The West's propaganda MO: a short 21st century timeline of the race to World War III

No Cold War online event Wednesday 25th May 2022
NATO, Ukraine and Russia: war, propaganda and censorship

The West's propaganda modus operandi: a short 21st century timeline of the race to World War III

Anna Chen's No Cold War talk @35m. I was timed out at Point 9 below, so here's the full text of my speech.

When China explored the world in the 15th century and reached as far as East Africa, they traded a bit and brought back a giraffe. When Europeans landed in the Americas in 1492, they killed and enslaved its native peoples, stole their treasures and gave them smallpox blankets in an early form of biological warfare.

In North America, 100 million native Americans were killed, Black Africans were put through slavery, Jim Crow and imprisonment. The USA was literally built on an ancient Indian burial ground, because that’s what they’d turned it into.

And that’s pretty much been the template ever since.

Europeans sailed beyond their own lands for conquest, glory and fortune. The Chinese mostly stayed at home.

The Chinese invented gunpowder for great firework displays.

Europeans turned gunpowder into murderous weapons of conquest.

If China is the newly rich kid wearing a Rolex who’s wandered on to Mafia turf and is about to be rolled, then America is the 300lb ex-champ who’s geriatric and punch-drunk from all those fights. He’s pinned the kid against a wall, fist in his face, screaming blue murder that the kid’s about to hit him.

Australia and Britain, the Ugly Sisters of the piece, nod enthusiastically and use the opportunity to bury bad news …
like Hard No Deal Brexit fallout,
a wrecked economy,
excess Covid deaths
and a society that’s breaking down.

(There's an argument to be had that Great Britain, with the oldest secret service in the world dating back to Sir Francis Walsingham in Elizabethan times, is the Wicked Stepmother and that the US is the senior Ugly Sister. They fell out regarding control over Iran and its oil fields in the 1950s, and the US stuck to the One China policy. However, GB has at last, after decades, managed to get the US on board for Winston Churchill's balkanisation of China: "I believe in the ultimate partition of China — I mean ultimate. I hope we shall not have to do it in our day. The Aryan stock is bound to triumph.")

Asian people are scapegoated, attacked and killed, all whipped up by the crudest anti-Chinese racism that’s lain dormant as an inserted Yellow Peril memory — which is now being triggered at every level by the 4th Estate of the State, the mainstream media.

On top of the $750 Billion dollars a year spent on military preparation for attacking China, Biden has slapped a $500 million dollar a year propaganda bounty on China’s head.
It’s clearly having a profound effect on our collective sanity. Only a few days ago the Sims family in Bristol were burned out of their home in an arson attack.

And that’s about where we are right now.

Sometimes it feels like we’re living in The Fall of the Roman Empire with Technology, and sometimes, it’s the 1930s. And someone is doing their best to pin a blood libel on the Chinese.

It was only 4 years ago that Christine Lagarde had pointed out the global economy was advancing in sync for the first time [since the US Great Crash 2008]. Oh, joy, we might never need war again.

But the plutocrats and industry giants of the West don’t just hold the delusion of conquest of China as the endgame. They are also ridding themselves of surplus labour which is, of course, us. Pampered middle and working class westerners of the post-war liberal era who never had it so good are now being hollowed out and presented with the bill.

So how did we get from the global economy running in sync and relative peace to the West’s race towards a war on the fat, juicy prize that is China?

The Anglosphere’s propaganda wars rely on the public not joining the dots. Events are presented as mysterious disjointed acts of the cosmos without cause or effect.

Never forget the Battle of Orgreave, 18th June 1984, which rehearsed and revealed the depth of manipulation by the state.

Thousands of striking coal miners picketed the British Steel coking plant. The day erupted in violent clashes between the miners and the heavy police presence, many of whom were on horseback.

The news bulletins that night showed the miners attacking the police, who seemingly horse-charged them in response, eliciting public sympathy for the cops and outrage for the miners.

However, when the original film was examined, it emerged that the the TV news outlets had shown the news footage in reverse order, reversing cause and effect, when it had been the police on horseback who'd attacked the peaceful and legally picketing miners.

They cut up the narrative, respliced it, started it at Act 2, slashed the backstory entirely, recast heroes as villains and villains as heroes. Attackers became victims and victims attackers.

In the same way, the 8 years of war on Russian speakers in the Ukraine ever since the violent coup in 2014 is disappeared like magic.

So please just remember that operational template.

A Short 21st Century Timeline of the Race to World War 3

1) George Dubbya Bush designates China a “competitor” in his 2000 election and again in 2005 when he’s standing in the rubble of Iraq.

2) China begins to buy US debt in 2000. In 2006, the value of the US dollar falls by a third because of Iraq war inflation. Meantime, an alarming housing bubble is being pumped up. When China complains, the US tells them to suck it up.

3) Two years later, America’s economic shenanigans lead to a breakdown of their system with the financial meltdown in the US Great Crash of 2008. A global Depression is feared. Deficiencies in Western capitalism are exposed and the system discredited in the eyes of many around the world. China steps in to act as a shock-absorber and rescues the world economy by allowing global currencies to devalue against the yuan, taking a massive economic hit themselves. They buy even more huge amounts of US debt until China holds over a trillion dollars’, and they stimulate domestic consumption because 1.4 billion Chinese can buy a lot of goods.

4) So China saves the world economy from devastation. And how is China thanked for this?
In October 2011, only three years after China saves us all from America’s Great Crash, Hillary Clinton — Obama’s Secretary of State — writes her notorious piece urging US control of the “Western Pacific” (South China Sea!) and the Central Eurasia landmass.
Three huge countries lie in a straight line across the landmass from Europe to Asia: they are, from West to East, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Mongolia, plus the little known region of China called Sinkiang in ancient times, now known as Xinjiang – China’s back door into Central Asia and Europe. Taiwan claims Mongolia as part of China, so let’s hope President Tsai isn’t made Empress of all the Chinas as the USA seems to want.
The title of Hillary Clinton’s piece is America’s Pacific Century and basically lays out the aims of the Project for the New American Century (began in 1997).
Hillary writes: “… there should be no doubt that America has the capacity to secure and sustain our global leadership in this century as we did in the last. “The future of politics will be decided in Asia, not Afghanistan or Iraq, and the United States will be right at the center of the action.”

The same year, a NATO coalition attacks Libya and destroys the country.

5) A year later, in 2012, President Obama Pivots to Asia, removing US military from the Middle East and pouring it into Asia where America has about 400 bases surrounding China. By doing so, America takes the first step in existentially threatening China.

2013: US-Australia practise war on China in the exercise “Talisman Saber,” involving 22,000 American and 10,000 Australian personnel and 27 warships.
2014: The US and Philippines begin annual military exercises over the pretext of disputed islands and shoals. Vietnam already started militarising their reclaimed islands back in the 1970s.

Meanwhile, in 2014 there is a right wing coup of the elected government in Ukraine, followed by eight years of violent ethnic cleansing attacks on Russian speakers in the east of the country.

2015: Xi makes an offer to Obama that he won't militarise China’s reclaimed islands if the US stops threatening them. Obama’s response is to sail the US fleet of warships straight into the South China Sea.

6) Obama revives military exercises in the Malacca Strait, situated between Indonesia and Malaysia, threatening to fence in China. Previous massive US exercises had been held in 2006 and 2007, prompting China to take defensive measures. Around 80 per cent of South China Sea traffic is China sending us their goods.

