Count Basie

Rare footage of Count Basie inside Birdland , NYC ( 1959 ) - part.: Steve Allen + Pee Wee Marquette

RareJazzVideos on Aug 3, 2011

Rare footage of Count Basie inside Birdland , New York ( 1959 ) - part.: Steve Allen + Pee Wee Marquette
Count Basie band at their prime!
Sonny Payne, Joe Newman, Frank Wess, Frank Foster, Eddie Jones,Marshal Royal

Submissions:

Journal, Radio Program, and Reading Series

The following types of submissions may be made online, using Submishmash:

• Contest submissions from international or U.S. addresses 
• Submissions of poetry and prose to the journal from international addresses only
• Submissions of artwork to the journal (international or U.S.)
• Radio-program proposals (international or U.S.)
• Reading series queries (international or U.S.)

All submissions except radio-program proposals may be made in hard-copy/via mail.  Book Trailer Contest entry forms must be mailed in hard-copy.

Click here for all contest guidelines.  Detailed guidelines for each of the other categories are below.

Journal

Quiddity seeks prose and poetry from emerging and established writers around the world. International submissions to the journal may be made either using Submishmash online or in hard-copy via mail. U.S. submissions to the journal should be made in hard-copy via mail. (It is our hope to eventually offer the option of Submishmash for U.S. submissions to the journal.)

Submission Guidelines

• Prose: one work (no more than 5,000 words)
• Poetry: up to five poems (no more than ten pages total)
• Artwork: up to eight images
• Include a cover letter.
• For poetry and prose, please be sure your name is listed on each page of your work. You may list contact information on each page as well, if you wish.
• U.S. submissions should include both an email address and a self-addressed, business-size (#10), stamped envelope (SASE).
• International submissions for the journal may be made online using Submishmash. If submitting in hard-copy, include (if possible) your email address in your contact information.
• Work must be previously unpublished. All manuscripts will be recycled.

Submissions made in hard-copy should be addressed to either Prose Editor or Poetry Editor at

Quiddity, Benedictine University at Springfield, 1500 North Fifth Street, Springfield, IL 62702 USA

We look forward to receiving high-quality prose and poetry from both established and emerging writers. We do not limit general submissions to specific subject-matter or style. Novel excerpts are welcome as long as the work can stand alone. Translations are welcome as long as permission, in writing, has been granted.

We accept simultaneous submissions but require notification immediately if the work is accepted elsewhere. Work submitted must fit the guidelines listed above.

Quiddity's international literary journal is a publication of Benedictine University at Springfield. It is published semi-annually in the fall and spring. Quiddity's companion public-radio program is produced by Illinois Public Radio’s hub station, NPR membe/PRI affiliate WUIS. Contributors may be invited to read their work for the public-radio program.

General submissions are read year-round. Subscription and back-issue information may be found here.

Radio Program

Contributors may be invited to read their work for the public-radio program and will receive detailed instructions for submitting audio if it is solicited.

Unsolicited audio submissions may be proposed via Submishmash. However, if you have work under consideration for the journal, you should NOT also propose that work in audio form here.

Audio proposals should be made by those who wish to have audio that they have produced—audio that is apart from any submission they may have made to the print journal—considered for feature in the radio program. Use the following guidelines to submit an audio proposal.

• Provide a one-page cover letter that contains a brief overview of the material you wish us to consider.
  • The overview should include information about the content and length of the material and whether or not the material has been previously broadcast (if so, list where and when, specifically).
  • The overview should also include a statement guaranteeing that you are able to grant electronic multimedia rights for use of the material. (If you cannot grant these rights, do not submit.)
• Upload a single audio file that contains a selection of the audio material you are proposing.
  • The selection should be no longer than three minutes in length. If we like what we hear, we’ll ask for an opportunity to hear more.
  • The selection may consist of a single excerpt from the material or multiple excerpts/highlights that together comprise a feature selection. Either way, the selection should be no longer than three minutes and should consist of a single audio file (MP3 format).

We look forward to hearing your work.

Reading Series

Although Quiddity solicits select participants for its popular reading series, poets and writers who will be traveling to the Springfield, Illinois, area are welcome to query via Submishmash or by mail about the possibility of scheduling a reading while you are here. Use the following guidelines to do so.

In fewer than 500 words, tell us about yourself, your work, and the type of reading/presentation you are proposing. We do consider traditional readings, but our audiences have indicated a particular inclination toward performance work, and as such, we give special consideration to performance poets and readers/speakers who seek to engage an audience with intriguing subject matter and vibrancy.

Don’t forget to let us know the dates you plan be in the area and available for an event. And please note that given the volume of correspondence we receive and the amount of care and time that goes into planning and promoting the series, considerable lead time is necessary. Queries should be submitted no fewer than four months prior to travel. If accepted for a reading, we do not require that you participate in a signing but we do ask that readers engage in an audience Q&A.

Best wishes surrounding your work, and safe travels.

EMAJ Magazine's Ramadan Coverage Contest 2011

Deadline: 1 September 2011

As many of you might already know, Ramadan just started. For those who are not acquainted with it: Ramadan is one of the five pillars of Islam, which requires Muslims to fast during a month from the sunup to the eventide. It is linked to the moon calendar, which is why the starting date is ten days earlier every year.

Last year EMAJ Magazine called for articles about Ramadan. You can find examples of articles that were published below:

- “Now I know how it feels to be a minority”

- “The holy month as seen by the secular”

- “How “trendy” has become Ramadan”

- “How “freaky” is fasting Ramadan”

This year, EMAJ Magazine decided to launch a “Ramadan coverage contest” of original contributions on the topic. The articles will be published on our website and the best three articles will receive a small prize. The best article will be rewarded with a prize of 100 euro and the best two seconds with a prize of 50 euro.

The EMAJ mission is to build bridges. In multi-religious societies, people of different faith have always invited each other to take part in their festivities and customs. We would like to help continue this tradition by displaying your experiences and thoughts about Ramadan to our readers across EU-MENA as a way to create greater understanding.

The contributions should be written in English (no native speaker level is required since all articles will be proofread by our own proofreaders) and can be accompanied with pictures (even though not mandatory). All contributions will be published as soon as we receive them after being proofread.

Send your contributions at emajmagazine(a)gmail.com. Please also note that the contributions should be sent before September 1st 2011!

The criteria for the best articles are the following:

- Originality of the subject

- Ability to capture the interest of the reader and originality with which the journalist treated the issue

Please note that we are not interested in articles explaining Ramadan or Islam in a “wikipedia style”, nor “theological” articles. But we are interested in unique stories, feelings and ideas from both sides of the Mediterranean.

The jury is composed of the four editors-in-chief of EMAJ Magazine. The prizes will be announced at the end of the first week of September 2011.”

Contact Information:

For inquiries: emajmagazine@gmail.com

For submissions: emajmagazine@gmail.com

Website: http://emajmagazine.com

 

Free to enter, American Art International Essay Prize for Non-US Scholars, top prize: $500

Deadline: 15 January 2012

The Terra Foundation for American Art International Essay Prize recognizes excellent scholarship by a non-U.S. scholar in the field of historical American art (circa 1500–1980). The winning manuscript should advance understanding of American art and demonstrate new findings and original perspectives. It will be translated and published in American Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum's scholarly journal, which will also cover the cost of image rights and reproductions, and the winner will receive a $500 award. This prize is supported by funding from the Terra Foundation for American Art.

The aim of the award is to stimulate and actively support non-U.S. scholars working on American art, foster international exchange of new ideas and create a broad, culturally comparative dialogue on American art. To be eligible, essays should focus on historical American painting, sculpture, prints, drawings, decorative arts, photography or visual culture. Preference will be given to studies that address American art within a cross-cultural context as well as new ways of thinking about American art. Manuscripts previously published in a foreign language are eligible if released within the last two years (please state the date and venue of the previous publication). For scholars from English-language countries, only unpublished manuscripts will be considered. Authors of eligible essays are invited to submit their own work for consideration. We urge scholars who know of eligible articles written by others to inform those authors of the prize.

The length of the essay (including endnotes) shall not exceed 8,500 words with approximately twelve to fourteen illustrations. The text of the essay should be submitted by e-mail as a Word file, accompanied by a PDF file containing all of the illustrations. A brief curriculum vitae should be included. Manuscripts submitted in foreign languages should also be accompanied by a detailed abstract in English. The submissions must be sent to TerraEssayPrize@si.edu by January 15, 2012.

