Obama: "I believe waterboarding was torture"

It still is, come to think of it. Hey, it's all small mercies though, compared to the last president. The next step is deciding whether or not torture is a crime. You can do it, Mr President.

Of mild interest, Obama used the example of Winston Churchill to make his point:

"I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British, during world war two, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said 'we don't torture', when all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat. And the reason was that Churchill understood you start taking shortcuts, and over time, that corrodes what's best in a people. It corrodes the character of a country."

Given that Churchill had no qualms about gassing Kurds, shooting miners, immolating anarchists and so forth I doubt it was anything to do with superior morality, more to do with how useless torture is as a means of gaining information. What's interesting is Obama has appropriated one of the favourite figures of the American right. There's something about Churchill that mainstream US politicians love. But why is it they can appropriate him but no British politicians can, or at least seem to want to?

Oh bloody wow!

I was listening to this last night doing the washing up and wondered (as you do) whether someone had made a video for youtube and, cover me with eggs and flour, someone has. Enjoy... before it's blocked by da man.

More great Blur album/B-sides/Other you've never heard before: I Know, Dancehall, Pleasant Education, Wassailing Song, Maggie May (yes, that Maggie May), Daisy Bell, Supa Shoppa.

The good fight

Should always be well fought. Remember Peter Hain? Remember when he was a lefty? Me neither, but then it was a fair old while ago. Peter does, though, and he's having a bit of a flashback in the Graun:

Thirty years ago rising unemployment and economic decline under Labour saw the BNP's predecessor, the National Front, also do worryingly well in elections. I helped to found the Anti-Nazi League in 1977 to target the National Front, and a mass campaign helped to put it out of business a few years later. Anti-Nazi League supporters developed their own initiatives, from Miners Against the Nazis to Skinheads Against the Nazis. There was even a Skateboarders Against the Nazis. With its sister group Rock Against Racism, the ANL organised huge national carnivals and local gigs, as rock music culture reaching millions was successfully fused with radical politics that traditionally had reached only thousands.

The lesson of the Anti-Nazi League's success is that the BNP needs to be confronted wherever its supporters march or appear in public; and they must also be denied platforms to spread their hate. This was the lesson of the 1930s when Blackshirts led by Oswald Mosley targeting Jewish communities in London's East End were physically stopped in Cable Street in October 1936.

What of fighting today's fascists?

Unless the rest of us get our act together...

Argh!

... the British National party could easily win three seats - and quite possibly six or more - in June's European elections.

Cheesy cliche but, again, true. We are all aware of the intensely difficult bind we are in. Peter Hain is part of that bind. The best antidote to fascism is working class radicalism.

Since the setback to the labour movement in the 80s the Labour Party has dragged hundreds of thousands of activists off to the right and sent hundreds of thousands more into the wilderness. There used to be a time when Labour stood for a Socialist Commonwealth, a time when it had 1 million members and 13 million supporters. Leaving aside the weaknesses in politics, that is touching hegemony.

But the Labour Party is locked into the system. The system has locked up the unions. Labour holds the key. TINA has stymied all attempts at a breakout.

The Labour base slowly corroded and denatured. There have been various attempts to capture this support. There have also been various moments where another politics seemed possible, February 15th being an outstanding example. None have succeeded so far as the structure of mainstream politics still stands.

With both the tories and the nazis closing in there will be tremendous pressure to get behind the old party. If this hasn't worked in the past there's no reason to suspect it will now.

The Labour Party has played a game where it has simultaneously fostered fascism (Hazel Blears, Jack Straw, Phil Woolas etc) and anti-fascism (Ken Livingstone, Peter Hain and so on). Between these two cultures there has risen a self-enforcing apathy. If we strictly follow the old model of fighting fascism we will be working with people who work with the enemy. There is still a gap to the left of labour, we must fill it if we can.

Today's hilarious disease update

OMG, this stuff is, like, so ridiculous. I mean, I can spot media-hype at, like, 500 yards, but gawd, how stupid are the World Health Organisation suggesting that swine flu can "no longer be contained"? Y'know, next week it'll be cockatoo shingles, then elephant syphilis, then cat AIDS. It's just ridiculous.

So this is how it ends?

Not with a bang, but with a sneeze. There is an eerie parallel with the current crisis, which is often referred to as if it were an unfortunate contagion.

Human society has always been subject to sweeping epidemics. Example: the bubonic plague played an interesting role in the rise of capitalism. Something close to half the European population was killed off at the height of the Black Death (between 1347 and 1351). The feudal economy and superstructure was decimated.

The sudden dearth not only created a labour shortage it left survivors in defacto control of cities and the countryside. People who were once (at best) subjects, began to think of themselves as citizens. The 14th century was certainly the biggest crisis Europe faced since the fall of Rome.

Capitalism creates cities, mega cities. But these cities are unplanned, dilapidated and overcrowded. They are hotbeds of disease. The neo-liberal phase of global capitalism reinforced urbanisation, to the point where city dwellers recently became the majority population on earth. We also have, as Mike Davis points out, parallel germ factories based in the industrial farm system that feeds the cities.

The heart of the swine flu outbreak is Mexico. The capital, Mexico city, has an estimated population of 22 million, most of whom are poor, abandoned people with barely any greater practical rights than a serf.

There is a further link between the economic crisis and the swine flu outbreak. Since the discovery and mass manufacture of antibiotics and vaccines many diseases have been virtually wiped out in advanced countries. The superbug and the mutant virus are end results.

Antibiotics and vaccines are a synthetic solution to an organic problem. Just as the credit system delayed and multiplied the economic cycle, the cycle of disease has now been distorted and exaggerated by the pharmaceutical industry.

These are tremendous problems that the current system may not be able to solve.

We're all going to die from swine flu but...

Prisme occupation ends with all jobs saved

Workers at Prisme end their occupation

by Euan Dargie

Workers at Prisme Packaging in Dundee declared victory as they ended their 51-day occupation on Friday.

A new company Discovery Packaging and Design Ltd is to be launched on May Day. This will run the factory and save the jobs. It will be owned and run by the workers.

The workers issued a statement saying:

“This victory would not have been possible if it had not been for the support we have had from the general public, trade unionists, socialists and many others. This support and solidarity has been overwhelming and has helped give us the energy and determination to carry on for more than seven weeks.

“We said at the beginning of this that we were little people who had refused to be little any more. We are proud of what we have achieved and our dignity is intact. We showed we would not be walked over by an uncaring employer.”

The workers were greeted as they came out by jubilant friends, family and supporters.

Prisme, has shown that workers and communities can still fight for their rights during a major crisis – along with the workers at Visteon and the parents from the Glasgow Schools Campaign.

