The Financial Services Authority has forced a number of companies to own up to short-selling. Clue - one of the miscreants is a division of a bank which features prominently in the appended song:

This is in response to an oldish article. I was going to blog on it earlier but every time I went to do so, the red mist descended and I had to lie down. Right now I’m too fucking tired to get angry, so here goes…

Bloggertarians on the subject of education piss me off in ways I can’t describe. But I’m gonna try anyway. Here’s my problem with them: they claim to be in favour of freedom in education - scything the dead hand of bureaucracy, decentralisation, empowering and liberating schools to do their own thing and so on - but there’s just a teensy-weensy problem with this line, so teensy-weensy the unobservant and the historically ignorant might just miss it: they are fucking Tories and that bitch Thatcher they worship, followed by the genial but useless Major they didn’t like but voted for anyway, centralised education services in this country to an unprecedented degree.

It was actually that nice Mr Major who was responsible for much that is evil and shitty in education today - the National Curriculum, for example - along with the whole culture of league tables and draconian inspections. But Thatcher laid the foundations with her war against local government and the public sector in general. (As an aside, I’d like some of these voucher-supporting libertarian diddies who wank over the memory of the Iron Lady to acknowledge, just once in a while, that she closed more grammar schools than any previous ‘totalitarian’ Labour government. It’d be nice, y’know? Inject a little reality into the education ‘debate’ and that.) What they don’t seem to understand is that power lost to local education authorities isn’t power passed to the ‘consumer’; it goes - it went - to central government. Did y’all miss this? This is why - for example - the ‘detoxified’ David Cameron can announce that he favours, for example, ’setting’ or streaming in schools, or the use of phonics in primary schools. I mean, what the fuck? Why doesn’t he just actually take the classes himself? Interesting that those who seem to think this vacuous fop represents a resurgence of liberal Toryism have nothing to say about this breezy assumption of control from the centre. Ok, so it’s not that interesting - just annoying.

This is not to exempt that Thatcher in trousers Tony Blair who embraced the philistine Tory centralism with great vim and gusto. So enthusiastic he was about it, he retained the pupil-shagging Thatcherite bully-boy Chris Woodhead as head of Ofsted - as well as employing the authoritarian thug David Blunkett to run the goddam education department.

Which brings us this, from the piece linked above:

“A study of nearly 200 schools found that while maths tests and exam results have improved, teachers’ poor understanding of mathematics was a serious problem. Fewer than half of secondary maths teachers have degrees in maths or related subjects and there is a shortage of suitably qualified candidates.

The report, Mathematics: Understanding the score, concluded: “Many [teachers] concentrated on approaches they believed prepared pupils for tests and examinations, in effect ‘teaching to the test’.”"

Teaching to the test? You don’t fucking say. I wonder how that happened. I have to say that since Ofsted have contributed towards a culture where the survival of institutions and the careers of individual teachers depends on the performance in national tests, it really takes a special kind of chutzpah to then produce a report complaining about it. Here’s another one on a similar vein, this time to do with science teaching in primary schools:

“Children’s interest in science and their understanding of it are being crushed by the compulsory tests they sit at primary school, leading professors argue today.

Pupils in England are being taught to perform well in the tests, rather than having their “natural curiosity of science cultivated and harnessed”, researchers from Bristol and Durham Universities will say in a report.

All 11-year-olds in state schools are examined in science as part of their standard assessment tasks (Sats). The results are used to compile league tables, on which parents and the government judge how good schools and teachers are.”

It takes a ‘leading professor’ to come up with this sort of breath-taking insight, you understand.

Ah, the rage, the rage. Sick to death of shit about vouchers, fucking Sweden in general, fucking ‘choice’ in general, crap about faith schools and their putrid discriminatory ‘ethos’, utter utter wank about grammar schools from journalists that are supposed to be leftwing but like to strike a contrarian iconoclastic pose by being, em, really rather reactionary actually. Come the revolution, I’m going to have every journalist and blogger who writes this ignorant crap shot like the rabies-infected dogs they are - starting with Melanie Phillips. Just saying like - so you know not to associate too closely with them. You have been warned.

A bunch of cunts are due to be marching — all blackshirt-like — goose-stepping and all of that, on 28th September. If you are in the vicinity get yourself along to a counter-demonstration — details here.

Comrade Hitchens on suchlike here.

One other thing — this time not Hitchens but worth a read — Iraqis have won Iraq war.

