Danger, Will Robinson: The Copyright Alert System

28 February, 2013 By

This article is from the Electronic Frontier Association explains the effects of a voluntary copyright violation policing agreement being applied by some American ISPs. Find out if your ISP is one of the offenders and switch if you can.

“The Copyright Alert System FAQ

It’s been a long time coming, but the copyright surveillance machine known as the Copyright Alert System (CAS) — aka “Six Strikes” — has finally launched. CAS is an agreement between major media corporations and large Internet Service Providers to monitor peer-to-peer networks for copyright infringement and target subscribers who are alleged to infringe — via everything from “educational” alerts to throttling Internet speeds. Unfortunately, the Center for Copyright Information, which is running this “educational” program, is hardly a neutral information source. So, as the participants finally begin to reveal some details, we’re here to provide an alternative.

More info..

Filed Under: Personal, Politics

Police State

25 September, 2012 By

I found this video today. It speaks to the state of things in my country. I have to admit that I’m somewhat afraid of how things are shaping up. In a time when the richest 400 individuals in the US have increased their net worth by 200 BILLION dollars, and the remainder of Americans have decreased their income by 4% the people in charge are getting scared. We the people are becoming a threat to them. We’re restless. We’re rebellious. They know it. They want to control us before we get the idea that we don’t have to take it any more.

Here’s the video. Note that the officer was suspended and forced to take some Constitutional law training. We have more power than they want us to think.

 

Filed Under: America, Personal, Politics

The Role of Writers and Other Creative Workers in Social Discourse

10 May, 2012 By

I haven’t read anything that covers this topic, so I’d be interested in being pointed to other articles that discuss it and hearing the thoughts of anyone who cares to comment.

Writers and other creatives (artists, actors, musicians in particular) have historically used their talents to sway opinions on the important issues of their times. This is not something limited to Western culture. In Soviet Russia, for example, science fiction and fantasy writings of the past have concealed lessons about the tyranny of Soviet government.  Post-colonial writers from around the world have and continue to contribute to social discourse, raising awareness of imposed cultures and biased histories.Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird  brought forward the racial biases of the legal system and the book had a tremendous impact. These are only a couple of examples from a vast number of contributions made by writers throughout history to shaping society and ending injustice.

Non-fiction writers are supplanting the media with blogs and on the spot reportage. The access granted by the interweb allows independent journalists to be more open than those paid by big media companies. So in the new age, what is the fiction writer’s role on the front of social activism? What does the self-published writer owe in this vein? Is social commentary a luxury granted only to those published in the main stream, or to the contrary, do the self-published have more leeway on this issue?

Musicians in the new world are taking an active stance. Amanda Palmer is a good example. Her activism is focused around the oppressive system by which traditional record labels made money off of recording artists disproportionately. The artist saw very little of the monetary rewards from the production of their music and gave up a lot of freedom. She’s making a case for crowd funding of music in order to allow the artist to create and survive/thrive.

Visual artist Molly Crabapple is making a similar case for art. She addresses issues like the difficulty of taking work on spec (meaning, doing work first in hopes that it will raise money or sell) and how this system makes it harder for an artist to earn a living.

These are all issues to do with raising awareness about how hard it is to make a living in the arts, but both Palmer and Crabapple are involved in/support the Occupy Wall Street movement and other progressive issues. They are set apart only by the visibility of their efforts. Many independent musicians and artists do similar work on a smaller, less visible scale.

But what about writers? Where are the independent writers leading the activism charge? Of course, some writers published by the big publishers still shout into the void from time to time. And a whole host of writers who work for small presses are addressing social issues. But how are indie writers doing it? As we seem to be moving more in the direction of self-publishing, is it going to be all about how to hit it big and not at all about what we can do with these voices we’re trying so hard to make heard?

Okay, so everybody’s got to make a living. Do we only get to make a statement after we’re insanely successful? (See this article by Stephen King.) Or in the case of indie writers, never at all because we risk alienating readers? I suppose I shouldn’t refer to myself as an indie writer. I’m still marginally in favor of the traditional system (as broken as it appears to be). But the tide is turning. Eventually there will be a way that good writers can get their work into the public eye without going through traditional channels.

