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Libya/Zimbabwe
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Message 1.Ìý
Posted by VoiceOfReason (U14405333) on Friday, 18th March 2011
The UN and the international community are now mobilising to provide help and support to the civilian population of Libya
The no fly zone inevitably means military as well as humanitarian action
The international community are also up in arms about the treatment of protesters in other Arab countries at the moment
My question is why no such action was mooted against the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe
The genocide of upwards of 20,000 in Matabeleland in the 80's and many other acts including the notorious Operation Murambatsvina were as if not more serious than the recent events in the Middle East/North Africa yet nothing was/has been done
Why? -
Message 2
Posted by bandick (U14360315) on Friday, 18th March 2011
It doesn’t float on a reservoir of oil…? -
Message 3
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 18th March 2011
Glencairn
I think that since the fall of Aparthied at least the outside world has tended to look to the South African leadership to deal with the SA situation..Perhaps with your SA connections you are more aware of the current situation in Zimbabwe.. It certainly has not been in the news very much since the whole business of negotiating some kind of cohabitation which allowed Morgan Sangourai and some of his party into office..
The Libyan situation has only been able to move forward because of the meeting of the Arab union last week-end, which made a formal request for the no fly zone- that David Cameron had foreseen as a possible necessity some time before.
And really only a meeting of African states under South African leadership (the African Saudi Arabia) really looks like being able to move things forward there.. But if your post assumes that there should be some connectivity between action in Libya and action over Zimbabwe, I believe that now that GB is not the monstrous global empire of your version of history- it is even more necessary than ever to work not only within our means- but also to avoid that danger of aspiring to be able to act as world policeman.
As for why things are being done now rather than in the past, I have argued on my 2011-1911 thread that we tend to imbue the time units around which we build human life with particular significance. George Osborne said on taking office that his was the generation that saw the Berlin Wall come down in 1989, and subsequently the spread of that popular demand for human rights right across Eastern Europe. This, I have suggested, repeats a pattern in which popular feeling amongst "the masses" looks towards the end of a century, and says "enough is enough". We will not let this situation go on into the next century- and the years 1989-2000 were truly remarkable- notably in South Africa and Ireland where tragic histories centures old turned a page.
Such things create hopes and expectations for the new century- millenium. And (as I have suggested in my piece "Bright New Dawns") there seems to be something of a pattern too in small and desperate groups early in the new century being prepared to risk all, paying with their lives in order to realise the hopes as soon as possible. This can go right back to the hopes of RC's on the accession of James VI/I in 1603, and the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. Perhaps Guy Fawkes was prepared to be Yorkshire's first suicide bomber.
Such small agitations may make a "big noise." Blowing up the Houses of Parliament with the King and all the Lords and Commoners in it. Or destroying the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre. I had many pupils who had relatives who normally worked in the Twin Towers- and there was a lot of anxiety. Unlike 1605 the plot was thwarted. But fortunately the 20,000 people who would normally have been there had not yet arrived.
But it looks very much like the hopes, and frustrated hopes of a new century tend to get down to the masses by the end of the first decade, when changes made and not made produce new tensions. As I wrote a few weeks ago there were some striking similarities between 1910 and 2010 and looked like being surprising similarities between 1911 and 2011.
With today's developments I was thinking of the Agadir Crisis of 1911 and the way that it looked like escalating into a major war, before the Kaiser backed down and diplomacy handled the situation. French hegemony over Morocco was one of the factors in that crisis, and I would suggest has been in this Libyan crisis. The French pride themselves on being able to understand the Muslim/Arab world better than the other Western Powers, and pride and appearance of dignity count for Arabs and other Moslems as much as for the French.. And I think that you are wrong to assume, which you seem to be implying, that military intervention can or will solve the situation.
I declaring an immediate cease-fire the Gaddafi Government throw the onus on the uprising also to cease-fire: and from there- and a position of stalemate- there will have to be negotiations which will actually need to be in the context of a whole new Arab world fit for this new Millennium.
If I may go back to the Imperial theme- surely what both Mugabe and Gadaffi,and Islamic fumdamentalism has had in common is the version of the history of Empire that you share, and the paramount need to side with the men of violence and etremism for whom the "West" was almost the anti-Christ as Protestant extremists used to think of the Papacy and its outreach. What we are seeing in the wave of 2011 is a popular demand from ordinary people to be part of the world that they have now become accustomed to accessing in this hi-tech virtual reality. So many in recent weeks have said "We just want to live as human beings".
Cass -
Message 4
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Friday, 18th March 2011
The Mugabe regime has been the subject of sanctions and Mugabe has been forced to appoint his rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, as his Prime Minister in a broad-based government. The main difference between Mugabe and Gadaffi however is the fact that Mugabe has been consistently protected and excused by his neighbours, notably South Africa and Namibia, which has precluded any military involvement by the Western Powers even if there had been a willingness to do so.
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Message 5
Posted by stalti (U14278018) on Friday, 18th March 2011
glencairn
dont even go there - i have been spitting blood since this has been mooted for the same reasons as u say Zimbabwe is a free zone apparently - why indeed
pol pot -sierra leone -somali - tieanammen square - chechyna - afghanistan before 911 etc etc
why Libya - is it because he has taken the p for years and supplied the ira and supported anyone against the usa- time to get our own back
whatever u think about ghadaffi he has held his ground and shown how to fight back - and succeed against a revolt of the people
he is the accepted leader of libya and has been for 40 yrs - why shouldnt he use maximum power against insurgents - we would for heavens sake - if they were al quaeda sponsored islamic fundamentalists who would we support
scenario - islamic militants take to the streets in saudia arabia to bring down the royal family - the SA army is on the streets killing protesters
what does barrack obama say !!
bets it not that innocent civilians are being killed
how many ways can u spell OIL
st -
Message 6
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 18th March 2011
Allan D
Exactly..
And is there not some kind of suggestion by the last two SA Presidents that Zimbabwe is now so weak and poor that Mugabe really has very little effective power left- the kind of power that he misused in those terrible years to which Glencairn referred..
It is perhaps also significant that under the leadership of Mandela and Tutu South Africa decided that truth and reconciliation rather more than war crimes and punishment was a more productive approach to building a new Africa.
I often think of my colleague who returned to Zimbabwe at its independence taking naturally his Zimbabwian wife, and his two teenage daughters (12 & 13) who came round to tea here before they went "home" to a home that they had never known, and already looked like being very different to South London.
Cass -
Message 7
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Friday, 18th March 2011
To get at Zimbabwe, you with have to fly over other countries most (With the exception of S A) are ruled by lesser version of the same kind of Ditactor, and unless the UN crosses the palms with silver, they are not going to roll over and let strange Air Forces fly planes across their lands. Then there is the matter od refueling. Again, unless money changes hands, there is only SA. Anywhere else and you will need troops on the ground to keep their base safe. (and to stop the locals borrowing anything not tied down.
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Message 8
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Friday, 18th March 2011
pol pot -sierra leone -somali - tieanammen square - chechyna - afghanistan before 911 etc etcÌý
Sierra Leone? We did intervene.
Somali? The USA intervened there too until Clinton pulled out.
Tienaman Square or Chechnya? Do you seriously think there is any military intervention against russia or China that doesn't end with casualty figures that make Iraq look like schollyard squabble?
why Libya Ìý
Because the politics are easy. The Libyan ambassador to the UN was the first to call for a no-fly resolution and the latest was called for by the arab league. This really is the simplest intervention in living memory. Which of Zimbabwe's neighbours were calling for action other than Botswana? The local despots all closed ranks behind him.
he is the accepted leader of libya Ìý
Not by a large slice of his people he's not.
how many ways can u spell OILÌý
Yet the west didn't intervene in Sudan, nor Chechnya (Both with oodles of oil).
If we wanted easy oil, then let Qadafi kill his people. The oil will be cheap then.
We did interv ene in Sierra Leone. There are only two countries which own oil with fewer reserves than Sierra Leone. Bosnia? Oil?
