Remember, Remember, the 5th of November, Birmingham UK 2013

Finally, the afternoon/evening of the 5th of November had arrived. The #MillionMaskMarch was on. Images from across the world were already starting to appear on Facebook of Anonymous protests and protesters, from the cities of Australia to the US. The excitement was growing.

I arrived at the Bull by the Bull Ring a little before 5pm, almost 2 hours late. Sorry guys. Life had already conspired to delay me. Already anonymous folks had convened, prepared banners, and were successfully attracting the attention of Birmingham shoppers and workers. The Fawkesian masks, being entirely appropriate for the 5th of course, certainly raised the interests of passing folks, young and old, different ethnicities and creeds. It soon struck me, the significance of the mask that is. Guy Fawkes had plotted against the rulers of the day in the onslaught of ruling class tyranny, and here we were 400 years later still struggling against a ruthless ruling class. The mask carries with it an important piece of history; the ever present struggle by the ordinary people against the monsters who dominate our lives. That idea is somehow carried implicitly in the mask itself. Folks without realising it, see the mask and receive an important message. The struggle is still going on. It's here and now. It is the rich and powerful against you, against us.

Anonymous protesters did themselves proud. Making friends with passers by. Answering questions calmly and thoughtfully. No aggravation. No trouble. Just spreading the message in a friendly, visual and effective way. The banter was fun and people wanted to know more not less. I am struggling to find words to express what I want to say but alas I should just say that I was proud to be part of this event, because of the people involved and their commitment to peace and positive engagement with the public.

It was my first demo and, truth be told, I was disappointed that there weren't more people involved, but I suspect I'm not alone in that sentiment. The issues being raised (see the banners in the images) were all of tremendous importance to the lives of ordinary people and perhaps even the survival of our species, and so long as they remain issues we are going to want more people participating in these events. We need the people to realise that they are in a war, a class war, and that they are us, we are them. The movement must grow, and it will. It will so long as there is oppression and tyranny, and we have an indelible symbol to unite behind. The movement is a symbol, a symbol of discontent, a symbol of defiance, a symbol of unity of the people regardless of the issues being raised.

Just a few metres away another protest had gathered, under the banner "Bonfire of Austerity", put together by  The People's Assembly against Austerity and the Midlands Socialist Resistance. They had quickly realised that we were fighting for many of the same issues that they were and invited us to join them in demonstrating at pay day loan shops. The police arrived quickly to do what they were instituted for, to protect the interests of the rich against the ordinary people. Thankfully no one was arrested and no trouble occurred. The protest did succeed in penetrating the shops themselves and making a point inside the building to the workers of Cash Loans and the Money Shop. Please take a minute to understand the issues of pay day loans and why they are a cynical and deplorable exploitation, by the rich, of the poorest workers, often trapping them into a spiral of debt with extraordinary and obscene interests rates.

After the loan shark protests, anonymous and The People's Assembly reconvened at the Socialist Resistance stall where people were invited to speak. We heard some great speeches about the voluntary complicity of local councils in the most cynical of Tory policies, free speech and other issues. I even got up to the microphone myself and rambled on a bit about democracy, law and order, sadly failing to get across the most important things I wanted to say e.g. how picking between factions of the rich every few years is not democracy, and how the principle function of the police is to maintain order, the social order, rich to poor, by protecting property over people. Those with property being the rich, those without being the poor, as it has always been. Many thanks to the Socialist Resistance for allowing us to speak. This was a great show of solidarity between different protest groups.

One of the points that I did make, regarding the establishment media and it's explicit function of serving the establishment rather than the people, came to mind again this morning as I replied to comments on Facebook about the appalling media coverage of protests. This is precisely why we have to get out on the streets and make our points. On the street there is no establishment media standing between you and your audience. No intercept. No 'interpretation'. Just you speaking to other people. We should also never forget the power of these face to face interactions. They are real. They make a lasting impression. They are free from the abstract and artificial experience of the media or internet.

