People are the common denominator of progress. So... no improvement is possible with unimproved people, and advance is certain when people are liberated and educated. It would be wrong to dismiss the importance of roads, railroads, power plants, mills, and the other familiar furniture of economic development.... But we are coming to realize... that there is a certain sterility in economic monuments that stand alone in a sea of illiteracy. Conquest of illiteracy comes first".
Somethings seem so inevitable that they just cannot not happen. Like Wolverhampton Wanderers getting promoted to the Premier League; like Labour winning the election in 1992; like Obama becoming the next President of the United States of America.
Okay, the first two examples are not particularly good ones. Just suppose McCain wins. That'll take one hell of a lot of explaining. The map of the USA will have to be redrawn: red states, blue states and totally racist states. I could see how, if you're a right-wing diehard Republican, you could vote McCain and Palin. If you're not a rabid Republican pitbull then why would you do that? McCain stands for the same old Republican voodoo-economics. Palin stands for a belief in the victory of old certainties and old prejudices. But some of the media coverage, like that coming from Pox News, has been racist, appealing to the worst characteristics of the worst, unprogressive sector of the electorate. For Obama to lose with poll ratings like this would be a death blow to the poll industry.
One of Rullsenberg's favourite children's books is The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster (1961).
In the Family supplement to this Saturday's Grundie was a review, by Lucy Mangan, of The Phantom Tollbooth. If you haven't read it, it recounts a tale of a country, the Kingdom of Wisdom, two capital cities Dictionopolis and Digitopolis
The cities are governed by two warring brothers who banished the Princesses of Rhyme and Reason from the land, after they were asked to adjudicate between the merits of words and numbers and refused to accord one more importance than the other. Since then, the kingdom has descended into chaos.
The story seeks to resolve this conflict by a newcomer to the kingdom.
It's not an investment. It's a place to hang your hat. It's a place to keep your books. It's a place to keep your clothes. It's a place to eat. It's a place to sleep. It's a place to make love. It's a place to have fun. It's a place to be happy. It's a place to be sad. It is not an investment. Or as Charlie Brooker puts it:
For years, money was just appearing from nowhere, or so we were told. People bought houses and bragged about how the value kept zooming up, and up, and up. In fact they didn't seem to be houses at all, but magic coin-shitting machines. It was all a dream, a dream in which you bought a box and lived in it, and all the time it generated money like a cow generates farts. Great big stinking clouds of money. And none of it was real. And now it's gone.
All that was never real melts into a big cloud of nothingness.
Governments all the world over fly to the rescue of banks. Are bankers grateful? You betcha (to borrow a phrase from Ned Flanders). More money for them to pilfer from the till.
Financial workers at Wall Street's top banks are to receive pay deals worth more than $70bn (£40bn), a substantial proportion of which is expected to be paid in discretionary bonuses, for their work so far this year - despite plunging the global financial system into its worst crisis since the 1929 stock market crash,
Anticipating the long and tense night ahead for him and his team, Darling had taken matters in hand at 8.30pm, personally ringing one of his favourite restaurants, Gandhi's in Kennington, south London, to order £245 worth of rice, karahi lamb, tandoori chicken, vegetable curry and aloo gobi.
From the article it's difficult to work out how many people were there. Eleven named and one unnamed, and probably note takers and support staff. Was £245 enough curry?
Would the government have got a better result if they had ordered some naan?
Not a mash-up of Hawaii-5-0 and CSI Miami but the five Cubans held in the United States for nothing more than informing the FBI of plans of terrorist attacks on Cuba. The five are Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González and René González.
But instead of arresting the terrorists, the FBI used the information to identify and arrest the Five anti-terrorists on September 12, 1998 in Miami, where they were illegally held in solidarity confinement for 17 months. A miscarriage of justice
The trial began in November 2000 in Miami, a hugely hostile environment where the anti-Castro Cuban-American community wields enormous political influence.
Defence attorneys’ motions for a change of venue were denied five times by the judge, although it was obvious that a fair trial was impossible in the city.
During the trial, the judge, prosecution and US government officials suppressed defence evidence and ensured key witnesses would not testify.
Despite intimidation of witnesses by the press and testimonies by prominent US officials that the Five had not accessed any classified documents, the jury reached a unanimous guilty verdict on all charges, without once seeking clarification of any evidence.
The Five were convicted on charges ranging from being foreign agents to conspiracy to commit murder, and sentenced to between fifteen years and double life.
