Philosopher's Tree

Head of Waitrose Bemoans Lack of Choice in Traditional Grocers.

2011-12-27T22:28:00.001Z

MARK PRICE: Retail is for all year round, not just Christmas | Mail Online

In an unashamed piece of PR spin in today's Daily Mail, Mark Price, head of supermarket giant Waitrose, extols the virtues of supermarkets such as his own.

In a brash swipe at independent grocers of a former age, the CEO states that,

"British food retailers do an incredible job providing great food to the nation. If any of us were to be transported back to the grocery stores of only 20 years ago, I think we would be dismayed at the lack of variety and inspiration."

The claim that independent retailers provided limited a limited range of food products in the past is one often made by apologists for the industrialised food sector. The problem with Mark Price's claim is that the independent grocery stores of 1991 had already been decimated by the scale of the factory-food-supermarket monopoly.

By that time, local wholesale fruit and veg markets had been closed across numerous cities in Britain, pushed out of business by global firms whose purchasing power and market dominance had lead to farmers being forced into punishing deals with the large supermarkets. A similar story befell the locally-sourced meat and fish markets that historically provided for the local, independently-owned retail market.

In the course of the replacement of the local food market with the globalised industrial model, the reality is that customer choice was drastically reduced in several key respects. Apples are a typical example of this decline. There are 6,000 varieties of English apples. Many are extremely localised. Yet, how often at any of the supermarkets do shoppers have a chance to buy an Adam's Pearmain, a Hampshire, a Tallow Pippen or half a dozen Hoary Mornings?

The logic of global supply chains and maximised profits means that children growing up today will almost never eat anything other Coxes, Royal Gala or Bramleys - though they will be exposed to French Golden Delicious, Granny Smiths, and other imports flown in from New Zealand and South Africa.

The narrative that supermarkets have increased choice is true only if we compare the processed packaged food on offer with that available when local independents were on their death bed twenty years ago. A comparison with an earlier age will reveal that choice has been drastically reduced.

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Why 98% of abortions in Britain are now technically illegal.

2011-12-11T18:43:00.001Z

Christian Medical Comment: Why 98% of abortions in Britain are now technicall...

Whatever your views on abortion, you must read this article by Dr Peter Saunders who makes a (to me) persuasive case that the current law in the UK should be interpreted as showing that 98% of abotions in the UK are in fact in breach of the law.

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Austerity and the Arms Trade

2011-11-23T23:44:00.000Z

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Funny Money and the Real Economy

2011-11-18T10:02:00.000Z

As Europeans face daily updates on the fate of their economies and of the Euro, public figures appear to disagree on the detail but agree on the broad framwork of how to respond to the crisis. The assumption from all quarters is that governments must in some way guarantee European currencies - whether through the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, sovereign loans or some other mechanism or combination of strategies.

This approach makes one assumption - rarely challenged - namely that the currency used by the large financial institutions must and should be the same currency used by individual citizens.

An alternative approach is that ordinary ciizens use (or create) their own currencies for peer-to-peer trading, and leave the global finacial institutions to sort out their own mess. The global markets, of course, will never make this happen, as such alternative and micro-currencies necessarily undermine the power of large financial institutions.

Which is, of course, one of their appeals, at least in the real economy whch most of us live in.

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Albert Schweitzer on Colonialism, Labour, Race, Freedom, Trade and the Role of the State

2011-11-05T09:33:00.001Z

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Am currently reading Albert Schweitzer's collection of contemporary reports from his time as a missionary doctor in what at the time was the French colony of Equatorial Africa (now Gabon) from 1912 to 1917. The reports are grouped together in the book On the Edge of the Primeval Forest.

As well as providing insights into tropical disease and medicine, the book later on gives scope for Schweitzer's developing thoughts on the nature of colonialism, particularly as it relates to the issue of labour.

In a chapter entitled "Social Problems in the Forest", written in the summer of 1914, the doctor-philosopher addresses the "labour problem" in the French colony. His observations are worth quoting and reflecting on. They highlight themes that seem very relevant to our world as it lurches from one economic convulsion to another, and as growing numbers of people ask fundamental questions about the economic system we have come to regard as normal.

The doctor introduces the "problem" as it presents itself to the European:

"People imagine in Europe that as many labourers as are wanted can always be found among the savages, and secured for very small wages. The real fact is the very opposite."

Schweitzer's frequent use of the term "savages" may be jarring to modern readers, but it is worth seeing beyond the crudeness of language to the wider points he is making.

"This [lack of labourers] comes from their laziness, people say; but is the negro really so lazy? Must we go a little deeper into the problem?"

After describing the strenuous efforts of native villagers in clearing virgin forest in order to create plantations for bananas and manioc (a root staple) and their ability to row the Ogowe River and its tributaries for up to thirty-six hours without a break, Schweitzer concludes that,

"I can no longer talk ingenuously of the laziness of the negro."

What, then, can explain the apparent difficulties that the white colonists have in obtaining paid labour from the black native population? Schweitzer offers the opinion that,

"The negro, under certain circumstances works well, but - only so long as circumstances require it. The child of nature - here is the answer to the puzzle - is always a casual worker."

European attitudes towards "the African" during the 19th and early 20th centuries ranged from a view of the natives as "uncivilised savages" to a belief that they were "natural" or "free men." This latter view was expressed for instance by fellow Frenchman Paul Gaugin, particularly in his Primitivist phase of painting. Schweitzer, as have already seen, seems to oscillate between the two views of the Africans as savages and as children of nature.

Continuing with this latter theme, Schweitzer notes that,

"In return for very little work, nature supplies the native with nearly everything that he requires for his support in his village. The forest gives him wood, bamboos, raffia leaves. and bast for the building of a hut....He has only to plant some bananas and manioc, to do a little fishing and shooting, in order to have by him all that he really needs, without having to hire himself out as a labourer and to earn regular wages."

The local tribesmen will hire themselves out only to raise money for a specific and particular object - some sugar, tobacco, an axe or a dowry to pay in return for obtaining a wife.

"If he has no definite object in view for which to earn money he stays in his village."

Schweitzer's conclusion from this approach to labour is interesting:

"The negro, then, is not idle, but he is a free man; hence he is always a casual worker."

This casual approach to paid labour - that it is to be engaged in only as necessary to purchase specific items above and beyond the daily necessities of food and shelter - inevitability found itself in conflict with the economic aims of the French colonists, whose primary concern was in felling and exporting the jungle's rich supply of quality hardwoods for transportation and sale to European markets.

"There is, therefore, a serious conflict between the needs of trade and the fact that the child of nature is a free man."

The colonists therefore have to think about how to convince the natives to work for them. The strategy of the State and its commercial allies is summarised thus:

"Create in him as many needs as possible; only so can the utmost possible be got out of him."

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The creation of artificial needs in the indigenous population took two main forms in the early 20th century. The first method was the imposition of "involuntary need" in the form of direct taxation. Every native of French Equatorial Africa aged 14 and above was required to pay a poll tax of five francs a year.

The second area of artificial need was created by the trader and involved the offering to the natives of goods and commodities that they did not have and could not create within their own local environment. Dr Schweitzer describes seeing the stock offered for sale in a single white-owned shop located in the middle of the jungle. The items ranged from the "useful" such as knives and axes, to shoes, material and tools, to the frivolous or harmful such as alcohol, glasses, tobacco, collars and ties, lace, corsets, gramophones and music boxes. Like today's iPods, the latter were apparently extremely popular. Schweitzer describes the local women who "plague their husbands until they have earned enough to buy one."

In conclusion, Schweitzer advances the view that,

"The child of nature becomes a steady worker only so far as he ceases to be free and becomes unfree."

By hiring labourers and transporting them some distance from their locality, and by holding back half of their wages until the end of a twelve-month employment contract, the plantation owners and loggers attempted to break the ties that the natives had with their local tribes and families, and to bind them in economically with the company. Barracks and labouring settlements therefore became the dominant model for ensuring a steady supply of local labour in the French colonies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Rejecting the idea of compulsory paid labour (followed in several European colonies in Africa), Schweitzer advocates allowing the native population to live in their own villages and equipping them them with skills to create their own local industries for their own use and for trade.

Applying Schweitzer's analysis to the current economic scene, a few immediate thoughts occur. Perhaps I will be able to elaborate on them at a future date. For now, they remain bullet points:

almost no-where in the current economic turmoil can a single voice be heard that is asking the basic question, "what do people actually need?" There is no distinction made between the creation of goods that are needed and goods that are mere luxuries. In fact, were such a distinction made, it would be regarded as Utopian by the mainstream media and culture.
Linked to the above, the assumption is made by politicians of all types that all economic growth is good, however it is promoted.
No distinction is made in today's discussion between "work" and "paid jobs". It is assumed that the employer-employee model should be regarded as the only, or at least the primary form of productive employment.
casual work is seen as second best under the current economic system. This is, in part, because such part-time work does not allow the worker to buy the luxury goods produced by global firms as a means of extracting wealth from the workers. For Schweitzer, by contrast, such casual labour is the essence of economic freedom.
There is no serious discussion at the present time about the rights of communities or families to obtain a living directly from the physical land around them, without recourse to private ownership or job dependency. The historic British model of communal local land use has been stripped away through waves of enclosure over the centuries, resulting in a population who are essentially landless. This makes it almost impossible for citizens to use the natural environment in sustainable ways to obtain food and building materials. This has happened so long ago, that most workers have no concept that land (or other productive property) could ever be widely owned by free local communities. This collective loss of consciousness and of imagination has resulted in a narrowing of the perceived options as far as economic survival is concerned. And this loss empowers large corporations at the expense of individuals or local communities.

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Libya, The Sahel and Food Insecurity

2011-10-31T09:41:00.001Z

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"The return to Niger and Chad of migrants from Libya who previously sent money home to help mitigate crop deficit is already pushing some families into further food insecurity, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). “These returns have aggravated extreme poverty and hunger which is affecting more than half of Niger's 2.5 million people threatened with food insecurity this year,” said IOM."

Source

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Storm Brewing: Kenya, Somalia, Uganda and America

2011-10-24T23:49:00.000Z

I'm nervous for Kenya, whose troops have for the last week been pursuing an aggressive intervention into neighbouring Somalia to hunt down Islamic militants from the al-Shabaab group, some of whom are believed to be behind a series of recent kidnappings and murders in the Kenya boarder area.

US forces are supporting the Kenyan incursion, with an American drone attack today killing 44 people and wounding 63 others in southern Somalia.

US forces have also recently been sent to Uganda by Presidential decree, apparently to help combat the insurgent LRA in the north of the country. It seems that their presence will add support to US anti-terrorist operations in the horn of Africa.

Al-Shabaab will of course fight back, so the fear is for terror attacks in Nairobi and Mombasa as retaliation for the recent incursions.

I can't see it ending well.

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Occupy Wall Street

2011-09-25T07:48:00.000Z

Image by SheepGuardingLlama via Flickr

A small number of activists have been camped out in New York's Wall Street for six days now, protesting against global corporate capitaism and its fruits.

Here's a short introduction to the occupation.

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The Other 9-11 Anniversary

2011-09-12T20:11:00.000Z

This week marks the 40th anniversary of another 9/11 tragedy: the Attica prison rebellion. On September 9, 1971, prisoners took over much of state prison in Attica, New York, to protest conditions at the maximum security prison. Then Governor Nelson Rockefeller ordered state police to storm the facility on the morning of September 13. Troopers shot indiscriminately more than 2,000 rounds of ammunition, killing 39 male prisoners and guards. After the shooting stopped, police beat and tortured scores of more prisoners, many of whom were seriously wounded but were initially denied medical care.

Professor Cornell West of Princeton University reflects on the legacy of Attica.

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Financial Crisis: Time to Diversify Currencies?

2011-09-10T15:11:00.000Z

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The idea of creating, using, or producing currencies other than those officially sanctioned by the state, is gaining momentum.

This from the BBC website today:

Parliament is to debate a call for foreign currencies to be made legal tender in the UK. Such a move would protect savers by allowing them to hold the currency least likely to be devalued, Tory MP Douglas Carswell told the Commons. He said people could then "extricate themselves from the monetary masters that hold them all captive".

Ryan Grant at the Distributist Review goes further, calling on American states to exercise their legal right to mint their own currencies, in response to what Grant sees as the inevitability of the collapse of the US dollar as a credible global currency.

The root of our system of currency and credit is not based on value, the thing money is supposed to represent, but on debt, its antithesis. .....

Among Grants five solutions to the debt crisis is that the government must

Allow and promote local currencies based on local assets, namely to have currency which is based on value and not on debt

David Boyle at The New Economics Foundation meanwhile is critical of

The idea that every nation, or even every continent, should have just one currency to serve everybody’s needs is a piece of eighteenth century Whig ideology that we have been stuck with unthinkingly ever since. The plight of Spain and Greece is evidence of how faulty it is.

Boyle calls for currencies that are as diverse as human societies.

With the collapse of the Euro a distinct possibility, and calls for the drachma to be reintroduced into Greece's domestic economy, such radical measures may be forced into the mainstream whether we like it our not.

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The Police, Notting Hill Carnival and the Permanent 'State of Exception'

2011-09-04T09:10:00.000Z

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This article is published by Aaron Peters, and openDemocracy.net and re-published here under a Creative Commons licence.

The original article can be found here.

“The flames of November 2005 still flicker in everyone’s minds...As an attempted solution, the pressure to ensure that nothing happens, together with police surveillance of the territory, will only intensify.” - Account of the policing fallout after the 2005 riots in France.

What qualifies as a 'successful' Notting Hill Carnival now seems open to debate. This year's carnival with its unusually good weather, high turnout and great food and music meant that, as ever, Europe's largest carnival (the second largest in the world after Rio in Brazil) was a feast of the senses and a day in which Londoners of all ages, creeds, colours - and importantly classes - could mix, share and dance.

Dawn raid ahead of Notting Hill Carnival: PA

Was this, then, a success?