There's certainly a good deal of self-interest in whether a country chooses to intervene. But also a good deal of self-interest in countries arguing against intervention (France and Russia were making a mint out of the Saddam regime in Iraq) and Zimbabwe's neighbours loved being able to say "At least we're not as bad as Mugabe".
Comparing intervention in 1980 to today is as nonsensical as comparing the effectiveness of a Mark I tank against a Sherman tank. -
Message 9
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Friday, 18th March 2011
Not that I'm necessarily against intervention in Libya but I wonder how important the fact that those lovely people in Saudi were pushing for it was. Just like Iraq.
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Message 10
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Friday, 18th March 2011
It doesn’t float on a reservoir of oil…?Ìý
The oil argument is convincing but it doesn't explain why the US was taking sides and militarily intervening in Libyan politics way back in 1805 only 29 years after their own American Declaration of Independence.
Even more remarkable is the fact that the US Marines and attached mercenaries under Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon didn't attack the port of Derne from the sea in an amphibious landing (as one would imagine marines would) but instead marched there 500 miles across the desert from Alexandria in Egypt. -
Message 11
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 18th March 2011
ferval
I think that what was more crucial was the widespread destablisation all across the Arab world over recent weeks, with the events in Libya starting out as apparently part of a larger pro-liberalisation and anti-despotism movement..
Of course during the period when "the nuclear threat" was not just of contamination from one stricken nuclear plant but the very real and ever-present strategic threat of the deliberate destruction of all life on Earth, the strategic advantage offered by staying on good terms with some reprehensible regimes outweighed all other considerations..
Some life was better than no life at all. With life there can be hope.
I wrote about the real "Islamic Fundamentalism" as it might be seen in future centuries on a piece about Protestantism.. For what I saw during 37 years of teaching was many young intelligent and serious Muslims searching for a way to combine things that they valued and appreciated in Western culture with the essence of Islam, much as Protestants and Anglicans tried to reconcile "Primitive Christianity" with the opportunities of the Modern World that was emerging in the sixteenth century.
The hope of such a new Muslim world emerging as a reaction to the anti-Imperialism of the Mahdi Age, with its idea that Islam must drag Muslims back to the reality of the Dark Ages, was something that perhaps the West has latched on to too quickly.
But either there is a popular basis for it or there is not. And only open and free debate and discussion amongst these populations will determine that.
The Gadaffi fight back, however, was indeed the kind of thing that the English can recognise and even might perhaps respect as the kind of "last-ditch" effort that the English were famous for. But those were times when "the few" stood against apparently overwhelming force. This does not appear to be the case in Libya, where the overwhelming force is in the hands of the authorities and it is not possible to predict what may happen if brute force is allowed to throw back the "tide" and turn it back to reaction and repression.
One goes back to the Balkan situation up to 1914 and the steps taken by Austria-Hungary to use the assassination at Sarajevo as an excuse to expand its contested hegemony in the north-west of the Balkans. And the action taken by Germany in ignoring the scap of paper that had largely preserved the peace of Europe by taking its cock-pit out of the equation.
I would suggest that "gung ho" actions and reactions are not appropriate for such moments.
Cass -
Message 12
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 19th March 2011
As for the oil theme that has propped up in several posts, I think that many people have forgotten that it was the Opec Oil Crisis of 1973 that effectively ended the period of the two Superpowers by pointing to the achilles heel of the developed world. It was an earthquake and tsunami within the global economy. But the role of Saudi Arabia in the OPEC cartel proved crucial then and ever since.
The OPEC producers organised a cartel in order to minimise competition and increase the revenues for the oil producers by putting limits on their oil production. In fact it was the absence of such controls on the World Commodity markets that led to over-production of food and commodities in the inter-war period producing economic warfare, dumping etc- and eventually the ruination of primary produders- turning the Wall Street Crash into the World Economic Chaos of 1932-3.
Once again in recent weeks Saudi Arabia has acted to stabilise the world oil market which, as the Labour Party has pointed out, has forced up the price of fuel putting an extra burden on the British consumer and producer in this Age of Austerity. It was an announcement by Saudi Arabia that it would increase production to make up for any short-fall resulting from the crisis in Libya that to some extent re-assured the futures trading in crude oil.
Looking back into history we can wonder that Britain and the USA made a friend and ally of Stalin during the Second World War given the fact that he ran a very nasty regime. But the USSR did send a delegation to the great World Economic Conference held in the Natural History Museum in London amidst that crisis, and were able to point to the lack of unemployment and other advantages in the great depression within the Soviet Union: and in fact since 1945 there has been a general adoption of the strategy of trying to manage the global economy rather than allowing "the Invisible Hand" to dictate events.
By the time of that conference Germany was not interested in internationalism- but a hard-line nationalism: and even with the USSR within the Alliance defeating that resurgent nationalism involved fighting the most destructive war in History.
Cass -
Message 13
Posted by VoiceOfReason (U14405333) on Saturday, 19th March 2011
Yes I would have to agree with most of the comments
Mugabe's Zanu, SA's ANC and SWAPO in Namibia are as thick as thieves and have had regular meetings since Independence to bolster each other in their anti Western rhetoric
There was never any danger of SA "dealing" with Mugabe under the leadership of Mbeki and a lot of people were fooled by that particular man who's views were always pro Mugabe and anti West although he was very clever in disguising it to those who had a rose tinted view of Democracy in the new Rainbow Nation
I think attitudes have hardened against Mugabe in SA in recent times and Zuma is less of a Mugabe ally but we will never see any strong action taken by the South Africans against their neighbour
I think it is a case now of waiting for the old man to die and see how the cards fall after that
The current "Unity" Government is a sham and it remains to be seen how strong the opposition will be once Mugabe has gone
Little has been heard from Morgan Tsvangirai recently and I think that the death of his wife, in dubious circumstances, understandably affected him very badly
The "bread basket" of Africa is now badly impoverished and unhappily I don't see much changing in the near future -
Message 14
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 19th March 2011
Glencairn99
It is nice to be so much in agreement...
Your "bread-basket" comment does point to the way that European settlement in "Rhodesia" did produce the kind of economic development that was thrust back by the re-distribution or "re-patriation" of lands to the war veterans..
One has to wonder just how much "black history" Mugabe studied in prison. Presumably he did not read C.R.L. James biography of Toussaint L'Ouverture, the hero of the Haitian Revolution.
Once the slave revolt had got rid of the French plantation owners, the freed slaves just took over subsistence plots, just enough for them to work to provide for their own families.
L'Ouverture,who had been a domestic slave, kept well dressed and well-fed, and educated by his masters- with plenty of time to read and study as their coach driver, rode around trying to explain that it was necessary to try to keep the plantations running because a free people would need schools and hospitals, infrastructure, and as the first free black republic a defence capability that would stop a future European reconquest.
Even the Pilgrim Father's had to enter into a short term contract to repay the investment-loans of the London merchants that made their trip and plantation possible. Moreover a recent reading of the Chronicles of the Founding Fathers made me suspect that those London merchants actually deliberately manipulated the situation so that the Plymouth colony actually replaced the Amerindians around Cape Cod with whom the Europeans had been trading for 100 years,and who had recently been more than decimated by a severe disease- possibly the plague.
As far as current Zimbabwe is concerned- obviously Mugabe has made Western investment next to impossible: but I wonder whether SA investment is totally hampered by the chronic development needs of SA itself- or whether it is more "sensible" politics to keep quiet about any development funds going out of SA.
As the Labour Party in the UK have shown, universal suffrage can result in what Gordon Brown insisted on calling "investments"- but were so often things that were never going to produce an effective return, in fact quite the reverse- they committed the British tax payer to costs that were without end. And the South African voter may wonder why it is taking so long to spread prosperity and its fruits throughout the whole population.
Zimbabwe however, as Rhodesia, was already on a path of economic development that presumably could be resuscitated under the right political consensus.