Anonymous is an idea, not a group or organisation, and we must remember that and convey it. I think that idea was expressed well and we should all continue to develop our messages and our capability of delivering them. We have to encourage our fellow citizens out of apathy and into participation. This is after all about all of us. It's about how we are treated as livestock to be exploited by the rich for greater riches and power. It's about how if only we stand up and speak up our message will be loud and clear. It's about letting ordinary people know that they are not alone and that they do have tremendous power if only they choose to use it. We exist in far greater numbers than our oppressors and exploiters, and their power to oppress and exploit relies explicitly on our apathy and participation in their machinations. All we have to do is say 'No More' and refuse to play their games. But we have to do it together, and we can. Keep going people. There is hope. So long as there is a breath in your body there is hope. Movements grow by ordinary people simply acting and spreading the message. All big things start small, and those who have the gumption to start small, in hope, deserve a great deal of credit and recognition. It is a pleasure to be with you guys. Peace.

"We Are The 99%"

 "Join Us"

"Together We Stand. We Are Legion"

"Too Poor To Learn". Reminding us of how the the education system is become an explicit privilege of the haves under the ruthless and greed driven ideologies of capitalism.

"United as one, Divided by zero"

"Together We Can; End poverty, Eliminate pollution, Feed the world. Unite. Let Peace Grow."

"If you're not angry, you ain't paying attention"

"Say no to; Badger cull, austerity, fracking, bedroom tax, NHS cuts"

Russell Brand: Man of the People

I used to think that Russell Brand was a complete twonk. Another icon of establishment decadence swaggering across the screen at our expense with a typical celebrity class ignorance and indifference to the injustices lavished upon the majority for the power, prestige and riches of the sociopathic minority we call the elite, the establishment, the ruling class. Whether that sentiment was justified at the time I'm unsure, but it is one I no longer hold. I became aware that Russell had sympathy for us, the 'unwashed masses', when I came across an article he produced for The Guardian in which he scorned the extreme hypocrisy of the establishment in their treatment of rioters whilst continuing to lay a carpet of rose petals for our war criminals, terrorists and ultra-thieves we call investment bankers and traders [1]. However I nearly fell off my sofa the other evening when I saw him being interviewed by Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight [2]. Russell was on fire! He was fierce, filled with the pain of the people and the planet, a freight train of disgust plowing into Paxman's agenda riddled questions, carriage after carriage of articulate decimation of the political paradigm that prevails ubiquitously in the establishment media. I'm surprised that the interview was even aired. For that Mr. Paxman and Co. do deserve some credit, but it is Mr. Brand who should be appreciated here, not merely for his spirited lambasting of the vogons that rule over us and control the the wealth of the nation, but for the circumstantial fact that he can awaken and invigorate a lost generation of disenfranchised and disengaged young people like few others can. I can only hope that other celebrities of Brand's generation hear the groans of the people and pick up the torch, to help ordinary people, particularly the younger generation, fight back, not just for justice and equality but very likely for the survival of the species.

Russell brings to the fight some long over due humour. A kind of humour that us ordinary folks can relate to. It has the incredibly important characteristic of raising awareness of the seriousness of the situation we're in but without sending us into a coma. He is able to stitch back together our attention spans, that have been shattered by the mind and ethics disintegrating triviality and chaotic dross we call the mainstream or establishment media. It should be well noted also that this arrangement is far from undesigned as Chomsky and others prolifically reveal [3][4][5]. The establishment do not want ordinary people participating in politics. They never did. They never will. If ordinary people enter the arena en mass then the political system will no longer be heavily tipped in favour of the rich. Check out Russell's piercing but also funny recent article in the New Statesman [6].

Russell is absolutely right that voting is a waste of time. As I sometimes say "if this is democracy then giving a slave the day off once every few years should be called liberty". Picking between factions of the elite once every few years is not choice. It is not participation. It is very definitely not democracy. It is the scam we are told to believe is democracy, rather like being given the choice between a kick in the teeth or a punch in the mouth. Furthermore there are very good reasons why genuine prominent alternatives do not exist, or at least are not made known to us. They are numerous, but perhaps most significant is the fact that the establishment own and control the mainstream media. Are they likely to allow alternatives and views that challenge their exponentially disproportionate wealth and dominance over us? It's a no brainer. The only participation in politics ordinary people have is in the streets, demonstrating, protesting, striking, refusing to comply with the ideologies forced upon us. But we do have power. Enormous power. Our power lies in our numbers. The elite are terrified of us, which is why they go to such great lengths to divide us, disengage us and make us apathetic and hopeless. But hope is here, it's growing, and you need a piece of it. Growing and evolving movements around the world are linking up, sympathising, educating, sharing and galvanising. Occupy, the 99%, Anonymous, the Arab Spring, human rights groups, animal rights groups, unions, celebrities, academics, political dissidents, whistleblowers ad nauseam are all fighting back, not just for themselves, but also for each other and for you. You just need to pay attention. Visit their websites and their YouTube videos. Join the Facebook pages and Twitter discussions. Feel the power of the people. Connect with others who are as outraged as you. Join a protest and make new friends, real friends with a passion for humanity, for the planet, for our future, for you. You'll thank me I promise.

