The Tyranny Merry-Go-Round. The Libyan Nuclear Nightmare

The gutlessness has spread. Turning on the despicable 'Wright Stuff' (an embarrassing attempt by channel 5 to be a TV station) I found that the B-list panel and most the callers were parroting the Mohatama McKenzie/Stop the War/Dave Spart line, and were willing to watch the slaughter of the Libyan people, and the death of the Jasmine Revolution in its tracks.
One of the favourite chants goes:

'Why Libya? Wot about Zimbabwe? Sudan! Saudi! Nigeria! China!!! We gonna bomb them too?! Hypocrisy! Hypocrisy! the CIA are behind it all'

 Round and round and up and down they fly on their Merry-Go-Round of Tyranny, pacifist ribbons braided in their locks, having a lovely time, wallowing in the horror of those names. Their reactions are not rational, but pornographic and exhibitionist. Or at best, the sad pedantry of the winner of the Atrocity Pub Quiz.
They also thought that Gadaffi had refused to sell us any oil for forty years, and that World War 2 started because Hitler attacked Britain. The Ignorati are out in force and are determined to prevent the freedom virus spreading any further than Egypt, which can then be corralled and managed. This was always to be expected from the Xenophobic Tendency, who object to Foreign aid on principle and think that Britain can exist in a vacuum, and is in some ways to be welcomed. The more Kelvin McKenzies the better. In his current incarnation, he is socialism's best recruiting sergeant. Sad then that some who call themselves socialists seem determined to fall in behind him, rather than figure out why he is wrong. Unless they do so soon, they will become another lost tribe of progress, like the Quakers. The People Who Technology Forgot, or rather, the people who forgot about the technology, which is partly what they have done, and which obscures their vision.
People who should know much better are spouting the Glenn Beck nightmare of a covert Jihadi plot, and other incredibly clever theories. All of which denies the facts of the last 3 months, and directly undermines the hope they embodied. And in some people, it seems that years of hating imperialism, while not understanding what it is for, is getting in the way of their humanity. They would rather pursue old vendettas than see the Relief of Bengazi and Misratah. This is a natural result of the money-poisoned intellectual atmosphere of the last 60 years, and a serious software problem for those concerned, but shouldn't distract from the need for urgent action now to allow the Libyan people to liberate themselves.
The scale of the missile attacks has been surprising, but they do not seem to have hit many civilian targets. The Libyan information is naturally discredited. They have cried wolf far too often for anything they say to be taken seriously. And there will undoubtedly be mistakes, in which innocent Libyans will die. But as most testimony finding its way out of Libya confirms, the people are prepared to pay the price of freedom, and know the risks. If they were not, none of this would be happening and RAF pilots would have been in the NAAFI last night drinking tea and watching Machester City Vs Chelsea on Match of the Day. This military action is probably unprecedented in history in being led by the people. Soon, they will be playing a vital military role in co-ordinating attacks. When Gadaffi has gone, they will decide the kind of society they want. And it may be a consumerist paradise, for a while, or it may not. That is for them to decide.
If Libya does fall back into Gadaffi's hands, as would happen if the pacifists have their way, Egypt and Tunisia can kiss their new democracies goodbye. They will be too busy dealing with the madman on their border, who will then believe he is immortal and omnipotent, and will do everything he can to get as many nuclear weapons as possible. Wot about Israel?! Why don't we attack them?! Because they have nukes, that's why. And now the pacifists want Gadaffi to have them too. For those who want to know the 'obective', the 'Endgame', it is to stop Gadaffi becoming a nuclear warlord. Happy now?
About progress they were not wrong, the old Chartists, how it boiled down to a few words:
'By moral force if we may. By physical force if we must.' And while we're about it, Self-defence is no Offence. Those calling themselves socialists should dust off those trusty old slogans until they can re-orientate themselves and join the real world.

Pacifists, however, are almost beyond help. But here goes. Ghandi would not have saved either the lives of one Libyan,  or the future of freedom. His tactics ran out of steam in Bengazi when peaceful unarmed demonstrators were killed with machine guns anti-aircraft guns and mortar bombs. In the face of such brutality, and with the world watching every second online, and discussing every twist and turn, UN 1973 and Operation Odyssey Dawn were inevitable, and inasmuch as they will save lives, and put the Jasmine Revolution back on track, desirable.
It is interesting that during the period when the west dithered and Gadaffi was counter-attacking with force, other tyrannies took heart and followed his example, leading Saudi Arabia to invade Barhain to suppress protest and demolish Pearl Square. Across the region hundreds have been killed in the last three weeks to preserve dictatorships which only have months to go.
But since the passing of UN 1973, the people of Syria are rising. and the Syrian regime is almost as brutal and monolithic as Libya. But the people are now less afraid of it than they were three days ago. And therefore, the regime is more afraid of the people. Human nature is easy to trust, but some find it impossible to trust anything. The sad aspect of this story is the fact that the list of the pathologically cynical includes both the mad and the well-meaning. Which only reveals the range of victims and war-damage of decades of Consumerist wars.

Who's the Daddy Now? The Revolutionary Balance of Power

It's now undeniable that universal access to information via the internet played a crucial role in the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and other countries. Global opinion is now formed and refined online, and can probably be quantified. If it had been over the last two weeks, it is fairly clear that the body of world opinion was against Moamar Gadaffi, for the Libyan people (as it was for the people of Egypt and Tunisia) and for some kind of international support for the Libyan revolution.
It is also clear that support in the form of UN 1973 relied on  Russian and Chinese abstentions, and that this could not have happened any sooner than the middle of last week. The conversion of the Russians and Chinese, alongside that of the Arab League, is being accredited to superior diplomacy. In fact it was the result of something much more interesting and basic. What we have been witnessing is the workings of a fine shift in the way power is directed, and political energy converted into action. 
China and Russia almost always veto any UN action against any regime. Not so much on principle, but largely out of self-preservation. These regimes cannot allow their people to have aspirations to human rights above their station, and need to pose as stout opponents of western imperialism to inspire patriotic loyalty. So while Gadaffi was just another dictator among many, clinging on clumsily but quietly, Moscow and Beijing had no difficulty in shelving any action in the usual way. He had to make himself into a monster to make enough difference to Russian and Chinese domestic opinion for their leaders to be able to afford to support 1973.
When this happened, the balance of world opinion, between the global internet on the one side, and domestic Russian and Chinese opinion on the other, tipped in favour saving Bengazi (at least) from slaughter. As well as kick-starting the Jasmine Revolution, the internet has secured its advance. But more significantly, the last month has shown just how much the old certainties are reversed. David Cameron was not the leader of the defence of Libya, he was being led. He knew what the general public were saying and had to respond in kind. On this issue, he is doing what the internet told him to do. And if role-reversal is good enough for politicians, it's good enough for bankers and Coca Cola too. Who's between the shafts of the cart now? Who's the Daddy now?
As for the future of Libya, the Jeremiahs are wrong. Firstly, there will be no 'stalemate'. Once Misratah is liberated, as it will be (better late than never) Gadaffi will have to retreat to Tripoli and his inevitable fate. The libyan people will drive him there, then rise up to topple him and his few remaining puppets.
Secondly, there will be no divide between east and west, in spite of all the legendary 'tribalism' said to infest the country and make democracy there a genetic impossibility. There may well be a miniature Northern Ireland left as a legacy of the bloodshed, as there was as a result of Britain's transition from feudalism to a form of democracy. We managed OK, eventually.