After the London riots some two weeks ago, the media drummed up the possibility of further public disorder. After all, as recently as 2008 there were indeed riots on the streets of Notting Hill in the immediate aftermath of the event. At the previous 2010 Carnival, 230 arrests were made over the two days.

It is clear, then, that the avoidance of major public disorder in excess of that seen since 2008 represented a 'success' for the Metropolitan police, the event organisers and much of the mainstream media. When combined with the usual joy of the event itself, high attendance and the fortune of clement weather, it should come as no surprise that carnival organiser Chris Boothman declared that the event had allowed Londoners to "reclaim the streets".

This is of course not the first 'successful' policing of a major public event this year. There was the 'success' of the Royal Wedding, with its bizarre pre-arrests of dozens of activists, followed by equally ludicrous arrests on the day itself. The policing for the Royal Wedding was all done within the broader context of a Section 60 of the Criminal Justice Act, which was imposed on the City of Westminster, just as we saw a Section 60 imposed for the Notting Hill Carnival.

A brief clarification of what Section 60 of the 1994 Criminal Justice Act actually is. It gives a police officer of the rank of inspector or above the competence to,

“...request authorisation for additional search powers on the basis of a reasonable belief that incidents involving serious violence may take place or that people are carrying dangerous instruments or offensive weapons in the area without good reason", such powers relating to,"...pedestrians and vehicles in a specified locality, for a specified period, not exceeding 48 hours at a time.”

In the case of the Royal Wedding, the 'specified locality' of the Section 60 issued was the City of Westminster. For Notting Hill Carnival, the Section 60 was applied to the whole of London - a truly unprecedented step. The application of the section was not applied to a 'specified locality' but rather to a city of eight million residents. Is London, a global metropolis, now considered a 'specific locality' where normal legislation can be temporarily suspended for 48 hours? To what extent, then, is the United Kingdom or England considered a less specific locality?

As with the Royal Wedding, we saw a number of pre-arrests before the carnival. Whereas the Royal Wedding arrests essentially had a pre-crime basis, the arrests before the carnival were more about getting as many people as possible on rather minimal charges, such as possession of cannabis, and then inserting non-attendance to carnival within their bail conditions. A highly expensive process for the taxpayer ensured the non-attendance of around ninety individuals who may or may not have chosen to attend the event. One can only wonder how many pre-crime arrests or targeted charges with bail impositions will accompany the run-up to the Olympics in 2012 or the Queen's forthcoming Diamond Jubilee. My guess is far, far more.

Along with these pre-emptive arrests and the deployment of the Section 60 itself, there was of course the policing of the event on the Saturday and Sunday. How can one really call any event resulting in 274 arrests and 32 hospitalisations peaceful? What was the nature of these arrests? Will the police provide a breakdown of those arrested: their race, age, gender and reasons for their arrest? In light of the unprecedented police numbers on the streets of West London and the issuing of a citywide Section 60 this is the very least the Metropolitan police should be doing.

Anecdotally, I have been informed of several incidents during the carnival involving arrests. The first is that of a man who was stop and searched under a section 60 for blowing a vuvuzela. Before I relate the incident, let's make this clear: the police can stop and search under a section 60 if there has been serious violence or disorder in the vicinity. They can resort to Section(s) 43 or 47 ( sometimes invoked against people taking photographs for example) if there is sufficient grounds to 'suspect' involvement in terrorist activities.

What explanation can account for a person being stop and searched for blowing a musical instrument? The story is recounted below by a friend who witnessed the events:

“...he was walking up Westbourne Park road with one of the free vuvuzelas they were giving out. A line of police was walking up towards him taking up most of the road. He was blowing on his horn and they deemed it to be too close to them and jumped on him and pulled him over to one side with a cop on each arm holding him in a crucifix position. around 10 cops surrounded him and one of them bruised his girlfriend's arm when she tried to help....they searched him, found nothing but continued to hold him asking for his name, address and date of birth.
"My mate refused to give them and asked why he was being searched: it was under section 60. He asked what violence and they claimed that blowing a horn near them equated to assault and that either way, "you are swearing aren't you, you dickhead!". A long row ensued with them allegedly threatening to nick him several times. Unable to get his name, they found his credit cards started addressing him by that name. He denied they were his so they threatened to nick him for theft! Eventually he gave them his name, DOB and address and they let him go. It took 15-20 minutes though. Officers numbers I caught where KF982, KF119 (Forest Gate). The officer who conducted the search was a constable Elton from forest gate.”

Another incident involved a man who was arrested because he had given a 'thumbs down' to a passing cohort of police officers from the balcony of his home. As one friend of the arrestee in question recounts:

"...the arrest happened when some police were walking past us - we were on a rooftop. My friend gave them a thumbs down, and they stopped and beckoned him down. He refused to go down but they posted men on the door of the house we were in and said they wouldn't leave until we had gone down.
"After fifteen minutes or so we went down to talk to them. The officer at the door (A) said my friend had sworn at his colleague (B). This was a lie and we said so - we all knew he had said nothing. It was clear to us they had decided to take offence at the thumbs down and had invented the swearing to justify their over-the-top reaction. Officer B shouted over 'If he denies it just arrest him'. Then Officer A told my friend to go and apologise to Officer B and he would not be arrested. He explained that my friend should be 'humble - very humble' when he apologised, he should address Officer B as 'sir', and he should not deny he had sworn.
"My friend agreed to apologise to Officer B (mostly because his mother was in the house I suspect) but felt the need to be truthful and say he hadn't sworn. For this he was arrested. His mother then went to talk to Officer B to try to clear up the misunderstanding and he threatened her with arrest. The friend was released not long after, having been told he would get a fixed penalty notice."

The same man who had witnessed this event also said, “I had another friend the previous day who had an officer threaten to smash his face in because he laughed at the officer's threats during a stop and search issued under a Section 60".

Over 250 individuals arrested during the carnival, nearly 100 arrested before the event and banned from attending (mostly as part of bail conditions for minor offences), a London-wide 'suspension' of normal legislation with regards to stop and search: Notting Hill Carnival was anything BUT evidence of Londoners 'reclaiming the streets' as Chris Boothman would have it. Instead, it offers yet another example of the insidious nature of how basic civil liberties are being compromised with increasing ease by the London Metropolitan Police. This continued erosion of liberties is equalled only by the passivity of a highly uncritical and uninformed media whose ambitions are to demand that we 'keep calm and carry on' regardless of what occurs.

The 'exceptional' manner in which Notting Hill Carnival was policed shows that the Royal Wedding was anything but an anomaly and that in all probability there is worse to come in the remaining year and 2012. Expect Section 60s to be issued at party conferences this Autumn (where large demonstrations are anticipated) and at any major student or anti-cuts demonstration.

The suspension of 'everyday' legislation is now becoming normal. 'Exceptional' conditions are increasingly viewed as quotidian, something Giorgio Agamben explores in his book 'State of Exception'. We will increasingly see tactics designed to deal with crisis employed during ANY situation of mass public assembly – whether it be a political protest, carnival or sporting event.

As Brett Neilson writes of Agamben's thinking on the matter,

"...this figure of generalized catastrophe under a sky void of transcendental authority...(is) characterized by 'governmental violence that ignores international law externally and produces a permanent state of exception internally, while all the time pretending to uphold the law."

In light of Cameron's remarks on the recent London riots and 'silly' European human rights legislation, Agamben's views on executive power replacing legislative power in contemporary ‘liberal democracies’ are especially pertinent.

On Twitter, I remarked about all of this being a 'new normal'. A friend remarked that it was anything but new for young, primarily BME males in London and other major UK cities. I am inclined to agree. Before the confrontational and counter-productive policing practices that have caused so much anger among the urban young become common practice in everyday policing, the public must start holding the police to account, particularly over excessive numbers of arrests, the use of section 60 and stop and search. The mainstream media, political commentariat and the political parties are, as usual, dismissive or unable to see the very real problems of arbitrary authority and the lack of transparency and accountability with the British police.

A section 60 for a whole city under the auspices of policing a public event is an abuse of power. We must ask that it does not happen again.

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Saudi Government Facilitating Child Sex Trafficking

2011-08-26T13:19:00.001Z

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Cable Viewer

This from Wikileaks. Click link above for full US diplomatic cable from its embassy in Yemen.

ROYG officials and independent experts 

repeatedly express frustration with the lack of Saudi 

cooperation on trafficking-in-persons issues, including 

children smuggled to Saudi Arabia for work and Saudi "sex 

tourists" who frequent underage prostitutes in Yemen.  They 

allege that the Saudi government has significantly stalled 

bilateral efforts to combat trafficking.  Without 

higher-level Saudi commitment, it will continue to be 

difficult for impecunious Yemen to fight this cross-border 

problem alone.

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John Hutton, Russian Gas, Georgia and Wiikileaks

2011-08-24T15:58:00.002Z

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Confidential US State Department cable 08LONDON2384 , published by Wikileaks, contains the following quote relating to the Russian invasion of Georgia's Abkhazia region in August 2008.

At a meeting in September 2008 between US Deputy Secretary of Energy Jeffery Kupfer and the then British Business Secretary John Hutton, discussion turned to Russia's growing dominance of the European gas market. The discussion is summarised as follows:

Hutton stated that the EU is never going to speak with one voice on

energy security, pointing out that each country has dealt with supply

issues independently. He pointed to the growing European dependence on

Russian gas, and the fact that much of Gazprom's board was former

Federal Security Service (FSB). These factors, Hutton said,

contributed to the EU's feeble response to the Russian invasion of Georgia.

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Police Reality TV Programmes: Low Cost PR?

2011-08-22T23:35:00.001Z

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The growth in the number of reality TV shows that feature police officers has been noticeable in recent years. At the last count I spotted seven different series on British television - Police, Camera, Action!, Cops with Cameras, Traffic Cops, Police Interceptors, Cops, Road Wars and Sky Cops. A few thoughts:

1. The shows are much cheaper to produce than TV crime dramas. There are no paid actors, no sets, no stunt men, no equipment, props lighting or make up. Fixed costs are a camera, an editing suite and some background admin.

2. The programmes show no breaches in police regulations. No police officers on these "reality" programmes ever receive bribes, leak information to the press or beat up suspects. Although 400 people have died following police contact in the last ten years, no policeman has ever been convicted of murder or manslaughter for such a death in the UK. The shows are, therefore, effective PR for the various forces represented. I don't deny the police the right to present themselves in the best possible light, but it is worth asking what measures the media are taking to present the full range of police reality through television.

3. Members of the public are routinely filmed over a range of alleged and actual misdemeanours, and then have these acts broadcast to millions. On occasion when members of the public challenge the film crews, the police routinely state that the cameras are operating within the law, since the events filmed are taking police in public, and that there is freedom to film in public. On some occasions, it seems that the camera's role is close to that of incitement.

4. Members of the public should feel free to film police officers in the course of their duty, as long as they are not interfering with a police officer as s/he carries out their role. It would be quite unacceptable for the police to object to this, in my view.

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The Vision of E.F. Schumacher

2011-08-16T22:46:00.001Z

The Vision of E.F. Schumacher | Daily News | NCRegister.com

Fascinating article on the theological roots of Schumacher's economics:

It is, in fact, ironic that the modern environmental or “green” movement derives its weltanschauung not from any New Age philosophy or neo-pagan “religion,” but from the expertise and wisdom of a world-renowned economist who found inspiration from the social doctrine of the Church.

In practical terms, Schumacher counteracted the idolatry of giantism with the beauty of smallness. People, he argued, could only feel at home in human-scale environments, of which the family was the archetype. His insistence that the question of scale in economic life should not — and, indeed, morally speaking, could not — be separated from the overriding dignity of the human person shifted the whole focus of economic thought away from impersonal market forces and back to the dignity of human life.

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Divide and Conquer: Who Benefits from the UK Riots?

2011-08-13T08:57:00.002Z

After the fires, the looting and the deaths, now the backlash begins.

More than 175,000 people (at the time of writing) have put their name to the following on the government's official e-petition website:

"Any persons convicted of criminal acts during the current London riots should have all financial benefits removed. No tax payer should have to contribute to those who have destroyed property, stolen from their community and shown a disregard for the country that provides for them."

Apart from the obvious difficulties in implementing such a proposal, and ignoring the social consequences were it implemented fully, the petition reveals one of the legacies of the recent riots. Working people are being divided from one another, this in-fighting taking the place of united political action against the consolidation of economic power by those at the top of the social system.

On any other quiet news day in the middle of the summer silly season, the revelation from The High Pay Commisson that FTSE 100 directors in the UK received pensions of up to 29 times the rest of the workforce would have become the day's top news story. The BBC story, buried on its web site among the wall to wall coverage of last weekend's looting, notes that the Commission's report

"comes at a time when many employee pension schemes are being closed or becoming less generous. The HPC said about 97% of FTSE 350 firms have kept open company-sponsored schemes for directors, but only one-third have stayed open for workers."

The HPC's report is simply another illustration of the reality of vast economic and social inequality in Britain. Consider the following highlights of a 2010 report based on statistics from the Department of Work and Pensions:

the richest 10% of the UK population have seen their incomes increase by 37% in the preceding decade
the poorest 10% have experienced a decline in their incomes by 12% in the same time period
four-fifths of income increase over the last ten years has gone to those with above-average incomes (two-fifths has gone to the richest tenth)
the richest tenth earn 31% of total UK income (the poorest tenth earn 1%)
Inner London is the most economically divided region of the UK

Against this economic backdrop, the site of workers (or unemployed) destroying their own communities and targeting fellow workers by stealing from them is a classic example of the alienation of labour, defined as "the estrangement of people from their humanity."

The rising anger among these same communities is being turned , understandably, towards the looters, with increasingly extreme voices calling for punitive action beyond the due process in the courts.

