The Sound of Grey

They slash your pension,
cut your wages,
pass massive handouts to the rich.
The contemporary poet's response:
sit at home, cogitate,
meditate, reminisce, contemplate,
celebrate the good in life.
This poet is so thankful,
bowing, scraping,
so grateful to authority.

Voluntary redundancies they call it
as they devour your livelihood, sack you,
deprive you of the means to life.
The poet then provides a solitary prayer;
of an individual alone and weak;
his godless prayer, comforting and pathetic.
Instructing you to rot in your miserable abode
contemplating a greater,
non-existent, experience.
All along inviting you to personify your misery.

They cut your social services,
slash your benefits,
condemn millions to the scrap heap before their time.
Then the poet is so safely defiant, so lofty,
all within such contrite bounds.
The mildest of a demure that challenges nothing.
Hoping both torturer and victim will both find comfort,
such solace in those useless words.
No matter, says the poet,
sit at home, read these lines of doggerel,
all jarring, phony,
overflowing with comfortless rhymes.

Don't personify:
rebel, resist, protest, organise,
above all organise – organise.

A Royal Day Out

Today has been the highlight of the royal jubilee. So let us, for a moment, pause and consider some of today's activities. The actions that are supposed to prove how much superior those royals are to us common drones. How intellectually topnotch royals are and how rightfully they administer the herd.

First off there was a religious service. We, the commoners, the ordinary folk watched someone watching a church service. It's not even as if they are involved in performing the service, that presumably would be to intellectually demanding even for the royals, no it's watching someone suppressing another yawn, seeing if the boredom shows. To cope with these strenuous demands involves some special breeding. If you headed down to your local church and did something similar, say stood down one side admiring the congregation, then they, the congregation, would probably be very polite: but they'd think you were insane. But royals can achieve this exploit without appearing loopy.

After the service it was grubs up. It's a dinner and a very special meal at that. You see us common mortals cannot eat alone, not unsupervised at any rate, we need someone in charge to guide us. But royals, you know what they can do, they can perform this monumental task all on their own. They can pick up both the knife and the fork, unaided by courtiers, cut their fodder and shove it into their gobs all unaided. And no mess spilt all over the floor and landing on the cat. So on this jubilee day we are allowed a prize demonstration of their superiority we, the dregs, get to see a demonstration of eating. And all unaided by any safety net.

The Deceit of Grandeur

The festering corruption of deception
Seeps through every pore
Stinking, contaminating the regime
Stifling creativity, freedom, comradeship
Luxuriating in the surrounding poverty

The pestilence lives on us
Feeds on us
Devours us
It becomes satiated to a sicking blubber
Still demanding more
Ever demanding etiquette
Turning all it excretes upon infectious

The obsequious blabbers scurrying
Followers of the counterfeit magnificence
Gorging themselves
On yet more human flesh
On our very minds
Occasionally the vermin look upwards
All fawning, sycophantic, toadying
Towards the self serving avarice of formality

Celebrating Spencer Perceval!

A curious anniversary is fast approaching associated with the British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval. The anniversary is of his demise on 11 May 1812. While Perceval represented a hated Tory government he did at least perform one intriguing function: being assassinated in office. So I wonder what's the best way of celebrating this momentous event? After all we do have another hated Tory government.

Book Review – Tony Cliff: A Marxist for His Time by Ian Birchall

I Joined the Socialist Workers Party in 1977. The first properly socialist book I read (as opposed to newspaper or journal article) was Ian Birchall's Workers Against the Monolith. This book, written in 1973, was a discussion of the Communist Parties, primarily European, since the Second World War. A couple of years ago I reread this work to see how well it stood up to the intervening years. Of course much has changed within the CPs over this period. Some have all but disappeared; for example the British CP where all that remains are a few squabbling fragments. All have seriously declined and what little remains is largely indistinguishable from labour or social democratic parties. So I was pleasantly surprised to find much of Birchall's thesis stood up reasonably well to the test of time; albeit on a vanishing issue for socialists.