For more information on American Art, please consult americanart.si.edu/research/journal. For details on the Terra Foundation for American Art, please visit terraamericanart.org.

Contact Information:

For inquiries: TerraEssayPrize@si.edu

For submissions: TerraEssayPrize@si.edu

Website: http://terraamericanart.org

 

Mormons Wrestle

With a Racist Past

America's 'Mormon moment' has exposed an uncomfortable side of the church: its spotty record of accepting African-Americans, according to a new film. Lizzie Crocker talks to the people behind a bracing new documentary that tries to set the record straight.

by Lizzie Crocker | August 2, 2011 9:29 AM EDT

 

Just before March Madness, fans of Brigham Young University’s nationally ranked basketball team were crushed when its star forward, Brandon Davies, was benched for having premarital sex with his girlfriend. Davies paid a big price for violating the school’s honor code, losing his shot at a dream season and ultimately withdrawing from BYU after finishing his winter finals.

 

As the BYU community questioned Davies’ dedication to his faith, the media declared the school’s honor code racist, pointing out that Davies is black and his girlfriend at the time was white. Deadspin dug up troubling statistics showing a majority of BYU’s honor-code violations involve black athletes. Several former BYU football players said that many of their white teammates often broke the honor code but weren’t punished. Either they were never caught or their offenses were purposely overlooked.

Racial issues have long been a source of controversy within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and are at the core of a new documentary, Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons. The film treads on fraught territory, exploring the faith’s attitude toward African-Americans from its beginning in 1830 up to today, featuring interviews with Mormon scholars, civil-rights leaders, and clergy.

It’s an uncomfortable twist on America’s “Mormon moment,” a surge in mainstream representation that has seen two presidential candidates (Mitt Romney and his distant cousin Jon Huntsman), a Tony-sweeping Broadway play (The Book of Mormon), and more.

Black LDS Church leaders (fromleft): Darius Gray, counselor to Ruffin Bridgeforth in the Genesis Branch of the church and president from 1998–2003; Ruffin Bridgeforth (seated), president of the Genesis Branch from 1971–1997; Helvecio Martins, first black general authority of the church after the lifting of the priesthood restriction in 1978; and Don Harwell, counselor in the Genesis Branch (currently the president)., Courtesy of Documentary Channel

Church founder Joseph Smith did not discriminate against blacks, and many African-Americans were ordained in the priesthood during his time as leader. According to the film, it wasn’t until after Smith’s death, when Brigham Young took over in 1847, that racist folklore became intertwined with Mormon dogma. Young preached about the myth of Cain, who was cursed by God and portrayed as “black” in the Book of Genesis and the Book of Abraham. Mormons adopted the belief that Cain’s dark-skinned descendants weren’t in God’s favor during their pre-mortal lives and were thus unworthy of holding the priesthood. For years, the Church of Latter-day Saints was labeled racist. The priesthood restriction denied African-Americans the most sacred privileges of the faith, including the ability to participate in ordinances and civil services. (Update: A representative from the church declined to comment on this article.)

Though widely accepted by church leaders as the word of God, Cain’s curse contradicted Mormon doctrine, which proclaimed that all children were born innocent. The paradox muddled the church’s principles: How could Mormons condemn blacks for their lineage, yet believe mortals would be punished for their own sins, rather than those of Adam?

Darius Gray, a black Mormon and renowned historian who co-produced Nobody Knows with author Margaret Young, was determined to restore the Mormon gospel so that African-Americans could be ordained. In 1965, Gray was one of two African-Americans among roughly 20,000 white students at BYU. “I was the darkest thing going down the street,” he exclaims in the film. He endured one year at BYU before leaving Utah, but would return several years later when he accepted a job at a flagship radio station owned by the LDS Church.

Black Mormon Danor Gerald looks at a painted panorama of selected Mormons through the Church's history, including Samuel Chambers., Courtesy of Documentary Channel

“I was still a relative newbie in the church at this point,” recalled Gray in an interview with The Daily Beast, his quiet baritone voice eerily prophetic. “Frankly, I kind of feel like God conspired for my return.” Gray interacted with senior leaders of the church while working at the radio station and became a respected voice in the community. In 1971, he voiced his concerns about the revolving door of African-American Mormons to the president of the church, explaining that converts were renouncing their faith because they felt unwelcome in the community.

It didn’t help that many of them were accustomed to a hand-clapping, feet-stomping Baptist congregation. “If you go into any black Baptist church, you’re going to get a warm, fuzzy vocation,” says Paul Gill, a musician interviewed by Gray in the film. The Mormon church atmosphere was different, to say the least; one convert in the film compares his first service to a funeral.

After President Spencer Kimball announced in 1978 that the priesthood restriction would finally be lifted, African-Americans flocked to join the Mormon faith. They were disappointed to discover that though the ban had been revoked, a racial stigma still echoed in the church. Several black Mormons featured in the movie maintain they feel segregated today. “I don’t mind defending the church to black people,” says actress Tamu Smith. “I do mind defending my blackness to the church.”

“We are still struggling, just as this nation is still struggling with matters of race,” Gray explained to The Daily Beast. “They say that the gospel of Christ is for all people, yet its implementation relies on all people, and not everyone is there yet.”

“

“I don’t mind defending the Church to black people,” says actress Tamu Smith. “I do mind defending my blackness to the Church.”

”

Nobody Knows is as much a lesson in American history as it is a documentary about African-Americans in the LDS Church. “It’s not a church-proselytizing piece and it’s not a church-bashing piece,” said Gray. “But it does speak to history.”

Co-producer Margaret Young added that she would be more than happy to comp Romney and Huntsman copies of the film. “If a Latter-day Saint is running for the office of president, they'd best know American history to have any credibility at all, and they need to know the history of their own religion.”

Though both Young and Gray support President Obama, they are intrigued to see how Romney and Huntsman will address their religious beliefs as they move forward with their campaigns (Romney avoided discussing his faith while announcing his 2012 presidential run in New Hampshire.) Race is another issue that is bound to come up. When Romney was the GOP frontrunner in 2008’s presidential election, his campaign team clearly lacked diversity. “It was pointed out to him that there weren’t any people of color on his staff, and his response was basically that he didn’t need any,” Gray remarked to The Daily Beast, troubled that a presidential candidate would sweep the topic of diversity under the rug despite the fact that it is one of the defining characteristics of our nation.

Samuel and Amanda Chambers. Sam was baptized into the LDS Church while still a slave in 1844. His first wife was sold off and he married Amanda Leggroan. They came to Utah in 1870, after they were freed by the Civil War., Courtesy of Documentary Channel

As for The Book of Mormon and other instances of Mormons in the mainstream, Young said she could appreciate the hit musical’s entertainment factor and was even amused by HBO’s polygamist show, Big Love. But she stressed that neither is an accurate portrayal of Mormonism today. “That’s one of the issues we’re dealing with right now. The stats are telling us that the most hated [religious] groups in America are Muslims and Mormons, and when people ask questions about Mormons, the two biggest issues are race and polygamy. We can only hope that our documentary will start a conversation about the race issue.”

Nobody Knows demonstrates just how far black Mormons have come since the priesthood ban was lifted 33 years ago. Though it’s not mentioned in the film, Africa is currently a prime breeding ground for new members of the church.

Meanwhile, Brandon Davies is reportedly working with BYU’s dean of students to meet conditions that will allow him back on the Cougars court next season. “There’s a plan in place,” Davies said in April, “and I intend to follow through and return to BYU in the fall.”

Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons premiered July 26 on The Documentary Channel. Watch its encore airing on Thursday, Aug. 18, at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

 

Imam

 

VERY Good Interview ( PBS after all). Iman on leaving Africa, discovering America, racism, politics of beauty, inspiring others, self esteam, being referred to as white but just browner when she first entered the modelling world, being African, on money, success, influence, being valued, wisdom that comes with age, and walking away from the modeling world cold turkey.

In our own hands:

an interview with Kesha Bruce

for the 6x6 Summer Blog Tour

My exploration of Afri-love has tended to centre around creativity and the creative professions. Mainly because it's what I do and what I love but, also because of a strong belief that creativity is a powerful way of inspiring and creating positive change. I've also been going on and on (and you may be sick of it by now) about how everything starts with the self. Any change we can hope to encourage on a large scale is likely to be futile if we haven't also considered how to implement it for ourselves.

