The state rests its power on a monopoly of violence. Indeed, in the final analysis a state is nothing but a monopoly of violence. Even when a state does good things, like tax to provide healthcare, it ultimately depends on its ability to employ violence to enforce the collection of the tax. Arrest and imprisonment is, absolutely, violence. We may not recognise it as violence, but if you try to resist arrest and imprisonment you will quickly see that it is violence. Whether or not blows are struck or arms twisted to get someone there, or they go quietly under threat, confining somebody behind concrete and steel is violence.
I use the case of tax evasion and healthcare to show that I am merely analysing that the state rests on violence deliberately. I am not claiming that the violence of the state is a bad thing in itself. I just want you to recognise that the state rests on violence. Try not paying your taxes for a few years, and try refusing to be arrested and go to court. You will, ultimately, encounter real violence on your person.
John Pilger gave a harrowing account of the everyday application of state violence at the Free the Truth meeting at which I spoke last week. Here is an extract from his speech describing his visit to Julian Assange:
I joined a queue of sad, anxious people, mostly poor women and children, and grandmothers. At the first desk, I was fingerprinted, if that is still the word for biometric testing.
“Both hands, press down!” I was told. A file on me appeared on the screen.
I could now cross to the main gate, which is set in the walls of the prison. The last time I was at Belmarsh to see Julian, it was raining hard. My umbrella wasn’t allowed beyond the visitors centre. I had the choice of getting drenched, or running like hell. Grandmothers have the same choice.
At the second desk, an official behind the wire, said, “What’s that?”
“My watch,” I replied guiltily.
“Take it back,” she said.
So I ran back through the rain, returning just in time to be biometrically tested again. This was followed by a full body scan and a full body search. Soles of feet; mouth open.
At each stop, our silent, obedient group shuffled into what is known as a sealed space, squeezed behind a yellow line. Pity the claustrophobic; one woman squeezed her eyes shut.
We were then ordered into another holding area, again with iron doors shutting loudly in front of us and behind us.
“Stand behind the yellow line!” said a disembodied voice.
Another electronic door slid partly open; we hesitated wisely. It shuddered and shut and opened again. Another holding area, another desk, another chorus of, “Show your finger!”
Then we were in a long room with squares on the floor where we were told to stand, one at a time. Two men with sniffer dogs arrived and worked us, front and back.
The dogs sniffed our arses and slobbered on my hand. Then more doors opened, with a new order to “hold out your wrist!”
A laser branding was our ticket into a large room, where the prisoners sat waiting in silence, opposite empty chairs. On the far side of the room was Julian, wearing a yellow arm band over his prison clothes.
As a remand prisoner he is entitled to wear his own clothes, but when the thugs dragged him out of the Ecuadorean embassy last April, they prevented him bringing a small bag of belongings. His clothes would follow, they said, but like his reading glasses, they were mysteriously lost.
For 22 hours a day, Julian is confined in “healthcare”. It’s not really a prison hospital, but a place where he can be isolated, medicated and spied on. They spy on him every 30 minutes: eyes through the door. They would call this “suicide watch”.
In the adjoining cells are convicted murderers, and further along is a mentally ill man who screams through the night. “This is my One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” he said.
When we greet each other, I can feel his ribs. His arm has no muscle. He has lost perhaps 10 to 15 kilos since April. When I first saw him here in May, what was most shocking was how much older he looked.
We chat with his hand over his mouth so as not to be overheard. There are cameras above us. In the Ecuadorean embassy, we used to chat by writing notes to each other and shielding them from the cameras above us. Wherever Big Brother is, he is clearly frightened.
On the walls are happy-clappy slogans exhorting the prisoners to “keep on keeping on” and “be happy, be hopeful and laugh often”.
The only exercise he has is on a small bitumen patch, overlooked by high walls with more happy-clappy advice to enjoy ‘the blades of grass beneath your feet’. There is no grass.
He is still denied a laptop and software with which to prepare his case against extradition. He still cannot call his American lawyer, or his family in Australia.
The incessant pettiness of Belmarsh sticks to you like sweat.
You can see John give the speech here:
Assange’s “crime”, of course, is to reveal the illegal use of force by the state in Iraq and Afghanistan. That the state feels the need to employ such violence against somebody who has never practised violence, is a striking illustration that violence constitutes the very fabric of the state.
Just as we are not conditioned to recognise the violence of the state as violence, we do not always recognise resistance to the state as violence. If you bodily blockade a road, a tube station or a building with the intention to prevent somebody else from physically passing through that space, that is an act of physical force, of violence. It may be a low level of violence, but violence it is. Extinction Rebellion represents a challenge to the state’s claim to monopolise violence, which is why the Metropolitan Police – a major instrument of state domestic violence – were so anxious to declare the activity illegal on a wide scale.
Ultimately civil resistance represents a denial of the state’s right to enforce its monopoly of violence. The Hong Kong protests represent a striking demonstration of the fact that rejecting the state’s monopoly of violence can entail marching without permission, occupying a space, blockading and ultimately replying to bullets with firebombs, and that these actions are a continuum. It is the initial rejection of the state’s power over your body which is the decision point.
Just as I used the example of tax evasion and healthcare to demonstrate that the state’s use of violence is not always bad, I use the example of Extinction Rebellion to demonstrate that the assertion of physical force, against the state’s claim to monopoly of it, is not always bad either.
We are moving into an era of politics where the foundations of consent which underpin western states are becoming less stable. The massive growth in wealth inequality has led to an alienation of large sections of the population from the political system. The political economy works within a framework which is entirely an artificial construct of states, and ultimately is imposed by the states’ monopoly of force. For the last four decades, that framework has been deliberately fine-tuned to enable the massive accumulation of wealth by a very small minority and to reduce the access to share of economic resource by the broad mass of the people.
The inevitable consequence is widespread economic discontent and a resultant loss of respect for the political class. The political class are tasked with the management of the state apparatus, and popular discontent is easily personalised – it concentrates on the visible people rather than the institutions. But if the extraordinary wealth imbalance of society continues to worsen, it is only a matter of time before that discontent undermines respect for political institutions. In the UK, once it becomes plain that leaving the EU has not improved the lot of those whose socio-economic standing has been radically undercut, the discontent will switch to other institutions of government.
In Scotland, we shall have an early test of the state’s right to the monopoly of force if the Westminster government insists on attempting to block a new referendum on Independence, against the will of the Scottish people. In Catalonia, the use of violence against those simply trying to vote in a referendum was truly shocking.
This has been followed up by the extreme state violence of vicious jail sentences against the leaders of the entirely nonviolent Catalan independence movement. As I stated we do not always recognise state violence. But locking you up in a small cell for years is a worse act of violence on your body even than the shocking but comparatively brief treatment of the woman voter in the photo. It is a case of chronic or acute state violence.
Where the use of violence by a state is fundamentally unjust, there is every moral right to employ violence against the state. Whether or not to do so becomes a tactical, not a moral, question. There is a great deal of evidence that non-violent protest, or protest using the real but low levels of physical force employed by Extinction Rebellion, can be in the long term the most effective. But opinions differ legitimately. Gandhi took one view, and Nelson Mandela another. The media has sanitised the image of Mandela, but it is worth remembering that he was jailed not for non-violent protest, but for taking up violent resistance to white rule, in which I would say he was entirely justified at the time.
To date, the Catalan people and their leaders appear firmly wedded to the tactic of non-violence. That is their choice and their right, and I support them in that choice. But having suffered so much violence, and with no democratic route available for their right of self-determination, the Catalans have the moral right, should they so choose, to resist, by violence, the violence of the Spanish state. I should however clarify that does not extend to indiscriminate attack on entirely innocent people, which in my view is not a moral choice.
All of which of course has obvious implications should a Westminster government seek to block the Scottish people from expressing their inalienable right of self-determination following the election. Which fascinating subject I shall return to once again in January. Be assured meantime I am not presently close to advocating a tactic of violence in Scotland. But nor will I ever say the Scottish people do not ultimately have that right if denied democratic self-expression. To say otherwise would be to renounce the Declaration of Arbroath, a founding document of European political thought.
As western states face popular discontent and are losing consent of the governed, one of the state’s reactions is to free up its use of force. Conservative election promises to give members of the UK armed forces effective immunity from prosecution for war crimes or for illegal use of force, should be seen in this light. So also, of course, should the use of agents not primarily employed by the state to impose extreme violence on behalf of the state. The enforcers of the vicious system John Pilger encountered were employed by Serco, G4S or a similar group, to remove the state one step from any control upon their actions (and of course to allow yet more private profit to the wealthy). Similar contractors regularly visit strong violence on immigrants selected for deportation. The ultimate expression of this was the disgusting employment by the British and American governments of mercenary forces, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, to deploy brutal and uncontrolled violence on the local population.
The pettiness of the election campaign, its failure to address fundamental issues due to the ability of the mainstream media to determine and manipulate the political agenda, has led me to think about the nature of the state at a much more basic level. I do not claim we are beyond the early stages of a breakdown in social consent to be ruled; and I expect the immediate response of the system will be a lurch towards right wing authoritarianism, which ultimately will make the system still less stable.
