The British Failure

Quotation:

On December 30 an editorial in London’s Sunday Times spluttered:

After more than four decades in the EU we are in danger of persuading ourselves that we have forgotten how to run the country by ourselves. A people who within living memory governed a quarter of the world’s land area and a fifth of its population is surely capable of governing itself without Brussels.

From the review by Hari Kunzru (NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, February 21, 2019)  of

Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain by Fintan O’Toole.

 

 

 

Britain and the Brexitiers

Why Britain Needs Its Own Mueller

Carole Cadwalladr,  NYRB, NYRDaily November 16, 2018  

A very interesting article, reveealing some hidden backgrounds on the Brexit-Connections with the USA und Russia. 

Recommended Reading!

Brexit ensures thralldom

From Bulldog to Lapdog: Rather Than Liberation, Brexit has Ensured Thralldom

by Luke O'Brien, COUNTERPUNCH, October 4, 2018

Après nous le déluge
– The capitalist mantra, according to Karl Marx

The peculiarities of nations, good and bad, tend to reflect the temperaments and qualities of their peoples. As Plato remarked, “where else would they have come from?”
– Morris Berman

Britain’s reputation as a country of consequence is long overdue revision. It clings to the global core — as liberals cling to their failing institutions — by flaunting leaky WMDs, acting as the US’s representative within the EU, and being one of the world’s most corrupt financial centres. The last of those is so extreme that the Mafia expert Roberto Saviano has claimed it is numero uno in this shady running.

Read on at COUNTERPUNCH

The Dead Men Society

Old men, experienced, mature and war oriented, orchestrate war, and the masses follow willingly. Quite different to the cultural concept of "Dead Poets Society" they do not indulge in art, but in destruction, annihilation. War is not only a big business. War is the fulfillment of their deep lying drives: to strike, to kill, to conquer, to reign by war.

After the attacks by France, the United Kingdom, and the US against Syria, which were based on the unproven assertions, that the Assad-Regime had employed once again chemical weapons against its own people. In rapid speed the vassals and satelite states of the US acknowledged this "fact" - without questioning the credibility of the power who notoriously used and uses desinformation and fabricated propaganda to cover their actions. The official program is: believe it. Believe it, as we believed the facts about weapons of mass destruction by Saddam Hussein, the most prominent falsity of the US.
If the credibility of the embedded mass media is questioned, the critics are denounced as Anti-semitic war mongers, as stupid American haters, as agents of Moscow. "Lügenpresse" ist wrong by the simple fact that many of the Right or extreme Right share this view. No, the embedded press is right and correct, the tasks of the US are necessary and human, Israel is a democracy and not to be criticized - unless one is an Anti-semite, a Neonazi or agent of Moscow.

This simple world view justifies any action. "Any" includes any form of war. The right is with the power and the power is with the US. Join in or be destroyed, put out of action, of life, of future because the future is with the US. The "friends" of the US are eager to play their part in this war game, especially Great Britain and France. The Germans, these re-educated non-people built by non-persons, leave it by words so far, but underwrite any action in the name of dignity and freedom. They have learned their lessons and have converted into dogs, who listen to their master's voice, and who lick their boots.

If one consults the quality press in Germany or Switzerland, one doesn't finde one critical question oder comment on the maneuver which coins the Western politics. The situation in the UK or US is almost the same; but at least some media show a kind of independence and display criticism.

Theresa May faces anger over Syria raids as Trump declares ‘mission accomplished’

UK opposition leaders insist that parliament should have been consulted before airstrikes 

 

Toby Helm, Martin Chulov, Sabrina Siddiqui and Michael Savage

THE GUARDIAN, Sat 14 Apr 2018 20.57 BST 

 

John (“Bomb Iran”) Bolton, the New Warmonger in the White House

By Robin Wright

NEW YORKER, March 23, 2018

American Air Strikes in Syria Do Nothing to Further Justice for the Victims of the Attack on Douma

There is no legal justification for the current US troop presence in Syria, let alone additional air strikes.

