th, the Palm Beach Post reported the shocking news that a crowd of 500 housing benefit applicants in Palm Beach had been dispersed by police in riot gear when application forms ran out earlier than expected.
Two people were arrested and six to eight people hospitalized for exhaustion during the ordeal.
Hundreds of people, mostly mothers who had spent more than eight hours in line - all night, in other words - were forced to leave the property at 2333 W. Glades Road by 30 Boca Raton Police officers, including SWAT team members, who walked toward the crowd in unison holding their police shields up about 10:30 a.m.
By the end of the operation, in which mothers with children were dispersed by riot police for having got angry at waiting all night for housing benefit application forms, only to be turned away, police declared they were satisfied with the operation and happy that "no one got hurt".
Hang on! No one got hurt? Women and children at a benefits office being dispersed by riot police?
Be under no illusions, people. This is what the draconian laws removing your civil liberties have been for over these past few years. Food is running out. Inflation is raging. Unemployment is hidden and epidemic. The crash has now started and is gathering pace. Try and protest, and this is what you face - riot police, or worse. Don't forget those enormous internment camps Dick Cheney's Halliburton has been building! Click here for the official Halliburton press release and here for the analysis.
For Manuscripts Don't Burn, one of the most telling comments came from Shayla Williams, 22, of West Palm Beach, who was angered by the police tactics.
"This place is going to get shot up later," she yelled to officers. "They can't treat us like this."
Tony Benn once said the benefit of our society was that, for the first time in history, we could change our government if we didn't like it without there having to be blood on the streets. Manuscripts Don't Burn wonders what Mr. Benn would say today.
Keep the flame, guys, and remember: manuscripts don't burn - you can't kill an idea. Spread the word.
On Wednesday, March the 12th, the Palm Beach Post reported the shocking news that a crowd of 500 housing benefit applicants in Palm Beach had been dispersed by police in riot gear when application forms ran out earlier than expected.
Two people were arrested and six to eight people hospitalized for exhaustion during the ordeal.
Hundreds of people, mostly mothers who had spent more than eight hours in line - all night, in other words - were forced to leave the property at 2333 W. Glades Road by 30 Boca Raton Police officers, including SWAT team members, who walked toward the crowd in unison holding their police shields up about 10:30 a.m.
By the end of the operation, in which mothers with children were dispersed by riot police for having got angry at waiting all night for housing benefit application forms, only to be turned away, police declared they were satisfied with the operation and happy that "no one got hurt".
Hang on! No one got hurt? Women and children at a benefits office being dispersed by riot police?
Be under no illusions, people. This is what the draconian laws removing your civil liberties have been for over these past few years. Food is running out. Inflation is raging. Unemployment is hidden and epidemic. The crash has now started and is gathering pace. Try and protest, and this is what you face - riot police, or worse. Don't forget those enormous internment camps Dick Cheney's Halliburton has been building! Click here for the official Halliburton press release and here for the analysis.
For Manuscripts Don't Burn, one of the most telling comments came from Shayla Williams, 22, of West Palm Beach, who was angered by the police tactics.
"This place is going to get shot up later," she yelled to officers. "They can't treat us like this."
Tony Benn once said the benefit of our society was that, for the first time in history, we could change our government if we didn't like it without there having to be blood on the streets. Manuscripts Don't Burn wonders what Mr. Benn would say today.
Keep the flame, guys, and remember: manuscripts don't burn - you can't kill an idea. Spread the word.
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
Blatant Graft Brings the West to the brink of Economic Collapse
Sometimes, when reading the papers, it's easy to get the impression that all this economic chaos and impending suffering and hardship is some Act of God. The way the papers paint it, it's as much a surprise to the Powers That Be as to the rest of us. Heavens to Betsy, they say, how could things have come to this? It was all going so well - none of us saw this coming...
Go to hell. The coming wipeout of our decent standards of living and social freedoms is horribly deliberate, and the result of a policy more than a generation old to reverse the social and economic levelling which followed WW2 and replace it with a blatant unfairness and pseudo-feudalism reminiscent of the late 19th century - before We the Proles got organised and demanded our share of the cake.
