Notes on the News

By Gwydion M. Williams

[The photo above shows Pan Zhanle, Chinese Olympic swimmer]

Riots by Failed Englishmen

Failed By Thatcher

Laissez-faire becomes Laissez Foul

IT Giants – They Who Must Be Obeyed

Olympic Politics

China Rising

The Vices of US Vice-President

Snippets

Normal Corruption in India

Lethal Corruption in India

Erdogan as a new Baybars or Saladin?

Riots by Failed Englishmen

I was born in 1950. My parents were upper middle class, though my father was born poor. But it mattered much less than it does now. All Britons got a job and a place to live, unless there was something seriously wrong with them.

There were few Failed Englishmen in those days. Most had been damaged by World War Two.

Now after four generations of peace, the Failed Englishmen are much more numerous. It’s a wonder the riots were so small.

Not surprising that they looted shops and attacked the police. They are a ‘rump without a Trump’. No one has made them enthusiasts for the Respectable Hard Right.

And also not typical. Racism is fading fast:

“Every age group is more opposed to immigration than younger ones. The differences are huge: people over 65 are more than three times more likely to want much less immigration than 18- to 25-year-olds.”^[1]

This dwindling rioting rump are the remnants of the English Defence League. It once looked serious, and I called them as the League of Offensive Englishmen. Also some offensive Englishwomen; but overwhelmingly loutish males. Seen as pointless troublemakers by most of those who resent immigration. The organisation collapsed, but internet technology lets rioters organise easily.

And gets them easily caught.

Back in the year 2000, I warned that the internet was not safe from a determined government.^[2] That libertarian ideas were just not working. And since then I’ve called for Internet Passports, to stop casual abuse that governments tolerate. To end the illusion of safety for those who offend the powerful.

And for these riots, unlike the harshness towards climate protestors, almost everyone backs the authorities:

“Only 7% of people support the unrest, and just 4% think the rioters should receive unusually lenient sentences, with scarcely any social differences. Hardly anyone likes a thug.”^[3]

Failed By Thatcher

Failed Englishmen. Failed by others. Failed at being decent men (or occasionally women).

Thatcher’s fault. She doomed the very things she thought she was valiantly saving.

Economically it was mediocre. But gave a much bigger slice of wealth and power to the rich, who use the media to hide that awkward truth.

Full Employment was promised after World War Two. The elite – what I call Upper London – paid tax and made sure it happened when Soviet Communism was a serious rival. And where there were real fears of a revival of Fascism. So we had the Mixed Economy, and it delivered the fastest growth the UK had ever seen.^[4] It was talked down by most intellectuals, since Britain was also losing the British Empire and the self-importance of Upper London. But for most, they had indeed ‘never had it so good’.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the state was widely seen as over-protective. Many, including most of the left, feared a horrible menace from Corporatism. That left much of the population wide open to Thatcherism.

The Thatcherite fantasy of a return to Classical Capitalism never got far. But we have a twisted version of the Mixed Economy, still supposedly striving for the ideal of Classical Capitalism. The needy get neglected, but necessary measures to cope with the 2008 financial crisis treated state control as an abomination. The state picked up the gambling debts of the very rich, but declared itself incompetent to prevent further gambling.

To keep voters attached to the greedy policies of Upper London, immigration has been very useful. Useful economically, to undermine wages. And useful politically, because much of the working class and underclass can be persuaded that immigrants are to blame.

Laissez-faire becomes Laissez Foul

Spontaneous has often been futile or poisonous. Including most spontaneous protests.

The anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant riots use exactly the same methods as left-wing protests. And arise because the left failed to institutionalise the big advantage it had in the 1970s. Would not push for Workers Control, nor accept Incomes Policy.

Yes, institutionalising anything must be tough and can be unjust. But the alternative is cherishing ideas that fail to work. Leaving the field clear for right-wing movements that will be treated nicely by media dominated by the rich.

After the successful youthful radicalism of the 1960s, society and in particular the left have been burdened by the curious idea that if an existing system of authority is imperfect, removing it is likely to make things better. It works in Hollywood movies, but not in the real world.

