Olympics games bring everyone together... 55% of everyone.

Still a depressing figure :

The warm glow of Team GB's best performance in 104 years and pride in an Olympic Games well received at home and abroad have led a clear majority of the British public to conclude the £9bn they cost is good value for money. 

Clearly, very few of the respondants to the poll come from East London, where rents have more or less doubled in a year. But it's interesting given the relentless, noisy and often illogical promotion this event has been given. Not everyone loves Seb Coe. The Olympics is a brute festival of corporations and states. Despite the soft-left wishing really wishing hard, you just can't square that with any kind of progressive agenda, and it shows:

Despite the success of minority ethnic Britons such as the Somali-born 10,000m champion, Mo Farah, voters remain inclined to doubt that most newcomers do anything positive for Britain.

By a narrow 53%-47% margin, the survey finds agreement for the suggestion that "More often than not immigrants … do not bring anything positive, and the likes of the Olympic-winning athletes are an exception".

Faith in the contribution of immigrants is much stronger in London, where 62% disagree with this statement, and a majority of respondents aged under 45 likewise disagree, but among pensioners there are particularly marked doubts about newcomers – with 64% of the over-65s describing the Olympians as "exceptions".

Attitudes harden further when the question switches to immigration in general. Only 32% of respondents say the Olympic successes make them "more positive (or less worried)" about it, against just 68% who disagree.

This is just one example, albeit the most pointed. This is where nationalistic tubthumping gets you, regardless of your intentions. Everyone in the mainstream wants to graft their own political outlook onto the Olympics, but some philosophies will do better than others. For David Cameron the British team's success at the Olympics proves that there is scandalous lack of competitive sport in schools (as opposed to "Indian dancing or whatever"). By that logic Britain's schools need more inclusive activities, not fewer. This is also something which he has only just noticed as, clearly, his mind was on something else when he got rid of the two-hour a week target, set by the previous Labour government.

The entire political class thinks though whimsy and daydreams (Boris Johnson wants state school sports to be just like it was when he was inb Eton - oh how jolly). We have to live with the nightmare.

Bus strike

On the very same day bus drivers in London struck a mighty blow against their bosses, standing up to the high-and-mighty judiciary and the bloated austerity-pimps in government, the very same day men and women from every racial and religious background took to picket line to fight for their rights, Ed Milliband (son of a refugee) crept onto the news to justify the racist vilification of immigrants. Sure, people have 'legitimate concerns', well, actually, they're concerns that have been promoted and legitimised by over a decade of concentrated campaigning by the national press, often involving stories like the Swan Bake legend, which gets recycled every few years. But if you want the answer to how we get everyone in this society to live together, thrive and survive (community cohesion, the New Labour elision used to avoid talking about racism), this strike is the perfect example.

It's a wonder Unite, the bus drivers union, still pays the Labour Party so much money, when it undermines its members interests like this, lets them down, so badly... But that's another story. Meanwhile, well done the bus drivers. Don't let the courts get in your way. Don't stop until you win.

Airport delays could be solved by "a bit of racism"

But, because it's Jeremy Clarkson saying it, it will be ironic racism, and we'll all laugh heartily, like yuppies pissing on a homeless teenager. I do wonder what it's going to take to bring Clarkson down? Does he need to say something like: "I would like to see sections of the current population shot or gassed based on their skin colour, nationality, political opinions, physical fitness or level of income", before someone who is in charge of something says, "hang on a minute... that's not on". These are mere pipedreams. If he said that the Director General of the BBC would just shrug and reply: "he earns lots of money through DVD sales, what'd you want me to say?"

Well good gosh blimey!

Galloway by 10,000 in Bradford West. Who expected that? Obviously he doesn't mean the same to me today as a few years ago and the result probably won't disabuse him of the notion that it's all just him, superstar politician, but this is a good thing. The House of Commons is better for George Galloway being in it (though he's much better use to the cause getting out and about the country, like he did before the Iraq war). This is a good thing.

This, on the other hand is a bad thing:





Virtually everything is 'fundamentalist' according to our overlords these days. Shame on the Guardian for putting out filth like this, for going along with the racist smears.

Margaret Hodge is against the BNP making racist and divisive statements

That's her preogative!

Margaret Hodge, the MP for Barking who won a hard-fought general election victory over the British National party, has accused Labour and the Conservatives of misleading the public over immigration.

The former children's minister told the Guardian that both parties have been playing a "numbers game" by claiming that they can cut the amount of people entering Britain. She said Labour should argue that the past decade's rise in immigrant numbers is simply a result of globalisation and that "people will come here, one way or another".

Not so much a problem of whether immigration is a net gain or loss to British society and its working class but whether politicians have been making promises they can keep.

In a move that may upset some Labour supporters, she also reiterated calls for resources such as housing to be prioritised for those who have lived in Britain for longer.

