August 10, 2011
Riot of a Time
Very quick thoughts on the recent riots.
1. Clearly it is true that poverty, alienation, deepdisgruntlement with the police and lack of opportunity are important background facts that any serious attempt at understanding will have to take into account.
2. But these alone cannot explain what was clearly, in many cases, opportunistic theft and glee in destruction.
3. So where do we go from there?
4. I take these to be true and important components of any description of modern British politics and society: that it promotes self-interested greed, materialism, the possession of ostensive goods for status, immediate gratification, and a toleration (even encouragement) of ruthless competitiveness with a deep disregard for the welfare of others. (Call this the “no-such-thing-as-society society”, if you like.)
5. Putting 1 and 2 together with 4, and adding in conditions of spontaneity, anticipated impunity and evident opportunity, a basic yet broadly sufficient explanation appears to emerge.
6. Note that the things described in 4 above constitute the core tenets of the political ideology broadly known as ‘Thatcherism’ (or if you want to bring things up to date post-1997, ‘neo-liberalism’).
7. Also note that the conditions described in 1. have been massively and continuously exacerbated by Thatcherism (or ‘neo-liberalism’), especially if enormous inequality and its debilitating effects on individual well-being and self-respect are included too.
8. So actually this may not be such a mystery after all. If you constantly tell people to be selfish, ruthless, competitive, greedy and disregarding of the welfare of others, then you can’t really be surprised when they behave as they are told they fundamentally are and must be (even if they forget about the bits to do with obeying the law).
9. However, if you happen to be the prime minister just invoke some vacuous covering fluff about ‘moral responsibility’. Continue to condemn loudly, and then get back to promoting the elements in 4. on a daily basis. Without wondering about which ways the knife may cut.
March 9, 2011
That Egypt Thing
During the Egyptian uprising, I didn’t have much to say. Far too much was being said already, and little of it well-informed. I was, of course, struck by the fervent optimism and passionate belief espoused by almost all on the Left. For this uprising – we were assured by many – was a truly democratic revolution, by a people yearning to be free. These were Democrats In Waiting, slaving beneath the Yoke of Tyranny. We had only to wait for The People to cast off Their shackles and a New Age of Democratic Freedom* would dawn.
Amidst the excitement and hubristic proclamation, it seemed to me consistently unwise to pass any judgements during the heat of the moment. For three considerations in particular seemed, if anything, to tell in the direction of pessimism about Egypt’s prospects.
Firstly, that the entire Middle East sits atop a pile of what Flying Rodent so aptly labels “democracy kryptonite”, aka oil. Given this particularly pressing truth, the long arm of America was never likely to withdraw its hand. After half a century of careful investment and planning, the US was hardly going to let things go all Venezuela in a key military and economic hotspot. At least, not if it could help it – and so on into the future.
Secondly, and closely connectedly, even the most cursory glance at the political situation during the Egyptian uprising revealed that the army always held the final balance of power. It was clearly with the support of the army that Mubarak would stand, or fall. In the end he fell. And now the army’s ruling council runs Egypt, following what was technically a military coup d’etat. Of course, it is quite possible that the army will cede power following elections in September. But it’s actually unclear whether there will be any elections in September. And as there has been no effective opposition in Egypt for decades, it’s also unclear whether will be any viable political alternatives on offer even if the ballots go ahead.
Furthermore, a kindergarten knowledge of history reminds us that never, ever, anywhere, has a ruling section of society willingly and freely given up power to those beneath it. Political revolutions – by which I mean proper revolutions, not eventualities which see nasty Mr Mubarak go to Sharm el Sheikh and his generals simply take over the running of affairs – are achieved by the forceful and bloody seizure of power by one group from another. The army is highly unlikely to let power go to any whom it does not approve of. Now at this point, note that democracies tend not to flourish when the military is the primary political power within a state. Now further note that for decades the primary source of American leverage over Egypt has come in the form of military aid. Things, to put it mildly, do not point in the direction of Hope and Change.