Whilst the supine press continue to hem and haw and wonder how things could have gone so terribly wrong, Manuscripts Don't Burn would like to express its anger and disgust, and enumerate some facts which may help shed light on events unfolding in the US and which will ultimately impact the freedoms and standard of living of all of us in the West, and indeed beyond. Not only is what is currently being called "the sub-prime crisis" a deliberate product of US government policy, it is merely the latest episode in the tightening of the noose of the New World Order, and the US government itself (in the person of The Dear Leader, BushCo) is managing the shenanigans in a way which - to those of us of purer mind - appears deeply criminal. Bearing in mind that this is merely the latest episode, Manuscripts Don't Burn would like to observe:
1. In an unprecedented use of the legal power of "federal pre-emption," BushCo recently ordered the individual states of the US to NOT enforce their consumer protection laws, thus allowing banks to practice "fraudulent conveyance" or "predatory lending" as it's defined under US law. In other words, BushCo didn't just turn a blind eye to what the banks were up to, they actively enabled the whole sub-prime bullshit that led to this bail-out.
2. Eliot Spitzer - the "bane of Wall Street" - was in Washington in February to launch a campaign to take on and investigate the financial alchemy of the Bush regime, and some of the biggest financial powers on the planet.
On the night of February 13 when Spitzer made the stupid choice to order some saucy take-out in his Washington Hotel room, he had just finished signing these words for the Washington Post about predatory loans:
"Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye."
Spitzer said in the headline, that Bush was the "Predator Lenders' Partner in Crime." The President, said Spitzer, was a fugitive from justice.
3. Last Wednesday, the 12th March, Carlyle Capital went bankrupt. Carlyle Capital is an offshore subsidiary of the Carlyle Group, who have some powerful friends: James Baker, Senior Counsel; notable partners, former and past: George Bush, the Bin Laden family, John Major and more dictators, pirates and presidents than you've had hot dinners. The Federal Bank acted swiftly and Bernanke dumped $200 billion on the poor little suffering bankers. They got the public treasure, and got to keep all those houses too. As a result, every mortgage sharking operation shot up in value on Wall Street.
The very same day the bail-out was decided - what a coincidence! - the man called "The Sheriff of Wall Street" was cuffed, and Eliot Spitzer was silenced.
4. Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, paid Washington DC prostitutes to put him in diapers, yet the Senator was not exposed by the US prosecutors busting the pimp-ring that pampered him. Naming and shaming and ruining Spitzer - rarely done in these cases - was made at the "discretion" of Bush's Justice Department.
So, BushCo creates financial turmoil, breaking the law yet again. It gets away with it - yet again - and yet again simultaneously enriches all their friends in the ruling class. Meanwhile, the poor move into their cars.
Is it us, or is anyone else seeing a pattern here?
Go to hell. The coming wipeout of our decent standards of living and social freedoms is horribly deliberate, and the result of a policy more than a generation old to reverse the social and economic levelling which followed WW2 and replace it with a blatant unfairness and pseudo-feudalism reminiscent of the late 19th century - before We the Proles got organised and demanded our share of the cake.
Whilst the supine press continue to hem and haw and wonder how things could have gone so terribly wrong, Manuscripts Don't Burn would like to express its anger and disgust, and enumerate some facts which may help shed light on events unfolding in the US and which will ultimately impact the freedoms and standard of living of all of us in the West, and indeed beyond. Not only is what is currently being called "the sub-prime crisis" a deliberate product of US government policy, it is merely the latest episode in the tightening of the noose of the New World Order, and the US government itself (in the person of The Dear Leader, BushCo) is managing the shenanigans in a way which - to those of us of purer mind - appears deeply criminal. Bearing in mind that this is merely the latest episode, Manuscripts Don't Burn would like to observe:
1. In an unprecedented use of the legal power of "federal pre-emption," BushCo recently ordered the individual states of the US to NOT enforce their consumer protection laws, thus allowing banks to practice "fraudulent conveyance" or "predatory lending" as it's defined under US law. In other words, BushCo didn't just turn a blind eye to what the banks were up to, they actively enabled the whole sub-prime bullshit that led to this bail-out.
2. Eliot Spitzer - the "bane of Wall Street" - was in Washington in February to launch a campaign to take on and investigate the financial alchemy of the Bush regime, and some of the biggest financial powers on the planet.
On the night of February 13 when Spitzer made the stupid choice to order some saucy take-out in his Washington Hotel room, he had just finished signing these words for the Washington Post about predatory loans:
"Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye."
Spitzer said in the headline, that Bush was the "Predator Lenders' Partner in Crime." The President, said Spitzer, was a fugitive from justice.