There have been numerous social systems that have given sections of the population preferential access to public resources before. In America they called it Jim Crow, in South Africa they called it Apartheid. Am I being unfair? Hell no! We are not so innocent as Margaret Hodge. Racism is a system and a code. Long-term residents in this case means white people. Indeed, the following sentence in the Grauniad report says:

Her comments come as Labour has conceded that it must do more to woo white working class voters.

Grisly nonsense, and not in the slightest bit pro-working class. It is, as Len suggests:

A purely sentimental, pseudo-ethnic model of class, in which a working class person is defined by certain sumptuary and sartorial habits, attributes which make for convenient genre markers but which by themselves yield no sociological insight. It is an object of nostalgia and melancholia, the deus ex machina of reactionary polemic that strictly does not coincide with the working class as it actually lives and reproduces itself.

The working class is black, white and every shade inbetween. If there are Alf Garnetts in the working class then there are at least as many Frank Owens, it's about time someone spoke out for latter, instead of pandering to the former.

Vous avez obtenu les pistolets de rayon muslamic

Yet more evidence, see here. So, in honour of alleged enlightenment values and secularism we've translated (meaning Babelfished) Muslamic Ray Guns into French:

I m ici à protester bien Je vais sur une marche la cause I veulent que la Grande-Bretagne soit en arrière les Anglais. Je veux que la Grande-Bretagne soit en arrière les Anglais. I' m allant sur une marche la cause i veulent que la Grande-Bretagne soit en arrière les Anglais Je veux que la Grande-Bretagne soit au sujet des Anglais Vous avez obtenu la loi inter-racial et l'infidèle muslamic; essai re d'obtenir leur loi au-dessus de notre pays et son événement, il se produit, it's se produisant dans d'autres pays it' ; s se produisant dans d'autres pays, comme, comme you' ; le obtenu, you' ; le VE a obtenu… Vous avez obtenu les pistolets de rayon muslamic, pistolets de rayon muslamic. Vous avez obtenu les pistolets de rayon muslamic, pistolets de rayon muslamic. Pistolets de rayon, pistolets de rayon. Vous avez obtenu les pistolets de rayon muslamic, pistolets de rayon muslamic. Vous avez obtenu les pistolets de rayon muslamic, pistolets de rayon muslamic. Pistolets de rayon, pistolets de rayon.

See, it all makes complete sense now, doesn't it?

A CiF post that ACTUALLY suggests we should "let the racists march"

For some reason Deborah Orr has stuck in my mind. Ever since, years and years ago, I saw her on BBC Breakfast News in a small panel discussion debating the sexualisation of children. Forgetting, for a moment, that it wasn't Newsnight Review, Orr opined:

"There are some children's clothes being made with words like 'fuck' printed on them".

It was quite a while ago, I am communicating the gist of what she said. Oh the presenters were sorry for the unforeseen profanity. What they forgot was to ask: Really? Are there actually children's clothes out there with the word (or words like) 'fuck' printed on them? Really? Actually? Are you sure?

Anyway, preamble over, Deborah Orr doesn't like lefty marches but doesn't seem to mind far right ones. Why?

I had given up by the time of the million-strong march against Iraq in February 2003, having become too cheesed off on previous marches. That's a shame, I guess, because by all accounts that march was different in character, the concerned citizens greatly outnumbering the usual suspects. But, on my last anti-war march, I'd been stuck behind a group of young men who appeared passionately to believe that 9/11 had been engineered by "the Jews".

Really? That's pretty serious (although you have to admit [two] million-strong political manifestations by their very nature attract all kinds of people). Who were these people?

A "broad church" is one thing.

No, seriously, who were they? Any idea?

A conspiracy-theorist lunatic fringe is another.

It would be good to know. As a serious journalist you wouldn't just want to be casting wild aspersions here. Did you stop to find out who these young men were?

It was all so unpleasant that I peeled off, and marched over Lambeth Bridge to Chez Gerard, and steak frites instead.

So, no idea, no need to have an idea, lefties tolerate unidentified racist conspiracy nuts but not Deborah Orr. Shame on them!

Meanwhile:

I was relieved too, when a huge police presence stopped Saturday's "static protest" by the English Defence League from developing into another kind of confrontation, this time against those who abhor the EDL. Viewing protest as a way to confront the state, and the police, is not constructive. Viewing protest as a way to challenge other citizens, whose mainstream views you do not agree with, is even less so.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, actively opposing the EDL is as bad as supporting them; and when the Normandy landings happened I bet there were people tutting at the Allied invasion too! Also, it makes you wonder what organised protest is for. You can't challenge the state, you can't challenge civil society; since it was taken off the air you can't even Challenge Anneka (there's a reference for you). So, got the message? Deborah Orr doesn't want you to oppose fascist manifestations.