Russell is a good man doing a darned good thing, and good people deserve our appreciation and reciprocation. The only thing I can do to reciprocate here is to make you aware that it is very typical of the establishment to go after outspoken public figures and try to bring them down before their message really reaches the masses. Don't be surprised if Russell Brand becomes 'embroiled in scandal' of some sort in the not too distant future. He is certainly at best sacrificing career opportunities for our benefit. Stand by him as he stands by you!

As always please let me know what you think.

References

[1] Big Brother isn't watching you, http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/aug/11/london-riots-davidcameron
[2] Newsnight: Jeremy Paxman and Russell Brand, 23/10.2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri0R9wCZz-o
[3] Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AnB8MuQ6DU
[4] Orwell Rolls In His grave (including an extended interview with media expert Professor Robert McChesney, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_lYGyIaK80
[5] Psywar, the battle for your mind, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXX0vujix-o
[6] New Statesman article, Russell Brand on revolution: “We no longer have the luxury of tradition”, http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/10/russell-brand-on-revolution

Modern life: What is wrong with it all?

A few years back a couple of friends and me decided to cycle a well known UK route called the C2C. As the name suggests it goes from sea to sea. In this case, from Whitehaven to Sunderland. We packed up our bikes with tents, food and other essentials and set off on the 4 day trip across the land, camping by night. It is possible to do the trip in one day if you are very fit, but we were not, and the additional weight of carrying what we needed to camp etc., slows you down, hence the 4 days. It was relative hardship compared to ordinary daily life, peddling our way across the Cambrian mountains, through sunshine, rain, fog and hail. The aches and pains of leaning on the handle bars, the bruising and soreness on your backside, revealing themselves more assertively each morning as you start the next leg of the journey, make for discomfort that us pansy-ass townies are really not at home with. Additionally, the late night sounds of your mates snoring and what I can only describe as half-goat-half-pig-half-goose mating grunts at 3 am in the morning, eminating from perhaps 20 feet away, amongst other strange noises, leaves you tired if not exhausted each morning. But still, we got on our bikes and peddled. On the upside, you see the country from a completely different perspective. You start to enjoy the rolling hills and peaks, at least when you're coming down them. You encounter people in a new context too. Folk are helpful, friendly and sympathetic to your quest, perhaps to some degree wishing it was them. By the end of the trip we were truly exhausted, though simultaneously elated at our small achievement, and enriched by the experiences along the way. But, something else had happened to us. We didnt want to stop. We didn't want to go home. We wanted more. What and why?

There was a comradery that developed, despite sleep loss and fatigue induced grumpy exchanges, that I have not experienced in daily town life. Something about the shared hardships and joys that creates unspoken bonds that we don't experience in modern life, save perhaps within the family home, but even then there is something different about this. There was more than just the bonds that made the experience so memorable and precious.

If we step back and look our lives and peer down from a larger perspective there are hints at why. We are constrained by having to pay for our homes and life in them, which forces us to take paying jobs, with our homes creating physical barriers to all outside the four walls. So for the most part of our lives we are either in our homes or in the place of work doing work, where the opportunities for the kind of experiences and comradery I'm talking about do not really exist. Furthermore we are bombarded constantly by marketing, everywhere, it is even piped directly into our homes courtesy of the box in the corner of the room. It teases us, manipulating our desires and emotions, making us addicted consumers of products, somehow dulling our brains to the fact that we are forced to pay all of our lives to live on a tiny patch of our own planet. The bricks and mortar having been paid for just a few years into our mortgages, and the rest just pampering the rich who hold our planet hostage. In this sense we are slaves to the rich. We are forced to live within their laws and ideologies, and skillfully manipulated and coerced into accepting this way of life.

Out on the road, we discovered something about freedom and friendship that is difficult to find or experience within the highly structured system of modern life that is imposed on us. Perhaps the fact that being on bikes, relatively unconstrained by road laws, allowing us to go just about anywhere also had something to do with it. I can't even adequately describe the meaning and joy of what we discovered. It is only something that can be appreciated by embarking on such adventures I think. But it changed me. It continues to change me. Every time I do something outside of the norms of the system now I feel that freedom and joy, and it's addictive. More and more I reject modern life; it's fakery, the celebrities, the rules, the slavery. And I feel good about it.