Well done to all concerned. Now, we have to repeat this up and down the land.

A spectre

There are dull people who try to prove how close to communism a country is by how many of the 10 demands of the communist manifesto are fulfilled in day-to-day national politics. The second of the conditions for a transition to communism is a heavy and progressive income tax.

There is a more serious notion that the 10p tax hike for the top band represent the first steps toward renewed social democracy. If it is, and I doubt it, then it's more like the first slight toe twitches. The current budget is a step towards new austerity. The tax rise for top earners is a nod toward the very popular notion that the rich, especially the banking rich, who spent the good times raking it in, should now contribute something toward the drive against recession.

The heading for the Steve Bell cartoon is 50p tax rate 'could cost government money'. What this means is the government could actually lower its income tax receipts as the wealthy choose to avoid tax. This is called many things. The proper name is class war.

It's not just individuals who like to hide their earnings. Corporations can do their bit to boost the bourgeoisie. An example: everyone's favourite capitalist Rupert Murdoch, his company Newscorp barely paid a penny of tax in the United Kingdom for decades. One of the benefits of outsourcing is easier tax avoidance, as the excellent SW articles about shady dealings at Ford/Visteon show.

But Visteon also shows a way round this, which is, of course, class struggle from below. Point four of the ten demands is the confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. It is pretty simple to move money around the world. It's much less simple to move the source of wealth, the means of production. Money is, after all, just a symbol of wealth.

In preventing Visteon from removing the factory the workers there have won an offer of 90 days pay, which is not enough but more than they would have got if they just left the premises for the dole. Taking control of wealth at its source is the key. If the government won't seize the property of the crooked tax dodgers then we should do so ourselves.

Eels

Why do British students have to be scabs?

Maybe they're not scabs, their leaders certainly are. Before dismantling NUS democracy, Wes Streeting, the leader of the NUS, took some time out to smear the Gaza occupation movement. Now he wants lecturers to knuckle under an accept job losses and course cuts, presumably London Met first.

What is the NUS for now? What will Wes do after school, become Unison bigwig or Labour MP? Are we really going back to the 1920s, when students scabbed with glee?

Lists: 2 for 1

First, some more TV shows you can expect to see very soon:

The New Adventures of Depeche Mode; starring the band as a team of time travellers who solve crime on the side. First up, the gang head back in time to share a frozen yoghurt with Tutankhamun when the Dave Gahan steps on a butterfly. Depeche Mode return to their own time to find humankind is slave to antelope and synthesisers are banned. Will they straighten out the timeline or will they just make a horrible mess? 45 minutes of mystery and suspense.

The Devil Wears Plaid: starring Steve Martin in a TV spin off from the movie/book, as the impossible executive... without hilarious consequences.

Undercover Laboratoire Garnier: an expose of the horrific conditions inside the factory. None of us are getting younger, except for those guys.

Britain’s Got Scabies: so, you’re reusing vet training footage now...? Yes.

Formula Monkey: not so much a sport more an experiment where apes are given high-powered sports cars.

The Revenge of the Laughing Gnome: DI Hunt is thrown back in time in a dream of Sam Tyler by Alex Drake set in 1967, who is stuck in 1982 and trying to get back to 2007, even though that’s now in the past. Also, there’s some nostalgia.

Night of the Living Australians: other working title Nightmare on Earl’s Court Road.

Hell’s Editing Suite: where X-list celebrities have just three weeks to come up with a new ‘reality’ TV show.

Justin Lee Collins in Bring Back... Horne and Corden: the nostalgia industry has almost caught up with the present day.


Over the years the TtSD crew have made various threats towards people, mostly people in the public eye. I thought it was about time we collected a few:

I'm going to put you on a bungee jump made of cheese wire.

I'm going to cut your skin off and tuck it behind a wardrobe.

I'm going to staple your to an ironing board and rub a cat on your face until you sneeze yourself inside out.

I'm going to force feed you dehydrated fruit until you vomit then use it as a shampoo.

I'm going to put you on a drip of pure LSD and force you to watch episodes of Hollyoaks backwards at top volume.

I'm going to chop your knees off and make you run a marathon.

I'm going to cut off your arse and us it as a wicketkeeping glove.

I'm going to sabotage all reasonable attempts to keep global climate temperatures within a 2 degree limit and then insist you wear a jumper.

Campaign Against Police Violence

Ian Tomlinson's death has changed things. The difficult thing for the majority of the public to grasp is that it was not unusual, a one-off. Think Kevin Gately, Blair Peach, the 96 Hillsborough victims. Since kettling was introduced into political demonstrations by the police on May Day 2001 unfortunately this was an accident waiting to happen.

It should not take the death of a demonstrator, let alone a bystander to change things. But it has. There has been a torrent of videos and eyewitness reports regarding police actions at the G20, this was published today. In a heavily mediated society many people now know the reality of political policing.

The current job is to explain how the G20 operation was not abnormal, but standard police practice. But, of course, something must be done or else more and more people will face this treatment as they take a stand against the current crisis.

A campaign against police violence has been launched with number of interesting, immediate actions planned. There is so much ground to cover, deaths in custody, stop and search, institutional racism to name a few issues. Such a coalition need not be jealously fought over. For one thing it represents a nascent majority. People want to see something done about civil liberty and policing, all we need to do is make a start.

Keep awn keepin awn: Part 9

The organising committee of the National Assembly were pacing the floors of Alexandra Palace. It was four days until the assembly. People were arriving from across the country. They’d just received a delegation of Welsh fishermen, were checking their credentials and asking around for floor space when a man on horseback came clopping up the hill, he was carrying a letter.

This wasn’t unusual. The postal system frequently broke down. Most post was delivered by town to town by train, but trains and track were often subject to sabotage and robbery. If your post was valuable or essential it was often better to send it by rider.

But this rider was unusual. Most recognised authorities wore grey uniforms with the organisation’s insignia somewhere on the front. The rider was dressed in purple and white with a red cross on the front. He was an emissary from Bishop.

Despite its small size the East England Bishopric had been gaining in power. For one thing the Bishop was now calling himself the leader of the Refounded Church of England. Various ex-clerics were trying to follow his example up and down the country.

Late summer there was a week of riots down in the West Country led by clerical gangs. Toward the autumn armed gangs tried to assault communal buildings in Manchester and Liverpool. They were eventually repelled. When the survivors were questioned they claimed to be inspired by the Bishop, although they denied being armed by him.

The Bishop had a small but well organised army that liked to parade. People who had seen them described clean new uniforms, assault rifles, machine guns, armoured cars. These were serious weapons.