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Two things which I’d like to mention here, the first involves the UK. I live in Marseille and often travel back to the UK which invariably means going through border checks. Whilst waiting in the queues, you see posters and pictures on the walls, saying things like ‘No Photographs’, ‘Be Patient’ and so on. What you never see on the posters are the words ‘Please’ or ‘Thank You’. The information is presented as orders, not requests.
It’s the same on Edinburgh buses. You see signs like ‘Do not talk to the driver’, Don’t place your feet on the seat’ and so on and again, they’re presented as orders, not requests and not a ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ to be seen. I first noticed it a couple of years ago and it struck me because the signs on the buses in Marseille always have ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’. I found it a bit strange that these words weren’t used on official signage in the UK and just that small detail told me a great deal about the UK.
Another thing which I found surprising, almost shockingly so is that as I say, I live in Marseille and as many people are aware, there is currently a form of weekly protest going on, the ‘Yellow Vests’ (Gilet Jaunes) movement and every week, there are reports of riot police violence against protestors, they’re beating people with their batons, firing tear gas and all this.
So one day, I was sitting on the bus (with please and thank you signs!) just looking out the window and here’s this riot policeman by himself, just walking casually along the street. He was carrying his helmet, but he was still wearing all the protective padding and equipment. He looked for all the world that he’d just finished his shift and was going home. There are no police stations in that area that I can think of, there weren’t any other police around and he was a long way from the protests.
But what shocked me was that nobody gave him so much as a second glance! Nobody was getting up in his face, nobody was attempting to kick shit out of him! I found that almost unbelievable. He might have been out there kicking shit out of a civilian protestor 30 minutes ago and here he is, casual as anything just walking along the street!
I suppose society in general accepts that the state will be violent against them, so there’s no use getting up in arms about it. As is written in Aesops Fables, ‘Any excuse will suit a tyrant’ and people accept that as part and parcel of life.
Airport security staff in Britain too have filthy manners compared to airport security in other countries, as do the police. This is all to do with treating other people like objects, either when the person doing the treating is a state or company official (which relates to the Empire – it’s true they run Britain similarly to how they ran the Empire) or when they are in “private” life and the other person is of a lower caste than they are.
Britain is egregious. In other countries, for example in most of the rest of Europe and in Latin America, there is a basic amount of respect for, for example, a low-caste person who is a mother or father, a grandmother or grandfather. As a person who has raised a family, who has fulfilled and continues to fulfil their family responsibilities, they are respected. You see this in Catholic Ireland too, at least if the person isn’t a Traveller.
A note on British cultural specificity
In most countries, a right-wing bourgeois a*sehole who wears cufflinks costing what a working class family spend on food each month will, if he ever sees the said family gathering for a festive occasion in their hovel, actually have some RESPECT for them as human beings in family relationships with each other.
In Britain, he is far more likely to think “That old man is costing the NHS money”, “His daughter only had those children – probably by three different fathers – so she could get a council flat”, and “His grandsons will soon be burgling and claiming social security too.” Basically he will begrudge them their humanity and, when they’re not working to produce surplus value, he’d rather they were dead.
And this is no better in Scotland or Wales than it is in England.
This is related to the way the structure of the schooling system here, and also to the British Empire, and did I mention Thomas Malthus and Herbert Spencer?
The only leftwing group in Britain that has ever addressed this matter is Class War.
If it’s not addressed widely, y’know what’s going to happen…
It’s one of those things the middle class left can’t address. Another is the caste differences in attitudes to abortion.
What are the class differences with regards to abortion? ?
I am interested because this is a subject that all “ right thinking” people are supposed to agree on…ie that abortion is a good thing. But I feel very ambivalent about it. I’m not sure about it. But I have never found anyone in my circle of friends and relations that I feel I can express my uncertainty to. It is a moral dilemma to me…..I would appreciate to hear your thoughts.
I was reading in the paper today that someone got mugged for their £700,000 watch.
I mean, you often see people getting mugged for their £25,000 to £75,000 watch.
Bog standard kinda stuff.
But yeah, there’s just no respect for private property these days.
At one time commercial enterprises displayed token respect for the public. It was insincere, but there’s no call to feign civility any more. Self-esteem must be at an all time low because people seem to have accepted the lowering of standards of respect and address. Perhaps it was the rush for ever newer products that did the mental damage.
The commander/ commanded psychological phenomena has always lain just below the surface of our awareness. Violent-natured personalities never give up gains they seize or inherit and the timid fear the pain the military minded will inflict. So there’s not a mouse squeak from the masses and low eye contact with governing bodies. The horror of what this race has already done and plans to do, keeps the seeing eye of Mankind firmly shut.
Seems to me this world of men was already on a profoundly destructive downward emotional spiral when I got here. It’s not something that started recently, indeed the desolation is part of our inner furnishings. We’re enmeshed in continual wars but defending each other’s lives is not what we do. When we’re asked for a blind eye, we give it gladly and seek refuge in the comfort zone.
The fact stands that most people hold themselves or have been held trapped in one eternal working day oblivious of how profoundly they are misused. This struggle against the odds could have been alleviated long ago.
I don’t go near airports any more if I can help it. Apart from the cramped conditions of flying, the way simple hubs of transport at strategic geographical locations – civil areas, free universal space – have been claimed and transformed into potential conflict zones, beggars belief. Freedom of movement and trust and friendliness have become a phenomena of the past.
Stepping into an airport today seems to equate to becoming a piece of unclaimed property in transit. Studied, photographed, iris-scanned, whatever … – thermal mapping signature perhaps? No right to refuse. Upon purchase of an airplane travel ticket one apparently agrees to being steered into the position of a battery hen or milked cow, with the underlying threat of being tazered or electrocuted or chemically sprayed into obedience at the drop of a pin.
To add insult to injury there’s the invasiveness and intrusion into one’s character, into one’s biology, into one’s personal belongings. The airport set-up forces consensus to being measured like a specimen rat in a lab cage, guided by the equivalent of mental pain-traps. An ugly will for total dominance has the audacity to masquerade as “safety and security”.
We submit to prepotence at our peril.
Former Conservative Party Chairman, Chris Patten this morning. Boris Johnson is turning the Conservative Party into a “narrow, sectarian, English nationalist party.”.
Johnson will of course reject a request for a Section 30 Order and there must be a reaction.
Suggested reaction: hold a Scottish general election and try to win a majority of votes, or, failing that, a majority of seats, for parties promising in their manifesto to request a s30 order. If it’s impossible to find 86 MSPs who are willing to risk all their benefits, all it takes is Nicola Sturgeon to resign and the SNP and Greens to block the nomination of a successor.
That said, a British general election is coming up and more Scots turn out to vote in those events than in the local Holyrood version, so if a majority of voteshare goes next Thursday to parties calling for a second indyref, that’ll be a mandate. If it doesn’t, no mandate. Polls indicate support will be 40-47%. Higher than the 37% gained in 2017, but no biscuit.
Even if the SNP win every single seat in Scotland this Westminster govt will refuse to recognise it as such just like they refuse to recognise the triple mandate we have now. This will not stop me voting because they will seize on any drop in their vote or support as well.
We have to go through all this so that WHEN push comes to shove we can say to the International Community all the things we tried and were ignored on.
Thank you Craig, and Best wishes to you, and to your family. I hope you are all well in these frightening times.
Except ER have been treated with kid gloves…………….
…precisely to discourage sympathy among the likes of yourself.
Thousands have been arrested, but in the main, gently and carefully. But those thousands have all been held in cells, photographed, fingerprinted, DNA sampled, and added to police databases. Many hundreds have been fined.
Yes.
Search “Extinction Rebellion protests” in Google Images. You see photos of laughing, singing and pink octopi.
Then do the same for “G8 Summit protests.” Photos of riot police, tear gas and violence.
Make the same searches on the BBC News website.
Same contrasting portrayal.
Funny that.
In Brussels, Extinction Rebellion were met with water cannon, tear gas and pepper spray.
The British state is one of the most mature in the world; declined now from empire, it has held power for centuries. It knows that holding power is like holding sand – squeeze too hard, and the grains leak out between the fingers.
The “laughing, singing and pink octopi” are our own choices from within XR. We wish to draw attention to our actions, transcend the usual boring and confrontational political protest formula, and engage and entertain the public, empowering them to join in – the disaster we face cannot and must not be addressed with conflict; only love can save humanity. The state would also look even worse were it to send violence against what is effectively a carnival.
Do you dispute that the mainstream media portray protests to suit their own agenda?
Do you dispute that the mainstream media portray ER sympathetically?
Coverage by the corporate media has been mixed; Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday called us a “death cult”, and the BBC quoted a tirade by the right-wing think-tank Institute for Economic Affairs without describing the bias of the source.
Overall, I have found coverage of the April actions more sympathetic than I expected, less so for the October actions. But despite its systemic bias, the “mainstream media” is made by people stuck on this planet just like the rest of us, and to that extent “their own agenda” converges with ours.
– – – – –
I’ll post your disclaimer for readers since you did not – Node denies that emissions from human activities cause global heating.
Node denies that emissions from human activities cause global heating.
That’s a deliberate lie. Clark knows he is misquoting me. When he feels he is losing an argument, he tries to divert it into a slanging match.
On another blog, Node wrote:
– Do I think global warming is a hoax?
I don’t know … probably not.