For opposing terrorist acts on US soil the Miami Five were prosecuted in a strongly anti-Castro and anti-Cuban government city and given sentences of more than fifteen years with little chance of parole. That evokes mental pictures of justice dispensed by a bouncing kangaroo.
Restrictions on freedom of expression, association and movement remained severe. At least 62 prisoners of conscience remained imprisoned and political dissidents, independent journalists and human rights activists continued to be harassed, intimidated and detained.
Many of the dissidents were convicted of "social dangerousness" which is defined as "proclivity to commit a crime". This "crime" carries a sentence of up to four years in prison. Further penalties include “therapeutic treatment”, “re-education” or “surveillance by the Revolutionary National Police”.
All that stands against Cuba as a socialist Eden. Many things are good in Cuba: the increasing use of cooperative farms; the (albeit forced by circumstances) recycling of materials from cars to fridges. As the country moves from a central party dominated culture to trusting its people to act and work independently of the party things will improve.
The lifting of the embargo by the United States government will lessen the control over the economy of the party and government, giving more decisons to be made by the people of Cuba.
A year ago Alan Greenspan was quoted by the FT (on 17th September 2007) as saying that "Profits are much higher than they should be in a world of ever intensifying global competitition". He managed an accounting explanation for this by saying that "workers compensation in the USA and other developed nations is unusually low by historical standards".
An economics explanation was lacking but he did say that real compensation parallels real productivity in the long run, but not now and, here's the killer, if wages for the average worker do not rise quickly "political support for free markets may be undermined".
So even the ex Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve sees that the acts of capitalists threaten the existence of capitalism.
As the man said, "sometimes even the Chairman of the Federal reserve has to stand naked".
[ This is borrowed from Ken Coates's introductory essay the The Spokesman 97, Brown Studies, published earlier this year, see Spokesman Books]
When international finance capitalism is falling willingly into the hands of governments you know it must be up shit creek without a paddle.
There is a mood of pessimism in the air, and, to quote Gramsci, it's not just "pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will" pervading the ether.
Once upon a time I had a thing for the writing of EM Cioran. His aphorisms have an almost beautiful streak of pessimism. Witness "Basis of society: anonymous sweat" or "We are afraid of the enormity of the possible".
Unfortunately in the 1930s and 1940s he, like the Daily Mail, admired a chap called Hitler.
This week Shalom read EM Cioran's The Trouble with Being Born: "Imagine the worst mood you've ever had, and now imagine there's someone for whom that mood would be the best mood they ever had. Now imagine they wrote a book."
That's a good summary but somehow it fails to describe the despairing beauty of Cioran's aphorisms.
Several years ago we were in a pub in the Bloomsbury fringe. Someone came round putting out notices saying that the research notes of a friend's six year study into Cioran had been stolen from a car and asking had anyone seen the notes which were worthless to anyone but the student. There is something beautifully tragic about a study into Cioran ending in despair; but I do hope the student recovered to submit their thesis.
With patience you may be able to find out something important. It helps if the person you are searching for has an uncommon name. Searching for a name like Moore gives over 300 pages.
The United Kingdom is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. All fair and nice cuddly politics. Now the UK has a general reservation against the UN Convention on Rights of the Child. That means the UK can ignore the Convention in pursuit of its border control and immigration targets. That strikes me as being wrong, unjust, unethical, immoral and just an all round bad thing.
The general reservation states that: "The United Kingdom reserves the right to apply such legislation, in so far as it relates to the entry into, stay in and departure from the UK of those who do not have the right under the law of the UK to enter and remain in the UK, and to the acquisition and possession of citizenship, as it may deem necessary from time to time."
The question is timely, 2008 being the year that the Committee on the Rights of the Child will scrutinise the UK's record of compliance with its Children's Convention obligations.
So how does the reservation affect child survivors of torture? According to the Border and Immigration Agency (BIA), it "allows the UK to apply its immigration laws without having them interpreted in light of the UN Convention". In other words, it allows blanket discrimination against foreign national children in the interests of so called "effective immigration control".
So the UK government discriminates, in contravention of the Convention, against children who may be survivors, or witnesses, of torture just so that it can meet its immigration targets That is managerial target-setting entering the door and throwing ethics and morality out of the window. Such is the reign of managerialism in the UK in 2008.
As the Medical Foundation says
It is paramount to send a clear message that the UK finally recognises its full responsibilities by formally and publicly removing the reservation. An act which at least for children would be every bit as important as the coming in to force of the Human Rights Act 1998.
