Just one more interesting note of the British insurrection - yesterday Prime Minister Cameron told us that they were going to investigate and reflect on the recent events. But before any reflection or investigation he told us that we have to understand that the riots weren't about race because not every rioter was black, and the riots were not about cutbacks or economic dépravation or democracy.
In other words, the Prime Minster wants to make sure that before the investigate or reflect on the events, we all already know what the conclusions should be.
Tories have never been interested in truth so it shouldn't surprise us. But what continues to be surprising to me (though at this point it really shouldn't) is that people buy this stuff. It is not surprising that riots and insurrections happen - it is surprising that they don't happen all the time.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Friday, August 12, 2011
Why Are Explanations Suddenly the Same as Support????
I find the recent discourse on the riots in England sad and tragic but I guess it is typical of any state apparatus from Syria to the UK to marginalize insurrectionists, calling them common criminals or terrorists.
What really aggravates me is that if one attempts to explain the root causes of the insurrection, it is viewed as being tantamount to condoning every kind of violence. Again, this is a technique used by leaders in almost every country. They are always desperate to demonize anyone who stands against the status quo. However, if one is even vaguely aware of history they know that if you leave people living in misery and desperation, without eductions and without hope for their futures, they will eventually rebel. It is as simple as that. However, to suggest that this understanding is a uniform advocation of violence of all kinds, is absurd.
Here is an imaginary news transcript to make the point.
Reporter; We are talking with Joe Aeroguy, an expert in airplane safety about the recent rash of airline accidents. Mr. Aeroguy, what do you think has led to these terrible accidents?
Mr. Aeroguy: Well, in the past few years the government has loosened the safety regulations concerning regular maintenance and the Airline companies have found many ways to cut corners on their regular maintenance program. We in the safety industry have been saying for years that these cutbacks would eventually lead to accidents and loss of life.
Reporter: Are you saying that you condone these accidents??
Mr. Aeroguy: WTF??
Exactly! Pointing out that insurrections are a perfectly predictable result of years of oppression, systemic racism, failure to provide services, and a basic lack of hope, is not the same as advocating violence. Rather, it is a call to fix what is wrong instead of demonizing and marginalizing the people who are reacting to something that many of us have never had to endure.
What really aggravates me is that if one attempts to explain the root causes of the insurrection, it is viewed as being tantamount to condoning every kind of violence. Again, this is a technique used by leaders in almost every country. They are always desperate to demonize anyone who stands against the status quo. However, if one is even vaguely aware of history they know that if you leave people living in misery and desperation, without eductions and without hope for their futures, they will eventually rebel. It is as simple as that. However, to suggest that this understanding is a uniform advocation of violence of all kinds, is absurd.
Here is an imaginary news transcript to make the point.
Reporter; We are talking with Joe Aeroguy, an expert in airplane safety about the recent rash of airline accidents. Mr. Aeroguy, what do you think has led to these terrible accidents?
Mr. Aeroguy: Well, in the past few years the government has loosened the safety regulations concerning regular maintenance and the Airline companies have found many ways to cut corners on their regular maintenance program. We in the safety industry have been saying for years that these cutbacks would eventually lead to accidents and loss of life.
Reporter: Are you saying that you condone these accidents??
Mr. Aeroguy: WTF??
Exactly! Pointing out that insurrections are a perfectly predictable result of years of oppression, systemic racism, failure to provide services, and a basic lack of hope, is not the same as advocating violence. Rather, it is a call to fix what is wrong instead of demonizing and marginalizing the people who are reacting to something that many of us have never had to endure.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Violence, A Way of Life for the Wealthy of Britain. . . . .
Ok, I have to say it. It must be said and no one else seems ready to say it so the responsibility falls upon me.
I have an important message to all those stuffy, self-righteous, hypocritical English MPs and commentators concerning their continual condemnation of the rioters in Britain - You have to shut up now! How weary I grow of representatives of the British Government telling us that "nothing justifies the violence." It would sound great if it was not so monumentally steeped in utter hypocrisy! The British authorities, governments, and aristocrats have been perpetrating excessive violence at home and abroad for centuries. Millions have died in the British pursuit of wealth and power. Most recently the British government was involved in the illegal invasion of Iraq where tens of thousands (some sources say hundreds of thousands) died in the pursuit of British wealth and power.
Let us be honest, it is not violence that the British government objects to, it is violence that is not committed by them in the interest of the corporations and the capitalist class that bothers them. The simple proof is in their long history of unadulterated and mass violence.