Thirdly, given that Egypt has no history or tradition or functioning democratic governance, the transition to any such regime is likely to be precarious. This is a country without democratic norms; a country where ordinary people have not yet had time to adapt to a political system which involves putting enormous amounts of trust and responsibility into the hands of parties whom one did not vote for. (Because the logic of democracy is that nobody’s favoured candidates can win every election, every time.) It is a country in which those who hold the strings of power, patronage and influence have not yet evolved the mechanisms of reciprocal deferred trust when out of power. The arrangements whereby electoral losers amongst the elite abstain from recourse to violence and thuggery, on the guarantee that their interests will not suffer too much in the short term and that they’ll get another meaningful shot at power shortly.
All of which is not to say that Egyptians – or Arabs, or Muslims – “cannot do democracy”. That is a piece of crass racism, against which we recall that less than a century ago respectable British individuals in respectable British newspapers urged the folly of democratic systems. Men who called for the imperative of strong rule; the clarity and good governance provided by Messrs Hitler and Mussolini during times of straightened economic woe. But it is to say that democracy is a difficult, complicated thing. It takes time to emerge, and requires favourable historical, geographical, social, economic and political settings. At present, Egypt appears to have none of these – albeit in significant part thanks to the grubby paws of The Land of the Free.
But then blaming everything on America just won’t do, either. For bound-up in the over-excited and premature rhetoric of Democracy and Freedom for Egypt was often the assumption that here was a democratic people simply yearning to be free. The implicit assumption being that They (what, all of them? young and old? rich and poor? muslim and christian?) were really just like Us. And that when They were given power, They would behave just like Us – a situation happily dovetailing with their new Democratic Freedom.**
But recent reports show that this is all a little too lazy. With dead Coptic Christians following religious clashes with sections of the majority Muslim population, this appears to be a society which hasn’t had the good fortune (and placatory economic development) to get beyond the bloody religious frenzies that our own blessed Isles used to play such sanguinary host to. And then there’s the International Women’s Day march in Tahir Square, which saw angry men charging the marchers, dragging them to the floor, beating and sexually harassing them, as police and army watched from the sidelines.
Certainly, these events are too isolated to tell us anything about “Arab culture” (or if you like, “Muslim mores”). Societies, religions, peoples and cultures are complex (and there’s plenty of violent hatred against women in the UK too, let’s not forget). To infer anything from the above in terms of positive substantive content would, again, be crass racism or outright stupidigy. But these happenings are nontheless enough to put the lie to the naively optimistic (and self-servingly convenient) assumption that They are just like Us, sharing Our Values, the outward political expression of which will necessarily be Democracy and Freedom.***
Those whom this piece is primarily aimed at will likely mistake the above for a sort of petty schadenfreude. They will think that I am indifferent about the sufferings and poor prospects of ordinary Egyptians, in service of some wider self-satisfied political cynicism. But that is wrong. I would genuinely like for it to be the case that Egypt could enjoy the prosperity, security and advantage of a nation like Britain (for all its faults). It sincerely saddens me that so many people’s lives must be made abject by forces beyond their control (such as the profitability of the British arms and oil industries). The point, however, is that just because I would like it to be otherwise, it does not mean that it is otherwise. And I adapt my assessments accordingly. I have this funny idea that other people should do the same.
–
*notice the marriage of two complex concepts, introduced unexplained and unsubstantiated as though nothing in the world could be more obvious.
** that conjunction again.
*** in for the third, whatever it actually means.
January 14, 2011
Cold World
18 years old is a strange age. Legally, you’re an adult. But in many ways you’re still a child. Looking back on my own late teenage years, I’m astonished at how immature I really was.
Which brings me to Edward Woolard. There’s no doubt Woolard was an idiot at the precise moment he threw that fire extinguisher off the top of Milbank. Yet whether he is an idiot through-and-through is a different matter. Certainly the national media branded him a thug in its instant witch hunt. But in truth, none of us know whether he was simply seized by a one-off moment of immature madness.
Either way Woolard is paying dearly. 32 months in jail, at the age of 18. His life prospects in tatters, and a family no doubt heartbroken.
