A Primer on Neoliberalism. Free Markets Were Not Natural. They Were Enforced The modern system of free trade, free enterprise and market-based economies, actually emerged around 200 years ago, as one of the main engines of development for the Industrial Revolution. In 1776, British economist Adam Smith published his book, The Wealth of Nations. Adam Smith, who some regard as the father of modern free market capitalism and this very influential book, suggested that for maximum efficiency, all forms of government interventions in economic issues should be removed and that there should be no restrictions or tariffs on manufacturing and commerce within a nation for it to develop. For this to work, social traditions had to be transformed. Free markets were not inevitable, naturally occurring processes. They had to be forced upon people. Mid-nineteenth century England was the subject of a far-reaching experiment in social engineering. . — John Gray, False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism, (The New Press, 1998), p.1.
Ideology and ethics of Tony Blair. Prime Minister Tony Blair will be remembered for foreign wars and his doctrines of military intervention. In January 2007 he even insisted that his successors should fight them too. Yet they played no role in his first election campaign, and the other ideologies of that early period remained in place, throughout his time in office... the underlying political model of Blairism was, and is, the liberal democratic nation state the global crusade for liberal democracy existed as a doctrine long before Tony Blair took office. He adopted it as a personal crusade during the Kosovo war, and continued in Afghanistan, and with the much larger invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Introduction The only moral justification for a democracy is that it allows the citizens to elect a good government. The underlying political model Blair, like his Conservative predecessors, implemented a shared general vision of state and society - the liberal market-democratic nation state. A readiness to kill neoliberalism. The stolen Shepway by-election nobody knew about | The Daily Shame. Never mind the expense-fiddling MPs who are causing us to shake our fists at them every day. Don’t even bore me with those undemocratic party whips who spend their days bribing votes out of our local MPs with promises of better career options. Let’s dig a bit deeper, shall we? What about the district councils that are quietly making sure they get exactly the votes they want, in order to keep their Tory guys anchored in town councils all over the country?
Did you know that, very recently, Shepway District Council decided to have a cheeky little by-election that hardly anybody knew about? No? Yes, even at local council level, votes are being fiddled. However, if you’re not sure how they go about it…I’ll tell you using this recent example. Okay…in a very small town in Kent, which hardly anybody knows about, there were two candidates running for election. So…here’s what actually happened. <cough> HERE IT IS </cough> Oh…and tell me again, what those bigger plans are?
Can Councils Set A No-Cuts Budget? | Councillors Against Cuts. The following article is a personal contribution to the debate from a London-based LRC member. “If our Labour council votes a no-cuts budget, then the Tory minister Eric Pickles will just take over the local authority and make worse cuts.” Under the Local Government Act 1999 s.15(6), Eric Pickles, as the minister, can personally or through “a person nominated by him” take over “a specified function of the authority” if he is satisfied that the council is failing to make “arrangements to secure continuous improvement in the way in which its functions are exercised, having regard to a combination of economy, efficiency and effectiveness”. This law has never been tested. It would not be instant or easy, legally, for Pickles to impose commissioners.
Assume, however, that the courts go with Pickles, as they probably would. “A single council could never win anything.” During the Thatcher cuts of the 1980s, Liverpool’s Labour council went to the brink of defying the government over cuts. Satanic-capitalist: Bill Moyers and Matt Taibbi:... Karl Marx Was Right. Capitalism post-2008 is falling apart under the weight of its own contradictions Add to Calendar > We can’t say Karl Marx didn’t warn us: capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction. In their chase for ever higher profits, the capitalists shed workers for machines. The higher return on capital means that the share of profits rises and the share of wages falls, and soon the mass of the population isn’t earning enough to buy the goods capitalism produces. And that’s exactly what’s been happening over the past four years of the Great Recession: ever increasing income inequality, leading to ever weaker aggregate demand – temporarily disguised by an unsustainable credit binge – leading to collapse.
Or should we? So which is it? Speakers for the motion Robin Blackburn Leverhulme Fellow at the University of Essex. Frank Furedi Professor of Sociology at University of Kent, whose forthcoming book is Moral Crusades in an Age of Mistrust: The Jimmy Savile Scandal Tristram Hunt George Magnus. Labour Used Virgin 'Restricted' Report to Open NHS to Healthcare Companies. A hitherto restricted report commissioned by Labour back in 2000 has revealed how Virgin overstepped their remit – advice on improving customer service in the NHS - by promoting an increase in the use of private companies.