The army liked to make things difficult for anyone travelling up or down the Thames. Early on in the crisis a group of East Londoners found an abandoned marina with dozens of yachts and powerboats. They reckoned they’d rig them up to go fishing in the Channel.

One fine morning, dawn they set off in a little flotilla, 20 boats down the river. Midmorning they had just sailed past Grays when rifle fire started whizzing at the sails. Startled, the group kept pushing on. The ships drew more fire, this time aiming at the crew. A few people were hit.

The flotilla communicated by short-wave radio. The captain of the lead ship kept telling the crews to press on when she was cut short by a huge explosion. A grenade from a launcher had ripped through the boat, killing all on board. The fleet turned sharply and headed for home.

The would-be sailors were deterred for several weeks until new groups began making trips at night. After several successful weeks at sea fishing crews came under attack again. Some were arrested by men on boats and were never seen again. Fishing crews started to go to sea armed.

The Bishop’s soldiers were a menace on land too. Anyone travelling east from London could reasonably expect to be stopped by a patrol. People found without ID (all citizens living under the Bishop carried badges or cards) would be taken in for questioning. Anyone suspected of being a Communard was treated roughly. Some were disappeared.

There was an incident only a few weeks before the assembly was called. The Bishop declared that the following Saturday his army would march through Romford and the surrounding areas in a gesture of Christian solidarity. It was a pretty transparent attempt to claim part of outer London for the Bishopric.

Former soldiers from the Chelsea barracks were sent to negotiate with the army. They were turned away. On the morning of the march people from all around the area were mobilised to block the march. The council sent groups of bows and rifles, distributed blocks and blocks of dynamite to back the crowd up. Fortunately no one came.

Unfortunately instead a squad of unmarked armoured cars raced into the centre Dagenham. They set up and sprayed bullets and bombs for three-quarters of an hour into the surrounding area. They were only driven off once back up had come down from Romford.

The communes had been outmanoeuvred. They weren’t going to be fooled again. The rider was immediately detained and questioned, why was he here, what was the Bishop’s intentions, was he connected to the shooting in Dagenham. The rider stayed quiet, except to direct the communards to the Bishop’s message.

It read: the Bishop’s army was now 100,000 strong. Debateable, but how strong was his army? It was difficult to get an actual measure. It represented the only force left in Britain to stand up for law an order. Not so much debatable but laughable.

If the communes took power at the assembly they would be committing an act of treason against the legitimately constituted government of Parliament, headed by the monarch. Where were they? People had almost forgotten. Hadn’t the government died with the great fire in Westminster?

Until the return of the government, as a Bishop of the order of the Knights Templar, the Bishop claimed sovereignty, caretaker of the land. Could it be true, was he behind the Knights’ uprising or were there more Knights? How deep did the conspiracy go? The Bishop would present himself to the national assembly in four days’ time, where he would make his offer: submit to my will or suffer my wrath.

It was then that the news of the overthrow of the US government came through. It was broadcast on something claiming to be Government Emergency Broadcast Network. This was no coincidence. A new conspiracy was on the move. An emergency meeting of the council was called. It was enlarged to take in representatives from the delegations. All communes were put on red alert.

News was not instantaneous in those days. Unknown to the Bishop or the Communards something was happening thousands of miles away that would change the balance of forces decisively.

Actually existing Obamabashing

Yahboosucks to me, eh? Actually, I'm not being too hard on him. Just noting that he's backed down in the face of CIA "concern". The US administration recently released documents showing the previous government had authorised sleep deprivation and waterboarding. Now CIA agents are worried they will be prosecuted.

Dick Cheney has made much huffing and puffing about how effective these techniques are. You might question the opinion of a man who was, apparently, convinced Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It seem though even the raw facts stand out against this conclusion:

Sensitive details were blacked out in the memos seen by most of the media on Thursday but over the weekend Marcy Wheeler, of the Emptywheel blog, found a copy in which crucial details were not masked.

That copy showed that Mohammed had been subjected to waterboarding - which simulates drowning - 183 times in March 2003. He had been arrested in Pakistan at the start of that month. Abu Zubaydah, a Saudi captured in Pakistan in March 2002, was subjected to waterboarding 83 times in August 2002.

183 times? That's very specific. How many virtual drownings do you have to go through before you spill the beans? Meanwhile, where were all the British agents when this was going on? They must have been somewhere.

Here it comes

The government will be making £15 billion of 'efficiency savings' (3% of last Autumn's bank bailout) in the coming budget. In the land of the sane these are called cuts. They will come (not from scrapping Trident or ID cards or foreign wars, not from a windfall tax) from "back office" functions, not "frontline services".

We will see what back office functions actually means. Will the government break with its strategy of targets, tables and managerialism? I doubt it. The top brass will probably stay.

There are lots of other support functions in the public sector. Take the average hospital, there will be porters, IT staff, security guards, people working in the canteen and shops. Perhaps the clue is in back office. Maybe we can do without admin staff. Maybe, but given the above culture of managerialism, where nothing has happened unless it has been written down and accounted for, are we going to ask doctors/nurses/teachers/social workers etc to take on more paperwork?

The battle will soon be on. Will global capital conquer the last bastions of the public service welfare state? This will be the greatest test of the unions since the miners strike, and they failed that one. The ruling class will pit back room against front line workers, public against private sector.

We know what victory will take.

Part 8: it just keeps coming and coming

But the news rang out most clearly over the radio. Radio was the prime New Medium. Everyone listened to the radio.

Strangely enough it was one of the few resources not to have been recovered from the catastrophe. At the first rising curl of the crisis Broadcasting House was under occupation. A group, three or four-dozen technicians, runners and producers had barricaded themselves into the building against job losses and outsourcing.

They occupied early one evening. They took the usual precautions (food, water etc) and called up the typical kind of support networks. They even planned for violent police intervention. The following morning they got their first taste, receiving a court order one morning from a police delegation demanding they leave by 5pm that evening or be moved by bailiffs backed with police,

But the riot police never came, so the workers settled in for the night. From a set of rooms on the 3rd floor they had an unusual vantage point. The stations they worked for, the programmes they made did not go to air. They checked the following morning, scanning the dial, checking the websites, phoning around. Nothing... at all. A few broadcasts at the far end but basically nothing. Strange.

They did pick up some news, odd reports of gang violence, shootings, riots. The riots didn’t die down. The occupiers would stick their head out the window. They heard sirens, shouting and screams. A small group of occupiers were sent out to check the rest of the building. It was largely empty, abandoned, those that were left were in the process of abandoning it: something about evacuating the city, a violent catastrophe.

The occupiers thought about doing the same. But stranger stories were coming in, mostly over the internet now, as the phone network ground down overloaded; cannibalism, fires, nazis, gunfights. Then an order went out from the authorities. Emergency TV broadcast at twelve pips: stay put. Remain in your homes, shops, offices, factories, wherever you happened to be, stay put. So they did. Then the TV fell dark. What a difference a day made.