But many of the pupils from black African backgrounds whom I taught were very conscious of the differences in ideas of the use and abuse of power within various African societies.. I remember one boy who had spent some time in a Nigerian boarding school (not a posh one- just the kind of thing that is necessary in a scattered society) recounting how the kind of "fagging" mentality was there. Older boys would tell the younger ones "Hey. You! Run down the shop and bring me...... And bring me back the change".. But they never gave any money. Just took it.
Cass -
Message 15
Posted by VoiceOfReason (U14405333) on Saturday, 19th March 2011
The chances of Zimbabwe getting back to where they were 30 years ago seem remote indeed
I wonder if Maggie Thatcher and Lord Carrington (and the UN) regret their decision to force Mugabe's Zanu party into elections in 1980 after Abel Muzorewa had won the 1979 election with his UANC party
Ian Smith may have had less than altruistic reasons for formulating the entrenched white minority rights for cabinet and parliamentary membership but the whites would still have been very much in the minority and the experience of the whites in government would have helped the country through a period of great change
There had been a gradual integration of Africans into government in Rhodesia (albeit due to international pressure) and it looked to be a formula that may have given the country a prosperous future
But Mugabe's "Patriotic Front" was forced into the process with promises that if any intimidation of voters took place then they would be excluded
Of course voter were intimidated - and tortured and killed but the UK (and UN) had washed their hands of the whole thing then and nothing was done
The rest as they say is history
That's my take on it anyway -
Message 16
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 19th March 2011
Glencairn
I think that the Iron Lady- rather like some really tough rugby forwards in their own "field"- was also in some ways a softy. She was rather susceptible to the optmism that people often pick-up- or have reinforced- at Oxford: famously a place of "sweetness and light" and "dreaming spires".. I suppose she was also forged by the war-time spirit and Churchill's idea of the underlying unity of "English-speaking peoples."
Thatcherism was in many ways a return to mid-Victorian optimism- of the Cobden and Bright era that I wrote about on the Empire thread.. Just as she assumed that going back to the free-market would bring back entrepreneurship , she assumed that dismantling the "Nanny State" would bring back Society- not as a thing but as something living that embraced everyone..And in Zimbabwe she seems to have thought that bringing the country back into the community of nations would put it back on the road- much as evolutionary scientists encouraged the belief in some kind of pre-ordained dynamic of progress, that would kick in when human intervention stopped distorting it.
But "One nation" Toryism did not take full acount of the historical legacy within Britain of voting on tribal and nationalistic bases; nor in Africa of the tendency for political parties to reflect similar tribal interests rather than a proper debate about different general ideas of the way forward for everyone..
But going back to changing times.. I was using history text-books that said that Germany was two countries and it was not possible to see how they might ever be united, when that wind of change blew in 1989-and we then saw scenes in South Africa and Ireland that one never expected to live to see... Rather like African-Americans said when Obama was standing for election.
Cass -
Message 17
Posted by stalti (U14278018) on Saturday, 19th March 2011
hi cloudyj
tanx for your response
sierra leone we actually respnded by accident where a british commander ingnored government orders
somali - exactly the usa went ashore in a glare of publicity till they fought back - and the scenes of corpses being dragged around forced the usa to withdraw
chechyna and tienammen square - high casualty figures ? - exactly !!
hey they are massacring their own civilians - doesnt matter im sure they are correct - nothing to do with mig fighters or the largest land army on earth
ghadaffi IS the leader of libya and u have no proof that he is opposed by a majority of his population - a facebook revolution proves nothing - his army backs him and the rebels are few and getting beaten - who is to say that for 40 years he wasnt popular
why will oil be cheap when he kills his people
afghanistan - no problem there we can destroy them with sheer power and liberate them and impose democracy on them (if we agree of course) but when the taliban fight back we withdraw
we choose Libya because we can beat them with even french air power at little risk - lets face it libya is very unlikely to take out us carriers
zimbabwe is a black african country with millions of blacks starving to death - and if thay all die its doesnt affect us one iota - bet they wish they had oil
st -
Message 18
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 20th March 2011
Actually the oil story probably is at the heart of the current unrest within the Arab world..The OPEC Oil crisis happened when the oil producing countries came to terms with the fact that the oil was a "one off" opportunity. It had been worthless until the West developed economic systems that depended upon it, and created the technologies to find,extract and exploit it. As long as the oil lasts there is in effect "money on tap" with minimal Labour.
So oil-producing countries have faced the problem of :
(a) the Present - which is how to keep the masses safely occupied and on what basis to distribute the wealth as the law of the "Labour theory of value" does not apply?.. On the basis that "the devil makes work for idle hands" pouring money into armies and police forces has been a popular choice, as has enriching those in power.
(b) the Future- How will these countries pay their way once the oil has run out? As in many parts of the developing world tourism in all its aspects- including second homes, conference centres, and sport-conference complexes has been one strand. And another has been education. To some extent both have resulted in the same process of urbanisation which has become a global phenomenon.
But when you encourage the growth of cities and towns, and educate people to a much higher standard of living with frustrated expectations for the future you create a great potential for the kind of urban discontent as from a sociological point of view the middle classes- or those aspiring to aspects of middle class living- become discontented.
Going back to comparisons between Libya and Zimbabwe, though the history of the region has been associated with such finite "Natural resources"- as shown by the ruins of Ancient Zimbabwe and an age of silver mining long gone- the land could become the "bread-basket" of Southern Africa- and so the problems of the Present and the Future were and are not the same.. The dynamics of "popular uprising" were out in the countryside, both during the independence struggle and in the exploits of Mugabe's "war veterans".
Cass -
Message 19
Posted by bandick (U14360315) on Sunday, 20th March 2011
Care to take another look at message 2 again… enough said. -
Message 20
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 20th March 2011
Bandick
If that was meant as a response to my last post-- I do not see the relevance-- apart from an extra reason why the Arab people should want to have a democratic right to use the natural resources for the people.. and not for undemocratic regimes..
Such resources are finite, and, though the present crisis in Japan has highlighted the issue of neuclear energy, however large the reservoir of oil, who knows how long the wealth and prosperity of the market for oil is going to be there, as more and more research will be going into alternative energy sources.
The OPEC countries may yet find themselves in the same sort of situation as the West African states when the West unilaterally abolished the slave trade.
I know that points have been made about royal families, but I would point to my last post and the experience of the French Revolution from 1789 until the emergence of Napoleon ( who one French man recently told me had been really like a Hitler)..
The relative stability of Nineteenth Century Europe was established by the use of British power in support of constitutional monarchies on the British model- as oppose to revolutionary nihilism or reactionary Empires with absolutist tendencies. Hence the key Anglo-French alliance that became possible with the bourgeois monarchy.
Cass -
Message 21
Posted by bandick (U14360315) on Sunday, 20th March 2011
Hi cass… not at all… and did you really think that? it was just to the point of the question… why. You can go on churning it over all day long in a cement mixer if you like… but it’s because of oil. -
Message 22
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 20th March 2011
Further to my last-- obviously Colonel Gadaffi is playing a number of "history cards"- most recently the Crusades, but also the Al Qaeida one, and the "Bay of Pigs" one- the last being one of the most obvious examples of people in exile/opposition managing to persuade the USA especially that there was indeed popular support for an uprising and that US sodiers would be welcomed as Liberators..
To some extent this surely applied to the 2003 war in Iraq, when the USA thought had it had the makings of a government in exile to bring.
But the evidence of 2011 has suggested genuine popular discontent in a number of middle eastern states, and it seems very possible that the history that some of the educated Arabs have been studying is their own.The kind of wealth, learning and prosperity of the Arab world that prompted the initial teaching of the Prophet Mohamed against the sins of affluence and commercialism, and the consequent Holy War. And then the initial essentially reformist and moderate (in comparison with what was to come) form of Islam that existed before the much more hardline and authoritarian Muslim rule that came with the Turks, very much at the time that similarly macho, authoritarian and hardline Christian rule came to Western Europe with the various "northmen".
And I go back to Millennianist hopes and fears that were important within the Christian world a thousand years ago, and which are active in the start of this Third Millennium of the Common Era.