Restoring confidence in collectivism is hard. It does not help that many socialists put a lot of effort into denouncing other socialists as some unusual threat to individual freedom. They create an atmosphere in which right-wing scares succeed.

China is the grand success for continuing socialism. But far too many on the left don’t want to know.

IT Giants – They Who Must Be Obeyed

Elon Musk is only a shade worse than other owners of gigantic IT corporations. People who came from nowhere when the basic technology got better.

His ignorant claim that the UK is heading for civil war is one example of how little those people know of the wider world.

And note than some, including Musk and Bill Gates, were born into the global community of millions of millionaires. The rest were all happy to join it.

And did not make the hard core of the IT revolution. That emerged after the USA’s military-industrial complex invested without thought of profitability, and caused a vast increase in computer power using microchips. And generated the internet as one of many wild ideas that the military funded in the hope that a few of them would be useful.

The internet originally flourished with message boards – a system most later users ignored. What boosted it was the World Wide Web. An easy way to turn a document into a web address that anyone could access with minimal skill. That was done by an English computer scientist called Tim Berners-Lee, who didn’t become rich out of it.

Money later flowed in absurd amounts to a few hard-working individuals who were both clever and lucky. Managed to be the first to attract a big audience for one of the new possibilities.

And given undue tolerance as the Baby Boomers moved into positions of wealth and power.

Having successfully carried through a Sex Revolution, the Baby Boomers thought that less state control was the answer. And far too many of them got mean-spirited about the next generations getting the same benefits that had made life smooth and easy for Baby Boomers.

Laissez-faire became Laissez Foul.

Baby Boomers defined the values of the IT Revolution, with those who became rich showing an increasing affection for capitalism and a hatred of taxes. Generation X, people like Musk, largely followed them in this. Wanted the present mess continued, since they do well in it.

The global Windows computer crisis of late July was one case. The Financial Times assessed the cause:

“CrowdStrike failed to properly vet the channel file it pushed out to its customers, crashing their Windows computers, and it also appeared to roll out that file to everyone all at once, rather than starting with a small number of customers to identify any problems before releasing the update widely.”^[5]

But then the FT tries to blame European regulators: they are always Defenders of the Rich. State regulation would help the rest of us, but the global Overclass prefer it to remain loose and mostly defined by greed.

Other beefs about what the IT giants have made:

News pages with adverts that dance on the page to attract your attention. Grab it, really.
Microsoft are keen to bully ordinary personal users into putting everything onto their Cloud. Holding files on far-away machines rather than your own personal storage.
In line with this, there is no longer an option on Word to set your files to save automatically every 5 or 10 minutes. Not unless you surrender to The Cloud That Must Be Obeyed.
Word does have a useful correction and suggestion function. But I’ve noticed that when I say something might be so, it usually suggests I remove any element of doubt. Probably how the Lords of Software do their own thinking, and it ruins only some of them.
When accessing an application you’ve not used for months, it will falsely say that the existing password is wrong. Finding it too much of a burden to be honest and say they’d like to check and confirm after the pause.
If you have a left-wing mailing group, you are likely to find posts classified as Junk, no matter how often you correct them as valid.

Individuals cannot fix this. The answer is to recapture the state for the left, and then enforce some sensible rules.

Olympic Politics

When people said ‘keep politics out of sport’, that means ‘let the rulers use sport for their sort of politics’.

China challenges the USA in sport, as with everything else. And there was nasty racism when an outstanding Chinese swimmer emerged. Pan Zhanle won the 100 metres freestyle, making him currently the fastest swimmer on the planet. And he’s only 20, so his dominance is likely to last some time.

I’ve never been much of a sport fan. But I saw Chinese complaints that the organisers have biased the system to have more swimming events, and fewer medal-winning weight-lifting events.

The USA and Australia dominate swimming. Despite Pan Zhanle’s triumph, China was 6^th for golds, though 3^rd in total medals. The number of events was increased from 34 to 37 in 2020, and remains so.

China has dominated weightlifting since the year 2000. At that time there were 15 separate events. Reduced to 14 in 2020, and now down to 10.