7) Donald Trump is elected in 2016, partly in fear of Killary's enthusiasm for World War.
Trump launches a Trade War on China on spurious grounds. He imposes crippling trade tariffs on Chinese imports (paid for by the American consumer), claiming a huge trade deficit but when you factor in the American corporate giants providing sales and services inside China — like Apple, Microsoft, MacDonalds, Nike, Coke and Starbucks — the deficit is actually a surplus of about $24 billion.

8) Around the same time as Trump’s Trade War, there’s a slew of Thucydides Trap articles warning us not to have a war just because Athens is catching up with Sparta. The trap refers to the situation in history when an upcoming power (ancient Athens) rivals the existing power (Sparta) and the result is a devastating war that wrecks both sides. China negotiates trade in good faith, increasing their purchase of US farming produce and machinery, but refuses to buckle.

9) Faced by a China that’s resisting pressure better than he expected, by summer 2019, Trump has closed the White House pandemic team and the CDC office in Beijing.
Coincidentally, Boris Johnson ascends to the Downing Street premiereship and one of his first actions is to close the British pandemic team, also in July 2019.
In November 2019, a month after Event 201 in New York, the White House briefs Nato and Israel about the coming pandemic but fails to warn China.
In December 2019, China becomes the first country to detect, identify and sequence (Jan 2020) the novel coronavirus, SARS-COV-2: COVID-19.

10) In Hong Kong in the summer of 2019 a US-backed colour revolution attempt ultimately fails without a single death of a protester. That same year US cops kill 1,004 civilians. 2019 is turning out to be a helluva Night of the Long Knives for America.

11) Everyone forgets the Thucydides Trap warnings about conflict between the established superpower and the rising one as the US of Amnesia goes to work.

12) Manufacturing consent for war is started by various military thinks tanks: ASPI, CIMSEC etc. This will involve transferring our collective horror of America's war atrocities and trail of dead on to a country that hasn't had a war since 1979.

13) Western mainstream media such as the Guardian close to opposing views by the time of Hong Kong riots and the CoVfefe outbreak in 2019. The Guardian's sister paper, The Washington Post, is owned by oligarch Jeff Bezos whose Amazon juggernaut runs the Pentagon's Cloud. Capitalism now openly runs the state.

14) In January 2020, just as the world is waking up to the Covid pandemic, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo calls the Communist Party of China the “central threat of our times.”
Most people have heard Pompeo’s notorious boast that he lies, cheats and steals and runs entire courses on it. How many know this is the exact wording of the Honor Code of the West Point Military Academy he attended … but in reverse: “A Cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do”. They are laughing AT you, not with you.

15) Biden is elected President in November 2020 and raises America's military spend to $780 BILLION a year. On top of this he places a fat bounty on China's head when he budgets $500m a year specifically on anti-China propaganda.
After promising he won't start World War 3, Biden forms AUKUS with Australia, and UK, bringing nuclear war to Asia.
In May 2022, Biden will lash up with Japan in preparing for a war on China on the pretext of "defending" Taiwan despite paying lip-service to the One China policy. Constant sabre-rattling provocations — supplying military arms, sending trainers and politicians to the island, sailing entire warfleets off the coast and sending submarines and airplanes into China's territorial waters and airspace — fail to provoke China into hot conflict with its own territory. America and the West are denied their casus belli and it enrages them.

16) In January 2022, a colour revolution attempt in Kazakhstan (nestled between Russia and Xinjiang) is swiftly ended by Russia and China in cooperation. It becomes clear that, in order to defeat China, the US axis will have to cut the legs out from under it - prime target, Russia. 

17) On the eve of Nord Stream 2 supplying Germany directly with Russian gas, Biden pledges it will never happen. NATO has moved military capability ever closer to the Russian border over the years and Russia has recently mobilised troops on the border to meet the threat. Having killed 14,000 eastern Ukrainians since the 2014 coup, the Ukranian far-right intensifies attacks on Russian-speakers. The trap is sprung.

18) Putin sends his military into the Ukraine. Biden gets his war at last.

19) So … Obama launches the war on China after Dubbya Bush sets it up.
Trump and his Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight find the plans and try to play it clever.
Biden becomes Trump Lite, gets a taste for it and eclipses even the Donald’s hideousness. He’s unable to fulfil even his promise of ending student debt.

I look at the richest country on the planet and see what they’ve done with their wealth. It has been one long looting spree until the top 0.1 per cent own as much as the bottom 90 per cent and the top 0.01 per cent own 11.2 per cent of America's total wealth. Having sucked their own country dry, a tiny stratum of oligarchs, plutocrats, Military Industrial Complex, fossil fuel companies, tech giants and gun-lobby enthusiasts are now creating new hunting grounds in order to replenish and reinvigorate their imploding economy.
And the mainstream media, the Fourth Estate whose role it is to hold the power of the first three estates — legislative, executive and judicial — to account, are right in there with them.
No Fourth Estate, no democracy.

The Europe-Asia landmass

No Cold War online event 25th May 2022
NATO, Ukraine and Russia: war, propaganda and censorship
Speakers:
Andrew Feinstein - Author, campaigner and former African National Congress MP
Camila Escalante - Journalist and presenter for Kawsachun News
Asa Winstanley - Journalist and political commentator
Anna Chen - Writer, poet and broadcaster
Kayla Quesada - Academic and geo-political analyst
Steve Sweeney - International Editor of the Morning Star
Chair: Sequoyah De Souza - No Cold War Britain

Tinderbox plc: a poem for Grenfell Tower

A poem for Grenfell Tower by Anna Chen marking a month since the disaster

Today marks a whole month since the devastating fire at Grenfell Tower in the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea, yet the conflagration that killed at least 80 people seems ever present, still fresh in the mind and the heart. This is more than an accident, a natural tragedy — call it gross negligence, call it murder, someone had to make a buck. Only £2 per panel of cladding separated the chances of survival from inevitable death. Then there were the absent sprinklers, the single stairwell, the lack of adequate firefighting equipment, the destruction of regulations designed to keep us safe, and all the other corrupt, mendacious, money-grabbing decisions taken that led us to this point.

While the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea took £55 million a year in rent from the remnants of its social housing, only £38 million made it back to the property that yielded so much loot that the borough was able to amass £274 million to spend on council tax rebates for the better off and flashy opera events in Holland Park. The poorest paid for the amusement of the wealthy. Funny how there's always money for those who need it least.

Artists are engaging with events. Here is my attempt to make sense, reflect and refract. I hope my readers get something out of it.

Tinderbox plc

At the hot point
Of the turning world
A spark lit the flame
That caught the cladding
That burnt the facade
And threw a light
On the burned-out shell
Of the state of the State,
By Lucifer's light,
A glimpse of hell
Roiled and erupted.
Two pounds of flesh
Per shake of dice
No values known,
Just the cheapest price
In modern Britain plc.

A giant with his fiery sword
Sliced and smote from the flash at four,
He slashed the night to twenty-three,
Dividing the world, rich and poor.
He made his mark, he slashed the dark
On the bias to the roof and higher,
Earth to sky, sheer cliff of fire,
Sliced the tower to light and ash
On one side life, the other a fire of flesh,
A cash-fuelled slomo waiting-room of death,
Each poisoned breath counting down
Lives extinguished but not the flames
Blackening air with soot and cinders.
That is my neighbour, this is a mum,
There is the artist, those are children
Unto the last babe in turbulent dreams
Such horror wreaks and wrecks.
This is the state at the top of the heap,
What power sows, the weakest reap.