How do we make a difference and still make a living? How do we help shape the New Publishing Paradigm to be less oppressive to writers and at the same time use our writing skills to be the voices of the voiceless? What do we owe the world on this front? Those of who don’t have a lot of money, but whose strong suit is our talent, our knowledge, our creativity, our compassion? How do we make a stand?

Filed Under: Earning a living as a writer, Indie Publishing, Politics, Writers

Thoughts about health care and other stuff

23 April, 2012 By

Last night I spent an hour on a livestream of Molly Crabapple working on a painting depicting “the business of illness.” This is part of a project that she raised money for through Kickstarter and the livestream is one of the rewards to those who contributed. I confess, I was tempted to contribute not only because I wanted to help but because I wanted to watch her paint. Call me crazy, but watching someone make art is nothing at all like watching paint dry.

What I wasn’t expecting was to be provoked, again, to think about the health care situation in the US versus in the UK. And actually, beyond that, to think about the differences in rhetoric and propaganda between my original home and my new home.

Molly has her own experiences with being without health insurance in the US. And she has the experiences of her friends, including doctors, to draw on for this painting she’s working on.S he’s doing a great job of showing the various problems inside the American system, I think.

But here I find myself looking at what’s going on in the NHS and what people int he US have said to me about their fears in having a system like the one here.

From home, I thought they didn’t know what they were talking about. But from here I do see the problems with this system.

Last night someone asked Molly if she was a communist and she laughed and said yes. (She was only joking, she has since informed me.) I’ve called myself a communist in the past as well, but I’m beginning to understand something that I didn’t before. The problem with the Communist/Socialist labels is that these ideologies are by their natures Authoritarian. They’re left in economic values, but they’re top down. That is, not democratic or libertarian. In labeling ourselves within these ideologies (because we don’t really have any better labels to choose from) we neglect our libertarian love of freedom for everyone.  This is where, I think, people’s fear comes from at the word Communist. I’ve said before that when I say Soiclist or Communist, I mean putting people or the whole of society ahead of other things. Whereas capitalist puts capital (money) first. But even Capitalism isn’t the real problem. It’s consumerism. The situation now where everyone feels compelled to buy, buy, buy and companies use powerful tactics to get everyone to and enable them at the same time to borrow more than they can ever reasonably pay back, so that essentially before they know what hits them, they’re buried in paying for stuff they’ve long since thrown out.)

So what does this have to do with health care.

Well, it seems to me that the conversion of the NHS to a more ‘American’ model, i.e. a business model, is being promoted by the same people who keep it locked in in the US. The rich see it as unsustainable unless it’s run as a business. But the problem of running it as a business is that it neglects the primary goals of health care. To care for the health of everyone in the best way possible. The primary goal of business is to make money. You can see how these are in conflict.

So the problem in the US is that not everyone has access to care because insurance companies are trying to make money and so are hospitals. To be honest, I’ve had some amazing doctors and amazing care in the US. And I had really good insurance. I was never denied treatment and I almost never had to pay out of packet. But this is not the experience that a lot of people have. And also, a lot of people don’t even have insurance.

In the UK, the problems I’ve seen are that any expensive treatment has to go through channels. Doctors are slow to act because the NHS is underfunded and they don’t want to draw more heat. So I’ve been forced to wait for some medications for much longer than I would have in the US. And I’ve seen this happen to other people as well.

Also, there is a chronic malaise among workers in the UK, at least in London and this is definitely present in the staff of doctor’s offices here. I don’t blame them. I just haven’t had the same experience in the US. My thoughts about why this is the case here is that in the US, if you hate your doctor’s office you’ll just find another doctor. Especially if you have insurance. Here,  I feel like I don’t dare complain because I’m not paying. The mailaise is caused by low wages and the general sense of despair that hangs over the UK. Maybe that’s growing in the US now as well.

Also, there are certain things that just happen a lot faster without the bureaucracy. In the US, I emailed my doctors or they called me with test results. Here I have to call or wait until my next appointment. Is this a problem? No. Is it less than ideal? Yes.