Cass -
Message 23
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 20th March 2011
bandick
Thank you for your reply.. Of course oil is a key factor. But the real question is why is it a key factor?
I recently exasperated a cold caller who could not understand why I expressed no interest in any scheme that could earn me a thousand pounds, or even a million..I realise that people do do things for money.. But the old Highwayman's "Your money or your life" does go to the heart of why should people be prepared to spend their lives getting money. Wealth is just something that people create in order to exploit those who are prepared to ruin their lives in its pursuit: the message of both Jesus and Mohamed in that crucial economi crossroads region of the Earth.
In fact- as I concluded when I was studying the Soviet Economy, people are prepared to make huge sacrifices in the hope of passing on a better future to their "loved ones".. And Communism promised but did not deliver. Same for Arabs now...
Cass -
Message 24
Posted by bandick (U14360315) on Sunday, 20th March 2011
°ä²¹²õ²õ… you start your post…
Actually the oil story probably is at the heart of the current unrest within the Arab world..The OPEC Oil crisis happened when the oil producing countries came to terms with the fact that the oil was a "one off" opportunity. It had been worthless until the West developed economic systems that depended upon it, and created the technologies to find,extract and exploit it. As long as the oil lasts there is in effect "money on tap" with minimal Labour.Ìý
And then get the hump… when I say look at message 2 again… it’s down to the oil. Heavens above cass you just agreed with it at the start of your last post… go on and flower it up as much as you like, and quote quotes from a hundred years ago… all day long… it’s down to the oil.
When they discovered oil in Poole and the Purbecks… there were signs up ‘home rule for Hamworthy’ and ‘keep your hands off our oil’… Hamworthy is a tiny district of Poole. -
Message 25
Posted by bandick (U14360315) on Sunday, 20th March 2011
Of course oil is a key factor. But the real question is why is it a key factor?
Of course oil is a key factor. But the real real question is how it got there. Then ask why is it a key factor.
Several times I’ve become exasperated by utility companies and the like who insist on being paid by standing order, direct debit or credit card… after years of getting clobbered by banks for their charges… I have dispensed with their services… apparently I can’t live without them… well yes I can and do. After what they have done to the country… and what with their disgusting bonuses… I absolutely refuse to deal with them… if they were in industry, they’d be paid by results… take home pay… nothing.
Give them a bonus when they restore the country’s economy… but something realistic eh? By using a bank your condoning their actions and nothing will get done… its greed… and the same with oil… greed, you’ve got it, and we want it. our guns are bigger than your guns, so we'll take it. -
Message 26
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Sunday, 20th March 2011
chechyna and tienammen square - high casualty figures ? - exactly !!
hey they are massacring their own civilians - doesnt matter im sure they are correct - nothing to do with mig fighters or the largest land army on earthÌý
Actually Stalti, it has everything to do with MIGs and large land armies. We could try to send the army to Russia or China and the result would simply be vast numbers of dead. Far more than the Chinese government kills and we'd probably still lose. So large numbers dead for no lives saved. That seems a perfectly moral argument for not intervening in my book.
War kills people so don't start one you can't win. Where military intervention can be successful, then why not? I, for one, do not see hypocrisy as the worst sin in the book - especially where the cases for intervention are actually different.
why will oil be cheap when he kills his people Ìý
Because there'd be much less interruption in supply and Libya would get back to "normal" much sooner and the oil would flow efficiently once again.
zimbabwe is a black african country with millions of blacks starving to death - and if thay all die its doesnt affect us one iota - bet they wish they had oil
Ìý
Sierra Leone had no oil, yet we still interveneed there. Sudan had oil and the west let them die.
We don't intervene in Zimbabwe because we're embarassed about our colonial history there and the surrounding countries (who we'd need as allies) are also wary of our colonial history and prefer to back Mugabe. -
Message 27
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 20th March 2011
bandick
Well If your are an OAP like me you would depend upon the Finance Industry to generate your pension- and everyone (if they are lucky) seems to want to get to that stage of life and have a living pension....
Moreover if you were a Labour Party sympathiser you would be in favour of taxing the profits that the Finance Industry is making in its global investments (incidentally exploiting the workers of the world) in order to pay for even more of the State expenses than it already does: not to mention borrowing on the good Credit rating that the FI produces for the UK economy, so that it was possible to double the National Debt in a few years-equalling the accrued debt of the previous three hundred years of British expansionism and Empire.
As for achieving anything in Libya and/or Zimbabwe your posts seem to reflect the racist and Eurocentric ideas of earlier ages which tended to see the Whites of Western Europe and US WASPs as the "makers and drivers" of History, when clearly resistance to that idea has been a major factor in world affairs for much of the Twentieth Century.
I agree with David Cameron's remarks some weeks ago that these are "historic times".. but we need to be aware of how they are historic times for the Arab world and all other regions, and not for "the West". It is for them, as well as us, to find the way into the future that they must forge.
The common people, who are the basic grain and dynamic of history, will shape the future- and only those projects that "go with the grain" will prosper.
Cass -
Message 28
Posted by bandick (U14360315) on Sunday, 20th March 2011
°ä²¹²õ²õ… I along with all the other tax payers have supported the finance industry for years… what I don’t want to support is the insane bonuses paid to the fat cats of the industry… and so I don’t want to put my money over the counter to be swallowed up to pay them these huge bonuses for doing a job they were getting well paid for anyway…
My politics are my business and no one else.
As for you reading something into my post that seem to reflect any form of racism as you imply…
As for achieving anything in Libya and/or Zimbabwe your posts seem to reflect the racist and Eurocentric ideas of earlier ages which tended to see the Whites of Western Europe and US WASPs as the "makers and drivers" of History, when clearly resistance to that idea has been a major factor in world affairs for much of the Twentieth CenturyÌý
Do you really believe your now qualified to make such an assessment.
I have read your post over a long time usually with great interest, and your dialogue with Thomas on H2O2, your obviously a learned gent… I respect that… but as soon as someone doesn’t agree with your train of thought you seem to want to browbeat them into some form of submission by quoting all manner of quotes for the sake of it, and bringing book titles ect into the discussion that quite frankly at times is hard to understand unless it’s a way of trying to prove your academic superiority and bolster your standpoint.
I am no academic… as Thomas and yourself discussed and agreed… but then I never pretend to be one… I am what I am.
You as a school teacher as you keep reminding everyone, would no doubt class me as thick… and your quite entitled to do that, that would be your opinion… and by the same token, I am equally entitled to my opinion.
Being a teacher Cass does not automatically qualify you into thinking your right all the time.
Best regards bandick -
Message 29
Posted by shivfan (U2435266) on Sunday, 20th March 2011
I don't think comparing Mugabe to Gaddafi is a good analogy....
After all, Mugabe was democratically elected, even if the election was flawed. But the fact is that there are large numbers of people in Zimbabwe who will vote for Mugabe based on the support his party receives from Mashona people, who form the majority in the country.
Gaddafi is a dictator, like most rulers in north Africa. A more fitting question to ask is this: will the West react the same way to other countries (Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, etc) who continue to deny their citizens democracy, using force to suppress such rebellions?
You see, those guys are 'our' dictators, and so they're all right, while Gaddafi is not....
And of course, as others have said above, Libya possesses huge reserves of oil, so much like Iraq, it's high priority on the list of countries to invade.... -
Message 30
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 20th March 2011
bandick
(a) Unfortunately the bonuses are not "insane" within the context of the system within which they operate.. The fact is that Capitalist Finance supported the victory over Communism and is now being allowed the spoils of victory through the vast profits that are now possible though venture capital investment in parts of the world ripe for low cost development in accordance with the "insane" system of "potato patch economics".
Unfortunately the Media that has developed out of the discourse of catastrophe and disaster in order to lead the public by the nose by shocking people and rousing irrational moral indignation has found it very convention to mix the dire state of domestic finance with the flourishing state of global finance.