By Phyllis Bennis
THE NATION, April 13, 2018

John Bolton’s Extremism Is Perfectly Aligned With the Most Bellicose Israeli Policies

Whether he consciously puts Israel’s interests first or whether he believes they are identical to US interests doesn’t really matter—the outcome is the same.

By Mairav Zonszein

THE NATION, April 13, 2018

(Even THE NATION follows the "common" language of the Syrian chemical weapon attac but questions the context by highlighting some background aspects.)

The only political magazine that is clear and outspoken in their reporting and judgements remains COUNTERPUNCH, where the Israel lobby hasn't won her hateful influence, where the usual embedded journalism is countered.

See some articles from the weekend-edition:

Weekend Edition
April 13, 2018
Friday - Sunday:

 

Patrick Cockburn

Big Noise: Apocalyptic Tweets, Limited Strikes

Stanley L. Cohen

When Zionism Rubs Up Against Reality

Mel Goodman

Trump’s First Big Test: a Crisis for All of Us

 

 

 

Nukes and the Global Schism

Nukes and the Global Schism
Robert Koehler, Counterpunch, July 14, 2017

The United States boycotted the U.N. negotiations to ban — everywhere across Planet Earth — nuclear weapons. So did eight other countries. Guess which ones?

The international debate over this historic treaty, which became reality a week ago by a margin of 122 to 1, revealed how deeply split the nations of the world are — not by borders or language or religion or political ideology or control of wealth, but by possession of nuclear weapons and the accompanying belief in their absolute necessity for national security, despite the absolute insecurity they inflict on the whole planet.

Non-Book Book

The Rise of the Non-Book Book

Alice Spawls 6 April 2016, LRB Blog

 

455. Geburtstag von Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon, 1. Viscount St. Albans, 1. Baron Verulam (Baron Baco von Verulam; lat. Baco oder Baconus de Verulamio; * 22. Januar 1561 in London; † 9. April 1626 in Highgate) war ein englischer Philosoph, Staatsmann und als Wissenschaftler Wegbereiter des Empirismus.

Wikipedia

Abbildung aus Wikipedia

Concerning the myth of media variety and openness in Britain

Great Britain entertains - some say suffers from - one of the extremest media concentration in the Western world and proves thereby a kind of Gleichschaltung which is worrying for a society which sees herself as democracy.

Read, as one more example, the article by Paul Myerscough in the issue 37/20 of the LONDON  REVIEW OF BOOKS, which is freely accessible:

Paul Myerscough
Corbyn in the Media


Letters concerning Paul Myerscough's article "Corbyn in the Media":

Paul Myerscough refers to the BBC’s ‘dominant role in people’s reception of news and commentary’ (LRB, 22 October). The actual figures demonstrating that dominance are startling. Using data published by Ofcom and the official measurers of TV, radio and newspaper consumption, I have calculated that the average UK adult consumes 56.7 minutes of news and current affairs each day from UK sources; 39 per cent derives from TV, 29 per cent from radio, 18 per cent from newspapers and 14 per cent from online news sites. Because of the BBC’s super-dominance in TV and radio news and current affairs consumption (75 per cent and 85 per cent shares respectively), and its strong position online (nearly 50 per cent), the BBC’s overall share is 60.6 per cent, compared with 6.3 per cent for Murdoch’s newspapers, 5.7 per cent for the Mail group, 5.1 per cent for ITV, 4.2 per cent for Independent Radio News, 3.2 per cent for Sky News, 2.8 per cent for the Guardian (thanks to its online readership), 2.6 per cent for the Mirror group, 2.4 per cent for the Telegraph group, 2.4 per cent for the Express group and 1.2 per cent for Channel 4. No other provider has more than 1 per cent.