Meanwhile, the millionaire politicians and their billionaire financial backers remain largely unaffected by the recent riots. Just 7 per cent of the public interviewed for a Channel 4 survey thought that the chaos was triggered by social inequality and 5 per cent blamed Government cuts.

It is likely that the cuts agenda will survive the rioting, albeit with some modification around police funding. Beyond that, the government's position will remain intact, with the in-fighting taking place among those currently bearing the largest burden of the current crisis in developed capitalism.

Other beneficiaries of the riots include the police. It will now be politically impossible to follow through on cuts to the police, despite the fact that one of its officers pulled the trigger on Marc Duggan, though he had not fired a shot - the spark which set off the initial protest in Tottenham.

Less tangibly, the large-scale calls from working people for retribution against the looters is creating a climate in which the call for "strong law and order" will increasingly be heard. This climate will benefit those seeking "stronger leadership" in government. Historically, when such sentiments take root in a nation, they can often pave the way for the emergence of extreme parties who promise to end the lawlessness.

Which is why, one of the best responses working people can do in the aftermath of the riots, is continue to work and campaign for greater fairness in society, and for structural changes that will reduce the unacceptable levels of economic inequality that have emerged in the UK in recent years.

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Anders Breivik and the Christian Nationalist Heresy

2011-07-25T02:21:00.003Z

Image by belkus via Flickr

Anders Breivik, the alleged perpetrator of Norway's first domestic terror attack and worst act of violence since the second world war, is being widely described across the media as a "Christian fundamentalist" and a "conservative". Initial speculation by The Sun newspaper, the Daily Mail and CBS that the terror attacks were the work of al-Qaeda affiliates was it seems (not for the first time) a premature conclusion.

As a committed Christian myself, it is always distressing to hear the word "Christian" and "terrorism" appearing in the same sentence. I imagine the vast majority of Muslims can relate to that feeling.

So painful is it to consider the possibility that a professed follower of Christ could willfully arm himself with firearms and fertilizer bombs and, in a calculating fashion deliberately murder scores of innocent people, that it is understandable why some fellow-Christians will instinctively respond to recent events by saying, "He was not a real Christian." Indeed, many people who are not Christians would tend to instinctively come to the same conclusion.

Such a knee-jerk reaction is understandable. Rightly so, we want to draw a sharp distinction between the murdering fanatic and the peaceable majority, who overwhelmingly reject and abhor the acts of destruction carried out by an apparently lone individual in the name of extremist politicised religion.

Rise of "Christian" Nationalism

Beyond these attempts at distancing themselves from the terrorists, however, European Christians have been reminded through Breivik's outrage of the theological and political challenge, perhaps hitherto ignored, of the rise of the heresy of extreme "Christian" nationalism.

Although there are parallels between this pan-European movement and similar white supremacist movements in the United States (epitomised by the Ku Klux Klan), the roots and manifestation of these two strands are sufficiently distinct to warrant separate investigation. For the purpose of this article, I will focus on the European dimension to the rise in the heresy of ultra-right "Christian" nationalism.

Anders Breivik himself states (in the file-sharing site document.no, to which he has been a regular contributor):

"I myself am a Protestant and baptized/confirmed to me by my own free will when I was 15. But today's Protestant church is a joke. Priests in jeans who march for Palestine and churches that look like minimalist shopping centres.... The only thing that can save the Protestant church is to go back to basics."

Andres Breivik's call for church reform illustrates the insidious nature of this heresy: like all false teachings, it clothes itself in language and themes that will resonate with some in the mainstream churches who would never endorse the actions of Norway's worst mass murderer. Like all heretics, the false prophet Anders Breivik espouses a doctrine which contains some common ground with large swathes of mainstream Christian opinion.

This superficial similarity of one aspect of his ideology should not obscure the fact that the rest of his doctrine is completely at odds with the teaching of the Bible and with the mainstream of historic and modern Christian teaching and practice.

Right-Wing Critique

His views share common ground with others on the political right who are critical of multi-culturalism, large scale non-European immigration and what they see as a Marxist-based cultural critique of western history and institutions. Although not terrorists, these themes are discernible in the work of such conservative writers as Bruce Bawer, Melanie Phillips, Mark Steyn, Geert Wilders, Theodore Dalrymple, and Robert Spencer. Some include in their critique the specific idea that Muslims, multi-culturalists, supporters of the European Union and social democrats are part of a plot to undermine Europe’s Christian civilization.

Christians in this respect are at particular risk of being roped into this extremist narrative, in the same way that many within the German churches fell prey to Nazi ideology in the 1930s, or who at least failed to offer a robust theological and political critique of it. Christians should note with concern, for instance, the willingness of some on the far right to employ Christian themes, symbols and narratives in their search for political influence. It is as bizarre as it disturbing that the Church of England General Synod found it necessary in 2009 to explicitly ban membership of the BNP on the part of its clergy.

Secretive

As an aside, it is worth noting that, like Hitler, whose "final solution to the Jewish question" was not central to his public policy at first, the Breivik brand of "Christian" nationalism does not make explicit (until now) the true nature of its doctrines of Nordic and Aryan racial purity which underpin its critique of multi-culturalism.

Elsewhere on Document.no, for instance, Breivik notes that he adheres to the Vienna School of thought on cultural conservatism - which he summarises as avoiding the advocacy of racist-based politics, but achieving the same outcome by emphasising that islamisation and multi-culturalism are themselves racist. In approaching public policy in this duplicitous manner, Breivik demonstrates the traits of cult leaders through the centuries who have not been explicit and public about their doctrine, but who have only expressed their views openly once they have established power.

In this vein, Breivik commends the tactics of Geert Wilders whose Party for Freedom emerged as the third-largest in the Dutch Parliament in last year's national elections. Breivik also commends joining the anti-islamic group Stop the Islamisation of Europe (SIOE) and is impressed by the tactics of the English Defence League who he says, have gained political ground by highlighting the alleged racist nature of multiculturalism rather than by espousing an explicit doctrine of white supremacy. Breivik states his three priorities for the conservative nationalist cause in Norway as being the creation of a conservative national newspaper, the control of non-governmental organisations in receipt of state funding and, finally, the establishment of a political party equivalent to the EDL.

The Idea of Christendom

European Christian Nationalism rests upon a toxic mix of beliefs and ideology. At its heart is the Roman Catholic, and later Protestant, idea of Christendom. This is the idea that a nation state, or an empire, can be "Christian". It includes the idea of an official state church (whether Roman Catholic as in the case of southern Europe, Lutheran as in much of Scandanavia, or Anglican as in the UK). The idea has its roots ultimately in the supposed conversion of the Emperor Constantine in the early fourth century and the Edict of Thessaloniki 70 years later which made Christianity not only legal, but the only permitted religion of the Empire.

The church's transition in less than a century from persecuted to persecutor is well expressed in the text of the Edict:

“According to the apostolic teaching and the doctrine of the Gospel, let us believe in the one deity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, in equal majesty and in a holy Trinity. We authorize the followers of this law to assume the title of Catholic Christians; but as for the others .... they will suffer in the first place the chastisement of the divine condemnation and in the second the punishment of our authority which in accordance with the will of Heaven we shall decide to inflict.”

Although the church and the state were understood as having separate functions within the life of the nation or empire, in practice, the presence of an "official" religion through the medieval and modern period in many western European countries has resulted in the creation of a mindset that equates the one with the other. Even today, in an increasingly secular continent, many millions of citizens will describe themselves by default as belonging to the official state-sanctioned church. To be British is still mistakenly seen by millions as to be Christian.

Confusion, Nominalism and Persecution

As well as contributing hugely to nominalism within the church, such a confusion between the nation state and the church has also historically had a devastating effect on the nations that adhere to it, as well as to their neighbours. The violent expulsion of England's small Jewish community during the reign of Edward I in 1290, for instance, was one of numerous acts of of anti-semitism carried out in the name of Christianity in medieval and modern Europe. The Crusades has a similar theological underpinning.

In the post 9-11 age, the resurgent idea of European Christendom has Islam rather than Judaism in its sights. To be "anti-immigration" in modern Europe is code for being "anti-Muslim immigration."

Brevik's conservative doctrines bear out this view. The manifesto 2083: a European Declaration of Independence was published online on the day of the attacks in Norway and is being claimed as the work of Breivik, written in English under the name Andrew Berwick. Even if this proves not to be the case, its content is relevant to the discussion on the characteristics of Europe's right-wing extremists. The document is heavily focused on anti-Muslim rhetoric, with over 900 references in its pages, the vast majority pejorative.

Included in the Declaration's critique of multiculturalism, Marxism and Islam is a complaint about the rise of liberal approaches to the Bible in European universities, describing undergraduate courses such as "The Bible as Literature" as a "course designed to denigrate the Bible as cleverly crafted fiction instead of God's truth."

It is common for theologically conservative Christians to express similar concerns about the denigration of the Bible, a fact which makes the Breivik/Berwick heresy particularly insidious, by mixing falsehood alongside truth in a seamless whole.

The Deception of Common Ground

This appearance of common ground between the extreme right and conservative elements within the churches can be reinforced by a narrative that portrays Christians as increasingly victims of secular policies and laws (such as those promoting gay rights) that are increasingly discriminatory to Christians. In such a charged environment, a simplistic narrative that links individual rulings at employment tribunals with a meta-narrative of a Muslim-Marxist-multi-cultural takeover of Europe are as insidious and harmful as they are appealing to some who are already pre-disposed to a conservative mindset.

As Simon Barrow of think tank Ekklesia notes, Christians must urgently respond to these trends by acknowledging, addressing and combating,

"the sometimes disturbing links in our midst between ideological 'Christianism' (as I think it deserves to be called), anti-foreigner nationalism, and the growth of a sometimes naive and sometimes malevolent 'Christianophobia' narrative. The latter can be seen emerging as talk of 'Christian persecution' within Britain. It is part of a fearful, defensive response to the the growth of socio-cultural diversity in Western societies, and to the corresponding demise of a 'Christendom' culture that privileged one kind of civic religion."

The Alternative to Christendom

In his ground-breaking book The Reformers and Their Stepchildren , Leonard Verduin sets forth a very different approach to Christendom to that advocated by the new nationalists. The "stepchildren" of the sixteenth-century Reformation were the radical groups which not only held to a Protestant understanding of justification by faith, but who at the same time rejected the idea of a state church and of Christendom itself. In the understanding of these believers, the nation-state is, by definition, a religiously mixed entity. Although rulers throughout history have often found it expedient to adopt and promote an "official religion" held by all their subjects, Verduin shows how the radical reformers (anabaptists and independents) insisted that societies are religiously pluralistic. All they sought was the freedom to gather, preach and worship according to their consciences, without the support or the interference of state regulations, law courts or fines for the non-conformist.

The fact that many of these "third-stream" believers were themselves persecuted by both Catholic and Protestant church and secular rulers during the Reformation era, highlights the essential difference between their understanding of the relationship between church and state and that of their Constantinian opponents. The model of the separation of church and state was to find its ultimate expression in the Constitution of the United States some 300 years later.

The German Experience

More recently, the clarity and courage of the so-called "confessing church" of 1930s Germany provies another alternative to Christendom. Under the leadership of Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemoller the "confessors" separated from the official state-sanctioned Protestant church and protested its nazification of Christianity under the influence of Hitler's religious affairs minister Ludwig Muller.

As Phil Wood notes:

"Christianity makes a poor civil religion. Allegedly it 'enfeebled' a people. The Nazis believed this, hence the attraction of Alfred Rosenburg's 'Positive Christianity'. Rosenburg attempted to rid the Bible of its Jewish heritage and claimed the 'Aryanhood' of Christ. His influence can still be traced in today's far-right groups, which espouse either outright paganism or a tractable and bastardized Christianity."

European Protestants today should take a cautionary note of the fact that it was the writings of the much-admired German-born Martin Luther (particularly the 400th anniversary of his 95 thesis) that were used as a springboard by extremists to promote the "German Christian" (ie, Nazified) movement in the years following WWI.

Urgent Work

It is interesting to note that when Muslim-backed acts of terror take place, they are routinely described in the west as expressions of global jihad. When equally atrocious acts take place by non-Muslim white westerners, they are described as acts of deranged madmen. Such a convenient explanation has been blown apart in the carnage of the Norway killings. Christians across Europe, not to mention the wider societies they belong to, need to wake up to the heresy that needs confronting. and embark more vigorously on that uncomfortable and urgent work.

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Filming in Public: Police More Aware than Private Security Firms About Rights

2011-07-23T08:24:00.000Z

Following guidelines issued last year by the Association of Chief Police Officers, it appears from this video that the police in the UK are more tuned in these days to the rights of the public to film buildings in public space.

Private security guards, however, appear to be ignorant of the law.

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QuickQuid: 1734 Reasons to Avoid

2011-07-17T00:36:00.004Z

Too much month left after the money? Need a quick cash loan?

QuickQuid can help - with instant loans of up to £1,000 for first-time applicants and money in your account within an hour of the loan being agreed.

The trouble is, the company (a UK subsidiary of American-owned Cash Euro Net) will charge you an eye-watering interest rate for the privilege.

How does a "representative APR" of 1734% sound?

Avoid, avoid - especially in light of some of the horror stories told by customers about the company's allegedly aggressive collection polices.

The company's original adverts in 2009 were banned by the Advertising Standards Authority for being misleading. The ASA judgement states that:

"because of the rate of the interest charged and the potential vulnerability of consumers likely to be attracted by the ad, we concluded that the ad was likely to mislead consumers by omission of information concerning the rate of interest."

Furthermore, several individuals who have never taken out a loan with the company claim to have received intimidating letters from Cash Euo Net demanding payment of non-existent loans.

And, while we're at it, how about asking your MP why such an iniquitous rate of interest is permitted in the UK?

Follow up

In September 2011, Which Magazine reported Casheuronet UK, which operates Quick-payday.co.uk and Quickquid.co.uk, to the Information Commissioners' Office for alleged malpractice.

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Do Electric Cars Actually Reduce Emissions?