The French Aristocracy insisted that those who stormed the Bastille were simple criminals and terrorists. But for centuries the working-class of Britain (and particularly those who are not 'white') have been left in desperation, without decent educations, without real opportunities, without hope, that is violence! And every once in a while the simmering anger and desperation will burst into flames - much to the chagrin of the rich and powerful. The sad thing is that these poor saps are simply looting stores and setting fire to a few buildings and many of them will end up in prison. It is amateur hour really. While these rioters are looting stores, the upper-class of Britain has been looting entire continents!! And while the racialized minority rioters will either end up in jail or going back to a life of unfulfilled desperation, those who have been looting whole countries live long lives of prosperity.
Of course, some people who absolutely don't deserve it, will be victims of these riots. But centuries of violent treatment, inequality, and oppression, never results in anything good. Meanwhile the real perpetrators of massive and universal violence go happily on.
I have an important message to all those stuffy, self-righteous, hypocritical English MPs and commentators concerning their continual condemnation of the rioters in Britain - You have to shut up now! How weary I grow of representatives of the British Government telling us that "nothing justifies the violence." It would sound great if it was not so monumentally steeped in utter hypocrisy! The British authorities, governments, and aristocrats have been perpetrating excessive violence at home and abroad for centuries. Millions have died in the British pursuit of wealth and power. Most recently the British government was involved in the illegal invasion of Iraq where tens of thousands (some sources say hundreds of thousands) died in the pursuit of British wealth and power.
Let us be honest, it is not violence that the British government objects to, it is violence that is not committed by them in the interest of the corporations and the capitalist class that bothers them. The simple proof is in their long history of unadulterated and mass violence.
The French Aristocracy insisted that those who stormed the Bastille were simple criminals and terrorists. But for centuries the working-class of Britain (and particularly those who are not 'white') have been left in desperation, without decent educations, without real opportunities, without hope, that is violence! And every once in a while the simmering anger and desperation will burst into flames - much to the chagrin of the rich and powerful. The sad thing is that these poor saps are simply looting stores and setting fire to a few buildings and many of them will end up in prison. It is amateur hour really. While these rioters are looting stores, the upper-class of Britain has been looting entire continents!! And while the racialized minority rioters will either end up in jail or going back to a life of unfulfilled desperation, those who have been looting whole countries live long lives of prosperity.
Of course, some people who absolutely don't deserve it, will be victims of these riots. But centuries of violent treatment, inequality, and oppression, never results in anything good. Meanwhile the real perpetrators of massive and universal violence go happily on.
Signs of the Apocalypse. . . .
"We're just showing the rich people that we can do what we want. . ."
-Rioter in Croydon
Monday, August 8, 2011
Real Liberty, not Illusion. . . . .
I think anyone who is even vaguely aware of the real history of Western democracy is fairly hesitant to legitimize modern conservatism by actually debating with its adherents in a serious way. People like Robert Ford or the so-called "tea-partiers" are so vastly ignorant of almost anything in the realm of serious politics that to discuss with them in a serious way seems absurd and slightly perverse. In fact modern conservatives are so vastly ignorant of the roots of democracy that I am certain that history will judge so-called neo-conservatism as one of those sad and embarrassing chapters of history like the McCarthy hearings. It has recently been particularly embarrassing in the US as the 'tea-partiers' continually invoke the so-called founding fathers while knowing nothing about the real issues that surrounded the revolution and the struggles that came after it. The differences between, say John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were incredibly wide and very important. And what is perhaps even more important than the arguments between the early revolutionaries is the fact that, given the changes that gradually took place in the two centuries after the American (and French) revolution, it is absurd to attempt a simplistic application of, say, Jeffersonian or Federalist policies to todays political situation. Hamilton and the Federalists were attempting to create what they thought would be a modern democratic system by aligning with Britain, creating a central bank, and supporting commercialism and increased trade. Though their elitism and commercialism have more in common with modern Republicans than Democrats, their notion of a more centralized and powerful federal state has more to do with modern democrats. Similarly, Jefferson's fear of a powerful central government sounds sort of like modern Republicans while his fear of a commercial elite rings more of the modern Democratic party.
The fact is that you can not draw too straight a line between 18th century revolutionaries from Thomas Paine to Thomas Jefferson to Jean-Paul Marat to todays political agendas because too much changed in the meantime. Men like Jefferson and Paine feared elitism and centralized power because their only experience of the state was one of the raw power of the aristocracy. At the time it was a fitting fear. But I think they also understood that commercial power could be just as dangerous as traditional state and aristocratic power (something that modern conservatives completely miss). So you get modern conservatives invoking the name of men like Jefferson as a warning of tyranny and loss of liberty, but this is largely meaningless because if Jefferson were alive today he would understand that while the state must always be watched, it can also be an institution that can improve the conditions of everyone.