– Do I think man-made global warming is a hoax?
I don’t know … probably.
– Do I think XR are the ‘white helmets’ of the environment movement?
I don’t know … probably.”
Unfortunately, Node is a conspiracy theorist.
… QED
“No”, “Yes”, and “Yes” would be better answers. The White Helmets comparison is a good one. Anyone know whether the WH bank with Triodos too?
@N_
The PTB have 99.9% control of the MSM and 95% control of the internet. They are re-writing history and backing it up with stooge reference sites. They steer education, health, politics, business, entertainment. Their banking system dwarfs all national economies.
Add to the above that it is now possible to doctor video in real time – on the fly fabricated reality.
These are some of the reasons I believe anybody who claims they know anything they haven’t witnessed for themselves is naive.
The polar icecaps are melting away. Thousands of people including hundreds of professional pilots fly over the North Pole every week. If the ice loss was a hoax, it would be impossible to cover up.
The best test of a scientific theory is its power to predict. In 1988, James Hansen testified to the US Congress that global warming due to human greenhouse gas emissions had begun. Just over thirty years later, September Arctic sea ice is declining at a rate of 12.85 percent per decade. I suppose you think Hansen just got lucky, and an unprecedented change in Earth’s climate, orders of magnitude faster than anything recorded in the palaeontological record, just coincidentally appeared, giving a false impression that he was right?
If you want to understand the actual process by which corporatism distorts scientific findings, I recommend Bad Science to get a grounding, followed by Bad Pharma, both by Ben Goldacre.
“You see photos of laughing, singing and pink octopi.” And the rune sign, sometimes worn in headgear, sometimes displayed on flags. And red costumes with white face-paint. The colours will have a Steiner nut meaning. The “root race” of the next epoch rises! These people say the planet will be destroyed very soon unless the governments of the world hand over power to
them“citizens’ assemblies” hell-bent on stopping nature from taking her course and changing the climate. Here they are, and here too, by the Brandenburg gate in Berlin. Will that flag fly over the citizens’ assembly buildings?It’s not a “rune sign”; it’s the extinction symbol, by anonymous East London artist, ESP or Goldfrog ESP in 2011. “These people” are the Red Rebels; just ordinary people dressed up in red costumes, to attract attention. There’s one who’s a very polite and ordinary grandmother in my local group – are you terrified of theatre, N_? Maybe dressing up should be banned in the name of “Marxism”?
“These people” say nothing about climate – in fact, they perform in silence. It’s the IPCC, reviewing the work international climate science community that tell us that we have ten years to halve carbon emissions, and that on our present course of emissions increasing year on year, we’re set for around four centigrade increase by 2100. To put that in perspective, the last ice age was only four degrees colder, and it buried Boston under a mile of ice:
https://xkcd.com/1732/
And anyone can measure the radiative properties of CO2 and methane in their own kitchen. Anyone can measure the increasing atmospheric CO2 with a simple, cheap monitor available on-line.
It’s an odd sort of Marxist that keeps regurgitating oil company disinformation, long after it has been debunked.
uh, the earlier events aren’t this event, and what earth has been through in the past has no relevance to what we are going to go through if we don’t start addressing the climate change we are causing stat.
@djm – You’re right. If it had been a leftwing or strikers’ group that had tried to take over the London bridges, the police would have kettled them to f***. If it had been a Muslim group, there could have been blood on the pavement. Extinction Rebellion types plot to bring down Heathrow Airport with drones and still they get widespread praise including in parties’ manifestos. Never trust anyone who banks with Triodos or who belongs to the same Steinerite nutjob cult as Jens Stoltenberg, NATO secretary general. The whole idea of “extinction” is cult nutcasery. These rune-following types were preventing working class people from getting to St Thomas’s Hospital in good time for appointments for treatment and surgery, and when they were remonstrated with their sh*tty patronising trust fund kiddie response was “We’re sorry. We know it’s not your fault. But there’s an emergency.”
Now who might want every house in the country to go all-electric?
There are thousands of academics and science professionals in Extinction Rebellion, and yes, we know that many of us are relatively privileged, and we know that the police treat us more respectfully as a result. We intend to use that advantage, for the good of all.
Personally I don’t know a single “Steinerite” in XR.
– “The whole idea of “extinction” is cult nutcasery”
You need to check the science. Right now, extinction of species is 100 to 1000 times the background rate, and on our current trajectory human extinction within the next century or three is certainly one of the possibilities.
“These are some of the reasons I believe anybody who claims they know anything they haven’t witnessed for themselves is naive”–node
i didn’t personally witness the moon landing, videos can be faked, therefore it is likely false.
i’ve never seen a nuclear bomb go off, seems highly dubious one small bomb can devastate a city.
i’ve never been to the sun, it could be cool for all i know.
etc. etc. etc.
in a discussion of the use of violence and propaganda by the state, it is important to point to relevant examples.
speaking of government violence against protestors against oil companies, check out the treatment of native americans protesting oil companies coming in and ruining their lands.
The examples you give are all pre- the information age.
James Hansen testifying for NASA that global warming had begun was pre- the information age; 1988. Very few people even got on-line, even by dial-up, before Windows 95.
N_ right. And who is paying them? Obviously not all are getting paid, there will be those who are drawn to it, but overall, who REALLY created it or funded it?
The vast majority of us don’t get paid. I have known a couple of people get expenses. Sometimes. For things for their whole local group. Activists pay their fines themselves; if they have to travel a long way to court, they can apply to their local group, and they might get something if their local group can afford it. Local groups raise money from donations.
And why ask N_, who’s clearly immersed in paranoid fantasy? I’m actually active in XR. Or go along to your local group and find out for yourself; “we welcome everyone, and every part of everyone”; XR Principle 6:
https://rebellion.earth/the-truth/about-us/
Clark prominent Extinction Rebellion speaker and activist Claire Wordley attacked Evo Morales and helped with the coup d’etat and Trump was really pleased.So what have you to say to that? Are you going to remove this comment which you have done in the past.ER have blood on their hands.
Twit. I can’t remove comments; I scrambled my moderator’s login years ago to lock myself out.
Had Claire Wordley actually attacked Evo Morales and participated in a violent overthrow, she would have been outside the XR principle of non-violence. I guess you meant “criticised”, and you regard Morales as above criticism.
Absolutely brilliant essay, I concur absolutely. Thanks you so very much to you John Pilger and Julian Assange
Of course there are active armed forces within our population dressed all day in plain clothes, MI5, MI6,etc. They are ever present and, in times of desperation, are instructed to instigate/enact the very instances of violence condemned as “terrorism”. When our next Independence Referendum is under way (from the campaign to the vote) we can expect numerous instances where the public will be sold fake news to explain violent occurrences so keep your mobile cameras handy and salvage the filmed content till a safer moment to air. The Independence voting majority in Scotland has been ultra peaceful. Any violence will be 100% attributed to the establishment side. As long as the vote gets recognised internationally all will be ok.
The “Battle of Trafalgar” poll tax riot was orchestrated by the State. Undercover cops infiltrating ant-poll tax unions. Agent provocateurs (police / MI5?) initiating violence on the day. Kettling and unnecessarily violent police tactics to provoke a response.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2eg636
Good article. One small thing, missing word ‘protests’ perhaps? “The Hong Kong represent a striking demonstration”
The answer here is easy. Commit to violence and you suffer violence. ‘The only auhority is that of the policeman’
And should a ‘policeman’ or other state employed individual dressed like you and protesting like you instigate violence and you suffer the physical violent consequence of their actions, what then is the answer?
Agent provocateurs and undercover security monitors are a fact of life and in evidence in just about every protest group.
The state and its agents consider us the adversaries.
[ Mod: The comment and replies have been moved to a dedicated thread in the discussion forum: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/forums/topic/state-funding-and-modern-monetary-theory/
Regards. ]
Neatly explained, Mr Shigemitsu. Thank you.
That’s a neat explanation of taxation, but somehow, I’m not entirely convinced it does apply to our modern system for two reasons:
1/ Money is created by the central bank, which in most modern economies is an independent body. (At least, that’s how the story goes. It’s debatable whether for instance the FED or the BoE are really independent from their respective governments. The ECB is though, much to the ire of the Germans.)
2/ Most of the money nowadays is created by private banks, not the central bank. So, to make your story complete, you have to say something about the creation/destruction process of that money.
Also, as an additional point, what do you think of Modern Monetary Theory?
Raskolnikov, it absolutely applies to our times!
1) The BoE was nationalised in 1946, and is owned by the Treasury Solicitor. It has some operational “independence, though this is largely illusory – being mostly restricted to setting interest rates to stay within the inflation target – and was only implemented by the coward Gordon Brown in 1997, in order to pacify the markets when he became Chancellor, following pure neoliberal dictat.
The Chancellor is the one who actually sets the target inflation rate, and has been responsible for dictating the amount of QE, for example.
Considering the Consolidated, or Whole of Govt, Accounts, there is no essential division between the BoE and the Treasury, just that some accounting conventions, include some as a result of EU legislation, attempt to create a separation between them – but this is also pure neo-liberalism, and intended to hamstring governments from directly meeting their citizens’ needs, by kowtowing to market forces. Its suits banks and Tory politicians to let us believe that we, and they, are the sole sources of money, not the government.