2011-07-14T08:55:00.001Z

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The Green Revolution Backfires: Sweden’s Lesson for Real Sustainability | Common Dreams

Provocative article by Professor Firmin DeBrabander on the need to consume less, not merely replace existing consumption levels with "greener" technologies.

The article is prompted by news from Sweden that, despite its high levels of electric car ownership, its emissions from the transportation sector are actually rising. The problem stated:

Through generous subsidies, Sweden aggressively pushed its citizens to trade in their cars for energy efficient replacements (hybrids, clean diesel vehicles, cars that run on ethanol). Sweden has been so successful in this initiative that it leads the world in per capita sales of ‘green cars.’ To everyone’s surprise, however, greenhouse gas emissions from Sweden’s transportation sector are up.
Or perhaps we should not be so surprised after all. What do you expect when you put people in cars they feel good about driving (or at least less guilty), which are also cheap to buy and run? Naturally, they drive them more. So much more, in fact, that they obliterate energy gains made by increased fuel efficiency.

The professor goes on to state that,

In its current state, the green revolution is largely devoted to the effort to provide consumers with the products they have always loved, but now in affordable energy efficient versions. The thinking seems to be that through this gradual exchange, we can reduce our collective carbon footprint. Clearly, however, this approach is doomed if we don’t reform our absurd consumption habits.

His solution?

Real change starts with us then, and I’m afraid to say, radical change is in order. We must figure out a way to consume less, which means driving less, shopping less, eating less meat (which the UN estimates is responsible for a fifth of all greenhouse gases), and conserving food and energy. This means essentially rethinking our suburban-sprawling, fast-food-gorging, shopaholic society. We must model for the world the changes we hope everyone will make to ensure a sustainable future.

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"The Worst Place I Have Been in my Life"

2011-06-28T10:45:00.001Z

Photographer Ben Hodson recently complied a large (6m x 3m) photo-montage out of 3,000+ individual photos from the inside of one of the cells from Amna Suraka prison in northern Iraq. The result is currently on display in the UCMK gallery in Milton Keynes, UK.

The prison was used extensively by Sadaam Hussein's government and includes cells and torture chambers. The artist spent an extended time documenting the inside of the "worst place I have been in my life."

Iraq: Amna Suraka photomontage by Ben Hodson from ATP Media on Vimeo.

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Getting What We Don't Deserve

2011-06-26T21:03:00.001Z

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There I was sitting in a former theatrical storage building in Bristol this evening, part of a crowd of around 300 people, when up gets John.

Here's what John had to say, paraphrased:

He is a recovering alcoholic who fell off the wagon two weeks ago and was walking home drunk.

In his anger, frustration and shame, his emotions poured out and, clenching his fist, he smashed his hand into a glass bus shelter. Despite modern shelters being made of safety glass, the impact resulted in John breaking three fingers in his hand.

Later in hospital, John's hand was put into a hard plaster and he was sent home.

The following Saturday (last week), John went to church. Actually, he went to a meeting called urban healing, where Christians will pray for anyone who is sick or injured and needs to be healed.

Two guys prayed for John and, as they were doing so, the fingers on his hand started to move rapidly and involuntarily. John believed that his hand was being healed.

Back at the hospital, John asked the orthopedic surgeon to cut off the plaster on his hand. The doctor, quite understandably, told John that it was against his professional judgement to comply with the request. When John announced that he would cut the plaster off himself if the hospital would not do so, the doctor reluctantly agreed. Having removed the cast, the surgeon bound John's three fingers together and told him to leave the binding in place for several weeks.

Ever compliant, John removed the binding at home the next day. He experienced complete freedom of movement, and an absence of any pain. At a follow-up appointment this week, the examining doctor performed a number of tests on John's hand. The doctor's conclusion, as John recounts it, was that the bones in the hand had been "healed." He also said that he would normally have expected the hand to take about eight weeks before the bones were properly fused together again, with a cast on. The doctor pronounced this all-clear at the follow-up examination two weeks after the initial break.

What struck me as I was listening to John's story, and watching him freely move, bend and stretch his fingers, was not so much the evidence that a healing had occurred in response to prayer.

Rather, in a week in which the Prime Minister has called for absent fathers to be "shamed" by society, the contrast of a man doing something foolish (smashing his hand into think glass) who then received a healing from God, made me realise that at the heart of the faith of these Christians is the idea of mercy: people getting what they don't deserve.

If we're honest, I guess many people find mercy an unsettling idea, turning on its head some of our cherished notions of justice and accountability.

But there is is anyway.

John's happy about it.

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Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao - Welcome to Britain

2011-06-26T10:15:00.001Z

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As the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao meets the UK Prime Minister David Cameron today, a short video filmed in secret by one of his fellow Chinese citizens.

Political dissident Hu Jia (pictured), who was released from prison today after three and a half years, has been placed under informal house arrest at his home in Beijing. His "crime" was to write articles and give interviews that were critical of the Chinese government for its human rights abuses. His open letter titled The Real China and the Olympics was published in 2008.

Prior to his imprisonment, Hu Jia and his wife were placed under near-constant police surveillance. The following video was secretly filmed during this period. Amnesty estimates that since February of this year, at least 130 political activists (including bloggers, writers and lawyers) have been disappeared, or placed under house arrest or close surveillance.

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Nine Ways to Reduce the Cost of University

2011-06-24T01:11:00.004Z

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With all 123 British universities and colleges currently planning to raise their undergraduate tuition fees to at least £6,000 per year from 2012, and with the majority planning on charging the maximum amount permitted of £9,000, what are the options for British students who want to study but who cannot afford it?

The following are legal, practical and worth considering.

1. Study in Continental Europe

Under EU rules, residents of member states who are accepted onto degree programmes anywhere in Europe pay only the local tuition fee of the country whose university they study at.

Since undergraduate course fees are significantly lower in some parts of Europe compared with the UK, this could be an attractive option. The good news is that a growing number of European universities are offering degree courses delivered in English.

Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden are leading the way in seeking to draw English-speaking students into their fold. This year, for instance, Dutch universities are running over 1,500 Bachelor, Master and PhD programmes in English. Tuition fees start at €1,700 for EU students (approximately £1,500). Leiden University currently rates as a top international centre for the study of the humanities.

Don't forget that Ireland, despite its economic troubles, is covered by the same EU rule and contains several English-language universities. Undergraduate fees in Eire are currently paid by the Irish government for all EU nationals and, if you're smart enough to gain admission, Trinity College Dublin is, of course, a world-class university.

2. Consider the north of England and Wales

If you have to pay tuition fees, you might want to explore reducing your living costs. Small towns in the north of England and north and west Wales will have lower living costs - from rent to food and transport. Over the life of a three or four-year degree, these savings in outgoings could add up to a significant sum.

The Universities of Cumbria, Central Lancashire, Aberystwyth and Bangor, for instance, are all in cheaper parts of the country. Not to mention the University of Newcastle and Northumbria University. Durham (good luck!) is not as cheap as some of its neighbouring areas, but rents are a lot less than in London or the south east.

3. Study part-time

A significant change in student funding, which has received little media coverage in the controversy over tuition fees, is that from 2012, part-time students will be eligible for exactly the same levels of student loans and grants as full-time students.

This means that, unlike at present, from next academic year, it will be much easier to study part-time while working as well. Although many full-time students already try and work, studies show that there is a relationship between hours worked in paid employment and class of degree achieved. Part-time students will face less pressure as they combine work with study - and may actually benefit in the long run from keeping a hand in the job market while they gain qualifications in the process.

4. Apply for a funded course

Despite the gloom and doom surrounding student finances, there are still organisations which will pay you to go to university. These include the NHS, the armed forces, and various industries ranging from engineering to journalism.

Certain degree courses attract funding automatically - some social work degrees, teacher training in certain subjects, as well as medical and dental courses (if only for part of the course).

5. Explore Bursaries, Grants and Scholarships

It's also worth looking carefully at whether a particular university offers its own financial support packages to certain types of students on certain courses. For example, some less prestigious universities will offer bursaries of up to £2,000 to students with high A Level grades - who might not otherwise consider that specific institution. Lancaster University is one of many offering this on selected undergraduate courses. Others will give an automatic bursary to students who are eligible for the full maintenance grant. Sussex University, for instance, pays this directly to the student if their parents' annual income is below £25,000.

There are also additional grants that can be applied for - from the university itself or from a range of charitable bodies or professional institutions. The Educational Grants Directory may sell for £90 on Amazon, but you can get it for free form your local library. A day spent researching and filling in applications may yield valuable financial returns.

6. Consider a Foundation Degree

Although a three or four-year degree may be traditional, a two-year foundation degree could be just as useful, depending on what your plans are after graduation.

With some foundation degrees having a vocational dimension, this is a very viable way in to your chosen career path - with the option to add a third year and convert into a full bachelors' degree, or to do a post-graduate course later on in your career.

7. Live at home

Although the prospect of three more years at home with mum and dad may not be the future you (or they!) dreamed of, it is worth considering the sobering fact that even before the tuition fee rise, 40% of women and 60% of men lived at home between the ages of 20 and 24.

So, it may happen anyway. If so, it's at least worth considering whether getting a a degree and saving thousands of pounds in rent is the worst way of spending those years.

Enough said.

8. Earn below the re-payment threshold after graduation

It has been estimated that up to 80% of female graduates will never repay their student loans. The loan only becomes repayable when the graduate is earning over £21,000 per year. In addition, all loans are cancelled after 30 years of graduation.

The lower (and variable) rates of income generally earned by women mean that this combination of lower income and the passing of time will result in many women never repaying the loan in full.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of this economic reality, it is worth putting this information in the mix when planning ahead.

By the way, the tax and allowance system in the UK means that it's much "easier" to earn less taxable income if you're self-employed. Just saying.

9. Combine the above

By mixing some of the above options, we may be seeing the way that university may look for increasing numbers of British students. That will be a part-time foundation degree, completed while working, based in mid-Wales or Amsterdam, and funded by the RAF.

Have fun!

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2011-06-10T07:09:00.001Z

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The directors of Goshen College, a Mennonite liberal arts institution in the United States, have reversed its 2010 decision to play an instrumental version of the US national anthem before athletic events.

The decision has been welcomed by the large number of Christians, both in the United States and internationally, who opposed the original decision - on the grounds that the Mennonite peace tradition and theological commitments are incompatible with nationalism and militarism.

Full story.

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Wonder - Gowe

2011-06-04T18:38:00.002Z

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Should the left go Blue? Making sense of Maurice Glasman

2011-05-29T23:51:00.001Z

Should the left go Blue? Making sense of Maurice Glasman | openDemocracy

The following article by Alan Finlayson is re-produced under a creative commons licence from Open Democracy.

Having risen to prominence as a (possible) intellectual guru for the Labour Party, and as the most public figurehead of ‘Blue Labour’, Maurice Glasman has been variously denounced as a “tool of apolitical centrism”[i], the advocate of a “socially conservative, economically liberal agenda”[ii], and as some sort of fascist fellow-traveller.[iii] Glasman himself urges Labour to attend to the common good through a “politics that brings together immigrants and locals, Catholics and Protestants, Muslims and atheists, middle and working classes”. It’s all a bit confusing.

The fact is that “Blue Labour” has created a framework within and against which Labour’s internal debate has been energised. It has done so whilst bringing various factions together (Progress and Compass, The Fabian Society and Soundings) - no mean feat and certainly a break from recent Labour traditions (although the non-involvement of the Briefing left is unfortunate). If only for that reason it is, I think, worth taking time to work out what Glasman is all about. In response to Billy Bragg’s charge that he was ‘economically liberal’, Glasman wrote this: “Resistance to commodification through democratic organisation. That's the position”. So, let’s see if we can understand what he means.

From Individual Morality to Ethical Institutions

Maurice Glasman. Image: David Levene

Glasman is what political philosophers call a ‘virtue-theorist’. For him, generalised moral rules make little sense. What matters is the quality of all of our actions in the context of the ongoing collective life of which they are a part; the extent to which such actions both contribute to and are rooted in a form of life in which individuals may flourish. There is a fundamental difference between this and Blairism. For Blairism (as for neo-liberalism in general) the only moral agent is the individual, whom government should help to become self-reliant, responsible, law-abiding. For Glasman the community is also a moral entity; only if it is rightly organised can people flourish.

This is not a “right-wing” position. In Glasman’s case it is also not a Liberal one. Glasman thinks that Liberalism treats values and principles in a way that extracts them from the communal and cultural contexts in which they have meaning and force. In so doing, it drains the ethical life from autonomous communities and depoliticises virtue by declaring that ‘the good’ will derive from formal rules and procedures professionally operated and enforced by Liberal lawyers, philosophers and politicians. These are fundamentally concerned with specifying when the state can legitimately intervene into the lives of insufficiently liberal individuals. A consequence of this is that relations other than that between individual and state come to appear as having little or nothing to do with ethical and moral life; the most important of these is the economy.

To the liberal concern for constitutional justice Glasman wants to add economic justice. But he does not mean by this only that there should be a better redistribution of wealth. He means that the working part of our life should be about virtue and ‘flourishing’, just as much as every other part. For that to be so, people should have some measure of control over their lives at work, and that work should have intrinsic value and meaning. That is why Glasman admires the culture of the mediaeval guilds and G.D.H. Cole’s attempt to invent a modern guild socialism. It is also why Glasman opposes to the Blairite project of inculcating ‘transferable’ skills – of the sort that float freely around the knowledge economy - the cultivation of vocational skills rooted in craft cultures and traditions.

For Glasman what matters most is the maintenance of autonomous communal life within which virtue may flourish. He is thus particularly concerned with the forces that threaten such community. For the right, traditionally, these threats are usually immoral individuals (single mothers, atheists, divorcees and so on). But for Glasman, not only individuals but also (and more importantly) institutions can be wholly incompatible with ethical life. And for him the most important of these, is the institution of the market.