Here things are covered, but you have to press to get them sometimes. Or it take s a while. In the US, when it’s going well, when a person has an insurance plan that works, doctors can focus on the best treatments and give them swiftly. There seems to be a set of misconceptions each side has about the other. And in the worst cases all of these turn out to be true. But there is a best case. And in the ultimate best case, everyone would have this best case.

That is, everyone would get the treatments they need. Doctors’ hands would not be tied by payment restrictions or pushed by companies who stand to make a profit.  This was the kind of care I received in the US. I know it’s not the kind of care everyone receives there and it did come at a price, That price was I couldn’t leave my full time job to write for a living. Here I’m a writer/editor. I make a lot less money, but my health care is essentially free. Or very low cost. And I don’t have massive insurance premiums. The cost of my NHS contribution is based on my income. This is the missing piece of the American system. Not everyone can get coverage and not everyone can get or afford insurance. (And also, drug companies are focused on maximizing profits, not maximizing people’s health and they actively push doctors to prescribe their drugs for that reason.)

The new health care legislation gives people  better access to coverage but doesn’t make it affordable according to individual resources and doesn’t make all coverage good coverage.

It seems to me that the real solution, anywhere, is to make sure people are covered for whatever they need. Put health care coverage at the top of a list of things that people require and that must be provided.

If a government can’t make sure its people are fed, housed and have excellent medical care, what are we paying them for?

Also, why should the wealthy pay more taxes?

To pay for the privilege of living in a place where life is good and such benefits are extended to everyone. Who wants to live in a place of squalor? To pay for the privilege of being able to make and keep wealth. To pay for the privilege of being treated with dignity and helping to insure that everyone is treated with dignity. Why should they? Because they can and it doesn’t hurt them and it helps others. Why should they want that? Well, because they’re good people. Aren’t they? Well, then they should because that’s what it takes to keep the mobs from burning their fancy houses down at night. Because that’s what passes for fair in the twenty-first century. And we require fairness now in the free world.

 

 

Filed Under: America, London, Politics

The new political awareness

10 April, 2012 By

In 2000, when Ralph Nader ran under the Green Party banner, people made a big fuss out of whether his candidacy would spoil the election. After that election, if you voted for Nader, you were harassed by Democrats and cheered at by Republicans. They were trying to teach us a lesson. Don’t rock the two party system.

Traditional Democrat-Republican, Left-Right descriptions in American politics do a great job of concealing the reality that politicians are working for the same contributor dollars. Under the protection of these labels, government has moved ever further from representing public interests and ever closer to doing whatever the fuck they want.

In 2001, I almost got into a fist fight with a colleague who was a staunch Democrat and who believed that people voting for the Green Party had caused George W. Bush to win the election. Eight years later, this colleague was singing a different tune,. He actually had become awake to the fact that the two parties represent the same values and that we weren’t going to get a better system under either party.

I have become interested in the political compass as a way of keeping track of where politicians stand. Right now, this is the diagram of the 2012 candidates for US President.

http://politicalcompass.org/uselection2012

Notice how Obama has shifted from being fairly close to the center to a much further right and up position since the 2008 election, shown here.

http://politicalcompass.org/uselection2008

A chart of the UK parties in 2010 is here: http://politicalcompass.org/ukparties2010

Notice that although the parties are all over, the government of the UK is almost the furthest to the right of any European government

http://politicalcompass.org/euchart.

Hilariously, only Greece is more authoritarian than the UK and equally far to the right. No wonder there are riots in Greece.

So why?

Why, when people are not all wanted to be ruled by an iron hand and not given any support, are all the politicians being elected from the upper right corner of the grid?

You can take the test and see where you fall. I’m way down in the left bottom corner.

Filed Under: Politics

Open Letter to the US Congress: Stop SOPA

15 December, 2011 By

The Stop Online Piracy Act clearly goes too far. I support copyright, but this bill threatens the U.S.’s domination of internet innovation and business. This bill is clearly a violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution.