Another giant slashed and burned for years
And turned a world upon its head,
A bonfire of red tape set in motion
A cascade of events, invisible, minuscule,
Each piling onto each in spidery increments.
Action group Cassandras screamed murders in waiting,
Grievous bodily profit with intent.
Lift a rock and see what crawls,
So many in the frame, your head spins,
The shitlist lengthens with every trawl,
Cash is cruel, cash is king:
National Grid gas pipes, KCTMO, austerity,
Stay Put, politicians, the construction industry ...
Even Maggie Thatcher takes a bow
Her dishes are all cooked by now,
Her high rise cladding on simmer the year the miners struck,
No law now, just luck and the gift that keeps on giving,
She slashed and burned faster than the FR60
One-hour fire-hold rule she flamed,
Halted building, sold off social housing,
Health and safety not gone mad. Just gone.

Aberfan, Hillsborough, Grenfell Tower,
Who had the cash also had the power
To wrap Babel in plastic, for the view palled,
No thought for the living when the opera calls,
A class event, a bagatelle paid for with Grenfell rents,
Rip off the poorest, the system bent.
Gas pipes up the stairwell, smoke in the vents,
Alarms on the fritz, saved a few pence,
Water pressure failing, too little spent,
Retrofit sprinklers too high an expense
And on ignition, stay put was their best advice.
Two pounds of flesh per shake of dice
No values here, just the cheapest price.

The giant scrawled in smoke and flame
Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here
But the firefighters came in all the same
Through Bosch's vision, the scorching Hotpoint near,
Over bodies they clambered, up clogging stairs
Barely three feet wide, on a wing and a prayer
And an underfunded gulp of air.
The sullied air chokes but the horror is pure,
Breathe deep and inhale fury and fear,
Cyanide, asbestos and your neighbours.
Which is the most toxic?
Down in your lungs even now
The death clock ticks, reset

Time was the enemy.
Fire was the enemy.
Mammon was the enemy.
Kensington and Chelsea council was the enemy.
Kensington and Chelsea TMO was the enemy.
The industry was the enemy.
The government was the enemy.
They sprung a trap, a trap was sprung.

Yet still we lived. Watching from an outer circle,
We were resourceful in those hours.
In our heads, at least, perhaps a car could provide a landing.
Could a mountain of mattresses soften the fall?
For these were no princesses on the pea
But cheeky, boisterous boys and girls.
We wished a man could fly.
We wished for Superman, iced chunk of Thames in tow.
We wished a child could bounce,
That they weighed a quarter of an ounce.
We wished we could put gravity on hold
Stretch this moment til an escape was found,
Slow down damn time til they reached the ground.
A thousand people prayed a million wishes:
For a Star Trek transporter to beam them away,
A fakir's rope dropping as the gentle rain from heaven,
For wings to sprout, something miraculous to get them out.
A ladder! A tall ladder, a platform with a high pressure hose,
No, too fanciful when the giant slashes and fire stations close.

Did those knotted blankets lead someone to safety
Or a dead end?
"I had my whole life ahead of me," Gloria Trevisan told her mum.
And it was.
Six and a half minutes with Rania Ibrahim
Is to take a trip to a dark side,
Her voice rings out truth everlasting.
Walk with her, it's the least she deserves.
Walk with the Grenfell dead and soar with angels.
A bonfire of people followed the bonfire of regulations
As surely as night followed night followed darkest night of the soul
Cry cruellest murder, the tower can never be put right.

Over the main route into London from Heathrow,
Looms a burnt-out colossus:
A coked-up Tory wideboy in a cheap suit with a pocketful of loot;
We all learnt the meaning of metaphor that night
In Tinderbox plc.

by Anna Chen
12th July 2017

The author was born and raised in Hackney in east London and lived at Hackney Downs and the Gascoyne Estate.

Apologies for not being able to find the photographers who took the photographs on this page. Please let me know if you took the photographs and if I have your permission to use them with a credit (or if you'd like them taken down). By the same token, please feel free to publish my poem with a credit and link to this page. Thank you.

The Tower: Rewriting Grenfell. Measured, factual, humane response from Architects for Social Housing (ASH) to Andrew O’Hagan'S 60,000 word clickbait article in the London Review of Books defending the RBKC council.

EDIT: More poems are turning up. I'll link to some of them here.

Grenfell Tower, June, 2017: a poem by Ben Okri. ‘If you want to see how the poor die, come see Grenfell Tower.’ Video here

This video of "No Alarms" by Sana Uqba made me cry with its haunting rhythms and powerful imagery

The Merited Moral Remembrance Of The Wilfully Massacred Residents Of Grenfell Tower - Poem by Stanley Collymore

"Grenfell" by Olga Dermott-Bond

"Nowhere": a response to the housing crisis by poet Tony Walsh – audio

"A Hope for the Future" by Angi Holden

On the Liturgical Poetry website, "Grenfell"

"Grenfell Tower" by Lisa Rey

"Towering Shame" by Sarah McGurk

Video of "Grenfell Fell" by Rakin Cisse Niass

"Grenfell Tower" by Maxine Black

"Kensington and Chelsea" by David R Mellor

Video of "Grenfell Tower Fire" by The Truth Poet

"Family Trees (Grenfell Tower)" by Steve Rowland

"Of Grenfell Tower and other scandals": Why we must Whistleblow a wind of change, by John Pearce.

I think this one is from a firefighter or police at the scene: "The Grenfell Tower" by Thin Blue Line UK

"For Grenfell Tower" by Dave Rendle

Two poems at the Culture Matters page, one by Alan Morrison and one by Paul Dovey

Stunning video, "Ghosts of Grenfell", from Lowkey. Live dates


"14th June 2017", a beautiful poem from someone who was instrumental in filling the void left by local and national government, badly marred by territorial pissing in the final stanza. A conclusion about universal love and empathy rather than a demand for "I am not my brother's keeper" indifference might have been more apt because a denial of others' empathy in a cruel world is surely not the path to follow. We are all pieces of the continent of humankind — Picasso didn't have to be at Guernica in order to paint the horror. Would be vastly improved by losing the last six lines.

Eggheads Against Jeremy Corbyn: right-wing academics phone it in to the FT

It's taken the right wing ages to muster 55 Jeremy Corbyn-bashing academics in the FT. (They include Alastair Milne, Professor of Economics at the University of Loughborough. Any relation to Seumas?)

I hate to mock the afflicted but they really are flailing like punch-drunks and have tacked together an argument most of us can answer in our sleep (hello, railways!).

It should be noted that while JC's People's QE's is far too good for the likes of us, Draghi is promising yet more money printing for the banks.

And I swear to you, the list includes a Ronald MacDonald.

For those of you with FT access, the comments are the best thing about this desperate gesture. For those without, here are the salient bits of the letter:

Corbynomics has not been thought through seriously

We wish to register our opinion that the economic policies sketched by Jeremy Corbyn are likely to be highly damaging, and send this message to counter the impression that might be got from the previous letter of “41 economists” that Mr Corbyn’s policies command widespread support in the mainstream of the discipline.

Renationalising industries is highly unlikely to improve the performance of its targets, and very likely, if history is anything to go by, to make things worse. If compensation is paid, it will be a waste of fiscal space, even unaffordable; in case it is not, it will be extremely damaging to the climate for enterprise in the UK as other companies fear the government would get a taste for it.

“People’s QE” would be a highly damaging threat to fiscal credibility, and unnecessary, since at this time of very low interest rates and tolerable debt/GDP public investment — in many areas much needed — can be financed conventionally. Figures put on money that could be found from ending “corporate welfare” and combating tax evasion are almost unbelievable and add to the sense that Mr Corbyn’s plans have not been seriously thought through.