If Ronald Reagan were still alive, there would be plenty of interviewers that would like to ask him if he still thinks that….

“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

And, up to $700 billion later, reading this and this, I thought it would be asking you - the good regulars at DSTPFW - to help me compose a certificate that could be sent out to every Thatcherite and right-wing libertarian that you have contact details for.

I’d like to write it up in a nice font, give it a pretty border, and turn it into a pdf that can be printed off, signed and framed, and hung over a well-appointed desk as an acknowledgement of recent developments.

The wording I’ve got is as follows - let me know what you think?

An Acknowledgement: Draft 0.9

For much of the past thirty years, there has been a consensus that deregulated capitalism provides a just moral framework. One that promotes fairness, efficiency and social progress.

I have been a vocal supporter of this position. I have opposed improvements to welfare safety-nets on the grounds that they would interfere with the workings of the markets. I have advocated a ‘meritocracy’ in which we all enjoy the rewards of our enterprise and take the consequences of our mistakes.

For decades, I have stood by while millions of people who were not born with my material advantages have been forced to bend over and take it like a man while I have continued to enjoy the fruits of my advantaged start in life. I have always argued that poverty is, at least in part, the consequence of irresponsibility and poor judgement, and that to relieve that poverty would be to reward these shortcomings.

I have always reassured myself that the iron laws of the market show that there is no fairer way of organising human relations.

Furthermore, I have argued that taxation is, somehow, almost a form of theft, and that no situation is so bad that it isn’t made worse by government intervention.

I am now happy to concede that the leading lights of modern capitalism are the more deserving of the label ‘thieving bastards’ than anyone else alive. In a month in which people such as myself have received the kind of bail-out that I have refused to countenance for others who are less advantaged than ourselves, I am now willing to concede that I am - and have for a long time been - a worthless cheating parasite of the highest order.

If the families of the unemployed have suffered terribly over the years for their relatively minor lack of responsibility or good judgement, then in a fair world, I would be spending the next couple of decades up to my eyeballs in raw sewage for the wanton irresponsibility and stupidity that I have long advocated.

If I had even an ounce of honour, I would retire to my study with a generic bottle of blended scotch and a revolver in order to relieve those around me of the burden of having to gaze upon my hypocritical countenance for a moment longer.

But failing that, I now, at least, have the decency to acknowledge that a generous universal safety net funded out of general taxation would be a minimal concession to make given the huge bailout that democratic governments have handed to the leading institutions of capitalism.

Furthermore, I am now prepared to accept that the kind of market liberalism that I have advocated for many years is entirely impractical in a modern democracy - and that effective liberal democracy is the only thing that stopped the entire population of my country, and it’s neighbours, from suffering the consequences of my long-standing stupidity, greed and dishonesty. I now concede that elected governments, and not larcenous shitheads such as myself, should drive public policy for the forseeable future.

Signed: ………………………………………..

Name: ………………………………………. (block capitals please)

Date: ………………………………………..

Whaddaya think? Does it go far enough? Or should I make it a bit more penitent? And let me know (Shuggy) if there are any shortcomings in the grammar and punctuation and stuff? I’ve probably overdone the split infinitives and that.

By way of an introduction:

Christopher Hitchens became aware of Bernard-Henri Lévy, or “BHL-conscious” as he put it in an e-mail message, in the late 1970s, “during the nouvelle philosophie phenomenon, otherwise known as the discovery of Stalinism by some French intellectuals.”

Hitchens remembered being impressed because Lévy — whose new book, “Left in Dark Times,” he reviews in this issue — was “so self-critical and so amusing.” In later years the two men often turned out to be distant political allies, one in the United States, the other in France — speaking out in favor of interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo, against the continuing slaughter in Darfur, in support of Palestinian rights, in defense of Salman Rushdie and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, “and of course against the Taliban and Al Qaeda and their shadowy Wahhabi capitalist underwriters in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.”

Yet when they actually met for the first time, during a debate on the Iraq war at the New School in Manhattan, they found themselves on opposite sides of the issue. “I still think that the main point was the need to remove Saddam Hussein,” Hitchens wrote. “BHL said that you couldn’t trust George W. Bush with such a task.” To be sure, there were significant areas of overlap in their positions. “We both agreed afterward that we could in theory have given about 60 percent of each other’s speeches.” Still, Hitchens reported, that first face-to-face encounter left him feeling “rather sad.”