You may think he deserves it. And certainly, it seems clear he had to receive some sort of serious sentence. Not simply to act as a deterrent to other acts of idiocy, but also to reflect that he could have killed somebody. The state can’t, after all, have private citizens behaving in ways which recklessly endanger the lives of others.
And the authorities also had to send a clear message for their own purposes. That even though they lost control at numerous points towards the end of 2010, captured perpetrators can expect to pay dearly for their actions.
It is worth remembering, however, that Woolard didn’t actually kill anybody. And surely that matters (even if the reasons why are philosophically complicated). Two and a half years in jail is a long time. Especially for not killing anybody, in an unpremeditated single act of stupidity. I can’t help but find it excessive.
And that’s partly because I keep thinking: “that could have been me”. Not because I’d ever throw a fire extinguisher off a roof (‘tis not my style). But because when I was 18 I did something very, very stupid too.
Angry and frustrated at the world generally – and heartbroken because the girl I was head-over-heels about decided she preferred her boyfriend after all – I got into a drunken fight one Friday night. Except I’d also been doing some amateur Thai boxing. And I hit the guy in the sort of way that you don’t hit people, even in organised amateur fights. Because you can kill them.
Needless to say I didn’t kill anyone. But if the angles had been a little different, the impact a little more, his alcohol-levels a little higher, it’s very possible I might have. A moment of madness, and I could have killed a man. And gone to prison for 20 years.
But I’m lucky. My moment of madness didn’t go that way. I’m free to pursue a successful and comfortable life. As I sincerely hope the guy I struck 6 years ago currently does.
Incidentally, PC Simon Harwood is lucky too. As we all know, when Ian Tomlinson was walking home from work PC Harwood struck him without warning and pushed him to the ground. Not long later, Tomlinson was dead. Yet Harwood never saw the inside of a dock, and the Crown Prosecution Service decided this particular bobby wouldn’t even stand trial for assault.
No such luck for Edward Woolard. I guess that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. Of course I’d like to say that the hypocrisy of a judicial apparatus which allows the police to kill whilst giving children lengthy prison terms will lead the The People to rise up for reform. But that’s spectacularly unlikely, I’m afraid.
So all I really have to note today is that it’s a cold world out there. If you’re lucky enough to be sitting by the fire, think on that a little while.
December 21, 2010
The Politics of Snow
Snow and ice have brought chaos to Britain. Flights cancelled, trains delayed, motorways deadlocked. Holidays have been ruined, general frustration caused to millions, and economic productivity reduced.
As in previous years, this has led to rafts of angry declamations. Fingers are enviously pointed to Finland, Germany, Illinois, or whatever places get far more snow than Britain each winter, and yet manages to stay operational. Angry letters are written to local newspapers, denouncing councils for not gritting every lonely lane and back alley. Her Majesty’s opposition requests the Government make a statement on the snow. Her Majesty’s government obliges.
Thus, the recent snow demonstrates some basic dynamics of modern democratic politics.
Firstly, that voters are unreasonable – both in the pejorative and the technical sense. It is highly dubious, for example, that the Outraged of Tumbridge Wells spend their warmer months lobbying for higher council tax to pay for more gritters and street-salt. (Things which, of course, may never actually be used if the next winter turns out to be mild.)
Yet as soon as the cold weather hits, the local council (or for that matter, central government) has wickedly neglected its duties to look after citizens, and must be condemned and bewailed accordingly. Never mind that those demanding Government Action frequently speak from the other sides of their mouths about the rise of the Nanny State.
For you see, voters cannot be trusted. They want their problems dealt with now. Regardless of whether they were happy to sell the collective lifejackets six months ago. And it’s likewise irrelevant that, in three months time, none of them will care that for a fortnight in December snow caused chaos. People demand action when their interests are sufficiently prompted in the here and now. And those demands and interests are often highly insensitive to any long-term reasonableness.
But politicians know this. Hence why Labour calls for a statement on the snow which can be nothing but platitudinous – and the Tories duly give one. The game has to be played; voters are outraged by the ice; Something Must Be Done.