Further inclusions written into the report by mystery authors also reveal a fledgling policy idea that would later become part of Virgin’s expansion into the healthcare market. The document also sheds light on New Labour’s wider programme of marketising the NHS – the job the Coalition has now seen to conclusion. The document, which was meant to focus on customer service, extended into areas of regional pay, consultant contracts and staff salaries, elements that would later be included as part of Labour’s ‘NHS Plan’. Under Tony Blair, Labour welcomed private companies into the NHS like never before, and in doing so helped spawn a new organisation that would go on to be key to maintaining competition in the recent Health and Social Care Act.
Who wrote Appendix 4? NHS Plan. CIA rendition: more than a quarter of countries 'offered covert support' | World news. The full extent of the CIA's extraordinary rendition programme has been laid bare with the publication of a report showing there is evidence that more than a quarter of the world's governments covertly offered support. A 213-page report compiled by the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), a New York-based human rights organisation, says that at least 54 countries co-operated with the global kidnap, detention and torture operation that was mounted after 9/11, many of them in Europe. So widespread and extensive was the participation of governments across the world that it is now clear the CIA could not have operated its programme without their support, according to the OSJI. "There is no doubt that high-ranking Bush administration officials bear responsibility for authorising human rights violations associated with secret detention and extraordinary rendition, and the impunity that they have enjoyed to date remains a matter of significant concern," the report says.
The psychopathy of the corporate personality; lessons for law from cognitive neurology. In cognitive neurology, ‘psychopathy’ does not mean ‘a tendency to kill someone’ as is common thought by the general public. ‘Psychopathy’ is literally a ‘suffering of the mind’, and is used by cognitive neurologists to refer to individuals who cannot understand the mental states of others. This inability to understand the mental state of another in your mind is thought to go to awry in autism, from the seminal work by Prof Uta Frith, at UCL (and who was awarded an Honorary Doctorate at Cambridge this year) and Prof Simon Baron-Cohen, Macurdy Professor of Abnormal Psychology at Cambridge.
It is even thought an ability to monitor to your own mental state, in particular distinguish internally-generated mental states from those of other people, can lead to conditions such as schizophrenia, causing delusions. Salomon v Salomon provides the pivotal House of Lords case in English law, establishing that the body corporate has a separate legal personality. Related posts: Haile Selassie address to the Unted Nations Oct 6, 1963 :: by Nazret.com. Mr. President, Distinguished Delegates: Twenty-seven years ago, as Emperor of Ethiopia, I mounted the rostrum in Geneva, Switzerland, to address the League of Nations and to appeal for relief from the destruction which had been unleashed against my defenseless nation, by the Fascist invader.I spoke then both to and for the conscience of the world.
My words went unheeded, but history testifies to the accuracy of the warning that I gave in 1936. Today, I stand before the world organization which has succeeded to the mantle discarded by its discredited predecessor. In this body is enshrined the principle of collective security which I unsuccessfully invoked at Geneva. In 1936, I declared that it was not the Covenant of the League that was at stake, but international morality. But these, too, as were the phrases of the Covenant, are only words; their value depends wholly on our will to observe and honor them and give them content and meaning.
For this, all men must give thanks. Occupy Everyone: Making Revolutionaries, Not a Revolution. Occupy Wall Street is a people-powered movement that began on September 17, 2011 in Liberty Square in Manhattan's Financial District. (Photo: Tony Fischer / flickr)If the dynamic of a diverse safe space in which people dismantle oppressions through conflict resolution is at the root of Occupy's transformative potential, then perhaps there's not a distinct formula that can be reproduced, but simply spread - a culture - that people can choose to adopt. Occupy Sandy has been lauded as more American than FEMA. Strike Debt, an Occupy offshoot, is pioneering the "Rolling Jubilee" of debt forgiveness to the adoration of publications like Business Insider.
While popular in some circles, these initiatives have also led to bitter divisions that ultimately surround the narrative of the Occupy movement. Some say Occupy died long ago and that these imitations are attempting to export an unperfected product. I think we can. Displacing the State Through Autonomous Conflict Resolution. Twitter Gulag Defense Network - What Is - #TGDN.
"I wouldn't want my anarchist friends to be in charge of a nuclear power station": David Harvey, anarchism, and tightly-coupled systems. An industry-specific response to David Harvey's popular claim that anarchists can neither run nor combat 'tightly-coupled systems', specifically nuclear power plants and air-traffic control. This paper is examines the the former and critiques Harvey's understanding of how such systems meet anarchist theory and practice, arguing that hierarchy does not make such systems safer or more efficient - quite the contrary. Quote: Fetishism of the Organizational Form and Tightly-Coupled Systems Professor Harvey is trying to warn us against what he calls the “fetishism of organizational forms” - the mistake of prioritizing the method of organizing over its desired outcome.
