The Ministry of Truth

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

Referring to the occupation, Chris Cobb, the chief operating officer of the University of London said: “This was a disgraceful and aggressive act, which placed the safety of our staff at risk. The university will always support peaceful and legitimate protest, but invading our working environment and blocking fire escapes is potentially life threatening and plays no part in democratic dissent. The university will never under any circumstances enter into a dialogue with any group or group of individuals who adopt this approach.”

yep a blocked fire escape can be lethal but not as immediate and brutal as the university staff and the plod [and security contractors]

dreadful silence by academics after several such reports in the press

the students are getting the shambles kicked out of them all over the place and no one seems to be supporting them .... never mind Ossy and the great pension Con

[Serial_Apologist]

Plus ca change - I thought this thread must be referring to some programme about the LSE occupation of May '68!

Now, where DIDN'T I hear about this on the news???

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

that the plod are thugs is not news but it is deeply regrettable now

A police spokesman said: "We have received no complaints in relation to police action at Wednesday's protest."

wow now that is chutzpah

[Serial_Apologist]

that the plod are thugs is not news but it is deeply regrettable now



wow now that is chutzpah

In my day we would have used the situation to explain the important lesson that the state is not neutral, and that it makes no difference to your skull whether you're a Trotskyite, an anarchist who believes in no government, or a liberal-minded believer in fair's fair.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

the inevitable consequence of commercialising universities is the battle to clear the space - risk and reputation management knows no fear in the corporate world .... private space, brand image is all, so violence comes ever nearer to the surface ... try photographing a modern precinct!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtLQbCdzBKo&feature=player_embedded

Ian Jack in today's Graun on privatisation of government

this article by David Graebner elucidates the relationship between bureaucracy, structural violence and stupidity [it has a remarkable relevance for the dumbing down and complaints handling process]

A former LAPD
officer turned sociologist (Cooper 1991) observed that the overwhelming majority of
those beaten by police turn out not to be guilty of any crime. “Cops don’t beat up
burglars”, he observed. The reason, he explained, is simple: the one thing most
guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to “define
the situation.” If what I’ve been saying is true this is just what we’d expect. The police
truncheon is precisely the point where the state’s bureaucratic imperative for imposing
simple administrative schema, and its monopoly of coercive force, come together. It only
makes sense then that bureaucratic violence should consist first and foremost of attacks
on those who insist on alternative schemas or interpretations. At the same time, if one
accepts Piaget’s famous definition of mature intelligence as the ability to coordinate
between multiple perspectives (or possible perspectives) one can see, here, precisely how
bureaucratic power, at the moment it turns to violence, becomes literally a form of
infantile stupidity.

i do feel that there is a war for our space and soul going on that no one is noticing very much ... and in this conflict lies the riposte to the right's propaganda that the left shirks patriotism ...
an old canard i can remember that fascist apologist Chapman Pincher making way back when ... i am not a patriot because my country, my space, my soul does not belong to me as an example of us; it all belongs to the toffs and gangsters still; it has not been stolen from us, it was never ours ... when it is i will love and cherish it

[ahinton]

the inevitable consequence of commercialising universities is the battle to clear the space - risk and reputation management knows no fear in the corporate world .... private space, brand image is all, so violence comes ever nearer to the surface ... try photographing a modern precinct!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtLQbCdzBKo&feature=player_embedded

Ian Jack in today's Graun on privatisation of government

This is old news, though, surely, isn't it? Whilst I suspect that Parliament itself will be among the last to go (i.e. after selling off HMT, HMRC, NHS, DWP and the rest), the possibility tht it will indeed be put out to competitive tender may not be entirely off limits (although what the Chinese would do with it I have no idea).