Enter artists and Baang+Burne directors, Kesha Bruce and Charlie Grosso, and their 6x6 project: their answer to the question “what if there were no more art galleries?” For 6 weeks starting in September this year, artists in New York City will take matters into their own hands and put on exhibitions to showcase their work. What an inspiring concept! What amazing potential such an idea could have in an African context, where the necessary infrastructure for a viable career as an artist is even more scarce …

I thought I'd get more wisdom from the source – the wonderful Kesha Bruce.

What does it take to make a living as an artist?
As much as I wish it weren’t so, it takes more than talent and passion to make a living as an artist.  It takes a ton of courage, perseverance, and more importantly business knowledge. If you don’t take time and money and invest in learning how to run a business, it’s going to be hard to actually make enough money to live on.

Most art schools don’t teach artists anything about the business of art, so once you leave school you need to go about immediately getting the business education you need. Every artist needs to learn the basic business fundamentals and then move on to understanding how to create a concrete marketing system. I say this all the time because it’s true: every business on earth does some kind of marketing. Your art business is no different.

How important is an art community/working with other artists?
Working alone in your studio can be very isolating. When you do come up for air, it really helps to have a set of friends or at least colleagues who understand what it is you do. One of my best memories from grad school is the time I spent in the Hunter college MFA building. Being surrounded by and interacting with so many excited and motivated artists was not only a great experience for me, but it was good for my work.

Outside of the context of art school, the idea for community is just as important. Your peers are your greatest resource and your support system. Artists thrive in communities.

In what ways can artists use their own initiative in advancing their careers? (i.e. why should artists be more DIY?) What does a self-produced, "indie" art world look like?
I think artists, especially emerging artists, should stop waiting to be “discovered”.  If you want to show your work or have an exhibition or event, get together with a bunch of your art friends and make it happen. Don’t wait. Don’t apply for a grant. Don’t ask for permission. Just do the thing.

The exciting thing about the prospect of an entirely “indie” art world is that it can take on absolutely any form it chooses. To be honest I don’t know what that will look like, but I know it’s coming, and I can’t wait to be part of it.

 

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To learn more about 6x6 or to read Kesha’s weekly articles art marketing and to download a free copy of her guide “The 5 Step Art Career Make-Over” visit www.KeshaBrucestudio.com.

All artwork by Kesha Bruce. Photograph courtesy of Kesha Bruce.

Noam Chomsky

EDUCATION  

AlterNet / By Noam Chomsky

250 COMMENTS

Chomsky:

Public Education Under

Massive Corporate Assault —

What's Next?

Converting schools and universities into facilities that produce commodities for the job market, privatizing them, slashing their budgets — do we really want this future?

August 5, 2011   

 

The following is a partial transcript of a recent speech delivered by Noam Chomsky at the University of Toronto at Scarborough on the rapid privatization process of public higher education in the United States.

A couple of months ago, I went to Mexico to give talks at the National University in Mexico, UNAM. It's quite an impressive university — hundreds of thousands of students, high-quality and engaged students, excellent faculty. It's free. And the city — Mexico City — actually, the government ten years ago did try to add a little tuition, but there was a national student strike, and the government backed off. And, in fact, there's still an administrative building on campus that is still occupied by students and used as a center for activism throughout the city. There's also, in the city itself, another university, which is not only free but has open admissions. It has compensatory options for those who need them. I was there, too; it's also quite an impressive level, students, faculty, and so on. That's Mexico, a poor country.

Right after that I happened to go to California, maybe the richest place in the world. I was giving talks at the universities there. In California, the main universities — Berkeley and UCLA — they're essentially Ivy League private universities — colossal tuition, tens of thousands of dollars, huge endowment. General assumption is they are pretty soon going to be privatized, and the rest of the system will be, which was a very good system — best public system in the world — that's probably going to be reduced to technical training or something like that. The privatization, of course, means privatization for the rich [and a] lower level of mostly technical training for the rest. And that is happening across the country. Next year, for the first time ever, the California system, which was a really great system, best anywhere, is getting more funding from tuition than from the state of California. And that is happening across the country. In most states, tuition covers more than half of the college budget. It's also most of the public research universities. Pretty soon only the community colleges — you know, the lowest level of the system — will be state-financed in any serious sense. And even they're under attack. And analysts generally agree, I'm quoting, "The era of affordable four-year public universities heavily subsidized by the state may be over."

Now that's one important way to implement the policy of indoctrination of the young. People who are in a debt trap have very few options. Now that is true of social control generally; that is also a regular feature of international policy — those of you who study the IMF and the World Bank and others are well aware. As the Mexico-California example illustrates, the reasons for conscious destruction of the greatest public education system in the world are not economic. Economist Doug Henwood points out that it would be quite easy to make higher education completely free. In the U.S., it accounts for less than 2 percent of gross domestic product. The personal share of about 1 percent of gross domestic product is a third of the income of the richest 10,000 households. That's the same as three months of Pentagon spending. It's less than four months of wasted administrative costs of the privatized healthcare system, which is an international scandal.

It's about twice the per capita cost of comparable countries, has some of the worst outcomes, and in fact it's the basis for the famous deficit. If the U.S. had the same kind of healthcare system as other industrial countries, not only would there be no deficit, but there would be a surplus. However, to introduce these facts into an electoral campaign would be suicidally insane, Henwood points out. Now he's correct. In a democracy where elections are essentially bought by concentrations of private capital, it doesn't matter what the public wants. The public has actually been in favor of that for a long of time, but they are irrelevant in a properly run democracy.

We should recall that the great growth period in the economy -- the U.S. economy -- was in the several decades after WWII, commonly called the "Golden Age" by economists. It was substantially fueled by affordable public education and by university research. Affordable public education includes the GI Bill, which provided free education for veterans — and remember, that was a much poorer country than today. Extremely low tuition was found even at private colleges. Actually, I went to an Ivy League college, and it cost $100 a year; that's more now, but it's not that high, it's not 30 or 40,000, you know?

What about university-based research? Well, as I mentioned, that is the core of the modern high-tech economy. That includes computers, the Internet — in fact, the whole IT revolution — and a whole lot more. The dismantling of this system since the 1970s is among the many moves toward a very sharply two-tiered society, a very narrow concentration of wealth and stagnation for most everyone else. It also has direct economic consequences. Take, say, California. What they are doing to the public education system is going to undermine the economy that relies on a skilled work force and creative innovation, Silicon Valley and so on. Well, apart from the enormous human cost of depriving most people of decent educational opportunities, these policies undermine the U.S. competitive capacity. That's very harmful to the mass of the population, but it doesn't matter to the tiny percent of concentrated wealth and power. In fact, in the years since the Pell Memorandum, we've entered into a new stage in state capitalism in which the future just doesn't amount to much. Profit comes increasingly from financial manipulations. The corporate policies are geared toward the short-term profit, and that reduces the concern for loyalty to a firm over a longer stretch. We'll talk about this more tomorrow, but right now let me talk about the consequences for education, which are quite significant.

Suppose, as is increasingly happening not only in the United States, incidentally, that universities are not funded by the state, meaning the general community. So how are the universities going to survive? Universities are parasitic institutions; they don't produce commodities for profit, thankfully. They may one of these days. The funding issue raises many troubling questions, which would not arise if fostering independent thought and inquiry were regarded as a public good, having intrinsic value. That's the traditional ideal of the universities, although there are major efforts to change that. Take Britain. According to the British press, the Arts and Humanities Research Council was just ordered to spend a significant amount of funding on the prime minister's vision for the country. His so-called "Big Society," which means big corporate profits, and the rest look out for themselves. The government produced what they call a clarification of the famous Haldane Principle. That's the century-old principle that barred such government intrusion into academic research. If this stands, which I think is kind of hard to believe, but if it stands, the hand of Big Brother will rest quite heavily on inquiry and innovation in the arts and humanities as the masters of mankind follow the advice of the Pell Memorandum. Of course, defending academic freedom in ways that would receive nods of approval from Those-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, borrowing my grandchildren's rhetoric. Cameron's Britain is seeking to take the lead on the assault on public education. The rest of the Western world is not very far behind. In some ways the U.S. is ahead.

