graham stewart

Trump is just Biden his time

January 20, 2021 By graham stewart Leave a Comment

A bad pun for the end of the world

Photo by Claudio Schwarz | @purzlbaum on Unsplash

There is relief, of course, that Trump has gone. After Trump, it’s hard to conceive of any president that would actually be worse in all ways presidential — outwardly at least. On the other hand, it’s very easy to conceive of many presidents that would offer more hope for real change than Joe Biden.

When your best feature is that you’re not your predecessor, it’s a good indication that expectations are low. And Biden’s cabinet picks so far appear to indicate that he’s not about to raise expectations any time soon.

The Democrats, after sabotaging Sanders in successive campaigns, have once again managed to select their Wall Street candidate. Like Labour in the UK, they seem to think that creeping to the right but calling themselves centrists is the way to gather the trust of a generation of working class voters they have sold out to neoliberal unregulated free market capitalism.

It’s not. An unconscionably large number of voters chose Trump. Again, in spite of all the evidence of both his venality and ignorance. That is a warning. It’s not a sign of an epidemic of stupidity. It is a sign of a generation who feels unheard and misunderstood.

If many of those fall under the banner of white supremacy this, also, is the result of the double whammy of seeing living standards fall and the propaganda of the right giving them easy targets to blame. The Democrats have fuelled this by promoting global trade agreements that shipped manufacturing jobs overseas, refusing calls for democratising wealth and health, and by demonising, criminalising, and disenfranchising a generation of black men in the name of the war on drugs.

If Biden follows the Obama playbook, there is every chance that Trump — or a smarter version of what ex-England rugby player Brian Moore calls the Mango Mussolini — will surface and run for president in 2024. With every chance of success. And next time, they won’t wait for an election to come around before any incitement to insurrection. There’s a good chance that the first 100 days of the next Trump will be the last we see of America’s so-called democracy.

Just some cheerful thoughts to end the day of Biden’s inauguration. We can only hope that Biden may channel policies more like those of previous vice-president Henry Wallace than those of the more recent vice-president Joe Biden.

Is anyone still surprised by the sheer nastiness of the Tory Party?

January 19, 2021 By graham stewart Leave a Comment

Millions to their friends, cuts for the needy: it’s a catchy slogan

That the Tories are even considering reducing Universal Credit at this time is, perhaps, not shocking. They are Tories, after all. That they are not pushing through pay rises for nurses at a time when not only are health worker hours and commitment stretched beyond imagining is probably par for the course for Tories. This Tory government has now led us to the highest death rate, if not in the world, then at least in Europe. With, I might add, no apology, no acceptance of blame, and certainly no sign of contrition.

And this evening, Tories voted down a move to keep the NHS off the table in future trade deals. You know, the NHS we were clapping for only recently. The reward for valiant service to the nation is for the nation’s leaders to consider you worthy to be sold off to private enterprise. Nice touch, Tories.

I’m not in cheerful mood, as you can tell.

Thinking on these things, I dug out this quotation from my notebook, taken from Astra Taylor’s quite superb book Democracy May Not Exist, But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone.

“The idea of liberal democracy posits free subjects rationally deliberating and deciding what is best for them. Yet a motivated subset of self-interested elites has dedicated itself to sabotaging broad understanding and deliberation, knowing that there’s money to be made fr4om incomprehension, bewilderment, and strife.”

One of the ways that the ‘self-interested elites’ sabotage the abilities of the majority of us to engage in rational discussion is to undermine education while at the same time ensuring that we are never presented with the full picture. We are shown the world in 2-D, projected against a flat screen in which the world ‘out there’, populated by the people and things that are said will threaten us. There’s no room for nuance, for subtlety. As Taylor goes on to say in the book,

“Today’s purveyors of ignorance are part of a deep tradition, though they are subtler than their predecessors. The ruling class has never been particularly keen on the prospect of ordinary people becoming educated and governing themselves.”

And because there is another quotation in my notebook close to those from Taylor that is perhaps a neat summary of how I’m feeling at the moment, I’ll share that, too. This is from Erik Olin Wright’s How to be an Anticapitalist in the 21^st Century — something more and more of will need to be are we to survive as a species.

“Anticapitalism is possible not simply as a moral stance towards the harms and injustices in the world in which we live, but as practical stance towards building an alternative for greater human flourishing.”

Amen to that.

When outsiders and their money drive policy and choose staff…

January 18, 2021 By graham stewart Leave a Comment

…. you don’t have a political party; you have a company department

I may have left the Labour Party but it continues to fascinate — a bit like watching a driverless train heading quickly towards the buffers at a deserted station.