Bons Mots and Bêtes Noires — Hitchens reviews LEFT IN DARK TIMES — A Stand Against the New Barbarism –By Bernard-Henri Lévy

(Thanks to Dai)

Ronald isn’t running for office, I am sad to say, although his son Brian is, or might be, depending on whether the New Democratic Party picks him as a candidate in the Alberta riding of Edmonton-Sherwood Park. Brian says he’d prefer not to talk about his dad, who is doing time on 31 counts related to firearms and threatening Premier Ed Stelmach and his cows, plus threatening to dig up the premier’s potatoes or something, which was a bogus bust anyway. Besides, he’d had a couple of drinks at the time. But Ronald’s speech from the dock was as ripping a stemwinder any New Democrat has delivered in quite some while, let me tell you:

As I stated on September 7, 2007 – Somebody should shoot his cows and livelihood right down the pipeline to the United States in the exact same fashion that he is sending perfectly good jobs down the pipeline. . . The same concern for Alberta’s labor force was not displayed after he won that leadership election. On September 12, 2007, then Labor Minister Iris Evans threatened Union Laborers with a “Go back to work or go to jail” order. . .I believe it is important to mention that I have been found guilty and will be held accountable for the threats I made, but as of this date, Iris Evans has not been arrested or even charged for uttering threats of jail time against the construction workers of this province for their refusal to work for what they believed to be unfair wages, paid by oil companies operating in this province who are currently making profits as high as twelve hundred dollars per SECOND, on the back of their labor and are highly subsidized by the government to do so.

The rest here.

Still funny

Brooker writes on it here.

I think I would just bomb the entire area where it is made with napalm and irradiate the area with large quantities of whatever the fuck irradiates shit and that.

Mind you — I think I will watch it next week. Forra lafflike.

And…

Excellent essay on Zimbabwe situation here by the way. Even the comment appended to the post is enlightening…

The situation is so dire that commentators are all to some extent writing of wishful thoughts they can detect scattered sparsely throughout the text.

Mugabe remains untouchable, and has negotiated invulnerability from prosecution. Tsvangirai will be lucky not to suffer the fate of the two murdered Kenyan MPs.

Mugabe has made no concessions allowing any erosion of power, and the MDC have patently been given some visibility in Government to tempt the outside world to bring in the food, which will now shore up Zanu’s position of power.

It is a great pity that negotiations for the deal could not have been prolonged until State salary payments could no longer be made. The imminence of that moment seems to have been the decisive deterioration in circumstances to have forced Mugabe into this cosmetic agreement.

And their white tusks crunched o’er the whiter skull,
As it slipp’d through their jaws, when their edge grew dull,
as they lazily mumbled the bones of the dead,
when they scarce could rise from the spot where they fed…
–Byron.

Necessary line break here fucking blog providing shitheads who make this shit non-compliant with human needs.

The Expandable-G_d that humanity worships every day and is that which rules over all our daily lives is a paper tiger. Kill it.

Not hackneyed. Needed.

TORONTO - At a brief stop off the campaign trail Thursday, Liberal MP Bob Rae reaffirmed his party’s commitment to keeping American war resisters in Canada.

It’s not just that the entire Jeremy Hinzman caper has been a charade of nonsense, falsehood and hyperbole from the very beginning. It’s that everyone is obliged to be complicit in it, like one of those beatnik stage plays that demand the participation of the audience.

Further elaboration here.

Meantime, the refugee-status scandal that nobody in Canada ever talks about:

Canadian authorities are absurdly obliged to turn away asylum seekers who are legitimate freedom fighters from totalitarian regimes.

Which reminds me.

If it comes to it, and I hope it doesn’t, we should give this guy Canadian citizenship and a diplomatic passport to get him the hell out of there.

His troubles are eerily similar to the persecution this guy is facing.

This sort of shit does my fucking heed in.

All it does is describe the human condition and then pathologise that same condition. According to these health nuts, to be human is to be abnormal and ill — what a pack of cunts doctors can be at times. I would much rather have the company of an alcoholic depressive than a tea total depressive. For obvious reasons like.

Two words: forrafuckinglafflike.

[Part one’s here.]

Continuing from the post previously (see link above). Thought I better had because what I’ve said so far is open to misinterpretation. This is partly because people go a bit mental on this sort of subject - see the thread below this if you doubt me. Partly also because I wasnae finished but also because I didn’t really explain what I meant by the ‘institutionalisation’ of the discussion about creationism.