In practical terms, this bill would make much that is great about the internet illegal. For example, this song recorded by a ten year old and her brothers http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=a7UFm6ErMPU would become a violation of the law. By the way, notice how 15 million people have watched it. And the kids signed a contract with Sony. This sort of getting noticed is not unique. People use the internet to show off their talents. Sometimes these talents requre material, like songs. Songs are obviously meant to be shared by singing them. No one is intending any disservice to the creators. There is a point at which free speech and free expression override copyright. If this bill becomes law, who will draw the line? Will satire become copyright infringement? Note all of the new sorts of licensing agreements on the web. People are sharing information and the rules need to change.

The litigious nature of corporations in the US is now threatening creative freedom worldwide. All creative products are influenced to some extent by what has come before. This is a natural process and it happens in other fields, too, like science. Without Einstein’s discovery of relativity much scientific advancement since would not have happened. We are not isolated creatures. We have shared culture, and now are able to share even further because of the world-wide web. This is not something to be afraid of but something to be awestruck by.

On an international level, other countries look to the US as a model for freedom. If this is our model, (and here, I rally want to cry when I think of it – my country, my great country laying waste to the Constitution in ignorance) if OUR country does this, the beacon on the hill will be snuffed out. The great experiment in democracy will be on the brink of failure.

Please don’t let this bill pass.

Filed Under: Personal, Politics

Stop SOPA

15 December, 2011 By

I am copying this directly from CNN International at this link: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/14/opinion/sigal-mackinnon-copyright-internet/index.html?hpt=us_mid

Online Piracy Laws Must Preserve Web Freedom

Editor’s note: Ivan Sigal is executive director and Rebecca MacKinnon is co-founder of Global Voices Online, an international citizen media network. MacKinnon is also a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and author of the forthcoming book “Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom.“

(CNN) — One year ago, a Tunisian street vendor set himself on fire, igniting a storm of protest that toppled his country’s oppressive government in less than a month. The anger swiftly spread, as activists and bloggers, organizing through social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, set off a season of revolution that is still shaking the Arab world. Yet as the first anniversary of that event approaches, a new threat to digital activism is looming — in the United States.

On Thursday the House of Representatives is expected to vote on the Stop Online Piracy Act, which would force social media platforms to pro-actively monitor and censor users to prevent them from posting words or images that might violate copyright.

Website operators who fail to do so could be blacklisted and prosecuted. The bill and its Senate counterpart, the Protect IP Act, would empower the attorney general to block allegedly infringing websites based anywhere on Earth.

Ivan Sigal

Ivan Sigal
Rebecca MacKinnon

Rebecca MacKinnon

The drafters of both bills do not mean to stifle online dissent and activism. Their goal is to protect intellectual property, especially from piracy by websites overseas. The problem is that the bills’ legal and technical solutions are very similar to mechanisms that authoritarian regimes use to censor and spy on their citizens.

Our organization, Global Voices Online, is an international network for citizen media. We support the protection of intellectual property; many members of our community earn all or part of their living by creating copyrighted work. We worry, though, that the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act will inflict broad unintended damage on digital activists living under repressive regimes as well as restrict speech freedoms at home.

Even existing copyright law is abused in attempts to stifle criticism and public debate. Take the case of Trevor Eckhart,a security researcher who wrote a critical blog post last month about a little-known software program called Carrier IQ, which runs on millions of smartphones and logs information about users’ activities.

Rather than address Eckhart’s claims, Carrier IQ responded with legal threats, accusing him of copyright violation because his analysis included copies of its manuals, even though the manuals were publicly available on the company’s own website. After the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation came to Eckhart’s defense, the company withdrew its threats and apologized.

If the Stop Online Piracy Act becomes law, online speech like Eckart’s will be more vulnerable to censorship. Those seeking to abuse copyright law to stifle criticism will be further empowered. To comply with the Stop Online Piracy Act, Eckart’s service provider would have had to actively monitor what he was posting to prevent him from violating copyright. If there is doubt about whether a post is or isn’t “infringing,” website operators will be under pressure to avoid legal problems just by blocking or deleting it — even if there is a good chance a court of law would eventually rule that it is protected speech.

