20 November 2012
If anyone has any doubts about the racist nature of Israeli society then the following quotes by Gilad Sharon, son of Ariel Sharon should clear the mist from your eyes:
“There should be no electricity in Gaza, no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing. Then they’d really call for a ceasefire,” he wrote. “We need to flatten entire neighbourhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza” — Jerusalem Post
25 December 2011 — Strategic Culture Foundation
I don’t remember much about my high school years. Some of the highs (few in number) come back to me but it was mostly lows which probably explains why I don’t remember much. It’s not that I was dumb, I just had no motivation, but I was interested in history, jazz and politics (thanks to my parents) and even won a prize for a history essay as well as starting up the school’s first jazz appreciation society (not appreciated by the school I might add, the head of music tore down my posters).
31 October 2011
Some readers may find it difficult to believe that for a brief time during my early, spotty teenage years, like thousands of others of my kind, I hung out out on railway stations collecting engine numbers and ticking them off in my Ian Allen train spotters guide. When I look back on those days, I can’t for the life of me figure out why I did it. What was the attraction?
Perhaps it was the smell of steam and coal, which when mixed in the right combination, is a heady brew, something akin to the best sensemilla to a twelve-year old and by some miracle my Observer’s Book of Railway Locomotives of Britain has somehow survived the years, minus the dust cover unfortunately. A birthday present from my mum in 1957.
Victorian industrial capitalism is now viewed through steam-fogged glasses and it’s been transported to the fictional land of Heritage where the past is embalmed in nostalgia. All those amazing machines, with their pistons, cogs, gears and levers, all whirring away in perfect harmony and best illustrated by the steam engine, the engine of industrial capitalism.
The invention of the railway network is probably the British Empire’s greatest, and only contribution to world culture but in an irony only possible for capitalism to produce, the railway– that made industrial capitalism possible–was jettisoned in the 1960s as surplus to requirement by those self-same ‘captains of industry’ the railway created in the first place.
Jettisoning the past is a central theme of capitalism, a necessary component if the nature of production is to be continually revolutionized and along with the workers who make it all possible.
When I was a kid apparently lots of boys my age wanted to be engine drivers (I wasn’t one of them), though it was a dirty, dangerous and grossly underpaid profession. But such is the nature of working class camaraderie, a ‘band of brothers’ but it also had its pecking order, with each function clearly delineated by union membership, grade and so forth. And an entirely male preserve.
A few years ago I wrote a piece about the Indian state-owned rail network, the largest in the world, carrying tens of millions of passengers a day and now an integral component of Indian culture in every sense of the word. Not without its problems and contradictions of course, especially as the neoliberal agenda asserts itself.
In the same essay I also wrote the following:
A couple of facts: The Indian Railway is the single biggest civil employer of people on the planet and the then newly-appointed minister of Transport’s first act was to rescind a decision to replace the locally made pottery cups that everyone traveling on the railway uses with plastic ones, because the switch resulted in 100,000 potters being made redundant.
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Now I contend that this is a good example of socialist culture in action. It may not be the most ‘efficient’ enterprise on the planet, it’s bureaucratic beyond belief, the entire network–the biggest in Asia–runs on paper, lots of paper, vast tomes get exchanged between guards when they switch shifts but so what?
The issue here is that the Indian Railway is not only intrinsic to Indian culture but also indispensable, socially as well as economically. It’s not merely an enterprise, for grouped around it are literally millions of people who are not directly employed by the Railway but who service the passengers as well as the railway’s needs. — ‘All Aboard!’
The contrast with the country that invented the railway could not be more stark once the UK decided that the automobile was the new generator of profit. The railway a relic of the 19th century but above all ‘unprofitable’, in money terms that is.
The double-whammy of the Beeching cuts and the privatization of the railways has left the the UK with the most expensive rail fares in Europe and the worst service. This from the country that invented it!
In retrospect however, I wonder if the ‘captains of industry’ are ruing the day they let the former boss of ICI, Beeching lose on the most comprehensive rail network in the world and smashed it to pieces? Literally. Capital infrastructure built over two centuries is not now easily or cheaply replaced but indicates just how short-sighted capitalism is.
18 October 2011
Something has to be done about a world rapidly filling up with the (often poisonous) rubbish that capitalism produces in vast abundance. Rubbish that will be with us for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Even the middle of the Atlantic Ocean is carpeted with the stuff, mostly plastic waste of all kinds. Even the remotest corners of our once, largely pristine planet are now poisoned with the excreta of capitalism’s insane and so far, unstoppable and largely arbitrary productive capacity.
17 September 2009
“It is right and necessary that all men should have work to do which shall be worth doing, and be of itself pleasant to do; and which shall be done under such conditions as would make it neither overwearisome nor over-anxious.” — William Morris, ‘Art and Socialism’.