2) Private banks just create *credit* (horizontal, or low-powered money), which, needing to be repaid (at interest), nets to zero – so there are no new financial assets created. Only Govt spending (vertical, or high-powered money) is the sole creator of new financial assets for the private sector.
Yes, I am a huge fan of MMT – as should anyone else be who cares to see through the economic guff we are constantly brainwashed with in order to preserve the neo-liberal status quo.
Thank you for these helpful and cogent posts regarding money supply and taxation. The global financial system has become no more than a monumental ponzi scheme thanks to the abandonment of the Gold Standard and Breton Woods – and deregulation of the City. MMT is certainly the future – if humanity survives the coming few years.
@Mark Russell,
Fiat currency and the abandonment of the Gold Standard and Bretton Woods is a good thing! Please don’t let your anti-establishment leanings push you into the arms of alt-right goldbugs and the sound money brigade – they’re economic views are reactionary, recessionary, and lead to immiseration.
Since Thatcher, or arguably Denis Healey, economic policy in the UK has been run as if we *were* still on the Gold Standard, or in a currency peg, whereas the truth that we’re not is potentially extremely liberating.
MMT is really the *present*, and accurately *describes* the existing currency creation process in a nation like the UK – with its own sovereign, fiat, non-convertible currency. It’s *descriptive*, not *prescriptive* (apart from the Job Guarantee policy).
What politicians – or voters – do with this MMT knowledge is up to them – they can carry on with business as usual, or fully use the power of the State, like the UK, that creates its own currency, in the interests of the greater good.
@Mr Shigemitsu
“What politicians – or voters – do with this MMT knowledge is up to them – they can carry on with business as usual, or fully use the power of the State, like the UK, that creates its own currency, in the interests of the greater good.”
QE should have been a wake-up call for the wider public to demonstrate the ease by which money can be created – but I guess the complexities of the financial system would be beyond the attention span, if not the comprehension, of most people. It will make for an interesting enlightenment and transition, if and when the time comes. Would very much appreciate some more of your thoughts on MMT, but I’m reluctant to distract from Craig’s post. I give consent for admin to pass on my email if you are happy to do so.
Thank you again.
—
[ Mod: You can create a new topic in the discussion forum, where others can join the debate and anyone can view it.
Thank you for your kind consideration. ]
@ Mark Russell,
Thank you, but this blog by economics professor, Bill Mitchell, is a far better MMT resource for you than I could ever be: http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/
Apologies to Craig – I didn’t mean to hijack the blog post, but this issue is so fundamental to economic justice, that I felt unable to leave the reference to “tax paying for health services” unchallenged.
It would be great to see Craig “on board” with MMT generally, but it can additionally provide vital knowledge with regard to issues of currency sovereignty, post-Scottish Independence .
Appreciate that – didn’t realise there was an adjacent discussion forum. Many thanks.
@ Mr Shigemitsu
Thank you for that link, that is really helpful. Appreciate you taking the time to post this today.
I agree with you Raskolnikov.
Also governments tend to run deficits, they spend more than they raise in taxes. This money is then burrowed from the bond market, not printed. Mr Shigemitsu gives a good story which could describe how money works, but we don’t run that exact system.
Here is a critique of MMT I have seen which I tend to agree with.
https://blog.usejournal.com/whats-wrong-with-mmt-a41e10c7203b
“Borrowed” from The Bond Market!
Pray educate us where that Bond Market ‘lenders’ got their £’s to ‘lend’ to the Government?
Take it step by step, as many of us are thick as shit and think the governments finances are the same as an individuals. And that there is no such thing as a ‘society’.
The budget deficit is the difference between what the Govt has spent into existence, and what it has then recovered in taxes in one financial year. The shortfall *exactly* equals the amount of the currency that the private sector (i.e. us) has chosen to save.
Because all of this unspent money would be sloshing around as BoE reserves (where else would it go?), banks, in aggregate, would have reserves in excess of their liabilities. This would push down the interbank lending rate to zero, because the BoE doesn’t pay interest on excess reserves. So, in order to stick within the BoE’s interest rate target, and pull out these excess reserves, the Govt sells (usually at an interest rate – called the “yield”, which is usually higher than the base rate) a savings product called a Treasury Bond, or a Gilt.
Now this *looks* like Govt “borrowing”, because it is indeed a liability at the Treasury, but its only “borrowing” in the sense that NatWest or Barclays are “borrowing” your salary every month – and you certainly don’t lose sleep that they’re in massive debt to everyone at the beginning of the month as a result! The Govt could just as easily instruct the BoE to pay interest on excess reserves, and it wouldn’t need to issue Gilts at all. It’s partly as a favour to the financial institutions, providing them with an ultra-safe savings product that need never be defaulted on, and partly to maintain the pretence that the Govt has no money of it’s own – which is Thatcher’s”Govt as Household” myth.
The beauty though, is that even if the Govt *didn’t* issue Gilts (a liability at the Govt owned Treasury), there would instead billions of pounds of excess reserves sloshing around… which would be a liabilty at the Govt owned Bank of England!!! So either way – Gilts or no Gilts – for as long as the private sector net-saves, there will always be a Govt liability of one type or another, until the money is spent and consequently taxed out of existence. So all that the purchase of GIlts is, is just an asset swap for one type of govt liability for another – for as long as there are any kind of Sterling savings – even the tenner in your wallet – the govt is still “in debt”, even if it weren’t to sell any Bonds at all.
If the govt were to – god forbid – tax more than it has spent, there would be a budget surplus. At any time other than a boom, this would be dreadful for the economy – the private sector (ie us) would, in aggregate, have to raid our savings, or worse, borrow, in order to pay the tax that the govt was sucking out of the economy. In a nation like ours, with a persistent trade deficit, this would be a recipe for recession – which is why Ed Davey’s economic plans are illiterate.
There is no fundamental need to issue bonds – and the government can always spend without recourse to prior taxation.
For example, did you or anyone else in the UK get an extraordinary tax bill before the Govt bailed out the banks to the tune of £800bn? Before it then instructed the BoE to conjure up £435bn to buy up a third of all available Gilts under QE? When it decided to spaff away further billions on various foreign wars?
No of course you didn’t because that’s not modern money creation works.
The link you refer to tries desperately hard to separate the Treasury and the Central Bank (Fed Reserve in its case), but it’s a smokescreen, and solely a function of highly artificial, arbitrary, and functionally unnecessary, rules. The reality is that they *are* consolidated into one government function – which is to run the economy and provide the necessary currency in order for it to operate, and to tax in order to enforce currency use, and drain excess funds in order to combat inflation. The idea, as described in that blog, that MMT presents “moral hazard”, and that unelected committees, or independent central banks should decide fiscal and monetary policy is pure, undemocratic, neoliberalism.
Believing all this neoliberal economic propaganda is actually *imprisoning* otherwise progressive people into the Thatcherite narrative of scarce money: the sense that we have to keep public spending low because no-one will vote for higher taxation, or that the rich (who we absolutely *don’t* depend on for their taxes) will run away, and leave us without functioning services. That we cannot trust democratically elected governments to spend the money that a civilised society requires for a more equally distributed economy, so instead we need unelected managerialists and bureaucrats, to protect us from ourselves.
MMT itself is politically completely agnostic – it merely offers a lens to see how the modern monetary system functions, but unless you happen to be a Tory, a billionaire, or a banker, why wouldn’t you want to end this “Govt as Household” charade? But MMT *is* your “Get out of Jail Free” card, and yes, in a developed economy such as ours, we actually *can* all have nice things – up to the real capacity of all of us to provide them, and not by how much we pay in advance in tax, or borrow from rich people.
I learned more about economics in five minutes of reading, than in the previous fifty years.
“as monopoly issuer of the currency, the UK Govt” Still depends on state violence or the threat of violence.
Indeed it does. But in the case of taxation, as I described above, it’s for our own good!
We don’t really want to be buying food with tally sticks, cigarettes, or foreign currency; the national acceptance of sterling serves us just fine – as does the absence of runaway inflation.
MMT explains very neatly that any Government with a sovereign currency creates money basically out of thin air and brings it into circulation.
A fine example is Germany after WW2 when the Deutschmark was created and every adult person received some 60 DM “Kopfgeld” and the Reichsmark savings where traded 10/1, where the Reichsmark basically was worthless and did not represent any value.
https://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/05/taxes-mmt-approach.html
This was OK until it got to Scotland and “the Catalan people”, confused partei with volk, and then turned as if inevitably to a 14th century feudal landlords’ document. Hardly anybody living in Scotland at that time even understood the language that the “declaration” was written in. Today an equivalent would be a group of billionaires with assets in Britain declaring that the authorities don’t have the right to tax or prosecute them – and writing a document to that effect in Mandarin Chinese.
Labour are saying vote Labour to stop the US buying up the NHS. That’s not “petty”; nor is abolishing tuition fees and renationalising the railways, the postal service, and other utilities.
It was addressed to the Pope. That’s why it was written in Latin.
I don’t imagine without that diplomatic courtesy and convention it would have had quite the same effect.