Above all, what modern conservatives miss (intentionally or simply out of ignorance) is that liberty in the modern world is not about low taxes or a smaller state or anything like that. Liberty has to do with an equality of opportunity. The way to increase liberty for everyone, is to ensure that as many people as possible have as much opportunity as they can. However, the conservative agenda will decrease opportunity and therefore decrease liberty. Privatizing education and healthcare (both things that conservative want to do), for example, will mean that education will be for the rich and people, like in the US, will live in constant fear of going bankrupt because they or someone in their family gets sick. Furthermore, putting more and more power in the hands of the corporations will continue to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the few and reduce the liberty of the many.
Modern social democracy does not have its roots in any one thinker or movement. However, it grew out of those radicals who knew that the ancien regime was an abuse of power, but also began to quickly realize that the power of the corporate elite was just as dangerous as the abusive aristocracy of the past. The men and women of the Trade Union movement and left of center parties in Western nations were the ones who really understood liberty because they knew that only when wealth and power were well distributed in society and only when we significantly increased the equality of opportunity would we begin to achieve real liberty.
Rightwing notions of liberty are simply illusory and lead to nowhere but to the past when the majority had nothing and a few rich people had more or less everything. And the remarkable ignorance of men like Robert Ford, the Federal Conservative Party leaders and the "tea-partiers" (ignorance they often seem to boast about) only illustrates that modern conservatism belongs in the dust-bin of history.
The fact is that you can not draw too straight a line between 18th century revolutionaries from Thomas Paine to Thomas Jefferson to Jean-Paul Marat to todays political agendas because too much changed in the meantime. Men like Jefferson and Paine feared elitism and centralized power because their only experience of the state was one of the raw power of the aristocracy. At the time it was a fitting fear. But I think they also understood that commercial power could be just as dangerous as traditional state and aristocratic power (something that modern conservatives completely miss). So you get modern conservatives invoking the name of men like Jefferson as a warning of tyranny and loss of liberty, but this is largely meaningless because if Jefferson were alive today he would understand that while the state must always be watched, it can also be an institution that can improve the conditions of everyone.
Above all, what modern conservatives miss (intentionally or simply out of ignorance) is that liberty in the modern world is not about low taxes or a smaller state or anything like that. Liberty has to do with an equality of opportunity. The way to increase liberty for everyone, is to ensure that as many people as possible have as much opportunity as they can. However, the conservative agenda will decrease opportunity and therefore decrease liberty. Privatizing education and healthcare (both things that conservative want to do), for example, will mean that education will be for the rich and people, like in the US, will live in constant fear of going bankrupt because they or someone in their family gets sick. Furthermore, putting more and more power in the hands of the corporations will continue to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the few and reduce the liberty of the many.
Modern social democracy does not have its roots in any one thinker or movement. However, it grew out of those radicals who knew that the ancien regime was an abuse of power, but also began to quickly realize that the power of the corporate elite was just as dangerous as the abusive aristocracy of the past. The men and women of the Trade Union movement and left of center parties in Western nations were the ones who really understood liberty because they knew that only when wealth and power were well distributed in society and only when we significantly increased the equality of opportunity would we begin to achieve real liberty.
Rightwing notions of liberty are simply illusory and lead to nowhere but to the past when the majority had nothing and a few rich people had more or less everything. And the remarkable ignorance of men like Robert Ford, the Federal Conservative Party leaders and the "tea-partiers" (ignorance they often seem to boast about) only illustrates that modern conservatism belongs in the dust-bin of history.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Rightwing haters. . . .
Frankly it is nice that the Right-wing is slowly being exposed for what they really are, mean-spirited and incompetent. The events in Norway are unspeakable and tragic beyond imagination, but they are a very direct result of the rightwing ideology of hate that has been fostered for the past generation. Though many rightwingers attempt to gild their anti-muslim, anti-immigration, and anti-multi-cultural viewpoints with reasonable discourse, at the heart of these feelings, which rightwingers everywhere have cultivated, is a fundamentally hateful and intolerant viewpoint.
At a less tragic, and more prosaic, level, recent events on the political scene have finally begun to expose the ridiculous myth that the rightwing is 'fiscally responsible.' It is taken a long time for people to actually begin to come to grips with this at a public level, but it is finally happening. We had to watch governments like those of Reagan, Thatcher, Mulroney, Bush, and Harper for people to begin to wake-up but it has definitely started.