Paul Levine
Professor of Economics,
University of Surrey
Tony Yates
Professor of Economics,
University of Birmingham
Wouter den Haan
Professor of Economics,
London School of Economics
John van Reenen
Professor of Economics,
London School of Economics
George Magnus
Associate, China Centre,
University of Oxford
Ronald MacDonald
Professor of Economics,
Glasgow University
Cristiano Cantore
Senior Lecturer in Economics and
Deputy Head of School, University of Surrey
Joe Pearlman
Professor of Economics,
City University
Kent Matthews
Professor of Economics,
University of Cardiff
Costas Milas
Professor of Economics,
University of Liverpool
Akos Valentinyi
Professor of Economics,
Cardiff University
Valentina Corradi
Professor of Economics,
University of Surrey
Alex Mandilaras
Senior Lecturer in Economics,
University of Surrey
Cian Twomey
Lecturer in Financial Economics,
National University of Ireland, Galway
Miguel Leon-Ledesma
Professor of Economics,
University of Kent
Alexander Mihailov
Associate Professor of Economics,
University of Reading
Peter Sinclair
Professor of Economics,
University of Birmingham
Christopher Martin
Professor of Economics,
University of Bath
Richard Disney
Professor of Economics,
University of Sussex and Institute for Fiscal Studies
John Fender
Professor of Economics,
University of Birmingham
Chris Florakis
Associate Professor of Finance,
University of Liverpool
Philip Rothman
Professor of Economics,
East Carolina University
James Foreman-Peck
Professor of Economics,
University of Cardiff
Juan Paez-Farrell
Lecturer in Economics,
University of Sheffield
Mike Wickens
Professor of Economics,
University of York
Michael McMahon
Associate Professor of Economics,
University of Warwick
Michael Ben-Gad
Professor of Economics,
City University
George Bratsiotis
Reader in Economics,
University of Manchester
Dr Rebecca Driver
Economist, Analytically Driven
Phillip Booth
Professor of Insurance and Risk Management,
Cass Business School
Theo Panagiotidis
Professor of Economics,
University of Macedonia, Greece
Ali Al Nowahi
Professor of Economics,
University of Leicester
Manthos Delis
Professor of Financial Economics and Banking,
Surrey Business School, University of Surrey
Martin Ellison
Professor of Economics,
University of Oxford
Christopher Spencer
Lecturer in Economics,
University of Loughborough
Alastair Milne
Professor of Economics,
University of Loughborough
Tom Holden
Lecturer in Economics,
University of Surrey
Patrick Minford
Professor of Economics,
University of Cardiff
Mark Koyama
George Mason University,
Washington DC, US
Ettiene Farvaque
Professor of Economics,
University of Lille
Stephen Hall
Professor of Economics,
University of Leicester
Stephen Wright
Professor of Economics,
Birkbeck College, University of London
Ray Barrell
Professor of Economics,
Brunel University
Ben Ferrett
Senior Lecturer in Economics,
University of Loughborough
Roy Zilberman
Lecturer in Economics,
University of Lancaster
Richard Dennis
Professor of Economics,
Glasgow University
Peter Doyle
Former senior manager,
International Monetary Fund
Todd Kaplan
Professor of Economics,
University of Exeter
Bob Rothschild
Emeritus Professor of Economics,
University of Lancaster
James Davidson
Professor of Economics,
University of Exeter
George Kapetanios
Professor of Economics,
Queen Mary College, University of London
William Tayler
Lecturer, University of Lancaster
James Malley
Professor of Economics,
University of Glasgow
Kitty Ussher
Managing Director,
Tooley Street Research
Geraint Johnes
Professor of Economics,
University of Lancaster
Ethan Ilzetzki
Lecturer in Economics,
London School of Economics

Poem for Jeremy Corbyn: Labour Pains by Anna Chen

No slouching towards Westminster by JC.

Here's my poem about the current welcome rush to the heart and head. I guess that makes me a Poet for Jeremy Corbyn too.

LABOUR PAINS

We snapped on a light
and in the glare all was laid bare.
Suddenly Yvette Cooper wasn’t so super,
Kendall won’t mend anything at all
‘cause Liz fights tooth and claw for biz.
As for principles, Andy says burn ‘em.
But the latecomer nails jelly to the wall,
walks tall among the fallen,
cuts a swathe through those in thrall
to the false gods in the shopping maul.
Looking like Santa, cast as Satan,
working like a dynamo, everybody’s smitten.
Bottle what he’s made of, someone nab the patent,
before the bloody Blairites get their twisted knickers straightened.
Groping in the gloom we’d forgotten how to stand,
the air up here so fresh and clean, the view they tried to ban.
Blinking in the sunlight, nerves and sinews flex,
this is how hope feels, it’s betterer than sex.
A pole star restored, a fiery dawn,
this way something bright is born.

Anna Chen
3rd August 2015

Anna Chen's collection of poetry, Reaching for my Gnu, is published by Aaaargh! Press


Margaret Thatcher Died at the Ritz (2013)

General election 2015: "It pumps me up!!!" not a lot

"IT PUMPS ME UP!!!"

I KNEW David Cameron would try the Obama "anger translator" trick and screw it up. His speech today launching his small business manifesto (sic!) in London was made even more hideously embarrassing by not actually hiring in the translator. Perhaps it's an English flaw, confusing mere rich-kid petulance with the fiery passion he'd dearly love to exude but can't. And, one mo' thang, Dave, it's "you've got another THINK coming," not "another thing" (which is what I heard mumbled on Radio 4's World At One programme just now). Perhaps Dave should be given the opportunity to spend more time with his book after 7th May.

Team Cameron are making much of Dave's claim that he has plenty of other things to do with his life and that being Prime Minister doesn't mean as much to him as it does to the other party leaders in the general election. Smell the BS, taste those sour grapes and pucker up. Surely the role of PM is supposed to be the greatest honour this nation can offer short of tea and crumpets with Her Maj.

Ed is much more likeable, especially as the right's relentless Bullingdon bully-boy tactics have won him the sympathy vote with the nation's young women and given rise to the phenomenon of the Milifan. This is almost as bizarre to me as when mighty efforts were made to transform Margaret Thatcher into a sex symbol in the 1980s and overnight she was turned into Marilyn Monroe ... at least in the eyes of old colonels, Little Ingerland and Alan Clark (who perved about her ankles). I felt like the little boy who saw that not only did the King have no clothes, he was wrinkly and ponked of formaldehyde as well.

Same thing happened with Tony Blair. Was I the only person on the planet who saw a bland posh-git Nigelesque twit whose only stand-out character trait was acquired when he achieved war criminal status over Iraq?

It didn't bother me that Ed was caught inelegantly chowing down on a messy bacon sandwich, not a fraction as much as that Labour "immigration controls" mug (and I don't mean Ed Balls). Re housing — which is surely part of the Labour USP — he's tinkering at the edges, bringing in a mansion tax that catches accidentally asset-rich but income-poor Londoners; bashing the Buy To Let sector, which is a nice juicy target for skint governments, instead of tackling the root cause — NOT ENOUGH HOUSES BEING BUILT FOR THE PAST DECADES. Try that one, Ed, along with increasing decent social housing stock ... and watch those pesky BTL landlords wither away as fast as their savings in the age of deflation.

While Austerity Bastard and Austerity Lite battle it out, we almost missed the super-rich doubling their wealth in the last ten years, thanks to the main parties politely pretending it didn't happen like a fart at that tea with the Queen I was talking about.

It took the Labour Party more than a year to decide that the bedroom tax was a travesty and even longer to challenge the Tory narrative about the deficit, which has now set like concrete and for which you'd now need the equivalent of a political pneumatic drill to break through the lies accreted during the past five years. This election should have been a walk-over after the cruelty, theft and vandalism of the Tory/LibDem Coalition. Ed should heed Aditya Chakrabortty's warning highlighting parallels between Labour and Greece's Pasok party.