It is worth adding that the USA get fewer medals than they could once expect in both shooting and weightlifting, sports that interest them intensely. Part of a general decline?

Then there’s performance-boosting drugs. There is a world authority, WADA, and a specifically US authority. They are now quarrelling publicly:

“WADA statement on Reuters story exposing USADA scheme in contravention of World Anti-Doping Code…

“The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) allowed athletes who had doped, to compete for years, in at least one case without ever publishing or sanctioning their anti-doping rule violations, in direct contravention of the World Anti-Doping Code and USADA’s own rules.”^[6]

The USA caused offense by repeated demands that Chinese competitors be found guilty of a case easily explained by contaminated food.^[7] Insiders knew that the USA was showing vastly more tolerance for US athletes.

The Paris games ended with China level on gold, but fewer than the USA overall. But their best achievement since 2008, when they were the home team.

China Rising

Western warnings of imminent Chinese economic collapse have become an annual event. But those news media that advise the working capitalists also have outbreaks of truth:

“Since the end of the cold war the rich world’s corporate giants have been the dominant force in global commerce…These leviathans are now under threat, as Chinese firms in industries from cars to clothing expand abroad with startling speed. A new commercial contest has begun. Its battleground is neither China nor the rich world, but the fast-growing economies of the global south…

“Chinese firms, once derided for turning out shoddy copycat products, have mastered the knack of producing goods for low-income consumers in a way that Western companies never did. Chinese firms are now at the cutting-edge of evs and batteries… Sales by Chinese companies in the global south have already overtaken those of Japanese multinationals. On current trends, they will pull ahead of European firms and be on par with American ones by 2030.”^[8]

The Chinese themselves can celebrate it;

“We are witnessing the end of the American century and the rise of a multipolar world. However, human psychology has a proclivity to believe that the past and present are predictors of the future. Thus, for many years, Indian think tanks and the media bought into the narrative of American exceptionalism and its enduring hegemony. The enormous success of Indian immigrants in the US also contributed to this biased view.

“However, the shifts of economic, technological and geopolitical powers from the West to the East have been unmistakable. In terms of purchasing power, China is about 25 percent larger than the US, BRICS is bigger than G7, and developing nations have surpassed developed economies. According to the IMF, two-thirds of global economic growth comes from Asia, where the middle class continues to grow rapidly. Meanwhile, the US pretends to be No.1 by borrowing trillions of dollars and creating financial bubbles.

“The final blow to imperialism came when the combined efforts of the US, EU and NATO failed to crush the Russian economy, isolate Russian president, or defeat the Russian military over the last two years and a half. Instead, the sanctions had unintended consequences, leading to the expansion of BRICS and an acceleration of de-dollarization.”^[9]

We on the left should stop calling ourselves failures. But thanks to Khrushchev and thanks to the revival of Trotskyism, most of the left is fixated on the view that Stalin and Mao were actually failures. Villains who maliciously prevented some much better version of socialism from winning power. That repudiating Stalin was brilliant, despite the later Soviet collapse. That maintaining respect for Mao was very wrong, even if in a mundane sense China does very well.

And did very well for most of Mao’s rule over 27 calendar years.^[10] ^[11] Excess attention is paid to the Three Bad Years: an error encouraged by the success of earlier risk-taking.^[12] ^[13]

The Vices of US Vice-President

“This week also offered clues as to how Mr Trump will govern. In 2016 he picked a social conservative as his running-mate, to placate pro-life voters. So confident is he of victory today that he has tapped J.D. Vance, an articulate anti-globalist, anti-big business, anti-immigration, pro-worker, MAGA enthusiast who has little experience and does nothing to broaden Mr Trump’s electoral appeal… MAGA politics, which started as an erratic vehicle for one man’s ambition, now looks much more likely to become a programme for government that will endure beyond 2028.»^[14]

On the other side of US politics, we have a better explanation of why Biden stepped down:

“A number of my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate thought that I was going to hurt them in the races”.^[15]

Biden has been hampered by Republican control of one half of Congress. If Trump wins but the Democrats keep their half or even win the whole, he too can be hampered.