Or rather, Something Must Be Seen To Be Done. Because politicians are canny. They know that in two months time nobody will give a sod about the snow. They also know that when the council (or general) elections come around, lower tax rates and more visible permanent public services will curry most favour. By contrast, platoons of unused road gritters – sitting silently in darkened hangers waiting for a winter’s day when might be called upon – will butter precisely zero parsnips in the balmy mornings of May.
The reason Germany, Finland et. al. have adequate infrastructure for dealing with snow is because it snows there a lot, hence permanent provisions are needed. The same is not true of Britain. It would be a very silly use of economic resources for the normally mild UK to install the same level of pre-emptive preparation these other countries do. Even if that means accepting that in some years the country will go to the snowy dogs for a week or two.
But of course, no mainstream politician can risk pointing out this blindingly obvious truth. Because pointing out such basic facts would be tantamount to explaining to outraged voters why they are unreasonable and irrational. Or, in other words, why they are acting like selfish, short-sighted idiots.
And in a mass democracy, you get nowhere telling hoi poloi such things. Especially if they happen to be true. Hence, the platudinous drivel you will find yourself surrounded by. Until next week, when the ice melts and the rabble finds something else to clamour for instead.
August 23, 2010
Just Boring
I don’t regularly play Medal of Honour, but a lot of my friends do. The various instalments are something of a phenomenon, not least as the advent of high-speed internet has allowed 24-hour game-play with live opponents across the world. Though apparently Call of Duty is much better.
Is MoH like real war? Obviously not. For a start, it’s a computer game. When you play you experience fun, rather than extreme, colossal fear. When you “die” in MoH multiplayer, you do not even have to sit out the rest of the game; you merely wait 10 seconds to “respawn” and carry on playing.
Sure, the object is to “kill” your opponents. But in that respect MoH is no different to the archaic Space Invaders. The graphics, game-play and complexity are all vastly superior, but the basic principle is the same: fire dots at pixels and make them go away.
MoH – like Space Invaders – is entertainment, and nothing more or less than that. When my friends play MoH, they don’t “identify” with the soldiers they are controlling or shooting. Because it is just a game, a diversion, a way to pass the time.
Which makes Liam Fox’s outraged comments about the latest MoH multiplayer – which allows people to play as the Taliban versus British troops – especially dumb. Nobody actually playing MoH thinks for a second that they are the Taliban, or has any sense of empathy for them, or desire to glory in the killing of British soldiers. This isn’t even a case for arm-chair Freudianism. Players are not secretly revelling in the illicit or forbidden, they’re just playing a game.
For the same reason that none of my friends have become stalwart Nazis or Communists after role-playing as the Wehrmacht or Red Army in Call of Duty, none of them are now going to become pro-Taliban. Or for that matter, scorn the lives of their mates – some of whom happen to be fighting in Afghanistan for real in our pointless, never-ending, unwinnable war.
But we’ve been here before, haven’t we? At least once a year there’s some uproar about computer games twisting the youth into psychotic murderers. And when it’s not allegations of electronic psycho-zombie-rearing, it’s hysteria over some other popular demon. Rap music is a tested favourite (think NWA to Eminem), but occasionally dance or metal does the job too (think Prodigy’s Smack my bitch up,* or Slipknot weeing on each other).
Indeed popular freak-outs about drugs are often of the same order. What’s that, lots of kids are taking mephedrone, then hugging each other, keeping themselves to themselves and not bothering anybody else? Cue media lies about meph-induced deaths, political demagoguery, and a whole bunch of new substances rendered illegal so they can be sold by organised criminals and cut with who-knows-what to make them actually dangerous. Success!
We know why politicians target computer games/music/recreational drugs. Haranguing about such things enables them to point to allegedly simply solutions to what are usually complex problems. Like intergenerational alienation, mass hysteria about hidden forces corrupting society from the inside, youth apathy, estrangement, and tragic cases of individual loss – things that no one political initiative is going to understand, let alone solve. Nonetheless, recourse to the official government ban allows politicians to make it appear they are doing something meaningful – with the bonus of keeping the Daily Mail happy.
