Fond Memories of May 68?
The 1926 General Strike – Baldwin’s Bluff
China Finds Gold Without the Market
Snippets
China Helps Africa
Mars – ‘World B’ for the Rich?
Whose Wealth Is It, Anyway?
Database Scares
Zelensky’s Heroic Triumph Over Russian Hackers
Inheritance – Saving Family Farms
Immigration – Foul Methods Often Work
Yemen: BBC Speaks with a Forked Tongue
Fond Memories of May 68?
As a 17-year-old radical, I briefly thought that the world was about to change. It was astonishing that student protestors who’d taken over the centre of Paris were suddenly supported by workers striking throughout the country.
Before that, I had feared that this small radical movement would be crushed, as had happened before. I’d already read a lot of history, including the brutal slaughter of the 1871 Paris Commune. And of how many crack-downs and coups had repressed popular movements.
I’m not sure what I thought when the students scorned De Gaulle’s offer to let the whole of France decide. I just remembered that they scorned it:
On May 24, when De Gaulle proposed a referendum, the demonstrators responded with the cry ‘Goodbye, De Gaulle’ (Adieu, De Gaulle), openly mocking his authority and calling for his departure… When De Gaulle dissolved the parliament and called for new elections on May 30, some protest groups tried to boycott the vote. They angrily chanted the scornful slogan: ‘The youth have already cast their votes on the barricades’” (DeepSeek)
Oddly, DeepSeek left out what I remember vividly – that De Gaulle’s supporters organized a massive counter-demonstration on the Champs-Élysées. 800,000, as against the protestor’s 500,000 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_68#Revolution_prevented).
From the Wiki, I got confirmation of how foolish it had been to think that they had overturned the state. It emerged that De Gaulle had checked first he had the army with him. A secret trip to Baden-Baden on May 29, 1968, where he met with General Jacques Massu, commander of French forces in Germany. If elections had been prevented, he could have used the army to take over. But this was not needed:
“De Gaulle’s party won a resounding victory and the left-wing parties lost over half their seats, signaling the collapse of the immediate movement. Though it failed to bring about a revolution, May 68 had profound long-term consequences. The events weakened de Gaulle’s authority, and he resigned the following year. The movement led to increased state investment in education and social policies, though radical leftist politics declined in electoral influence. The strikes forced major concessions in labor rights, including wage increases, better working conditions, and expanded social protections.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_68).
Lenin, Mao and Castro had their own armies, as did Ho Chi Minh. Anyone without such a thing should be content to change the society one piece at a time. And that could have been done better had the radicals accepted that elections would settle the issue. Instead they scared people, but had nothing to back it up with.
Radicals should have known better. Revolutions happen where there is a disciplined party that is ready to be authoritarian for a good end.
And have a reasonably good chance of winning if you do decide to break all the rules.
In the current student protests, everyone looks to the next Presidential election. Likely to be won by the Hard Right, with Hard Left second and Macro’s legacy derided. But protests for more education reforms may succeed.
Note that there was no real trouble when regular organisations ran the demonstrations. A vast popular mass was properly stewarded. Looting and vandalism and maybe some agent provocateurs happened when the demonstrations were spontaneous.
I feel little optimism about the student protestors who’ve just won an election in Serbia. They are ‘Big Tent’, meaning they have no idea what they want beyond less corruption. My observation is that anti-corruption movements with no other ideas seldom succeed. They can be manipulated by the rich to spoil sensible government controls.
Much more hopeful is the victory of regular reformist politics in Brazil (https://mrgwydionmwilliams.quora.com/Brazil-Lula-an-Ogre-and-17-Dwarves).
The 1926 General Strike – Baldwin’s Bluff
Thinking about 1968 also made me think of another event sometimes seen as a near-revolution. But if the left were overbold in 1968, in the 1920s they made the opposite error:
“The 1926 British General Strike was not driven by a new set of demands from the trade unions themselves, but was instead a defensive action called by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in support of coal miners who were fighting against demands imposed by mine owners.