Libya, Japan, and The Night The Neutron Died

On the same night, events in Libya and Japan have spelt the end of nuclear credibility. In Japan we thought we had the one the country which would be trusted with nuclear technology, and they couldn't handle it. And in the United Nations, we are witnessing events which would never have happened if Gadaffi had started his nuclear programme. The world would still be sitting on its hands while Bengazi became a charnelhouse rather than sanctioning the destruction of any of Gadaffi's weaponry pointing east. But in fact, there would never have been an uprising in Libya at all. By its nature, nuclear technology gives the state licence to do whatever it likes to its own people.

Nuclear power is one of the few technologies which cannot be democratised. The materials and support systems it requires and its inherent dangers all conspire to make it the sport of kings and their secret police. Not only that, but nuclear installations are the ultimate terrorist target, and nuclear technology the ultimate terrorist weapon. As such, it can never do anything but act as a barrier both to political progress, and the required economic change to end environmental vandalism.

As for the so-called 'energy gap' which James Lovelock and others sought to fill with lovely cuddly nuclear energy, the only fact worth knowing about it is that we simply cannot pretend any longer that the Consumerism creating the gap makes any sense at all. Morally, ethically, politically. economically, environmentally or spiritually. It doesn't even work arithmetically. We only have one planet and perpetual growth on it is as impossible as a perpetual motion machine. It is baloney. So we will have to drastically reduce our consumption both of energy and raw materials, and reorganise to suit. How we reorganise is the real question, not the sterile dead end of Tony Benn's rhetorical mantra on Newsnight tonight: 'If we're going into Libya, why aren't we going into Saudi Arabia'? As a professed socialist, Benn should have been addressing the kinds of people-power in Libya which might make best use of the new situation, both in the immediate war against Gadaffi, and in the new economic situation we will all find ourselves as a result of the growth in global political awareness. He should be revelling in the confusion of the Great Powers, and the resurrection of some of his dearest principles. As someone who was alive during the Spanish Civil War, he must surely remember the resentment felt against Chamberlain for objectively supporting facism, just as we supported Gadaffi by arming him and paying him for Libyan oil.  Can Tony Benn really look inside himself and say that if Chamberlain and Baldwin had intervened to prevent fascism in Spain, that he would have turned up his nose? 

We are in a very new world, and it is far from clear whether old assumptions and alliances still hold good. From one point of view, it looks as if the old Imperialist powers have been cornered into fighting on behalf of the people, for once. And for a people not struggling for a McDonalds on every street corner, but for real freedom and a sense of purpose. Things which their recent experiences must surely have convinced them that Consumerism does not offer, otherwise they would not be as willing to die as they seem to be. After all, that is the only right which Libyans still enjoy. And some armchair pacifists would deny them even that. 

From the same point of view, playing the same trick on the corporate world is only the next step, as opposed to the academic fantasy it once was. Making them work for us is a real possibility soon, but not while we rely on military grade plutonium to make our toast, nor while we hire oil-crazed gangsters to kill their own people.
The UN have acted too late for many people. But not so late as to save Gadaffi's neck. The NFZ should have been imposed while he was mortaring unarmed protestors in Bengazi three weeks ago, before he was driven back to his Tripoli rat-hole. Now it is more complicated and bloody, but the stronger resolution the UN has passed means that he has nowhere to hide except behind the people, and if his troops do try to hide in Bengazi they will be skinned alive. It will be his Stalingrad. And it is only proper to plead in advance that the hated foreign mercenaries be treated humanely. If that is, they haven't all deserted by tomorrow evening.

Politics Versus Learning. Student Essays to be Scanned for Signs of 'Radicalism'

The latest insane Anti-Radicalisation Programme to analyse student essays for signs of terrorism puts us directly in the middle of the Russian purges, or even Swift's paranoid totalitarian state.

"In the Kingdom of Tribnia, by the Natives called Langdon... the Bulk of the People consist, in a Manner, wholly of Discoverers, Witnesses, Informers, Accusers, Prosecutors, Evidences, Swearers.
... It is first agreed, and settled among them, what suspected Persons shall be accused of a Plot: Then, effectual Care is taken to secure all their Letters and Papers, and put the Owners in Chains. These papers are delivered to a Sett of Artists, very dexterous in finding out the mysterious Meanings of Words, Syllables, and Letters. ... Where this method fails, they have two others more effectual, which the Learned among them call Acrostics and Anagrams. First, they can decypher all initial Letters into political Meanings: Thus: N shall signify a Plot, B a Regiment of Horse, L a Fleet at Sea: Or, Secondly, by transposing the Letters of the Alphabet in any suspected Paper, they can lay open the deepest Designs of a discontented Party. So, for Example if I should say in a Letter to a Friend, Our Brother Tom has just got the Piles, a skilful Decypherer would discover that the same Letters, which compose that Sentence, may be analysed in the following Words: Resist — a Plot is brought Home — The Tour. And this is the anagrammatic method.'

This is a technique now much easier with modern computer power. God help us all. And God help the entire intellectual project, when every student is choking on every word of every essay in case it gets him arrested.

Fuck You! - The Crystal Spirit

It's another birthday and I'm too old for comfort. And I'm nobody much, especially after the night I had last night. But I don't care because I've never felt bigger and brighter and bolder in all my life. Because that's the way the world seems to feel, and it makes me feel the same way.
For the first time I can remember, people are simply saying Fuck You (Anglo-Saxon is always best) at the tops of their voices to an entire regiment of steam-age dictators who have ruled through a combination of steam-age weapons and insanity for generations. Their weapons are now obsolete. - the tank is not the weapon of the Information Age. And the people are terribly sane. So sane they have run the figures on the amount of blood needed to win freedom, and the audit is favourable. The Workers Flag really is deepest red. And until recently, we never realised just how much the balance of the historic freedom Account, paid into regularly over the mellenia, was in credit. And so we want to draw out our Freedom, thank you very much. No more jam tomorrow. Jam Today. Or Fuck You, in other words. The Fuckocracy has arrived, and there is no negotiation, no pussyfooting forward with caution. The creaking diplomatic Ghost-train designed to scare children away from change, with its lurching moth-eaten bogeymen, always relied on generous suspension of disbelief to stay in business at all. We stopped being afraid of it about the same time we stopped believing in Santa Claus.