William Morris’s News from Nowhere, his future history of a ‘return’ to an idealized vision of a pre-capitalist society, part feudal, part agrarian socialism, I read when I was a teenager, and perhaps oddly, I also read it as a science fiction story.
5 February 2009
The badge of the Woodcraft Folk
Unlike most of the kids I grew up with, my folks introduced me to Nature at a very early age and they introduced it to me in very specific ways, especially my father, Roy. Not just trips to the country at weekends, weather permitting, but a view of Nature as all-encompassing including us humans.
My dad, building microscopes at Baker’s Microscopes
Roy was a self-taught man who had left school at perhaps fourteen or fifteen and like others of his class, time and politics, he felt a deep sense of inferiority when it came to knowledge. Thus he did everything he could to educate himself in all kinds of subjects especially the English language, science, history and of course politics and surprisingly for those days, Nature.
1 September 2007
Book Review: Ecology Against Capitalism by John Bellamy Foster
“An ecological approach to the economy is about having enough, not having more.” — John Bellamy Foster
“For the first time — nature becomes purely an object for humankind, purely a matter of utility; ceases to be recognized as a power for itself; and the theoretical discovery of its autonomous laws appears merely as a ruse so as to subject it under human needs, whether as an object of consumption or as a means of production. [my emph. Ed]” — Karl Marx, Grundrisse
For some of us on the Left it appears that confusion reigns in much of what”s left of the Left, caught up as it is in its own largely petty squabblings, mostly about who said what to whom and when, thus when a book comes along like Ecology Against Capitalism, I feel damn well vindicated!
3 August 2007
The Web has opened a veritable can of worms as far as the mainstream media are concerned, even so-called liberal journalists seem to feel threatened by the emergence of a global, independent media, the latest one to emerge being Robert Fisk (who I referred to in my last piece). Now whether, as fellow blogopopsicle Chris Cook, publisher of Pacific Free Press opined, it’s because he’s afraid of the technology or, as I offered, because he sees his privileged position challenged by what he obviously thinks of as a bunch of opinionated, jumped up ‘amateurs’ invading his patch, is debatable. I obviously lean toward the latter.
5 July 2007 — InvestigatingImperialism
Well it’s started, in fact it’s more than started and it’s driving me mad. You know what I’m talking about, my fucking ‘carbon footprint’! Every time I hear the phrase, which is every damn day, it really pisses me off.
‘Carbon footprint’ is the new Osama, the new bogie man with which to frighten the kids. And as the campaign gathers speed, awful things happen to your mind; the ‘green virus’ infects you, there is no escape.
So last night I was in the kitchen getting a meal together and I had to open a new packet of spices and as I poured it into a container and then dumped the empty carton into the garbage can a strange feeling came over me; I was thinking about the fate of the empty carton.
Then I realised that it wasn’t the first time I’d been ‘possessed’ by the feeling whenever I threw out the crap my food comes packaged in. Bottles, wrapping, cans, every piece of junk mail, evokes the feeling that I’m fucking up the planet, even the stuff that goes into the orange recycling bag (who knows what really happens to it?).
But this is how it works isn’t it, once the media gets its hands on ‘my carbon footprint’, I’m buggered. Slowly but surely it worms its way into my consciousness. It’s not just the dedicated programming on ‘greening’ my life, every damn news broadcast has at least one piece on ‘what I can do’ to save the planet.
And it works, no matter how insulated you think you are from the predations of the media, engineered guilt worms its way into your mind. Every piece of garbage on the street; every time you see someone drop something, you want to tackle them (and get whacked for the privilege of ‘doing my bit’? Not likely).
The thing is this, it’s no bad thing to having our streets clean (people tell me that London is one of the dirtiest capital cities in the world) and it’s also true that the sheer volume of packaging our food and such comes packed in is ridiculous. This is what makes the ‘green’ propaganda campaign almost impossible to resist.
The point is however, that all of it entirely misses the target and deliberately so, for the objective is to shift the responsibility away from the economics of capitalism onto our shoulders whilst we stay loyal consumers, we’ll just consume ‘green’ crapola instead the usual crapola. And as predicted awhile back by yours truly, every damn product is now selling itself as ‘green’, even car insurance.
It’s one, giant con job and one of the major culprits is the BBC with its endless series of programmes on how ‘we’ can save the planet but not a one of them will actually raise the issue of the economics of capitalism being intrinsic to the problem, that unless this is dealt with, we’re buggered.
Earnest men with handlebar moustaches, invade our homes armed with meters to measure our electricity consumption, dig holes in the backyard to put our crap in, and all of it without mentioning the ‘c’ word.
Look they mean well these ‘green crusaders’, that’s part of the problem, for them it’s fun being green and it pays well too. Books and DVDs follow in rapid succession, in fact an entirely new industry is born and all the ‘new’ products that go with it.