In countries whose judicial systems are less independent and where legal defense for bloggers is rare, abuse of copyright law to stifle activism is much easier. The Russian government last year used a crackdown on software piracy as an excuse to confiscate activists’ computers. The Chinese government used copyright claims to crack down on critics of the 2008 Beijing Olympics who sometimes used modified images of the Olympic mascots in their critiques.

“In China ‘copyright’ is one of many excuses to crack down on political movements,” a Chinese blogger, Isaac Mao, told us. “If a new law like SOPA is introduced in the U.S., the Chinese government and official media will use it to support their version of ‘anti-piracy.’”

Amendments could narrow or eliminate some of the bills’ most dangerous features. Congress could pass a better, though still problematic, bill. Yet even these efforts fail to address the deeper problem: that some members of Congress are seeking to regulate the global Internet for the benefit of the U.S. entertainment industry.

At the same time, members of both parties in the House and Senate (including some sponsors of both bills) have expressed impassioned support for global Internet freedom, sometimes chastising the executive branch for not doing enough. Last week Rep. Christopher Smith, R-New Jersey, introduced a new version of the Global Online Freedom Act, which aims to punish companies that sell censorship and surveillance equipment to authoritarian regimes or support the suppression of online dissent around the world. In recent years, Congress has repeatedly allocated funds for tools that help Internet users get around those surveillance regimes.

It is thus only reasonable to expect that Internet-related legislation should be consistent with Congress’ repeated commitment to uphold and protect rights of Internet users globally.

Contributors to Global Voices on all continents face increasingly sophisticated surveillance and censorship. Several are in jail right now because of their online activities, and others are in exile. Passage of the Stop Online Piracy Act or Protect IP will send a loud signal to governments everywhere that it is fine to monitor and censor citizens’ online behavior to catch and prevent “infringing activity,” which too often means political and religious dissent. The result will be a world even more dangerous and difficult for bloggers and activists than it already is.

Follow @CNNOpinion on Twitter.

Filed Under: Personal, Politics

This ██ ████ the Internet will ████ like if SOPA passes.

14 December, 2011 By

Former Senator Chris Dodd — head of the Motion Picture Association of America — says that China censors its Internet, so we can too:

“When the Chinese told Google that they had to block sites or they couldn’t do [business] in their country, they managed to figure out how to block sites.”

Really? Because it’s a FREE COUNTRY has lost all meaning?

Filed Under: Of Interest, Personal, Politics

Why I support the Occupy movement

15 November, 2011 By

This morning’s news of a surprise police raid on Zuccotti Pari in lower Manhattan, where for the past two months, protesters have been living in tents was just about the last straw.

For the past ten years, I’ve been all too aware of the sad direction my country was headed in. I witnessed the two party political system doing everything it could to keep out any other parties with the potential to make genuine change. Not just in the news, but first hand. I worked on Green party political campaigns in 2000 and watched the other two parties ganging up to prevent Green participation in debates.

Friends of mine, people on the true left, have been saying revolution is the only way for a long time. I was slow to come to that conclusion. Revolution in my mind meant violence. I don’t like violence, from either side.

Several years ago, steeped in facts about the nature of injustice in the richest country in the world, I learned that corporate salaries had gone from CEOs making 40 times the salary of an entry level employee to CEOs making 470 times the salary of an entry level employee. Awareness changes viewpoint. There are so many facts like this.

According to Wikipedia: “Real income in the U.S. grew by 62% for all households between 1979 and 2007. However, after-tax income of households in the top 1% of earners grew by 275%, while income growth for the bottom fifth of earners was 18%. ‘As a result of that uneven income growth,’ the report notes, ‘the share of total after-tax income received by the 1 percent of the population in households with the highest income more than doubled between 1979 and 2007, whereas the share received by low- and middle-income households declined.’ ” (The rest of this article is here.)