By this I mean it would be a mistake to prescribe this sort of discussion in curricular arrangements or even issue ‘guidelines’ for teachers on this matter because the very act of doing so runs the risk of institutionalising the notion that in relation to creationism, there’s a case to answer - which there isn’t. (If Reiss wasn’t suggesting this, I’m even more mystified as to why he resigned because without this, he was only offering his opinion on how teachers should do their job. If this is a resigning matter, why is anyone still working?) If I could draw the following parallel: if I’m confronted with a pupil who believes the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a historical document - which I have been - I might take the time to disabuse them of this ‘worldview’, explain the origins of this Tsarist forgery, point out that it is the prototype conspiracy theory, and add that like all conspiracy theories it is characterised by a) the absence of evidence b) rests on propositions about the human condition that are completely implausible.

Or I might tell them to give their mouths a rest and stop trying to change the subject. There are different ways of getting it across but the message is the same in both cases: belief in the historical veracity of the Protocols represents a fundamental misconception of history; that it also serves as a ‘worldview’ to some doesn’t make it worthy of serious consideration or respect.

Historians can make the judgment to give space in their classrooms to deal with matters that aren’t history in the way that scientists can do the same for matters of belief. But the purpose of this would be to reinforce the boundaries of a particular discipline in the minds of the pupils - to insist on the discrete intellectual space one’s subject occupies - not to allow them to bleed into one another, which is what any formalisation of the discussion of something like creationism would do. This brings me to some dreadful nonsense by Peter Wilby in the New Statesman:

“My answer is to take religion out of RE lessons (or whatever they are now called) and integrate it with other subjects. It is impossible to understand history, music, art, architecture and literature without understanding the role of religion.”

The comment in brackets is the key line that explains everything else about the article. Journalism I just don’t get. I’m not saying it’s all like this but it is profession that definitely allows space for people to flaunt their ignorance and get paid for it. What does he imagine happens in the classroom - that we try and teach the history of the 19th century whilst discretely side-stepping the role of organised religion and its adherents? Regardless of the subjects he mentions, the underpinning misunderstanding here is the confusion between theology and history. Historians are interested in religion but we are interested in it only when it impacts upon historical events. We are interested in the behaviour of Christians - but we are completely uninterested in assessing whether those claiming to be Christians fulfill the conditions for discipleship as laid down in the kerygma of Jesus or the Pauline letters or whatever. If we do take an interest in this, we have reached beyond the discipline of our subject and have moved into theology.

That Wilby doesn’t get this is indicated in his suggestion that RE be abolished as a discrete subject and be absorbed into all the others. Apart from being essentially medieval (something he might have recognised in himself if he understood what history is), it overlooks the obvious fact that RE is a subject - worth studying simply because, only because, it represents an investment in human thought but something that is concerned with issues that are not fundamentally of interest to the historian, the chemist, or the mathematician.

There’s a number of thoughts this provokes but if I can leave you with this half-formed one? The insistence on the limitation of one’s subject is not only essential to intellectual coherence, the liberty of the pupil depends on this. Liberal education has nothing much to do with allowing the pupil to do ‘their own thing’ and cast off restraints; it has quite a lot to do with the idea that teachers has to understand the limits of their role. This is not to treat the student as human material to be shaped and worked on - it is to teach them a subject. A task that is going to be more difficult if people are unclear about what their subject actually is.

On Sunday, members of Iraq’s parliament moved to strip Mr. Alusi’s parliamentary immunity from prosecution in order to charge him with treason for visiting Israel.

A taster of what he is up against…

After a combative session, parliamentarians voted to lift Alusi’s parliamentary immunity and seek charges against him for visiting the Jewish state. They also said the fiery, secular politician should be prevented from travelling abroad again.

News of Alusi’s visit, which took place last week, emerged over the weekend. It was his second visit to Israel since 2004.

Alusi, who accused some MPs of being in the pocket of Iran, reacted angrily during the parliament session, which was broadcast live on Iraqi TV.

UIC MP noted Alusi’s visit to Israel “dealt a blow to the Iraqi people’s will and violated Iraq’s constitution.” Sunni MP Falah Hassan Zidan from the Arab Front for National Dialogue upheld the Parliament’s decision, saying “we have problems with Iran and neighbouring countries, but they do not justify visiting an enemy state.” “Striping Mithal al-Alusi of immunity was strong so that other MPs can take heed and refrain from visiting the Zionist Entity.”