Money Does Not Make the World Go Around

Glasman’s inspiration here is the economist Karl Polanyi who sought to describe and explain the development of the capitalist market in England in the 17th and 18th centuries. Liberal economics often imagines the market as a wholly natural outcome of the interaction of human wants and interests under conditions of scarcity. In contrast, Polanyi argued that it was the outcome of a political project. Surveying England’s history of enclosure and the forced mobility of labour he concluded that “There was nothing natural about laissez-faire; free markets could never have come into being merely by allowing things to take their course…laissez-faire itself was enforced by the state”.

For Glasman political debate about the market should not be confined to the degree of legitimate intervention within it (as if it were a delicate natural ecosystem). His key concern is not how to ‘manage’ the economy or impose moral restraints upon unruly individual capitalists. The problem is much greater than that. There is a fundamental opposition between ethical community and the market because the market entails the commodification of life, labour and nature; it pulls things out of the communal context within which they have meaning by subordinating them to its one ‘universal’ measure of abstract value: ‘price’.

One part of the Labour tradition has seen its task as the use of the state to increase access to commodities - through organising to improve wages, state benefits and national economic planning. New Labour was in this tradition; accepting that we now live in a free-flowing, global knowledge economy, it saw its task as helping people to acquire transferable skills which would help them to fetch a better price on the market. This, incidentally, is what new Labour meant by social mobility. But Glasman claims that there is an alternative tradition for which commodification itself is the problem and the role of the party is the creation of collective organisations which can resist it, entangling the market in democratic “regional, civic and vocational relationships”. His examples include mutual banking, “real traditions” of craft, co-operatives and so on.

This is a specific form of anti-capitalist politics. It identifies the core problem of capitalism not as inequality or class war but as commodification. The latter is thought wrong primarily because it undermines embedded communities. Glasman’s politics, although shaped by realities of class, are not necessarily class politics: for him every community is threatened by the market and thus any community - national, regional or religious - has the potential to be part of the struggle against it. Indeed, it may be that Glasman is not in favour of community organising because of its role in challenging capitalism, so much as opposed to capitalism because it challenges community organising.

Glasman’s critique of the commodity does not originate with Polanyi, and it predates socialism. The critique of the commodity first appeared in the West as a critique of the idolatry of money; a critique of the belief that money can produce things of itself, and thus in particular a critique of usury (and it is worth noting that one of Glasman’s campaigns with London Citizens was for a cap on interest). That critique can be found in Aristotle (one of Glasman’s common reference points). Aristotle wrote of wealth creation that "The most hated sort and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself and not from the natural object of it”. This criticism overlaps with a religiously inspired critique of the belief that money can create something out of nothing (a power reserved only for divinity). Or, as Glasman puts it, “the pressure of commodification violates a fundamental notion of the sacred common to all the Abrahamic faiths concerning the integrity of the human being, the divine status of nature and the limits of money…”.[iv]

This is why Glasman makes very particular reference to the challenge money poses to community life and why he argues that “Democracy, the power of organised people to act together in the Common Good, is the way to resist the power of money”.[v] Often he inveighs specifically against finance capitalism and has been particularly and powerfully critical of the City of London.[vi] It is not that Glasman doesn’t care about capitalism in general. Rather, the problems he finds in it are not sufficiently captured by pointing to its exploitation or greed. For Glasman the problem of capitalism is that it enables the sovereignty of money over common life; that trade in commodities substitutes for real production carried out by real people making things that they care about. In this respect, at its core, Glasman’s critique of capitalism is not in fact moral at all. It is ontological. To believe in money is to hold an erroneous view about the nature of the universe. Money is a false prophet.

The Politics of Religion and the Religion of Politics

In a lot of the comment on Blue Labour the religious dimension has I think, been both underestimated and misunderstood.[vii] Yet it is in this aspect of his thinking that Glasman is most dramatic and iconoclastic. For most political thinkers in the contemporary West it is a given that a defining opposition in our tradition is that between “Jerusalem” and “Athens”: the city of faith, governed by a transcendent principle, and the city of politics, governed by whatever the people decide. Glasman thinks that this opposition is false; that faith and citizenship can and must be reconciled. That is because today both are under threat from the same forces. The first, as we have seen, is the commodification of the world. The second, is a form of pluralism so radical that it produces communities which, although they share a polity, cannot properly speak with each other. Consequently, there can be no conversation about the common good.

This brings us to what has been the most controversial aspect of Glasman’s politics – his critique of a Liberal version of multiculturalism. Glasman thinks that when the state grants rights to communities it sets itself up as the arbiter of the rules that govern relationships between all communities. In so doing it takes power away from those communities, subordinating them to the legalistic and formal rules of the state. To be sure, it does so in the name of “equality” or “fairness” but it makes these abstract and thus empties them of real meaning; for such concepts to have value they must be embedded in real, practical experiences of relationships between people. Thus, he laments that, “competition for scarce resources and state power between different groups is a far more realistic description of civic life than an active engagement between different communities in pursuit of a common good”.[viii]

His alternative is to try and forge a conception of a common interest out of an experience of collective political organisation. This is the view Glasman finds best expressed by the founder of community organising, Saul Alinsky, and which, I am sure, he sees as embodied in his own work with London Citizens. This position, although it finds anyone without a community highly problematic, is, in the end, far more inclusive than anything the British left is really used to. For instance, Glasman thinks that one should try “to build a party that brokers a common good” with everyone, and that means that Labour should involve “those people who support the EDL within our party”.[ix] He also has no anxieties about the incorporation of religious groups into politics, a position against the grain of secular Liberalism but consonant with Glasman’s conviction that today the building of a new Athens and of a new Jerusalem are one and the same architectural endeavour: “The Abrahamic faiths embody a range of institutions and values of far greater intensity and meaning, or in the language of political philosophy far thicker, than the state, as the collective enforcer of a singular law can allow. Concepts of love, brotherhood, mercy and community are difficult to reconcile with equal rights, respect for persons and neutrality”.[x]

For Glasman the point of politics is to maintain the ‘community’ because being in community is the ‘end’ of humanity, its goal or purpose – the place within which love, brotherhood and mercy can flourish. He does not speak the legalistic language of secular liberalism (essentially the language of individual rights) but, rather, the language of faith communities and of faith in community (essentially the language of civic participation). Glasman is a true believer in civic politics, and just as the ancient religions were really all about organizing peoples against their adversaries so is Glasman’s political religion about organizing communities against the threat they face from the market and the state: “Resistance to commodification through democratic organisation. That's the position”.

But is it any good?

Glasman has certainly sparked controversy. I do not find him advocating a uniform national culture of the sort that Tories sometimes talk about. Nor do I find him expressing an ethnically exclusive politics. But I can see why people think this. Glasman privileges a politics of collective action over a legal order of individual rights and this makes it hard for many left-liberals to fit him into the political spectrum. Furthermore, English political culture lacks a common vocabulary for talking about race, class and religion in political terms (our history is one of bitter struggle to de-politicise these) and Glasman has been insensitive to this cultural context. That is unfortunate because he and Blue Labour are trying to speak about things new Labour was embarrassed by: ethics, class and the British socialist tradition. These are things we need to talk about together.

Ultimately, I suspect, Blue Labour’s success will be limited, not unironically, by the conservatism of the Labour Party. Labour’s is an insular culture much more at home with the processes of official politics (producing candidates, harvesting votes) than with the unpredictable force of social movements and community organisations (especially ones that are religious or ‘ethnic’). In their heart-of-hearts the question which Labour members ask when evaluating political ideas is not ‘is it right?’ but ‘will it get us elected?’. Those who think that Labour lost in 2010 only because it was soft on immigration, and that one wins in politics by moving to the centre rather than moving the centre towards you, are now regrouping under the label of ‘Purple Labour’ where they will leave Glasman behind.[xi] Others will find provocative talk about Englishness and religion difficult to cope with (as, to some extent, do I).

There are also conceptual problems. At its core, Glasman’s thought is animated by the power of political movements - the energising and consciousness-raising effects of political and community action as well as the ethical experience they make possible. That’s fine, but such a politics, thriving when opposing the forces that threaten it, tends to find it harder to specify how official, government power should work, how the relations between persons on a macro-level can be administered. That generates unclarity about the state. For most social democrats the state is precisely the means through which communities protect themselves from markets. Glasman is critical of the ‘big state’, because he thinks that it weakens ethical community. That is not a ludicrous position to hold but a traditional social democrat would respond by saying that this is why democratising constitutional reform is so important. Some might feel that this defence has a practical clarity lacking in the general demand for community organising (although Labour itself is usually not much interested in either).

Secondly, and this point is made very well by Sally Davison in her contribution to The Labour Tradition and the Politics of Paradox, while overturning the idea that the market is natural Glasman seems to fall back on the notion of natural community.[xii] Mainstream Liberals will respond that, since not all communities are the same, there must be some more general criteria for distinguishing between the really ethical ones and the rest. The more radical will respond that all communities are also political constructions, often serving the interests of the few, and that politics should oppose this too. More importantly, from my point of view, in Glasman’s thinking organic community acts as a kind of deus ex machina in the struggle against commodification. Somehow, outside of the forces of capitalist enclosure, community remains, awaiting only organisation into the right form to carry out its redemptive mission. But that faith, I think, hinders deeper analysis of the balance of social, cultural and economic forces, the tendencies within them and the possible directions in which they might take things. Glasman may be right, and there is evidence for the claim, that the next phase in the history of political struggle will be centred on religious and other ethical communities united against the relativism of commodity capitalism. But I need more than an invocation of faith to convince me of this.

It seems to me that one of the things which Blue Labour has inadvertently proven is just how hard it is in England to think beyond the assumptions of the Liberal tradition. Probably, many think that a very good thing. But while the answers are not all there, Glasman has at least posed the challenging question of the common good. Belief that this question has an answer is what distinguishes ‘the left’ from everything else. The efforts to answer it constitute a tradition that needs to be remembered and in which Glasman may yet find his place.

[i] http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/searchforthemastercopy/spanish-revolution-and-commons-tale-of-two-tweets

[ii] http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/apr/24/blue-labour-maurice-glasman

[iii] here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/21/blue-labour-lord-glasman-conservative-socialism and here: http://www.leftfutures.org/2011/05/blue-will-never-be-the-new-red/

[iv] http://www.lishma.org.uk/index.php/articles/99-abraham-aristotle-and-alinsky-on-the-reconciliation-of-citizenship-and-faith-by-dr-maurice-glasman

[v] http://www.soundings.org.uk/

[vi] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/06/corporation-of-london-billingsgate-fish-porters?INTCMP=SRCH

[vii] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/may/03/blue-labour-openness-tradition-religion?

[viii] http://www.lishma.org.uk/index.php/articles/99-abraham-aristotle-and-alinsky-on-the-reconciliation-of-citizenship-and-faith-by-dr-maurice-glasman

[ix] http://www.progressives.org.uk/articles/article.asp?a=7981

[x] http://www.lishma.org.uk/index.php/articles/99-abraham-aristotle-and-alinsky-on-the-reconciliation-of-citizenship-and-faith-by-dr-maurice-glasman

[xi] http://labour-uncut.co.uk/2011/04/19/purple-bookers-try-to-revive-past-new-labour-glories/

[xii] http://www.soundings.org.uk/

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Capital Kills Its Own Market - Hilaire Belloc

2011-05-29T17:08:00.001Z

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Capital Kills Its Own Market

Some quotes from Hilaire Belloc, in an essay re-published recently in The Distributist Review:

Those are the two principal material disadvantages of capitalism as we now have it. They are translated, in the actual world, into the terms “Unemployment” and “Insufficient purchasing power.” So long as control is in few hands and gets into fewer and fewer hands-these evils must grow larger and larger.

But the spiritual disadvantages of control by few and yet fewer men, over the process of production, transport and the rest, are even worse than the material disadvantages.

These spiritual disadvantages take three main forms. First there is loss of choice.....

Second ... is the counterpart of this: an increasing uniformity in the pattern of existence.....

The third ... is that the mass of men fall under the will of a few.....

On the loss of the habit of economic freedom:

When any bad process begins there is, in its first stages, a memory, a tradition, of better things. The old and better state of affairs still possesses what physical science calls “acquired momentum.” So it is with freedom when monopoly of control is growing up. All the older people can remember real competition and a fairly good division of property.

A human generation is short. When it has lost what it once knew, habit turns the new conditions into matters of course till the new conditions come to seem almost part of the universe. At least it becomes impossible for men to imagine what the older and better state of affairs was like.

Now this habit in any evil, but especially the habit of dependence, is what makes evil permanent; and as things are now going there is a rapidly increasing dangers that his condition of dependence upon a few, and of accepting monopoly of control over our lives, will become second nature. If we allow that to happen by allowing the gradual decay of individual property and freedom to continue unchecked, it will be impossible to return. That is the real danger when we pass the point after which reform becomes practically impossible because the mind cannot conceive it.

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Blackwater Founder Forms Secret Army for Arab State

2011-05-15T09:28:00.002Z

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Blackwater Founder Forms Secret Army for Arab State - NYTimes.com

Just when it all seemed to have gone quiet over Blackwater - America's notorious private military contractor that came to the fore in the Iraq conflict - its founder turns up in the desert deploying a secret and private army for the government of the United Arab Emirates.

Erik Prince, billionaire founder of Blackwater (now re-branded as XE) has set up the force - which consists of Colombian and South African elements, to protect the Emirates from both external threat and internal challenge, according to documents seen by the New York Times:

The force is intended to conduct special operations missions inside and outside the country, defend oil pipelines and skyscrapers from terrorist attacks and put down internal revolts, the documents show. Such troops could be deployed if the Emirates faced unrest or were challenged by pro-democracy demonstrations in its crowded labor camps or democracy protests like those sweeping the Arab world this year.

All very grim.