We can't continue our existing way of life. We already know it. The exhaustion of resources, the damage to our ecology, the wars that will probably ensue, the biological hazards, the nuclear hazards. If the constraints of wage slavery and these mentioned threats are not enough to compel you to change your existence, your existence will change anyway. The question is, do you want it to be on your own terms or are you going to let the terms of others, specifically the rich and powerful, be imposed on you?

My experiences have taught me that there is a much more fulfilling existence for us, waiting for us, beyond the walls of this fake life imposed on us by the rich. It will involve work too, but not this meaningless 'existance' as servants. We have to fight for our rights and freedoms, and that takes comradery and solidarity that doesn't come from ordinary modern life. You can experience it on an adventure, in protests and demonstrations, through participating in life with fellow ordinary folk. It creates meaning for your life that you wont find on your TV, in the supermarket or at work, but you have to seek it out to understand it. As the famous anarchist Rosa Luxembourg once said "those who do not move do not feel their chains", and that is something we cannot truly grasp whilst continuing to go through the motions of the life that has been designed for us by the rich for the rich.

Do something you have never done. Do something beyond normality. Understand what the word liberty means, and how we give it up by continuing with modern life. Become addicted to freedom and learn how to fight for it.

Examining Sam Harris's moral assertions

Sam Harris has often referred us to a specific hypothetical moral dilema which forms what appears to be a cornerstone in his philosophy concerning the practice of religion, and in all likelihood one of the key foundations in what appears to be his tacit, if not explicit, endorsement of certain aggressive aspects of US foreign policy. The dilema proposes a scenario in which a runaway train cart is on course to wipe out a group of workers plying their trade on the track. According to the rules of the dilema only one of 2 possible courses of action may be taken. One is to do nothing whilst the other is to kill an otherwise uninvolved individual, the result of which will be that the cart does not go on to kill the group of rail workers. Sam comes down in favour of killing the innocent bystander on the basis of the lower resultant body count. This Sam does without equivocation, as though it were an obvious a conclusion to reach, just as choosing not to open fire on a crowd of shoppers simply because you have a gun. Sam does not explore the ethics of the other option in our raiload dilema, and that is to take no action, though he gently urges us to except his conclusion on the basis that truths may in fact be less than obvious to us, citing the Double Jeapardy 3 door dilema as another such case. In fairness to Sam he does explore the alternative in a different scenario, in which we consider the possibility of sacrificing a hospital patient suffering say only a minor injury in order to save the lives of several other patients who are in need of critical organs which our patient happens to have. In this scenario Sam comes down on the side of not sacrificing the individual for the sake of the body count. Is Sam suffering from a case of what Orwell called double think? I.e the ability of the human mind to simultaneously accept two mutually incompatible statements or beliefs. In fairness to Sam I should say that I don't know what Sam's reasoning is though he does seem to expect us to find it obvious, and it maybe the case that Sam pictures different conditions to that which he appears to me to present. That said, I would like to go back to the railway scenario and examine the option of taking no action.

The principle view point in the philosophy of ethics, to me at least, is of the actors or catalysts in a given scenario. That is to say that what the rest world is doing is irrelevant, what matters is the action or inaction of the actor. This, on the face of it, might appear to lend favour to Sam's argument in the case of the runaway train cart. However if we start to adjust some of the criteria of the scenario we may unveil a broader picture that is not obvious from simply taking the train cart scenario in isolation. For example let's suppose that the innocent bystander is Sam's own child, assuming Sam has a child for the sake of the argument. Sam doesn't know any of the track workers in peril, but according to Sam's moral reasoning we should assume that he would be at least in favour of killing his child to save the track workers, whomever they may be. I think it would be hard for anyone to believe that Sam would actually support the notion of killing his child and thus hold any respect for statements by Sam to the effect that he would kill his child if presented with the scenario for real. Could you support the notion of killing your own child in this scenario? Your answer to that question is what we would call a moral value. So what has changed? We have substituted his child for an anonymous individual, but the moral dilemma itself has not changed. Now, I don't want to be seen to be putting words into Sam's mouth so I shall just remind you that Sam, as far as I know has not made his position in our altered scenario known, and for all I know he may not have even thought about it. We do however appear to have a conflict of morality here to resolve, as I suspect most people fall strongly in favour of not killing their children, which I believe to be a good thing, and that is also a moral value. So, what is at the heart of the conflict? Well, it would seem to me to be down to the question of action or inaction, physically at least.