That night someone, unknown antagonists, drove a tank down nearby Regent Street, spraying bullets everywhere, into nearby buildings, onlookers, before crashing into a shop. The occupiers decided to pool resources, turn off all lights and seal the ground floor as best they could.

They held out for three more days and nights, making the occasional phone call. Some friends and family were safe at home or alive, miles away. Some loved ones were missing. Contact began winding down, slowly, as more and more people disappeared. The occupiers were being surrounded by silence.

But not complete silence. In between the rumbling, klaxons and screams, occasional passing strangers, realising the building was occupied, would call up to the people inside, begging sanctuary. Initially the occupiers didn’t respond. Time passed. People came and went. The occupiers felt compelled to answer. They tried to drive the refugees away with insults and improvised force. Small groups began to converge on the building. A stand off began.

The refugees were unarmed, a ragged, sleepless bunch but still potentially dangerous. By the sixth morning there were two-dozen people returned. The occupiers talked to the refugees for nearly an hour, quizzing them. Who were they? They were a motley crew, blue and white collar workers stuck in Central London. What was happening? Most of the violence had died down but the streets were still dangerous. The roads were mostly blocked. There were fires everywhere. Food and medicine had mostly run out. The authorities were nowhere to be seen.

The occupiers were wary but they agreed to meet the refugees outside by a well-guarded fire escape. The occupiers were afraid. They tooled up as best they could, taking fire extinguishers, pipes and spanners, knives, hat stands and letter openers as weapons. They went down on masse and talked to the refugees some more.

Eventually it was agreed they could come on up. It was one of the best decisions the occupiers made. In the party of refugees there was a doctor, three builders, an IT tech, two cleaners, a train driver and a bus driver, a number of admin staff, four students (Biology and Physics, two for English Literature), a bouncer and a security guard. Not only did they bring their skills to the mix (example: the builders helping shore up the barricades) they also raised morale amongst the occupiers. They were not alone.

Later that morning the new occupants of Broadcasting House decided it was time to end the isolation. It was time to go to air. The IT tech helped rig up a website with audio and visuals, although the occupiers decided against using the camera to start with.

The podcast began with one of the original occupiers reading out a prepared statement, describing the past week from the occupiers’ point of view. A telephone number was then given out. Anybody listening was asked to text, phone or email (one of the occupiers gave up their mobile for the purpose) to give help, offer advice, and share their experience. Each of the occupiers, old and new, took it in turns to relay their experiences and make the same appeal. This went on for about an hour and a half.

The recording was replayed throughout the day. The occupiers waited for some sign from the outside. None came. That evening they decided to risk of an open air broadcast. The producers and runners got quietly busy that night rigging up equipment for the following morning. They checked the dial. Nothing was out there except faint French, Dutch and Norwegian broadcasts at the far end.

9am the following day they checked again, still nothing. The occupiers found previously popular bandwidth and repeated their appeal. Again it lasted for about an hour and a half. Again there was no response. With no better ideas and nothing better to do one of the occupiers put the Beatles White Album out. Halfway into Dear Prudence there was a sudden noise. A text had come in. It said: people are alive and well in East Ham and would like to request something off Revolver.

The occupiers got straight back on the air. Within minutes they got dozens of calls, text and emails from people all around London. The occupiers thought they’d risk it. They revealed their location, asking for help, medicine, food, water etc. They invited people to come down to the station, come on air, share stories, wisdom, help spread the news.

More and more people started contacting them. Pretty soon they had to give out a second telephone number. Very few people at that time were keen to venture into the heart of the city, but the occupiers read out more and more messages as they came in. However, 36 hours after the internet message began repeating the occupiers were receiving delegations from across the city and Radio Free London was born.

It was also about this time a rival station was set up, the Government Emergency Broadcast Network.

Obama, the blank screen

People project onto him their own political desires. This is an ambiguous talent for a politician. He has real, albeit slim, anti-war credentials, which he has managed to stretch a very long way. His supporters also seem him as progressive (can't say left wing) despite not having done a great deal of progressive things in his political career.

We at TtSD were very meeean and naaaaaasty about Obama supporters in November. We are, of course, extremely earnest and relentlessly right in everything with say and do. If there is one solid thing that you can say about the vote for Obama was that it showed a great number of Americans do not want to live in a racist society. Electing Obama was a platonic but significant gesture.

But if the majority of Americans don't want to live in a racist society, a great number, by definition millions, still wouldn't mind:

The Obama administration has issued a chilling warning to US police forces about the threat of a rise in violent rightwing extremist groups fuelled by recession, the return of disgruntled army veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, and hostility over the election of the first black president.

The internal report, which was not meant for publication, was drawn up by the department of homeland security, set up after the 9/11 attacks to co-ordinate internal security.

A leaked copy says: "The economic downturn and the election of the first African-American president present unique drivers for rightwing radicalisation and recruitment."

It adds that the threat posed by "lone wolves" and small terrorist cells is more pronounced than in past years.

This is not just idle Summer-of-Rage-type speculation. We know a lot about the US military culture of racism and abuse (story from today US army soldier convicted of killing Iraqi detainees). We know that the top brass have been (at best) turning a blind eye to far-right recruitment to the army.

We've also seen how the American right has reacted to Obama. First he was a muslim then a terrorist, then he was a socialist, then a muslim socialist (you see where I'm going with this... projection). Nowadays he's a fascist, or at least has the whiff of fascism, however that may smell.

Great social crises have always brought polarisation. Obama may try to bridge the divide, sit on the fence etc. If he does so the memory of his administration will depend upon which side America plumps for, left or right.

Actually existing news

Since the Ian Tomlinson video and the vigil video have made it into the mainstream media the Guardian has been numerous bits of footage showing Operation Glencoe. The little press release linked to has a nice line in chutzpah:

On the first day of the G20 summit a number of cordons were put in place to deal with the high levels of violence experienced against officers.

One of the films shows people at the Climate Camp on Bishopsgate being struck with batons and shields. The campers have their hands in the air and are chanting "this is not a riot". There is another film worth watching, where:

A City of London police officer approaches a group of photographers and camera crews and orders them to leave the area for a period of about 30 minutes or face arrest. The instruction is made under section 14 of the Public Order Act, which is intended primarily to disperse potentially disruptive or violent gatherings.

Of course they don't know the law, they just apply it as best they can... of course. Once you get over the shock, first of the police violence, then of the press actually taking notice, you have to remember that this is normal behaviour for the police. We are more or less twenty years from Hillsborough and thirty years from the murder of Blair Peach, and those are events which are remembered.