The Old Bastards

The Old Bastard Ghadaffi may still be able to pay his mercenaries to mortar the people while he hides in his bunker in Tripoli, but everywhere else the Old Bastards are out, and the people are in. And all Old Bastards from The Bank of America to Mik Il Jong will have to mend their ways, or go. Chaos and Rampaging Bloodlust and the rumble of tumbrils? Mob Rule as predicted by the vermin press and the liberal wankers? Not at all. 
The same weapons which provided the courage to ged rid of the Old Bastards will be just as effective in sorting out any New Bastards who fancy taking those freedoms away again. And without the obscene human cost of destroying the Old Bastards. Even clever New Bastards, who think that they can dominate by running companies called Facebook or Google. 

It's A Living

All over the middle east, nice Muslim girls, whose elder sisters could only dream of a profession as an accountant married to a richer accountant are now dreaming of careers as professional revolutionaries. As bloggers for freedom. To be a revolutionary is now a genuine profession, and one which many parents can now take genuine, unreserved pride in. I'm sure even Gigi Ibrahim's parents are pleased as punch (really) at their little girl's achievements. And so they should be. And the attraction is not merely the noble objective, or even the temporary fame, but the fact that the revolutionary, at whatever level, is simply more alive than the conformist, who is possibly not alive at all. People do want to love each other more than they want to hate each other, and through that simple mental revolution they are more alive than any money-chaser. As the greatest optimist of the C20th says, all you need is love:

'Men use up their lives in heart-breaking political struggles, or get themselves killed in civil wars, or tortured in the secret prisons of the Gestapo, not in order to establish some central-heated, air-conditioned, strip-lighted Paradise, but because they want a world in which human beings love one another instead of swindling and murdering one another. And they want that world as a first step. Where they go from there is not so certain, and the attempt to foresee it in detail merely confuses the issue.'

Bread and Roses

The choice will come soon enough between the air-conditioned, dead-end Consumerist paradise - and love. But the bond forged between those now changing the world will make that choice much easier and responsible.
Bless the heroes and martyrs of Tunisia and Egypt and Libya. Happy Birthday to You all, the living and murdered. My other birthday presents were nice, but your Crystal Spirit is the greatest possible gift, even if it was the most expensive. Happy Birthday to us all.

                                            '... the thing that I saw in your face
                                           No power can disinherit:
                                           No bomb that ever burst
                                           Shatters the crystal spirit.'    - George Orwell, 1942

FUCK YOU!

FUCK OFF!

Let 6,500 Members Bloom

Britain is to be subjected to a carnival of statistical idiocy for the next two months as the PR nerds make their case in a pointless referendum nobody wants. Whether to move to a form of proportional representation which Nick Clegg is proposing but thinks is garbage. Leaving aside the obvious 1984 doublethink, how is a system which encourages, even demands, more than one half-hearted vote supposed to nurture political awareness and participation? If you can't even choose one, why is not choosing two or three any more democratic? It's all bollox. A total PR exercise by the Libs to try and keep the memory of Gladstone and Lloyd-George from decaying completely to dust.
Apparently, AV is a good system if you want to vote against someone - you can vote for all the other candidates in order of preference. This is even better than I thought. It's a purely negative transaction. And the politics it creates will be the one which gives least offence, a gutless compromise with no conviction or purpose other than to get itself elected by default, not choice. And if that wasn't enough, The Motion Picture Academy now uses AV for Best Picture. Fantastic. Job done. While we're about it why not hand over the entire business to Simon Cowell and Max Clifford? Or am I behind the times?
I know all PR Nerds have to be mathematical whizzkids, they keep proving it by inventing ever more exotic and impenetrable Quantum explanations for why their form of PR will make everything better. And I would grant them their toy with pleasure, were it not for the planned cull that goes with it.
None of the PR boffins can explain how fewer MP's with bigger constituencies can deliver more representation per voter, not less. How 92% of MPs can deliver a 100% service. The cull has been bundled in with the PR bill, for some daft or toxic reason, but when did God or the laws of Nature say we have to have a this purge of MPs at all? The anti-democratic gutter press want fewer MPs, but not the average constituent trying to get an audience at their MP's surgery. Rather than fewer representatives in parliament and less representation per constituent, there should be ten times more MPs. 6,500 Members is a nice round figure, but negotiable. The object is to vastly broaden the range of people able to do the job. Being an MP should be a profession within the skills and sympathetic to the lifestyle of the average person. Not an ego-crazed scramble for status and domination, vulnerable to corruption and poisonous to family life.
In an age of mass information, there is no excuse for an elite which has to make up for the mass ignorance of a C19th workforce based on back-breaking and mind-numbing toil.
A quote from 1984 I've been dying to use for ages.

"From the proletarians nothing is to be feared. ...They could only become dangerous if the advances of industrial technique made it necessary to educate them more highly."               - (my italics)

"The advances of industrial technique" have educated people more highly, whether by necessity or not, and in ways which are in direct conflict with the mentality required by the current political dogma. So more people are becoming part of the political process all the time. So surely the only sane way to accommodate this growing aspiration for power is to share it out, increase the membership of parliament and decrease the workload until the average, intelligent, concerned  adult could do the job. As well as putting MPs back on the beat, it will also have the result of fragmenting the traditional C19th Steam alliances into their modern constituent parts. More parties, more choice. No need for PR bunkum.

And on a bigger stage, people are taking power for themselves, if the old elites refuse to face reality. And not through any centrally designed cunning plan, but in response to the moment, the politics of improvisation and creativity. Jazz politics. But mostly by simply refusing to play ball. Mubarak was not ousted by the occupation of Tahrir Square, vital though that was, but by the fact that millions of Egyptians were no longer a working part of the society he ruled. They had left the boy who made up the rules playing by himself. And that is no power at all.

Deficit Democracy

By cutting the number of MP's by 50, The Electoral Reform Bill will cut the amount of democracy per voter at a time when the electorate is better informed and more vocal than ever, and when they are about to suffer the worst attack on their communities since the Blitz. There should be twice as many MPs, not 50 fewer.