What has become clear over the last few days is that the party’s funds seem to be in parlous shape. This has forced Sir Keith Strimmer to abandon any struggle to manage the optics around bowing to the wishes of prospective donors.

To be fair to the man, he can afford the gamble at the moment because the media are occupied with other matters and they already know that Labour under the garden gnome is not going to be a party that threatens the status quo. No attacks on inequality, poverty, and militarism are on the cards.

But with the exodus of many thousands of left-wing members of Labour both at the election of Starmer as leader and then after, when his purge of socialists began, money is now increasingly tight at Labour H.Q. Luckily, a Labour Party now shorn of left-wing policies can go cap in hand to some of the old centrist donors. These are the rich with consciences, the equivalent of the Victorian philanthropists who saved fallen women or set up foundations for foundlings and orphans.

The trouble with being dependent on donors to pay for a party’s infrastructure is that sometimes the donors want reassurances. Centrists don’t want to slip Labour a few million now and suddenly find they’ve sponsored a party that wants to make real change. To actually improve the lives of the majority.

And so we get outcomes that stink, no matter how they’re perfumed with press releases and briefings. One such outcome is the sudden resignation of the leader of Scottish Labour — or, more accurately, after Starmer’s intervention Labour’s Scottish branch. Richard Leonard has long been on the receiving end of attacks from right-wing party colleagues, no doubt briefed from down south about the best ways to undermine a leader.

But a call with prospective donors followed by an indication — at the very least — from Starmer that Leonard should go in order to secure funding in not a good look. But, as I said at the top, Starmer is gambling that looks are not important, especially now. And especially when money is needed to counter the loss in party subscriptions.

There are elections to the Scottish Assembly in May. It’s not the best time to switch leadership, especially when the likely winner of any race is probably on the right of the party and someone leaning more stridently towards unionism. Two of the political positions that more or less led to the destruction of Labour in Scotland in 2015. But still, if the wealthy are prepared to back those positions and keep the party running despite election results, the voters can go hang.

Are we losing trust in The Intercept?

January 18, 2021 By graham stewart Leave a Comment

Greenwald and Poitras both gone…. Not a good look

Snowden, Poitras, and Greenwald were the recipients of the 2014 Carl von Ossietzky medal. Photo: Michael F. Mehnert, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

What it does it say when the co-founders of an organisation both leave within months of each other and both write damning accounts of why they are no longer at the organisation?

I first came across the names of Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras because of their part in the breaking of the Edward Snowden files. Poitras also made the Oscar-winning film Citizenfour about Snowden and the release of the files and Greenwald won a Pulitzer for his reporting on the Snowden story and later released a book-length version of the events and how they related to the burgeoning surveillance culture, called No Place to Hide.

Around the time that the book came out, Poitras, Greenwald, and Jeremy Scahill started publishing on The Intercept, part of First Look Media. This was primarily meant to be a safe space for quality independent journalism. And, by inference, a safe space for whistleblowers.

Given my interest in Snowden and the work of both Poitras and Greenwald up to that point I started reading The Intercept. Not long afterwards, I set up a monthly debit to support the site. I stopped paying at the end of last year after Greenwald left. Greenwald accused The Intercept of censorship of a story involving Joe Biden’s son. The Intercept hot back that Greenwald’s story simply didn’t stand up. I suspect the truth lies somewhere in the middle — how centrist of me — but it wasn’t a good look for The Intercept.

I had also heard that Poitras had left but it is only today that I have read her open letter from January 14th in which she accuses The Intercept of firing her for her outspoken reaction to the company’s internal review regarding the Reality Winner case.

Even if what Poitras says is mistaken — and that is unlikely, given both her qualities as a journalist and her knowledge of security protocols — that fact that The Intercept failed Winner to the extent that a whistleblower ended up with a shocking and unjustifiable prison sentence is an indictment of a company that was set up on the back of some of the most significant and painstaking efforts to protect sources and information.

From the outside, it looks like The Intercept not only made some bad errors originally but they are compounding them by obfuscation and an inability to accept blame.

There are still good stories from time to time on the site but, somehow, the gloss is gone. It is as if The Intercept is simply becoming mainstream and seeking to appease money and power where once they challenged it.

Just show up

January 16, 2021 By graham stewart Leave a Comment

Time does the rest, if you let it

This is purely aspirational, you understand — Photo by Benn McGuinness on Unsplash

I’ve carried the thought that I would like to try yoga for at least twenty years. And, like many of the things I know that I think would be good for me, I have never carried the thought forward into action.