For Medical Foundation clients and all other children who have suffered serious harm, Article 39 of the Convention can then be demonstrably implemented to the fullest effect: "States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to promote physical and psychological recovery and social reintegration of a child victim of: any form of neglect, exploitation, or abuse; torture or any other form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; or armed conflicts. Such recovery and reintegration shall take place in an environment which fosters the health, self-respect and dignity of the child."
And, as the government keeps telling us, Every Child Matters. So, make it so.
With all the coverage and reminiscences of 1968 and the discussion of the revolutionary moment and the glories of spontaneity, I was surprised to find someone berating the pace and the lack of preparation of the participants.
The French are known for their failed revolutions. This time in 1968, having done nothing to educate the people or communicate with the trade unions, they went through a revolutionary charade producing excellent poetry but resulting in the complete defeat of anarchist nonviolent aspiration throughtout the world.
The French activists had no right to spoil years and years of work towards a universal understanding of the tasks in front of us, to create a worldwide peaceful society without rulers."
Publisher, 77, London
As my old five-a-side captain used to say Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance and Preempts Post Revolutionary Pangs of Passion for a Glorious Failure. And the P's ran away with it.
I've just discovered that Denis Healey never said he would "tax the rich until the pips squeak". There's one illusion shattered. But back in the heady days of glam rock in 1973, at the Labour Party conference he did say "I warn you that there are going to be howls of anguish from those rich enough to pay over 75% on their last slice of earnings".
In Tribune, 11th July 2008, Paul Anderson wrote the government should increase personal allowances and pay for it by introducing a 60% tax rate on incomes over £200,000 and abolishing the upper earnings limit national insurance. The income figure of £200,000 was chosen so as not to frighten the middle classes, but is in danger of being useless as so few people earn that figure and pay tax.
According to HMRC, in tax year 2005-6 99% of tax payers earned less than £132,00. So there are probably less than 2 in a thousand people earning more than £200,000. Is it worth having a 60% tax rate on such a small number of tax payers? How much tax do those on such high incomes actually pay and how much do the avoid and how much do they evade?
It's either sending out a signal or it's a tax to generate income for the treasury but it's not really doing both.
1. An increase in personal allowances to take everyone on £10,000 a year or less out of income tax altogether.
2. Introduction of new top-rate income tax of 60 per cent for everyone earning more than £60,000, 80 per cent on £80,000-plus and 100 per cent on £100,000 or more.
3. Standardisation of national insurance rates so everyone pays the same percentage on every penny of income above £5,000.
4. An end to all non-dom privileges.
5. A council tax revaluation with abolition of bands and a straightforward proportional relationship between value and payment, so households in £10m homes pay 100 times what a household in a £100,000 home pays.
6. Abolition of inheritance tax up to £500,000 and introduction of 100 per cent inheritance tax over £1m.
That's more like it but I'd still debate the amounts.
Over the summer I have been working, relaxing at festivals and generally not writing as much as I should. It's now time to catch up.
Last weekend I was going through some old copies of Tribune and various other journals and spotted this piece by Bryan Rostron in Tribune 27 June 2008, p13,(available online at Mail and Guardian), on Stalinism and the ANC.
In his epic novel, Life and Fate, Russian author Vasily Grossman tried to explain the slavishness of "party-mindedness" and the acquiescence of once brave revolutionaries who kept quiet as Stalinism took hold. "Fear alone cannot achieve all this," he wrote. "It was the revolutionary cause itself that freed people from morality in the name of morality, that justified today's pharisees, hypocrites and writers of denunciations in the name of the future, that explained why it was right to elbow the innocent into the ditch in the name of the happiness of the people."
How else to explain that not one of Mbeki's ministers took issue with his Aids denialism? Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang even trained at a Soviet institute influenced by Stalin's lauded agronomist, Trofim Lysenko, who applied Marxist dogma to biology with disastrous results. "Perhaps," observed James Wilmot, "this is why she does not appear to understand how the genetics of retroviral co-evolution works."
Grossman, famous for his war reporting from Stalingrad, witnessed the corruption of Stalinism from within. His great, breathtaking novel was published only in 1980, after his death, yet Grossman also captured something of what is going on in South Africa today: "The hide was being flayed off the still living body of the Revolution so that a new age could slip into it; as for the red, bloody meat, the steaming innards -- they were being thrown on to the scrap-heap. The new age needed only the hide of the Revolution -- and this was being flayed off people who were still alive. Those who then slipped into it spoke the language of the revolution and mimicked its gestures, but their brains, lungs, livers and eyes were utterly different."
So goes the revolution as the baton passes to those who only hear tales of how the revolution was won from those who lived its adventures.