The police force are on the rack, and rightly so. They must stay there. they must be held to account. KWM was at last night's public launch of the Justice for Ian Tomlinson campaign. I'll will ask if he's got something to report.

Oh My!

Stupid, stupid, stupid

Actual named authors with actual published books that you can look up at the British Library.

Pierre Anus
Istvan Apathy
Pierre Jean Jacques Bacon-Tacon
Marmaduke Baghole
Yoshimoto Banana
Rebecca Hammering Bang
Forest Belt
Juana Bignozzi
Petr Bitsilli
Melt Brink
Malte Brunk
Clement Crock
Richard L Daft
T. Fox Decent
Arsen Diklic
Gordon Bandy Enders
Semen Frug
Manfred Grunt
Herbert Hunger
Klaus Klang
Jurgen Klapprott
Dirk La Cock
Herman von Lips
Tit Wing Lo
Rocco L Motto
PC Pant
Ruth Rice Puffer
Hans Rectanus
Abraham Shag
Morten Thing
Urban Groskipper von Whipper
Walter Womble
Pedro Alid Zoppi

8 out of 10 cats prefer a certain brand of tinned food...

But 9 out of 10 climate scientists think current measures to tackle global climate change will fail to keep average temperatures within the 2C band of tolerance. As things stand catastrophic climate is inevitable.

Some people won't let things stand. They may be elitist. Their actions may be fundamentally inadequate to the task. However, some of them are also under arrest. It's a funny old world.

Bill Hicks

Bill Hicks and his friends used to like taking psychedelic drugs outdoors. They heard about a new must-do drug called X. Bill and two friends took the drug and went out into the woods, whereupon they found a clearing with patterns of emergent power. Bill sat in a lotus position while the other two walked in careful circles. After a while Bill noticed:

“The patterns you just walked describe how our horoscopes interrelate with each other”.

This is incredible. When Hicks was young he created his own comic series, starring a superhero called Sane Man, who goes round solving the world’s problems with the application of logic and reason.

As an artist he was sceptical and satirical. He ruthlessly probed hypocrisy and double standards in politics, war, drugs, religion, sexuality… and so on. He was Sane Man and yet he was incredibly superstitious. Bill Hicks believed in everything.

There is an interesting point to be made here. A key human mental ability is abstraction. Humans can lift what is significant from a welter useless or conflicting information. This means an astronomer can pick up the faint glow of a dwarf planet moving against the background of stars. It also means people can spot a picture of Jesus in a car park oil slick.

Superstition is the over application of reason. We shouldn’t underestimate how big an intellectual leap atheism still is. Humans labour consciously; the fruits of their labour surround them. The products of human effort are also reflections of the human mind. If you understand a man-made object you understand the mind behind it.

It makes sense to extend this to nature. What mind made the world? Add to this the complication of alienated labour. In this latest form of class society the products of human labour seem to have a life of their own, leading them to rise up against their creators. What mind made this world?

In an age when there’s potential to both understand and overcome the blind forces which rule humanity, given the raw levels of alienation, it shouldn’t be surprising if there’s a greater degree of superstition and belief. It makes sense then, also, that these phenomena should be combined in unusual ways. Bill Hicks was one of those ways.

A comparison: Bill Hicks Vs Bill Blake.

They are both known radicals. Blake was a plebeian radical, inspired by the French revolution (during the revolutionary wars he was seen walking the streets of London wearing a French tri-corner hat). Hicks described himself as “Noam Chomsky with dick jokes”. This was an honest description from a man whose political ideas revolved around concepts of freedom and individual self-determination.

There is a secret political link between the two men. The English revolution of the 1640s was expressed in religious terms. Its motivation was not so much democracy as we know it today (although the idea was raised) but personal and religious freedom. The transformation of the state and law from an aristocratic to bourgeois context began then. The true radicals were defeated but not destroyed. Instead they exported their revolution to the colonies.

In his intro to Revelations, Hicks described how he “tracked the remnants of the American Dream”: the dream being founded on the principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Though he would criticise manifestations of capitalism (even mentioning the word during the 80s and 90s seemed odd) he never really tried to transcend the system except in vague Hippie/New-Left terms. This is in keeping with his honesty. It’s also a moot point whether his politics would have developed over more time.

Both men held idiosyncratic faiths. Blake was an egalitarian Christian who stood out against orthodoxies held by the Church of England and of Rome. Hicks was brought up a Christian and used Christian ideas and imagery in an apostate manner.

One clearly common trait was diabolism. Blake was obsessed with the fall of mankind. Why did god allow it? The role of the devil, the leader of the first insurrection, in creating the world as we know it, fascinated him. Though it appears through his known work, this trend is most pronounced in the Proverbs of Heaven and Hell, where Blake tries to invert the whole of reality to remake it afresh.

A contemporary of Hicks described him as “Christ at his angriest”. Over the years he increasingly saw himself as a bearer of enlightenment. A heckler once told him “we don’t come to comedy to think”. His response was “well, where do you go to think? I’ll meet you there”. For him words had import. His self-expression was a fundamental, almost holy principle. The compliment to his christlike pose was Goatboy. Goatboy was at times a personification of evil and at time recognition of true desire.

Comedians past

“I said ‘you’re just that close to being a preacher’. He said ‘I am a preacher, Momma’”. Mary Hicks on her son, Bill.

At the dawn of human culture all the different arts, sciences and superstitions were effectively one. Culture is a clear sign of surplus wealth. Surplus wealth is the foundation of class division and struggle. Since the dawn of human culture art, science and religion have been drawing apart.

This process reaches it’s outermost limits under capitalism, where each discipline, each genre, each sect is sharply defined and commodified, and sent out onto the market.

Stand up comedy boiled down is verbal/visual performance (verbal dominant) in front of a live audience. Stand up comedy, as we know it today is a capitalist art form. It depends upon the monopoly of public space.

You can see the pre-capitalist basis for stand up comedy in pre-capitalist spaces. Precursors of the comedian include the jester, who performed in royal or noble courts. The jester, or fool, played primarily to his patron: the ruler of the house. His job was mostly to flatter and amuse. He had licence to offer witty forms of council. In the process he could gently play on the host’s foibles and flaws. This dual role still exists in modern comedy.

Another proto comedian was the preacher, in particular the radical preacher. Established religions need homogeneity, clarity and repeatability in their message. They are crucial pillars of civil society, of organising consent for rule. In line with the state that sponsors them, their rituals are much more founded in text than performance. Think of a church or an empire without script, it’s not possible.