The law under which he is to be prosecuted is a 1969 statute dating back to Ba’athist rule, a Saddam Hussein-era law making it a crime for Iraqis to travel to Israel, although the Iraqi legal expert Tariq Harb considered Alusi’s visit to Israel as legal and complying with Iraqi constitutional legislation (quoted in article here)…“Article 44 in the constitution gives Iraqi nationals the right to travel and move abroad with no restriction on country,” Harb said. According to this article (with more biographical details included) - the whole scenario is a clarifying one - “Keep a watch on the struggles of one Iraqi by the name of Mithal al-Alusi and you will see the drama of Iraq’s modern history and the battle for its future.”

Additional:

Mr. Alusi says that for too many years the regimes in the Middle East have used the Jewish state as an excuse for their own misrule. “I have visited Israel before. I have been open about this. I won elections, my party is more popular now because of this than before,” he said.

Mr. Alusi spent the day Monday campaigning on the issue and says he has received overwhelming support. We would not count him out. He made his name in the Iraqi opposition by briefly taking over Iraq’s embassy in Berlin in 2002 and spent time in a German prison for his beliefs. He lost two sons at the hands of terrorists inside Iraq’s government and has survived multiple assassination plots. What a turnabout and a victory it would be if a visit to Israel actually made an Iraqi politician more popular.

A short essay by Michael Walzer here worth a look over: Spheres of Influence

…influence is a normal feature of political life. We all try to be as influential as possible. So how should influence work? When is it legitimate? There is a Marxist argument about this in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, which starts from everyday social life. Assume, Marx writes, that our relation to the world is a “human” relation: “Then love can only be exchanged for love, trust for trust…If you wish to enjoy art, you must be an artistically cultivated person; if you wish to influence other people, you must be a person who really has a stimulating and encouraging effect upon others.” I suggest that the case is the same with political parties, social movements, all sorts of NGOs, and with states, too. If they want to influence people in other countries, they must be stimulating and encouraging, which means materially helpful, politically supportive, ideologically persuasive. What is ruled out by the idea of “human” relations is military force, coercion, manipulation, and subversion. Barring those four, influence isn’t limited to a regional sphere—any person, any party or movement, any state can be influential anywhere.

So if democratic states in western Europe, say, provide ideological support, political encouragement, and material assistance first to new democrats and then to new democracies in eastern Europe, this isn’t imperial politics. It is an attempt at influence, indeed, but it isn’t the creation of an old-fashioned sphere of influence. The expansion of NATO is a harder question, and I am not going to address it here. But support and encouragement for the “color revolutions” in Georgia and Ukraine fit Marx’s account of how influence ought to work—while the U.S. instigation of a Guatemalan coup obviously doesn’t.

If Russia wants to be influential in Georgia, then, it has to be helpful and persuasive to the Georgians. There is no other way—that, it seems to me, is the liberal and left position. Realists may be eager to recognize the kind of influence that is a function only of military power, and political leaders may have to adapt to that kind of influence, at least for a time. But we liberals and leftists cannot accept this as morally right or politically conclusive. Our parties and movements should be active in other countries—building unions, training political activists, strengthening democratic institutions. We should work to undo imperial influence and foster “human” influence wherever we can, whether it is in the Caucasus, eastern Europe, or Central and South America. That work, indeed, should define what we mean when we call ourselves “internationalists.”

Iraq’s parliament reconvened this month after a month long break and consequently there is some important shit going on in Iraq ‘behind our backs’ at the  moment (good — let the Iraqis sort their own shit out where they can).

The Provinces Law, which paves the way for provincial elections which have been fucked up because of the status of Kirkuk seems to be coming to a conclusion (belatedly).

The law specifies the system of government in Iraq, and if applied, a federal system may be established in the country with three separate regions, a call echoed by some Iraqi political parties. The draft law on provincial council elections proposes an open slate system, which gives voters influence on the position of the candidates placed on the party list and allows an individual voting system.

It is difficult to follow what the fuck is going on just now as regards this subject — however — this report has news which is welcome or not — depending on your weltanschauung:

The registration results suggest a silver lining: The U.N. says that of the 2.9 million people who showed up at registration centers, about 1.8 million of them were new voters from areas with substantial Sunni populations. The 2005 Sunni boycott essentially locked the sect out of the government, exacerbating tension with Shiites and Kurds who performed well in the polling.

Unrestrained badly regulated capitalism kills.