On the matter of action versus inaction I believe it to be valuable to explore the ethics of inaction as the complexity of real life may reveal more about the reality of outcomes versus hypothetical scenarios in which other considerations are excluded for the purpose of building an ethical argument. First off, in our railway crisis, we are urged to ignore external actors, be they natural or intelligent. So we are encouraged not to consider that we do not know that everything will turn out as we are led to believe. For example, let's suppose our group of rail workers are in fact Nazi sympathisers trying to dislodge a rail so as to kill the Jewish occupants of a later train. This fact we add to the scenario, but we do not allow the principle actor and would be saviour to know this information. If we sacrifice our innocent bystander, the Nazi plot remains uncovered by virtue of them having been saved from a grisly meeting with a fast moving and very heavy machine. The Nazi conspirators are then free to go on and successfully derail and kill a train load of people. OK, it's a fairly unlikely real world scenario today if we are thinking of the context of Nazis, however it may not be such an unlikely scenario if we change the actors and props to a more contemporary context.

Let's now consider another alternative to the railway scenario. Supposing instead that the rail points between the train and the unaware workers are set to divert the train cart down a different line thus averting disaster. Again our saviour is unaware of this fact or worse still is of the belief that the points are set such that the workers will meet their destiny when in fact they are set such that the workers would be saved. In the latter case, our would-be saviour would be compelled to switch the points based on his belief, but in doing so would seal the fate of our rail workers. In the former case he may have in fact killed his son or an innocent bystander when in fact the workers are in no danger. Now we start to see that with every moral dilemma, in the real world at least, we can't know all of the factors that are critical to the outcomes. It is also reality that all too often intervention i.e. action, in fact turns out to be a moral travesty. The would-be saviour is not in control of everything in the scenario nor are they aware of everything and thus they cannot be held responsible for a situation not of their making, in my opinion. A passive observer has no impact upon a system thus the system remains the product of the histories of the actors in the system and thus if any responsibility maybe apportioned it must be to them. Does this make a case for not acting to intervene ever? I don't believe so. What I have done here is to show that complex situations that for which we cannot be fully aware of we should not simply jump aboard the action wagon but watch peacefully and passively and learn. In war and conflict actors following the action course are almost always the ones doing the killing or at least supporting it. These scenarios are vastly more complex than in our railroad scenarios yet the moral actors are always those with guns that choose not to use them, inaction. It is the same principle in peaceful non-cooperative protest. Protesters pursue their peaceful course of action and in doing so expose the immorality of their opponents who choose the course of physical intervention. Another example is the role of international obervers in conflict zones.

Many people try to persuade us that inaction is a form of complicity. I reject this notion on the grounds that I think it is willful ignorance of the factors of a situation that is tantamount to complicty and in order not to engage in such ignorance we must observe and learn.

You fund it so they do it

People keep whining about their governments, yet you keep funding these war criminals and thugs. If you follow the teachings of Jesus, he said "let him who hath no sins cast the first stone", which means you are supposed to pay attention to your own crimes and deal with them. But you people just keep working for them and funding them with taxes. If you want to change things, if you want to stop terrorism, war, oppression then stop funding it, and stop participating in this corporate fascist nightmare.

U.S. Army prepares to invade U.S. NDAA

The philosophy of peaceful protest

I just wanted to post up a small discussion regarding protesting that has great relelvance right now in light of the #Occupy movements including the #OccupyLsx movement currently active in the UK.

Non-violent action by ordinary people is vital to the success of the movement for very simple reasons. There are still a great many people in the country who are not yet persuaded that the government is merely a proxy for corporate UK and are ensnared by the propaganda of corporations that pervade their TV screens and newspapers. Violence by protesters legitimizes violence by the state in the eyes of these as yet unconvinced observers, thus violence by the state is sure to follow and the cycle leads ultimately to the destruction of the movement. However, if the movement remains non-violent then violence by the state will be viewed unsympathetically by our fellow citizens, notwithstanding deceitful editing and misrepresentative reporting.

Strategies for addressing the media deficit of representation of ordinary people and NGOs will have to be a topic for discussion in another post.