Land of opportunity

Posted on November 17, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

17 November 2013

If you are black or Asian or belong to an ethnic minority in England and Wales, you are streets ahead of the population at large when it comes to one opportunity – the chance to end up in clink.

A 2013 survey by the UK Justice Ministry (so called) shows that blacks, Asians and those belonging to other ethnic minorities constitute 26 % of those jailed in England and Wales, according to a report in the London Guardian on 15 November 2013.

This is twice the proportion of those groups in the population at large. That percentage has remained “around this level”, according to the Guardian, since these figures were first regularly published in 2004.

Separate figures from the ministry show that the proportion of inmates in prisons in England and Wales who are Muslim has nearly doubled over the past 10 years.

Antigone1984:

Would-be immigrants to Britain who are black or Asian or who belong to ethnic minorities might do well to ponder these data before making their travel arrangements.

According to the Guardian report, black people are six times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched on the street by police. This is twice as likely to happen to Asians and people of mixed race as it is to white people.

The near doubling of the proportion of Muslim prisoners in English and Welsh jails during the past decade is hardly a surprise. The “War on Terror” launched by the US, abetted by Britain, in the immediate aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center in New York on 9 September 2001 has focused disproportionately on followers of the Prophet.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Africa, UK, USA, Wales | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race

Posted on November 16, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

Paris, Saturday 16 November 2013

“Travailler plus pour gagner plus”

Work more to earn more

This was one of the electioneering slogans employed by right-winger Nicolas Sarkozy (b. 1955 in Paris, the son of a Hungarian immigrant) in his successful campaign to become President of France, an office he held from 2007 to 2012.

“Travailler plus pour gagner moins”

Work more to earn less

This, according to Sarkozy’s critics, was the reality of the labour market.

Since the canonization, in the second half of the 20th century, of the neo-liberal market economy as the only possible theory and praxis for a globalised world, it can hardly be contested that it is the latter slogan which holds sway across the global economy as conveyor belts speed up and working conditions deteriorate.

How refreshing, therefore, to read in today’s Financial Times –  of all places! – an article which pulls the ideological rug from under the feet of market apologists touting their take-it-or-leave-it live-to-work long-hours propaganda.

Here at Antigone1984 we believe that we work to live, not the other way round. Contrary to what the free-market ideologists claim, work, in our view, is not an end in itself.

Very agreeable, therefore, it was to read today’s article by Harry Eyres in his weekly column – called, appropriately, the Slow Lane and this week entitled “Why work so hard?”

Eyres starts by noting that the great Keynsian economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) got it wrong in his 1930 essay “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren” when he predicted that by the early 21st century the working week would have been cut to 15 hours.

In fact, Eyres points out, the number of hours worked in both the US and Europe has remained pretty steady for decades at more than 40 hours a week.

However, long hours at the coal-face have not always been the human norm.

For millennia, human hunter-gatherers managed to get by comfortably with their feet up for much of the day.

“The San (Bushmen) people of southern Africa thrived, with a good diet (2,500 calories day) on little work (two or three hours a day) and much play,” says the article, citing anthropologist James Suzman.

The much-invoked liberal myth of permanent human progress – from hunting and gathering to agriculture to industrialization – is not borne out by the facts.

“Farming did not immediately bring improvements in health and longevity,” says Eyres, referring to an article written by geographer Jared Diamond in 1987 which explains why agriculture was the “Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race”.  According to Diamond, agriculture brought with it “the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism, that curse our existence.”

Skeletons uncovered in Greece and Turkey show that men’s average height fell from 5ft 9in at the end of the last Ice Age – about 10 000 BC – to 5ft 3in in 3 000 BC after the invention of agriculture.

“So the myths of a golden age were not just nostalgic fantasy,” concludes Eyres, who goes on to query why, in  supposedly advanced societies in the early 21st century”, we are we all so addicted to work. “ Why do we assume that working harder and harder is an unquestionable virtue?”

He refers to the book “Willing Slaves” by Madeleine Bunting, published in 2004, which “revealed an epidemic of work-related stress and depression among British white-collar workers.”

The addiction to overworking reflects external pressure as workforces are squeezed. But people also over-work voluntarily, according to Bunting, to the extent that they associate work with status and money.

Here, however, a problem arises: “if they work all the time, when will they have the time to enjoy it [the money and status]?”

The article concludes by citing a demand made in 1866 at a congress in Geneva of the International Association of Working Men: “We require eight hours work, eight hours for our own instruction and eight hours for repose.”

Amen to that! Except that perhaps the Bushmen had a more enlightened idea of the number of hours it was reasonable to work….