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The Soldier, the FA Cup and the Creeping Militarism of British Popular Culture

2011-05-14T07:57:00.004Z

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When Corporal Mark Ward of the Mercian Regiment presents the FA Cup to the winning team at today's Wembley Stadium final, his presence will be a further subtle step towards an American-style inter-mingling of militarism and sport in Britain.

The FA has been developing this agenda for several years, with uniformed servicemen (and women) appearing in ceremonial roles at a growing number of FA-sponsored fixtures, including recent England full-international matches.

FA Chairman David Bernstein notes that, “The FA has been a long time supporter of the Armed Forces.... We should never forget the bravery and sacrifice our forces make and I hope this gesture by The FA will give the 90,000 crowd at Wembley on Saturday the chance to show their respect and appreciation."

The FA Cup itself was taken to Camp Bastion in Afghanistan earlier this year by England Under-21 Head Coach and man-of-the-people Stuart Pearce.

One problem with this supportive engagement on the part of the FA is that it is deeply political. In the United States, "support for the troops" has very easily morphed into an uncritical acceptance of the government's foreign policy. Similarly, the cultural transition towards celebrating the work of soldiers at mass public sporting events carries with it the unspoken assumption that the activities of these same soldiers, and their political masters, should be unchallenged. At least in public.

In an era when the government is closing children's centres across the country, reducing educational budgets, allowing universities to charge £9,000 per year to future undergraduates, and inviting private firms to "compete" within the NHS, the financial cost of the government's misguided Afghanistan policy remains an elephant in the living room, as far as public spending is concerned. This is quite apart from its moral or strategic merit.

This week, the head of the British Army, Sir Peter Wall, acknowledged to the Commons Defence Committee that there "clearly was" a failure of intelligence in the run-up to Britain's involvement in Afghanistan's Helmand province in 2006.

"I absolutely accept that what we found when we had our forces on the ground was starkly different from what we had anticipated and been hoping for. We had always anticipated Taliban potential intent. What we probably under-estimated was their capacity," he said.

With both of the prominent male Royals currently serving in the military - William in the RAF and Harry a tank commander in the British Army - the fusing of power, wealth, militarism and popular culture remains a powerful combination in modern Britain. Today's FA Cup presentation will add to that heady mix, and in the opinion of this fan, is a regrettable development.

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NHS: Cameron's Rhetoric is Wearing Thin

2011-04-21T13:43:00.002Z

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NHS: Cameron's rhetoric is wearing thin | openDemocracy

Speaking on the Today programme yesterday the Prime Minister claimed to be committed to what he called our ‘precious’ NHS. He said he wanted it to go on succeeding, free at the point of use. But unless he is still not paying attention to what is in Lansley’s Bill (which is possible, as Cameron often seems curiously indifferent to the detail of his government’s policies) he is being completely disingenuous.

The crucial point is this: the Bill relieves the Health Secretary of his existing responsibility for providing a universal and comprehensive health service, and doesn’t allocate it to anyone else. It leaves it up to unaccountable local GPs grouped in Consortia to decide what services their particular patients will be entitled to, and what they will have to pay for, and how much, and this can vary from one consortium to another – goodbye both comprehensiveness and universality. It leaves an unaccountable healthcare market regulator (Monitor) to decide what private companies can offer NHS patients, and whether they can underbid NHS hospitals on price, and it mandates Monitor to promote competition – goodbye free care at the point of delivery.

The whole thrust of the Bill is to create a competitive market with a large expansion of provision by companies focussed on shareholder value. To pretend otherwise is, frankly, to insult the public’s intelligence. And it doesn’t make it any better to declare, as Cameron did, that because the population is ageing, the NHS ‘has to change’. That sort of rhetoric has lost all traction with the growing number of people who have woken up to what is going on. Change is constantly necessary in all services. The question is how handing over the NHS to market forces is supposed to improve it. The evidence points decisively against competition in health care and by now everyone knows it.

In March the BMA came very close to declaring outright opposition to the Bill. The nurses at their Liverpool conference in April repudiated the Bill and Lansley with it – by a majority of 478 to six. Unison and Unite are massively opposed. Cameron now says he would like ‘more full-throated support’ from the NHS workforce. Even his capacity for spin is getting seriously overstretched.

The name of the game for Cameron and Lansley now is to appear to be making ‘substantive changes’ to the Bill which will in fact leave its aims intact. The patently deceptive Future Forum ‘listening’ exercise with its Panel of five, chaired by a notoriously pro-market GP, plus 40 handpicked medics and managers, is designed to give a fig-leaf of legitimacy to what will actually be a behind-the-scenes search for amendments that look major but are not. These will not include the ‘essential amendments’ proposed by the Lib Dem rank and file after the Sheffield conference; those amendments are incompatible with the aims of the Bill and Lansley will not be accepting them. Whether the Lib Dems will tolerate yet another abandonment of their principles remains to be seen.

The task for everyone who is genuinely committed to the principles of the NHS is to ensure that the true aim of the Bill is kept clearly in view, and to insist that the media don’t collude in the lazy sort of misrepresentation that Cameron is hoping to get away with.

This article is published by Colin Leys, and openDemocracy.net under a Creative Commons licence.

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Filming Starts for The Hobbit

2011-04-18T10:09:00.000Z

Having realised how much slower this blog is to load when I embed videos in it, I have tried to avoid doing so in recent months.

Every so often however, a mere link to an exciting video just won't suffice.

The journey begins....

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Some Thoughts on Libya

2011-04-14T20:27:00.000Z

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

I haven't had much to say on this blog about the Libya crisis/uprising/civil war.

That vacuum has partly reflected my lack of time and partly my vacillating opinions on the issues involved in the western powers' military action arising from UN Resolution 1973.

Here, belatedly and in a slightly disorganised note form, are some thoughts:

If no action had been taken a month ago by the international community, I wonder what the outcome would have been. The fear was of a Darfur-like bloodbath in Benghazi, but a number of commentators have expressed doubt about this. Stephen M Walt, for instance, has argued that in the absence of western military intervention, Gaddafi's forces would have overrun Benghazi at the end of March and would have arrested and executed the leading opposition figures in the city, both political and military, but would not have undertaken a systematic butchering of the civilian population. Gaddafi's promise to show "no mercy" to the rebels should be understood in these terms - a violent crackdown on dissenters rather than a widespread killing of the city's population. Which is not to say that the former scenario would have been at all pleasant.
The UN resolution's call for an "immediate ceasefire" is being cited less by Western powers than its provisions for a no fly zone. I have not heard many British or French diplomats talking publicly about the need for a negotiated ceasefire. The only serious efforts in this regard seem to be coming from the African Union rather than the west.
Regime change is not part of the UN resolution - though it is evidently part of the French foreign policy. Indeed, such an action would presumably be against the UN Charter and sets a dangerous precedent for the international community.
The claim from some that the west's intervention is "all about oil" is predictable, but I think a little simplistic as a total explanation for where we are now.
I agree with Gavin Hewitt's view that the western-Arab League alliance is starting to show signs of disunity and confusion over its objectives.
Arming the rebels is about the most stupid suggestion to have been voiced so far during the Libya crisis, in my opinion.Apart from anything else, there is an arms embargo on.

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Six Ways Twitter has Helped my Business

2011-04-12T16:45:00.000Z

My own experience of the benefits of Twitter as a small business owner. Here.

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Turning Rubbish into Cooking in Africa's Largest Slum

2011-04-07T21:04:00.001Z

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Libyans in Sheffield Chanting "We have to say... Thank you UK"

2011-03-26T21:02:00.000Z

Thanks to Ian Jukes for this picture, taken March 26th 2011.

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Jerusalem bomb blast victim was Scottish missionary | Christian News on Christian Today

2011-03-25T16:54:00.000Z

Jerusalem bomb blast victim was Scottish missionary | Christian News on Christian Today

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Stop the press: man in dressing gown caught on CCTV! - Big Brother Watch

2011-03-24T09:11:00.001Z

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Stop the press: man in dressing gown caught on CCTV! - Big Brother Watch

As one of the commentators on this story asks, what business is it of the police, or CCTV operators, to stop or film a member of the public who is not breaking any laws nor giving grounds for suspicion that he is about to do so?

Furthermore, what right does the Council have to describe the man's activity on its public newsletter?

Behind the humour of the incident there is a telling illustration about the increasing intrusion and interference of the state in the lives of its citizens.

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Aristide Returns to Haiti

2011-03-18T21:40:00.002Z

On a normal day, the return of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to his native Haiti would be top of the news programmes.

But it's been a long time since we;ve had a normal day, news-wise.

Here are some intimate photos of the event via Sharif Koudous of Democracy Now. Sharif was one of the best first-hand sources of English-language reporting on Twitter during the Egyptian revolution.

He's now in Haiti providing similar first-hand updates.

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The world can be powered by alternative energy in 20-40 years, Stanford researcher says

2011-03-16T09:56:00.001Z

The world can be powered by alternative energy in 20-40 years, Stanford researcher says

"Based on our findings, there are no technological or economic barriers to converting the entire world to clean, renewable energy sources," said Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering. "It is a question of whether we have the societal and political will."

Jobseekers told by job centre to volunteer at Poundland, claims volunteer centre - Third Sector

2011-03-09T22:41:00.000Z

Jobseekers told by job centre to volunteer at Poundland, claims volunteer centre - Third Sector

Follow the link.

Read the story.

Is this the future for those who are unemployed - accept voluntary unpaid work for private businesses or lose your state benefits?

Disgraceful.

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7 Billion: Are You Typical? -- National Geographic Magazine

2011-03-04T00:06:00.002Z

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Where Next for African Integration in The Post-Gaddafi Era?

2011-03-01T23:04:00.000Z

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Exactly one year ago, President Muammar Gaddafi was appointed Chairman of the African Union. The Libyan leader took the opportunity to outline his vision of African economic and political integration.

Next month, African specialists meet in London to deliberate on prospects for an African Free Trade Area.

It’s unlikely that Colonel Gaddafi will be able to attend.

Read the full story here.

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Suffolk's Teachers Take 10,000 days off for Stress - Telegraph

2011-03-01T13:36:00.003Z

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Suffolk's teachers take 10,000 days off for stress - Telegraph

The Daily Telegraph is reporting today that teachers employed by Suffolk County Council required a total of 10,000 days off with stress-related illness in 2010.

The total is the equivalent of 50 academic years lost due to stress, depression and anxiety-related conditions.

While the Telegraph reports the story today in the context of the challenges, in general, of the modern teaching profession, and the decline in behaviour standards in the classroom, the article does not offer any specific geographical analysis of the alarming figure.

Last Autumn, I noted that Suffolk County Council (in the east of England) had become the first local authority in the UK to outsource virtually all of its council services in a dramatic cost-cutting exercise. The BBC reported at the time that the aim of the council's New Strategic Direction was to "turn the authority from one which provides public services itself, to an enabling council which commissions other to carry out the services."

Now, at the end of the first year that this strategy has been implemented by the Conservative-controlled Council, we can see some of the human cost of this policy. In addition to the damage done to the health of teaching professionals in the county, there will also be increased financial costs - to cover the supply teachers needed to cover absences, as well as the legal costs involved in any related litigation. This is on top of the money that must be spent providing medical and psychiatric services to these troubled teachers.

The lesson of Suffolk's daring experiment seems to be that whatever the ideological merits of a smaller government, (which of course are hugely controversial in themselves), the process of transitioning to such an outsourced model is vitally important for the health and stability of the public service being delivered.

The more I look at the current government's drive towards public sector reform, the more I am convinced that at a process level (let alone ideologically) it is seriously flawed.

In being confronted with these statistics of teachers' rates of mental health problems in the county, I fear that we are looking at the future across the nation, unless the government can apply the handbrake to its public spending cuts.

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Latest from Libya

2011-02-20T20:17:00.001Z

Image via WikipediaUprising flares in Libyan city - Africa - Al Jazeera English

"Anti-government protesters in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi have reportedly seized army vehicles and weapons amid worsening turmoil in the African nation."

Naomi Kline: Shock Doctrine at Work in Wisconsin Attempts to Dismantle Public Sector Unions

2011-02-19T11:13:00.000Z

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O Brotherhood Where Art Thou?

2011-02-05T19:25:00.000Z

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Mubarak or the Muslim Brotherhood?

Binary assumptions that the only options for Egypt are dictatorship or Islamic theocracy are both misguided and dangerous.

Read the rest of the article here...

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U.S. intelligence collaboration with Omar Suleiman “most successful”

2011-02-01T09:22:00.001Z

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U.S. intelligence collaboration with Omar Suleiman “most successful”

Useful background notes from Wikileaks on Omar Suleiman, Egypt's new vice-president, and therefore the man constitutionally next in line to take over if President Mubarak were to step down.

Key points include:

Suleiman was trained early on in his career at the U.S. Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg
Head of Egypt's spy agency
Professional links with the CIA
Fiercely opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood

Not an American puppet, but certainly an acceptable alternative to the US when Mubarak boards that plane for Jeddah.

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The Jasmine Revolution and The Commodification of Protest

2011-01-26T21:58:00.000Z

Tunisia’s uprising may have caught the world off guard, but media and PR professionals have not been slow to create a brand out of Tunisia’s upheavals.

Where next for designer democracy?

Read the rest of the article here....

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No Country for Old Men: an Old Testament Parable?

2011-01-22T02:01:00.001Z

Image by Vardhana via Flickr

Being a bit behind the times with all things cinema-graphic, I only got round to watching No Country last week.

What a brutal film - and yet despite the bloodletting, there is an interesting tale with a spiritual dimension. At least, that's how I saw it.

The film touches on a number of religious themes - not least of all that of death itself, which wraps itself around the action like an omnipresent shroud.

With more than a hint of influence by the existentialist school of philosophy, the story is unremittingly bleak and portrays a vision of life that is, to borrow a well-worn phrase, absurd.