I think the myth of fiscal responsibility in the rightwing comes from a very basic dilemma which has gradually become more clear as the global economy has changed and more pressure is put on the public purse in Western nations. It is not that rightwingers don't want to be fiscally responsible per se that has been a problem. Rather the difficulty exists for them at a different level. The rightwing has an agenda by which they want to expand the wealth of the rich and the corporations and one of the primary modes to achieve this end is to lower the corporate tax rates and taxes on the rich. In order to make this a saleable policy they have had to continually make a public claim that they know to be entirely false, that lower taxes on corporations and the rich will actually increase government revenue and improve the economic situation for everyone. This is simply false, and always has been. Not a single credible study suggests that this claim is true, in fact quite the opposite. By pursuing these policies the right only succeeds in lowering government revenue. As a result of shrinking revenue the right is then forced to cut social services to make up the differences, an idea they essentially don't mind since it undermines the position of the poor and vulnerable and further strengthens the power of the rich. But here is where the dilemma really kicks in - the right, like everyone, relies on elections to maintain power and if they cut too much, particularly from the elderly, they will not get reelected. And it is just too difficult in the final analysis to cut enough to make up for the shrinking revenue situation that they have created. Thus rightwing government continually destroy public finances in the process. It is not that they don't have the stomach to completely cut social services, it is just that they know they cannot get reelected if they do. When you actually get almost all rightwingers to be honest in private they uniformly admit that they don't believe in universal public education or health care, for example, but they would never admit that publicly because their portion of the vote would be reduced to less than ten percent.
In other words, the right is financially irresponsible because the combination of their ideology and electoral politics forces them to be. But the continual repetition of this scenario is finally making the reality of rightwing irresponsibility more clear to people. The only thing that has maintained the rightwing at all is more or less total domination of the media which sells the falsehoods of fiscal responsibility nonstop.
Hate and irresponsibility are the hallmarks of the right. Listen any day to your local rightwing radio call in show and you will hear rightwingers peddling their hate, ignorance, and lies relentlessly. They will condemn the Charter and Rights, condemn immigration, condemn non-christians, condemn the laws which attempt to protect the vulnerable, and condemn multi-culturalism. Meanwhile they will promote a huge and blatant lie that reducing corporate taxes will increase government revenue while their parties bankrupt nations full of millionnaires. But the lies will not stand for much longer as tragedies of their hate become more clear in poverty, wretchedness, and the barrel of a gun.
At a less tragic, and more prosaic, level, recent events on the political scene have finally begun to expose the ridiculous myth that the rightwing is 'fiscally responsible.' It is taken a long time for people to actually begin to come to grips with this at a public level, but it is finally happening. We had to watch governments like those of Reagan, Thatcher, Mulroney, Bush, and Harper for people to begin to wake-up but it has definitely started.
I think the myth of fiscal responsibility in the rightwing comes from a very basic dilemma which has gradually become more clear as the global economy has changed and more pressure is put on the public purse in Western nations. It is not that rightwingers don't want to be fiscally responsible per se that has been a problem. Rather the difficulty exists for them at a different level. The rightwing has an agenda by which they want to expand the wealth of the rich and the corporations and one of the primary modes to achieve this end is to lower the corporate tax rates and taxes on the rich. In order to make this a saleable policy they have had to continually make a public claim that they know to be entirely false, that lower taxes on corporations and the rich will actually increase government revenue and improve the economic situation for everyone. This is simply false, and always has been. Not a single credible study suggests that this claim is true, in fact quite the opposite. By pursuing these policies the right only succeeds in lowering government revenue. As a result of shrinking revenue the right is then forced to cut social services to make up the differences, an idea they essentially don't mind since it undermines the position of the poor and vulnerable and further strengthens the power of the rich. But here is where the dilemma really kicks in - the right, like everyone, relies on elections to maintain power and if they cut too much, particularly from the elderly, they will not get reelected. And it is just too difficult in the final analysis to cut enough to make up for the shrinking revenue situation that they have created. Thus rightwing government continually destroy public finances in the process. It is not that they don't have the stomach to completely cut social services, it is just that they know they cannot get reelected if they do. When you actually get almost all rightwingers to be honest in private they uniformly admit that they don't believe in universal public education or health care, for example, but they would never admit that publicly because their portion of the vote would be reduced to less than ten percent.
In other words, the right is financially irresponsible because the combination of their ideology and electoral politics forces them to be. But the continual repetition of this scenario is finally making the reality of rightwing irresponsibility more clear to people. The only thing that has maintained the rightwing at all is more or less total domination of the media which sells the falsehoods of fiscal responsibility nonstop.