The twin effects of this de-democratisation will be to make the government seem like they are saving money, when in fact it will cost huge amounts; and to vastly increase the workloads of MP surgeries when people are being evicted because their street has become interesting to the property speculators, or their streets are overrun with gangs of unemployed youths raging against anything to hand in Cameron's wonderful Bog Society.  It will also be the biggest act of sheer Gerrymandering on the British mainland since the achievement of Universal Suffrage, making Lady Porter's shenanigans in Westminster look like a rehearsal.
The depressing, ridiculous public attitude at the moment is that All MPs Are Bastards. So speaks the voice of well-engineered apathy. In a Britain which boasts one of the highest rate of online social networking in the world we still retain a quota of  MPs which is more a result of the C19th rail network than the demands of democracy. More MPs - more representation. Cameron thinks we have too much democracy. And is exploiting knee-jerk reactions to the Expenses Scandal to impose his social vandalism on us all.
Each British MP now has to deal with far more constituents than ever before. That means we should have more of them, not fewer. We deserve as much representation as it takes, and at the moment, MPs are far too important because they are so rare. And we certainly don't need to follow the US further into the Land of Millionaire politicians.
And if there were enough MPs to cope with the burden of the people's everyday needs, politics might not be in the quagmire it is now. Making parliament even more of an elite will cause far more problems than it solves. And the only problem it will solve is a PR job for the Condems.

The Prevention of Orwell

Tonight to the Orwell Prize launch, and a debate on the Condem sabotage of the welfare state. A suit night.

The bare brick walls of the very nice restaurant were awash with Don McCullins and Robert Capas proclaiming War in-a-Paddington!
Access to the bar left much to be desired, with definite health and safety implications for those dying of thirst at the rear of the queue. But the wine and nuts and crisps were tip-top. There were no pashminas or bush-hats, as far as I could see.

"Policy-based evidence-making" (C.G.)

The panel was also impressive. Chris Giles of the Financial Times confirmed that nobody knows what a 'structural deficit' is, and that many of the cuts to benefits could be replaced more fairly and cheaply by a simple increase in income tax and that through its 'policy-based evidence-making' the Condem government is basically no more rational than the Ancient Egyptians, who believed that writing something down made it so. We are seeing that in spades right wing press tries to talk up the economy in the face of predicted plummetting growth projections for the next quarter. If we tell the wolf to go away, he will. If we say our prayers, the Devil won't get us when we sleep. If we stick pins in a wax doll of Recession, it will die.

Lisa Harker, formidable welfare rights hi-flyer, and David Walker, experienced social analyst, both gave their various decimations of the government's lies and deceit and idiocy. And the audience was packed and enthusiastic, but few, it turned out, could demonstrate any sense of affiliation with Orwell's politics, or imagine what he would have thought of the chicanery of the bankers, and the western world's unquestioning, collective, superstitious faith in their voodoo. 

Naturally, this was not the Orwell Appreciation Society, nor the Orwell Liberation Front,  but the Orwell Prize, a benchmark of honesty and clarity, and not necessarily tied to any of Orwell's extreme socialist politics. But nevertheless, If Orwell is to be invoked, his style and character cannot be divorced from his politics, and the silly-clever conservatives who try to paint Orwell as the mortal enemy of socialism because of his attitude to Stalin, sandals, and vegetarians would be advised not to dig themselves too deeply into that hole.

Tonight's examination of the effects of the latest front in the Deficit War was always meant to be a process of counting the damage not planning a response to it, but it might have been an edition of Question Time from Newcastle Under Lyme, for all the attention it paid to the kind of alternative economics which the author of The Lion and the Unicorn would be demanding. We accept that from the BBC, but not from an organisation named after one of Britain's foremost, vocal, unapologetic socialists. Britain's plodding obedience to US Consumerism was taken as read, as was our inevitable obedience to the call for a consumerist war to keep the homes fires burning. The minute attention to detail was predictably immaculate, but the sense was that deckchairs were being re-arranged all over the Titanic. And none of the highly qualified, experienced, respected panel questioned the theory of infinite economic growth - as responsible economists are now starting to. All seemed wedded 'til death to the market system which Orwell, 60 years ago, realised was obsolete and festering. The general impression was of watching a man desperately tinkering with a broken umbrella in a thunderstorm, oblivious to the warm log cabin just behind him. In its net effect the meeting was a demonstration in favor of capitalism. This at a time when the market is less ideologically defensible than ever, and when language has never been more abused in its defence. 
From where I was sitting, the audience seemed to sense this hole in the night, and took out their frustration on poor Patrick Nolan of Reform, who seriously proposed that New Zealand, a barely occupied island paradise, with its economy based on sheep, could provide a viable economic and social model for modern digital multicultural Britain, the oldest industrial society in the world, and then lectured us from that elite political position. Londoners don't cotton to being told how to live by their country cousins. If he hadn't then proceeded to defend the bankers, and banking, he might have got out alive. Luckily for him, Sherriff Jean Seaton stepped in and stopped us riding him out of town on a rail.

In one of the most depressing experiences of a depressing year, I spoke with some bright-eyed young butties from Newport, whose grandparents would have slaved to make the welfare state possible, and who made the down-payments on the socialist future with their labour. This crew were completely unaware of their class-heritage and the nature of exploitation. The political cable connecting them with their history and destiny has been cut at some point in the last 20 years. So all they receive now is just the static background radiation emanating from the mass media. Until eventually I was seriously urged to leave Orwell's politics behind and 'think out of the box'. Their local hero Nye Bevan would be turning in his grave, as would his would-be speech-writer, Orwell.

Until 2008, The Orwell Prize probably was justified in honouring prose from all ends of the political spectrum, on grounds of high journalistic principle. But since then, anyone trying to apologise for the competitive market system is at best lying to themselves, and does not possess 'The Crystal Spirit'. I really don't see how anyone can now defend the market with Orwellian conviction and truthfulness. And to 'turn political writing into an art' requires truth, including genuine belief in one's opinions. The opinion that market forces are still the best way to organise the world is not one many people now agree with, or can write about without squirming. 

All Lies are True, But Some Lies are More Truthful than Others.

Elton John is in the planning stages of a musical version of Orwell's Animal Farm. .
God save us. As if Orwell hasn't been trivialised and distorted and hijacked enough.
It doesn't suggest that Sir Elton has read much more of Orwell than the farmyard fable, or he would have felt Orwell glowering in appalled silence at the idea of yet another anti-socialist tract cobbled together from his work. So I  don't suppose for a second that there's a chance in hell that the show might reclaim the actual conclusion of the book, which is that there is nothing to distinguish the pigs from the farmers. Between Stalin and Churchill, essentially. If it were to undo the myths and lies spun around Orwell's politics, that would be literally fabulous.
In the conclusive great peace conference between businessmen and pigs, Mr Pilkington of Foxwood farm makes a long and significant speech to unanimous approval:

"Their struggles and their difficulties were one. Was not the labour problem the same everywhere? ... "If you have your lower animals to contend with," he said, "we have our lower classes!" This bon mot set the table in a roar; and Mr. Pilkington once again congratulated the pigs on the low rations, the long working hours, and the general absence of pampering which he had observed on Animal Farm. ..And now, he said finally, he would ask the company to rise to their feet and make certain that their glasses were full. "Gentlemen," concluded Mr. Pilkington, "gentlemen, I give you a toast: To the prosperity of Animal Farm!"