“The central conflict revolved around the miners’ resistance to the following proposals from the mine owners:
“ Wage Cuts: Owners sought to reduce miners’ wages by approximately 13%.
“ Increased Working Hours: Owners proposed extending the working day from 7 to 8 hours.
“ District-Level Agreements: Owners wanted to end national wage agreements in favor of district-level negotiations, which would have weakened the bargaining power of the miners’ union.” (ChatGPT)
“The government, led by Stanley Baldwin, viewed the general strike not just as an industrial dispute but as a direct challenge to state authority and constitutional democracy.” (DeepSeek)
I’d been told that he said ‘if this goes on, you are the government’, but there’s no evidence he said it. But the TUC could have challenged him to call a new General Election, if he was unwilling to make the coal owners concede the miner’s defence of the status quo in their industry. There had been a minority Labour government from 1923 to 1924, and was to be another in 1929.
Baldwin was open to challenge on the claim that he representing the constitution. But sadly, the TUC backed down and got no concessions. The coal miners fought on for months, but were defeated.
Baldwin had won 47% of the votes in 1924, but had a majority of seats because of Britain’s unfair first-past-the-post system. His vote was to fall to 38% in 1929, when Ramsey Macdonald formed another much stronger minority government with the Lloyd George liberals.
And the man messed up. John Maynard Keynes had the right answers, and there were many on the left who supported them. But Ramsey Macdonald lacked the boldness to do what non-socialist Theodore Roosevelt was to do. He would not insist that a government was not a household and that cutting government spending would only make a depression worse.
The same stupid error that Labour has been making since Blair took over. The same trust in gibberish economics shown by Obama and the Clintons, when they picked up the losses of the speculators in the 2008 crisis. When they made ordinary people pay the price, and the very rich went on getting richer.
China Finds Gold Without the Market
“The taxman comes for China’s offshore riches
“‘To get rich,’ according to a saying often attributed to Deng Xiaoping, ‘is glorious.’ The great Chinese reformer’s slogan became synonymous with his campaign to open the country up to the outside world and its capitalist forces.
“And over decades of astronomical growth, many in China did get rich. Today, the country boasts the world’s second-biggest economy, with more than 1,000 billionaires and 5mn millionaires.
“Now the pendulum is swinging back again. Strongman Xi Jinping wants those who benefited the most from China’s economic ascent to increase their contributions back to the state, embarking on what could be the most ambitious global tax hunt in history.
“From October 22, authorities will begin collecting a 20 per cent tax on dividends and interest earned from offshore trusts, explicitly targeting wealthy Chinese who shelter their assets overseas…
“The sudden move announced this summer came as a shock to many of China’s wealthiest people, arriving at a pivotal moment when the country faces a generational handover of wealth. Many Chinese entrepreneurs who built fortunes during the early decades of reform are nearing retirement, raising pressing questions about how their assets will be passed on, who will take control of the family empires — and who will pay the taxes.” (https://www.ft.com/content/f31baf40-a753-4cca-86e1-1373f08d99e2?syn-25a6b1a6=1 – Pay site.)
That’s the Financial Times, the newspaper for the people who own the country. And who like to think of themselves as the real wealth-creators, but since Thatcher they have taken an increasingly large slice of an economic ‘cake’ that has grown no faster than it did before Thatcher. No faster than before Reagan in the USA, and that has included accepting vast numbers of immigrants in a land that still has plenty of free space.
China shifted away from radical equality after Mao, but never lost faith in state power. Gold production is just one of the successes:
“Beijing built its dominance through innovation and meticulous planning, not superior natural reserves…
“Perhaps no story illustrates the secret of China’s industrial success better than its rise as the world’s gold superpower.
“China has revered the metal for millennia, yet it has never had a gold-based economy. Its own deposits were simply too scarce.
“In 1975, as China began its economic modernisation, it desperately needed gold to fund reform and build up foreign reserves. Despite its best efforts, it produced a meagre 13.8 metric tons a year. South Africa, then the undisputed king of gold, produced many times that. Canada, the United States and Australia each comfortably outproduced China as well.