Not everyone agrees it was a feudal landlords’ document; some argue that it was inspired more by ecclesiastical concerns than those of the barons. By asserting claims of the Scottish king and nation it also asserted the independence of the Scottish church and ecclesiastical establishment from opportunistic incursions into their jurisdictions, rights, privileges and landholdings by southern powers whether spiritual or temporal. By getting the barons to agree to it and affix their seals they signed up to it too, pretty much agreeing to support and underwrite the privileges of the Scottish religious establishment.
Violence is almost always counter-productive, and even more so when it is the state that uses it. In the UK, we are luckier than most that it is not the first thought of government, but we should not kid ourselves that it has never been used in recent times. Ask the miners. When the state feels threatened, it will react. The problem for non-violent protestors and those who want change in one direction or another is that the state can simply block that change forever, if it so wishes, causing frustration and, ultimately, a break-out of rage and aggressive behaviour. That is why I believe it is better to fight it out in the courts and keep everything legal. There is no point at all in taking our case to the domestic courts where the constitution will always be upheld if there is no evidence that it is being undermined illegally; it is always okay for governments to undermine the constitution in a fashion that does not breach the law, as Johnson discovered to his cost. Cross the line and the courts will rule against you.
It is to the international sphere that we must look now, and if we get no sustenance there, then I do not know what will happen, except that independence will not be stopped – not now. The three British Nationalist parties in Scotland, and their supporters, are breaching international mores every day, and they are getting away with it. Largely, this is because the SNP is so paralyzed by fear of offending someone – anyone, apart from its own supporters, at times – that it makes basic errors in relation to what the British parties get away with, but, there have been signs very recently that that is changing, and a more robust challenge is making itself felt. In the end, though, I think a second pre-independence referendum – all recent pre-independence referendums across the world have been lost – is a cul de sac, and that only resiling the Treaty of Union in the International Court of Justice and the Floor of the UN, if need be, will suffice, with a ratifying referendum after that. This route will enable us to leave the Union, to gain international recognition and to put the stamp of democracy on the matter with a post independence referendum.
I would be under no illusions that Westminster would use every influence it has to try and stymie us, but it is fast running out of friends as it flouts international law daily now, behaves like a spoilt child in international affairs and, generally, tries to throw its weight around a la imperialist days when the Nabobs ruled. The latest wheeze from the Tories – making their candidates sign on no2indyref2 pledge – proves that they are deranged, and certainly deranged over the need, from their viewpoint, to execute Brexit post haste, and with Scotland still in the Union, and, even if they win the GE, they will have to choose a new leader immediately after the election. I doubt that it will be Jackson Carlaw, who has been trying too hard to prove his ‘British/English credentials, but you never know. Adam Tomkins would be my bet. The quintessential English Nationalist who masquerades as a man of the new Scottish Enlightenment.
“Pre-independence referendum”, lol. Using name magic again? 🙂
N_ : pre independence as opposed to ratifying referendum? You comprehend the difference? No requirement in international law for a pre independence referendum if we resile the Treaty, only for a ratifying one. Resiling the Treaty would rest on our bringing a case against the UK government on the grounds of breach of contract (the Treaty is an international contract between states) and ultra vires actings on powers to which the Treaty does not entitle England as rUK to assume. Magic has nothing to do with it. Oh, just saw your Marxist logo. That explains it. So proud of your Marxism that you don’t even put your name to it.
Courts are a way of enforcing State Violence as CM illustrates with the ‘illegal’ incarceration of JA in a max security prison sent there by state appointed and compromised judges.
See?
Nope. See what? I’d rather not see what you see, thanks all the same.
“That is why I believe it is better to fight it out in the courts and keep everything legal. ”
But what to do when the courts are politically motivated rather than legally? Should we askthe Chagos islanders or before that Mandela or longer ago Gandhi, to trust the ‘legal’ process?
I am all for non-violence and ‘blind’ justice but it is mainly a fiction when we are in extreme scenarios which challenge the State that weilds the levers of justice.
Dun: with all due respect, the courts have ruled the occupation of the Chagos illegal, and they have stipulated that the UK should return the people to the Chagos Islands. I agree absolutely that the UN is somewhat toothless in the face of the aggression of the big states, but constantly pointing out their shortcomings in international circles, giving them the diplomatic cold shoulder, etc., can often work. The UK is a signatory to the UN Charter. It should be reminded of that constantly. I also agree that, occasionally, giving a bully a good thumping when you can’t take any more can be a relief, but does it achieve anything in the longer term? Not really, you just create more resentment, more recruits to the cause. Mr Assange should never be extradited to the US for showing us the truth about government and its acolytes. If a British government, of any hue, does try to do so, it should be made aware of the consequences.
Remarkable article from Murdoch’s Sky News: “General election: Leak of Jeremy Corbyn’s NHS papers raises ‘spectre of foreign influence’“.
What do people think when they read that headline? Personally I thought of the US. Foreign influence is precisely what Jeremy Corbyn is alleging. The US is a foreign country. “Wow. Have some interests flipped to Labour?” I wondered.
But no. They are suggesting it was the Russians who got hold of the documents and gave them to Labour. I’m surprised they don’t say “Gregoriator” sounds like a foreign name. But I suppose that rather than look at “Gregoriator’s” use of Twitter and Reddit they prefer to conjure up an image of Jeremy Corbyn meeting a Russian diplomat in a remote layby somewhere.
They aren’t saying the documents are forged. They accept they are genuine. This is a totally crap propaganda effort by the Tories, so let’s hope they keep it up. How many people realise that US companies are aiming to buy up profitable parts of the NHS? Probably about 80% of the population, the remaining 20% being Tory voters who can’t stop thinking about how much they enjoy getting treated in private hospitals, at least when they’re not thinking about black men carrying knives.
It seems pretty clear that there is cooperation from inside MI6 with this kind of propaganda put out through Sky News. And…the night is young. There is still time for a Trump public relations disaster that crashes the Tory vote. Whitehall must have given him 72 virgins or something behind the scenes to keep the lid on him so far. What I’d like to know is if all of a sudden he’s “well-behaved Donnie”, and he can work with “any” prime minister (funny how he can’t work with “any” ambassador, then), when is he going to answer the polite letter Jeremy Corbyn sent him?
#BaitTrump
But only the other day they were claiming the documents were published at the end of October!
Now the Putin-Corbyn-Stalin-Nazi’s are the culprits! Wonder if that is the line Trump is going to take . ( this as the British States conspiracy of Russiagate and Trump being a Putin -Nazi stooge is finally set to pop as -Christopher Steele has criminal charges put to him any day now – maybe even early next week).
Trump is like a Caesar in a position to doom or save the British establishment this coming few days.
Just like the msm and lying yanks blaming Russia for the 2016 election interfence in the usa when, in fact, it was the ukrainians involved.
You come to the same conclusion as V.I. Lenin “State and Revolution” 1917.
Closer to Engels perhaps
You should delete this post, Craig. You should delete it and go and write something that might help. You should be writing about what’s at stake in this election, the Labour manifesto and what it represents, the bleak alternative offered by the Torres, and media bias which is a huge issue in this election.
You talk about state violence as if it’s a discovery. 120 thousand people died of austerity in the last few years. That’s almost double the number of UK civilians that died in world war 2. Assange is one man.
This blog should be devoted singularly to helping Corbyn make his case for the next 10 days. That’s the moral thing to do because it’s the thing that might make a difference. Everything else is crap right now.
A tad harsh. But obviously comes from the right place. State violence will inevitably be cranked up in the event of another Tory half decade. Mostly unseen as now, inflicted through deepened austerity cuts, unaffordable medicines etc. But obviously accompanied the usual japes overseas, exacting a brutal toll on other invisibles. There is a clear moral fight at hand for the next week or so for anybody concerned about state violence.
Hatuey, I had this on YouTube. Assange supporters wanted everyone to take to the streets and support Julian. I wrote “no one cares”. The guy thought I meant I didn’t care, and attacked me. I said, thousands of disabled and other vulnerable people have died or killed themselves – where’s the public outrage? “Now that it’s someone you care about, you expect the public to act differently?”. I asked him if he had protested against the treatment of the disabled and he said no, thus proving my point. Even Assange is no better, supporting Brexit with his “intelligent reason” for doing so, not caring about those who will suffer as a result. Blind in their own cause is one possible explanation.
However, I have no faith in Corbyn – he’s done numerous U-turns on important issues, regularly caving in to the Blairite faction of his party, which is actually most of the party. It’s the same MPs who either abstained on or voted for the “Welfare Reform Bill” that has led to so much suffering and death.
“Vote for the lesser evil” – we’re just going the U.S. route – two parties that are virtually identical! Nothing we can do. The English are right-wing and that’s that!
Nevertheless, I don’t think Craig Murray’s articles are going to sway this election – he’s a nobody as far as the public are concerned. “Craig who?”
You are dead wrong. Forty percent voted for Corbyn two years ago, denying the Tories a majority. Every Labour MP this time will have been elected to deliver the most radical manifesto since the 1940s. Corbyn himself has been unstinting in his efforts on behalf of justice and peace throughout his life so claiming he is virtually identical to the rest of them and nothing but a lesser evil is just disinformation. As I suspect you know.