Every year tens of thousands, if not millions of ‘new’ products hit the market, most don’t make it beyond one year before being consigned to the dustbin of market failures for one reason or another. And no matter whether the product is made of’ sustainable’ materials and processes or not, the sheer volume of raw materials consumed is absolutely necessary to the continuance of capitalism. Capital must reproduce itself and every market has a limit to what it can consume before it becomes saturated and a ‘new’ product has to be produced and a new market created for it.
It’s a self-perpetuating system with millions of jobs at stake, not to mention profits. Everything is interlocked and inter-dependent. Without our increasing consumption returns on investments diminish, the stockholders complain and new ways have to be found to keep the rate of return increasing. This means finding new markets, reducing the cost of production, inventing new products, ad infinitum.
How to counter this avalanche of capitalist ‘green’ propaganda? The latest Medialens piece illustrates to some degree the problem that confronts us. Titled ‘Melting Ice Sheets And Media Contradictions – An Exchange With George Monbiot’ reveals the contradictions inherent in capitalism allegedly trying to heal itself and the planet.
Monbiot is one of the very few anti-capitalist writers with access to the corporate media, principally the Guardian. The problem, as Medialens points out, is that Monbiot’s essays are immersed in advertising; for cars, air travel, booze, etc, aimed mainly at the ‘jet-set’.[1]
“Doesn’t this make a mockery of the Guardian’s claims to be responding to climate change? Is it really credible to expect a newspaper dependent on corporate advertising for 75 per cent of its revenue to seriously challenge the corporate system of which it’s a part and on which it depends? Why don’t you discuss this inherent contradiction in your journalism? — [Monbiot doesn’t] discuss this inherent contradiction in [his] journalism? — [that] the news reports, comment pieces and adverts that surround your work powerfully reinforce a ‘pathology of normalcy’ and prevent people from seeing the pathology for what it is.”
Medialens goes on:
“Isn’t it vitally important that this structural problem of the corporate mass media system be exposed? Doesn’t your silence on this issue indicate the very real limits of free speech in our ‘free press’?”
Monbiot agrees but suggests that ‘alternative’ sources of revenue be found for the corporate media and invites people to send him suggestions. The problem with the idea of’ alternatives’ is that it doesn’t matter what is advertised, whether ‘green’ or not, advertising and the corporate media are one and the same thing, abolish one and effectively you abolish the other. In other words, advertising is intrinsic to the corporate press, there are no alternatives unless one pays for the actual cost of a newspaper, which few would be prepared to do. The very nature of the corporate media is determined in the first place by its reliance on advertising; it defines its choice of what is ‘news’ and how events are covered, to expect anything else is self-delusion.
Medialens notes that the Guardian has an online adverts-free edition, at a cost of course, but fails to point out that the content of this edition has already made a profit from advertising! Effectively, online versions of print media are a license to print money, all that happens is that the content has been repackaged and sold again (and again). One way or the other, corporate media are totally dependent on advertising as the major source of revenue regardless of where it comes from.
Quite correctly, Medialens points out that supporting independent, non-corporate media is one answer but we know the problems that confront such enterprises. And it doesn’t address the issue of our being immersed in an ocean of capitalist propaganda, not only the corporate press and state-run media but local councils, the education system, and of course central government and business, have all jumped on the bandwagon.
‘Fighting global warming’ has become the leitmotiv of New Labour (after the ‘war on terror’) but obviously it excludes the central contradiction of the relationship between climate change and our economic system.
But it goes much further than the issue of climate change, for all climate change has done is reveal the contradictions of capitalist economics which is why for the government and business, it’s vital that there be no exposure of the connection between the two.
To some degree, it can be argued that the issue of climate change actually masks the central problem by diverting attention away from the essential nature of the economics of capitalism which is why the central propaganda message is what you can do about your carbon footprint’. And so far the campaign has been eminently successful in passing the buck. Who amongst us and aware of the issue, hasn’t felt what I feel every time an empty carton is tossed away?
Note
1. ‘Over the last 12 months, the GNM [Guardian News and Media] total audience accounted for: “20% of all champagne drunk. One in six of all city breaks taken. One in five Acorn ‘Urban Prosperity’. £1 in every £7 spent on computer hardware or software. 1/6 of all MP3 player expenditure.” http://www.adinfo-guardian.co.uk/display/research/total-audience/total-audience-facts.shtml
8 June 2007
‘All the freaky people make the beauty of the world’ — ‘All The Freaky People,’ Michael Franti & Spearhead
For the most part, television is crap, driven as it is either by commercial interests or in the case of the state-run network, by something that tries to mimic the demographically driven commercial networks. But occasionally good stuff pops up, for example, every year the BBC has this daily programme that runs for three weeks, called Springwatch, based in an ‘organic’ farm somewhere in the West Country. It has hundreds of tiny cameras voyeuristically placed to watch the animals do their spring thing.
Investigating Imperialism 