Cor... ain't it quiet?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE BIG LIE

Time to roll out the old Goebbels quote:

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

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

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

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

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

It's like turkeys voting for Christmas.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

Chronicle of a Rape Foretold: Economic Collapse 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

Angry, us? Does it show?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Growth Junkies: Why we are here in the first place

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

SocialistMike:

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

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

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

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

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

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

*****

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

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

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

Welcome to the Revolution...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Economic "Crisis": The Great Redistribution Continues Apace

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ignorance is Strength, indeed.

Civil Disobedience: Vandalised Speed Cameras

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

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

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

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