Who voted for the Royal Mail firesale? For tuition fees trebled, for tax breaks for the rich, the poor and disabled hounded to suicide? The explosion in food bank use? The whole IDS DWP nightmare?

On the other hand, look at the overlaps of ghastliness with the last Labour government. Who can forget the Private Finance Initiative, loving up to non-doms like Lakshmi Mittal (yes, Ed is doing something now), the near-complete collapse of house-building? Who was it who brought in tuition fees in the first place? How many in the Labour camp have financial interests in privatising the NHS (hi, Alan Milburn and Cherie Blair!). How many Labour peers voted for the NHS Privatisation Bill ... and then it turns out they have financial interests? Former Home Secretary Dr John Reed a director of G4S, Jack Straw selling himself ...

Ach! They're all awful. Having personally witnessed how the far left is just another ruling class in waiting, I'll probably vote Labour just to get rid of the Tories. It pumps me up not a lot!

Saturday interview at All That Is Solid with Anna Chen: "Don't sneer at love in politics"

Saturday interview with Phil Burton Cartledge at All That Is Solid ...: Anna Chen

Extracts: highlights and lowlifes

- Why did you start blogging?

I started blogging as Madam Miaow in 2007 to stop me chucking heavy objects through the television screen. I needed not only to vent, but to order my thoughts when faced with the all-pervading mess out there. I'm sure there are many of us who have been kept sane by having the option to communicate our views to an audience, even a small one. It's a healthy way to make sense of an increasingly chaotic world.

- What set of ideas do you think it most important to disseminate?

A rising tide floats all boats. Rosa Luxemburg's warning that the choice would be between socialism or barbarism grows truer by the minute. Socialism is supposed to about an egalitarian, freeing society; from each according to their ability, to each according to their need, not a wholesale troughing down by power-hungry opportunists.

- What set of ideas do you think it most important to combat?

Nationalism, anti-immigration, racism, sexism. I would include reformism if only there was a socialist alternative.

- How about political villains?

Anyone who rises through the left only to take an axe to the movement as soon as they see an opportunity to climb the greasy pole — they have done so much damage to the movement and proper socialism which should represent liberation for the majority. The SWP analysis in the late 1990s predicted that Blair would be right-wing and betray the working class who would move rightwards so it was vital that we build an alternative to Labour. They were correct in that instance yet here we are over a decade later with the left worse than ever following pointless sectarian punch-ups mostly initiated by the SWP when a strong principled left has never been more desperately needed.

- What do you consider to be the main threat to the future peace and security of the world?

The constant upward suck of wealth with our resources accreting in the hands of a tiny global elite. This can't carry on without major crises and a battle to redistribute fairly. Trouble is, they now have the technology to hang on to their ill-gotten gains and leave us behind. Recent "revolutions" have not been inspiring, they've simply meant a change of personnel at the top as die alte scheisse takes over.

- What would be your most important piece of advice about life?

Beware inadequates — they loathe you. Learn to tell the difference between lip-service and action. If love isn't part of your politics, then you have no business telling others what to do and how to run the world. Far from being romantic nonsense as so many cynics would have it, love is the highest plane on which human beings as social animals interact. We need to develop 360 degree abilities and wider bandwidth.

- What do you consider the most important personal quality?

Capacity for love — not the romantic kind, the other bigger one that encompasses generosity, solidarity and comradeship. Intelligence versus cleverness.

- And any pet peeves?

Mockney accents on posh leftists who tell working-class people how to be working-class. Purported progressives and anti-racists I've never met projecting their yellow peril fears onto me. Leftists who fall over themselves to appropriate your labour and the comrades who turn a blind eye. The snowy blinding WHITENESS of the left groups and the obvious lack of diversity, often manifesting as outright hostility towards Other. Organisations that bolt themselves to the front of other people's struggle and then claim leadership rights. None of this helps us advance our political cause.

- What piece of advice would you give to your much younger self?

Use softening rose water instead of tonics that strip your skin and dry it up. Don't smoke or stay in the sun too long.

Don't go anywhere near the British far left. Too many charlatans, careerists and snake-oil salesmen and women with ambitions who are happy to plant their boot in your face if it means personal advancement as soon as something's up for grabs. Suddenly, gay rights are no longer a "shibboleth", that rape never happened and "what's yours is mine". Wise up to the fact that, just because someone says the right thing, it doesn't mean they live it. No-one on the left has your back if you are already a marginalised minority because so many of them are insecure, chasing status, career, youth and power, and they harbour a deep contempt for those who they see as occupying the bottom of society, whatever lip-service they pay otherwise — it's their own self-loathing projected out. Just because you are comradely, principled and non-sectarian, it doesn't mean everyone else is, too, simply because they've read the right books. Watch out for the middle-class ones who sneer at ethics and morality as "bourgeois", forgetting that Trotsky wrote a book called Their Morals and Ours, not Their Morals and We Ain't Got None.

Click to read more >>>

THIS AFFECTS YOU: EU & US feeding us to corporations with planned TTIP legislation

Video of Cameron handing us to the corporations like fatted cattle. Cannibalised by Morlocks.

Is everyone aware what the EU and US are planning to do?

No TTIP Day of Action Saturday 12th July 2014

More info on https://www.facebook.com/events/231572717052962">Facebook

Behind closed doors, the EU and US are planning the biggest corporate power grab in a decade. Join us in central London on 12 July to say: hands off!

If agreed, the EU-US Trade Deal (TTIP) would grant corporations the power to sue governments, threatening to lock-in the privatisation of our schools and NHS. Rules that protect workers, the environment, food safety, digital rights and privacy would be undermined, with harmful industries like fracking encouraged.

But we can defeat this agreement. On Saturday 12 July, people in towns and cities across the UK and Ireland will be taking action together.

Take to the streets with us in central London on 12 July. Meet 12 noon outside the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) for a creative action with a few surprises.

Together we will raise our voices in the heart of Whitehall, transforming a space with art, theatre, workshops and music -- and kick-starting a new movement with the power to win.

See you on 12 July.

www.noTTIP.org.uk
Twitter: #NoTTIP and #SayNo2TTIP

****

Part of the #NoTTIP day of action, supported by: 15MLondon, 350.org, An Taisce, ATTAC Ireland, Biofuelwatch, Campaign Against Climate Change, Centre for Global Education, Christian Ecology Link, Comhlámh Trade Justice Group, Community Food Growers Network, Corporate Watch, Disabled People Against Cuts, Environmental Pillar, European Greens in London, Frack Free Sussex, Frack Off London, Friends of the Earth, Fuel Poverty Action, Globalise Resistance, GMB, Green Party London, Green Party of England and Wales, GreenNet, IOPS, Jubilee Debt Campaign, Keep Our NHS Public, Left Unity, Lewisham People Before Profit, London Federation of Green Parties, Occupy London, Open Rights Group, OurNHS, People & Planet, People’s Assembly Against Austerity, Pirate Party UK, Platform, Presentation Justice Network, Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), Reclaim the Power, Red Pepper, Roj Women's Association, STOPAIDS, Student Stop Aids Campaign, SumOfUs, Tax-payers Against Poverty, Trocaire, UK Food Group, UK Uncut, Unison, University and College Union (UCU), War on Want, We Own It, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, World Development Movement, Young Friends of the Earth, Young Greens.