Yet I can’t help wondering if we’ll ever get tired of this. Because let’s be honest, it’s all so boring. We’ve been here before; we’ve seen it all already. The correct response is not outrage. The correct response is a big, fat yawn. As they used to tell us in primary school: just ignore Liam Fox, he’s simply not worth it.
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* “Smack my bitch up” referring, of course, to the taking of heroin, not to domestic abuse. But don’t let that bother the self-righteous media moral orgy that normally couldn’t give a toss about battered women.
July 12, 2010
Conservative Wisdom
The Nanny State. With its army of bureaucrats, its forests of red tape, its suffocating reams of cotton wool heralding the world of ‘Elf and Safety Gone Mad! Down with the Nanny State!
Hurrah for Andrew Lansley! Champion of individual responsibility and grown up society!
Who needs a “Food Standards Agency” anyway? At last, adults will be treated like adults. The oppressive tyranny of colour-coded food packaging will be overthrown. No longer will the Nanny State bully people into eating healthily with its ominous and intrusive red, orange and green labelling guide.
Instead, responsible members of the Big Society will have to help themselves, taking the time to calculate percentage intakes of fat, sugar and salt and deciding whether a product is a sensible healthy option or not. Whereas before the life-interfering PC brigade forced people to be healthy with their red traffic lights, meaningful freedom has now been restored.
Whatismore, Sir Lansley (if I may pre-empt the rightfully inevitable) has struck a blow in favour of the other core ideals of freedom: competition and independent production. Rather than the interfering state obstructing the activities of private enterprises with its paternalistic cynicism, companies will now compete freely in the market, securing efficiency and ensuring that rational, responsible consumers can exercise their full freedom of choice.
And with this blessed increase in freedom rational and responsible consumers can look forward to many pleasures.
With the removal of regulation, British meat production can get back to its halcyon days. When companies circumvented restrictions on animal rearing to beat the competition, and fed dead cows to living cows leading to a mass outbreak of BSE. Which was then lied about and covered-up.
Rational and responsible consumers of the big society will be empowered to choose whether or not to eat beef, knowing it might kill them or their families! British farmers will be empowered to decide whether or not to commit suicide following the collapse of their herds and income-sources, as they are abandoned by the companies that earlier demanded they rear cattle in such a disastrous way. As the EU imposes a ban on British beef exports, the entire country can bask in the good economic consequences sure to follow. In a mark of independent self-reliance, Andrew Lansley will no doubt feed a possibly infected beef burger to his daughter in the sort of gruesome propaganda stunt pioneered by his predecessor John Gummer.
In the meantime, parents on low incomes in stressful circumstances will be empowered to make independent decisions when buying food for their children. As there is no such thing as “pester power” – the food industry spends billions worldwide on marketing for absolutely no reason at all – parents can only win.
Restrictions on advertising are nothing but manifestations of an evil, all-controlling Big State Gone Mad. They should be dispensed with forthwith. This will allow the rational consumers of tomorrow to make informed personal choices, via the medium of their parents wallets, enlightened by the merely informational qualities of multi-national advertising techniques.
The Nanny State’s egregious interference – the aforementioned traffic-light package guides – will surely soon be removed forever. And what loss could there possibly be? Lobby groups certainly spent £830million in a successful bid to prevent the traffic light system being introduced EU-wide. But that was just because being such fantastically successful, enterprising, innovating and dynamic corporations they needed something to do for a laugh. No harm can come of such activities, especially as the tyrannous traffic lights were just evil state interference anyway.
With the death of the FSA – saving an enormous £135million in these times of fiscal austerity – the overbearing state will be rolled back. Britain’s independent citizens will once again stand shoulder to shoulder with Nestle, Unilever, Kellog, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, McDonalds, Mars and Burger King.
Freedom will be restored to this benighted isle. Thank the gods for Conservative Wisdom.
July 8, 2010
La plus ça change, encore une fois
I recently came across a collection of political campaign cards from the early 20th Century centering on the demands of the suffragettes, both for and against. The following is some sort of postcard, graffitied into anti-suffragette hate mail. (Apologies for poor quality, I only had my iPhone camera):
Front [the "Striking Example..." passage is added by hand]:
Back:
What I find fascinating – albeit depressingly so – is the extent to which misogynist abuse has not changed in nearly 100 years.