Yet, I was still appalled that the EDL march was banned.

Let the racists march through your neighbourhood because:

Banning groups or their activities, without evidence that they are conspiring to break the law, or encourage others to do so, just feeds the group's feeling that what they have to say is so important...

Could you make Tommy Robinson more self-important? I doubt it. Besides, it's not as if there isn't weighty evidence showing the EDL are about bringing racist violence to our streets. They attack mosques, and have done so and threatened to do so on numerous occasions. This is not exactly inconsistent with their ideology. Numerous of their members are also in the fascist BNP. They frequently attack members of the public, usually but not exclusively brown skinned people. They attack Hindu temples, trade union demonstrations and public meetings.

I could go on. The point is wisemen and fools knows the EDL didn't want to come to Tower Hamlets to go shopping in Canary Wharf, dine out in Brick Lane or go clubbing at 93 Feet East.

Never mind anti-war demos, Comment Is Free is definitely a broad church.

Some not especially original thoughts on the (almost) tenth anniversary of 9/11

In a few weeks time we may well be asked to remember 9/11 - so lets. Observations in no particular order:



1. The event itself was long coming and yet a surprise as well. The organisation Al-Qaeda (sometimes translated as meaning 'the base') is said to have been founded in the late eighties. It was a highly neo-liberal organisation. If it exists today it is more of a devolved franchise than close-knit conspiracy.



In 1993 the World Trade Centre was attacked by a truck bomb. In 1998 several American embassies in Africa were bombed. In 2000 the USS Cole came under attack. There had been several audacious and deadly attacks by people connected to Al-Qaeda before 9/11. It was immediately obvious to everyone not deranged and/or ideologically blind, that the attacks were connected to the sustained and ongoing western imperial intervention in the Middle East.



Yet the event was a shock. Despite the ongoing effects of the fin-de-siecle recession most parts of the world not starving were stupefied. Despite the grand efforts of the anti-capitalist movement (who lets not forget brought the word capitalism back into common use), force, hatred, history and all that seemed an anachronism.



9/11 was a shock, then a stimulus. The global right received a boost, equivalent to a huge dose of political viagra. Following 9/11 every incident around the globe became 'our 9/11'. The American right loved 9/11. If it didn't it wouldn't to this day be trying to recreate that wonderful, priapic rush. I say 'priapic' with just cause. 9/11 let the Republicans unleash all their ultimate fantasies, dramatically extended surveillance, a global system kidnap and torture, and a theory of war based on overwhelming technological superiority. Goodness me, the abiding political verb at the time was 'saddamize'. Clearly someone had been anticipating something like this, some spectacular event, emancipating the Republican libido. The Patriot Act is 342 pages long, the length of an average novel. It was printed and passed on October 24th 2001... not a case of writers block.



The global anti-war movement was a vital and inspiring movement, a reaction to the crazy aggression of the western powers. However it, at best, struggled to a score draw. American and British politicians, especially, fear another Iraq-like war and the effect it would have on the public back home. NATO's apparent triumph in Libya may help it reign in the Arab Spring and revive the notion of humanitarian intervention... then again there may be surprises in store. We shall see. But on the matter of war and humanitarian intervention:



2. You can't fight a war without dehumanising your enemy. War on an abstract noun is a bit difficult; terror is bulletproof. You have to fight some people. Again, it's a bit difficult to fight a decentralised, extra-territorial organisation. Al-Qaeda don't stand in the open yelling "shoot me, shoot me". The Axis of Evil was a useful makeshift. This war was to be a mopping up operation for the End of History. The only problem was the Axis of Evil (as some actually existing alliance of doom) made absolutely no sense.



The consensus on our enemy has settled on muslim extremism. The only problem with that is it frequently is elided into muslims in general. In Britain the EDL have simply taken mainstream consensus a step further, their enemy is brown people in general.



We are living with this toxic politics still. Racists love it. Divide and rule is essential to capitalist government. But what about the strange reaction of several prominent, professed left-wingers? The answer is well known, but lets go over it again. The immediate answer goes back to the soporific decade before 9/11. In such times it is difficult for socialists to differentiate themselves from the well-intentioned amiable rootless drifting social reformers who clog up our world. Once the need arose for definitive answers and decisive action a section of the nominal left split - leaving a trail of bitter and egregious articles in its wake: the left must this, the left should that, we need a decent left (not comprised of "rough train drivers" and "Marxist-Leninists") and so on. The only legitimate political actor is now the state, any attempt to solve the world's problems by a movement from below inevitably ends in gulags (those rough train drivers!). Whereas rightists might assert the superiority Judeo-Christian values or some such, liberals elevate enlightenment values. Forget for a moment that the enlightenment was not necessarily liberal or nice by modern standards; the result is the same, they believe in the superiority of ruling class white westerners. Ugly, isn't it?