I’m not really one for resolutions — experience has taught me that they are both a waste of time and serve only to make me feel disappointed in myself — but this year I am finally determined to make some changes. One of those changes is to recapture some flexibility, balance, tone, and self-respect. Yoga may or may not offer all that but I suspect it does, so I decided that I would start on January 1st using one of Yoga with Adriene’s monthly journeys.

I signed up at the end of December and on January 1st I showed up. And continued to show up.

It is now the 16th and I’m mightily pleased with myself that I have showed up every day and done the ‘class’ to the best of my ability. And I don’t mean I’ve sat and watched the video and wiggled my toes from time to time. I have given what I could. And I am rewarded.

Showing up is more than simply being there. It has to include a certain commitment to take part. Don’t be the churlish date that tags along to a party and grunts and moans and lets everyone know you’re counting the time until you can head home. The same goes for writing and the same goes for yoga. Be there in heart, mind, and spirit, or don’t bother at all.

This has coincided with me picking up and starting Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott again. She understands showing up.

“All I know is that the process is pretty much the same for almost everyone I know. The good news is that some days it feels like you just have to keep getting out of your own way….” p8

And that’s how it works. Trick resistance into taking your weaker self out for a coffee and sneak to the desk — or the mat — and just start.

And I have become superstitious about it, too. I know that habits are usually supposed to take about thirty days to get baked in but I think if you combine new habits there is a reinforcing element at play. So I’ve done sixteen days in a row on a book. I’ve done sixteen days in row writing posts on Medium. And I’ve done sixteen days of yoga practice. If I miss one now I’m scared I’ll miss the other parts of the triumvirate that is championing my self-esteem at the moment.

There’s a theory that by talking about this I will jinx it and tomorrow all my resolution — and resolutions — will crumble and I’ll be sitting watching TV instead of showing up. There’s another theory that by making yourself accountable any lapse in the process brings shame — or at least embarrassment. I’m going with the second option.

Come the end of January, I’ll commit to an honest appraisal of how I got on for the second half of the month. I’ll even talk word count on the book.

Britain’s Labour party responds to the looming financial crisis

January 15, 2021 By graham stewart Leave a Comment

…..by proposing the same old tired neoliberal sh*t

So there you have it. The Labour Party under Sir Keir (the Strimmer) Starmer has finally found its financial policy. It’s going to threaten the Tories with a plan to become economically competent. This radical policy — of basically following the traditional neoliberal playbook of balanced budgets and austerity — was announced by Shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds in the annual Mais Lecture on January 13th.

Now follows a rant.

This is a return to playing by right-wing economic rules. It’s a commitment to drain useful money from the economy and ensure it filters upwards. Balanced budgets — or treating the national economy like a household budget where spending should match income — is simply a guarantee of stunted growth, low wages, poor services, inadequate housing, and ever-increasing inequality.

Labour, by returning to this failed notion — this economic illiteracy — is simply showing that they are no longer the party of the working majority of this country. Fiscal responsibility is code for asset stripping. True economic competence would be about ensuring that money is spent where it is needed most. Housing, health, jobs. We have a fiat currency, which means we cannot go broke. There is no direct relationship between tax and spending. Tax is a tool to combat inflation and to manage levels of employment. To pretend otherwise is to commit to increasing the wealth of the plunderers of the national treasury and to lead us further down the road to a right-wing authoritarian nightmare.

It is both depressing and furthering that our main party of opposition has no expert in economics who can guide our shadow chancellor away from making the usual errors of judgment and bowing to the Daily Mail’s view of how an economy works. Couldn’t Labour perhaps think outside the box for once and try to hire someone like Stephanie Kelton?

That it fails to do so sentences the majority of us to a future of greater need, little protection against the climate crisis, and the threat of fascism as the anger of the deprived is used by those benefiting from the growth in inequality. Instead of blaming ignorance of economics, of course, the wealthy will have us blame someone or something ‘other’. Immigrants, the ‘undeserving’ poor, benefit ‘scroungers’, the disabled, ethnic minorities, the plain old unemployed. These all become categories to be despised and targeted. Instead of treating the nation as a community, the right want us to see only competitors for scant resources.

And the irony, of course, is that there is no practical limit on the money to spend on public services. On housing. On transport. On health. It is always an ideological choice how money is spent and how it always seems to be spent upwards.