3. Last Wednesday, the 12th March, Carlyle Capital went bankrupt. Carlyle Capital is an offshore subsidiary of the Carlyle Group, who have some powerful friends: James Baker, Senior Counsel; notable partners, former and past: George Bush, the Bin Laden family, John Major and more dictators, pirates and presidents than you've had hot dinners. The Federal Bank acted swiftly and Bernanke dumped $200 billion on the poor little suffering bankers. They got the public treasure, and got to keep all those houses too. As a result, every mortgage sharking operation shot up in value on Wall Street.
The very same day the bail-out was decided - what a coincidence! - the man called "The Sheriff of Wall Street" was cuffed, and Eliot Spitzer was silenced.
4. Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, paid Washington DC prostitutes to put him in diapers, yet the Senator was not exposed by the US prosecutors busting the pimp-ring that pampered him. Naming and shaming and ruining Spitzer - rarely done in these cases - was made at the "discretion" of Bush's Justice Department.
So, BushCo creates financial turmoil, breaking the law yet again. It gets away with it - yet again - and yet again simultaneously enriches all their friends in the ruling class. Meanwhile, the poor move into their cars.
Is it us, or is anyone else seeing a pattern here?
Wednesday, 27 February 2008
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.
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.
Friday, 15 February 2008
Who Will Rid Me of this Turbulent Website - Economic Indicators Site Closed Down
There is an Inconvenient Truth known as the Economic Indicators website at www.economicindicators.gov, a site run by the US government providing free-of-charge data on the state of the US economy. As Forbes has explained, the site provides an invaluable service to the public for accessing US economic data:
This site is maintained by the Economics and Statistics Administration and combines data collected by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, like GDP and net imports and exports, and the Census Bureau, like retail sales and durable goods shipments. The site simply links to the relevant department’s Web site. This might not seem like a big deal, but doing it yourself–say, trying to find retail sales data on the Census Bureau’s site–is such an exercise in futility that it will convince you why this portal is necessary.
As of March 1 this year, the Bush administration is going to CLOSE DOWN this website due to "budgetary constraints". Yeah, right... As if "budgetary constraints" affected anything that BushCo did. And, in any case, as those of us who know anything about the production of websites is concerned, EconomicIndicators.gov costs almost NOTHING to run - the only "budget saving" would be if BushCo decided they weren't going to collect the stats at all, which is hardly likely... But, as we all know, the "budget" has nothing to do with it - it's the fact that this information is being made freely available to the global public.
Henceforth, this free economic data will NOT BE AVAILABLE TO YOU, although you'll be able to pay (through the nose) for "bulletins" detailing bits of the economy that BushCo want you to know about.
Again and again, the pieces add up. Freedom of information in the Anglo-Saxon Empire is being systematically closed down, to general apathy. We keep a record here of how it was done - in case it should prove useful to posterity. We can always hope.
Mr Bush - the time for glorifying yourself will soon be at an end.
This site is maintained by the Economics and Statistics Administration and combines data collected by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, like GDP and net imports and exports, and the Census Bureau, like retail sales and durable goods shipments. The site simply links to the relevant department’s Web site. This might not seem like a big deal, but doing it yourself–say, trying to find retail sales data on the Census Bureau’s site–is such an exercise in futility that it will convince you why this portal is necessary.
As of March 1 this year, the Bush administration is going to CLOSE DOWN this website due to "budgetary constraints". Yeah, right... As if "budgetary constraints" affected anything that BushCo did. And, in any case, as those of us who know anything about the production of websites is concerned, EconomicIndicators.gov costs almost NOTHING to run - the only "budget saving" would be if BushCo decided they weren't going to collect the stats at all, which is hardly likely... But, as we all know, the "budget" has nothing to do with it - it's the fact that this information is being made freely available to the global public.
Henceforth, this free economic data will NOT BE AVAILABLE TO YOU, although you'll be able to pay (through the nose) for "bulletins" detailing bits of the economy that BushCo want you to know about.
Again and again, the pieces add up. Freedom of information in the Anglo-Saxon Empire is being systematically closed down, to general apathy. We keep a record here of how it was done - in case it should prove useful to posterity. We can always hope.
Mr Bush - the time for glorifying yourself will soon be at an end.
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.
Multi-million Pound Study States the "Bleeding Obvious"
The Guardian reports today that the Sutton Trust, an "influential charity", whatever that is, has discovered that university tuition fees in the UK actually favour rich families, and have been dissuading poorer students from going to university because of "fear of debt".