We shall end this disquisition with the poem “Leisure” written by Welsh bard William Henry Davies (1871-1940) and first published in 1911:

What is this life if,  full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

Antigone1984:

We have no connection with the London-based Financial Times but we have a lot of time for its Saturday edition, which is a different animal from the business-focused publication produced during the working week. The Saturday edition comes replete with discursive in-depth essays ranging across a breadth of cultural and artistic as well as life-style and economic topics.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

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Posted in Economics, France, Hungary, Literature, UK, Uncategorized, USA, Wales | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Lost

Posted on November 15, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

15 November 2013

I AM IN MARKET HARBOROUGH. WHERE OUGHT I TO BE?

This is the text of a telegram sent by the English writer G. K Chesterton (1874-1936) to his wife in London. Source: Chesterton’s Autobiography, published in 1936.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

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Posted in Literature, UK | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The Patriot Game

Posted on November 14, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

14 November 2013

 

Why Patriots are a Bit Nuts in the Head

 

Patriots are a bit nuts in the head

because they wear

red, white and blue-

tinted spectacles

(red for blood

white for glory

and blue…

for a boy)

and are in effervescent danger

of losing their lives

lives are good for you

when you are alive

you can eat and drink a lot

and go out with girls

(sometimes if you are lucky

you can even go to bed with them)

but you can’t do this

if you have your belly shot away

and your seeds

spread over some corner of a foreign field

to facilitate

in later years

the growing of oats by some peasant yobbo

 

when you are posthumous it is cold and dark

and that is why patriots are a bit nuts in the head

 

This poem by English poet Roger McGough (b. 1937 on the outskirts of Liverpool) takes a stance on patriotism that is the direct opposite of that espoused by Henry Newbolt in the poem Vitaï Lampada, which we published in this blog yesterday 13 November 2013. The poem was published by Penguin Books in 1967 in The Mersey Sound, a paperback anthology of poems by the three “Liverpool poets” – Adrian Henri, Brian Patten and Roger McGough. The Mersey is a river which flows by Liverpool into the Irish Sea. According to Wikipedia, “The Mersey Sound” – of which Antigone1984 has a copy signed by all three poets – is one of the best-selling poetry anthologies of all time, shifting over half a million copies.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Literature, Military, Politics, UK | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Patriot Game (I)

Posted on November 14, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

13 November 2013

 

         Vitaï Lampada

There’s a breathless hush in the Close tonight –

Ten to make and the match to win –

A bumping pitch and a blinding light,

An hour to play and the last man in.

And it’s not for the sake of the ribboned coat,

Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame,

But his Captain’s hand on his shoulder smote –

‘Play up ! play up ! and play the game !’

 

The sand of the Desert is sodden red –

Red with the wreck of a square that broke; –

The Gatling’s jammed and the Colonel’s dead,

And the regiment’s blind with dust and smoke.

The river of death has brimmed his banks,

And England’s far, and Honour a name,

But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks:

‘Play up ! play up ! and play the game !’

 

This is the world that year by year,

While in her place the school is set,

Every one of her sons must hear,

And none that hears it dare forget.

This they all with joyful mind

Bear through life like a torch in flame,

And falling fling to the host behind –

‘Play up ! play up ! and play the game !’

 

This is a poem written in 1892 by English author, barrister and government adviser Henry Newbolt (1862-1938).  The title, meaning “the torch of life” is an expression borrowed from the Roman poet Lucretius (94-55 BC). The poem celebrates the passing of the torch of life from one generation to the next. It is also a hymn to the supposed virtue of patriotic duty inculcated into the children of the ruling class at English private schools in 19 C. Newbolt himself was head boy at Clifton School in Bristol. The schoolboy in the poem learns his selfless commitment to duty as a result of playing a straight bat during cricket matches that took place in the close at Clifton. Later, as an army officer, he puts what he has learned to good use as a leader of men on the battlefield. There is a saying in England that “the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton”. Eton was the school attended by the Duke of Wellington, who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

Posted in Literature, Military, UK | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Uncle Sam and the heffalumps

Posted on November 12, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

12 November 2013

Nearly 100 African elephants are killed for their tusks every day [by poachers] to feed a huge demand for ivory trinkets from newly wealthy buyers in Asia, who see ivory as a status symbol.

Observation by contributor Suzanne Goldenberg in her article on the ivory trade in the London Guardian on 11 November 2013.

Antigone1984:

Goldenberg points out that the United States is at the forefront of the global fight to stamp out ivory trafficking. On 14 November 2013, on President Obama’s instructions, the US is to pulverise publicly its six-tonne stockpile of confiscated ivory gewgaws, worth millions of dollars, in order to send a message to traffickers that this is how their ill-gotten swag will end up.

Let’s hear it then for the good ol’ US of A.