Truefax.

PS. So does Capitalism - whether restrained, or regulated, or not. And freedom and openness within a capitalist mode of production is not a sufficient restraint or regulatory measure (although a necessary condition for restraint) upon it’s killing modus operandi.

More than 2 million children under the age of 5 are dying every year in India because of a lack of basic care despite the country’s rapid economic growth,…

The report by the U.N. Children’s Fund focused on the Asia-Pacific region but singled out India — home to 20 percent of the world’s children under 5. It also warned that rising inequality between the rich and poor risked undermining gains made in other countries of the region.

While India has made steady progress in recent years, it’s “not nearly enough,” said UNICEF regional director Daniel Toole, calling on the government to invest significantly more money on health services.

Officials from India’s Health Ministry and the Women and Child Welfare Ministry were not immediately available for comment.

Fuck me — what a surprise.

In 2006, the last year for which there are full figures, some 2.1 million children under 5, or 76 children per 1,000 live births, died in India, the report said.

Much of this was caused by rampant malnutrition among mothers and children and resources not reaching the poorest segments of the population, it said.

Basic solutions like providing trained midwives or doctors — currently only present at about 30 percent of births — or information on caring for newborn, like keeping them warm, could make a big difference, said Mario Babille, UNICEF’s head of health care in India.

Socialise the costs, privatise the profits, reduce welfare. Capitalism kills. It’s not fucking complicated like.

To change the world, we must interpret it correctly.

A few days ago Normski posted on the recent ‘power sharing’ deal made in Zimbabwe between the corrupt, murderous, evil scumbag and all-round tosser Mugabe and his henchmen, and the MDC opposition … “both dawn and deception: dawn in the eyes of the MDC and deception by Mugabe. We shall see.”

It seems that South Africa’s TU Federation isn’t too enamoured of the deal either:

South Africa’s trade union federation COSATU has said the deal signed on Monday by Zimbabwe’s political rivals ‘marks a dangerous spread of the Kenyan virus,’ that sends a message to dictators that they can defy the will of the people.

…

A similarly violent situation in post election Kenya saw a government of national unity being formed – a government that the Zimbabwean power sharing deal has been widely compared to.

COSATU said in a statement on Wednesday that the signed agreement marks a retreat from the principles that the African Union and SADC are supposed to uphold, and a ‘return to the bad traditions of the Organisation of African Unity, that sacrificed the interests of the people to protect dictators.’

…

COSATU’s national spokesperson, Patrick Craven told Newsreel on Wednesday that it is important that Zimbabweans ‘are the judges of the deal,’ but added that the federation is gravely concerned that certain demands have not been met. Craven explained that the deal ‘does not reflect the March elections’ in that the MDC has a ‘more junior role to that of ZANU PF.’ He also expressed concern that a ‘draconian legislation is still in force,’ which could see opposition leaders remain targets of violence and arrest.

Craven argued that these concerns are based on the demands made by civil society, and said at the ‘heart of our worries’ is that the public will is still being ignored. He said this sets a bad precedent for the future of the Zimbabwean government, as the will of the people urgently needs to be enforced. Craven added that Kenya, with its government of national unity, ‘set a very bad example’ in that there is a ‘shifting back’ to a situation where African leaders can turn their backs on atrocities being committed in their neighboring countries.

COSATU also said in Wednesday’s statement that it would wait for the go ahead from the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions before continuing with the proposed programme of boycotts, saying ‘if they ask us to proceed we shall do so.’ The trade union federation had organised a mass boycott of goods headed for Zimbabwe as a form of protest against Mugabe’s continued term as President after the run-off election in June.

Maybe COSATU are colonialist imperialists and running dog reactionary lackeys or sumfink? Or not.

Last night CBC Radio, on the nationally broadcast news program As It Happens, featured a debate between Terry Glavin and his member of parliament, Denise Savoie (NDP). The topic was Canada’s mission in Afghanistan, and the NDP’s desire to leave the Afghans to the mercies of the Taliban. Audio here.

Damien Hirst gets so buried under hype - his own and other people’s - that it is sometimes difficult to remember that he is just an artist. . - Simon Morley

I have nothing much more of value to say than I have said before about an artist of nothing much value. Except money, of course. And how safe is yours nowadays? Best bank on Damien Hirst then.