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

yes, old news, and no, new news ... it takes some time to boil the frog, we need to keep saying ouch ... and btw if it is truly old news its continued existence [plod brutality in the service of corporatist state manoeuvres] is an absolute disgrace and a shame on our passive heads for it

[Serial_Apologist]

the inevitable consequence of commercialising universities is the battle to clear the space - risk and reputation management knows no fear in the corporate world .... private space, brand image is all, so violence comes ever nearer to the surface ... try photographing a modern precinct!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtLQbCdzBKo&feature=player_embedded

Ian Jack in today's Graun on privatisation of government

this article by David Graebner elucidates the relationship between bureaucracy, structural violence and stupidity [it has a remarkable relevance for the dumbing down and complaints handling process]


i do feel that there is a war for our space and soul going on that no one is noticing very much ... and in this conflict lies the riposte to the right's propaganda that the left shirks patriotism ...
an old canard i can remember that fascist apologist Chapman Pincher making way back when ... i am not a patriot because my country, my space, my soul does not belong to me as an example of us; it all belongs to the toffs and gangsters still; it has not been stolen from us, it was never ours ... when it is i will love and cherish it

Or as Marx put it, the working class has no country. Hence the rationale for internationalism (as opposed to nationalism/patriotism) being that the real wealth-creators have more in common with their brothers and sisters overseas than with their national bourgeoisie. It's a good materialistic as much as moral basis for anti-racism.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

more old news

what gets me is the clever plod who tasered the suspect covered in petrol .... on a par with the lady who smoked whilst using an oxygen mask, presumably in both instances the surprise from the resulting fire was quite remarkable

[ahinton]

Or as Marx put it, the working class has no country.

One might ask how and in what particular ways such an assertion differs from one that ,ight alternatively seek to claim that "the country has no working class". I have long felt that the application of the term "working class" is gravely misleading in its tacit implication that its members supposedly have something in common besides the mere fact that they all work. The Queen works. Overpaid and overbonussed corporate CEOs work (well, some of them do, anyway!). The self-employed sole trader works. The expenses-fiddling MP works. The loca NHS GP works. The postal delivery person works (and I somehow suspect from his habitual tardiness that my regular one probably works harder than most - and not all for Royal Mail either); can it be credibly asserted that they all belong to the same "class", whatever that may be, simply on the grounds that, in their own different ways, they each "work"?

[Serial_Apologist]

Would "the proletariat" be OK with you, then?

[ahinton]

Would "the proletariat" be OK with you, then?

If you're asking me, I would answer that, whilst it might arguably seem somewhat better than "working class", it would remain far from satisfactory, not least because not only am I uncertain as to how you might seek to define what the term "proletariat" means to you in this or any other context but also because I cannot help but question how any term, whatever it might be, can necessarily hope realistically and credibly to link together as many people from many diffeent persuasions as you appear (if I undersand you correctly) to be trying to shoehorn into any single category.

[Serial_Apologist]

If you're asking me, I would answer that, whilst it might arguably seem somewhat better than "working class", it would remain far from satisfactory, not least because not only am I uncertain as to how you might seek to define what the term "proletariat" means to you in this or any other context but also because I cannot help but question how any term, whatever it might be, can necessarily hope realistically and credibly to link together as many people from many diffeent persuasions as you appear (if I undersand you correctly) to be trying to shoehorn into any single category.

I think it was Richard Barrett who came up with a straightforward definition for the working class, or somebody from the working class, along lines of one, or a group, who works for another, and receives payment for said work.

[Mr Pee]

I think it was Richard Barrett who came up with a straightforward definition for the working class, or somebody from the working class, along lines of one, or a group, who works for another, and receives payment for said work.

Well that covers everybody from bankers to bin-men.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

excluding the plutocrats yep lots of low paid proletarian bank workers Mr Pee

but the alienation i refer to is not economically determined; it is social [and i think, unlike marxists, that the social is the determinative structure - certainly of much of economic life]

walk through such space as you can find that is still public in the City of London and tell me how you think that sterile concrete and safety glass canal system they still charmingly refer to as streets reflects and human need other than dominance and control .... its very emptiness is the symbol of its victory; a uniformed jobsworth will pop out and these days taser you if you jabber in any polyglot kind of talk .... they only used to do that at the airports [i am making this up {not the airport} but it could be happening today and certainly tomorrow eh]

walk through any larger city market, Leicester is my current favourite but North End Road in London or Ashington in Northumberland were childhood prototypes, experience the polyglot miscellany, noise, muck, trade &c and feel in the midst of humanity and an emergent 'brit' imperial legacy that is demographic and migrant based [cf the last census data on self definitions]

we have , in our politics, ceded and granted power to organised groups of criminals to act unilaterally in their own interests in any sphere of our lives and to have their interests enforced in and by law and treaty ... and the plod, even the publicly paid enforcers have succumbed to the gangster interest ...