More generally, in a corporate-run culture, the traditional ideal of free and independent thought may be given lip service, but other values tend to rank higher. Defending authentic institutional freedom is no small task. However, it is not hopeless by any means. I'll talk about the case I know best, at my own university. It is a very striking case, because of the nature of its funding. Technically, it's a private university, but it has vast state funding, overwhelming, particularly since the Second World War. When I adjoined the faculty over 55 years ago, there were military labs. Since then, they've been technically severed. The academic programs, too, at that time, the 1950s, were almost entirely funded by the Pentagon. Under student pressure in the time of troubles, the 1960s, there were protests about this and calls for investigation. A faculty-student commission was formed in 1969 to investigate the matter. I was a member, thanks to student pressure. The commission was interesting. It found that despite the funding source, the Pentagon, almost the entire academic program, there was no military-related work on campus, except in the sense that virtually anything can have some military application. Actually, there was an exception to this, the political science department, [which] was deeply engaged in the Vietnam War under the guise of peace research. Since that time, Pentagon funding has been declining, and funding from health-related state institutions — National Institute of Health and so on — that's been increasing. There's a reason for that. It's reflecting changes in the economy.

In the 1950s and 1960s the cutting edge of the economy was electronics-based. The Pentagon was a natural way to steal money from the taxpayers, making them think they're being protected from the Russians or somebody, and to direct it to eventual corporate profits. That was done very effectively. It includes computers, the Internet, the IT revolution. In fact most of the modern economy comes from that. In more recent years, the economy is becoming more biology based. Therefore state funding is shifting. Fifty years ago, if you looked around MIT, you found small electronics startups from the faculty. They were drawing on Pentagon funding for research, and if they were successful, they were bought up by major corporations. Those of you who know something about the high-tech economy will know that that's the famous Route 128. That was 50 years ago. Now, if you go around the campus, the startups are biology based, and the same process continues. The genetic engineering, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and the big buildings going up are Novartis and so on. That's the way the so-called free enterprise economy works. There's also been a shift to more short-term applied work. The Pentagon and the National Institutes of Health are concerned with the long-term future of the advanced economy. In contrast to a business firm, it typically wants something that it can use — it can use and not its competitors, and tomorrow. I don't actually know of a careful study, but it seems pretty clear that the shift toward corporate funding is leading towards more short-term applied research and less exploration of what might turn out to be interesting and important down the road.

Another consequence of corporate funding is more secrecy. This surprises a lot of people, but during the period of Pentagon funding, there was no secrecy. There was also no security on campus. You may remember this. You walk into the Pentagon-funded labs 24 hours a day, and no cards to stick into things and so on. No secrecy; it was all entirely open. There is secrecy today. A corporation can't compel secrecy, but they can make it very clear that you're not going to get your contract renewed if your work leaks to others. That has happened. In fact, it's lead to some scandals, some big enough to appear on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

Outside funding has other effects on the university, unless it's free and unconstrained, observing the Haldane Principle. Indeed, it has been true to a significant degree by funding from the Pentagon and the other national institutions. However, any kind of outside funding [has effects], even keeping to the Haldane Principle, supposing it establishes a teaching or research facility. That kind of automatically shifts the balance of academic activity, and that can threaten the independence and integrity of the institution. And in the case of corporate funding, quite severely.

Corporatization can have considerable influence in other ways. Corporate managers have a duty. They have to focus on profit making and seeking to convert as much of life as possible into commodities. It's not because they're bad people; it's their task. Under Anglo-American law, it's their legal obligation as well. There's a lot to say about this topic, but one element of it concerns the universities and much else. One particular consequence is the focus on what's called efficiency. It's an interesting concept. It's not strictly an economic concept. It has crucial ideological dimensions. If a business reduces personnel, it might become more efficient by standard measures with lower costs. Typically, that shifts the burden to the public, a very familiar phenomenon we see all the time. Costs to the public are not counted, and they're colossal. That's a choice that's not based on economic theory. That's based on an ideological decision, which applies directly to the "business models," as they're called, of the universities. Increasing class-size or employing cheap temporary labor, say graduate students instead of full-time faculty, may look good on a university budget, but there are significant costs. They're transferred and not measured. They're transferred to students and to the society generally as the quality of education, the quality of instruction is lowered.

There's, furthermore, no way to measure the human and social costs of converting schools and universities into facilities that produce commodities for the job market, abandoning the traditional ideal of the universities. Creating creative and independent thought and inquiry, challenging perceived beliefs, exploring new horizons and forgetting external constraints. That's an ideal that's no doubt been flawed in practice, but to the extent that it's realized is a good measure of the level of civilization achieved.

That idea is being challenged very openly by Adam Smith's Principal Architects of Policy in the State Corporate Complex, the direct attack on the Haldane Principle in Britain. That's an extreme case; in fact so extreme I assume it may be beaten back. There are less blatant examples. Many of them are just inherent in the reliance on outside funding, state or private. These are two sources that are not easy to distinguish given the control of the state by private interest. So what's the right reaction to outside funding that threatens the ideal of a free university? Well one choice is just to reject it in principle, in which case the university would go down the tubes. It's a parasitic institution. Another choice is just to recognize it as a fact of life that when I'm at work, I have to walk past the Lockheed Martin Lecture Hall, and I have to look out my office window at the Koch building, which is named after the multibillionaires who are the major funders of the Tea Party and a leading force in ongoing campaigns to wipe out the remnants of the labor movement and to institute a kind-of corporate tyranny.

Now, if that outside funding seeks to [influence] teaching, research and other activities, then there's a strong argument that it should simply be resisted or rejected outright no matter what the costs. Such influences are not inevitable, and that's worth bearing in mind. 

Read more of Noam Chomsky's work at Chomsky.info.

There is a context

to London's riots

that can't be ignored

Those condemning the events in north London and elsewhere would do well to take a step back and consider the bigger picture

• Comments (1248)

• 
• • Nina Power
  • guardian.co.uk, Monday 8 August 2011 

Police in riot gear in Enfield, north London, on Sunday night. Photograph: Stefan Wermuth/Reuters

Since the coalition came to power just over a year ago, the country has seen multiple student protests, occupations of dozens of universities, several strikes, a half-a-million-strong trade union march and now unrest on the streets of the capital (preceded by clashes with Bristol police in Stokes Croft earlier in the year). Each of these events was sparked by a different cause, yet all take place against a backdrop of brutal cuts and enforced austerity measures. The government knows very well that it is taking a gamble, and that its policies run the risk of sparking mass unrest on a scale we haven't seen since the early 1980s. With people taking to the streets of Tottenham, Edmonton, Brixton and elsewhere over the past few nights, we could be about to see the government enter a sustained and serious losing streak.

The policies of the past year may have clarified the division between the entitled and the dispossessed in extreme terms, but the context for social unrest cuts much deeper. The fatal shooting of Mark Duggan last Thursday, where it appears, contrary to initial accounts, that only police bullets were fired, is another tragic event in a longer history of the Metropolitan police's treatment of ordinary Londoners, especially those from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, and the singling out of specific areas and individuals for monitoring, stop and search and daily harassment.

One journalist wrote that he was surprised how many people in Tottenham knew of and were critical of the IPCC, but there should be nothing surprising about this. When you look at the figures for deaths in police custody (at least 333 since 1998 and not a single conviction of any police officer for any of them), then the IPCC and the courts are seen by many, quite reasonably, to be protecting the police rather than the people.

Combine understandable suspicion of and resentment towards the police based on experience and memory with high poverty and large unemployment and the reasons why people are taking to the streets become clear. (Haringey, the borough that includes Tottenham, has the fourth highest level of child poverty in London and an unemployment rate of 8.8%, double the national average, with one vacancy for every 54 seeking work in the borough.)

Those condemning the events of the past couple of nights in north London and elsewhere would do well to take a step back and consider the bigger picture: a country in which the richest 10% are now 100 times better off than the poorest, where consumerism predicated on personal debt has been pushed for years as the solution to a faltering economy, and where, according to the OECD, social mobility is worse than any other developed country.

As Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett point out in The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, phenomena usually described as "social problems" (crime, ill-health, imprisonment rates, mental illness) are far more common in unequal societies than ones with better economic distribution and less gap between the richest and the poorest. Decades of individualism, competition and state-encouraged selfishness – combined with a systematic crushing of unions and the ever-increasing criminalisation of dissent – have made Britain one of the most unequal countries in the developed world.