There was once a footballer called Ronnie Radford who played for non-league Hereford in the early 70s. Hereford beat Newcastle United in the Cup on a rainy day with a great thirty yard strike from Radford that was caught on film by the BBC. It has been replayed a thousand times since.

Hirst’s art is a little like that. One big shark, then loads of replays, plus a few fribbles. A kind of diamond-encrusted Hereford United.

But there’s a difference. Because Hirst, unlike Radford, had genius, you see. How do I know? Because so many fine, upstanding people have told me so. Nick Serota told me, Norman Rosenthal told me (”Rosenthal is a big friend of Hirst’s”) and, most important of all, Charles Saatchi told me by putting his money where his mouth is. Because who knows what any art is worth unless somebody puts their money where their mouth is.

But money is not quite enough. After all, Saddam Hussein, paid his Boy’s Own-meets-Playboy style artists very well. Saddam’s mouth never found the ear of those who matter in the long run.

Who matters? is the question. How do we know that any art is good? There is little that is objective about aesthetic value, especially visual art that deals in unique objects as commodities, or multiple objects with some limited direct underwritten relation to a single unique object.

Walter Benjamin used the term aura to refer to such works of art. The aura did not reside in the objects, per se, but in whatever external factors made it numinous, turned into a cult. He thought the age of mechanical reproduction would destroy that notion, emancipate it “from its parasitical dependence on ritual”.

Wrong. Wrong, alas.

Hirst’s art is full frontal cult, 99% aura, the great ripe fruit of capitalism. Not “the aestheticisation of politics” (Benjamin) but the politicisation - and capitalisation - of aesthetics. It is the credit that does not get crunched.

The discovery of the power of credit in terms of ‘right’ opinion and publicity coincided with the rise of neo-liberal economics. Art history, according to this account, is not a spiritual force that develops along evolutionary lines as Modernism thought it might be, but is what you say it is. That is if you have a mouth full of noise and money.

It is exciting seeing shares rise, house-prices rise, credit surfing the waves. It is exciting watching the Hirst phenomenon. The more excitement the bigger aura, the greater the confidence in Hirsts. People get a kick from it. They can hardly tell the kick they get from looking at a piece of Hirst from the kick of simply knowing about its excitement. The two wash together. Blithering idiots like Janet Street-Porter (I don’t get offended by much, but she does it for me) are addicted to surfing the waves. Surf addicts. Aura addicts. It makes them feel cool. They feel so cool they forget they are idiots.

Hirst money is cool money. It’s fun money. He is a national treasure, a music-hall artiste. But the treasure is other people’s sweat. The music-hall is a whispering gallery papered with money. And it’s not that different from Saddam really.

I am not putting up yet another image by Hirst. Here’s Ronnie Radford’s goal instead.

The latest doings by Comrade Hitchens is from Vanity Fair — in which he …

“charts the magazine’s omnivorous yet discriminating sensibility, in which personality, style, and wit meet the grittier issues of the day.”

Honest.

Dude looking all omnivorous yet discriminating in his sensibility, in which personality, style, and wit meet the grittier issues of the day.

All to do with the publication of Vanity Fair, The Portraits: A Century of Iconic Images, and a touring show that opens this month at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (a slideshow is included via a link over at VF). So there you go. Here it all is

And … this time from The Atlantic ‘Books’ section – Hitchens on Indignation by Philip Roth

“Whenever anyone says to me, ‘Oh it must be so romantic being a Gypsy,’ I say, ‘What’s romantic about being spat at?’”

Louise Doughty writes on growing anti-Roma racism here.

The Russians have put on a window display:

The display, at The Central Museum of Armed Forces, displays weapons, uniforms and personal possessions belonging to Georgian soldiers killed or wounded during the fighting along with graphic photographs of the burnt and mutilated bodies of dead Georgian soldiers.

A museum guide, who was showing a group of Russians around the exhibit, paused at a display showing the personal photos of a dead Georgian soldier. One of them showed him having dinner with relatives, another had him in a comradely pose with a black man.

“Look, here’s one of the Georgian soldiers with a black-skinned man, an African,” said the guide. “We all know that there are a lot of Africans in the US Army, this was probably one of his instructors.”
[…]
In a Soviet-style touch, there are more than a dozen photographs of President Dmitry Medvedev, and an array of his speeches and orders to the military during the conflict. A timetable of the war leaves out several important events. There is also a distinctly anti-Western tone to the exhibition, with several pieces of “Nato” equipment and army clothing on display, and a list of which Western countries had armed Georgia.