We already know!

So it would seem, that last week in British Politics became decidedly boring. This in turn, meant the BBC had very little to report. Which meant, it’s editors were forced to submit articles to the Politics section of the BBC News website, that appear to have been posted by Captain Obvious.

Take this article, referring to the leader of the Liberal Democrat’s Nick Clegg’s claims on the Andrew Marr show, that The Tories offer nothing different to pull Britain through tough economic change.
Clegg is quoted as saying … “I don’t believe for a moment that a Conservative government will take radical action to make the tax system fairer.” … As if we didn’t already know this. Firstly, they aren’t called Conservatives for no reason. Radical isn’t really in their vocabulary. Secondly, when the word “Radical” does breach Conservative Security, the Country ends up with a Thatcher. I cannot imagine anyone in the Country other than the greedy bankers she spawned, would want to see radical Conservatives again.
Clegg wasn’t finished with the obvious statements. He went on to suggest that a Tory Government would not help those on middle or lower incomes. Again, did he really need to make that point? Does anyone seriously believe a Conservative Government who have pledged to simply do nothing productive for the less advantaged in Society during this long horrible recession, are the best choice for those struggling the most?
The Conservative Party Website says… “Our welfare programme will be delivered by private and voluntary providers, who will only be paid when someone gets and keeps a job.
Combined with our commitment to end the couple penalty in the tax credits system, our radical welfare plans will help lift almost half a million children out of poverty.”…. Private Welfare? Delivered by those out for profit? Not only can I see that pushing more people into poverty given that they pledge to not raise minimum wage, but I foresee that parents will feel forced to work longer hours, meaning that work becomes more important than family. The Tories will never help poor families. We do not need Mr Clegg to point that out.

Late 2008, Goldman Sachs asked for a $7,000,000,000 bail out. They put $6,000,000,000 aside for bonuses, according to The Guardian. It defended it’s bonuses by suggesting bonuses are needed to attract the best people. The best people, who seemingly lost £1.4bn for the fourth-quarter of 2008. I’m quite happy to lose that much money for a company, if it means a hefty bonus at the end. Bring it on.
Similarly, according to The Daily Mail, between 2003 and 2007, Sir Fred Goodwin, boss of Rbos received £15.5million in pay and bonuses, and Eric Daniels of Lloyds TSB received £10.2million.
The housing market boom, seeing prices pushed for modest properties, way beyond the £1million mark, is estimated to have been worth an incredible £5.5bn according to Savills, in London, by City Bonus buyers alone. Greed. Nothing more than pure Greed. So why has it taken so long for an MP to stand up and critise this greed culture. Lord Myners told The Times, that “The golden days of huge bonuses are over” and that “grossly over-rewarded” executives must shoulder some of the blame for the global recession. In short, right winged economic policy, the concept that deregulated… “the markets will save the World!!” is so horribly overestimating the power of the greedy minority who rule the World. Lord Myners went on to uncover himself as Captain Obvious, with this “Let us be quite clear: there has been mismanagement of our banks.” No shit.

Whenever I watch Parliament, in particular Prime Minister’s Questions, it strikes me as inconceivable how little Parliament is actually allowed to scrutinise Whitehall. It does not matter how many time the Prime Minister is asked a question, he will never answer it truthfully, and he will try his very hardest to sneak around the question. And yet, The BBC seems to think it’s a story worth telling that the Prime Minister wont answer MPs questions adequately. As if it’s shocking. As if we didn’t already know they do this. According to the BBC citing The Ministerial Code, Members of the Government should be…….” as open as possible with Parliament and the public, refusing to provide information only when disclosure would not be in the public interest“…. and yet quite evidently, they aren’t, in fact, they couldn’t be further from that rule if they tried.
We know that Labour is incredibly out of touch, we know that they have very little support, we know they do themselves very little favours when they try to block calls for more transparency and scrutiny, like the full disclosure of MPs allowances under the Freedom of Information act, which Harriet Harman has been using the most ridiculous legal jargon to postpone quite tragically for Democracy, as long as possible. But it goes even deeper into the realms of the hypocritical and ridiculous when Labour’s Deputy commons leader Chris Bryant tells the BBC that openness is vital in Parliament.
Norman Baker goes on to, according to the BBC “accuse Mr Brown of using stock excuses to avoid answering questions“. Is this really a story? The entire country knows just how slimey Politicians are when it comes to the truth. You just have to sit watching Prime Ministers questions to know this.