The claim or insinuation that campaigns for women’s rights and equality are rooted in a lack of family to cater for (“no homes”), rejection by men (“no husbands”) and infertility or barrenness (“no children”) are apparently as old as the hills yet very much alive and kicking.
Over at the Guardian’s CiF threads, anything remotely relating to feminism will attract exactly these sorts of derogatory comments. A fair number of them include aspirations to violence (“why don’t you drown yourselves”), and hence have to be removed by the moderators ASAP (usually with howls of indignation against the feminazi conspiracy).
I’ve previously asked Laurie Penny – one of the UK’s best young feminist writers - about the abuse she receives as a feminist commentator and journalist. She confirmed that all the above are standard tropes: “My very least favourite are the ones that tell me ‘you know you’re just doing this because you’re frustrated that you don’t have a baby yet’. That’s a common line.”
Laurie estimates that she receives about 35 abusive emails and comments a month. Indeed her comment forms have to be pre-moderated because the abuse got so bad in the past. You’ll note that The F-Word also has to pre-mod comments to keep things under control.
In her book Backlash, Susan Faludi argues that throughout history whenever steps towards women’s rights or equality are achieved it doesn’t take long for a counterveiling “backlash” movement to come into force. A key part of that backlash typically involves blaming women’s continued inequality and disadvantage on the women’s movement itself. As recently exemplified by Phillip Blond.
But also common to the backlash phenomena are techniques used to denigrate and dismiss women’s campaigners, in particular painting them as unfulfilled, lonely, bitter trouble-makers. You guessed it: lack of family, lack of babies and lack of a man to clean up after usually come top of the list.
The above example, an entirely typical exhibit from the period, only adds support to Faludi’s observations.
June 30, 2010
China-Fetishism and the Usefulness of History
Via Dave Semple, I’m alerted to a recent bit of China-fetishism at the Socialist Unity blog. Actually, by the standards of China-adoration this piece isn’t particularly egregious. On the face of things you’d do well to distinguish this from a China People’s Daily article. Except that Chinese propaganda tends to shy away from explicit statements about the means of economic organisation, insofar as that might suggest there are working alternative systems.
It can seem mystifying that self-identified (hard) leftists turn to China as a laudable example of counter-capitalism. Because it’s astonishingly obvious that China’s massive economic development of the past 20 years has not been achieved via anything like communism or the collectivisation of the means of production.
Rather, it’s been achieved by the CCP deciding to allow a form of capitalist activity to take place within fairly controlled sections of the economy, where the state remains a key player with (part-)ownership of industries whilst a new class of western-style entrepreneurs and businessmen have been allowed to emulate (in particular) Anglophone capitalist practices.
The means of production have not been collectivised (or rather they were collectivised and that resulted in famines and a peasant-level economy), and the means of production are not in the hands of the proletariat. On the contrary, the enormous proletariat subsists with no labour rights, no rights to free speech, no rights to free press or association and no right to choose – or remove – the country’s leaders. As well as myriad human rights abuses, this also ensures no proper political accountability, allowing for the possibility of disasters such as this. Even the capitalist class walks on eggshells: a multi-billionaire today, but piss-off the wrong CCP official and your property can be seized in an instant tomorrow, appropriated by a state upholding no meaningful contract law or property rights.
China-fetishists usually reply that Chinese economic development has lifted millions out of poverty (which it has). But this is usually used as a fig-leaf to ignore the CCP’s systematic rights abuses such as forcibly relocating entire villages to provide cheap labour for new economic projects, or razing entire cities to the ground to facilitate 5-year plans regardless of who happens to be living there. And given that – as above – poverty reduction is not the result of socialism but of a hybrid of extreme American-style capitalism in the economy combined with top-down Stalinist authoritarianism in politics and society, it’s difficult to see how the “but there are fewer poor Chinese now” reply can be used as a socialist/Marxist defence. Oh, and it’s also inconsistent: western capitalism has lifted billions out of poverty, so if that’s the mark of a desirable economic-political system why fetishise China in particular?