Immediately after the peace conference, they all start fighting again. War will continue, and only the rulers will benefit.
Orwell was certainly criticising Stalinist communism in Animal Farm, but more for its betrayal of socialism and its collusion with capitalism than for any ideals or aspirations it might once have had. And whatever generations of misled children of all ages have been told, Orwell was most definitely not attacking socialism for being either unworkable or undesirable. Elton John's vanity project will certainly be both if he fails to appreciate this fact of the text. 
Only weeks ago, George Galloway announced his plans for a musical of the life of Dusty Springfield. Has the world gone mad? Surely the scripts were sent to the wrong addresses. 

ConDemNation

Clamday 1. Mood of the day: Smugg.
Warm bath of columnist approval - Valiant exploits ahead - Deficit Monster Quest - New Age of co-operation and consensus - Dave Disraeli? Why not Good Queen Bess?
- Evil Crookback Gordon well and truly Martson Moor'd - NuLabour delusion dead.
The lesson of NuLabour is that the markets just won't agree to play nice. That if you mess with them, you will eventually wake up one fine morning-after in the bloodstained bed of a dead hooker.
But the ConDems will soon find out that compromise is not co-operation, which the world is crying out for. And Cameron will soon find that his Big Society is co-operating to survive his cuts in public services, and eventually to get him out of Downing Street as soon as possible.
But at the same time, they won't want to replace him with anything resembling NuLabour. Which again leaves room for a genuine alternative to the current poodle-politics. Whether people choose the dark warm burrow of hatred and fascism, or something which celebrates and enables human potential will be largely a matter of presentation. And the message which needs to be delivered is that those who support the BNP are people making a choice according to their lights, not evil mental-defectives. And that they have exactly the same natural needs and enemies as everyone else in their class. That this is not a war among the working classes, but for genuine social justice, with no utopian lies on either side.
Sadly, at present, there are too many so-called socialists who indulge in this kind of Daily Mail language. Who slip into football terrace tribalism whenever the BNP achieve some squalid gain in a windswept Essex estate. The slogan All BNP Supporters are Idiots is as divisive and alienating as the BNP could want. It supports their myth that socialism is just another sneering exploitation of the working classes.
What makes them think that Nye Bevan would have stood on the steps of Dagenham town hall and denounced BNP supporters as being too stupid to have the vote? As being beyond the persuasive power of progressive politics.
To fill the political hole of the future, progressive politicians have to reject completely the language and vocabulary of reaction. Politics are a matter of the words used as much as the policies advanced. It is not possible to advance radical policies with fascist rhetoric. Which doesn't mean simply not insulting natural allies who happen to have found themselves supporting the political enemies of their own class. As we saw with Bigotgate. It means having enough confidence in the ideas to express them clearly and unapologeticaly. This was the failure of NuLabour. The only thing they communicated with their daily drizzle of ungrammatic grunts and mumbles was their political emptiness. They abandoned their principles to get market approval, but had nothing to put in their place.
ConDem have something new and shiny to have faith in. A palpable lie. So they sound convincing. It's just a shame that they have nothing to offer but another compromise with market forces, one even more craven than NuLabour's.
So when the next crash happens, will they be able even to repeat Gordon Brown's goalmouth heroics of autumn 2008? Or even match his part in the negotiations to prevent the collapse of the Euro-Zone? His last act in office, taken when he knew he was an ex-prime minister. Bereft of life, resting in peace.
It is interesting that the period of deepest Brown-Hatred was book-ended by two achievements any politician would be proud of, and which may yet be what he is remembered for.
Cameron and Clegg will definitely be remembered for the embraces of today's fragrant opening ceremony. And for their accidental arranged marriage. But unless Clegg is even more of a sycophant to Cameron than Brown was to The City, and prepared to surrender all principles, and work with corpses like David Davis, Duncan-Smith and Michael Howard, the alliance won't have much time to achieve greatness. It's all hearts and flowers today. But when the looting begins, who will take the blame?
Right through the hard winter, and the long election campaign, and right until yesterday lunchtime, my bird-table was a busy little trattoria for dozens of perky little visitors. Today, nothing. The birds have all gone.

Too Much Democracy, Says Cameron

In a blatant invitation to Gerrymandering, the tories are planning to cut the number of MP's by at least 50.
They don't explain how MPs will cope with the extra workload, or which section of the electorate will be allocated to which new constituency.
The democratic representation of hundreds of thousands of people, possibly millions, depends on how their consituencies are restructured. It would be a very simple matter for a government to rig the process and create a massive false majority.
It will be interesting to see how this feeding frenzy for votes develops, and which party comes out ahead, and how much it will cost. The backstairs deals and infighting and political resentment should keep the media happy for years.

NAZI CLEGG THIEF SWINDLER SHOCK TRICK SMEAR

The Telegraph jumped the gun a bit with this lame piece of muckraking. Not only is it completely harmless, but also exquisitely badly timed. Now Cameron looks like the pampered poodle of press bullyboys. Which is of course true.
All Clegg has to do is turn casually to Spudface, flicking a speck of dust from his immaculate cuffs, and ask:

'Is this the best your bosses can do to get you elected?'

By launching this pathetic dirty Nick trick in a blatant attempt to scupper tonights debate, the Telegraph has panicked like Corporal Jones, and fired its musket long before it could see the whites of their eyes.
As for the Mail conflating CLEGG and NAZI all over their front page, that is hardly surprising. In the dark columns patrolled by its hitmen, Clarkson and Littlejohn, almost everybody, including cyclists, vegetarians and council workers are routinely referred to as NAZIS. And now almost everyone loves Click. And if he's a nazi and they are nazis, someone is either lying about them and Clegg, or lying about the nazis. The trick was bound to backfire sometime, and this is probably it. It has confirmed everything Click has been saying about both tories and Labour, but Labour can sit in the shade again and let Cameron take the heat.
You have to say, well played Peter Mandelson. Hot favourite for the Bernard Ingham Spindoctor of The Year Award at this years' press bash.
 Cleggmania aside, last week's show was dominated by Cameron's Deflation. He looked like a fretful Maris Piper most of the time. Like Wayne Rooney's bank-clerk older brother when opening his winter gasbill.. And by failing miserably to outperform the Ultra-Lite Clegg, he showed his true worth.
The fact that Click Negg beat Spudface in the beauty contest means that Brown won on the night. If Cameron was the tories' Great White Hope, he wouldn't have been outsmarted by the no-hoper. Gathered around their screen in the Carlton Club, tory grandees must have been crying in their Asti Spumante.
Tonight, the leader who manages to properly pronounce Eyjafjallajökull first will see his digital approval worm will hit the roof. And if Click gives it its new name - E15 - the Cleggometer will blow a fuse. Mt Stratford would be even better.
If the election is decided by this farce, there will be demands for proportional representation to replace the current system.
It won't make any difference. All we need is a fixed term, and a total ban on any electioneering during the month before the poll. In fact, all politicians should be locked into the Palace of Westminster, and the election fought purely on the basis of the real experience of the electorate during the term of office. That would make us pay attention a bit more. And not just for a week or two every four years.
The first 'debate' saw Clegg clouding the political sky, grounding Cameron Air, but leaving Gordon Brown sipping Pina Coladas on his Barbados holiday beach for an extra week.
What kind of freak political devastation we can expect out of tonight's Sky is still unclear. Something to do with helicopters, presumably.