In practical terms I drifted away from the SWP in the mid 1990s. There was no grand haemorrhage or bickering, simply inactivity. Though I still pretty much agree with these politics, read their publications, and contemplate getting involved again – in the near future but not right now. So it was of interest to read Birchall's latest book on the principle founder of this tradition.

Tony Cliff: A Marxist for His Time is so much more than a celebrity biography; the kind stacked high on supermarket shelves and disposed of alongside the remnants of that ready meal. It takes on many big issues. From the class nature of Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, through the post war boom and subsequent decline, along the sixties rising tide of rebellion and its subsequent downturn. In fact much of post war history is touched upon in some way.

During the early period Cliff and the International Socialists (later the Socialist Workers Party – IS/SWP) got three big questions, broadly speaking, right. Three questions that developed Marxism and updated its power in explaining the world. The first issue was the State Capitalist nature of Russia and the other so called 'communist' states. Most critics of the theory view it in ahistorical terms. But it only makes sense when you view capitalism as a world system, a system of interconnecting rivalries, and this system had developed to a certain point. The theory explained the how state could act as a unit of capitalist development. So a strangled revolution, as in Russia by Stalin, or a military takeover, as in Eastern Europe, could lead to state economies competing on the world stage. In turn this explained the internal workings of these systems. This understanding made sense of events like the 1956 Hungarian uprising, the Prague Spring, and later, the collapse of 'communism'.

Iraq: the US is gone but not forgotten

So the US is finally out of Iraq – well sort of, I guess they still have some mechanism for meddling. And apparently it's been such a success. You only have to utter the 'S' word in this context to realise the horrific joke. Then there's the 1 trillion dollars the US spent. You could have done seriously good work in Iraq with that kind of money. But no spend it on destruction.

What I really want to comment on is most of the press coverage. Last night on the BBC Newsnight program we saw a typical example.

Want to cover US troops leaving Iraq? Well, it's obvious, you travel to a US army base somewhere in the United States where Obama is speaking. Of course.

Has anyone looked at a map; seen where American is; where Iraq is?

Want political comment on the US withdrawal? Well, it's obvious, interview Washington insiders and pundits.

But what you should never do, never ever do, and something that would never cross the narrow pathetic mind of a Newsnight 'journalist' in get the opinion of an Iraqi. What! Allow someone who has to live with the consequences, and is from the region, to have an opinion. Never; it's not allowed. Not a single person from the region was interviewed; not one single person of any political persuasion. It was all white skins, American accents, and safe Washington advisers or military, well, lets be honest, criminals, murderers. Anyone with the wrong skin colour or accent is simply not allowed have an opinion or, worst of all, be seen as some kind of expert.

This is tantamount to racism on the part of Newsnight.

Book Review – Dear God by Eamonn McCann

Eamonn McCann takes us through a wild romp describing the shear insanity of religion. Mostly he targets Catholicism in his home country of Ireland; but, along the way, he also manages a few detours to other parts of the world. What's described here, obviously, has its analogues for other religions and countries; there's nothing that special or original about Christianity or Catholicism. No religion has a monopoly on lunacy.

Dear God: the price of religion in Ireland is pieced together from snippets of journalism McCann has produced over the years. This does give the book a sense of immediacy and of dealing with hot political topics. However it also results in some deeper issues being overlooked. For a source for some of the articles see here where the story is continued and other, non religious topics, are also discussed.

So much of religion is bizarre. It almost appears the more weird the ideas espoused the more this demonstrates commitment to some lunatic faith. If you're totally wacko then you're a real believer and to be honoured. In itself this may not matter and could be dismissed as a few harmless cranks. But many of these cranks have quite offensive political ideas. Most of those lionised by the church recently have been extreme right wingers and some downright fascists. Quite how embracing former Nazi sympathisers and making them venerated saints enhances the church is hard to explain. It's not the kind of advice any reputable PR company would give to its corporate clients trying to make its way in the modern world.