(b)And the need for public support for the Finance industry was very much due to
(a) New Labour "getting in bed" with global Capitalism,
(b) the shock of 9/11 when Western Consumers were encouraged to "counter-terrorism by embracing the higher than ever availability of credit in order to correct the 20% value of the World immediately after the attack on the Twin Towers.
(c) the dismantling of all those measures of protection and self-defence against a financial tsunami that had been important from the 1870's in the UK and after the Great Crash of 1929 in the USA.
(c) The kind of ideas that tend to get expressed within Western Culture do tend to generally reflect a "White Man's Burden" concept . In the late Victorian Era this idea was used to justify European and American World Leadership in the great age of Imperialism.. In the post Imperialistic Age the anger and resentment within the Western World tended to reflect the same presumption and arrogance- as I see it. As very much part of the Sixties Revolt Generation I was very much aware of the tendency for a kind of adolescent reaction from what were essentially very priviliged young people in the history of the World, living with an inheritance of unprecedented material advantage bequeathed to us by the Victorians, but angry because instead of creating a good world as it seems they claimed to have done, they created a very flawed and evil one.. But this is in its own way Eurocentric and possibly racist because it assumes that Europe alone was the driver of history; and of course people can "cherry pick" material..
As for qualification- It is for other people to award qualifications. All I can say is that I have done just about everything that I can to learn something about what one might call universal history. At University in the Sixties, for example, this did include a two year option of Latin American History that took me out of the Western "rut", and my specialisation was the Soviet Economy of the Five Year Plans. That reflected my ambitions before going to university and since.
(d) I am amazed that anyone is just reading my exchanges with Thomas on h2g2.. Over 120 and some of them very long.
(e) Sorry about the browbeating-- But the quotes are there very much because about thirty years ago when I had already been trying to put my ideas down on paper for almost ten years, I showed some of my workd to an ex-colleague who had gone on to teach at London University. He advised me not to try to "re-invent the wheel": which made me realize that someone from my background, and pursuing my particular course out of the "establishment rut" was not going to be treated with much respect- especially by those of the establishment that were essentially "self-serving" (White Man's Burden again). So I realised that I would have to "arm myself" in order to be able to combat them in their fields of conflict. It is not to prove my academic superiority- but in order to be able to debate with "men of power" as at least someone who is entitled to discuss with them as an equal. To my mind that is my birthright and duty as an Englishman.
Regards
Cass -
Message 31
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 21st March 2011
Further to recent posts on this and other threads- I went to the short stories of "Saki"- who is normally described as a writer of humour-- though I find him very dark and pointed.
But then Hector Hugh Munro, born 1870, was a man of the New World of the "Lost Generation". He was born in Burma in the British Raj of Scottish Highland stock, with one grandfather having been a colonel in the Indian Army and the other a British Rear-Admiral..And like many boys in that situation he had spent much of his childhood being away from home in British boarding schools and farmed out to maiden aunts for the holidays.
The last of his short stories published after his death in the war was entitled "For the Duration of the War" and it contained a mock Persian poem ascribed to Ghurab the Hunter of Karmanshad. The first four verses are food for thought based, I think, upon Saki's life experience:
A Mouse that prayed for Allah's aid
Blasphemed when no such aid befell:
A Cat, who feasted on that mouse,
Thought Allah managed very well.
Pray not for aid to One who made
A set of never-changing Laws,
But in your need remember well
He gave you speed, or guile- or claws.
Some laud a life of mild content:
Content may fall, as well as Pride.
The Frog who hugged his lowly Ditch
Was much disgruntled when it dried.
'You are not on the Road to Hell,'
You tell me with fanatic glee:
Vain boaster, what shat that avail
If Hell is on the road to thee?
___________________________________________________
As I say not my kind of humour- but probably the kind of trench humour that was comprehensible to a Lost Generation for whom the Road to Hell really meant something.
According to today's News most people in the UK now count themselves as non-religious, which means that they can just play around with ideas of Heaven and Hell as no more than the kind of tales used to entertain children in a society in which there is no God to give people "speed, or guile- or claws". In any case these things are not really called for in our managed-systems-reality- until something like the events in Japan bring a reality check.
Cass -
Message 32
Posted by bandick (U14360315) on Monday, 21st March 2011
You really can’t help yourself °ä²¹²õ²õ… straight away you tell me I’m wrong… and it’s not insane…
Have you ever taken on board anyone else’s opinions… Thomas advised you to consider something I said about your posts… I see you’ve ignored that too…
Well as I said I respect your views… and disagree… I was going to say I won’t tell you you’re wrong… but I will… Cass it is insane to pay a bonus of over seven million pounds to anyone… let alone someone that though incompetence and greed forced the state to its knees, creating hardship and misery to thousands putting people on the breadline… the man was paid to do a job… he failed. He should go. Go quickly and far.
Salaries or bonuses like that simply breed discontentment and devalue the efforts of everyone else… a great morale booster…? I think you have spent far too many years in academia… and not enough time in the real world… shame really… with knowledge such as yours you could have gone far.
But I’m surprised at you, continually banging on about your socialist background, coming from a humble if not frugal background, father a hardworking lorry driver… I wonder if he would agree with you… or maybe think of turncoat.
With respect bandick -
Message 33
Posted by Thomas_II (U14690627) on Monday, 21st March 2011
Hi bandick,
Wouldn´t it had been for the case that you´ve mentioned me in your posts, I rather would just read about your debate with Cass. But there are some points in your posts, that leads me to agree with you.
it is insane to pay a bonus of over seven million pounds to anyone… let alone someone that though incompetence and greed forced the state to its knees, creating hardship and misery to thousands putting people on the breadline… the man was paid to do a job… he failed. He should go. Go quickly and far.Ìý
That´s quite right and I think that beyond discontent, such "awards" for loosers in the financial and other economical business sections brings with, it leaves the people wondering about justice anyway. Every employee who failes at work, might be given a second or even a (rarely) third chance to do better, but afterwards, when they fail again, they´re sacked and left to their own luck or worse on the dole. Same terms and conditions should be valid for these higher professions as well. They should be aware of their responsibilities and reliability and taken to account when they made a mess that led to closing down the company or the loss of huge amounts of money. But as it appears, they´re spared from the cuts anyway in this "Big Society Project" which is rather a bad joke. But I won´t continue with this because it leads us more to current affairs.
Have you ever taken on board anyone else’s opinions… Thomas advised you to consider something I said about your posts… I see you’ve ignored that too…Ìý
Well, I have given Cass some advises in some ways, but I´m not expecting him to follow if he doesn´t want to. The reality on these boards speaks its own language and it´s on him whether he take it into further considerations or not.
I don´t know how many of the posts Cass and I have exchanged, you´ve read. In some of them he told me about his own experiences with that "Socialist background" and I for myself doing hard to put him into a political scheme. Probably his is of none or rather his views are depending on the subject.
But one is clear to me, he is an idealist and believes in his views and opinions. In compare to him, most posters you and me included, are some different to that. I´m rather inclined to keep my ideals for myself and mess them with reality and in this, to check how honest political parties are dealing with that. I think that I´m among many others who see, that the times where you can rely on the ideals of political parties, i. e. the Social Democratic ones, are gone.
To me it is clear, that the Western Countries are just then taking action when they realise the threat on the delivering of resources which are vivid for the country, its economy and people. Therefore, besides the attempt to weaken the Gadaffi regime, oil playes the "hidden" main part in it. In addition to these reasons, they can´t afford a third place for going to war after Iraq and Afghanistan.
By the way, I hope your recovery is getting better from day to day.
Regards,
Thomas -
Message 34
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 21st March 2011
bandick
I still say that it is not insane given the fact that we depend upon what I regard as what called be called an insane system.... It is certainly deeply flawed and we will need to create the momentum towards another dynamic before we can safely do away with the foundations on which we are all standing.
I tackled this in many things- perhaps most simply in "The Re-Discovery of Social Man" written c2000-2001.
Someone recently expressed disgust at Sir Bob Geldorf and Bono shaking hands with the men of power in the existing establishment. But one of the reasons why I did not try to become a pop star in the Seventies was because I believed that there was a huge task that people needed to embrace in order to create the new world that my generation wanted to see.