What we’re seeing on the modern far left, of course, is the time-tested practice of ignoring inconvenient facts in order to adhere rigidly to a political ideology – namely some variant of Marxism – that is predicated upon condemning Western capitalism as the worst form of socio-political arrangement. Quite logically (at least, within the paradigm), “better” alternatives are sought out in existing world regimes…ironically going against the work of Marx himself, who argued that communism would develop (gradually or via revolution) out of mature capitalist regimes.
Such ignoring or inconvenient facts by the chaps at Socialist Unity – or for that matter Ken Livingstone, his former adviser John Ross, or pop economist Philippe Legrain – is in this day and age of no particular importance beyond intellectual frustration. But in other times and places the adherence to ideology over inconvenient fact has had altogether more sinister outcomes.
Being on the wrong side of such ideologists in the Russia of 1922, the Catalonia of 1937-8, or the Czechoslovakia of 1948 (to pick three examples from hundreds) would be as good as a death sentence. The 20th Century stands as a marked warning to the dangers of ideology unfettered by fact, and the terrible things this can induce individual human beings – of left and right – to do. As Anthony Beevor puts it at the end of his history of the Spanish Civil War:
“Ideological and religious invocations deliberately tried to make the violence abstarct. There was said to have been a sweet-natured youth among Moscardo’s defenders at Toledo, who was called the Angel of the Acazar because before firing his rifle he used to cry, ‘Kill without hate!’ This depersonalisation existed on the republican side as well. David Antona, a CNT leader, said that ‘the bullets which ended the lives of the officers at the Montana barracks did not kill men, they killed a whole social system’. People were encouraged to submerge their identity and individual responsibility into causes with either mystical or superhuman auras…It was this dehumanization of the enemy which made the war so terrible, along, of course, with the modern weapons and the tactics of terror aimed against civilian populations.”
The economic, social and political failures of 20th Century communist systems were enormous (whatever the real, but ultimately far lesser, faults of capitalism). The persistent refusal to acknowledged this – and to act towards China as Soviet apologists did towards Russia 70 years ago – rather implies that contemporary China apologists should be taken outside, lined up against the wall…and forced to read some bloody histoy.
Pun intended.
February 20, 2010
Poor Little Liddle
Somehow this one got through for nearly a week without anyone on the left/Stop Liddle Campaign picking it up in a major way. Presumably because we’ve all got better things to do than read Rod Liddle’s weekly bile in the Sunday Times.
But his effort from last weekend is really worth a look.
Ostensibly, Liddle is bemoaning the case of a primary school that set up it’s own farm, and when a little lamb was old enough to go to the chop house, suddenly “all hell broke loose”.
Apparently “It was at this point that the endlessly hyperactive, bone-headed online fascists got involved”.
“Some 2,500 cretins started an online petition calling for the beleaguered head teacher [Andrea Charman, of Lydd primary school] to be sacked. It is entirely possible that none of them whatsoever had any connection to Lydd primary school. However, the campaign of vilification and vituperation had begun.”
Righteous Rod goes on:
“Another Facebook site was set up by 650 similarly sad, lifeless, drongoes, demanding not merely that Charman be sacked but — and I quote — to Ban Andrea Charman From Teaching Anywhere. Can you imagine the sort of people who would associate themselves with such a cause?”
But there’s more!
“Thick, bitter, utterly convinced of their own rectitude, though they constitute about 0.001% of the population. Convinced enough to make this woman’s life a total misery. The new electronic media might make the world a better-informed and more democratic place, but it also allows the splenetically dunderheaded to impose their will upon others, in a spectacularly uninformed and undemocratic manner.”
Ouch! But wait, there’s even more to be said:
“ [I]t was a defeat for democracy and a victory for those crepuscular cyber-warriors, holed up in their dank bedsits, who cannot bear other people to hold opinions which differ from their own and demand that their minority views must prevail.”