Images of burning buildings, cars aflame and stripped-out shops may provide spectacular fodder for a restless media, ever hungry for new stories and fresh groups to demonise, but we will understand nothing of these events if we ignore the history and the context in which they occur.

__________________________

Writer/Activist Darcus Howe

Schools The BBC

__________________________

They Were Warned

Nick Clegg "warns" of riots if Tories are elected (11 Apr 2010)

__________________________

Monday, 8 August 2011

Diane Abbott:

A tinder box waiting to explode

Diane Abbott is the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington 

>via: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/diane-abbott-a-tinder-box-w...

__________________________

• 
• • Stafford Scott
  • guardian.co.uk, Monday 8 August 2011 22.00 BST
  • Article history

The still smouldering Carpetright store in Tottenham has quickly become iconic of the rioting seen since Saturday. Photograph: Ray Tang/Rex Features

 

 

It's usual practice when someone is killed that their personal details are not made public until the next of kin has been informed. Mark Duggan's family saw in headlines that he had been killed as a result of a "terrifying shoot-out". Why such a difference in treatment? I was one of those who went to Tottenham police station on Saturday, with members of his family, to get an official acknowledgement that Mark had been killed. No official confirmation had been given to the family. As a community we were outraged they were being treated with such disregard by both the Met and the IPCC.

Why, 10 years after the Macpherson inquiry reported on institutional racism in the Met, should it still occur? We are from Tottenham: we have seen Cynthia Jarrett, Joy Gardner and Roger Sylvester killed by the police and do not expect finite answers from an investigation that has barely begun. All we really wanted was an explanation of what was going on. We needed to hear directly from the police. We waited for hours outside the station for a senior officer to speak with the family, in a demonstration led by young women. A woman-only delegation went into the station, as we wanted to ensure that this did not become confrontational. It was when the young women, many with children, decided to call it a day that the atmosphere changed, and guys in the crowd started to voice and then act out their frustrations.

I am appalled, dismayed and horrified by the level of destruction that took place. I wouldn't defend the indefensible; however I would like to provide an insight into the mindset of someone willing to burn down their own neighbourhood as I believe that on this point, little has changed since the disturbances on Broadwater Farm 26 years ago.

To behave in this manner young people have to believe they have no stake in the neighbourhood, and consequently no stake in wider society. This belief is compounded when it becomes a reality over generations, as it has done for some. If the riots at the weekend and the disturbances around London today have come as a surprise to the police and that wider society, the warning signs have long been there for those of us who engage with black youths.

First, looting comes from the belief that if you cannot get equality and cannot expect justice, then you better make sure that you "get paid". "It's all about the money!" is the motto of too many young black men, who have given up all hope of attainment in a white man's world. This is an absolute belief for those looting at the weekend – born not only out of their experiences but their parents', too. They want to follow the rappers and athletes who live ghetto-fabulous lifestyles based on natural talents, as opposed to learned skills. They can't see that coming through education: those who live on estates generally survive from one wage packet to the next. Sadly this mindset also makes it easier to legitimise the selling of drugs, as that too "brings in the money".

Another sign was when they allowed themselves to be referred to by the n-word. They weren't simply seeking to reclaim a word. They were telling the world that they were the offspring of the "field negro", not the trained "house negro" from slavery days. The field negro's sole intent was to escape, and maybe even to cause a little damage to the master and his property.

A third obvious sign of major discontent was the creation of gangs and the start of the postcode wars. Yet all of these signs were largely unheeded by wider society: all perceived to be a black problem. It's black kids killing black kids, so it's our problem to address.

On Saturday, instead of imploding and turning inward and violent among themselves, as they have been doing for the past decade, the youths exploded. The trigger may well have been the killing of Mark Duggan and the insensitive treatment of his family, but this has been brewing for some time. The government cuts – especially the withdrawal of EMA; the new barrier of tuition fees; and rising youth unemployment have all added to their sense of isolation and lack of a stake in society.

Beyond all this, the Met also has to explain to the people of Tottenham just how it allowed this to happen. Since the 1990s I have engaged with the Met and gained a working knowledge of some of its operational processes, and I know of none that can be described as "let's just leave them to it". The police seemed intent on protecting the police station, leaving everything north of it free for the rioters to loot or destroy.

More cynical community members suggest the Met might have been playing politics. The more the police stood off, the bolder the youths became. Some question whether disturbances mean police can turn to government, and dare it to cut their numbers in a time of civil unrest. But I believe that just as they bungled the operation to arrest Mark Duggan, and bungled the way they broke the news, they bungled it again.

 

 

 

__________________________

 

 

blog by Penny Red 

TUESDAY, 9 AUGUST 2011

Panic on the streets of London.

I’m huddled in the front room with some shell-shocked friends, watching my city burn. The BBC is interchanging footage of blazing cars and running street battles in Hackney, of police horses lining up in Lewisham, of roiling infernos that were once shops and houses in Croydon and in Peckham. Last night, Enfield, Walthamstow, Brixton and Wood Green were looted; there have been hundreds of arrests and dozens of serious injuries, and it will be a miracle if nobody dies tonight. This is the third consecutive night of rioting in London, and the disorder has now spread to Leeds, Liverpool, Bristol and Birmingham. Politicians and police officers who only hours ago were making stony-faced statements about criminality are now simply begging the young people of Britain’s inner cities to go home. Britain is a tinderbox, and on Friday, somebody lit a match. How the hell did this happen? And what are we going to do now?

In the scramble to comprehend the riots, every single commentator has opened with a ritual condemnation of the violence, as if it were in any doubt that arson, muggings and lootings are ugly occurrences. That much should be obvious to anyone who is watching Croydon burn down on the BBC right now. David Lammy, MP for Tottenham, called the disorder 'mindless, mindless'. Nick Clegg denounced it as 'needless, opportunistic theft and violence'. Speaking from his Tuscan holiday villa, Prime Minister David Cameron – who has finally decided to return home to take charge - declared simply that the social unrest searing through the poorest boroughs in the country was "utterly unacceptable." The violence on the streets is being dismissed as ‘pure criminality,’ as the work of a ‘violent minority’, as ‘opportunism.’ This is madly insufficient. It is no way to talk about viral civil unrest. Angry young people with nothing to do and little to lose are turning on their own communities, and they cannot be stopped, and they know it. Tonight, in one of the greatest cities in the world, society is ripping itself apart. 

Violence is rarely mindless. The politics of a burning building, a smashed-in shop or a young man shot by police may be obscured even to those who lit the rags or fired the gun, but the politics are there. Unquestionably there is far, far more to these riots than the death of Mark Duggan, whose shooting sparked off the unrest on Saturday, when two police cars were set alight after a five-hour vigil at Tottenham police station. A peaceful protest over the death of a man at police hands, in a community where locals have been given every reason to mistrust the forces of law and order, is one sort of political statement. Raiding shops for technology and trainers that cost ten times as much as the benefits you’re no longer entitled to is another. A co-ordinated, viral wave of civil unrest across the poorest boroughs of Britain, with young people coming from across the capital and the country to battle the police, is another.

Months of conjecture will follow these riots. Already, the internet is teeming with racist vitriol and wild speculation. The truth is that very few people know why this is happening. They don’t know, because they were not watching these communities. Nobody has been watching Tottenham since the television cameras drifted away after the Broadwater Farm riots of 1985. Most of the people who will be writing, speaking and pontificating about the disorder this weekend have absolutely no idea what it is like to grow up in a community where there are no jobs, no space to live or move, and the police are on the streets stopping-and-searching you as you come home from school. The people who do will be waking up this week in the sure and certain knowledge that after decades of being ignored and marginalised and harassed by the police, after months of seeing any conceivable hope of a better future confiscated, they are finally on the news. In one NBC report, a young man in Tottenham was asked if rioting really achieved anything:

"Yes," said the young man. "You wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn't riot, would you?"

"Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you."

Eavesdropping from among the onlookers, I looked around. A dozen TV crews and newspaper reporters interviewing the young men everywhere ‘’’

There are communities all over the country that nobody paid attention to unless there had recently been a riot or a murdered child. Well, they’re paying attention now.