Anna Lo stays in job and fights rising racism in Northern Ireland

A positive story among the horrors of the European turn to the right. The UK's only parliamentary politician of Chinese origin — the Alliance Party's Anna Lo – has defied racists in Northern Ireland and will stay on in her job. Lord knows we need people like her.

It was bad enough that a Christian pastor in Belfast, James O'Connell, condemned the entire Muslim people of the world as following a "satanic" religion that was "spawned in hell".

Northern Ireland's First Minister, Peter Robinson, then inflamed the situation by agreeing with the rabble-rousing pastor by saying he would only trust Muslims to "go down to the shops". One wonders if he'd trust the loyalist mob who did go down the shops and chased Anna Lo out of Connswater shopping centre. Then there's Dineen Walker, Newtownabbey deputy mayor and Democratic Unionist Party member, calling Anna a racist. Which "satanic" dimension are these people inhabiting?

Imagine being a Muslim today in Northern Ireland. It must feel as if the First Minister has just painted a big target on you.

Name one religion or belief system that isn't a nightmare when it descends into fundamentalism.

The world is at war in various hotspots, we no longer love our neighbour ... it is the unholiest of messes and demagogues will always try and whip up hysteria against an entire group defined as "other". All other social and economic factors from which they themselves benefit are buried in a slurry of hatred: no challenge to the unneccessary austerity or the recession brought about by bankers' excesses which continue today. No serious measures to retrieve the billions in tax lost to evasion and secreted off-shore that should have been spent on health, housing, job creation.

Ed Miliband could do with learning from Anna Lo instead of capitulating to the Ukip agenda following their win in the European elections.

Anna Lo's defence of minorities dates back to even before she became the first ethnic politician to be elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2007. Not just the Chinese, who were subjected to a mail-out from the loyalist marchers who rerouted their parade past her home in the year of her election, but Poles, Romanians, Roma and anyone in need of an honest politician.

Speaking on Channel 4 News, Anna called out the racism of personal insults she's been subjected to. She criticised the "outrageous" anti-Muslim comments of Pastor O'Connell followed by Peter Robinson's "ludicrous and negative comments about a whole race, about a whole religion" in a climate of rising racism. In answer to whether the First Minister had made it worse, she said: "That was my concern and my anger, seeing the rise in racism in Northern Ireland in the last six months, and for him to come up with such comments supporting … such negative sweeping comments about the Muslim community." She thought he should make a public apology and retraction in response to public anger or else resign.

Widespread support and a Twitter campaign with the hashtag #istandwithanna has persuaded her to stay and continue her work.

Robinson may well have breached the rules of Stormont's Code of Conduct. Even Ian Paisley's son, Kyle, has called him "a condescending ignoramus", (although this was somewhat marred by his description of the DUP politicians' cowardice as "yellow". Still, it's the thought — or lack of — that counts). Decent politicians should give this brave principled woman maximum support — she is a model for us all.

Caleb Selah and Lenny Henry: TFYS radio show on Soundcloud

From Caleb Selah: "Recently this man accidentally became the TFYS's neighbour. Lenny may have done a few dodgy things on the tellybox but everyman has to earn a crust. I like the Brummie a lot, he has put many smiles on my face, given work to friends. It has been suggested by a politician that he should return to a black country. He's from the Black Country. UKIP must not be underestimated, first Lenny, then Craig Charles and then Lemmy from Motorhead will all be attacked by these stupid, cowardly wastes of blood and piping. Fuck You UKIP and Lenny, live long and prosper…"

Read more and listen to Caleb Selah's The Fuck You Sound show.

Sisters: poem from the Fabulous Ninja Gurl about feminism and politics as sleight of hand

Put the blame on BAME, why don'tcha?

Yelling that you stand up against social injustice does not mean that you do. One of the things that has shocked me the most about my time in the left is how various characters can say and write one thing, and then do the exact opposite, like words don't have meaning.

It's a flimsy Potemkin village of left postures, a sleight-of-hand art mastered by a largely white Oxbridge elite who tell others to check their privilege while failing to do so themeselves; who loudly defend victims while slyly substituting themselves for such and booting out the incumbents; who insist they tell the truth while twisting the narrative out of shape.

Whiny and self-serving, brooking no challenge or debate, it is the art of perpetuating oppression while posing as liberator and utterly gobsmacking in its cheek.

I always thought the role of the revolutionary was to make visible the invisible. That goes for hidden power relations as well as flesh and blood human beings.

Face value and lip service are tools of the trade when you take the public for a ride. Perhaps the inability to discern between actions and words does indeed make you a sucker.

Cue drumroll: on a silver salver, may I present to you a blue pill and a red pill … Your choice.

Sisters (first draft)
by Anna Chen

The siren sisters call,
"Help her. Help her."
Help who?
"Help the woman of colour.
We'll tweet and link
if not our arms then our charms:
I am the good fairy, look at me."

But I am a woman of colour.
"We are all women of colour now."

No, I AM a woman of colour.
"Not sure your type qualifies.
That's almost white but not quite.
Help her. Help the woman of colour
except for the ... what is it you are again?"

But I AM a woman of colour.
"Then help yourself."

Okay.
I would like to thank all the white sisters
who say they could not give a shit
or who say they do, without whom ...

I am the fabulous Ninja Gurl who dances among you
blowing kisses and raspberries,
turning cartwheels and juggling flames.
"Is there a draught in here? Shut that door,"
say the dames atremble
that some ghostly elephant has thundered into the parlour
and pissed on their parade.
You are chilly and chilled in your icicle tower
and can freeze me out at a hundred paces.
Your thousand-yard stare is as close as you can bear
my ashy traces in the sand.

I am not insubstantial, a helpless damsel in distress
who you can pet like a mouse,
neither am I an industry powerhouse, of use.
In your dark lens I am let loose, the barbarian at the gate
who you secretly rate,
but who you fear would play buzkashi,
pounding your carcass into dirt under my horse-hooves.
I, subspecies, stinking of animal skins,
ripping carcasses with graveyard teeth, blood on my breath,
who's fought in battle for our cause,
dived off sheer cliffs and hobbled
on smashed spine back to health.
No wonder you won't let me in.
I am the wind under your roof,
the fierce blast shaking your ballast,
that rattles your windows.
And how are you enjoying the view?

Every Cinderella should have such sisters.

In the shadows, in the cracks beneath the crags,
While you file your copy, I file my teeth to jags.

Case study of experience in the British left.

Chinese Britons could swing the general election vote in some constituencies

Sonny Leong and Ed Miliband

As the British local and European elections heave into view, watched closely for how likely the 2015 general election is to yield victory for feudal baron David Cameron or milquetoast Ed Miliband, here's my South China Morning Post column from last year in which the Chair of Chinese for Labour Sonny Leong explains why non-white voters may hold the balance of power in some constituencies.

Does this mean the end of racial discrimination against BAME Brits ? Or could it also partly explain why the white male establishment is hell-bent on protecting its last gobby bastion of crude race dominance, Jeremy Clarkson and the Top Gear team at the BBC?

City scope: Ready to be counted
Anna Chen in London
13 October 2013

With the numbers of ethnic-minority voters exceeding the electoral majorities of sitting members of parliament in 168 constituencies, it is being suggested that minorities hold the key to the outcome of Britain's next general election, in 2015. Britain's ethnic-Chinese population, meanwhile, has reached almost half a million, and Chinese voters exceed in number the MP's majority in 36 seats. Political parties may well decide it is time to attend more to their interests.

In an era of no outright winners and coalition fudges, those 36 seats might mean the difference between power and limping along in opposition for five long years. Sitting MPs, fearful for their survival, now have to target communities within communities. There could be some interesting horse-trading with Chinese constituents.