“Then, slowly but surely, everything changed. In 2007, China overtook South Africa to become the world’s largest gold producer, and it has held that position ever since. Today it churns out 380 metric tons a year, more than South Africa, Indonesia and Mexico combined.
This was no miraculous bonanza. Beijing did set up a “gold troop” in 1979, sending the military across the country to hunt for deposits. Yet high-grade finds remained elusive until the past two years, when China announced two world-class mines: Dadonggou and Wangu. By then, the country had long since secured its crown. Its journey from a gold-poor economy with low-grade ore to the top of the league table is among the most remarkable industrial turnarounds in modern history.
“It came from technological innovation, state-led industrial policy and meticulous planning.” (https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3369170/how-china-became-worlds-gold-superpower).
Snippets
China Helps Africa
“At its annual meeting in Bangkok this month, the IMF said Africa would grow at 4.6 per cent — intriguingly, 0.1 percentage point above China. That would be the first time African growth had outpaced China in decades, as the Chinese population ages and its export-led model hits its limits.
“In Africa by contrast, where the median age is 19 and the population will continue to grow for several decades even as fertility rates fall, at least 10 economies including Guinea, Rwanda, Uganda, Ivory Coast and Tanzania are expected to grow at 6 per cent or above this year. African nations have done a better job managing the war in Iran and consequent disruption in petrol, diesel and fertiliser supplies than many expected.” (https://www.ft.com/content/4702e72d-ba3c-43c4-92e7-1dffccddcd16?syn-25a6b1a6=1 – pay site.)
Naturally the newspaper of the rich does not admit that China’s non-capitalist policies actually worked well for Africa. But unlike much of the modern Western media, they accept a duty to tell their readers what is actually going on. The people who own the country need some idea of the awkward truths that the rest of the mainstream media cover up.
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Mars – ‘World B’ for the Rich?
Green protesters are fond of saying ‘There is no World B’. No backup if things go wrong for an increasingly strained global system.
Sadly, there might be. Or many of the people who selfishly control most of the world’s wealth might think their is.
One argument for going to Mars is that it would ensure human surivival. But while the Earth will not last for ever, it will be millions of years before we might face destruction from natural causes.
I can’t see we could wipe ourselves out, unless someone is mad enough to make Cobalt Bombs. But killing far more than the total deaths in the 20th centiry is all too possible. And the country that produces the vast bulk of the world’s School Shooters and other horrors is the place to worry about.
School Shooting is the game of the poor and unsuccessful. But do the super-rich privatly think we do not deserve them? That they should ignore climate risks in a world that anyway full of people unfit to live?
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Whose Wealth Is It, Anyway?
People raised to enormous wealth by the rise of the Internet and other IT advances bitterly resent anyone else having a share in this new wealth.
And all of them succeeded by being the most popular choice for something that was happening regardless. The internet’s efficient package switching was invented by blue-skies research paid for by the US military. The separate matter of a World Wide Web was made workable by a scientist doing pure science at CERN. And the ideas that made a fortune for Apple and then for Microsoft with Windows were developed and shared by Xerox, who never made a commercial success of them.
Yet they insist that the world’s prosperity depends on the very rich getting an even larger cut of the world’s wealth.
This despite Trickle Down never having happened. And countries as different as Finland, Singapore and China flourish while keeping their rich people taxes and under social control.
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Database Scares
“Most people may not have heard of PHP, but they probably interact with it daily.
Short for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor, it powers a vast number of platforms, including online shops, Wikipedia and WordPress – the content management system behind many websites like blogs.
“When you visit a website like Wikipedia, PHP is the code that collects information you need and presents it in a way you can read on the web, Paul Spain, chief executive of Gorilla Cyber Security, told the BBC.
“But due to a flaw that could allow attackers to take control of affected web servers without authentication and steal sensitive data, everything built on PHP was left exposed.” (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3qjnwye0ep5o).
I don’t know the details. But for many IT areas, I see problems stemming from the desire of modern businesses to have as few skilled workers as possible. To cut costs wherever possible.
A simple Internet Passport that would get rid of a lot of the fraud. But the New Right still hang onto the hope that unregulated internet will persuade people in regimes they dislike to destroy those regimes.