Tonight in London, social order and the rule of law have broken down entirely. The city has been brought to a standstill; it is not safe to go out onto the streets, and where I am in Holloway, the violence is coming closer. As I write, the looting and arson attacks have spread to at least fifty different areas across the UK, including dozens in London, and communities are now turning on each other, with the Guardian reporting on rival gangs forming battle lines. It has become clear to the disenfranchised young people of Britain, who feel that they have no stake in society and nothing to lose, that they can do what they like tonight, and the police are utterly unable to stop them. That is what riots are all about.

Riots are about power, and they are about catharsis. They are not about poor parenting, or youth services being cut, or any of the other snap explanations that media pundits have been trotting out: structural inequalities, as a friend of mine remarked today, are not solved by a few pool tables. People riot because it makes them feel powerful, even if only for a night. People riot because they have spent their whole lives being told that they are good for nothing, and they realise that together they can do anything – literally, anything at all. People to whom respect has never been shown riot because they feel they have little reason to show respect themselves, and it spreads like fire on a warm summer night. And now people have lost their homes, and the country is tearing itself apart.

Noone expected this. The so-called leaders who have taken three solid days to return from their foreign holidays to a country in flames did not anticipate this. The people running Britain had absolutely no clue how desperate things had become. They thought that after thirty years of soaring inequality, in the middle of a recession, they could take away the last little things that gave people hope, the benefits, the jobs, the possibility of higher education, the support structures, and nothing would happen. They were wrong. And now my city is burning, and it will continue to burn until we stop the blanket condemnations and blind conjecture and try to understand just what has brought viral civil unrest to Britain. Let me give you a hint: it ain’t Twitter.

I’m stuck in the house, now, with rioting going on just down the road in Chalk Farm. Ealing and Clapham and Dalston are being trashed. Journalists are being mugged and beaten in the streets, and the riot cops are in retreat where they have appeared at all. Police stations are being set alight all over the country. This morning, as the smoke begins to clear, those of us who can sleep will wake up to a country in chaos. We will wake up to fear, and to racism, and to condemnation on left and right, none of which will stop this happening again, as the prospect of a second stock market clash teeters terrifyingly at the bottom of the news reports. Now is the time when we make our choices. Now is the time when we decide whether to descend into hate, or to put prejudice aside and work together. Now is the time when we decide what sort of country it is that we want to live in. Follow the #riotcleanup hashtag on Twitter. And take care of one another.

"I like her and her savage red pen of justice" - Warren Ellis

 

Posted by Penny Red at 9.8.11    

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Stephen said...

Hi Laurie,

Much like you I'm currently sat in my living room in Croydon watching the violence unfold. I have just seen images on Sky News of my local shops and local flats being burned to a cinder and my first reaction was "What gives them the right?" What gives these people the right to hijack a peaceful protest and use it as an excuse for mindless violence destroying the livelihoods and homes of people who already live on the breadline? Those aren't chain superstores burning in front of me. Those are local businesses which are a valuable part of the fabric of the community here. 
The only problem with that is that the community here is Broad Green is one that is, as you quite rightly pointed out above, forgotten. It is inherently Labour and has been for many years in Croydon North due to its large proportion of immigrant families I would imagine. 
It is forgotten because all of the money in Croydon never sees the light of day in Broad Green or West Croydon. These see none of the public money which is spent on regenerating the town centre when it is merely ten minutes from the town centre that properties are in desperate need of renovation and rejuvenation, where green spaces are scarce, where libraries are shut and replaced with car dealerships, where more and more pressure is put on the area as more and more flats are built but with no rise in job opportunities. 
Instead all that happens is that more and more people occupy the same space and it becomes a matter of time until the segregated community (which was last given media attention after the 7/7 bombings, cf. "Croydon Mosque" which received a lot of unwarranted negative press because of a tenuous link to one of the bombers in the right-wing press) explodes. Of course the young people are disenfranchised - a lot of the schools in the West Croydon area, while many are very successful, do not enjoy nearly enough of the privilege and kudos granted to schools in other parts of the borough. All this does is breed resentment.
All night the question from BBC and Sky reporters has been "Why has this happened?" when really it should be "How did this not happen sooner?"

9 August 2011 02:45

antiintellect said...

I read this as a privileged American, but one who knows the cry of the oppressed, it's familiar ring. Thank you for sharing your insight and clarity on what is a emotional time for many, and I hope that you and other Londoner's remain safe. As you have stated in this piece, this is not the work of people who are heard, this is the work of people who are unheard, a last cry, a chance to be heard, to air their grievances. This is a situation of gross disparity between have and have not, rich and poor, White and Brown. We don't know where this story will end, but we do know that it has begun, and we must all take notice.

9 August 2011 02:51

Tim said...

The disorder has spread to Bristol [...] and Leeds. 

It has?

Whereabouts in Bristol and Leeds?

9 August 2011 02:52

zdroberts said...

Thanks for this. Trying to filter through the talking heads and the photos... nothing making sense from the states...

9 August 2011 02:53

Stephen said...

Apparently in Bristol town centre.

9 August 2011 02:54

Jason said...

I actually saw something like this coming. I knew we were going back to a 70s/early 80s situation. I can tell you the other aspects of that situation will also come in eg. stagflation. These riots are not the last we'll see, and the economic situationis thoroughly connected -- was then, is now.

As far as this being the time to decide what kind of country we live in, it is in many ways too late. The country as we know it is in strong decline now and unfortunately owing to peak oil that decline is irreversible. A very important lesson tonight has been the behaviour of the Turkish community in for example Dalston -- the men turned out en masse to protect their areas. This is something more areas will need to learn to do.

9 August 2011 02:56

Sista Resista said...

Thank you for writing this. Your observations are spot-on and much needed. www.sistersofresistance.org

9 August 2011 02:58

Marguerite said...

wonderful piece of writing. i live in chicago and came across your blog when Naomi Klein shared it on facebook. may cool heads prevail

9 August 2011 03:03

MigiziNse-ikwe said...

Thank you so much for your words and insight. I'm a Canadian, sitting in a very quiet west coast town, so far from you that it's already almost morning in London. It's like watching the future from the past. Keep blogging, please!
~JeninCanada
www.fatandnotafraid.jigsy.com

9 August 2011 03:06

Catherine Liu said...

Goldman Sachs CEO walks free: the real looters are the wizards of finance capital, on Wall Street and in the City. A flat screen TV or a pensioner's nest egg? "Opportunity" cannot replace justice as a public and social good.

9 August 2011 03:10

Cetamua said...

Your writing deserves much more exposure, for you've nailed the zeitgeist of these events better than anyone else I've read.

Good luck and stay safe!

9 August 2011 03:12

Stephen Hunt said...

A very well-thought and considered analysis, particularly considering the fear of the situation you're in. One can only hope that community after community in the wake of this will say that this is not acceptable in any way, and seriously tackle the causes of the situation. 

This should never happen again. But then it shouldn't have happened this time, or any time in the past when people have rioted because they had no other way to react. Somehow this time feels different, though, as if the looting is the prime motivation rather than the politics. Maybe I'm wrong on that - hopefully the next few days will see serious debate on how we got here.

9 August 2011 03:17

me said...

the police don't seem motivated, i wonder why not ?

9 August 2011 03:23

btb_london said...

When young people (and the not so young) see a criminal conspiracy between the police and the media and another between politicians and bankers and see the rich getting richer and everyone else getting poorer is it surprising they engage in some bottom up criminality. 

My immediate securityy may be threatened by the young people on the streets but it's not them who have destroyed the economic and social security of the country.

9 August 2011 03:29

melissakoski said...

Thanks for the insight.

9 August 2011 03:31

pineapplecharm said...

Jesus. I cycled about 20 miles tonight around various places between Clapham and Camden. On the way back I was anxious to get in front of the keyboard. But then this, this was just perfect. Full marks.

9 August 2011 03:39

Paul Breen said...

Very good. Everything we do is political, including criminality. Whether it be by a government, a corporation or an individual. In any case, the scale of the unrest has made it political.

9 August 2011 03:41

Simon said...

This is the best blog I have ever read. I ended up leaving South London and moving to New Zealand as opposed to put up with the endless spiral of no jobs and a Government that takes bureaucracy to extremes. New Zealand is not that much better, especially with the rich idiots we have in power now, but at least I can be me here, and not just another number.

Thank you for such a great insight.

9 August 2011 03:44

SJS said...

First of all, I'm going to point out a blatant inaccuracy in your "report".