Breakaway religions do not have prestige and wealth. They are not plugged into networks of power. They are normally founded on revisions, combinations or alternative interpretations of prior religions. The rituals of the breakaway religion are more attention catching, performance based. This is the difference between a preacher and a vicar. A preacher has to win and hold an audience in the same way as a comedian.

The last precursor we’re going to pick on is the theatre. If we’re being accurate the theatre is more proto than pre capitalist. The word ‘comedy’ used to be a concrete noun, referring to plays where the principle characters survived. A generally upbeat framework allowed comedy, in the modern sense, to develop.

Instead of the epic, deadly sweep of tragedies, where the fate of nations would rest on the shoulders of lonely individuals, in comedies you had a focus on day-to-day life. Comedies would rest on bawdy humour, scandal, satire, Twelfth Night and Mardi Gras. A common theme was the clash of middle class and aristocratic culture (also a tragic device) and the potential comic turmoil and overturn therein.

Once you get things like vaudeville and music hall you find the direct ancestors of stand up comedians taking the stage. In time the music and dance separated from the comedy routine. All human inventions take time to find their niche. Either they separate quickly and have to refer back to the objects they have separated from, for example the wireless or the horseless carriage, or they spend time as an adjunct to some other form: the internet is a good example of this.

Man and Method.

Bill Hicks’ early comedic heroes were Woody Allen (from whom he stole his first joke) and Richard Pryor. He also loved rock ‘n’ roll, in particular the freewheeling, spectacular.

Post war culture has been overwhelmingly occupied with self-expression and improvisation. It was a reaction against the rigidity of the total war machine. Rock and roll, with its promise of total liberty, was the most important manifestation of post war culture.

I would argue the promise of freedom of expression clashing against the needs of nightclub owners and the comedy circuit brought out the latent politics within Bill’s worldview. Bill’s first raw taste of censorship came with the battle over his material for TV routines. Everyone knows Bill’s final David Letterman Show routine was cut. Ten years before he was arguing over whether (perfectly tasteful) jokes involving wheelchairs were acceptable for broadcast.

Bill’s later mission was to point out how beliefs and ideologies were distorting our humanity and “making us pay a higher psychic price”. The inconsistency between word and deed in public life is the basis of satire. Bill fleshed out his satire in great detail, from his UFO experiences right up to the Counts of the Netherworld.

But Bill would take this concern one step further. Bill would often take up consciously hypocritical opinions. Usually he wouldn’t take off the mask. For example: his high period routine about homelessness (“the very idea they want me to given them the hard earned money my folks send to me every week… leech, get a job”).

Another example: in his very last TV routine he went on at length about two grade school books, My Two Mommies and Daddy’s New Roommate. He found that disgusting… Daddy’s New Roommate, not My Two Mommies, which was very edifying. There is a subtle little wink at the end: “some people would call that a double standard, people, eh?” Anyone who laughed or applauded the bulk of the routine suddenly ended up looking stupid.

Bill saw himself as trying to illuminate the collective unconscious; a tough task. Perhaps he was laying it on a bit thick, but he was very sincere in his wish. In his school yearbook under “goals” he put “enlightenment”.

His role-play got more extreme with time, developing into dark poetry. He would frequently have a cloven hoofed wolverine impregnate a banal (male) celebrity with the children of satan. Hicks was an avid fan of rock and roll. He would often wheel out his Jimi Hendrix/Debbie Gibson routine as a further riff on banality. The climax of that routine is literally horrific, but the message is clear, the endpoint of complete freedom is complete subjection.

An interesting side note, the point he bludgeons home is celebrity culture is demeaning and humiliating for all. He summed it up in the catchphrase “suck satan’s cock”, now part of popular culture. Hicks used a variant on the satan/wolverine character, called Goat Boy, to talk about his own sexuality. Goat Boy was always concerned with giving rather than receiving oral sex.

Bill Hicks made his point through graphic exaggeration. There’re shades of Hunter S Thompson. There’re also elements of Bill Burroughs Naked Lunch. Even as he, say, rhapsodised about pornography, Hicks would end the routine with an observation about the nature of pornographic modelling (how is jism being worn this year?).

All of this is consistent with a man whose prime concern was freedom of expression. Hick’s politics is best when he deals with the subject of war and, in particular, the lies that are told in order to generate consent for war. This leads us back to the original point. The bulk of post war culture has been a celebration (albeit packaged and sanitised… another Hicks hobby horse) of freedom of expression and self-determination. The war machine is the ultimate negation of self-determination.

What has Bill Hicks left us?

Unfortunately much of his topical material has stayed fresh in the 15 years since he died, even down to the names, Bush, Clinton etc. The collective unconscious is still unaware of itself.

Aside from his example of relentless, questioning idealism, his life and works have left at least one practical change. You don’t need to be that old to remember the slogan Comedy is the New Rock and Roll. For a short while in the late 80s to early 90s it seemed like comedy had replaced pop music as the driving force of culture.

When Hicks began performing there were a few famous comics. Some like Woody Allen, Richard Pryor and George Carlin etc had pop culture cache. Mostly comedians were thought of as take-my-wife types, old men in suits working Las Vegas.

Comedy had very little outlet into mass media. The scope for any young, remotely edgy stand up comedian was small. Hence Bill Hicks ended up playing 200-300 nights a year most years in order to reach some kind of an audience. Comedy is not a medium in itself.

Bill Hicks was part of a group of Houston-based comedians who spent the best part of the 80s building a reputation for iconoclasm and straight talking. A British equivalent might be the Alternative Comics. While the Alternative Comics had a fast track to sketch shows and sitcoms on BBC2 or Channel 4, Hicks spent 5 years off the air after an argument over a 6-minute slot on a talk show.

In that time his act developed and became what as it is known today on CDs and DVDs. While lamenting the decline of popular music Hicks took everything about rock and roll that appealed to young people and put it in his act. He was the purest example of the alternative comedian, the irresistible rebel.

His look, his moves and routines might seem clichéd at times, if only because they are so repeatable, copy-able (from Dennis Leary to Krusty the Clown circa the Last Temptation of Krust). He is the basis for modern comedy. Ironically, for a man who eschewed organised religion, he has become a christ-like figure. He was (or at least his stage persona was) what all comedians, all questing radicals are supposed to be.

His mission to illuminate the collective unconscious was going to fail. In some cases it’s actually more fun when he deals with unreceptive members of the audience who just don’t get it (check out his 1989 gig at the Chicago Funny Firm), watching or listening to him fly off the handle. Except, of course, his mission is not over, so long as there are people who remember (and repeat) his act with joy and pleasure.