Sonny Leong, chair of the Labour Party's Chinese for Labour, says, "The Chinese have reached a certain size where they can be power brokers. The ethnic minority is an important group that no political party can ignore."

Leong alludes to a certain complacency that has existed until now. Labour was long able to take ethnic votes for granted, but politics have become less tribal and voters no longer adhere blindly to family tradition when choosing which party to put their cross next to. Just because Grandpa voted for a party all of his life doesn't mean his independent-minded grandchildren will back the same one.

More than ever, issues and policies determine who gets votes and, for Chinese, educational opportunities and immigration issues tend to be priorities. Every Chinese here is likely to know of someone affected by immigration clampdowns. For Labour that could be good news, electorally; for the parties who form the current coalition government - the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats - recent accusatory, anti-immigration ad campaigns do not bode well for gaining Chinese votes, especially as the MPs of both are still overwhelmingly white.

Unlike in other Western democracies, in Britain Chinese have practically no parliamentary representation, other than one member of the House of Lords, the baby-faced Baron Wei of Shoreditch, of whom few had heard before Prime Minister David Cameron made him policy "tsar" for his Big Society initiative in 2010.

Just as little has been heard of him since he resigned his tsar-ship in May 2011 (because nobody had told him it didn't come with a pay packet).

Class War comes to Penge: Ian Bone standing in Lewisham in the general election

Looking forward to seeing Class War liven up the general election. "Because all the other candidates are SCUM!" With very few exceptions, I'd say they were cutting with the overall mood.

If you don't like the sentiment, then make sure your candidate does their job, represents their constituency, protects the rights of their voters rather than the rich and basically does NOT behave like scum.

Anarchist Ian Bone is standing in Lewisham West and Penge in 2015.

Oriental Pearl in late capitalism: warning

"Just be advised, boys ... You'll want to watch your step, 'cause what I am is, is like a small-diameter pearl of the Orient rolling around the floor of late capitalism — lowlifes of all income levels may step on me now and then but if they do it'll be them who slip and fall and on a good day break their ass, while the ol' pearl herself just goes a-rollin' on."

From Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon

British East Asian Artists and Diaspora music take the diversity debate into Parliament

Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) artists demand representation that reflects British Society 

Last February, the British East Asian Artists wrote an open letter to broadcasters and culture minister Ed Vaizey about the pitiful almost non-existent representation of east Asians in the media despite being the third largest minority in Britain. Vaizey, who had been holding round-table discussions with black actors, including Lenny Henry about continued exclusion, immediately wrote back inviting us to participate in future round-table discussions.

British East Asian actor Daniel York followed up with a powerful piece on the racial pecking order and structural inequality in British theatre and television in which he quotes American sociologist David T Wellman numbering the "culturally sanctioned strategies for defending social advantage based on race”.

In every political and cultural sphere in Britain, Black, Asian and Mixed Ethnic (BAME) people are excluded (see my last post with an illustration of this dynamic in action).

Yesterday, I went to the well-attended Diaspora Equality in Music round-table discussion chaired by Rt Honourable David Lammy MP for Tottenham at the House of Commons.

Sixty or so people (mostly from the Black community) listened to Diaspora founder, Rose Nunu, lay out her objective of trying to ensure that BAME is at the heart of the music industry. "The Diversity landscape is not diverse," she said, requesting recommendations to change the landscape.

One startling figure she gave was that, while the UK music industry employs more than 100,000 people and generates £3.8 billion a year, 95.7 per cent of its workforce is white. At the current rate of loss, its questionable whether there will be any BAME representation in the music industry by 2020. The music industry is more fragmented now than at any time in the past 10 years.

Various lines of action were explored with a strong vocal presence from the business end aiming at increasing the workforce.

Beverley Mason FRSA said there had been a decrease in BAME representation since 2011. (This reminded me of Caitlin Moran telling an audience that the majority of pop artists are now privately educated, nudging out the working classes from one of their few conduits of social mobility.)

However, Mason reeled off a list of figures showing how diversity was a reality factor in the cold light of economics: as the market place becomes more global and competitive, companies actually benefit from being inclusive, She said, "Diversity has to be embedded in the culture. It is a mindset, not an add-on to the budget like tea and biscuits."

The advantages include fresh sources of creativity and problem solving from new perspectives. Varied cultural background and life experience reward companies and organisations that embrace change. It takes good leadership to implement diversity and inclusivity but, as I've witnessed on the political left and in the arts, the white privately educated establishment have a vested interest in keeping out those BAME sources.

David Lammy said, "We get fantastic music because different music from across continents come together." Hybrids are always healthier than a mono-culture for all concerned. Despite Lammy having previously been Minister for Culture, "No-one from the BBC's phoned me up asking me to be on the board. I'm available."

When one speaker told of her tribulations getting one night of the Proms devoted to gospel for the first time but which was then dropped as a regular event, Lammy expressed the room's disappointment. "One night in a whole Prom season? This is unlike the US experience where the 40 per cent BAME presence is a permanent fixture. What would it be like if there was 10 years of that inclusion, and not just one?"

BAME makes up 40 per cent of London's population. Politics, the music industry and the arts trail behind even the Metropolitan Police in terms of numbers. In the legal profession, BAME representation stands at over 10 per cent. It is an alarming set of figures that needs to be addressed.

It was pointed out to cheers, that the music is diverse but the money and power behind it isn't. A speaker from the floor said, "The music industry is in the toilet," and urged musicians, "Don't work for a record company. Get seed-funding, set up your own companies, start an industry."

This was a fine as far as it went but I was soon getting the impression of small outfits scrambling around and manoeuvering on the Titanic while the ship goes down.

So it was interesting to hear another perspective from a speaker arguing that they needed support for those who already exist.

"We have a culture of diversity. We are scrapping for different corners while young people are dying. It's a culture and community that won't support itself. There hasn't been action at a movement level since Soul to Soul. We need to bridge the gap between commerce and community. There are larger and deeper issues, and those with power should be held to account until we see tangible results."

It remains to be seen whether music can be transformed into a channel of social change for the good. Will the corner of the industry as discussed here be challenging the power that relegates BAME to a resented add-on, or joining it in an unholy scrum for the advantage of individuals? Are we, as has happened in left politics, building a new establishment within the establishment? The debate is well under way.

Restaging Revolutions: alternative theatre on Madam Miaow's Culture Lounge tonight 5pm, Resonance 104.4FM

Tonight live at 5pm on Resonance 104.4FM, Madam Miaow's Culture Lounge's guests are Dr Susan Croft and Neil Hornick of The Phantom Captain theatre company.

Presented by Anna Chen. Charles Shaar Murray rides shotgun.

The alternative theatre movement in Britain was a post-war explosion of talent and ideas that took theatre to the masses in the two decades from 1968. Dr Susan Croft, curator of the Restaging Revolutions exhibition currently on at Holborn Library, talks about this rich cultural period with Neil Hornick, veteran of the movement in his role as founding member and director of The Phantom Captain theatre company.

With clips from The Phantom Captain's productions.

Unfinished Histories website — a great resource for the period.

Listen live (click on the Resonance FM widget in the sidebar) or afterwards online.

Full set of Madam Miaow on Resonance FM.

Resonance 104.4FM

Ed Vaizey responds to British East Asian Artists open letter on cultural inclusion

Ed Vaizey responds to British East Asian Artists open letter.

The BEAA writes:

Some of you may have seen yesterday an open letter from British East Asian Artists (BEAA) to the Minister For Culture, Ed Vaizey. The letter was in response to Mr. Vaizey’s recent roundtable discussions with leading black actors and industry heads about the lack of opportunities for “Black & Asian” actors in the UK.