If any commercial organisation commanded a 60 per cent share of news consumption, there would be a national outcry, and demands that the organisation be broken up. But the BBC’s dominance – which has been growing steadily, as newspaper circulation declines and ITV News loses audience share – doesn’t merit even a mention in the government’s Green Paper on the BBC’s future. Of course if Myerscough is right that ‘the BBC’s institutional bias’ is now effectively in the Tories’ favour, that might explain their indifference to the situation. Meanwhile, the left seems primarily concerned about which of the newspaper moguls has a larger share of a disappearing readership.

David Elstein
London SW15

Like Paul Myerscough, I was struck by the different way the leaders’ speeches to the Labour and Tory Conferences were treated by BBC2’s Daily Politics. The studio guest for Cameron’s speech was Michael Heseltine; for Corbyn’s it was Lance Price, Alastair Campbell’s second in command as Blair’s spin doctor, and for several years now quite removed from the UK political arena running a French B&B. I complained to the BBC and received this reply:

    As well as being a highly experienced journalist and political commentator, Lance Price has held significant roles in the past for the Labour Party, most notably being their director of communications and overseeing their 2001 general election campaign. With this in mind, we felt he was well placed to give an informed analysis of Jeremy Corbyn’s conference speech. Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader was controversial, even within the party itself. Mr Price clearly stated on the programme that he was ‘not a fan’ of Mr Corbyn’s leadership, but we believe it was important to hear his views, as they represent a significant strand of thinking within the party and among Labour supporters.

It seems especially worrying that the BBC justifies the invitation to Price on the basis that Corbyn’s election was ‘controversial’. Is this not a case of the BBC positioning itself as arbiter of who is fit to be elected as Labour leader, just after record numbers of party members had voted for him?

Rosie Brocklehurst
St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex

Paul Myerscough uses two tropes which are increasingly common among Corbynistas. First, he identifies scepticism as being about an inability to value qualities beyond ‘seeming plausible’. There has been plenty of that, it’s true, and the voters are obviously a shallow lot for being influenced by it, almost as bad as the BBC for covering it. But he discounts the possibility that, for many on the left, the main problem with Corbyn is simply that they disagree with him, and feel that many of his views actually are – as opposed to merely portrayed as – some combination of simplistic, populist, outmoded and distasteful.

Second, Myerscough reserves special disappointment for the Guardian’s new editor and her ‘cadre of electoral realists’. Realism? Could anything be worse? Apparently it could, in this case ‘disdaining’ (i.e. disagreeing with) Corbyn’s supporters and alienating potential readers. Another view might be that the cadre represents the views of people like me who just want the more progressive party to have a chance. It’s hard not to think of the Scottish referendum, where questioning of the Yes campaign risked the most scornful charge of all: lack of optimism.

While Labour are having what I like to think of as a holiday from the voters, the Tories are trying to grab the centre ground. The SNP still appears to be the go-to party for genuine opposition to the government, and its level of organisation stands in sharp contrast to Corbyn’s flat-footed start. Maybe a hopeless media operation is another element of the new politics. Who knows? What is clear is that excuses for the next election are piling up early.

John McGowan
Lewes, East Sussex

225. Todestag von Adam Smith

Adam Smith, FRSA (getauft am 5. Junijul./ 16. Juni 1723greg. in Kirkcaldy, Grafschaft Fife, Schottland; † 17. Juli 1790 in Edinburgh) war ein schottischer Moralphilosoph, Aufklärer und gilt als Begründer der klassischen Nationalökonomie und der Freien Marktwirtschaft.

Wikipedia

Abbildung aus Wikipedia

The future of libraries

The future of libraries – no books, no knowledge
Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, SPIKED, 15 December 2014

The Carnegie UK Trust has published its final report in its Enterprising Libraries series, a project aimed at making libraries more fundable by having them offer services that promote ‘economic wellbeing’. The report, Beyond Books: The Role of Enterprising Libraries in Promoting Economic Wellbeing, is the culmination of this project and offers recommendations for best practice.

British Academia

We need to open the academic mind
Getting rid of the the Research Excellence Framework would be a good start.
Joanna Williams, SPIKED, 15 December 2014

*

The “program of obedience” and conformity exists in many European states and demonstrates the downfall of higher education. It goes along with the conservative or even reactionary mood of our societies.