Hate and irresponsibility are the hallmarks of the right. Listen any day to your local rightwing radio call in show and you will hear rightwingers peddling their hate, ignorance, and lies relentlessly. They will condemn the Charter and Rights, condemn immigration, condemn non-christians, condemn the laws which attempt to protect the vulnerable, and condemn multi-culturalism. Meanwhile they will promote a huge and blatant lie that reducing corporate taxes will increase government revenue while their parties bankrupt nations full of millionnaires. But the lies will not stand for much longer as tragedies of their hate become more clear in poverty, wretchedness, and the barrel of a gun.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Standing for something. . . .
It seems that nowadays Political Parties stand for as little as possible, at least at the public level. Just look at the recent victory of the Harper Conservatives, they have consistently attempted to run on nothing, as though they are the Seinfeld of the political arena. The Liberal Party of Canada has also tried to stand for little, though I must give them credit, when Martin ran for Prime Minister he actually had some important platform issues not least of which were the Kelowna Accord, Universal Childcare, and the defence of gay marriage. Unfortunately when Dion attempted to stand for something in an election (the Green Shift) he lost badly. Similarly, John Tory here in Ontario lost an election on one issue alone - the funding of religious schools. In the States the Democratic Party has been running on nothing Since McGovern lost while trying to end the war in Indo-China. Barack Obama ran on some vague cheerleader's platform that said "Yes We Can," but what exactly "we can" do was never clear. And since he won it has become pretty clear that anything that we thought Obama might have stood for, he didn't.
The right-wing in Canada has become much like the right-wing in the US - it exists on vague notions of economic competence (entirely belied by the facts), strong military (totally belied, again, by their complete lack of support for veterans.), and calling all their opponents terrorist sympathizers and communists. Meanwhile what they really stand for is the total destruction of democracy, the gutting of all social programs, and the effort to make sure that the majority of Canadians become poorer and will eventually not be able to afford a privatized education and health system. Only, like real cowards, they will never say what they actually stand for in the public arena.
The only national party that now stands for anything is the NDP, though I sat that with only qualified support because that party too has become increasingly vague about their ideals. But at the very least the NDP stands for protecting universal health, education, and protection of those who are most vulnerable. Of course, many Canadians still buy the mainstream spin that the NDP is a radical socialist party that would instantly nationalize all industry, but those who pay attention know better. But then people are remarkably foolish as they constantly display in their attacks on Unions. So much of what we enjoy in our society from universal education and health, to the forty hour work week and legislation that protects workers and consumers, we owe in large part to Union activists. Furthermore, as wages in Western nations have stagnated in the past generation they have done so in direct correlation with the decline of union membership. Unions are certainly not perfect, but they actually stand for something, and that is the improvement of people's lives and living conditions.
My prediction is that people and political groups will continue to avoid standing for anything meaningful until the Conservative agenda is successful enough to make it clear that all they care about is the rich and when the majority have lost their rights, their incomes, their decent homes, and everything else, then the struggle will have to begin all over. One day people will suddenly wake up and think 'Wow, how did we let them turn back the clock to the 19th century??"
The right-wing in Canada has become much like the right-wing in the US - it exists on vague notions of economic competence (entirely belied by the facts), strong military (totally belied, again, by their complete lack of support for veterans.), and calling all their opponents terrorist sympathizers and communists. Meanwhile what they really stand for is the total destruction of democracy, the gutting of all social programs, and the effort to make sure that the majority of Canadians become poorer and will eventually not be able to afford a privatized education and health system. Only, like real cowards, they will never say what they actually stand for in the public arena.
The only national party that now stands for anything is the NDP, though I sat that with only qualified support because that party too has become increasingly vague about their ideals. But at the very least the NDP stands for protecting universal health, education, and protection of those who are most vulnerable. Of course, many Canadians still buy the mainstream spin that the NDP is a radical socialist party that would instantly nationalize all industry, but those who pay attention know better. But then people are remarkably foolish as they constantly display in their attacks on Unions. So much of what we enjoy in our society from universal education and health, to the forty hour work week and legislation that protects workers and consumers, we owe in large part to Union activists. Furthermore, as wages in Western nations have stagnated in the past generation they have done so in direct correlation with the decline of union membership. Unions are certainly not perfect, but they actually stand for something, and that is the improvement of people's lives and living conditions.
My prediction is that people and political groups will continue to avoid standing for anything meaningful until the Conservative agenda is successful enough to make it clear that all they care about is the rich and when the majority have lost their rights, their incomes, their decent homes, and everything else, then the struggle will have to begin all over. One day people will suddenly wake up and think 'Wow, how did we let them turn back the clock to the 19th century??"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