When Bob yelled "Just give us your.... money" he was accepting that all that was possible at that time was really just a "sticking plaster" bandaid temporary solution. For both then and in the G8 demonstrations he was going as an innocent into the land of the money men. When in Rome..etc
As long as people make themselves slaves to money there will be no liberation form "mental slavery" as Bob Marley put it.
As for my Labour background I have mentioned many times my seventh birthday present when the Bevan/Wilson revolt split the party I supported and formalised the end of the One Nation hopes of a post-war world in which I had been brought up. We were to go back to the class war, and fighting over wealth distribution instead of wealth creation. But this idea that the economy could be better run by the State than the private sector was an important factor in my choosing the Soviet Economy as my final year specialixation , though actually the course was designed for students doing History and Economics combined, rather than pure History.
The fact that I have not spenty years in academia is directly related to that for I consciously chose to teach in the deprived inner city. There I really had to deal with the grim reality of my pupils and their families who really could not afford the luxury of burdening themselves with chips on their shoulders about history or historical legacies for 37 years. As I had pupils from disaster-zones and others from all over the world during that 37 years I did get first hand experience of a more universal human experience than I ever would have got in academia.
Cass -
Message 35
Posted by bandick (U14360315) on Monday, 21st March 2011
Thomas hi… thanks for your return post… I must apologise for bringing you into the exchanges between Cass and myself, but if it wasn’t for a desperate ‘needs must’ scenario I wouldn’t have.
I totally agree with you that Cass is an idealist and believes in his views and opinions. But there are times when it is best to listen to others, whether they be from an academic background or not, and take on board another viewpoint… sadly Cass seems to think he’s become an authority on everything. And he don’t half waffle on a bit.
A smarter man might have taken on board some of the posts of stoggler… but not Cass and still he went ahead trying to browbeat his way thru by posting things totally irrelevant to the OP on the ‘When God Spoke English.’ thread even when it was pointed out to him. It was sometime before he came down from his soapbox and realised what he’d done.
Look back thru some other posts… there are a number of examples where polite inference has been totally ignored… to the point where some find the need to tell him to shut up. Tongue in cheek of course… rudeness is unnecessary, but we have a saying here that… ‘many a true word spoken in jest’.
I enjoy the post of others and learn a lot from them, yours included, as you have already mentioned to Cass I am no academic but that does not preclude me from forming an opinion… sadly I feel unable to articulate myself well enough to contribute much to that which I enjoy reading… is that a sign of stupidity…?
For all of Cass’s years of teaching… there has only been one post of his that I understood… (not exactly what you would expect from a teacher)… but you know about that as he told you on his h2g2 site. There were others that mentioned its clarity…
I have a problem when you ask someone’s opinion on something, they tell you what others think, Tom, Dick or Harry said this that or the other… with the number of quotes, and citations Cass puts into his posts, its hard to determine just what the man’s opinions are, or do you judge his reply by the books he’s read. A chimp can turn the pages of a book… doesn’t mean he understands it.
I’m a little annoyed that he has the temerity to suggest I have racist tendencies… no actually I’m very annoyed.
All this from a few simple words… it doesn’t float on a reservoir of oil…?
Once again I am sorry… I just mentioned your name in the posts in the hope he may have checked himself, as I know how much he respect your views and rationale.
With respect bandick -
Message 36
Posted by Thomas_II (U14690627) on Monday, 21st March 2011
Hi bandick,
There´s no need to apologise at all. You´ve just give us the opportunity to exchange our opinions.
I got your point straight away and you´re not the only one on these boards in your statements about Cass. That´s the way he is and that way may have cost him some relations to contributors here. Without telling you names, I might recall at least some four of five people who, after getting involved with him, ceased to respond. A few of them left these boards, for I wouldn´t think that this was because of him, it was more for the reason that these boards were going on a low activity in recent times.
I´m no academic either and therefore I´m not prepared to cite a list of book titles to backen my opinions.
I noticed your interest in the essays of Cass, a couple of months ago, but you´ve frankly explained why you can´t keep up with reading them. You´ve taken at least the time to bother yourself in reading the thread on the h2g2 boards and that is, politely said, what less than a hand full of people did.
I´ve also noticed your posts on the bar thread about your horrible experiences in hospital recently and these stories leaves one to beg that he´ll be spared "Olga tha Wolga" (?).
To get back to your post on this thread re "racistical tendencies". I´ve read your post concerning and I couldn´t find something that proved that assumption. Maybe this has been misinterpreted and caused all the bother.
I understand that you´re annoyed and I hope that you´ll get over it soon, because there are some other people here with whom you´d have more pleasure for exchanging opinions.
I think that you´re not alone with your opinions regarding the true reason for why Western Countries are taking measures against certain countries and dictators, whilst towrds others, they do nothing. I´m also with you concerning the greed of the bankers and the failures in the financial business, paying failing managers huge amounts of money which noone can understand in times where the people are forced by their governments to deal with cuts in various public sections.
To excuse these mischief by global trade and also financial business, has now become worn out because I´ve heard this for over a decade. If anything goes wrong, it´s the global market to blame, but seldom the companies moving abroad for cheaper wages and production costs. It were also Western Companies who created the global market after the end of the cold war.
I enjoy the post of others and learn a lot from themÌý
Me too.
I am no academic but that does not preclude me from forming an opinionÌý
Of course not, you´re entitled to express it like anyone else on here.
… sadly I feel unable to articulate myself well enough to contribute much to that which I enjoy reading… is that a sign of stupidity…?Ìý
No, it doesn´t, it´s more to do with the medication you´ve been treated, I suppose.
So cheer up and quite honestly, I hope you´ll get well soon.
Regards,
Thomas -
Message 37
Posted by Thomas_II (U14690627) on Monday, 21st March 2011
I still say that it is not insane given the fact that we depend upon what I regard as what called be called an insane system.... It is certainly deeply flawed and we will need to create the momentum towards another dynamic before we can safely do away with the foundations on which we are all standing.Ìý
I think, Cass, what bandick was trying to say by "insane", is that nobody outside that "big bonus-system" (which means those who didn´t get such huge amounts of money for their failures) can understand the "justification" of this perverted way for "awarding mischief". That´s the core of the problem which is concerning many countries and their economies.
As long as politicians are not going to deal with that problem by political measures, as long this system won´t change until it collapses in itself. It´s not the question of new ideas concerning a better way of life for the people, it´s simply to enforce some tougher rules and make the people that ruined companies by their speculations on the financial market responsible and reliable, which means that they have to pay for their mistakes with their own money. This what got lost in recent times and with it the honour of bankers has gone down the gutter too.
Someone recently expressed disgust at Sir Bob Geldorf and Bono shaking hands with the men of power in the existing establishment. Ìý
People are easily disgusted upon various things, I don´t care with whom they are shaking hands, because these two musicians are at least among those who act for people and use their influence as far as they can use it for helping people. I´m not an enthusiast of Sir Bob Geldorf, and I wasn´t much impressed by his Life-Aid Concert in 1985 for Africa, but I respect his intentions. Bono had his own trouble for that with his members of his own band, but although sometimes it seems to be a bit odd when musicians, or Pop-Stars are going to bother "men of power", it shows that such people can achieve something. He also deserves respect for that.
As long as people make themselves slaves to money there will be no liberation form "mental slavery" as Bob Marley put it.Ìý
I don´t pay much value upon the expressions of an musician who was - proved - addicted to mariuhana. This might be the place from where this sentence comes from.
One "mental slavery" can be replaced shortly by another, just the subject changes, but "mental freedom" lives in oneself and for what it is like to have the country broken down, one might just have a look on Japan these days.
But one of the reasons why I did not try to become a pop star in the Seventies was because I believed that there was a huge task that people needed to embrace in order to create the new world that my generation wanted to see.Ìý
Aren´t you getting a bit too far by this statement, bearing in mind that it has been your desire to study history from the times when you were a child? You once told me that. -
Message 38
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 21st March 2011
Thomas
Thank you for your post... I think that I have written enough on the tragedy of building humanlife around States that are created in order to have the potential to be nasty, and an economic system that has supported State-power in a mutuality that has created the monstrous modern world that I must live in- to some extent..