John Berger 88th birthday

Woraus der Mensch Hoffnung schöpft: eine Begegnung mit dem Schriftsteller John Berger vor seinem 88. Geburtstag.

John Berger - Der Philosoph der einfachen Dinge
Pepe Egger, Der Tgesspiegel, 29.10.2014


John Peter Berger (born 5 November 1926) is an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet. His novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to a BBC series, is often used as a university text.

Wikipedia
Photography from Wikipedia

Tackling the reading gap

Overworked teachers and dumbed-down libraries are behind Britain's shocking literacy levels.
Joanna Williams, SPIKED, 12 Sept. 2014

Interesting article with links to some documents and reports.

Also of interest:

Kathryn Ecclestone and Dennis Hayes: The dangerous rise of therapeutic education

Kathryn Ecclestone is professor of post-compulsory education and Dennis Hayes is a visiting professor in the Westminster Institute of Education at Oxford Brookes University, England. 
The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education, published by Routledge.
Spiked 2008

Ronald D. Laings 25. Todestag

Ronald David Laing (* 7. Oktober 1927 in Glasgow, Schottland; † 23. August 1989 in St. Tropez, Frankreich) war ein britischer Psychiater und einer der Gründer der antipsychiatrischen Bewegung.

Wikipedia

Bruce Chatwin's 25th day of death

Charles Bruce Chatwin (13 May 1940 – 18 January 1989) was an English novelist and travel writer. He won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel On the Black Hill (1982). Married and bisexual, he was one of the first prominent men in Britain known to have contracted HIV and died of AIDS, although he hid the facts of his illness.

 

Wikipedia

 

 

 

Henry Green's 40. Todestag

Henry Green (* 29. Oktober 1905 in Tewkesbury; † 13. Dezember 1973 in London; eigentlich Henry Vincent Yorke) war ein englischer Romanautor.

Wikipedia

300th commemoration of Laurence Sterne's death

Laurence Sterne (24 November 1713 – 18 March 1768) was an Anglo-Irish novelist and an Anglican clergyman. He is best known for his novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy; but he also published many sermons, wrote memoirs, and was involved in local politics. Sterne died in London after years of fighting consumption.

Wikipedia

Picture from Wikipedia (Painting 1760, National Portrait Gallery, London: NPG 5019)

50th commemoration of C. S. Lewis' death

Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963), commonly called C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, poet, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian, and Christian apologist. Born in Belfast, Ireland, he held academic positions at both Oxford University (Magdalen College), 1925–1954, and Cambridge University (Magdalene College), 1954–1963. He is best known both for his fictional work, especially The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Space Trilogy, and for his non-fiction Christian apologetics, such as Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem of Pain.

Wikipedia

Aldous Huxleys 50. Todestag

Aldous Leonard Huxley (* 26. Juli 1894 in Godalming, Surrey (England); † 22. November 1963 in Los Angeles) war ein britischer Schriftsteller, der in die Vereinigten Staaten auswanderte. Er entstammt väterlicherseits der Familie Huxley, die mehrere Wissenschaftler hervorbrachte, und mütterlicherseits der britischen Intellektuellenfamilie Arnold; der Schriftsteller und Kulturkritiker Matthew Arnold war ein Großonkel Huxleys.

Wikipedia

Abbildung aus Wikipedia

Wilfred Owen's 95th anniversary of death

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC (18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918) was an English poet and soldier, one of the leading poets of the First World War. His shocking, realistic war poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare was heavily influenced by his friend Siegfried Sassoon and stood in stark contrast to both the public perception of war at the time, and to the confidently patriotic verse written by earlier war poets such as Rupert Brooke. Among his best-known works – most of which were published posthumously – are "Dulce et Decorum Est", "Insensibility", "Anthem for Doomed Youth", "Futility" and "Strange Meeting".

Wikipedia

Photograph from Wikipedia