Captain Obvious has been busy, neatly suggesting that the title of this blog “futile Democracy” isn’t as radical a claim as first may seem.

We’re all American now

Am I going mad?
Or am I one of the few sane people left in the Western World?

I sat watching George Bush deliver another speech of bullshit and propaganda in which he metaphorically masturbated Tony Blair. Blair was awarded The Presidential Medal of Freedom for his success in fighting terrorism. I’d assume this refers to the biggest disaster in war history, perhaps worse than Vietnam: Iraq. Currently this doesn’t surprise me. We seem to have become a World dedicated to rewarding failure. When asked why Goldman Sachs’ top guys will still be getting a bonus this year, The Independent was told “you have to pay big money to get the best guys“… such are ‘the best guys’ whose company is guilty of corruption, incompetence and partly responsible for the destruction of the entire free market. And those are the best guys? I’d hate to see the worst guys. Do they just sit in a room throwing faeces at a wall?

At one point, when referring to Blair, Bush used the phrase “Helped to free millions of people in Iraq”. If we must use that dreadful lie, we must also use “Has helped murder 600,000 innocent Iraqi people including many children, along with thousands on our own troops, whose family still don’t know what cause their sons, husbands, brothers, uncles died for.”

It was one of those horribly cringeworthy speeches, that only George Bush appears to deem appropriate. I’m neither casting a negative nor positive judgement on Blair as a Prime Minister. In fact, I quite liked him when it comes to domestic issues, but based on his foreign policy and his ‘special’ friendship with the World’s most villainous Terrorist Bush, his legacy will always be judged in a horribly even if somewhat unfairly negative light.

Bush thanked Blair for his public support for ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’. Whenever those phrases are used so frequently, I wonder to myself what they mean, what they stand for exactly. Is it that in one breath we support Democracy, and then denounce it the moment a political party that does not like us, wins an election? Is it condemning homosexuality? Is it making flag buring a crime? Is it support for the regimes of dictators like Pinochet, because he’s agreeing to let your companies exploit his people? Is it seeking nuclear proliferation across the globe, yet hypocritically having the largest stock pile of nuclear arms on the planet? Is freedom experienced by the innocent men being held at Guantanamo without representation? Is freedom the love of warantless wiretapping? Experts (according to ‘The Economist’) have said that under the Bush administration, classified documentation has rised from 8.1 million in 2001 to 14.2 million in 2005 and that it is now much more difficult to obtain documents under the freedom of information act than ever before. Is this the Freedom the Bush administration so happily boasts about? Ex-felons (according to the Economist again, one in thirty seven adults in America has spent time behind bars) in some States, are banned from voting.

Bush went on to applaud Blair’s attitude to spreading Democracy across the globe. That Democracy goes hand in hand with freedom. He must be speaking of the failure to export Democracy to countries that just don’t want it, but killing enough people whilst trying? Or perhaps it’s the continued support for Governments like the Eqyption Government, whose President ‘Mumbarak’ has been in power for 28 years? Is it condemning Hamas and cutting off Aid because Hamas’ goal is to destroy Israel, yet standing side by side with Israel when their goal since birth has been to clear it’s region of all Islamic influence? Is it condemning Iran for testing missiles, yet ignoring Israel when they (according to U.S Intelligence – as much as an oxymoron as that is- Officials) “conducted an exercise that simulated a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities”? Or was it the support for the murderous regime of Batista in Cuba, yet (and unsurprisingly) hypocritically condemning every breath Castro takes. Right winged murderous dictators GOOD? Left wing, whether murderous or not, BAD? Freedom is only freedom when it suits American economic interests. Democracy is only democracy when the out come means that McDonalds can poison as many local water supplies as it can get it’s hands on.

Blair should not have been given this medal. He was awarded it in 2003 but has only agreed to collect it this year. Can you imagine the out cry it would cause among the families of dead soldiers who to this day do not understand why their children have died in a war zone, who have been given no reason or explanation, that the man who sent them to their deaths, is being rewarded for doing so? It’s a horrible consequence of a horrible period of history controlled by those who profit from War.

In a loose way, and perhaps this is where Bush feels so strongly about rewarding Blair for his help in achieving, we’re all American now.