Anyway I will shortly be off to follow Voltaire's advice to withdraw from life to cultivate my french garden.
As for singing- I was born in order to make music, but the world was not conducive to harmony.. Which is why the first priority was to try to work on practical ways to "heal the world".
But that does not stop me escaping into "Utopia" as defined by Yehudi Menuhin (who shared my birthday)
If bandick will excuse another of my quotes:
"My life has been spent in creating utopia. If this has been an ambition bound to fail- for utopia can exist only outside time; the tragic and the negative are built into the world we inhabit- it has nonetheless been achieved here and there, briefly and partially. Circumstances have conspired to help men, above all in giving me music and the chance to work at it, which, despite inherent frustrations and inevitable failures, is a blessing most people cannot know".
Interestingly Menuhin was very much attracted to Indian philosophy, within which sound is the true reality- the expression of pure energy, as opposed to the energy trapped and imprisonned within what we consider to be a material world.
So I usually make music for at least an hour or two every day.
Regards
Cass -
Message 39
Posted by bandick (U14360315) on Monday, 21st March 2011
°ä²¹²õ²õ…
I still say that it is not insane given the fact that we depend upon what I regard as what called be called an insane system.... It is certainly deeply flawed and we will need to create the momentum towards another dynamic before we can safely do away with the foundations on which we are all standing.Ìý
Don’t understand… you say it is not insane… then… makes no sense, but it could infer that you regard it as an insane system… it is certainly deeply flawed… does it not amount to the same thing.
I tackled this in many things- perhaps most simply in "The Re-Discovery of Social Man" written c2000-2001.Ìý
What was it you tackled… what is ‘The Re-Discovery of Social Man’…? I’ve searched for sometime thru google for such a publication… where can I find it…?
Someone recently expressed disgust at Sir Bob Geldorf and Bono shaking hands with the men of power in the existing establishment. But one of the reasons why I did not try to become a pop star in the Seventies was because I believed that there was a huge task that people needed to embrace in order to create the new world that my generation wanted to see.Ìý
Mostly cass the reasons people don’t make it as pop stars is a lack of talent… nothing to do with new world orders… what task had you in mind to embrace…?
When Bob yelled "Just give us your.... money" he was accepting that all that was possible at that time was really just a "sticking plaster" bandaid temporary solution. For both then and in the G8 demonstrations he was going as an innocent into the land of the money men. When in Rome..etc,Ìý
How do you know that… did he tell you… do you rub shoulders with Geldorf and Bono… do you…?
What the hell has Bob Marley got to do with it… and who gives a stuff, he was out of his face on a couple of pound of marihuana a day.
As for my Labour background I have mentioned many times my seventh birthday present when the Bevan/Wilson revolt split the party I supported and formalised the end of the One Nation hopes of a post-war world in which I had been brought up. We were to go back to the class war, and fighting over wealth distribution instead of wealth creation. But this idea that the economy could be better run by the State than the private sector was an important factor in my choosing the Soviet Economy as my final year specialixation , though actually the course was designed for students doing History and Economics combined, rather than pure History.Ìý
I remember my seventh birthday too… my mother deserted us… I didn’t see her for near forty years… but I had no idea you were so politically active at such an early age.
William Hague started his career early… I remember watching the national news when at the age of 16 he addressed the Conservative Party's 1977 national conference.
The fact that I have not spenty years in academia is directly related to that for I consciously chose to teach in the deprived inner city. There I really had to deal with the grim reality of my pupils and their families who really could not afford the luxury of burdening themselves with chips on their shoulders about history or historical legacies for 37 years. As I had pupils from disaster-zones and others from all over the world during that 37 years I did get first hand experience of a more universal human experience than I ever would have got in academia.Ìý
Do you honestly think the comfort of a deprived inner city school gives you firsthand experience of the outside world… and what those disaster-zones children went thru. They lived it… you only heard about it… big difference, and not in the same class… Cass.
Regards bandick -
Message 40
Posted by Thomas_II (U14690627) on Monday, 21st March 2011
Cass,
Sometimes, you seem to be catched up in Utopia and you even don´t notice that others prefer to deal with the real world.
As long as you take your pleasure there, it´s fine for you. To get back on what you´ve said about the attempts of your generation, I very often noticed that most all of them ended up in high positions in exact that establishment, they so strong argued about when they were young.
I know about your writings, but you won´t admit that the conclusion of this part of history shows that mankind won´t change in this particular matter. They just alter the "design", but not the principles, because it is part of human nature, as it was in high cultures in ancient times ago, so it is in the present and so it will be in the future. What changes are the people and their possessions.
Yehudi Menuhin, as far as I´m aware was just a musician, not a politician and as well none of those who had a message to deliver.
Interestingly Menuhin was very much attracted to Indian philosophy, within which sound is the true reality- the expression of pure energy, as opposed to the energy trapped and imprisonned within what we consider to be a material world.Ìý
Philosophy can help one to deal with triviality and some problems, to seek for a relieve, but it won´t change the world, because if, the world we live in would be different, depending on the philosopher of course. In the world of Nietzsche or Schoppenhauer, life would be even harder than today. In the world of Lao-tse it would be as different as to quote Konfuzius.
Anyway, enjoy yourself.
Thomas -
Message 41
Posted by Thomas_II (U14690627) on Monday, 21st March 2011
Hi Bandick,
You can´t find "The Re-Discovery of Social Man" on google or elsewhere except on the h2g2 boards, because it´s an essay he edited there, not unpublished as a book. It´s part of his "Towards Project" there.
Good sentence regarding Bob Marley
.
I think when you read Cass´ recent reply to me, you may guess what he´s up to, now.
Thomas -
Message 42
Posted by Thomas_II (U14690627) on Monday, 21st March 2011
not unpublishedÌý
Correction, it has to be read "not published". -
Message 43
Posted by LairigGhru (U14051689) on Monday, 21st March 2011
My question is why no such action was mooted against the Mugabe regime in ZimbabweÌý
Because the U.K. had insufficient interest in that distant land to justify a reckless foray. Such a calculation is only sensible, and it reflects how we all behave as we go through life - observing realities of power, and weighing up whether or not a particular course of action is: (a) realistic? (b) in our own interest?
In the current instance, Gaddafi was on the very point of blasting the democracy-loving portion of his people to smithereens in Benghazi so that only his supporters would be left and his rule could continue unopposed. Should we have just let this happen? -
Message 44
Posted by bandick (U14360315) on Monday, 21st March 2011
Cass
As for singing- I was born in order to make music, but the world was not conducive to harmony.. Which is why the first priority was to try to work on practical ways to "heal the world".Ìý
Well Cass that just about sums up everything… ‘not conducive to harmony’ nothing to do with you being the only one in the quire singing out of tune… or indeed from a different song sheet.
Are you suggesting your sheared birthday with Yehudi Menuhin makes you a maestro too…?
Somehow I get the impression you’d be out of step on a parade ground… and complain you were right… it was the rest of the men out of step.
A horse born in a stable is a horse… if a dog is born in a stable… he’s still a dog.
bandick -
Message 45
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 21st March 2011
bandick
(a) If you are within a system like ours there may be terrible things about it, but you may need to make it work.. People talk of Britain's industrial revolution as the first "economic take-off" in history, and it has spread all around the World. From the time of the Age of Revolution 1776-1848 it was fatally flawed.. But it has made it possible to "feed the world" and increase global population ten-fold, and generally improve living standards. Only suicidal people crash the heavier than air machine on which their lives depend: and some people might call that insane.
(c) "The Rediscovery of Social Man" is on my h2g2 site as a Guide Entry. It is about 20 pages. If you wish I will give you a link.