Brian c, LOL! Corbyn bombed syria, knowing full well it was about arming and supporting terrorists in a futile attempt to overthrow Assad. This 12-year-old boy says “Thank you, Mr Corbyn, thank you for standing by your principles and defying the evil, nasty crap that is most of the Labour party”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jifS0fi9WB8&t=46s
Corbyn said he would oppose the Snooper’s Charter – at least to some degree! – then allowed it into law completely unopposed. Corbyn has thrown his left-wing allies under the bus of fake anti-Semitism charges. Corbyn smeared Assange, said he should stand trial in Sweden for sexual assault charges, when Assange has NEVER been charged with any crime (and neither did he flee the police in Sweden, but fully cooperate with them, and was told he was free to go) – the EU arrest warrant was invalid as it did NOT charge Assange with a crime. Corbyn has helped turn the public against Assange by HAVING NO BALLS!
I wrote a letter to Corbyn, told him to help Assange – got no reply.
The hardest right government in memory and you’re pumping out bogus anti-Corbyn propaganda.
Why do I smell a fish, Jerry?
Ooh Jerry you are so SPIKEY … lol, nasty little hobbity corbyns steal summat precious from you eh?
Jerry: ““Vote for the lesser evil” – we’re just going the U.S. route – two parties that are virtually identical! Nothing we can do. The English are right-wing and that’s that!”
You’ve been depatterned. Most people here have, including Craig. They aren’t out to convince you that one piece of information is more truthful or relevant than another any more, that’s old school propaganda. This depatterning stuff is new; designed to destroy normal patterns of constructive thought so that you throw in the towel and go away thinking nothing can be done.
All of you watch and read too much news. I deal with this every day.
If you get back to basics and unite people around simple ideas and lowest common denominators you can beat them. And that’s what we are going to do in this election. A hung parliament is the prize and it’s inches from our reach.
They’ve been specifically targeting disabled and vulnerable people since about 2013. Again, the goal is to break us down as human beings and drive home the message; “you’re a worthless irrelevance, look how you can’t even protect these disabled people, you’re getting it too, nothing can be done…”
You say you have no faith in Corbyn. It would be easy for me to say I have no faith in you. But I do. You’re hard wired to work things out and find solutions as a human being. Depersonalise it, stand back and look at it for what it is, and ask yourself if people are going to be better off or worse off under Corbyn.
Boris with a strong majority is an apocalyptic idea and possibility. It isn’t just the NHS, they’re going to destroy the whole public sector. Hundreds of thousands will die here and abroad if Boris gets in. Hundreds of thousands more, if not millions, will suffer. I’m talking about Iran, the poor, everybody, except the rich.
Hatuey, here’s why disabled people had little reason to vote Labour in 2015:
https://dpac.uk.net/2015/01/taking-the-wca-back-to-the-bad-old-days-why-sick-and-disabled-claimants-should-fear-a-labour-government/
It’s the exact same Labour party, just with a different leader – a very weak one! Maybe Labour will be a bit better under Corbyn, but for how long? Once Corbyn goes, it’s back to the hardcore Blairites! Ed Miliband even attended Margaret Thatcher’s funeral. Personally, I would have tramped the dirt down on her grave:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Znn5a-88tY
2015??? Ooh dear not ’17?
We DONT elect A PRESIDENT. We elect our LOCAL representatives for PARLIAMENT.
Here is a handy cartoon for these who can’t understand words alone
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/03/you-know-youre-not-legally-required-to-like-jeremy-corbyn-in-order-to-vote-for-him-right
Nice link. Sobering question: When did you last like a prime minister?
Oh …umm…no hang on …it’ll come to me … of course – James Hacker!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGscoaUWW2M
Jerry says dying is better under the Conservatives than that half cocked suffering under NEW LABOUR.
Whadoyaknow…..
Hatuey, I agree with your sentiments but let’s be brutally clear – the word *austerity* paints an inadequate mental picture. Many of those 120,000 died either by their own hand or induced illness out of massive, abject, inescapable, dead end no way out fear and despair. That’s the truth of it, abject inescapable soul destroying humiliation no hope fear and despair, whilst the bastards in the press joined the slaying fest by dancing on their graves and turning joe and sheilas little minds against the leeches.
And it is still going on, still in full flow, people still being filthily assessed, people with brain cancer, quadraplegic, blind, or totally mentally retarded having their only means of survival – for them and their families terminated by faceless, conscienceless automatons.. Sheesh.
And its all happened on the tory watch and in less than ten years, in fact the savaging of genuinely disabled and terminally ill people didn’t really begin in earnest until mid 2012. Just over 7 years.
And it isn’t going to stop or even remotely improve when Eton boy hands the keys to the US corporate raptors. It’s a bad, bad situation make no mistake and the fact that people are being gunned down in the street , in full public view, at point blank range should be warning enough to even the most gullible.
Picture two decades back.
Now picture two decades forwards.
Or just 7 years even.
Round my way there are no factories left working, most state funded concerns are now shut, just
Broadmoor Lunatic Asylam and Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, the rest is a wasteland, comprizing of emty shops and warehouses.
What hope for the youth?
No hope unless they join the shrinking army.
Forget the details. Approach it as you would any other problem, as a human being. It can all be fixed.
I tweet a lot Hatuey, which reaches a larger audience and probably is better suited to affect election results. Have regularly been getting 1,000 to 6,000 retweets during the campaign.
I am afraid to say I think the media have learnt their lesson from 2017 and the sheer volume and unanimity of propaganda is such we are probably well and truly shafted. Hope I am wrong. This article represents looking ahead to future battles, while still striving to mitigate the current one.
“I am afraid to say I think the media have learnt their lesson from 2017 and the sheer volume and unanimity of propaganda is such we are probably well and truly shafted.”
If that is true now then it sounds as if it is true from now on and we are indeed in Orwell’s world.
“the sheer volume and unanimity of propaganda is such we are probably well and truly shafted”
Exactly what they want us to think. It’s hanging by a thread, though, even with the propaganda. Labour had momentum until that bastard on the bridge thing happened.
With over a week to go, it’s far from a done deal.
Yeah, but if Corbyn wins, all the entrepreneurs will be leaving the country.
And then what’ll we do.
Back to spuds and porridge, I suppose.
Where will they go? How much profit will they make? Will they convert it back into £’s to comeback and spend here? Or will they foresake their ‘homeland’ forever?
The absurd nature of objections , infantile even, gives me confirmation that you know the game is up. Take your 40 years of booty and go hide it on some desert island – don’t forget to make a treasure map with a ‘X’ marks the spot on it and pray that we don’t change the currency so that if you ever come ack and try and spend it – it will be as worthless as a Tally Stick of old is now.
He’s also assuming that these “entrepreneurs” are the great godlike beings who bestow life itself on us.
That’s what Macron said in response to a question about his relationship to elites.
Something to the effect that he worked with elites to ensure they provided jobs for the peeps.
Dunno if there’s some other kinda system where you don’t need elites.
Why do “elites” need to provide jobs? Why can’t communities meet together to decide what jobs need doing? In short – why do we have to go along with the “Golden Gods Above Us” paradigm?
Yes Herbie there is some other system where it doesn not require elites to feed house and protect us – it starts as subsistence and progresses to artisans and thence to elitism via priests and useless aristocracy.
How do you get from artisans to elites?
Surely by the time you get artisans, elites have already dominated the territory.
I mean, elites and aristocracy and so on emerge from the warlords who provide protection within a given territory.
It’s only then you get the priests/intellectuals etc who provide these warlords with more sophisticated means of control, beyond brute force.
Tool makers. Pot makers. Brick makers. Furniture makers. Medicine men and women. Etc
it takes a village to raise a child.
Chiefs are chosen and replaced.
Warlords are thiefs and steal everything from all ofthe above and become the elite – our aristocracy is no more than that. They have been preserving their loot-grabbing powers ever since and took all the land and charge rent on it too!
So it goes.
Controlling and directing what people think and feel about and towards any given issue or group or institution or individual is a kind of violence against the mind, against free thought, and is often done so as to hide the violence of the state, as with Iraq and Saddam Hussain, for example, or what they are doing – and have been doing – to Julian the past nine years or so, as with Jeremy Corbyn and his several hundred thousand LP member supporters during the past four years since he became leader. As most people who follow Craig probably know, when the authors of Bad News For Labour commissioned a survey, they found that respondents, on average, believed that 34% of LP members had been reported for antisemitism, which is truely astonishing, and testament to the power of the corporate media and the semi-corporate BBC AND the effectiveness of their smear campaign against Jeremy and the left. And they really don’t give a damn about causing worry and concern and consternation amongst tens of thousands of people in the Jewish community in their quest to destroy Jeremy.
There are FIVE aspects to it, and I don’t know which is worst:
1. Falsely accusing completely innocent and decent people – who in many cases have been life-long campaigners against racism and bigotry – of being antisemitic.
2. Duping and deceiving millions of people regarding the above.
3. Subverting democracy by such deception.
4. Using the very thing that led to the Holocaust as a weapon against their political opponents, or enemies, as THEY would see it.
5. Causing concern and consternation amongst tens of thousands of Jewish people and exploiting their innate fears which they carry deep within them as a consequence of what happened in Nazi Germany.