My-oh-my, Rod has certainly got his knickers in a twist about those evil online campaigners, hasn’t he?
Of course, this article couldn’t possibly be about something other than Lydd Primary School, could it? I mean, it couldn’t possibly be about another highly energetic online campaign that now appears to have succeeded in preventing Rod Liddle becoming editor of The Independent?
Of course not. That would just be the fevered paranoid imagining of a crepuscular cyber-warrior, holed-up in his dank bedsit, laughing his sad, lifeless, drongoe head right off.
December 10, 2009
Tamiflu?
Shock, horror! Revelations that Tamiflu, er, maybe doesn’t work.
The Daily Express – “Crusading for a Fairer Britain”, no less – thundered in anger yesterday:
“TAMIFLU does not work on healthy patients who get swine flu, experts have claimed.
An investigation by the British Medical Journal has found no robust data to prove that Tamiflu prevents swine flu from becoming a serious condition.
In what could prove an acute embarrassment to the Government, analysis by two teams of academics suggests that the benefits of Tamiflu were vastly over-estimated.
And it could call into question the Government’s decision to spend £500million stockpiling the drug.”
Damning words indeed. How could the Government have been so foolish?
I wonder if it had anything to do with:
NOW SWINE FLU PANIC SWEEPS BRITAIN: “SWINE flu panic is sweeping Britain, with emergency phone lines overwhelmed and tens of thousands of people desperately stockpiling treatments”
“The National Health Service has 33million doses of anti-viral drugs like Tamiflu – enough for over half of the population – but people fear they will not get to those who need them.”
SWINE FLU WILL KILL 350 PEOPLE EVERY DAY: “”The death toll in Britain has already more than doubled in just one week to 29″;
“Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson said the NHS is planning for almost a third of the population being struck down by the virus and up to 65,000 people dying over the next few months. It is also feared that 12 per cent of the workforce could be off sick within weeks, bringing the country to its knees.”
“Transport and other public services could be crippled and the NHS faces a potentially catastrophic strain on its already over-stretched resources. Estimates of the eventual death toll range from as few as 3,000 to a staggering 750,000 people.”
GIRL, 9, DIES OF SWINE FLU AS SHE WAITS FOR PILLS: “A YOUNG victim of swine flu died waiting for her anti-viral tablets to be sent in the post, it emerged last night.”
“Nine-year-old Asmaa Hussain is the seventh person in the UK to die after catching the bug. She had been taken to the doctor by her mother last Thursday suffering flu-like symptoms and he prescribed Tamiflu tablets as a precaution.”
“Asmaa suffered a massive epileptic fit and died the same evening before the tablets could be sent through the post.”
And slightly more bizarrely (though hardly surprising given the source):
MIGRANTS MAN SWINE FLU HELPLINE: “IMMIGRANTS who can barely speak English will be used to man the phones at emergency swine flu call centres, it was revealed yesterday.” [Click on the link for this one, it's worth it just for the picture they use]
Back in the summer silly season The Daily Express was one of the worst offenders for stoking swine flu hysteria. Let’s imagine what its front page would have been if the Government had refused to stock Tamiflu immediately. Probably something like “LABOUR MURDERERS WANT YOUR CHILDREN TO DIE BECAUSE MINISTERS SAY TAMIFLU ‘NOT 100% PROVEN”.
Given the fruit-loop mood of the country and the media pressure at the time, it’s hardly surprising that the Government panic-bought Tamiflu without first checking its efficacy. After all, stockpiling the drug and disseminating it as soon as it was available was never a sensible, long-term contingency plan against pandemic (you really shouldn’t give out anti-virals during the warm summer months so that the virus can mutate, become resistant and then get to work in the cold winter months). It was a forced action due to hysteria largely stoked by the tabloid media.
So the Daily Express really ought to be quiet. And so should anyone who turns around and criticises the Government for “wasting” money now, but who was a swine-flu-scardie-cat back in the summer.
Oh, and in case you are wondering, at least the Daily Mail has some claim to being long-term Tamiflu sceptical: “Tamiflu turned my children into hallucinating, sobbing wrecks”, after all.