Before the recent surge in support for Kamila Harris, I had already decided that the Democrats should stick with her. She was the natural next in line. The USA has simultaneous votes for Presidents, for some Governors, for one third of the Senate, and for the entire House of Representatives. Passing over a mixed-race woman would have put off voters that they need for Congress, even if she loses.

Snippets

Normal Corruption in India

“‘It is understandable that they have to save their government and gave special packages to Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, but a state like Uttar Pradesh that gives the country its prime ministers, is there anything for the farmers here?’ Mr Yadav told reporters today.”^[16]

The BJP recently lost its overall majority. It needs the 16 seats of the Telugu Desam Party, a regional party in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Also the 12 seats of the Janata Dal (United), a regional party in Bihar and Manipur.

In the state of Uttar Pradesh, the two big parties are the BJP and the opposition Samajwadi Party. Third comes a party called Apna Dal, but it has only one seat in the all-India parliament. So for now, they don’t get the Indian version of the classic US pork barrel.

Lethal Corruption in India

“Floods, corruption, lax maintenance take toll on India’s creaking bridges: ‘lucky that no one died’

“Experts say scientific bridge health monitoring systems needed to prevent collapses linked to intense downpours and faulty construction by corrupt firms…

“Between 1977 and 2017, more than 2,130 bridges collapsed during various stages of construction across India, according to a study published in 2020.

“It found the average age of failure of bridges was 34.5 years, a low duration compared to the expected design life.

“The report’s lead author, Rajeev Kumar Garg, said the combined reasons of poor construction techniques and excessive flooding could have caused the bridges to collapse…

“Ghoshal said ‘acceptance of poor quality is prevalent in our corruption-ridden society’ and the practice of awarding new contracts to companies with a history of failures because of their proximity to powerful politicians was common.”^[17]

But the world is supposed to praise the world’s largest democracy. Sneer at China, where the rulers don’t ask for public votes of approval, but do deliver what most people want.

Erdogan as a new Baybars or Saladin?

“Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday (Jul 28) that his country might enter Israel as it had done in the past in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh, though he did not spell out what sort of intervention he was suggesting…

“In 2020, Turkey sent military personnel to Libya in support of the United Nations-recognised Government of National Accord of Libya.

“Turkey has denied any direct role in Azerbaijan’s military operations in Nagorno-Karabakh but said last year it was using ‘all means’, including military training and modernisation, to support its close ally.^[18]

This hasn’t got a lot of Western attention. But the west has alienated Turkiye in many ways, including a refusal to accept the sovereign nation’s right to change the way it is identified in English, the language of global communication.

I’ve wondered for years if there might be an Islamic coalition that would force Israel to give up the entire West Bank, and to let the Gaza State function normally.

The necessary alliances are not currently in place. But Israel and most of its Western backers have made a ludicrous miscalculation of the world’s shifting balances.^[19] Let Israel follow an old extremist dream of being rid of all those unwanted Palestinians. And may lose much more than they could have got from honest dealing after the Oslo Agreements.

Old newsnotes at the magazine websites. I also write regular blogs – https://www.quora.com/q/mrgwydionmwilliams

^[1] https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/08/08/are-britains-rioters-representative-of-views-on-immigration

^[2] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/about/about-2/998-from-labour-affairs/the-french-revolution-and-its-unstable-politics/against-globalisation/the-web-is-always-insecure/

^[3] https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/08/08/are-britains-rioters-representative-of-views-on-immigration

^[4] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/problems-magazine-past-issues/the-mixed-economy-won-the-cold-war/

^[5] https://www.ft.com/content/60dde560-194a-40d1-8c98-1d96d6d019a0 – pay site

^[6] https://www.wada-ama.org/en/news/wada-statement-reuters-story-exposing-usada-scheme-contravention-world-anti-doping-code

^[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Anti-Doping_Agency#American_doping_allegations

^[8] https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/08/01/chinese-companies-are-winning-the-global-south – pay site

^[9] https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202408/1317400.shtml

^[10] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/recent-issues/2019-11-magazine/2019-11/

^[11] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/m-articles-by-topic/42-china/china-three-bitter-years-1959-to-1961/