The harsh Texas landscape combines with the portrayal of the lives of the ordinary and powerless, whose existence is shown to be meaningless and insignificant - the more so when confronted with the cruelty of amoral killers seeking money, revenge or, perversely, mere self-actualization . The brutality metered out on many of the cast is, in this context, equally meaningless. Nondescript lives, ending in random and violent deaths.

Indeed the theme of randomness is central to the narrative, supremely illustrated by the psychopathic Anton Chiqurh, menacingly played by Javier Bardem, who tosses a coin before deciding whether strangers live or die at his hands.

In this sense, the film is acutely realistic, and consistent with many of the most profound questions posed by the writers of the biblical Psalms and other Wisdom literature. The observation that life often appears brutal, meaningless and that the innocent are frequently carried away in apparently random acts of violence is, indeed, a Biblical observation:

An unplowed field produces food for the poor,
but injustice sweeps it away.
(Proverbs 13:23)

Or, consider the political "realism" of "the preacher":

Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun:
   I saw the tears of the oppressed—
   and they have no comforter;
power was on the side of their oppressors—
   and they have no comforter.
And I declared that the dead,
   who had already died,
are happier than the living,
   who are still alive.
(Ecclesiastes 4:1-2)

The Biblical realism of these passages is evident to anyone who takes the time to look. Even as this blog is being read, this very day, innocent civilians are being butchered in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and in Pakistan, children are being orphaned by American drones.

The religious person is forced to ask the uncomfortable question: "Why?"

The fact that the Biblical writers observed these injustices through the perspective of belief in a Supreme God made their attempts to find meaning in these brutal acts more difficult than would be true for the atheist, who would not attempt to find any grand design or meaning behind such events.

Job, described as a man who "feared God and shunned evil" seems to even accuse God of injustice in the face of the pain suffered by the innocent:

It is all the same; that is why I say,
‘He destroys both the blameless and the wicked.’
When a scourge brings sudden death,
he mocks the despair of the innocent.
(Job 9:22-24)

The psalmist puts the problem even more bluntly:

Why, LORD, do you stand far off?
Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?

From the perspective of the New Testament, Paul of Tarsus makes a historic evaluation which is also full of theological meaning:

"Death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses" (Romans 5:14)

Although No Country For Old Men is located in modern America, theologically, it is located in this epoch when "death reigned". The absence of hope in the film underlines this spiritual reality - Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) is rebuked by his Uncle Ellis for assuming he can change anything. "Thinking it's all waiting on you, that's vanity" spews out the ex-lawman.

In this sense, the finely-crafted film is a parable that fits with the time before the Answer to death is revealed. It portrays the reality and shows the problem, but is unable to provide meaning or hope.

In Biblical terms, the film is B.C.

Its resolution would await another bloody death of an Innocent and His destruction of death itself.

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Publishing Projects

2011-01-17T18:43:00.001Z

I have started 2011 with the intention of creating a number of self-published written works, to supplement this blog and others that I maintain.

My two main publishing projects for this year are:

1. A series of essays under the working title of Understanding the Times: Essays in Christian Engagement

2. A book examining the radical Christian history of Bristol, my home town.

The series of essays arise from the same root motivation as this blog - namely to relate the Christian faith to the real world of politics, economics and culture. They will hopefully be of interest to people of all faiths and none.

The essays will be published once a month on the You Publish site and will be available to download as PDF documents.

In fact, the first essay, setting the scene and introducing the theme, has been uploaded already and can be read here.

Comments welcome, as always.

The image is Ship of Fools by Hieronymus Bosch, and forms the front cover of the first essay.

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KPMG: A Family-Friendly Company?

2011-01-15T11:36:00.001Z

Two tweets from separate sources caught my eye this week. They both concerned accounting giant KPMG, "the largest integrated accounting firm in Europe" according to their website.

One tweeter commented that,

"In [an] interview with KPMG was asked if had kids. I don't. They said good, because they weren't going to employ a mother."

Another mentioned that when she worked there, a colleague who announced she was pregnant was told: "Oh dear what terrible timing with promotions coming up".

Is this stuff legal?

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Tunisia: the Tipping Point?

2011-01-14T14:45:00.002Z

Reports today from Tunisia highlight both the desperation of the ruling Ben Ali family, and the opportunity for mass popular action to usher in change.

A common pattern has been observable in the course of the protests and the official reaction to it in recent weeks.

First, the clampdown. In the case of the Tunisian protests, police action has been combined with efforts to shut down online dissent. A facebook page supportive of the protests has been targeted, for instance.

Second, the concessions. The President, faced with mounting pressure, agrees to step down from power in 2014 and to act against corruption (one of the key elements that sparked the initial protests).

Thirdly, as the army and security forces appear to be no longer opposing the demonstrators, and as a crowd of 6,000 gathers in Tunis itself, we can expect to see the (final?) stage - resignation of the president and the removal of his corrupt family from public life.

The extent to which this is done in a prompt and orderly fashion will largely determine whether the existing government structures are able to cope with these changes and facilitate the reforms necessary.

Failure to do this may usher in a fourth and more problematic phase: a more general breakdown in law and order and government, with much greater potential for bloodshed and upheaval.

My earlier posts on the Tunisia demonstrations and its background can be found here.

The following video, in which gunfire can be heard, was taken on January 11th in Sidi Bouzid and uploaded by Tunisian blog Nawaat.

BoinbBoing, meanwhile, has a photo essay from today on its site here.

The following was uploaded today, January 14th.

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The Distorting Effects of Transportation Subsidies

2011-01-14T02:11:00.001Z

Image via Wikipedia

In an earlier post, I noted the work of Kevin Carson in his various writings on the creation of a national market in the C19 - a development which Carson describes as an artificial creation, funded by taxation and created by the State through its direct and indirect subsidies of national rail networks and communication infrastructure.

Carson's essay The Distorting Effects of Transportation Subsidies sets out this thesis in a more accessible form than his longer work on the subject and is a readable and, to my mind, persuasive arguement.

I also appreciate the fact that this shorter essay looks not only into the distant past but also at recent developments in the creation of national road networks and the civil aviation infrastructure, as examples of the similar State-lead trends.

Carson also shows the clear links between the creation of such networks and the consolidation of national markets, wedded to global firms.

Take a look and see what you think.

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Minor Changes to Blog Layout

2011-01-13T02:19:00.000Z

Image via CrunchBase

Two new features have appeared in the right hand column of the blog, should you be interested.

One is an update on articles I am writing for the Triond network, which are published around their various sites.

The other is a feed from Reddit of articles that I am submitting there. This is the closest I get to a "what I'm currently reading" section.

Hope both are of interest.

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Mark Kennedy, ACPO and Global Open

2011-01-12T23:45:00.003Z

The Mark Kennedy story reveals some murky links between sections of the police, who have infiltrated activist groups on the political left and within the environmental movements, and global firms who hire private security companies to spy on such activists.

The Guardian has a lot of information on the story, including some background on one such firm, Global Open. Their registered business address is 10 Springpark Drive, Beckenham, Kent. It's the house with the blue door.

I don't suppose the owners object to such information being shared publicly. They are in the freedom of information business, after all. In fact, the focus of Global Open, according to their website is gathering and sharing with their clients information on people involved in "activism" such as "Environmental issues; Anti-corporatism; Anti-globalisation."

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Follow up:

Fitwatch, based on a report from Indymedia, today carries a picture of who it claims to be a second undercover police officer operating deep within groups of environmental activists in Leeds. The officer is named as Lyn Watson.

Meanwhile, the Guardian today claims that a third officer has been revealed, having infiltrated a group of around 20 anarchists in Cardiff. Fitwatch also names the officer as Mark Jacobs and carries a photo.

Clearly there are major questions that need addressing about the policy of police infiltration of political and environmental groups.

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Co-operatives, Mutuals, Big Society and the Labour Party

2011-01-12T10:18:00.001Z

Image via Wikipedia

Interesting article by Carl Rowlands on the ambivalent relationship between the British Labour Party and the Co-operative Party and the wider co-operative movement.

The Co-operative Party is a "partner" and "sister party" to labour and its members include some of Labour's senior figures.

Rowlands makes the point that there appears to be some philosophical overlap between the co-operative philosophy, "mutualism" and the Big Society ideas of the current government.

The devil, however, is in the detail. Which is why the relationship is an uneasy one.

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Tunisia: The Middle East’s first cyberwar

2011-01-09T01:17:00.001Z

Index on Censorship » Blog Archive » Tunisia: The Middle East’s first cyberwar

Excellent and thorough piece by Rohan Jayasekera on the cyber dimensions to the current wave of protest in Tunisia.

The International Freedom of Expression Exchange has set up a Tunisia Monitoring Group to report on issues of press freedom and related human rights abuses.

Earlier post on the Tunisian protests here.

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Tunisia: Demonstrations Reveal Corruption, Media Restrictions

2010-12-30T10:33:00.001Z

Last week I reported on the issue of corruption as a global phenomenon that is severely hindering the ability of the international community to reach the UN millennium target of halving extreme poverty.

Tunisia is this week experiencing some of the convulsions that arise when corruption is left unchallenged, and when a lack of press freedom allows citizens little outlet but to take to the streets to vent their frustration.

The spark to the current unrest, which has seen street demonstrations and the death of two protesters, was the attempted public suicide of Mohammed Bouazizi, an unemployed university graduate, in the town of Sidi Bouzid in the centre of the country. Aj-Jazeera carries a rather grim photograph of the student in hospital covered entirely in bandages.

If, as Al-jazeera reports, lawyers are among those who are now joining in the demonstration against government corruption, this would seem to indicate that the government is in serious trouble. President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali was re-elected in 2009 in an election described by Human Rights watch as taking place in "an atmosphere of repression." The incumbent President received a reported 89% of the votes cast.

The President and his family are reported to be at the centre of the nation's political corruption, as revealed in a recent Wikileaks cable from the US Embassy in Tunis. Cable 08TUNIS679 contains the following revelations:

"President Ben Ali's extended family is often cited as the nexus of Tunisian corruption. Often referred to as a quasi-mafia, an oblique mention of "the Family" is enough to indicate which family you mean.... Ben Ali's wife, Leila Ben Ali, and her extended family -- the Trabelsis -- provoke the greatest ire from Tunisians. Leila's brother Belhassen Trabelsi is the most notorious family member and is rumored to have been involved in a wide-range of corrupt schemes from the recent Banque de Tunisie board shakeup (Ref B) to property expropriation and extortion of bribes."

The corruption inside the ruling family has coloured day to day dealings in the economy , according to the leaked cable:

"Beyond the stories of the First Family's shady dealings, Tunisians report encountering low-level corruption as well in interactions with the police, customs, and a variety of government ministries."

Severe reporting restrictions on the country's media has meant that many protesters have turned to the Internet to report on the recent riots and to protest with others. A Facebook page supporting the demonstrators has attracted over 12,000 subscribers - though it is unclear how many are form within the country itself.

Tunisian bloggers supporting the protests include Boukachen and Tunisian Girl, who is the owner of the image used above, used with permission under a creative commons licence. Demonstrators are using the hashtag #sidibouzid to spread information about the protests on Twitter.

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Wikileaks, Sweden, the Suicide Bomb and the CIA: Is There a Connection?

2010-12-27T11:41:00.001Z

Source, Tomblanton 1957

Mainstream media outlets are generally making no connection between the terrorist attack in central Stockholm last week and current attempts by the Swedish authorities to extradite Wikileaks director Julian Assange.

The consensus view on the pre-Christmas bombings is that they were carried out by Iraqi-born Taimour Abdulwahab, apparently a British-based self-radicalised jihadist acting on his own initiative, though possibly with some logistical support from persons currently unknown.

There is, of course, an alternative and more disturbing view.

Respected Swedish academic Professor Ola Tunander is currently based at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO), an independent peace studies institution which publishes numerous peer-reviewed articles on international relations, conflict resolution, foreign policy and peace studies.

Professor Tunander's 2004 book, The Secret War Against Sweden: US and British Submarine Deception Against Sweden in the 1980s makes the well-documented case that during the Cold War, British and American forces operated major submarine incursions into Swedish waters with the aim of creating the belief that these were Soviet ships acting aggressively.

From the book's forward:

"Following the stranding of a Soviet Whiskey-class submarine in 1981 on the Swedish archipelago, a series of massive submarine intrusions took place within Swedish waters. However, the evidence for these appears to have been manipulated or simply invented. Classified documents and interviews point to covert Western, rather than Soviet activity.....

Ola Tunander's revelations make it clear that the United States and Britain ran a 'secret war' in Swedish waters. The number of Swedes perceiving the Soviet Union as a direct threat increased from 5-10 per cent in 1980 to 45 per cent in 1983. This Anglo-American 'secret war' was aimed at exerting political influence over Sweden. It was a risky enterprise, but perhaps the most successful covert operation of the entire Cold War."

Former US Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger was also interviewed on Swedish television around the time of the publication of The Secret War and confirmed that American and British submarines had indeed been conducting operations against Swedish installations during the 1980s as a way of ensuring military (and civilian) "readiness" to counter the threat of Soviet expansion into the Baltic. The interview took place on TV2 on 7 March 2000.

In an earlier article in the journal Cooperation and Conflict, Professor Tunander quotes former CIA Director James Schlesinger on the existence of a Swedish "dual state" in which the official "Political Sweden" is matched by the "Military Sweden" which is portrayed as seeking ever closer ties to the United States. The article reflects on the "supranational" structure which, despite the country's official policy of non-membership, ties Sweden inexorably into the NATO orbit and policy objectives.

State Department cable 07STOCKHOLM506 on Wikileaks bluntly reveals this current political reality:

"While Sweden's official foreign policy doctrine emphasizes non-alignment, in practice Sweden is a pragmatic and strong partner with NATO"

and, in the same cable,

"Sweden's official security policy is non-participation in military alliances during peacetime and neutrality during wartime. Its active participation in the NATO Partnership for Peace and its role in leading the European Union's 1,500 troops-strong Nordic Battle Group give the lie to the official policy."