It’s almost impossible to pick one as being worse than the others, because they are ALL as bad as each-other, but if I HAD to pick one of them, I guess it would be Number 5, and what is being done to them IS a form of violence, violence to their emotional and mental well-being AND feelings of security. A couple of weeks ago, after the ITV leaders debate, the corporate media et al and the Jewish newspapers and the so-called Campaign Against Antisemitism ERUPTED in a frenzy because Jeremy Corbyn pronounced Jeffrey Epstein’s surname Epsteen, and David Baddiel tweeted that ‘every Jew noticed’ who was watching the program. It was of course ludicrous beyond words, but as is often the case with Big Lies – and those who concoct and dissemble them know it of course – that it is inconceivable to most people that ‘they’ could be lying to them and deceiving them. But as fate would have it, and ironically so given the Panorama hatchet job a few months ago, that last nights hour-long edition about Prince Andrew etc just happened to have a number of people mention Jeffery Epstein’s name, and they ALL pronounced it Epsteen, EXACTLY as Jeremy did, including Epstein HIMSELF, in some footage where he is asked to give his name prior to being questioned about whatever (the program is on Iplayer, and that particular bit happens round-about 4 mins 25 secs. So please share the fact far and wide on social media and beyond between NOW and the election, as it gives the lie to the whole smear campaign and exposes it for what it is, and those who have conspired in it for what they are.
Thanks
allan -read this – https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-the-contract-on-corbyn-1.8192769
Whilst I agree with much of your post the point regarding pronunciation was because Crobyn had stuck a ‘sh’ in there, i.e. Epshteen – the German pronunciation. Why pronouncing a German name with a German accent is antisemitic is beyond me – I have heard people argue that Jews in Germany were once forced to adopt German names and therefore it is offensive but I do not recall ever having heard this.
RP sounds to me quite foreign, Germanic even…
I have long held that Victoria brought up speaking German with a German namny and married a German and having kids who spoke German at home – very likely had a GERMAN accent – thiat whole germaness always ignored in potrayals of her in cinema, radio and TV, utterly pathetic. I don’t believe that her recordings on cylinders are ‘lost’ – how could anything of the empresses be lost?
The funny clipped stiff upper lipped english RP was certainly developed and all
Courtiers forced to speak in that fashion for no other purpose than having the monarchy sound less …German.
In my humble opinion: this is one of the best articles you have posted here. Thank you.
On the subject of Scottish independence, it has long been my view that an essential part of our journey to self determination would be the formation of local militias, or perhaps a Scotland wide militia, wholly independent from the UK state. Like you I am not advocating violence, but by your own assertion: without that capability a nation cannot be a state.
What you are advocating is a defensive militia. As opposed to that standing army which has always been regarded as alien to the constitution, hence the annual Mutiny Act.
I believe that, at the time of the Second Labour government, there were miners’ militias drilling in the hills separating those valleys from which such as Aneurin Bevan came.
Although there was undoubtedly a sense in which the militias referred to in the Second Amendment of the US Constitution did allow (as if they needed permission!!) slaveowners to set up slave patrols, the origins of the Amenment actually lie in that True Whig doctrine that standing armies are dangerous and inimical to freedom. So, many argued against Robert Peel, were police forces -Bourbon Police as Cobbett called them.
Oh Bevin, the police aren’t a “force” anymore, they’re a “service” now. Reassured?
“The massive growth in wealth inequality has led to an alienation of large sections of the population from the political system…”
As you go on to elaborate there is a circular aspect to this situation: it is the alienation of large numbers from the political system that facilitated the rapid increase in the disparity between rich and poor; the, often overlooked but vitally important, castration of the working class at work through the various impediments to the collective leaving of work (striking) has been the largest factor in the ‘silence of the lambs’ which has characterised, for example, the court ban on a postal strike.
And that too is violence. In fact the violence of which you speak is almost always accompanied by robbery. Among those things purloined from the collective pockets of the people being such matters as the right to work/full employment, and the right to strike/pressurise employers, as well as the right to demonstrate peacefully without being ‘kettled’, beaten, gassed and led by secret agents of the police posing as radicals with time on their hands and resources to spare…
Neo-liberalism is all about violence enabling systematic exploitation.
As Howard Zinn noted half a century ago, Craig, the problem is civil obedience.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/CivilObedience_ZR.html
Jeremy Corbyn plans to join Donald Trump this evening at an event held at the British monarch’s Central London palace. There will be protestors outside. What an opportunity this is! Hopefully he will address the protestors directly.
Earlier today Jeremy Vine asked him what he intended to say to Trump. Corbyn replied, “I will say: ‘Welcome to this country. I hope you’ll understand how precious our national health service is, and in any future trade relationship with the USA, none of our public services are on the table, none of our public services are for sale and investor state protection is not acceptable to our government when we’ve won this election.”
Corbyn also stressed that he would be polite. He was “always polite”, he said. Corbyn said he would ask Trump to change the guidelines issued to his trade negotiators to reflect the fact that the NHS was not on the table. Asked what he would say to Trump if Trump told him that he did not want access to the NHS, Corbyn replied: “I will say: ‘Thank you very much. I assume that will now be the basis of your administration’s talks with our Department of [International] Trade.'”
I am absolutely loving this! Labour are playing this with brilliance.
There is bound to be a Trump “event”. If there isn’t, provoke one. Then go to town on it. Beautiful!
NHS staff are demonstrating right now outside Buckingham Palace in uniform, with banners saying “Hands off our NHS” and “Our NHS is not for sale”. I doubt the Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg woman, her deranged Crown Prince son, her other son Andrew who may soon have to give evidence in a sex-slave trafficking case, and her Bullingdon Club violent thug of a prime minister are all going to appear on the Palace balcony with the poor and far less charismatic copy of Enrico Berlusconi who currently “serves” as president of the United States. But it would be nice if they did 🙂
Jeremy, the night is yours. Take it.
I’m told that one banner outside Buckingham Palace has a picture of Trump with the slogan “Take your tiny hands off our NHS”. Beautiful stuff. For a few days now the directors of the Labour campaign have shown true mastery.
#BaitTrump, force him and his Bullingdon Club pal in Number Ten to expose themselves as the liars they are. And Dominic Cummings thought the Tories would win votes by saying how much they love the NHS as they smirk into their Grand Cru champagne on arrival back from Harley Street!
Yeahbut. The thing about the NHS is that we can’t afford it.
Read the papers. Watch the telly.
All them old people with all their health problems and whatnot.
The NHS is a victim of its own success.
Needs privatising and management by clever financial people to make a success of it.
Good idea, except a privatised system would cost far more, so, if we can’t afford what we’ve got, we certainly can’t afford that. It may have slipped your notice, but the creeping privatisation of the NHS has resulted in it costing more not less, viz the ever-increasing amounts of money the government has to throw at it.
Very good article, except for Hong Kong. That’s a color revolution, and they don’t “reply” with firebombs to bullets. Anything beyond tear gas and water cannons are a very recent thing from the police. There was extreme violence from the “protesters” (who, incidentally, wave US, UK and colonial Hong Kong flags), with a very measured and moderate response from the police up to a point. Bullets were used as justifiable self defense in every case (pls. check video evidence).
The Hong Kong protests represent a striking demonstration of the fact that rejecting the state’s monopoly of violence can entail marching without permission, occupying a space, blockading and ultimately replying to bullets with firebombs, and that these actions are a continuum.
What is missing that those protesters tried to burn people alive, demolished common and private property, had stored containers with corrosive substances, shot with bow and arrow and that the only protester that was killed fell off a roof…There are protests like those in Spain where the protesters despite the violence of the police restraint themselves, and those as in Hong Kong who are financed by outside interest.
So to say it is a continuum .misses the point that the protesters fairly early on reacted to the containment of their protest with fire and violence themselves, something that is NOT talked about either here or in the Mainstream press and that in contrast to the police in Spain, Chile, France, Bolivia, Argentina, Lebanon, Iraq and Equador the police in Hong Kong showed much restraint.
LOL, I wrote almost the same (not that detailed as yours) at almost the same time.
This Brian Cloughey article in Strategic Culture makes similarly valid points:
“…(On November 29 the BBC reported that when Hong Kong police entered the Polytechnic University “they found 3,989 petrol bombs; 1,339 explosive items; 601 bottles of corrosive liquids; and 573 weapons” but there will be no criticism by Congress about this arsenal. US legislators apparently consider that petrol bombs intended to incinerate policemen do not violate human rights, providing they are thrown by those in mobs rioting against China.)..”
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/12/03/human-rights-and-hypocrisy-in-the-white-house-and-congress/
Also reports and photos of Ukrainian nazis who have gone to help with their ‘Maidan’ …
The agitation of HK and it’s backers though, is not CM’s point, which I get clearly.
Right, CM has conveyed his point very well (and in a quite Marxist way, very likely without knowing it). Hong Kong is not central to his argument. He got it wrong though, illustrating that propaganda may even affect people who are very knowledgeable.
Correct. More or less. It’s a post-truth landscape. Establishments around the world, first here in the west but elsewhere too, are finding out that they can no longer win by playing the old game of suppressing the truth. Modern technologies make it impossible to do so effectively. The Arab Springs changed everything.
So, if you can’t any longer control information and suppress stuff, what do you? You destroy their ability to process information effectively. it’s depatterning — aimed at destroying normal patterns of human thought.