This kind of pseudo-revelatory bollocks really angers Manuscripts Don't Burn. In fact, Manuscripts Don't Burn is offering itself up as a "Blindingly Obvious Think Tank" for government ministries and "influential charities" to save millions of pounds in future when researching the f*cking obvious. If you want to know whether water is wet, the pope catholic, or whether setting yourself on fire is likely to hurt, just call Manuscripts Don't Burn - we'll send you a 700-page feasibility study and multimedia-sexy Powerpoint presentation in a fraction of the time of Accenture and at a fraction of the cost... For F*ck's Sake...
University Tuition fees are one of the shameful legacies of Thatcher's social engineering program which the NuLabour coup did nothing to expunge, and which since its inception has done its job to increasingly dumb down the Proles and leave a generation of young people intellectually frustrated and unable to afford education whilst the like of Hatfield Polytechnic (the "University of Hertford") are packed out with thousands upon thousands of A-level students pretending to do media studies degrees on mummy and daddy's bank account.
You may have already guessed it from our tone, but Manuscripts Don't Burn represents one of the thousands who, in times past, would not have been allowed to go to university by its parents if it entailed racking up tens of thousands of pounds worth of debt before the age of 20. And quite rightly so. Education is not a privilege - it is a right. It is not something which we have to buy; we, and our parents, grandparents, and all taxpayers and disenfranchised folks for generations past, have already more than paid for it - education is owing to us.
The social engineering of university tuition fees is all the more horrible because of its short-sightedness. No longer does the UK have a sufficiently skilled workforce; no longer to the desperately cheapened "A-levels" count for anything when entering university; no longer does a BA mean what it did a generation ago - not when they're two a penny. We now have to look abroad for our doctors, dentists, engineers, technicians. The UK, by this and other dismal methods of social engineering, is hollowing itself out, turning itself into a shadow, in which all looks well when seen on paper, but outside, in the real world, things look terribly, terribly different.
So remember - the next time you're about to spend millions of pounds on a survey to find out the bleeding obvious, think of Manuscripts Don't Burn.
Tune in next week for: Why Lending Thousands of Pounds to Penniless People on State Benefits is a BAD IDEA and not a Viable Method of "Structured Investment".
This kind of pseudo-revelatory bollocks really angers Manuscripts Don't Burn. In fact, Manuscripts Don't Burn is offering itself up as a "Blindingly Obvious Think Tank" for government ministries and "influential charities" to save millions of pounds in future when researching the f*cking obvious. If you want to know whether water is wet, the pope catholic, or whether setting yourself on fire is likely to hurt, just call Manuscripts Don't Burn - we'll send you a 700-page feasibility study and multimedia-sexy Powerpoint presentation in a fraction of the time of Accenture and at a fraction of the cost... For F*ck's Sake...
University Tuition fees are one of the shameful legacies of Thatcher's social engineering program which the NuLabour coup did nothing to expunge, and which since its inception has done its job to increasingly dumb down the Proles and leave a generation of young people intellectually frustrated and unable to afford education whilst the like of Hatfield Polytechnic (the "University of Hertford") are packed out with thousands upon thousands of A-level students pretending to do media studies degrees on mummy and daddy's bank account.
You may have already guessed it from our tone, but Manuscripts Don't Burn represents one of the thousands who, in times past, would not have been allowed to go to university by its parents if it entailed racking up tens of thousands of pounds worth of debt before the age of 20. And quite rightly so. Education is not a privilege - it is a right. It is not something which we have to buy; we, and our parents, grandparents, and all taxpayers and disenfranchised folks for generations past, have already more than paid for it - education is owing to us.
The social engineering of university tuition fees is all the more horrible because of its short-sightedness. No longer does the UK have a sufficiently skilled workforce; no longer to the desperately cheapened "A-levels" count for anything when entering university; no longer does a BA mean what it did a generation ago - not when they're two a penny. We now have to look abroad for our doctors, dentists, engineers, technicians. The UK, by this and other dismal methods of social engineering, is hollowing itself out, turning itself into a shadow, in which all looks well when seen on paper, but outside, in the real world, things look terribly, terribly different.
So remember - the next time you're about to spend millions of pounds on a survey to find out the bleeding obvious, think of Manuscripts Don't Burn.
Tune in next week for: Why Lending Thousands of Pounds to Penniless People on State Benefits is a BAD IDEA and not a Viable Method of "Structured Investment".
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.
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