Religious Parents Refuse Children Sex Education

November 2009
The only 'choice' for religious maniac parents is between having their 15 year old daughters educated about sex by qualified teachers, or by children a year older than them. Or simply by the practical method, up to and including the highest level - or childbirth, as it's also known.

The argument in favour of preserving sexual ignorance in children is that 'children are not the property of the state', or similar nonsense. Whereas they ARE the 'property' of their parents? Since when? This is typical of the psychotically individualistic attitude of those who to whom consumer 'choice' means 'freedom'. In fact, it is the darkest prison. The fact that they can refer to their children as cattle means they are not qualified to make any choices regarding their welfare.
For primary school children denied professional tutelage because of their parents' paranoia and neuroses, the other source of sex education is, of course, internet porn. This perverted veiw of sex might be even worse than no education at all, especially as far as girls are concerned.
Those who would exclude the state from all influence on education sing a different tune when they are told about a single mother of three claiming benefits and jumping the housing queue. Who's fault is that? Normally The Parents.
Either way, the state has an obligation to take decisions which will benefit the majority. Hordes of sexually-malfunctioning teenagers, spawning unintended dysfunctional state-dependent families onto the taxpayer's bounty is in nobody's interest.
That's why we have an education system in the first place. I'm sure the discombobulated genteel classes think that 'the whole theory of education is radically unsound' but luckily, they also prove that 'in Britain, education has no effect whatever.'

Blair in Chilcot Land

It's a joke. Endless circular arguments and inverted reality. All that incense has obviously liquified any adult intelligence he ever had.
Nice is nicer than nasty, he reveals. And Saddam was nasty. And (get this) nasty people with nasty weapons are nastier than nice people with nice weapons. And 9/11 was the perfect excuse for a war to secure oil prices. 'We had to deal with' Iraq because of 9/11. 'And how were you going to do that?' 'By dealing with it'...
Essentially, Blair took advantage of American panic after 9/11 to look like a Bigshot, end of story.
In a 'connected world' invasions and bombings are fine, he says, on the mere suspicion of attack. So by that logic, Iran had better organise its centrifuges as soon as possible. Then it will be as safe as Israel. And be able to atttack its neighbours with impunity, or even attack the US if it feels it is under threat. The American Way.
The 'connected world' means, in reality, oil prices. Any moral justification is neglible compared with the threat Saddam posed to the cost of energy, which he could control with the turn of a tap. If only Blair would admit that, as Alan Greenspan eventually did, it would be possible to have a shred of respect for him. But wars mustn't be about money, even though they all are.
And so Blair will always be remembered as the murdering liar of Iraq, not the saviour of Kosovo, or the PM whose government introduced the minimum wage and the Freedom of Information Act.

THE SUN SAYS - YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU!

The British army has no conscripts, only volunteers, and the Sun is smart enough to know this. And hypocritical enough to cash in on it. So if the country is under threat from Osama and All His Goats, and the majority are as patriotic as The Sun says, why isn't dying to save it good enough for the children of editors and columnists as well as the children of unemployed ship-builders and miners? In the Red Poppy haze of their patriotic rapture, who will be the first Sun columnist to send their boy off to The Front for Queen and Country?
Why isn't conscription the policy of The Sun? Isn't the glory of this country worth it? After all, history shows that when we fight with volunteers, we generally lose, or never win at least. Which is exactly what AlQaida wants; never-ending war.
As loyal patriots The management and editorial team of The Sun, the Mail and all the other Death-Worshipping rags have no alternative but to call for conscription (1,000,000 young people on the dole!) and urge their sons and daughters in university to do set an example to the lower orders and do their gap year in Helmond.
Unless they want to be seen as the profiteering hypocrites they are, of course. And their sickening abuse of the entire Remembrance industry one of the greatest lies sold to the British people yet - that War is always Glorious and the Dead always sacrifice their lives for a cause called Britain. There is no such cause, there is no such glory.

Photoshop Phascism

I once did some casual imaging for a new magazine targeted at the rapidly emerging hip Asian British middle classes. The worker next me was assiduously transforming a caucasian model into an asian one. Apparently, there were simply not enough Asian models available due to cultural and religious traditions which are not in sympathy with the requirements of the glamour industry. So Photoshop was used to alter the hue and darkness of the skin tone, neatly undermining petty cultural barriers to exploitation and profit, and possibly even altering those cultural norms by exposure.
The manipulation of images for commercial purposes is nothing new, and neither is the industrial exploitation of women. Photoshop makes the process easier and cheaper than ever, and is used for all kinds of remedial work which once would have been done in the darkroom or on the lightbox or layout table. So the boundaries of manipulation are very blurred. The entire mood of a landscape can be altered by darkening the sky, as many film photographers used to do. So my guess is that any legislation to discourage the promotion of fascistic body ideals will end up entangled in miles of legalistic wrangling.
Far better to legislate that all images in which the dimensions of any part of the model have been altered should be credited as an Artwork rather than a photograph.
Better still to tax all pornographic, degrading images of women off our streets and screens entirely. But that's apparently a gross abuse of the human rights of the advertising industry to make fortunes from the humiliation and abuse of many. And they're generally prepared to go to the european Court of Human Rights to prove it. As they did when Sweden banned junk food ads on children's TV.

GOTCHA!