"Police stations are being set alight all over the country."

No, they're not! One unmanned police outpost has been set ablaze. Hardly the novel-exciting story you'd have your readers believe.

Now to what I consider a more important issue...

Where did you grow up? Was your family poor? Was everyone around you a feckless thug, smoking, drinking, having sex under-age because they consider it "cool"?

Well, I grew up in one of the poorest neighbourhoods in England. My family was not only poor, it was only one step removed from a cardboard box beneath a bridge.
I went to the same schools as these looting, mugging thugs. I was presented with the same lack of opportunity as them, I was just as disenfranchised with this floundering country.
I have been searched (many times) without justification by police, I've been charged with an offence which never even took place.

Am I out there smashing windows, mugging old ladies, torching builds and cars? No... I'm not!

You can blame society as much as you like, but you're demonstrating a noxious delusion an unfortunate number of ill-informed and ill-experienced people. More depressingly, it is predominately people such as yourself who dictate policy as short-sighted as your rhetoric.

What makes me different to these morons? Simple: I CHOSE not to be a moron. I elected to LEARN when I went to school (and ever-after), I wanted to make something of my life.
Inversely, these morons have no desire to WORK. They've no drive to learn, or to achieve anything for themselves. They're content to live on "the dole", sponging from taxpayers such as myself who work bloody hard to make a distressingly poor wage.

You can try to justify their behaviour as much as you like, but not only does it fail to excuse it, you're doing nothing more than deluding yourself.

As for "racism", well... I've been watching the news for god-knows how many hours... and every single image of rioters and looters I'm seeing has a disproportionately large number of black people (particularly young black women with bags full of ill-gotten loot).
I'm not at all racist... but let me tell you, I DO believe what I see with my own eyes. If 60+% of rioters happen to be black, then that 60+% are proliferating a stereotype, and have only themselves to blame for any racist sentiment aimed in their direction.

These people are wilfully unintelligent! They CHOSE not to pay attention in school. Not because they're poor, not because they're "downtrodden", but because they are plain stupid.... by CHOICE.
They are simply too lazy to do their own thinking, and so are easily cajoled into "gangs", empowering them to be a complete moron... thus, you end up with mobs rioting and looting.

You cannot change the way these people behave, because they LIKE the way they are. They lack any moral compass, any social responsibility, any willingness to be productive. In the place of those purposefully belayed virtues, they have weaknesses: desire to steal, to "make fast money" at the expense of those of us who work hard, to cause others pain, to seek "popularity" within their gang, to watch the world burn.

There's NO justification for their actions, no excuse. They made their bed, and I for one would be sincerely happy to see copper-jacketed projectiles put them to rest in it.

9 August 2011 03:49

DavidB said...

Thank you, brilliant. Following #londonriot tweets as much as I can without going insane, I'm surprised and disappointed how smug are so many Londoners' reactions to this, how lacking in any perspective. Such as blog might help change that. 

I fear London burning is merely a harbinger of what is coming for all of us as night descends. Best wishes on the cleanup. We're all going to be cleaning up, I fear, for a very long time.

9 August 2011 03:50

nealjennings said...

I'm in tears reading this. I've been searching for even the faintest hint of answers to the things you raise here - where is all of this violence coming from? I think you've put your finger on it quite well, and to hear it from the perspective of someone in the midst of it is always refreshing. Thank you for your words.

9 August 2011 03:57

David D. said...

This is a brilliant and powerful piece of writing, piercingly true. It should run in every paper in the country tomorrow--instead of the flailing drivel that no doubt will be published instead. All the best from Canada, and I hope that tomorrow begins the cleanup and the reconsideration of what has led to this and what will lead to a better future.

9 August 2011 03:58

fingertrouble said...

Cry of the oppressed also means attacking gay men in the gay village in Birmingham apparently. It means mugging kids who have been knocked over. It means torching people's homes.

Please don't romanticise this; I can see the oppressed aspect, but a lot of nasty 'phobic and evil mob mentality and criminality. I don't cry for a wrecked bank, but seeing people jump for their lives in Croydon brings me up sharp. This is no revolution.

This is no poll tax riot or even the student protests I supported, it's drawn on those for ideas I think but far darker and far more yes - mindless. Fighting back has become fighting for mine in Thatcher's Grandchildren. For to quote the Boomtown Rats 'you see there are no reasons'...I think Tottenham might've had a point. The others far less...I eagerly await people's analysis how looting and torching a Sony factory is somehow a cry of failed yoot and a strike for freedom from oppression...but I think the kids would laugh at your rhetoric, they just want a free Wii.

9 August 2011 04:00

mryashin said...

The most rational analysis I've read.

9 August 2011 04:01

Blair said...

@Simon, yeah as a NZer we arent much better, but I feel the fabric of society is a a bit thicker, maybe it comes with being a bit smaller. All I know is that im kinda glad to be living in a small insignificant part of the world right now.

9 August 2011 04:02

jumbobuzzard said...

Hello from the USA, where the same unrest is imminent. Thanks for your well-written, open-hearted observations.

9 August 2011 04:03

/mc said...

Thanks for perspective and watch your six – we're gonna need you.

9 August 2011 04:07

SJS said...

@fingertrouble - at least someone here has some common sense and can see this for what it really is!

Fed up with these naive people dismissing wanton destruction and thuggery as some "expression of civil disobedience".

WAKE UP, PEOPLE... THEY'RE LUNATICS, NOT REVOLUTIONARIES!

9 August 2011 04:11

mryashin said...

@SJS: I realise that it is a difficult and complex truth but people can be both products of their environment AND make choices about their lives. To say that we who have emerged from these backgrounds unscathed prove the fecklessness and depravity of those left behind is naive.

9 August 2011 04:12

TS said...

There are so many shocking aspects to this, but nothing is more startling than reading those who blame it on everyone except the people actually doing it. There is nothing political about this. It is greed, and ignorance. And ignorance, these days, is by choice. These are bullies, and thugs, and thieves.

9 August 2011 04:12

Wasi said...

this bought me to tears - in part because it's so much what i feel myself (see my blog from last night - highly incoherent, but, hopefully, arguing a similar thing in terms of a need to look at context and background). that response by the young man ('you wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn't riot') is the sad truth.
glad to know you're safe.

9 August 2011 04:15

Deplume said...

"They thought that after thirty years of soaring inequality, in the middle of a recession, they could take away the last little things that gave people hope, the benefits, the jobs, the possibility of higher education, the support structures, and nothing would happen. They were wrong."

Particularly haunting. Those of us that have an ounce of compassion have said all along that our governments complete lack of it, would end in trouble.

People asking 'if it's a protest, why don't they go for police stations, or government buildings or protest peacefully' ...Anger is anger, and to them a target is a target. 

How many protests have there been in recent years? Anti-war, G20, students? 2000+ marching to scotland yard.. what use did it do?
They have no voices. Nobody listens.
The lack of jobs, education, facilities, and the poorest in society getting ever-poorer, it's always somebody elses problem as long as Cameron gets his holidays, and osbourne looks like he's got a plan. 
And now it's all of our problem, because these people believe, through example, that actions speak louder than words ever will.

Now we have to look seriously at our country, into every nook and cranny that was previously glossed over and ignored. And LISTEN to these people. Or regardless of c.o.b.r.a. meetings, and 'calls for calm' and promises of 'justice against this pure criminality' This will happen again.. and again... and again. 
Excellent blog penny red.
Stay safe everyone x

9 August 2011 04:16

Muslim Youth said...

"structural inequalities", "People riot because they have spent their whole lives being told that they are good for nothing, and they realise that together they can do anything – literally, anything at all. People to whom respect has never been shown riot because they feel they have little reason to show respect themselves"

excellent analysis of the situation. the inequalities of this country have led to this situation. 
People comment on how these youth are simply using this as an excuse to commit crime; Images in the media of sexy lifestyles and no means to achieve them, have frustrated the youth and they have now had enough.
No one on this blog or comments section can say what its like to be an youth living in a deprived area going through an inadequate schooling system, being faced by racism daily and being treated as a 2nd class citizen. 
So whilst you easily disregard their pain and frustration, you actually have no idea of the situation.

9 August 2011 04:19

SJS said...