Marxism is not just about poking fun at religion; entertaining as that can be. Equally, if not more, important is explaining why so many still believe. After all religion fails so many tests: logic, rationality, the remotest connection with the historical record. So poor is the connection with reality that some theologians suggest treating religious texts more as fables with a profound moral meaning. If that's true then why believe one set of fables over another. Alas, this book does not really go into this question of the persistence of religion. A useful starting point might be found here (and by someone with similar ideas to those of McCann).

All religions force feed their followers some form of family values. Some of the most moving sections here show how Catholicism has torn many families apart. The gamut runs from everyday oppression and subdued violence of religious run children's care homes through to the abuse, both physical and sexual of children. And along the way we find priests cohabiting or using their position to gain sexual favours. With all this immorality you wonder how many Christian types really believe in God or eternal punishment in the afterlife. In all of these cases little concern has been given to professed family values and indeed the real life families of the victims.

Have these relig-idiots no shame? The answer is a resounding: NO. Those who practice institutional religion never themselves act as if the religion they preach is supposed to be true; or is something they themselves should follow; it's always something to control the lower orders. And above all protecting the institution of the church counts above everything; there's a lot of power and prestige at stake, and often cold hard cash as well. Doctrine and humanity are well down the list.

This book is a great read with some wonderful descriptions. (And just the occasional klutzy sentence, every half dozen pages or so, where McCann seems to have become carried away by his bravura style. Or is it that, as the book is made up mostly of journalism, there has been little editing applied.) A book well worth digging out.

Book Review – The Crisis: Social Contract or Socialism by Tony Cliff

This book brings back a certain nostalgia. Long, long ago in 1977 I had just joined the Socialist Workers Party and, while not the absolute first, this was among the first batch of socialist books I read. Even then it had been superseded by Paul Foot's Why You Should be a Socialist, this being more a popular introduction to the SWP's politics. However the Cliff work was a longer and more detailed explanation and I found it more interesting. Curiously, even for the few connoisseurs of this political brand, it still appears to be one of Cliff's less well known works. For example it does not appear on the main online listing of Tony Cliff's works.

I have been outside the SWP for a number of years now, though I did not leave due to any grand political dispute. Rather it was simply the juggling of pressures of work, education and more that meant something had to give. So it was the SWP that had to make space for the rest of my life and I drifted away, without, it must be said, any great acrimony. Having been outside that organisation for some time now it's curious to discover how well this book – which influenced me so much – has stood up to the intervening years.

They Really Do Not Get It

David Cameron has spent more than £680,000 of public money renovating Downing Street in the year that his government inflicted the biggest ever spending cuts across the public sector.

This story in the Guardian shows show how they really do not get it, they really do not care about how things look. When every else is having cuts in services and losing out on wages due to inflation they can just spend as they like.

And given the likes of Cameron el al sing so loudly about waste in the state sector it's so amazing the blatant hypocrisy.

Fighting Web Censorship

So the US government has seen the light and the state department is spending $30m (£18m) in fighting internet censorship. Of course this only applies to countries like China and Iran. Sounds great at first but in no way would I trust any technology developed by the US government.

Meanwhile back at WikiLeaks and on the same day!

A Parable

A man, let's call him Tony, has committed war crimes in Pakistan. He now lives just outside Washington in a expensive house.

The Pakistan authorities desperately want Tony and have placed a bounty on his head. It has become a point of honour for their government so they call on their military. They send a group of helicopters to the United States without even informing the US government.

Landing outside Tony's mansion the Pakistan military engage in a firefight. Tony along with Tony's wife – we shall call her Cherie – are killed along with a number of US civilians. The Pakistan military escape in their helicopters, though one was lost due to a 'technical failure' and was left burning on the freeway. Over the sea the Pakistan military dump Tony's body.

Unofficially it was considered better to kill Tony rather then have him stand trial. After all he may have used it as a propaganda platform or exposed unsavoury past dealing with the Pakistani military.

Back in Islamabad there is dancing in the streets and shouts of “Pakistan, Pakistan.”

What do you think the US government and media would make of this unlikely scenario. No matter what you might think of Tony and his crimes would it not be viewed as an act of aggression, an act of war, by Pakistan? So why, in the real world, all the hypocrisy?