 

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Africa, Asia, Economics, USA | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Times They Are a-Changin’

Posted on November 12, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

11 November 2013

THE BOOT IS ON THE OTHER FOOT

In the 1930s victims of Nazi persecution in Germany fled to Britain to escape.

Sarah Harrison is a British journalist has been working in Russia with political refugee Edward Snowden. Snowden is the US whistleblower who blew the gaff on clandestine eavesdropping by US and British spooks on the electronic communications of millions of European citizens as well as 35 world leaders.

Harrison arrived in Germany on Saturday 2 November 2013 only to be advised by her lawyers – according to a report in the London Guardian on 7 November – that it was not safe for her to travel on to her home in the UK. As a result, according to the paper, she has joined “the growing band of net activists stranded in Berlin”.

In a letter to the London Guardian published on 9 November, reader LJS Lesley comments: “it is ironic that in the 1930s people fleeing persecution in Germany came to Britain. Today people take refuge in Germany to avoid prosecution in Britain. How times have changed in 80 years.”

Antigone1984:

O Tempora! O Mores!

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

Posted in Germany, Politics, Russia, UK, USA | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Dulce et decorum

Posted on November 10, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

10 November 2013

Before our generation the names of those who had died for Ireland were the dearest names of all – Sarsfield, Wolfe Tone, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Robert Emmet. Many a young man and woman grew up dreaming of dying for Ireland and leaving behind a name immortal in the country’s memory. Dying for freedom, suffering for freedom, was the great road to fame and renown, the sure way of having one’s name remembered forever. But in our day, under the new leadership, young people began to think that living for the country and doing something for it might be as good as dying for it.

From the autobiographical “Life and the Dream” written by Irish literary critic Mary Colum (1884-1957) and published in 1928.

Antigone1984:

Nice one, Mary. One in the eye for Horace!

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

Posted in France, Ireland, Literature, Politics, USA | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

No left left

Posted on November 9, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

9 November 2013

Não é possível votar na esquerda se a esquerda deixou de existir.

It is no longer possible to vote for the left if the left has ceased to exist.

Observation by Portuguese novelist José Saramago (1922-2010), winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature, in his diary entry for 9 June 2009.

A fuller version of the passage is as follows:

O que chegou a ser, no passado, uma das maiores esperanças da humanidade, capaz de mobilizar vontades pelo simples apelo ao que de melhor caracterizava a espécie humana, e que veio criando, com a passagem do tempo, as mudanças sociais …. cada dia mais longe das promessas primeiras, assemelhando-se mais e mais aos adversários e aos inimigos, como se essa fosse a única maneira de se fazer aceitar, acabou por cair em meras simulações, nas quais conceitos doutras épocas chegaram a ser utilizados para justificar actos que esses mesmos conceitos haviam combatido. Ao deslizar progressivamente para o centro, movimento proclamado pelos seus promotores como demonstração de uma genialidade táctica e de uma modernidade imparável, a esquerda parece não ter percebido que se estava a aproximar da direita….Não é possível votar na esquerda se a esquerda deixou de existir.

A movement that in the past succeeded in representing one of the greatest hopes for humanity, capable of spurring us to action by the simple resort of an appeal to what is best in human nature, I saw, over the passage of time, undergoing a change in its social composition.…daily moving further away from its early promises, becoming more and more like its old adversaries and enemies, as if this were the only possible means of achieving acceptance, and so ending up becoming a faint replica of what it once was, employing concepts to justify certain actions, which it formerly used to argue against precisely the same actions. As it drifts without let-up towards the centre – a course described by its advocates as demonstrating both tactical genius and the inevitable need to keep up with the times – the left does not appear to have noticed that it was coming to resemble the right…. It is no longer possible to vote for the left if the left has ceased to exist.

Antigone1984:

The ideas expressed are very much in line with our own, eg in our post on Partitocracy v. Democracy .

——-

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

Posted in Europe, Literature, Politics, Portugal, Sweden, UK, USA | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Joker trumps the pack

Posted on November 8, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

8 November 2013

Monarchs were pretty ruthless in medieval times. Dissent could cost a courtier their head. However, there was one member of the sovereign’s entourage who was permitted to speak his mind freely and even to poke fun at the king himself. This was the court jester.

How appropriate it is then that the despotism of today’s ruling elite, the partitocracy, should be subjected to a withering onslaught not from a disgruntled denizen of the ivory tower but from a rank political outsider –and a comedian to boot!

Born in Essex, England, in 1975, Russell Brand – also an actor, radio host and author – has been making waves recently with a series of public diatribes against the small self-preening self-selecting log-rolling world of conventional conformist consensual party-political politics.

His latest outburst comes in an article he wrote for the London Guardian newspaper on 6 November 2013.