@mryashin: There's nothing complex about it! Many of the people looting, mugging, and causing destruction in London right now are people I will have grown up with in some regard or another. Many of them will have gone to the same schools as I did, been my neighbours, been the bullies who made everyone's lives hell for their own sick enjoyment.

These are the same people who torture small animals because it gives them a thrill... it'd be absolutely no loss to the world for these lunatics to simply be shot dead.

Naive is the idea that those that would jump at any opportunity to steal, mug, maim and assault others could be motivated by any rational political or social environment.

They are a product of THEIR OWN stupidity, not society's oppressive constraints.

If these fools were motivated by politics or social circumstance as you seem to believe, then they would be targeting institutions responsible for this circumstance... not high-street electronics stores, people's homes and cars.

They're interested in stealing items of monetary worth... because they're too lazy to do an honest day's work to actually EARN their way through life.
What they can't steal, they smash and burn.

If you feel society is to blame, then you're part of the problem, not the solution!

9 August 2011 04:21

[J] said...

Stringing a narrative to justify these kinds of actions is really not helpful either. You mention that 'this is not about poor parenting'. But clearly it is about a certain culture within the poor areas of London. I agree that acts of criminality are about power, about taking back with force what you feel denied. It is people such as yourself which are feeding these feelings of class distinction and isolation. This is not an inevitable result of class warfare, but a opportunist expression of thug idealism. It is a time to be principled and not 'political'. Violence is horrible, lock the fuckers up.

9 August 2011 04:28

minnie said...

Watching the riots from Canada, I was ever more confused... you have given me a perspective that appeals not only to your community but gives voices to all of those who cannot materialize their expressions through words.

I feel the pain your community must have gone through, for that struggle is everywhere in the world. Perhaps this is the beginning of the end of a system that systematically silences so many voices, so many struggles...

Hang in there & stay safe.

In solidarity

Thank you.

9 August 2011 04:28

Joel said...

I apologise for providing a link for SJS to follow. 

He's one of those people that think stupid people are not really people.

9 August 2011 04:37

SamV said...

@SJS Oh yes, your rags to riches story. How inspiring and original.

Spare us the pep talk. There are structural problems that mean that the growth required for this amazing story to happen for everyone, can't happen.

We live on a finite planet. Growth is to be exponential at 2-3% a year or we're in a "recession" which must be avoided at all costs. So we have "austerity" measures to try to put this global Ponzi scheme - the world economy - back on track.

Just how will that growth keep going? Efficiency? Nope, that's only 1-2% a year, not fast enough. Increase in non-material growth compared to material growth? Not fast enough, either.

Economists have a mantra that with economic growth comes prosperity for all. But the potential for growth has been reached. Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, all wrote about this but the jobsworth bankers and gambling-addict traders of the world were too busy giving themselves bonuses to notice that it has come.

We have reached it, the end of growth, and now we need to look at what our priorities are instead of economic growth. We need to grow civilization.

9 August 2011 04:37

Bobby G. Marino said...

The sheer power of your words... just wow!

9 August 2011 04:40

Cait said...

sending prayers your way, sweets. may the lord protect you.

9 August 2011 04:42

bradw said...

@SJS: you are spot-on.

Life is about choices. These rioters have had years to take actions to better themselves and make decisions that define the direction of their lives for the better. They have instead chosen to join gangs, or generally become worthless members of society, and on this night they have chosen to take advantage of an opportunity to terrorise innocent civilians, wreck livelihoods, and instil fear in their communities.

The sooner the army is deployed and these cowards, muggers, arsonists, common thieves, and general human-trash are removed from the streets the better.

9 August 2011 04:45

Pjgj03 said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh5ogOH82Aw this song represents whats going on in London to a tee.

9 August 2011 04:48

webfarmer said...

Laurie, 

As an older person from the States watching this horror show unfold on the BBC streaming video, I'm reminded of the inner city riots and burning in the 1960s. 

That resulted in a commission being established by President Johnson to determine the causes of the riots and what policies should be implemented to prevent it from re-occurring. It was called the Kerner Commission. 

Subsequent riots have often noted that the problems identified in the Kerner Commission report were never seriously addressed. Perhaps it might be helpful in sorting out things in the UK today.

Stay safe!

Kerner Commission - Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerner_Commission

9 August 2011 04:48

BlueMtnMarc said...

excellent blog, thanks for the insight

9 August 2011 04:50

Shopgirl said...

This is amazing writing though sadly I wish you didn't have this subject to write about. I hope the issues you discussed here is finally heard, and addressed even if it happens over some time. Praying for your cities and people's safety and well being, soon.

9 August 2011 04:51

om said...

@SJS, an experiment for you

"...There's nothing complex about it! Many of the people looting, mugging, and causing destruction in Falluja right now are people I will have grown up with in some regard or another. Many of them will have gone to the same schools as I did, been my neighbours, been the bullies who made everyone's lives hell for their own sick enjoyment.

These are the same people who torture small animals because it gives them a thrill... it'd be absolutely no loss to the world for these lunatics to simply be shot dead.

Naive is the idea that those that would jump at any opportunity to steal, mug, maim and assault others could be motivated by any rational political or social environment."

(some upsetting images)
http://tinyurl.com/3m38746

Our Boys. Funded by you.

But I suppose it's OK with you because you're benefiting from the looting ? Or maybe just that your victims are brown ?

Even if very few of the rioters see this as a political act it's not hard to see where they got their inspiration from.

9 August 2011 04:55

Rodolfo Piskorski said...

Thank you so much, Laurie, this is great. Many times in political topics the tone of an article is much more important than the content... You usually choose very good tones for your articles, but this one is perfect.

No, the looters don't have the right to loot and set things on fire, but they have, and since we cannot turn back time, we should just try to learn why this happened.

9 August 2011 04:59

Mike Smith said...

great reading. The contrasting comments of SJS and Penny Red are really provoking.great reading. The contrasting comments of SJS and Penny Red are really provoking.

9 August 2011 05:01

Usalama said...

A very nice post; I appreciate being able to read some on the ground perspectives from across the pond. One question, although I still have many: if the attention, and the need to be heard, are so important, why is it, do you think, that journalists are being attacked?

9 August 2011 05:03

peterjukes said...

Bigged you up on the main US liberal blog Daily Kos in a hasty late night diary. But hey, you ought to think of blogging there

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/08/08/1004737/-London-Burning:-Police-Now-...

PS. I think you once said you loved me on Labourlist. I was AntiTory Troll back in the day.

9 August 2011 05:04

Margaret Ann Harris said...

Thank You for the courage of your pen and voice. I spent a year in London between 2007-08. I came away with a picture which horrified me. On the one hand there is this opulence - unattainable for most. Nothing shocking there. It was the deprivation in the inner cities that most caught my attention. The poverty and quality of life in many of these areas was heartrenching. I made it my business to go into parts of Peckham, Croydon, Brixton, Dalston, Hackney -- to see how indeed people in these communities lived. Why? I am West Indian. I had heard rumours about ongoing racism, the kind which is not overt but felt in marginalisation, fewer opportunities, etc. I am not surprised by the riots. People in these communities live extremely challenged lives, that is fairly brutal for a first world country. I do not know how confined these lifestyles are within particular areas/communities of the country or even how "black" communities are. I only know that this should never be. A recession would definitely ignite the flames of dissent. The riots in France clearly did not serve as a warning to England. It is time the UK wakes up to what many of us visitors see. While your parliament is lined with gold, the poor suffer. No, never as in Dickens' England. Racism and classism combined is too rich a brew to easily overcome. But as Robert F Kennedy said there is a kind of violence that does not come from the barrel of a gun, it's the violence of institutions, the violence of not being able to live as a man amongst men, the violence of inaction, the violence of decay...

9 August 2011 05:04

 

 

"I like her and her savage red pen of justice" - Warren Ellis

 

PENNY RED IS...

Laurie Penny, 24, journalist, author, feminist, reprobate. Lives in a little hovel room somewhere in London, mainly eating toast and trying to set the world to rights. Drinks too much tea. Has still not managed to quit smoking.

 

 

 

 

 

>via: http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2011/08/panic-on-streets-of-london.html

 

 

 

 

 

Amy Winehouse:

What Really Happened

 

Amy Winehouse is a singer and songwriter who is famous for her strong vocals as well as her blend of numerous musical styles such as soul, jazz and R&B.

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Alternatively watch – Amy Winehouse: The Girl Done Good