At the 2004 Pan-European International Relations Conference held in the Netherlands, Professor Tunander presented a paper with the working title of "The Use of Terrorism to Construct World Order" . Building on the pioneering work of Hans Morgenthau from the 1950s, Tunander outlines the history since 1945 of CIA-backed terrorist incidents in mainland Europe. The aim of these actions was the fueling of anti-communist sentiment among European citizens, in order to strengthen US/NATO-lead attempts to contain and oppose communism on the continent and elsewhere:

"The Strategy of Tension, as we know it from Cold War Europe, has received a global dimension. During the Cold War, the US ‘dual security structure’ – with its specifically tasked units masquerading as ‘enemy forces’ – was developed by the US ‘security state’ in order to keep the political strength and the readiness and capability of the Western defences. Now, this structure has seemingly been made into a self-propelled mechanism that is able to transform the world order into a Pax Americana."

Swiss academic Dr Daniele Ganser has also written extensively about the existence of secret armies operating in Europe under American control during the early 1990s. His book NATO's Secret Armies outlines their history and deployment as agents of terror.

After outlining how this policy was applied in Italy and elsewhere in Europe from the 1960s to 80s, Professer Trunandar then argues that following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US-NATO elites required a "new enemy" in order to justify ongoing American hegemony. That enemy was radical Islam.

CIA support for Osama bin Laden and his mujaheddin in the 1980s is a matter of public record. Later contact with the group took place in the Balkans in the 1990s and, according to several sources, as late as 2001. Trunandar provides details:

"The Saudi military intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Faisal had several meetings with bin Laden and supported the Taliban economically. Bin Laden allegedly had a meeting with the CIA station chief in Dubai, Larry Mitchell, as late as on July 12, 2001, as well as with the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Turki bin Faisal, while bin Laden was treated for his kidney problems at the American Hospital in Dubai (Von Bülow, 2003, p. 228. See also Richard Labeviere, 2001. ‘La CIA aurait recontré Ben Laden en juillet’, Le Figaro, November 1; Anthony Sampson, 2001. ‘CIA agent allegedly to have met Bin Laden in July’, Guardian, November 1; Elisabeth Bryant, 2001. ‘Report: bin Laden treated at US hospital’, United Press International, October 31) "

Fascinating though all of this is, none of it proves even a remote link between Taimour Abdulwahab, the CIA and the Pentagon's current crusade against Wikileaks.

Nonetheless, the history of CIA operations in Sweden does prove that

(a) American and British military forces have used "false wars" in Sweden as a way of manipulating popular opinion against America's enemies

(b) CIA strategic involvement with radical Islamic groups has been a proven reality until at least the start of this decade.

Beyond these facts, we are left only able to ask questions:

1. Why did Abdulwahab choose to commit his attack in Sweden rather than the UK? Although his parents apparently lived there, the practical challenges of carrying out a "lone" terror attack across international boarders must have been considerable. Why not target the Swedish embassy in London? Or IKEA?

2. What is the significance (if any) of the release of an official report on the Islamic terror threat in Sweden - three days after the Stockholm bombing? The report was originally commissioned by the government in February. Was its release this week pure coincidence? Or was it timed to create maximum impact in the media in the week of Scandinavia's first suicide bombing, with the report's claims that up to 200 Swedish Muslims are currently advocating violent jihad ?

3. Why was the Stockholm attack such a failure? Reports that the attacker's car - allegedly full of gas canisters - failed to blow up are attributed in many publications to the "amateurish" nature of his tactics. Considering what we know about the role of previous CIA covert operations in Sweden, is it not also plausible that those handling the attacker may have not wanted the car to blow up? This would make sense if their aim was not to kill but to create fear. Similar questions should be asked about the location of the car. It was not parked in the most obvious place to cause major casualties - with the heart of the shopping district being several hundred metres away.

4. Why did Abdulwahab's device detonate when it did? If the aim was to create terror (with the minimum loss of Swedish lives), then the detonation of his belt bomb down a side street with no casualties could be seen as achieving this result. If Abdulwahab's claim that he had been training as a jihadist for four years are true (as relayed on the audio message he is alleged to have sent to the authorities minutes before the first blast), then it might appear surprising that such a lengthy training period resulted in the perpetrator being unable to create a device that could even blow himself up properly, let alone kill others. Eye witness reports claim that the bomber was still alive for a short while after his device exploded.

5. How are we to account for reports on Sweden's The Local news site of alleged military knowledge of the attack in advance? The claim is made that a Swedish armed forces member was warned by a colleague two hours before the bomb blast, “If you can, avoid Drottninggatan today. A lot can happen there…just so you know."

6. Who was behind the fake bomb left at Kungstraedsgaarden metro station in Stockholm, on Christmas eve, two weeks after the suicide attack? A police officer is quoted by AFP as saying: “It looked like a real bomb. Someone made it to frighten people.”

As for the connections with the Wikileaks saga, the following video reveals Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt claiming in a recent interview with Sir David Frost that he knows very little about the Assange case as it is not handled by his particular government department. This modest denial is strange considering the Minister's recent political history. Bildt has been heavily criticised in recent years for his membership of The Committee to Liberate Iraq, which was an American political lobby group aimed at the "replacement of the Saddam Hussein regime with a democratic government" in the years leading up to the US-lead invasion in 2003.

Other members of the Committee included Newt Gingrich, John McCain, Richard Pearle (founder of the right-wing Project for a New American Century), and R James Woolsey, former director of the CIA. Bildt's participation is remarkable as, apart from one Iraqi, he was virtually the only non-American of the 35-member Committee. Clearly, he was closely associated with many of the prime movers at the heart of efforts to ensure a US-lead invasion of Iraq, whose project has come under such fierce criticism, in part as a result of revelations from the Wikileaks site.

It is inconceivable that Bildt is not actively concerned about the Wikileaks phenomenon and, presumably, receiving the perspective of the United States government on the matter via their man in Stockholm, Matthew Barzun or indeed, from more senior American political figures.

Specific US Embassy cables released through the Wikileaks site that relate to Sweden have not portrayed the inner workings of the country's Foreign Ministry in a particularly positive light.

Cable 09STOCKHOLM194, for instance, notes that "the current Swedish political climate makes any formal terrorist screening agreement highly difficult" and notes that "existing informal arrangements are working well."

In other words, Mr Bildt's department (he became Minister for Foreign Affairs in 2006 after serving as Prime Minister from 1991-94 ) wished in the words of the Daily Telegraph to "avoid parliamentary scrutiny" of its discussions with the US over terrorism-related matters. The cable goes on to reveal that Sweden's continuing US visa-waiver entitlement was being officially linked to its co-operation on allowing access to information on Swedish nationals that might be of interest to American authorities in their counter-terrorism strategy, in line with Homeland Security Presidential Directive Hspd-6.

The cable reveals that the Swedish representative at an October 2008 meeting noted that it was "a particularly sensitive time politically in Sweden for issues involving government surveillance and personal privacy."

In a final, rather chilling conclusion in light of recent events, the leaked cable notes that,

In the longer term, while a changed political environment in Sweden might be more conducive to a formal agreement with the U.S., there is a very clear GOS [Government of Sweden?] belief that Sweden is not likely to be a direct target for terrorists and therefore has little to gain from an HSPD-6 agreement.

One could logically conclude from this statement, therefore, that a terrorist attack in Sweden might help to move public and political opinion towards embracing a more formal information-sharing arrangement, which the cable reveals as being beneficial to the United States.

In conclusion, we have at this time no concrete evidence that the terror attack in Stockholm was supported or directed by the CIA. What we do have, however, is a political motive for such an event, a previous history of such events and a number of practical questions about the attack itself that warrant further investigation.

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What Next for the Student Movement?

2010-12-23T22:32:00.000Z

Reproduced with permission under a creative commons licence from Our Kingdom. Written by Guy Aitchison.

The volcanic eruption of student anger and militancy in Britain over the last few months has blown the political space wide open, making a broad-based movement against austerity thinkable where previously there was only rumbling discontent. It has certainly been an exhilarating experience to be part of, but whether future historians look back on the heady period leading up to the parliamentary vote on tuition fees as the beginning of the fightback against the neoliberal juggernaut or the last desperate gasp of social democracy, will depend on the next steps the movement takes.

An extraordinary opportunity has been presented to us. Len McCluskey, general secretary of the biggest trade union, Unite, has called for an alliance between trade unions and the "magnificent students’ movement". This call, from the leader of the country’s biggest trade union, which echoes the countless personal messages of support delivered by unionists at the university occupations, is without parallel in the history of social activism in this country.

With over seven million members, the labour movement represents by far the largest organised force in this country, and through the power of co-ordinated action, from strikes to occupations, to political mobilisation and education, is capable of putting serious pressure on the legitimacy and functioning of the state.

The key question now is how to turn rhetorical expressions of solidarity into concrete relationships of support and co-operation, not only with trade unions, but with the full diversity of campaign groups that are springing up at a local and national level to fight the cuts.

One important theoretical debate concerns whether the movement should strive to retain its hitherto organic and decentralised nature or whether this is merely a temporary phase before the inevitable discipline of central organisation and leadership. I hope to set out elsewhere the creative potential of networked organisation and the dangers of over-reliance on traditional hierarchies. Here I will confine myself to ten practical suggestions on the way forward. They are in no particular order of priority and come from a student perspective:

1. Convene nationwide meetings of the occupations, and then broaden these out to other groups.

We need forums to strategise on the way ahead. Online networks have proven their efficacy, but the occupations also demonstrated the importance of a shared space and face-to-face interactions in fostering the strong bonds needed for concerted political campaigning and direct action. One of the most impressive political meetings I’ve taken part in was the Cambridge University occupation general assembly - a genuine "big society" get together of over 300 people from all backgrounds and walks of life, brought together to discuss how to oppose the cuts. There is no reason why these kinds of meetings can’t become a regular occurrence.

2. Educate each other, disseminate skills.

The occupations served as fast-track apprenticeships in political activism. Thanks to them, hundreds of young people now have the skills and confidence to run democratic meetings, deal with the press, engage in non-violent resistance to bailiffs, and so on. We need to disseminate these skills further through workshops and informal instruction, across sectors as well as within them. At UCL occupation we were given a lesson in the community organising techniques of "power mapping" by a unionist from the TSSA. Students, in return, could offer their own knowledge and skills, such as how to organise through social media.

3. Build and strengthen links with school students.

They have been the most radical and militant, leading from the front at the days of action. University students need to be forging links with students at local schools, giving talks to their societies, and encouraging them to get involved in activism. They are the ones who will suffer the brunt of cuts to EMA and university funding and many are keen to get involved. I expected ten pupils at a talk I gave to Camden School for Girls, with Jo Casserly, on the eve of their occupation – instead there were at least 100.

4. Keep it adventurous and creative.

Think flashmobs, culture jamming, political art, the techniques of the Yes Men and the Situationist International. A group of Goldsmith’s graduates have formed the University for Strategic Optimism, a nomadic institution which pitches up and holds lectures in capitalist spaces such as Lloyds TSB and Tesco. As we saw in Parliament Square, even a calculated technique of state repression, such as the kettle, can be subverted and turned into a mini festival. We need more of this; anything satirical and subversive the authorities find difficult to handle.

5. Convince the wider student body.

When you’re caught up in deliberative enclaves of the like-minded it can be easy to ignore the opinions of the wider student body. This is a mistake. Their support, even if only passive, is critical. Public talks, workshops, and informal persuasion can help bring them in. This is an attractive moment of political persuasion by example, but also argument; it needs to face outwards not be totally absorbed by itself.

6. Call for co-ordinated strike action.

This will be a vital tool in defeating the government’s austerity programmes. Students should be making the political case for strikes in defence of jobs and the welfare state, as well as providing support for workers who withdraw their labour. At UCL occupation we organised delegations to attend the pickets of striking tube workers – this should become a regular activity.

7. Improve legal knowledge and anti-surveillance practices.

We can expect a furious backlash from the police and the wider political and judicial establishment. The repression of student activists has already begun with police raids on suspected leaders. The Met are demanding ever more draconian powers and tools to deal with protesters, whilst Lib Dem politicians urge intrusive "intelligence" gathering operations designed to suppress legitimate dissent. We need more people trained in legal observation attending demos, and wider awareness of the techniques needed to foil police intelligence gathering, both online and off.

8. Beware sectarianism.

As a political theory Phd student, I enjoy robust theoretical debate as much as the next activist, but one of the wonderful things about the occupations (at least the ones I witnessed) was how they prioritised practice over ideology. It would be a great shame to now descend into ideological fetishism or for different factions to move in and try and appropriate the anger and energy to grow themselves at the expense of the wider movement. This movement's openness and pluralism is a political strength; without it, it won't succeed in bringing in the larger public.

9. Become a networked participant.

There has been something of a backlash against "clicktivism" of late (largely from those with little experience of digital activism) but it’s no coincidence that the most successful anti-cuts actions to date – the student protests and UK Uncut - are those that have harnessed the power of online networks. Join Twitter, join Flickr, work Facebook, set up a blog – and use online platforms such as False Economy to link up with other campaigners in your area and pool knowledge and resources. Start open mixed group websites for exchanging information, ideas and video reports and images. Participate in non-partisan websites such as OurKingdom or start your own.

Ultimately, activists should consider moving their online operations from private social media conglomerates, inherently vulnerable to corporate and governmental pressure, to self-hosted, open source networks. The scandal of corporate connivance in the attack on Wikileaks and the recent "disappearance" of UK Uncut’s Facebook group underlines the urgency of such a switch.

10. Support the motion of No confidence in Aaron Porter, but don’t let it distract from the core task of building the movement.

It would be nice to have a combative NUS President prepared to mobilise the organisation’s resources on behalf of students, but the real lesson of the last few weeks has been how ineffectual "leaders", desperate to appear responsible and safeguard their own careers, can be bypassed by taking autonomous action.

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