We wrote because it’s simply too easy for us, the “third minority”, to be overlooked and ignored.

Today we received this from Mr. Vaizey’s office –

“Excellent points – thank you. Will include you in my thinking and invite you to my next round table”

Harriet Harman, the Labour Shadow Culture Secretary is also keen to meet with us.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who shared, tweeted and supported the open letter yesterday. When more of us speak up we are a powerful voice. Let’s not think of ourselves as the “smallest ethnic group”. Let’s think of ourselves as the third largest and fastest growing.

It’s extremely heartening to see more and more of us moving away from that “silent model minority” stereotype which will only ever renders us irrelevant and invisible.

If you want to be heard In modern Britain, you have to (in the immortal words of the Beastie Boys), “fight for your right to party”.

Let’s continue doing so.

Press pick up on the BEAA letter to Ed Vaizey.

SWP splinter in new sex storm: never mind social and economic relations, here comes mighty whitey with the horn

I'm sure the first thing we all thought when we saw the photo of Dasha Zhukova Abramovich and the bondage chair was: ooh, hot BDSM.

My own race play consists of me as Kato doing a kung fu leap on Loved One as Inspector Clouseau, and then yelling at him in some guttural language that may be cod Chinese or just cod landed in Newfoundland.

Sometimes we reverse roles but I am not very good at being a clowning buffoon. There are some things men do better — I'm sorry, gurls, but let's just face the ugly truth on that one.

At other times I pretend I am the leader of the vanguard party addressing the millions (played by Loved One) and shout at him in long words that he can't understand or some such egregious polysyllabic sesquipedalian bumsuckery sublimating my drive for white supremacy that I must codify to render invisible the underlying hierarchy or it will make my friends' heads go pop.

Then there are the times we play Wendi and Rupe. He complains because we have to roll around on Monopoly money and old pesetas from holidays we can no longer afford.

I'm thinking of bringing the Opium Wars into our race play, and do opium while he sails a gunboat up my Yangtze. (Will poppy-seed cake do?)

Never mind the social and economic relations — here comes mighty whitey and he's got the horn.

The Red Dagger by Heathcote Williams: what the power elite do when the poor play up

Part 1 of The Red Dagger, a fascinating history of the poor from Heathcote Williams. When the power elite clamped down on the masses, Wat Tyler led a challenge and was martyred for it. I'm not saying we're heading back to feudal times, but …

Narration and montage by Alan Cox.

George Osborne says we can't afford the welfare state. Here are some reasons why.

George Osborne says we can't afford the welfare state. Of course we can't afford it. £70bn pa in tax avoidance, tax cuts ... Someone has to pay for all that and the 147% pa profit made by the train companies. Fire sales of public assets. All those extra billionaires with tastes to match: £20K cocktails (£35,000 at Movida), £330K rounds of drinks, £49mn apartments planned at Battersea Power Station making residents of No 1 Hyde Park look like paupers, £32mn Ferraris, £6mn bras (see pic above), diamond encrusted everything. Not to mention the odd war (check out those politicians' arms portfolios).

According to The Sunday Times Rich List in 2010, after a short dip in the collective wealth of the top one thousand weathiest Brits in 2008, it went up by a third in one year, 30 per cent in 2009 in the wake of the economic crisis. That's over £77bn up to £333.5bn, the biggest annual increase in the 22-year history of The Sunday Times rich list. Worldwide, the 358 people with assets of more than $1bn were worth more than the combined annual income of 45 per cent of the world's population.

There were 447 billonaires in January 2013. The world's richest hundred people could end world hunger now.

Randeep Ramesh wrote in the Guardian in 2011:

"In Britain, a dramatic rise in inequality has been fuelled by the creation of a super-rich class. The (national wealth) share of the top 1% of income earners increased from 7(.01)% in 1970 to 14(.3)% in 2005. ... Just prior to the global recession, the OECD says the top 0.1% of highest earners – accounted for a remarkable 5% of total pre-tax income, a level of wealth-hoarding not seen since the second world war."

Michael Meacher wrote in his open letter to the press in 2012:

" ... the richest 1,000 people make up only 0.003% of the population and yet they have made £155bn extra in the past three years, in the depths of the recession. If they paid off the entire deficit they'd still have £30bn with which to console themselves. Their combined wealth is the highest in history: 1,000 individuals own £413bn, more than a third of Britain's GDP. Their increase in wealth has been £315bn over the past 15 years. Capital gains tax on this at the current 28% rate would yield £88bn, that's 70% of the entire deficit. And yet it's the poorest and weakest who are paying: 77% of the budget deficit is being recouped by public spending and benefit cuts. Only 23% comes from tax increases, and half of that is from VAT which we all pay and hits the poorest hardest. None of the tax increases are specifically aimed at the super-rich."

Not to mention that the Coalition government has borrowed more in three years than Labour did in 13: £430.072 billion compared to £429.975bn.

C'mon, Tamara Ecclestone has to pay for her half a million quid shelf of Birkin bags somehow.

Listen to The Super Rich with Aditya Chakrabortty, Kate Belgrave and Charles Shaar Murray on Madam Miaow's Culture Lounge, Resonance 104.4FM.

John Kampfner on the history of the super rich.

From Vice magazine: The Seven Reasons Why Super Rich British Tax Dodgers Don't End Up in Jail.

A 2014 report by the Equality Trust revealed that the poorest 10 percent of British households pay eight percent more of their income in all taxes than the richest; 43 percent compared to 35 percent. And that's before tax avoidance schemes have been taken into account. What the rich fail to put in, the rest of the country must cover in taxes like income tax and VAT.

Paul Robeson on Resonance FM 5.30 Tues, Madam Miaow's Culture Lounge

MADAM MIAOW'S CULTURE LOUNGE 6/8
News, music and poetry
RESONANCE 104.4FM
Presented by Anna Chen
5.30-6.30pm Tuesday 19th November
http://resonancefm.com/listen
https://soundcloud.com/resonance-fm/sets/madam-miaow-says

PAUL ROBESON, MEET ANNA MAY WONG
Guests: Tayo Aluko and Dr Diana Yeh. With Charles Shaar Murray.

In this Tuesday's Madam Miaow's Culture Lounge on Resonance FM, the world's first internationally renowned African American singing star Paul Robeson and the Hollywood screen legend Anna May Wong chat about their lives and why they are now cultural icons. Well, they would if they were still alive.

However, we do have Tayo Aluko whose award-winning show, Call Mr Robeson, has played around the world. And Anna Chen — who introduced new audiences to the Chinese American film star in her 2009 BBC Radio 4 profile, A Celestial Star in Piccadilly, and has performed her solo show Anna May Wong Must Die! — talks about Anna May Wong who became chums with Robeson when they met in Europe.

With Dr Diana Yeh talking about some of the forgotten pioneering Black and Asian stars of the stage in the early 20th century, and Charles Shaar Murray.

As a famed singer and actor persecuted for his radical politics and civil-rights campaigning, Paul Robeson has the dimensions of an American tragic hero. ... Tayo Aluko does a fine job in evoking his dynamic presence and in reminding us of the inhospitable attitude to dissent in the land of the free. Michael Billington, Guardian

PAUL ROBESON, MEET ANNA MAY WONG — 5.30pm TUESDAY 19TH NOVEMBER

Listen live

or afterwards

listen online

Previously On Madam Miaow's Culture Lounge …
https://soundcloud.com/resonance-fm/sets/madam-miaow-says



(To listen to Madam Miaow's Culture Lounge series on Resonance FM for WINDOWS, download VLC media player)