Sermon over: I’d like you all to repeat after me:

“Today a young man on acid…”

More police news - slight interest

Celebrity ex-policeman Brian Paddick has called for the officer who assaulted Ian Tomlinson to be arrested and suspended in order to save public confidence in the police force. If this incident proves anything it should show how if you've nothing to hide there still is plenty to fear... but that was said about the De Menezes case.

Then check out this little horror story:

After five minutes, I wandered through the station and filmed with my mobile phone the policemen and the sniffer dog and the men searching Fred while pretending to text.

An officer approached me and asked me whether I knew if it was an offense to photograph the police. I said I didn't know. I held my phone up so that he could see the home screen on it. He tried to take it from me. I pulled it back. He held my arm while trying to twist my body round to get the phone out of my right hand. I asked him to stop touching me and he continued. I managed to put my phone in my right-hand jacket pocket. He gripped me harder and was tying to pull me towards him so that he could have access to my right pocket. I asked him again to get off me and that he was hurting me. He stopped trying to get into my pocket but kept my left arm in a very firm two-hand grip.

He turned to two women who were stood close by and explained that I had been filming with my phone, that it was illegal and that he's trying to get my phone, which is in my right jacket pocket. One of the women grabbed my right arm and the other went for my pocket. (It's possible that the plainclothed woman flashed a badge in my face first and said "we're officers" before they launched their attack on me). I swung around and pushed my self against the wall so that they had no access to my pocket and pulled myself down so that I was crouching on the floor in the corner of the walls. The three of them wrestled with me, pulling me and yanking me so that the other could get into my pocket. I pulled myself down on the ground trying to protect myself with my knees up at my chest but they just kept yanking me back up.

"The male officer told me that it was the law that I should give him my phone. I told him it wasn't the law and they had no right to take my possessions and they were already in breach of my civil liberties. He said that he would arrest me if I didn't hand over my phone.

She was right too, but that doesn't matter. I once observed two policemen who stopped an Arab man under "section 60". They were actually relatively well behaved towards the chap. Afterward I asked one of the officers section 60 of which act? He said:

"Uh..."

Long weekend

There's only one a year (officially), and it's not here yet... Still, enjoy this bumper crop:

Roundup

If you are going to the Visteon occupiers in Belfast and Enfield or demonstrating in Bethnal Green for justice for Ian Tomlinson, or perhaps going to see the Glasgow schools occupation, remember these are not yet extraordinary times. Someone else is doing it, why aren't you?

If you're not, remember there is also going to be a huge demo in solidarity with the Tamils currently under bombardment (threat of genocide, almost) from the Sri Lankan state. Given what we have seen in Westminster, we know the demonstrators will be determined. Please given them your support?

Dr. Ugs

The legalisation of drugs could save the government between £4.6-£13.9 billion according to the drug law reform group Transform.

I don't know a great deal about them. They have focused on raw, easily understandable figures. There are, of course, other, less quantifiable benefits. For example being able to control the supply, being able to monitor what goes into each drug, making it easier to offer treatment to people with problems... Not forgetting demolishing the grand hypocrisy that nicotine and alcohol, the two most harmful drugs remain legal.

Lets not forget, though, that the War on Drugs is just as much a cover as the War on Terror. In places like Colombia it means propping up a brutal but pro-western government. Wherever you live, at home it is a war on personal freedom, a war against the poor and ethnic minorities. Example: marijuana, so named by the American authorities in order to associate with Mexican immigrants.

Given the current reversion of the state into its oppressive function it will take a massive social break though, beyond mere reasoned argument, to liberalise the laws on drugs.

Picture

Ian Tomlinson was a passerby heading home from work last Wednesday when he was caught up in a police cordon. He died shortly afterwards. The police originally said he died of a 'heart attack', then it was 'natural causes'. Eyewitnesses say he was charged to the floor and suffered a sharp bang to the head.

The police said they were prevented from reaching him because they were attacked with bottles. I don't know how long before his death this photo was taken but according to the picture (and to further eyewitness reports) but this clearly wasn't the case.

Foul play or unfortunate accident, Ian Tomlinson was a victim of the police tactic of kettling.

Update VIDEO: Ian Tomlinson had his hands in his pockets and his back to the police. He was struck by one officer on the top of his legs then charged to the ground by another.

There is a case to answer. The very least this proves is that the police felt they had carte blanche to dish out egregious violence that day to anyone they saw fit... the very least.

Part 7: culture n that

News from America travelled via radio transmission and restored internet links. Culture in New London was greatly diminished, although it had a head start over the rest of the country.

The old city was a media and cultural centre. It was the home of all national television networks, the seat of each newspaper, printing and publishing empire. It was blessed with film, television and sound studios, theatres, museums and galleries, nightclubs and other music venues.

Though much wealth was of this was out of reach of the average Londoner, its effects seeped through the collective consciousness. London folk were media savvy, used to handling information, a tribal group eager to swap and discuss news, ideas, gossip, jokes and so on.

As the survivors went over from surviving to rebuilding, the tribal notion returned. The tendency toward a fast moving, collective culture was revived. This time it was an active culture, where consumers were also creators.

The first efforts at creativity were simple, connected with the politics of the city. The simplest form of communication was printing, paper and ink.

In the Old Times newspapers were a clumsy but hard-working institution. Newspapers had an usual relationship with the public. Britain was a small country with a (relatively) large population, concentrated in large towns and cities. Print culture was slow to die. It was relatively easy for someone or something to become part of mass culture and consciousness. All you had to do was make impress the right journalists, agents and commissioners.

Even so, the complicated and expensive print infrastructure was the first to break down during the catastrophe (only when the electric grid broke down were the spoken and electronic outlets silenced). Deadlines were missed, deliveries got lost, machines were destroyed and so on.

As the recovery got underway people, groups, communes had to find ways of communicating with each other. Hey, we’re still alive! Many Londoners were at least half-trained in computers and office work. Internet cafes and stationery supplies were reopened or recycled.

The centuries old tradition of the bulletin and newsletter was revived. A great recovery was going on. Ordinary people were thrown back onto their own resources, which then had to be pooled for the sake of collective survival.

News could be carried around the city by word of mouth. It went further, lasted longer and was trusted a whole lot more if it came from a recognised source. Many of the newsletters came from communal groups. These were usually merged as groups joined forces. As political groups emerged they also began publishing.

When various bits of industry and infrastructure were revived the news was usually announced by leaflet or bulletin. As bits of industry grew stronger the workers felt more powerful and autonomous, they began producing their own communications. This would sometimes lead to arguments with local, territorial communes.

To begin with the new print media was prolific in volume and variety but quite modest in practical size. Papers were rarely more than two sheets folded. Groups with access to binding sometimes produced four page documents. Publications were often just double sided sheets of A4 paper.
Various names sprang up, for example: obvious names such as the Lewisham News, the Harrow Informer or the Somers Town Times. Some titles were pointed, like Broadwater Radical and the Free Press (which covered parts of Camberwell and Peckham). Some publications had humorous or obscure names like the Victorious Opposition, the Crisp Box or the Shaking Neutrino.