Here are some extracts:

“As long as the priorities of those in government remain the interests of big business, rather than the people they were elected to serve, the impact of voting is negligible….The only reason to vote is if the vote represents power or change. I don’t think it does. I fervently believe that we deserve more from our democratic system than the few derisory tit-bits tossed from the carousel of the mighty, when they hop a few inches left or right. The lazily duplicitous servants of The City [the City of London, the financial district] expect us to gratefully participate in what amounts to little more than a political hokey-cokey where every four years we get to choose what colour tie the liar who leads us wears….

People riot when dialogue fails, when they feel unrepresented and bored by the illusion, bilious with the piped in toxic belch wafted into their homes by the media [Brand is referring to rioting by the dispossessed, including some students, in London and elsewhere in August 2011; vicious sentences were subsequently dished out to the rioters by a judiciary hell-bent on punishing those members of the lower orders who had had the effrontery to cock a snook at the powers that be].

The reason these coalitions are so easily achieved is that the distinctions between the parties are insignificant [The present UK government, which has been in power since the last parliamentary election in May 2010, is a coalition between the Conservative (Tory) Party and the Liberal Democrat Party].

Some people say I’m a hypocrite because I’ve got money now. When I was poor and I complained about inequality people said I was bitter. Now I’m rich and complain about inequality they say I’m a hypocrite. I’m beginning to think they just don’t want inequality on the agenda because it is a real problem that needs to be addressed.

…we are living in a time of huge economic disparity and confronting ecological disaster. This disparity has always been, in cultures since expired, a warning sign of end of days. In Rome, Egypt and Easter Island the incubated ruling elites, who had forgotten that we are one interconnected people, destroyed their societies by not sharing. That is what’s happening now…

Most of the people who criticised me [for speaking out against the system] have a vested interest in the maintenance of the system. They say the system works. What they mean is ‘the system works for me’.

The less privileged among us are already living in the apocalypse, the thousands of street sleepers in our country, the refugees and the exploited underclass across our planet daily confront what we would regard as the end of the world. No money, no home, no friends, no support, no hand of friendship reaching out, just acculturated and inculcated condemnation.

The reason not voting could be effective is that if we starve them of our consent we could force them to acknowledge that they operate on behalf of the City and Wall Street; that the financing of political parties and lobbying is where the true inflence lies; not in the ballot box.

…our treasured concepts of tribe and nation are not valued by those who govern except when it is to divide us from each other. They don’t believe in Britain or America. They believe in the dollar and the pound. These are deep and entrenched systemic wrongs that are unaddressed by party politics.

The symptoms of these wrongs are obvious, global and painful. Drone strikes on the innocent, a festering investment for future conflict. How many combatants are created each time an innocent person in a faraway land is silently ironed out from an Arizona call centre? The reality is we have more in common with the people we’re bombing than the people we’re bombing them for….

Can we really believe these problems can be altered within the system that created them? That depends on them? The system that we are invited to vote for? Of course not. That’s why I won’t vote. That’s why I support the growing revolution.

We can all contribute ideas as to how to change our world – schoolboys, squaddies, hippies, Muslims, Jews…loving our planet and each other is a duty, a beautiful obligation.

We could use the money accumulated by those who have too much…giant corporations…to fund a fairer society. The US government gave a trillion dollars to bail out the big five banks over the past year….How about…don’t give them that money. Use it to create one million jobs at fifty grand a year for people who teach, nurse or protect. These bailouts for elites over services for the many are institutionalised within the system. No party proposes changing it. American people that voted, voted for it. I’m not voting for that…It’s socialism for the rich and feudalism for the rest of us.

The people that govern us don’t want an active population who are politically engaged. They want passive consumers distracted by the spectacle of which I accept I am part.

If we all collude and collaborate together we can design a new system that makes the current one obsolete. The reality is there are alternatives. That is the terrifying truth that the media, government and big business work so hard to conceal…I believe in change. I don’t mind getting my hands dirty because my hands are dirty already. I don’t mind giving my life to this because I’m only alive because of the compassion and love of others. Men and women strong enough to defy this system and live according to higher laws. This is a journey we can all go on together, all of us. We can include everyone and fear no one. A system that serves the planet and the people. I’d vote for that.

Antigone1984:

And so say all of us!

Well said, Sir!

Verily, a secular equivalent of the Sermon on the Mount.

A masterpiece of silver-tongued advocacy on behalf of the wretched of the earth.

And a cry from the heart.

To be read and re-read.

Who would have thunk it? Coming from an ex-drug-addict stand-up comedian with a private life notorious for political incorrectness.

But then the spirit moves in mysterious ways.

——

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

Posted in Politics, UK, USA | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment