Invisible Handjobs.

Mirrors without Economics.

The chorus of "I told you so!" cannot fall on enough ears right now, not just in Whitehall but in the rest of the country. As the ears of the charlatans behind this doomed experiment - they call austerity - are notably deaf, only from below can the opposition emerge to this vandalism. It's only austerity for the people who rely on the NHS, state-schools and a benefits system to fall back should they lose their jobs. There was just word of a double-dip recession when the oik first set about on his 'slash and burn' approach to the economy. Since then we've seen growth dip, flat-line and then dip further, it doesn't seem as though the artful oik knows what he's doing. Or perhaps this is part of a fiendish plan. It remains to be seen, but what we know is that this man lacks any formal education in economics (that's not unsual) and he's surrounded by a coterie of advisers who are devoid of theory. He's far too comfortable taking risks which he won't have to suffer for and ordinary people will - the so-called 'difficult decisions'.

The message was posted and it was received with the Conservatives getting smashed at the local elections. It didn't seem to remind them they never had a mandate to begin with, they only succeeded in raising their vote by 3% against one of the most unpopular periods for the Labour Party. That says a lot that the political class don't want to hear. The last Conservative leader to win 40% of the vote was John Major and Thatcher was never as popular as the Party itself. All that really mattered to the Party was to keep hold of the London City-State, if that was lost then the whole thing could be lost. It was also a key opportunity to snuff out any sign that Galloway's victory in Bradford would have impact outside of Yorkshire. And yet the Tories entertained the delusion that Boris won because he embodies a solidly conservative set of virtues. The gap between Ken and Boris now closer than ever at 3% rather than the 6% gap in 2008. There was some truth to Ken's suggestion that he was just "hated more" than Boris.

In the midst of this the BBC seem incapable of acknowledging that the ongoing attempts to reduce the deficit will shrink the economy. They can't even articulate that the cuts to the amount of money flowing into the economy will not boost demand and growth. We're just told that the cuts to the salaries and pensions of public sector workers are a necessity. It's even assumed that there's just 'waste' to be cut and growth can still emerge from this process. Oh yes, the new mantra is deficit reduction and growth - an oxymoron of the highest order. Even if the aims of the cuts go as far as deficit reduction, it would seem that the cuts are insufficient in this aim and may actually increase the deficit as unemployment remains high. The Right will naturally prescribe another round of cuts. For a long time it seemed that the possible had become impossible, yet today most of us can see cuts aren't the way out of this recession and no one dares to reach for the alternatives.

On the Tumbril.

The pretensions of travail, famille, patrie were done away with swiftly on May 6th. The French voter took the Rat Man to the tumbril and placed the Flanby in the Élysée Palace. Well, Hollande will take office tomorrow to be exact. He won 55% of the vote on a platform calling for an end to austerity, though Hollande may have defined himself as the successor to Mitterand he had plenty of words in the right tone as he spoke about a great change across Europe. This is the first time in France for 30 years that an incumbent lost a second term - a testament to the strange times we live in. Sarkozy now joins the ranks of Berlusconi as just another establishment right-winger to be knocked out of power in the midst of the Eurocrisis. The appalling attempts to grab the frothing racist vote shocked many, it was ultimately too much for the supposed pragmatism of French politics. The major point is that the tough-love programme of tax-cuts for the rich and public service cuts for the rest of society has been rejected.

As Mark Hanna would remind us "There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money and I can't remember the second." Word has it that £40 million of funds in the Rat Man's campaign chest came from the dearly missed Colonel Gaddafi. There has since been talk of $65 million and another despot Alexander Lukashenko has claimed that the actual amount was $100 million. Whatever the case it has long been clear that Sarkozy is a creep, a wannabe de Gaulle with that trope of French chauvinism - the suspicion of the Anglo-Saxons. That went as far as claiming the economic crisis is an 'Anglo-Saxon disease' even though Sarkozy had posed as a French Thatcherite. He suggested taking a Kärcher to the neighbourhoods affected in the riots of 2005. Supposedly it was Bernard-Henri Levy persuaded him to wage war on Libya. Really, it was probably the rebel's promise to respect old oil arrangements that made it clear Gaddafi was no longer a necessity in North Africa.

On May Day Sarkozy demanded of trade unions "Put down your red flag, and serve France instead." It was an impotent call, he had to have people brought into town to be filmed in front of the Eiffel Tower. Nonetheless, this dwarf embodied the spirit of reaction in French politics coming at the end of a long line from the Thermidoreans through Pétain to d'Estaing. This may be another instance of the Europeans taking out the incumbent for the other guy, but this time it is a guy who was calling for a stop to cuts. Hollande may retreat from this to some extent, if not all together. We have yet to see. The German elections are coming up and if we see a swing to the centre-Left there could be a shift in policy which might lead to a domino effect across Europe. Naturally the European ruling-class has already seen this coming and they're prepared for a fight. Not everything is going to plan, but it'll take a bit more from the people of Europe to derail this out-of-control train.

Business as Usual.

The process we have endured over the last 40 years was the nightmare of classical economists. The fear was that the merchants and manufacturers would conspire to shape public policy in their favour, that they would do business abroad - investing abroad and importing from abroad. It would rake in enormous profits, but England would have been ruined. Adam Smith argued that the merchants and manufacturers would give priority to their own country, as if by an "invisible hand" England would be saved in this way. Since the 1970s we have witnessed de-industrialisation at home combined with off-shoring of production abroad and shifting to finance over industry. The causes of the crisis are barely discussed, we just have to look forward to the way out. We're no far from the nightmare of classical economists. But it's been pretty awful for a lot of ordinary people and it could get worse. There is no "invisible hand" in sight.

We the British tend to love business as usual. That was evident in the 1930s when we lined up to vote for Conservatives who wanted to sell-off chunks of Europe to Hitler. We don't like to recall just how compromised the Establishment really was. It may have gone as far as the Royal Family, the House of Lords and the proprietors of major newspapers. Even Churchill said in 1937 "I will not pretend that, if I had to choose between communism and Nazism, I would choose communism." When it went wrong and no amount of appeasement could hold-off the inevitable there wasn't much else to do but stand still under the bombs. The people with any means available to them would escape to the countryside. For the lot left behind there was plenty of time to rob bombed out houses and even steal from the dying. Even firemen were caught looting buildings, the fires of which they had just put out. People were crushed to death in the panics to rush into the underground for safety.

David Cameron might be more Chamberlain than Churchill, but for the most part we've managed to stir clear of the spirit of the Blitz with the exception of the riots last summer. Still, it's not really a fair comparison. Between September 1940 and May 1941 there were over 4,500 known cases of looting and juvenile crime made up almost 50% of all arrests. And yet huge gains were won for the working-class movement after the war. The only moves we're seeing to secure those gains have been the odd strike. Officially 400,000 people marched this week in London over pensions, the crowd included 20,000 coppers, and London Occupy has sprung up once again. This is the ongoing resistance to the cuts that hasn't been going on in the US. The courageous protests across the pond in Wisconsin and on Wall Street (which shouldn't be sneered at) have been blips on that vast land-mass. There are huge differences, in Europe we're seeking to protect the social democratic accomplishments of the last century while in America these victories have yet to be won.

Freedom or Death.

We have seen large-scale demonstrations across Europe, including general strikes in Portugal, Spain, Germany and France. The most heroic of resistances has been fought in Greece, which has been hit badly by the crisis to say the least. Of course, there is a lack of coordination on a continental scale, so the bursts of rage are sporadic and unpredictable. Europe still has something of an organised Left, which America barely has anymore. Perhaps history only ended, as Fukuyama suggested, in the US. The emergent SYRIZA, a coalition of leftist parties, which has been making significant gains in the recent Greek elections. The coalition is only 2% behind New Democracy, the conservatives who are closest to taking power. Even the Communist have won 8% of the vote and the Democratic Left got 6%, while PASOK has fallen to 13%. It looks unlikely that the Greek Left will be able to form a coalition government due to differences over austerity and the usual sectarianism that plagues the Left wherever it can be sniffed.

It's possible that New Democracy and PASOK will form a government, - the equivalent of Labour cutting a deal with the Tories - a capitalist bulwark to push through austerity and wait until the socialist storm passes. In retrospect, the victory in France for the established Left holds greater significance with the gains of the radical Left in Greece taken into account. The ruling-class is determined to reconstitute the status quo and get its way. The fight isn't over, though some would prefer to turn our attention to the presence of the Golden Dawn in the Hellenic Parliament. This seems to overestimate the possibilities of a return to Metaxism in Greece, given the gains that the neo-fascists have made are still dwarfed by those of the Left. We shouldn't fool ourselves that these herds could put together the Fourth Reich. The Greek Left needs to push further and be on guard against any possible attacks Golden Dawn might launch on immigrants.

The rape of Greece has opened up all kinds of possibilities, it is an unstable situation. We're told not to sympathise with this profligate nation of wasters and yet this is where some of the longest hours in the world are worked. This is the birthplace of democracy which the Germans and the French have shown nothing but disdain. The Greeks remain remarkably in favour of European integration in spite of the garbage the Franco-German reactionaries have been trying to feed them. The country has been trashed for the sake of a right-wing experiment that was rushed into after Germany reunified. There are some profiteers in this crisis, Greek workers aren't being paid and are being fired across the board. SYRIZA are sticking to their guns, calling for the nationalisation of the banks, paying of the debts owed to pensioners and an end to "structural adjustments" in the jobs market. The Greeks are right to resist of the attempt to destroy the living standards of huge swathes of the population. Recall the old slogan: freedom or death.

Womb Wars.

Since the beginning of 2012 we have heard the usual blather about welfare 'reform' (a most dodgy word in political language) with the defenders of family values reserving a particularly cold place for single-mums. The Conservative Party have pushed for a cap housing benefit at £26,000 on commonsense grounds of "fairness". Of course, this isn't nearly enough for the gutter-press which would like to see the whole benefits system scrapped followed by the swift return of workhouses. It would hit large families hardest even if they have managed to find cheap housing outside of London. There are now pushes in Newham to boot the poor out of London altogether. Clearly the London City-State is just for the ultra-rich to swan around in limousines. The next kick was to single-mothers in a bid to make them pay for trying to get child support from their former partners.

Even though it makes far more sense to cap private rents in London, at least in the short-term, as everyone knows that the rent is too damn high! Of course it isn't enough to cap rents, there needs to be serious public investment in affordable housing. And yet the Conservatives have no time for this discussion. It's just assumed that the problem is that they haven't gone far enough. But there's plenty of ink and phlegm to be wasted on calls for an end to dependency culture. There's even been time to entertain nonsense about morality legislation. We've seen Nadine Dorries, that arch-custodian of the sacred foetus, go after sex education in the wake of failure on her campaign to sledgehammer the right to choose. This is the politics of reaction at work again, it has nothing to do with any moral values. Whenever politicians talk of 'family' you should expect an attack on women to follow.

This is where class and sex converge, where feminism and leftism are conjoined at the hip. Everyone knows the word "proletariat", but not every rascal with a Marxian phrase book know that the term is derivative of the Latin for "offspring". Terry Eagleton reminds us that it referred to those who were too poor to serve the state with anything other than their wombs. Too deprived to contribute to economic life in any other way, these women produced labour power in the form of children. Society demanded reproduction, not production from these women. The proletariat was originally outside the workplace, not within it, just like the single-mother living on benefits. But the work these women endured was a lot more painful than breaking boulders. The average worker is a woman in the world today, as it was in the days of Marx and Engels when Britain was the workshop of the world.

As the workers' movement suffers in this time of regression, so do women. We can see this in America. The Georgia House has passed a 'foetal pain' bill that stipulates women must continue to carry to term a stillborn baby as pigs and cows do. The lot who think its proper that a women should die in back-alley abortion clinics to save a foetus have seen victories recently with 'Let woman die' bills. There are businesses spying on potential employees and judge them in accordance with their use of birth-control. This is the nation partly founded by Aaron Burr who hung a portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft in his office and insisted that his daughter be educated at the same standard as a man. And we expect this of women for no reward. It's not like we recognise motherhood as work, so many of us don't think the raising of children has any worth at all that we support cuts to child benefit. It's just something women do for free, like a lot of wonderful things.

We've seen people like Rick Santorum pop up, an Opus Dei Republican who believes that life begins at erection. The sort of lunatic who is opposed to abortion in cases of rape. This comes from a man with no kind of social conscience at all. He wants to legislate what consenting adults do in the bedroom. The state can intrude into that area, but not emancipate individuals from wage labour. Santorum's rotten mind fixated on the rigidity of hierarchy and the strength of authority. It is no coincidence that Santorum's politics consist of a return to theoconservative values with the state as a nanny for the rich, a bludgeon of the poor and of the foreign. It isn't coincidental, the opposition to the vital freedom, for women, over their rate of reproduction fits neatly into this platform of sadism. It's about making sin fun again for a privileged few in a way.

As noted by Peter Singer if abortion was illegal then it would be poor women who die from botched abortions in droves whereas well-off women can travel to another country in search of the treatment. Think of the number of people who travel to Switzerland in order to commit suicide. Clearly, the value of life only applies to some in the world of Nadine Dorries. The sacred foetus trumps mummy almost every time I'm afraid to say. Of course, when mummy can fly out to another country and hire a doctor to perform the procedure without a coat-hanger then a blind eye will be turned. Furthermore, as women gain greater control over their lives economically then they're less likely to get pregnant. In a society where there are greater opportunities, better education and better pay for women there will be less children born but there will be less abortions too. Primates like Mr Santorum are unable to see this, men like this have no right to claim to be "pro-life".

Bastards in Bahrain.

Well the Grand Prix maintained its record of holding races in horrible regimes. The little island of Bahrain is just the most recent example, but there were the races in Apartheid South Africa and Fascist Spain of yesteryear. It was good to find updates in the mainstream, just a glimpse at the courageous pro-democracy movement: particularly the ongoing hunger strike by Abdulhadi al-Khawaja. The most recent protests and deaths at the hands of the police forces have received much more attention than they would have otherwise. The repression in Bahrain now has John Yates, once a candidate for the top job in the Met, to defend the House of Khalifa. Well, you've got to pay the mortgage somehow! On top of this, King Hamad has been invited to dine at the celebrations of the Queen's Jubilee. All of this comes over a year since the Saudi intervention in Bahrain was waged. The intervention embodied the West's anxiety at the prospect of democracy in the Middle East.

First it was Bahrain, then it was Libya. By then, Ben Ali and Mubarak had been swept away by the revolutionary contagion spreading rapidly from country to country. You can say it was oil in Libya, but you can't simply say that about Bahrain. The island isn't simply a major oil-producer unlike it's neighbours. There is a reason that the US Fifth Fleet is stationed in Bahrain, it is well situated to defend the status quo. In the West the fear was that the uprising would establish a Shi'ite dominated state in the Gulf. This would go far to undermine the Arab facade of US client-states which keep a friendly hand on the oil spigot. It could mean a new ally for Iran, not to mention give ideas to the Shi'ite dominated eastern province of Saudi Arabia. This is at a time when the Iraqi government is looking to avoid another war with Iran and instead wants stable relations. Meanwhile a civil war rages in Syria with the Ba'ath Party just about clinging to power, its talons bloody as ever.

As with the violent repressions in Syria and Libya, the reason given in Bahrain was to defend the nation from 'foreign interference'. Similarly, in Egypt, Mubarak had anti-Semitic propaganda distributed as he called on Bibi Netanyahu to send the IDF into Tahrir Square. By then it was too late to save the tyrant, the military shunted Mubarak out of office hoping to buy-off the opposition. Meanwhile the Israeli political class watched with great unease as the US gave up on blocking elections in Egypt after it became impossible to save the dictator. And for good reason, Egypt has been a vital US proxy since Sadat dragged the country into a tacit alliance with Israel in the 1970s. By then Sadat had already imposed market reforms which destroyed the country's middle-class and opened the door to corruption. After the rebellions of 2011 suppressed, the serious question for the House of Khalifa is how to reformulate the old order.

Ironically, it was in eastern Arabia that a esoteric Ismaili sect set out to build a society based on reason and equality. By 899 the Qarmatians had established a utopian republic in what is now Bahrain. Its system of governance consisted of a council of six with a chief who was the first among equals. Out of a millenarian fervour the Qarmatians sacked Mecca in 930, stealing the Black Stone and dumping dead pilgrims in the Well of Zamzam. The Qarmatians may have first attempted to redirect the pilgrimage away from Mecca before holding it for ransom. Whatever the case, over 20 years later, the Black Stone was left shattered in the Great Mosque of Kufa in Iraq. The opportunity to seize control had come for the Qarmatians from the aftermath of the slave rebellion in Basra, which raged from 869 to 883 and had left Baghdad diminished in power. Hundreds of thousands of slaves participated as the rebels held that the most qualified man should reign - even if he is a black slave.

Even in recent history, Bahrain has seen uprisings and significant protest over the last 20 years for democracy with the state managing to fend-off each successive wave of opposition. Given that Bahrain is an important artery to the heart of capitalism in the Middle East, it may mean that the GCC itself has to been shaken up sufficiently to bring about democratic change. This would mean serious change in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and the UAE.  Notice there has been no regime change and no reform in any of these states. The repression was swift to prevent any serious opposition from even appearing on the streets. This is where most of the power in the region is concentrated, the epicentre of capital accumulation from an unsustainable energy trade. The Arab Spring has shaken a rotten status quo in the region to its core, but has yet to fundamentally change the Middle East. This isn't to say that it has been a failure, far from it, it means that it has to go further.