Che: The Hero

“Che was the most complete human being of our age.”
Jean-Paul Sartre

Every generation needs a hero. Every generation needs that one person who stands out above the rest as a symbol of resistance. Someone, that the little man can relate to. Every generation needs someone so different, so willing to fight for the people who cannot fight alone for themselves, the forgotton people, the used and abused people, the exploited people. We all need someone to show us that we’ve all become a little too obsessed with the disturbingly life-consuming chase for individual wealth, that we’re forgetting our duty to humanity as a whole. Especially to those less fortunate. There is nothing any one can tell me, to convince me that allowing people to die every day of extreme hunger, whilst others across the World buy their third or fourth house, a yaht, and a new holiday home in Cyprus, can be justified in any way whatsoever.

It’s strangely satisfying to know that such a man, such a great man, is hated by the majority of Conservatives, Capitalists, and American Imperialists. It’s a two finger salute that generation after generation will read The Motorcycle Diaries, and wear the iconic Che tshirts, with their red Che posters, as a reminder that people are more important than money, whilst no one will ever wear a tshirt with Margaret Thatcher’s face, or Ronald Regan’s face, i’d be surprised if anyone names their child “George” again, after the past eight years. Whenever American Imperialists insist on describing someone other than every Republican currently running their country as “communist” or “insurgent” my instant reaction is “ah so what they mean is, people who don’t want to become just another American state”.

There are many right winged blogs that shout “terrorist” at the very mention of Che Guevara, and yet they have very little problem with the abuses of America, of Britain, of all Western nations, who continue to manipulate the word “freedom” in the most grotesque, and evil of ways. Che was no terrorist.
“Here’s a list of people he had killed!!!” – Let’s set up a list of those killed by American imperialism over the past fifty years shall we? Che killed, because he had to, if he didn’t kill, he’d have been killed, That’s what war does. None of those killed, were innocent. That’s a fact. And yet, more innocent people have died as a result of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan than non-innocents. Who’s the terrorist now?

He taught me to think — he taught me the most beautiful thing which is to be human.
“Urbano”, former Cuban rebel fighter

The same people who cannot help but critise every thing Che Guevara stood for, or his methods, his fight, are the people who bitterly claim Obama to be an evil anti-christ and Socialist. These people are boring now. We’ve heard their shit for twenty five years. Their free market masturbation, that has lead to the World financial crises perhaps ever. We’re bored of it.

“Che’s life is an inspiration for every human being who loves freedom. We will always honor his memory.”
Nelson Mandela

“He killed people! He’s nothing but a terrorist!!” – He killed those who would have killed him given the chance. We don’t live in that World. We can never know what it’s like to live in a country under a corrupt government that happens to be supported by the Americans, who systematically execute anyone who disagrees with them. We don’t know what it’s like to live in a World where you should just give in to Capitalism, whilst you watch people dying of starvation all around you…. whilst the ignorant Capitalist Conservatives hail your nation as “free”. In a World where you kill or be killed, Che was no terrorist, he was a freedom fighter, a doctor, a teacher, a poet, a writer, a revolutionary. And let’s face it, he could never kill as many innocent people as Britain and America has since 2003 (over 600,000 now I believe). If the Right Wing are happy to ignore their politicians horribly destroying lives across the World, purely for profit, then they cannot complain when the Left Wing start to react with violence against their opressors.

The CIA throughout Latin America during the 1940s and 1950s financed corrupt regimes like those of Pinochet, or Batista, or Videla setting up “death squads” to kill off any resistance. Anyone who stands up against such a dangerous machine, anyone who fights that machine, fighting fire with fire, willing to endure the struggle, is a true hero.

It usually works like this…

America and Britain support a corrupt Capitalist government. Purely for money making opportunities.

That corrupt government (for example Cuban under Batista, or Chile under Pinochet) causes untold suffering and poverty.

The left wing is all but wiped out.

Someone from the oppressed nation steps forward and says “enough is enough” and fights back, sticking up for the less fortunate.

America refer to that person as a terrorist.

America go to war somewhere….. kill thousands….. anyone who fights back, is a terrorist.

If you say “woah woah woah, this isn’t right!!!” you’re “unamerican” or maybe you’re a terrorist too!!!

Mark Falcoft in his book on Che, had this to say…
“What has made Guevara a cultural icon is not his example for poor countries, but his capacity to provoke empathy among the spoiled youth of the affluent West.”
I think this sums up the legend of Che Guevara perfectly. You look at Che, you find out what he stood for, and you’re introduced to a world where the rich man will do the most evil of things to increase his wealth whilst the poor man lingers on the edge of the mountain, supported by no man, and you cannot help but feel deep empathy. You start to think , Thank the heavens for good men, men who wont just roll over and be fucked by American imperialism. Thank the heavens for people like Che Guevara.