(d) The task that I felt obliged to take up was the one of forging a new understanding of the History of the times that I was living in.. I just finished it a couple of weeks ago after more than 50 years. But as I say other people may be living in another time. I am not sure how many people other than my pupils are living in mine; but fortunately lots of them are.
(e) Well I did not meet Bob Geldorf during the term that we and I taught his daughter, though a couple of the pupils were daughters of another of the "Boom Town Rats", but I am pretty sure that Bono and the Boys saw me performind shortly before they made it. In fact when we had a drink in the bar afterwards and a chat Bono had the exclusive privilege of being allowed to borrow my Guild Guitat and play me one of the songs that he was just writing. I also explained my guitar technique to "The Edge" which seems to be what he says is special about his technique. They popped up a couple of other times, and took my address. I think it was them that sent me a post-card of a camel with cheers.
(f) Well round where I was teaching in the Brixton area we could appreciate a lot of Marley's music and thinking. It is still very rated- and of course Marley had a white father and a black mother and therefore knew a great deal about the complexities of Afro-Caribbean history in his own blood.
(g) Bandick I am sorry that your seventh birthday was one of desertion too.. In a very real way I lost both my parents and my childhood too. Though our family staggered on like some wounded animal in a long agony for the next fourteen years.
(h) You comments about teaching perhaps show that you were at school before "our time".. As I wrote in a published article in 1978 entitled "Partners" what had been achieved in the first ten years that I was teaching was that the whole pupil teacher inter-action had been humanised. And, having had such a long and lonely struggle myself, in order to use education and knowledge in order to be able to construct some kind of life for myself, I was determined to have a very different relationship with my own pupils- to find out about their own pain, anger experience, etc.. "In loco parentis" and all that.
People on the MB often comment on my habit of bringing a personal element into history. But for me the value of History is that it is our story as individuals, groups and societies: and many lessons almost became group therapy sessions, while of course the work as a class tutor often took me deep into the painful realities that the pupils had to deal with.. Of course having your face smashed in might also not be counted as exactly the "comfort of an inner city school". etc
I sometimes feel some responsibility for having perhaps encouraged Philip Lawrence in the kind of interventionist approach that got him killed when he left our Brixton/Lambeth school and went back north of the river.
Regards
Cass -
Message 46
Posted by Thomas_II (U14690627) on Monday, 21st March 2011
A horse born in a stable is a horse… if a dog is born in a stable… he’s still a dog.Ìý
"A horse is a horse, of course a horse and called Mr Ed"
This has just reminded me to the above cited song from a film series about a horse which could talk, some decades ago (a British production). -
Message 47
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 21st March 2011
bandick
Not conducive to harmony..
When I was performing in clubs what people wanted to hear was anger and hatred , the class war, the sins of the past, and resentments over police and politicians. Especially from a man.. The 'main man' of Â鶹ԼÅÄ folk in those days said I would be huge, had I been female. Men can not stand up for truth and reconciliation.
Bob Dylan was clever enough to ride that "protest" wave- only to be hailed and treated as a judas when he moved away from just feeding the anger and discontent of the Sixties student scene.
Cass -
Message 48
Posted by Thomas_II (U14690627) on Monday, 21st March 2011
But as I say other people may be living in another time. I am not sure how many people other than my pupils are living in mine; but fortunately lots of them are.Ìý
No one here is able to ask them whether they would confirm that or not, Cass.
Maybe this is rather what you want to believe, and doubt that very much that once they were out of your influence they would stick on your ideas.
Your posts are going to seem more a wind up and have little to do with the OP.
Thomas -
Message 49
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 21st March 2011
Thomas
The point is that the pupils found their time as I hoped- and I hope that they will not be moved out of it... Those I run into (e.g. three days ago) still seem to be moving on from the times that we shared..
But as you say this has nothing to do with the OP... apart from the fact that it took me back to the end of 1989 and my North London school near to Banglatown with the Muslim boys who argued that the whole Kuwait crisis and the West's reaction was down to oil, and had nothing to do with:
(a) the example of the IWW when Britain went to war over the invasion of Belgium.. very much a similar creation to Kuwait.
and
(b) the lessons of the Hitler's Occupation of the Rhineland.. The lesson of History seemed to argue that prompt military action might have changed the course of history.. The same lesson to my mind influenced Mrs T over the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands.
Cass -
Message 50
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 22nd March 2011
bandick
As you have taken my " Eurocentric and possibly racist" remark personally- which was not my intention-- perhaps I should just clarify that my perception is that most of the history that is in print is rather like that.
It was a point that was brought home to me at many points in my life- not least when I found myself being initially treated by by South London pupils of the Sixties as either a "good guy" or a "bad guy" from the White Middle Class- which made up the most important sections of "goodies" and "baddies".
The late Victorian idea of the "White Man's Burden" created this idea of the new Meritocrats of WASP Europe being the standard bearers of evolution.. those carrying the Torch of Civilization. And racism was one of the strands of the culture of that period.
But those writing about the Middle Class- the owners of material wealth and practical power- did not always see themselves as "middle class", though their security and power in life came from the ownership of the kind of Capital that they valued most- intellectual Capital. This went along with political socialism/Communism and anti-imperialism: a mixture that led to vicious attacks on men of wealth and power and policies of domestic wealth redistribution and anti-imperialism. Result the house divided that would fall.
In future government would be run by the educated domestic "intellectual and professional" elites , who, as they were interested in ideas and not money, and understood the science of economics and government, would be able to handle both the economy and politics in the best possible way.
This kind of analysis of course only encouraged "them and us" thinking. It tended to take the Victorian Middle Class "Meritocracy" at its own evaluation, and there was seen to be common cause between the British working class- who "never benefitted from the Empire"- and the indigenous populations, whose history had also been dominated and shaped by the White Middle Class culture. Seizing wealth and reparations at the expense of the White Middle Class became the "way of life" much as the barbarians had helped themselves to the "glittering prizes" of Rome- and had killed the goose that lays the Golden Egg.
One trouble with this idea is that it provides a terrible "role model" and history for White, black and brown populations, and this is a formidable challenge for those who feel that indeed it is their turn to now "make history"..
Fortunately we have females from all parts of the Community who feel that their "role models" were, or would have been, inspirational, and much of our "upwardly mobile" dynamism comes from "sisters" who are determined to prove a point.
But the history that males have read and been taught argues that they (and their forebears) were incapable of making history. They could only be pawns in the game, incapable of taking charge of their own lives and making their own history: and all that they can hope for is to be able to choose whether they are going to be ruled by what they believe in a rather tribal way are "goodies" and "baddies" from the current largely White Intellectual Middle Class
In fact- and this seems to be the burden of Niall Ferguson's current Civilisation series, that asks whether Western Civilzation has "had it"- and as I argue in my "TP" project- we are now in a third age of distinctly Westen History.
Initially in that "White Man's Burden" era world history was to be made by the White swashbuckling adventurer. The survival of the fittest.
That gave way to the age of the scientific master mind, who could control everything from his HQ.
This Third Age is "the end of history". There is no real sense of evolutionary progress. Both the swashbuckler and the scientist have failed to create a predictable world order.. So now the mantra is that there is no overall direction in life. We have no purpose, no inherent values etc: and all that we can do is comb over our past and try to come to terms with our Past evils, while preparing for the end with a clear conscience.
But this is incredibly Eurocentric, and possibly racist. Dr Bronowski ended his Ascent of Man with the observation that it was sad that there was such a crisis of confidence and self-belief in the West c1973.. But- ever the optimist- he said that the Ascent of Man would carry on in other parts of the world. They first, however, need to get over this idea that they were not the makers of recent history, or if they were- to understand why this happened. I spent so much of my life refusing to be a victim, and it was the burden of much of my work teaching pupils who could very easily have given up on themselves and committed the sins of "omission"- leaving undone those things that they ought to have done.
In fact I do not accept - and never did- the Middle Class portrayal of my English working class roots.
Cass
PS- It is perhaps not totally irrelevant that my son who works in a shop habitually responds to "You're only saying that because I am black".. with:"And you're only saying that because I am white".
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