Most productions were given away for free. Newsletters were often given out door to door or on street corners. As various publications gained in popularity they were tied to recycling schemes. People would pay for their news through donations of old paper and any supplies of ink they could make or find.

As the print media expanded access to paper, ink and printing became a hot political topic. If resources weren’t in short supply there was the constant danger of supply being cut off.

The new print media usually carried raw news, along with appeals for help, people and materials. If the news were busy publications would often come out more than once a day.

If there was space there would sometimes be included small tutorials, good stories with happy endings, occasional poems and pictures. As the print media recovered it started to merge with the new education.

Newspaper culture would also cross over into poster forms and other kinds of art. A new trend sprang up using buildings as props for art. Papers and posters were often pasted up on old billboards, railway arches, subways and street corners. People would stop to look every morning, until that is the fly posters got used to not having to sneak around at night. Why do that anymore?

More than that, there was a trend of painting buildings. Most basic examples would be reclaimed buildings and workplaces. If there were no flags to fly (or nothing to fly them from) people would paint the building with various insignia, tags, stripes, symbols, crests and so on.

Folk began extending this habit into murals. Paint was hard to come by, however. Solutions were found, such as refined vegetable oil mixed with homemade dyes. Great events were always commemorated with murals. There were many tributes to the great battle and fiery death of the government. Communes often marked their jurisdictions with murals, usually depictions of the area its inhabitants and their virtues.

As time passed the trend for outdoor art became very popular. From basic tagging, to graffiti all the way up to the giant landscape painstakingly daubed across Central St Martin’s College.

Most often people painted or pasted quick pictures or witty slogans. One inexplicably popular trend was puns on the word grout, which started with The Grout Escape painted under the railway bridge in Shoreditch. Before long there was the Groutsiders, The Grout Barrier Reef, Grout White Shark, Down and Grout in Paris and London, The Grout the Bad and Ugly, Grout Expectations, the Groutest Story Ever Told, the Grout Pretender, Grout Balls of Fire… and so on.

The old education system was large and complicated, and so broke down very quickly. The initial burst of violence made people very afraid. There is no one weaker and more vulnerable than a child. As the situation transformed and people came out to reclaim their shattered world there was a remaining problem. What was to be done with the children?

The survivors had to come together in order to survive. Every last person was needed to battle complete relapse and destruction. Londoners were afraid of a return to violence and carnage. Not so their children. Fearless and curious they were very hard to restrain. With all the time in the world they wanted to explore this new, alien city that was once London.

Communards had to find safe places for their children to spend their time. What better place than the old schools and libraries? There were many teachers, but not enough for a formal education system as in the old days. Commune members had to take it in turns to look after the kids. They had to make do with what they knew and what they had to hand. School, such as it was, became freewheeling and oddly democratic.

But, then, what of the grown ups? People found themselves thrust back onto their own resources. How was a former office worker supposed to fix an engine or a mechanic diagnose an illness or a doctor successfully grow turnips? There had to be a better way to exchange information, organise knowledge in the city.

Groups of people, lecturers, authors, researchers and similar types tried to put on evening classes around the city. Toward the end of the year this movement became the Recovered University of London, based in repaired buildings around Bloomsbury and Kingsway.

As with school education, classes were very different under the new regime. There were lessons in Literature, French, Philosophy and so on. There were also lessons in horticulture, hunting, carpentry, smelting (very important in a city littered with scrap metal), distillation, identifying edible mushrooms, how to maintain a rifle, how to build a well.

Mo G20

The headline figure from the G20 is $1.1 trillion. One hundred and one thousand billion dollars are being put "into" the economy (where "outside" is I don't know) in order to stimulate growth (the economy is now a giant clitoris).

[Gordon] Brown said that the existing agreed fiscal stimulus will amount to $5tn by 2010, and the measures will raise world output by 4% by the end of next year.

This is supposed to be financial aid. Leaving aside the argument about where this is all supposed to come from in a contracting global economy, this leaves Gordon Brown triumphant, at least on the world stage. He is the leader who has been gambling everything on stimulating the economy when other leaders, Sarkozy and Merkel in particular, and their government have been keener on cuts and austerity.

It also complicates the political outlook. Neo-liberalism is supposed to be dead, and yet it is staggering on in zombieform. A $1.1 trillion package amounts to "if at first you don't succeed"... a continuation of western economies relying on finance and services to make money.

Is this going to free up the credit system and therefore the rest of the economy? Maybe not if rules on banking and accounting are tightened. Maybe not if the game of pass the parcel of toxic debt goes on. Certainly not if paying, secure jobs are not created quickly. Here's an example, in Spain, a G20 country, 1/6 of the working population is officially unemployed, and that figure stands to reach 1/5 next year.

There has to be effective demand for the economy to start moving.

Finally, of course, this is all going to have to be paid for. In Britain we face turmoil in the private sector. After the next general election expect struggles in the public sector.

Roobin's personal G20

I have, of course, very little first hand experience to relay as I am currently blessed with wage labour. I went down to see the City demos last evening with a friend. Pockets of demonstrators had long since been 'kettled'.

At Liverpool Street the demonstrators stuck inside the cordon were still very lively, well into the evening. They had friends on the outside who stayed and watched. We could not even get sight of the Bank cordons. One man died inside those cordons last night. It increasingly seems he died not from "natural causes" or a "heart attack" but an untreated headwound (The Tomb is hosting a call for witnesses).

The mildly interesting thing is I went in my worksuit, which according to the police would be like waiving a rag to a bull. The people we encountered were weird but amicable, occasionally drunk. Perhaps I should have told them I was a member of the SWP.

There will be more demos today. Hopefully everyone will stick together, hard. There should be a solid debate about the week of action once it is over. On both sides of the barricades there people are likely to conclude there is stalemate, neither the pro nor anti-capitalist arguments are making decisive headway. It is not likely we will see a great deal of progress until industrial action, such as the ones in Belfast and Enfield, become more commonplace.

Until that time we are likely to see the further autodigestion of the polical system in Britain, where executive power is so terrified it bans the World Development Movement from the G20 conference.

LOLRevolution

Or the Grauniad live feed for the G20, early pearls include:

10.38am:
Is it a tank or an armoured car? Whatever it is, its outside RBS on Bishopsgate.

Andrew McDonough says it looks like a Bat Mobile.

Thank you... Andrew.

I know there's an imminent anarchist revolution and/or police riot, but...

The brief return of LOL politics.