Thatcherism is Alive and Well.

Let them eat cake!

In the midst of the scandal, which looks to swallow News International whole, David Cameron stated, what we all knew, that his government is dedicated to a radical transformation of the way public services are delivered. The stated aim on the tin is greater choice, less bureaucracy, improved services and equal access for rich and poor. The problem being that no one would oppose such things, which is just the point, no doubt this list was carefully constructed by a public relations team. The welfare state and public services are about to torn open to face the full brunt of the market, oh and the voluntary sector as Cameron would add to reassure us of the prospects of privatisation. The suggestion that opening up public services for privatisation is fine because there might be a bit of charity work, and volunteering going on as well, is ridiculous. Just as when the US Supreme Court decided to open the floodgates on campaign funding, a union might be able to contribute to Obama's campaign but it will mostly be corporations that actually flood the campaign with bales of cash.

The Prime Minister stressed that he wanted to put power in "people's hands" and to do so the "grip of state control" had to be loosened. These people are the raiders of the public good remember. This is no different than the Thatcherite rhetoric of popular capitalism which gave "power to the people" by selling off British Telecom for £3.7 billion, the first of a series of privatisations in the 1980s. Soon after the privatisation the workforce of British Telecom was subjected to a witch-hunt against trade unionists. We should also keep in mind when John Major took power after the fall of the Iron Lady in 1990. As Prime Minister John Major soon promised the British people "nothing less than a revolution in the way public services are delivered, it will be the most comprehensive quality initiative ever launched." The market reforms initiated under Major were intensified under Tony Blair and it was applied to almost every aspect of government and public services. We know just how well this turned out.

We're incapable of imagining a better world and instead resort to a business ontology, whereby everything can be better if it is handed over to the markets. The privatisation of British Rail in 1993 was made on the separation of track from train operation in the same way as the model of air transport, which is fundamentally different in terms of infrastructure and engineering. Richard Branson just gobbled down an £18 million dividend from Virgin Trains, which does quite well out of £8 billion of tax-payers' money spent to upgrade the West Coast Mainline. The support for the railways has fallen from £5.2 billion in 2008 and 2009 to £4.6 billion in 2010, whilst the contribution from the private sector is at £459 million and most of which is spent on stock. The state can either under-charge as the private providers pay huge dividends to the investors in the private sector or the private providor hemorrhages cash and the tax-payer has to bailout the franchise. British Rail has been turned into a gravy train and the standard of service has hardly been improved.

Remember the Conservative u-turn on NHS reform, well it turns out to be bollocks. The Tories have refused to scrap the reforms which will rip open the NHS to private competition for the sake of "efficiency" and all the other buzzwords. The so-called "u-turn" of the Coalition has retained the aspect of the reforms that stipulates any private company can be involved in the NHS so long as the firm is a "qualified" provider. So the unelected bureaucrats and unaccountable private companies can still take hold of the health budgets and provide the care. The talk of "choice" is to be feared most, free choice is always invoked but never explained in its most brutal expression: You can either live in a fancy house or under a bridge? What is missing here is the amount of money it involves to buy a nice house in this country? The costs which will be incurred by the NHS reforms are not going to be put forward in advance, this is particularly true of social costs, because no one would sign up to it if that were the case. Just as there will be no mention of the inconvenient truths around the cuts.

Fascism, Regular not Decaf.

The media was somewhat disappointed to find that the slaughter of Norwegian civilians on Utoya Island and the bombing in Oslo was not perpetrated by Islamists. Instead it turned out to be just another angry white man out to "liquidate" an entire generation of future politicians. Oh and he's a fan of Geert Wilders who made contact over the web with fascist groups such as the English Defence League and wanted to make a stand for Europe as a Judeo-Christian civilisation. It is a testament to the state of affairs in Europe that we often hear the political heirs to Hitler and Mussolini calling for a defence of Judeo-Christian values. How dare these people even speak of the Judeo-Christian civilisation?! It is time for us to seriously think about the resurgence of the radical Right with it's promise of an alternative modernity devoid of the class struggle and affirmed through the nation. It is no coincidence that we have witnessed this resurgence just as the economic crisis of 2008 has left us stagnant, bankrupt and disillusioned.

A recent poll conducted by Searchlight has found that 48% of the British people would vote for a radically right-wing political party if the violent xenophobia, football-related thuggery and proto-Nazi regalia was ditched. So we want Hitler without the Holocaust, a decaffeinated fascism. The growing support, which is probably exaggerated, is the result of the financial crisis and the subsequent recession. Similarly, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation has found that 30% of people believe Germany is over-run with immigrants and another study found that 13% of the German people would welcome the rise of a new Führer. So Angela Merkel has announced the "failure" of multiculturalism as Nicholas Sarkozy has banned the Islamic veil and expelled the Roma, whilst Silvio Berlusconi has imposed a state of emergency to combat illegal immigration among other things. The approach of the British government has been to lay into multiculturalism as a "state-sponsored doctrine", to the joy of the BNP and the EDL, in favour of a "muscular" liberalism.

In Europe we find there is a silent rehabilitation of Fascism going on, where Fascism is being defended as not as bad as National Socialism and we are encouraged to forgive Mussolini but not Hitler. The Hungarian government has reformed the laws against Fascist propaganda to outlaw Communist propaganda and Nazi propaganda. All National Socialists are Fascists, but not all Fascists are National Socialists. Thus, Fascist propaganda has been given the green light in Hungary. Just as the UK has introduced an immigration cap and rails against multiculturalism, in order to avoid the horrors of the "extremes" of racism we must resort to a "reasonable racism". This is no better than the way Robert Brasillach came up with a notion of "reasonable anti-Semitism" during the Nazi occupation of France. When we excavate the ideas that lurk behind this attack we should begin in mainstream conservatism and outward to fascism. So we can go from the timid opposition to multiculturalism and political correctness to the militant rejection of Islam and cultural Marxism.

There is no vaccination for Fascism, we can't hold it off with a "moderate" racism that will accomplish the same ends without the Gestapo. As Richard Seymour has pointed out we can still read about the "failure" of multiculturalism that led to the attacks in The New York Times and in The Atlantic how the massacre is a "mutation of jihad" whereby a white man goes ape as a Muslim fanatic would in order to prevent the coming Islamization of Europe. So these outbursts can be avoided if we just act to dismantle multiculturalism in a more 'moderate' way. It is not the case that the Muslim disposition to kamikaze style attacks was "transmitted" into the innocent mind of a blond white European which caused this horrifying atrocity. The worrying presupposition remains Brasillachian in that the radical Right represents the legitimate grievances of working-class people and we must find a "reasonable racism" to resolve such grievances. The media are looking to reconstitute the same line that these events could have been avoided if Norway had been tougher on immigration.

Now we find that the BBC are apprehensive to refer to the Norwegian perpetrator as a "terrorist" and has opted for references to "acts of terror" in Norway in order to maintain the self-serving definition of terrorism, e.g. if you have a beard and you're yelling something in Arabic when you blow yourself up you're a terrorist mate. The euphemism of "international terrorism" pops up to remind us of the threat of al-Qaeda rather than the threat posed by far-right maniacs who have access to firearms and explosives. The commentariat has really showed itself up this time, which set the agenda of the media and the limits of the discussion over the attacks until the murderer surrendered peacefully. The Sun spared no time at all to run the headline "Al-Qaeda Massacre: Norway's 9/11". On Fox News John Bolton stalled until the full facts were known, remaining sceptical until it was proven that it was an angry white man and not a Muslim. The shock-jock Michael Savage went on an appalling rant against Muslims and specifically spewed hate against Muslim immigrants in Norway.

On Newsnight we watched as Jeremy Paxman asked the most feeble of questions to EDL leader Stephen Yaxley Lennon. The line of the EDL has basically been swallowed by the mainstream media, that the grievances of the working-classes are being expressed through a fascist reaction to immigration. So the massacre in Norway is an inevitable bi-product of multiculturalism as white people react to the Islamization of Europe. The only way to avoid more violence is to restrict immigration, put a stop to multiculturalism, political correctness and the fundamentalist practice of Islam. This is the same line that Glenn Beck tows on his radio show. And yet the millionaire funder and strategist of the EDL Alan Lake has said "Apparently, in a long screed Anders Behring Breivik posted on line, he did this attack to protest against the way that Islam is taking over large parts of Europe. By attacking the leftist politicians that are enabling this, the chickens have actually come home to roost – although I’m sure it won’t be depicted that way."

The Republican Hypocrisy on Debt-Ceiling.

 

 

Nixon raised the debt ceiling 9 times for a total increase of 36%.

Ford raised the debt ceiling 5 times for a total increase of 41%.

Reagan raised the debt ceiling 18 times for a total increase of 199%.

George H.W. Bush raised it 9 times for a total increase of 48%. 

George W. Bush raised the debt ceiling 7 times for a total increase of 90%.

 

The disagreement between the Republicans and the Democrats is over the ratio of spending cuts to tax hikes. The Republican Party want 85% spending cuts and 15% tax increases but the Democrats want 83% in cuts and 17% in tax rises. Of course there are some who want to see 100% spending cuts and no tax hikes at all, those people are fucking mental!