Normally we go up and look at a problem and our natural instinct is to work out how to solve it. We do that from an early age. It’s why we do jigsaw and crossword puzzles. It’s in our genes, our nature to do that with everything. And that’s what post-truth depatterning is aimed at destroying.
Intelligent people and intellectuals are as susceptible to it as anyone else, arguably more so.
In the end you can’t make an omelette without first breaking a few eggs.
A stitch in time saves nine.
An interesting light on the nature of state or semi-state violence in this quotation by Guillen in Raiz y Futuro:
He makes the point that the Spanish authorities in the New World came to be reluctant to allow the depth of exploitation that colonists required and prevented them from outright enslavement of the indigenous. Paradoxically this state restraint led to the colonists taking matters into their own hands. The situation he describes applies almost exactly to what has been happening in Bolivia and describes the sort of omnipresent intimidation characteristic of right wing regimes in Latin America
“..precisely because of its precautions and extra legal charades, the exploiting class (of landowners and Allied bureaucrats) came to have characteristics of moral irresponsibility, rapine and inhuman violence, unknown where there coalesced an aristocratic strata firmly supported by the state in its privileged economic situation, as in Germany, France or Italy..”
“moral irresponsibility, rapine and inhuman violence” Seem to me to describe the intellectual origins of death squads. Of course, it needs to be understood that many of those worst attributes of Latin America were also present in that North American polity which has become culturally hegemonic in “the west.” Which is why we can find echoes of the death squad and Jim Crow’s lynch mob in places like Ukraine, for example.
Pilger : “On the far side of the room was Julian, wearing a yellow arm band over his prison clothes.”
.
That Yellow Armband was decided upon after long and careful consideration by someone or other. . . . . . .
.
Disgusting.
The Nazis made ‘people ‘ wear armbands and painted doors.
Just seen Pilger’s video and at the end I thought the visitors were treated just as badly as the prisoners themselves.
I thought it was illegal to take people’s fingerprints ( biometrically or otherwise ) unless you were charged with an offence?
What do these private lackeys do with them and where are they kept?
I am sure that if Corbyn does become PM he will give Julian Assange asylum in the UK.
Unless the Body of Armed Men – otherwise known as the State – put Corbyn in prison along side him?
We all know what happened to Allende.
As long as the Scots destroy the Tories and Swinson I think we are at least on our way to where we were just before the GE.
A bonus would be a small Labour majority with the SNP voting with Labour Bill by Bill.
That’s all I can hope for at the moment considering the Boris Broadcasting Corporation ( remit – To inform and entertain ) will be in full swing for the next ten days attempting to stop potential Labour and SNP voters turning out.
Cummings has got his eye on the weather forecast.
Warmest December ever! would be a great Daily Express headline on the front page.
I detect hysteria at the BBC – genuinely and the mediaocracy in general.
Some might say it’s fear.
Judge it all by what happens next?
As David Coleman would say.
.
History often repeats itself, but for different reasons, the great man John Maclean found himself unjustly incarcerated by the British state to a point that left him seriously, and death followed soon after. Here’s hoping Assange does not have a similar fate.
Violence put upon ones self by the state has occured through the ages, such as in the Radical war and the Peterloo Massacre, and more recently the Poll twx demos in Trafalgar Sq in 1990. We are slowly but surely returning to a time where demonstrating and standing up for what’s right and proper in society, decent housing, a good wage, proper healthcare etc are met with first a barrage of promises and lies, and eventually kettling by the police and finally prison.
The further the UK lurches to the right, the more likely the people push back.
Coincidentally in the Guardian this afternoon….
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/03/brain-injury-police-waiting-for-justice
Almost nine years ago, on 9 December 2010, I joined thousands in Parliament Square to protest against the coalition government’s proposal to allow universities to charge up to £9,000 a year in tuition fees, a policy that inaugurated a decade of austerity. While Tory and Liberal Democrat MPs voted through the bill, outside, the police kettled protesters and charged at us with horses. Just after 6pm that evening, while detained in the kettle in Parliament Square, I suffered a fractured skull and bleeding on the brain at the hands of the police. I had to undergo life-saving brain surgery.
Good piece. Very Engels-ish, with a hint of Lenin. My view is that for any life to survive on this planet means the end of the current state. Craig rightly points to 40 years of neoliberalism destroying what made peoples lives livable, resulting in much anger. I suspect that fascism will be deployed in order to destroy this anger and sections of the population, resulting in the preservation of the state & the wealthy. If such a scenario does occur then humanity is finished.
I don’t radically disagree, but think the predominant influence is probably more Proudhon.
“destroying what made peoples lives livable”
That’s the key. The implication is that people’s lives are now – or are shortly going to be – UNliveable. And if that’s the case then we are not talking about “much anger”. We are talking about something far more radical than that. The horrific conditions so well documented by Marx and Dickens were finally changed – in Western countries anyway. But what we are looking at is something different again i.e. people who have grown up in an affluent society and who then suffer deprivation – and it’s deprivation of a sort they’ve never experienced before and never even imagined before. Unfortunately these are people who are also not used to militant action either. But then desperation can be one hell of a motivator.
Of course, the deep state will have foreseen all this. It’s a scenario it has long prepared for i.e. the police state scenario. But that would mean a transformation of propaganda. Perhaps that’s where fascism comes in?
PLEASE watch the 3.22 youtube video ‘NORMAN FINKELSTEIN on The Anti-Semite Corbyn Claims‘ (by Renegade Inc. The group that made the doc ‘Four Horsemen.’) Finkelstein lost alot of family in the Camps but is outraged by the use of antisemitism as a Political Weapon BY the British Elite. Especially against Corbyn !!
nice one. Here’s a link to it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEX5OGmXLz4
Worth noting that although he says the UK population has 6% antisemites, The Labour Party has had complaints against members which amount to less than 0.1% of its membership for ‘alleged’ antisemitism .
oh yours is a link! ha I’m going blind, or mad, or both
—
[ Mod: Actually, neither. The link was added by a moderator several minutes after the original comment was posted so it may not have been linked when you originally replied. ]
if either of you two missed this – it is worth the quick read – https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-the-contract-on-corbyn-1.8192769
Finkelstein is great, he always cuts to the chase and speaks uneqvocally.
Also this is a great response to the Chief Rabbi and lickspittle Welby by an anti racist campaigner in the Church:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/03/academic-quits-c-of-e-body-over-chief-rabbis-labour-antisemitism-comments
“As a matter of principle, I cannot continue to work with the Anglican church … after the archbishop of Canterbury’s disgraceful endorsement of the chief rabbi’s unjust condemnation of Jeremy Corbyn and the entire Labour party.”
“What gives the archbishop of Canterbury the right to endorse the chief rabbi’s scaremongering about Corbyn and adopt such a lofty moral position in defence of the Jewish population? I have often had cause to wonder how it is that Justin Welby was made archbishop of Canterbury, rather than John Sentamu [archbishop of York] … it was widely expected – in some circles at least – that Sentamu would get that post. Sentamu was a highly respected black senior cleric and had been a bishop since 1996 and archbishop of York since 2005.”
John added: “If Anglicans in the UK from the African and Asian diaspora were to judge Justin Welby as the leader of the established church by the same criteria he appears to be employing in his assessment of Jeremy Corbyn, he too would fail the fitness to lead test.”
@CM,
This is fundamentally an anarchist analysis of the nature of the state (one with which I fully agree). Without the threat of violence, there is no state. To oppose the state is to oppose its violence, which itself implies a threat of violent resistance.
So if any state can only function and exist through violence and the threat of violence how would an independent Scottish state work without violence?
“Just as we are not conditioned to recognise the violence of the state as violence, we do not always recognise resistance to the state as violence. If you bodily blockade a road, a tube station or a building with the intention to prevent somebody else from physically passing through that space, that is an act of physical force, of violence. It may be a low level of violence, but violence it is.”
I still can’t believe this Craig – this is pure doublespeak. Not even the most government spokespeople have yet attempted to portray NON-violent protestors as being violent (and hence potentially ‘terrorism’) for simply being in a place that others might wish to be in.
Please consider ‘tank man’ of Tiananmen Square, who held up a column of war machines by standing in front of them. Are you seriously thinking that the unarmed student was the aggressor in this dynamic? Because please examine what you are saying – it is simply preposterous. The student could not possibly win a ‘violent’ confrontation with a row of tanks. He could however, win a non-violent one.
You conflate the use of violence with aggressor. You can use violence defensively.
And non-violence doesn’t always win cf. Rachel Corrie.
That is true, but you are conflating violence with non-violence! In no way was ‘tank man’ being violent towards a tank battalion.
If you are in a nightclub and drunk, and security ask you to leave, are you ‘violent’ if you do not follow their instructions? No. They may become violent in lawfully removing you.
If you are playing squash and position yourself in the middle of the court to prevent your opponent being there are you being violent? No.
“Please consider ‘tank man’ of Tiananmen Square, who held up a column of war machines by standing in front of them. Are you seriously thinking that the unarmed student was the aggressor in this dynamic?”
Funny. That guy wasn’t a student, he didn’t hold up the column long, he was chased away quickly, and anyway, it was after the “massacre” (where, curiously, soldiers were killed too by unarmed, non-violent, peaceful protestors).