'Murdoch Papers Use Criminal Methods to Get Stories'

'Murdoch Papers Use Criminal Methods to Get Stories'

Shame that it won't be Jon Gaunt or Murdoch going to jail. Still, it's a start.
After the bankers and politicians, now it's the the turn of the press to get knocked off its high horse. And who would complain about those tax-avoiding, expenses-inflating fatsos getting a kicking?
As that agent of the Devil, the Guardian reports:

"The evidence also poses difficult questions for:
• David Cameron's director of communications, Andy Coulson, who was deputy editor and then editor of the News of the World when, the suppressed evidence shows, journalists for whom he was responsible were engaging in hundreds of apparently illegal acts
• Murdoch executives who, albeit in good faith, have misled a parliamentary select committee, the Press Complaints Commission and the public
• The Metropolitan police, who did not alert all those whose phones were targeted, and the Crown Prosecution Service, which did not pursue all possible charges against News Group personnel"

There will be a flood of legal action by the likes of John Prescott, who was allegedly spied on for years. This is good news. Not because Murdoch and his Empire of Lies deserve to be torched with lasers and the ground beneath drenched in Nitric acid to prevent any vestiges of its spoor from surviving. And not even because it buys some breathing space for the BBC in its constant battle for civilised decency against the barbarians of Wapping, Teacosy England and the Mary Whitehouse Memorial Society. But because it is the first step in debunking the so-called Fourth Estate. The professional lie machine which has been riding its moral horse pretty high for a long time and which is as much to blame for the mess we're now in as anyone - including bankers and politicians.
The Wapping Spin Machine has to make money. And the way to make money in this primitive competitive economic system we endure is at the expense of others. Greed is good, but not practicable without liberal doses of hate. Too little hate would make us share too much, and there would not be enough greed at work either to run a newspaper like the Sun, or for its relentless message of conflict to be marketable. So it is also in the interest of the gutter press to make us hate each other as much as possible. Naturally, we find it easier to trample on colleagues we dislike than those we feel natural human sympathy for. Hate is a skill which needs constant practice. So every piece of dirt the News of the world and the Daily Mail can unearth, by whatever methods, and use to exercise the hate glands of the nation, is just money in the bank. If their proprietors weren't such gigantic hypocrites, every redtop masthead would brag about how it supplies the capitalist system with the anger and confusion it needs to keep going.
The allegations made yesterday involve thousands of victims. As even Homer Simpson would say; I'm no fancy city lawyer, but that suggests a class action to me.
I wish I was on the News of the World's hack-list, I could do with a cool million or two. But more significantly, in the interest of being 'Fair and Balanced' I would like to know the nett political effect of the entire alleged operation. If the political smears which eventually emerged are all lined up against the stories which were supressed, which side comes out least effected (I wonder)?
In other words, if these allegations are proven, which they will be, just how much do Rupert Murdoch's mouthpieces manipulate the British political system, and just how illegal are their methods? More illegal than the 'scandals' of the politicians on the redtop hitlists, with their scandalous expenses claims for toilet seats and taxi rides? Probably. Which raises the entire question again of the hidden Wapping archive.
If the gutter press has a right (in the public interest) to spy on elected politicians, supermodels and drunken musicians, why shouldn't the nation have a right to know what information Wapping holds on all of us? And to know (in our interest) which information finds its way onto the front pages and which is swiftly hidden in the lead-lined vaults under Fortress Wapping, never to be seen again.
Since media corporations have become unelected fiefdoms with laws of their own, which exert huge political and economic power, and now, it emerges, have the capacity to spy on all of us, it is time they came under the same sort of scrutiny and regulation which other bodies of the same power and influence have to endure. In practise this might well mean disclosing all hidden archives of images and other data under amended Freedom of Information law. Then we might discover how many stories the media have suppressed over the years, what their political implications might have been, and even who killed Blair Peach. 'Public interest' my arse.
Then we would know how 'Fair and Balanced' they have been, and even why.
The price might well be to discover just how widespread this abuse of power has become - because if the hacks at the News of the World can do it, there is no reason why their counterparts in other newspapers can't. We might have to face the systemic sleaze of a profit-driven media market, which will not be a pretty sight. But that would be a price most decent people would be prepared to pay.

Now it's National

Until now, most states have been able to sit back and shrug their shoulders to the Iranian government and let the BBC and Gordon Brown take all the blame:

'We'd love to help, but what can we do? Those pesky global Twitterers and hackers. You think they don't cause us all sorts of trouble? We appreciate your problem, but we can't do what you do and shut down the internet, even if we could, or lock up all the troublemakers. We'd love to oblige but, sorry, you see our position."

But it could hardly rest there, and the logical response was always going to be

'Not your problem? We'll make it your problem. We're not bad at the old cyber-terrorism, and our mates the Chinese are real experts. We'll get them to lend a hand, and then we'll see who's got problems.
We do envy you in the west your computerised health and energy systems. It would be a great shame if they should get all frozen up and useless one day...'

The hope was that the Iranian power struggle could be between an alliance of the Iranian people and the online global community against the antiquated Iranian elite clinging to power. And that primitive twentieth century national politics could be sidelined for almost the first time in history. It seems we are not quite at that phase yet, which is hardly surprising. The discredited Iranian elite has every motive to strike back in any way which will drag the battle back to a ground it is familiar with and an enemy it can touch and use as a scapegoat, or whose embassy it can beseige - or whose dipomats it can hold to ransom.. And by threatening to launch hacking expeditions against, say, the British health service database, the Iranian government would be seeking to gain the initiative and bolster its own image. A bit like Krushev putting nuclear missiles in Cuba. And like Krushev's USSR at the time, Iran is also far behind in this particular arms race. In spite of its Chinese big brother. Not only does it have to face up to the combined expertise of the western cyber-powers, but also the infuriatingly evasive geekocracy, who would be given complete licence to kill. An army of James Bonds sliding in through the airconditioning and crawling out of every manhole. The role every geek would love to play, and who would now get the chance. In effect they would be rallying to Kitchener's call:
Your Country Needs You!
But safe in the knowledge that they wouldn't risk getting killed, maimed or poisoned.
However, neither shoplifting nor insurance fraud are victimless crimes, and the same goes for war. How many Iranian hospitals would the freelance commandos of the Global Iranian People's Liberation Support Network (GIPLSN) be prepared to close if the Iranian government began executing leading dissenters? Would the GIPLSN take its instructions from the Iranian people, and if so, how? What consensus should it recognise, and from which source? Or are we seeing something more subtle at work? A form of collective, self policing morality, responding organically to the situation, and tending to deliver an appropriate response. A self-resolving chaos in which every butterfly's wings really do make a difference.
Viewed as a brain, the internet is in its infant, amoral stage. Its neural pathways are still untrained and feral. Given enough exercises in decision-making and storytelling and role-playing, like the Iranian revolution, and the internet could develop into a healthy, upstanding, happy adult, ready and willing to enjoy life and the company of others.
Censored into a cupboard, and fed a diet of kill-games and porn, and only allowed the barest scraps of information from the outside world, the child's morality doesn't advance much more than that of the average rat.
So unless the internet is due to be univented or totally quashed, the outlook is still hopeful. And the enemies of progress everywhere are still just trying to paint over the ageing process, only succeeding in making themselves look less human with every brushstroke.
--------------
And when oh when oh when will the BBC stop being the 'Mind-Control Centre' of the western conspiracy to broadcast inconveniently true images and stories to the world?
Not as long as it's a uniquely funded organisation, to judge from its privileged position (along with Voice of America) as almost the sole target of the Iranian propaganda machine.
How satisfying to see dear Old Auntie bouncing her brolly off the bonce of the mullahs in finest Margaret Rutherford fashion. They Do Not Like It Up 'Em.
The Iranian vilification of the BBC is worth the licence fee alone. Of course, the Daily Mail knew all along what the mullahs have just discovered. Perhaps they should get together to try to destroy it. Mediocre minds think alike, if at all.
The absence of any commercial news outlets from attack by the Iranian regime is not just embarassing, its shameful. And those who ever demanded a surrender to commercial versions of truth should also be ashamed of themselves. But if that ever happened, Mullahs would fly and the tabloid journalism would be a footnote in history.
As I try to publish this, Twitter tells me that GCHQ is recruiting hackers from the naughty classes in much the same way that the novels tell us James Bond was:

" ...the government had recruited a team of former hackers for its new Cyber Security Operations Centre, based at the government's secret listening post GCHQ, in Cheltenham, to help it fight back.They had not employed any "ultra, ultra criminals" but needed the expertise of former "naughty boys," he added."You need youngsters who are deep into this stuff... If they have been slightly naughty boys, very often they really enjoy stopping other naughty boys," he said."

What more could a geek want? Except that being under the wing of MI6 means adopting their morality and serving their power base. In effect, telling lies. So as always, the real struggle is not between nebulous notions of Right and Wrong, but good old truth and lies, which may never be absolutes, but which are far more definable.

No Vote - No Work

"SPREAD THE WORD IN IRAN,STOP paying your bills (water, gas, electricty), STOP paying taxes. It worked in '79.RT Please #iranelection"

Says one Iranian Twitterer. And if there was ever a perfect time to organise mass civil disobedience, it is now. The list of pranks which the Iranian people could play on their government, and which could be disemminated online, is almost inexhaustible.
But the uiltimate weapon is still, as always, withdrawal of labour. No Vote. No Work. Can't Vote - Won't Work.
The opposition have already begin the process of reclaiming Islam from the sect which has defined it for twenty years, and possibly begun remodelling it to suit a modern world. If they can do that to a religion, they should manage the relatively humdrum task of remodelling a country. Especially one which for twenty years has been the puppet of the same faith now being shouted from the rooftops every night in defiance of the Mullahs . And there's not a thing the Revolutionary Guard or the secret police can do about it.

140 Characters In Search of A Revolution

[Play muted for best effect]
The cringeing cowards are out in force. It seems that Twitter is being used as a tool by the dastardly CIA. And according to a recent Harvard study, most social website users don't play with their toys much after Christmas Day, and therefore Twitter is nothing but the plaything of the idle western consumer, and not to be taken seriously. Or it is just a rumourmill, seething with as many lies as the Daily Star or Newsweek, or FoxNews and easily dismissed by print diehards.
It's all in the choice of the word 'rumour' instead of 'lead'. Twitter is, initially, providing leads. Old fashioned confirmation always provides stories. And what about the images and videos, how many of those are just 'rumours'?
Whatever bored consumers use it or don't use it for, it has been proved to be a valuable tool for people organising against suppressive or fraudulant regimes. Yesterday and today requests have been made for ideas. What kinds of collective actions could be taken to paralyse the state machine? What is the best remedy for tear gas and pepper spray? What are the safest ways of posting images and video? What kind of retaliation can be expected in this very Persian game of political chess. How can the Basij be identified and even targeted..?
The other argument is that the internet as a tool of change simply doesn't work because it can be turned off at will. This is patently not true, as the masses of footage emerging over the last week has shown, and it is an insult to the craft of the Iranian commentators, who know their business just as well as any Wapping hack knows how to bloat his expenses. And it also ignores the fact that for several days, the conventional media have been turned off entirely and have to rely on the civilians at trheir laptops. The shooting of Neda Agha Soltan on Saturday was news which was reported on Twitter several hours before it appeared on the BBC. Without Twitter, it may never have emerged at all.
Like many other aspects of the internet, personal publication does represent a massive shift of power, as proved by the Iranian regime's actions against it - actions made largely futile by the counter-actions of the global hacker community, garnered partly via Twitter and Facebook.
The sneering has to stop at some point. It seems that the left has to re-learn its own lesson, that the production, distribution and exchange of a commodity is inherently empowering. So when that commodity is information in an Information Age, is it any wonder that tyrannies begin to tremble?

The following Twitter users don't count, it seems.. or the use itself.
crisisintehran TODAY 4pm - Haft Tir Sq - Meydan 7 Tir - Tehran - in memory of our martyrs - Karoubi said hes coming(on his facebook)


stevemahfouz Please be very careful about what information you share on Twitter. The Iranian government monitors Twitter closely #iranelection #gr88


silentherotx #IranElection To deal with tear gas soak a bandana or paper towel in lemon juice or cider vinegar can breath a few minutes, also buy goggles


TGskills NAMES AND NUMBERS OF BASIJ AND OTHER ITELAGENCE AGENTS http://www.goftaniha.org/ #iranelection #iran #persiankiwi #mousavi1388 #twitpersia

etc etc etc. All useful to those concerned, and when the spooks do manage to work their wicked wiles, no doubt we'll find out about it. Until then, they have their hands full trying to stem the flood of unsuitable information leaving Iran. And it is a battle they are losing because of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Picasa, and other weapons which the Medieval minds of he mullahs still don't understand. Those using the internet to tell their story are way ahead of the defeatists.
Iran is the most sophisticated blogging community in the world, and the second biggest. They are the ideal people to test the new politics of personal publishing. And they have the sympathy of the freelance global hackers, who quite fancy the idea of making trouble for dictatorships from their bedrooms and garden sheds.
The argument against Twitter is the same one which discredits the Gutenberg press for culminating in Rupert Murdoch. In fact, what Twitter does is it give too much power to those awful ordinary people with their seditious, rabble-rousing pamphlets. Good.
Iran represents a definiing moment in the clash between medievalism and modernity, and modernity will win because the medieval mind does not understand the technology being used against it.
It is in the dilemma of needing the internet to survive in the modern global economy, while trying to deny it from the most sophisticated online community in the world. It will lose because it is not only trying to suppress its own people, but the aspirations of a global community.