Harvey worries that the focus on non-hierarchical local organization which he sees as dominating the rhetoric on the left is inadequate to meet the challenge of contemporary capitalism. Harvey centres his critique of anarchism around the operation of what he calls “tightly coupled systems”. Technology Atomic Anarchy Conclusion. S Rights 2012.pdf (application/pdf Object) Community Assets and Services Grants. NHS privatisation: Compilation of financial and vested interests. Liberal Democrats 71. Lord Alliance: Shares in Huntsworth plc - a company whose CEO is Lord Chadlington - which £15,500 to the party in August last year and has given money every year since 2008. Denied it at first but Electoral Commission found them out. The same company that had Baroness Cumberledge as one of their non-executive directors. Heavily involved in lobbying and PR. Article on Lord Alliance here. Donations: Lord Alliance according to the electoral commission has given £697,440.48 to the Liberal Democrats through their central party and local party. 72. 73. 74. 75. 77. 78. 79. 80.
Circle, which became the first private UK firm to run an NHS hospital last year when it won the tender to run Hinchingbrooke Hospital, plans to build a network of 30 hospitals across the UK in the coming years. Paul Frampton, managing director, MPG Media Contacts, said: "We're proud to be working with Circle, which does an excellent job in the Healthcare sector. Labour Lords 81. 82. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88.
Economics. Freeman on the land. Freeman on the land, also known as FMOTL, FOTL, "Footle" or simply freeman,[1] is a form of pseudolegal woo in various English-speaking countries. Freemen believe they can opt out of being governed, and that what normal people understand to be "laws" are merely a form of "contract" that applies only if people consent to it.[2] Freemen hold that we are all subject to a massive international legal conspiracy perpetrated for the profit of the elites, but you can hack the system if you just use the right form of words.[3] They believe only in their version of natural law, which they call "common law.
" In practical terms, they believe this means they do not have to pay taxes, debts, mortgages, etc. because we were all deceived and if you say the right form of words, this fact will be accepted! [edit] History Freemen have also shown up in Ireland, causing similar concern amongst the legal profession there[17] and a similar lack of success in practice. [edit] How it's marketed [edit] Common law.
TheBlueGuerilla. - Debate|Freedom|Liberty|Democracy: Fabricant in a haze. Terror in North Africa: are Westerners pulling the strings? - Africa - World. Westerners, including a man with blond hair and blue eyes, are believed to have been among the Islamist militants who launched last week’s attack on the Tigantourine complex near Algeria’s border with Libya. A French jihadist, previously unknown to authorities, and two Canadians are suspected to have been involved in the hostage-taking, and reports also claim that a man with a Western accent was among the extremists who lured terrified gas workers from their rooms during the hostage crisis.
Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal told reporters that a man, judged “by his English accent” to have been Canadian, was among the 32 Islamists whose raid on the Algerian refinery prompted a global crisis. One of the Canadians, identified only as “Shaddad”, is alleged to have played a leading role in the attack which left 58 hostages – including 37 Westerners - dead after a four-day battle with Algerian forces. Five further Western workers are still unaccounted for. Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann - Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists. An action-packed thriller is about to unfold in Davos, Switzerland | Aditya Chakraborrtty. I have an idea for a particularly mediocre film. The plot runs thus: a bunch of rich white men gather in an Alpine hamlet. There's a schlubby bald Chicagoan, a Parisian banker in a suit lush enough to eat, and the obligatory Belarusian with a PhD in physics and a dentist keen on gold crowns.
It's an odd set-up, but apparently innocuous. With this much cash flying about, busted film stars and semi-retired pop singers swoop in. Journalists write amusing sketches about the post-prandial piano-man who plays Billy Joel for tipsy millionaires. But away from the gluhwein and the gabfest, the real action is slowly revealed. The businessmen summon prime ministers and presidents to secret meetings in tiny rooms, where they order the lives of the billions consigned to the plains below – and so make themselves even richer. Perhaps you think my scenario is too crass to be credible, yet a far cruder version is about to unfold: it's called Davos. Take a look at who's in the Davos set. British politics urgently needs a new force - a movement on the Left to counter capitalism's crisis - Comment - Voices. Something sinister about the lack of prosecutions at Lehman Brothers. Arms dealers.