This despite the visible examples of societies remaining poor and chaotic when they follow this advice. Syria has an Islamist in charge, after years of suffering. It would be a very useful forward base if Turkiye ever decided to attack Israel. Meantime Tunisia runs better, but is run by an authoritarian not so different from the one driven out at the start of the Arab Spring.
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Zelensky’s Heroic Triumph Over Russian Hackers
Social media has recently been full of claims that Kiev’s attacks on data centres in Russia has silenced a lot of the voices supporting Russia.
So do you find them saying something like ‘Pro-Russian souces Unrumpledstiltskin, NewJerseyBoy66 and BayCityRoller777 claimed to be US citizens, but are now silent’?
All I’ve seen are claims that someone somewhere has been silenced. Never a checkable fact.
It’s not even a sensible idea. Everyone serious about computers has backups at some other location. Data centres are for processing: there is always other processing to be found elsewhere.
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Inheritance – Saving Family Farms
I can’t see why most people should inherit more than five times the average yearly income. But far too many people get much more:
“The most precise breakdown comes from Altrata’s Billionaire Census 2026, which categorizes billionaires by the source of their fortune :
“ Fully inherited: Only 8% of the world’s billionaires (as of 2025) owe their entire fortune to inheritance, with no meaningful wealth of their own creation. This is down from 11% in 2020.
“ Blended wealth: About 30% built their fortunes through a mix of inheritance and their own efforts (for example, inheriting a family business and significantly growing it).
“ Self-made: The largest group, at 62%, are entirely self-made.
“An earlier estimate from Wealth-X placed the ‘fully inherited’ figure slightly higher, at around 10.2%.“
That’s from DeepSeek. And surprisingly, it also found less inherited wealth for those with a mere 50 million.
That should be ended. But farming is the one exception. People can have farms that are worth millions, but still be at stretched middle-class level when it comes to spending.
For this I’d suggest Sleeping Death Duties. Let a farm be inherited without vast immediate financial demands. But if they give up farming, then they have to pay. And this would stop it being used by people with no interest in farming to evade death duties.
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Immigration – Foul Methods Often Work
“Over the past 50 years at least 23m people born in Latin America migrated to the United States. It was the largest sustained flow of migrants in the world to a single country, surging in the years after covid-19. Governments and people in Latin America got used to it, and the money the new American residents sent home.
“Then Donald Trump returned to power. In the year to July 2026 US Customs and Border Protection recorded 137,000 encounters between its agents and migrants at the southern border. That was a decline of 94% from the same period in 2024, which saw 2.4m encounters. The Darién Gap, the jungle route from South America into Panama, tells the same story: crossings fell by 99.9% over the same period. In Costa Rica the number of migrants heading north has fallen to almost nothing, while the total going south has jumped (see chart 1). The world’s busiest migration corridor has fallen quiet.” (https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2026/10/01/the-worlds-busiest-migration-route-has-gone-quiet).
The whole liberal approach has failed. People’s trust in the Welfare State was undermined by loud propaganda about a small number of people cheating. And not helped by most of the left ignoring the fact that there was some cheating. Being ready to bring in honest people from a poor background to deal with it.
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Yemen: BBC Speaks with a Forked Tongue
“Question: The BBC speaks of the ‘internationally recognised’ government of Yemen. What democratic mandate does it have?
“Answer; The ‘internationally recognised’ government of Yemen, currently led by the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC), lacks a direct, current democratic mandate from the Yemeni people. Its legitimacy is not derived from a recent national election, but rather from a transfer of power by a previous president and international recognition, particularly from the United Nations and key regional powers like Saudi Arabia…
“The core issue is that the last time Yemenis voted in a national legislative election was in 2003. The current body, the PLC, was not elected by the public…
“While the PLC claims to be the legitimate government, its mandate is transitional and externally recognised, not democratically elected. It operates in a prolonged state of emergency where holding a national election is currently impossible due to the ongoing civil war and the Houthis’ control over large population centres.» (DeepSeek)
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