Here’s how I see it. Society functions on the general agreement that the majority will not get screwed over. In some other parts of the world, the majority has been screwed over for so long, they no longer have any basis to decide they won’t put up with it. They’ve never known anything else. In the US, the majority has been slowly roasted, like the frog in the pot. Not really noticing. Except the young, raring to go, have been made keenly aware of how, for the first time in generations they are limited by the system. And they’re pissed off. Thank god. Finally, someone is pissed off enough to stand up and say something.

We didn’t leave England and start our own country to become serfs. We are free. We have voices. We’re not cattle to be corralled. The Great Experiment in Democracy could be so much greater if all the resources weren’t at the top. If healthcare weren’t tied to working for a large company. If entrepreneurial spirit could apply to things like art and writing and multimedia projects. We weren’t made to work in hives, like drones. The system is designed to keep the masses working for it. Not to help us, or support us while we discover what we’re capable of. The system needs cogs. Not individuals. Not artists. Not free thinkers.

The rightwing says we’re jealous. I can only speak for myself. I don’t want what they have. I want what I have, just a little less on the edge. And I want that for everyone, because how can I feel safe and comfortable when my friends and family and neighbors and the people on the nightly news aren’t? When did we stop caring about everyone else? When did we learn to close ourselves off, to say ‘I’ve got mine,’ to turn away from the truth.

Recently, Penn State coach Joe Paterno, who really seemed saintly to me and probably so many others, lost his job because of his failure to follow through on reporting very serious child molestation from one of the other coaches. When did we go there, to that dark place, where a half stand is a stand? Where even Joe Paterno can’t be trusted to stand up and do what’s right and damn the consequences?

I still don’t want revolution. But I’m proud of the revolutionaries making a stand down on Liberty Square. I support them. Being reasonable has failed us again and again. Because the system isn’t reasonable. Right now revolution looks like it might be the only answer.

Filed Under: Personal, Politics

Let’s go over this one more time…

10 August, 2011 By

I won’t make excuses for violent behaviour. But everything has a context.

The context of the London riots is oppression. It’s perhaps easier for me to see, as an American relatively new to the UK, than it is for the British who are used to this situation.

A number of things have surprised me about the culture of London. There have been good surprises and bad surprises. From my own personal perspective, the bad surprises didn’t seem that bad. But I come with a sense of entitlement. I think many Americans have it. I don’t think I’m ‘entitled’ to Britain’s resources, but I have a general sense of myself as having rights and liberties. And I’m willing to stand up and ask for things if they’re denied to me. Fairness is integral to American culture and law. If it’s not fair, we’ll fight it.

I’ve noticed that the English are more downtrodden. They’re less likely to stand up for their rights. In fact, they don’t’ seem to think they have many rights. It’s true that in the U.S., we have a Constitution that lays out our rights and everyone knows of its existence. So many rights, like the right to remain silent, not to testify against yourself or your spouse, the right to an attorney if you’re held by the police, the right to free speech, free assembly, peaceful protest, the right to refuse to be searched –educated Americans know about this stuff.

I’ve done a lot of work with the poor in the U.S. I’m from Michigan and Detroit is one of the most economically disadvantaged areas in the country. I know that if you’re from a very poor area, the problems that you deal with on a daily basis are different problems than lower middle class people. There is more violence, less safety, less safe housing, both from the perspective of crime and environmental concerns, like toxic waste, poorly maintained building conditions, etc. I know that young men of colour are more likely to go to prison than to university. I know that prison populations are disproportionately composed of people of colour. In the general population, about 13% are African-American. In prison, it’s 60%.*

Poverty means more single mothers. Poverty contributes to depression, drug and alcohol abuse, and poor health. Poverty also makes it less likely that kids will get a proper education or good role models.

I had no idea until I came here how much racism there would be. It hit me as quite a shock. I thought this problem was a particularly American one, one that Americans are getting closer to eradicating. We’re still quite a way away from it in some areas of the country. But still, in some places, there are a lot of progressive people who don’t think twice about inclusiveness. (Though I hate it that you have to be progressive to think this way.)

Earlier this year I was in the hospital for a week with a crazy sinus infection that went out of control and required surgery. A number of the staff at the hospital were black. Which would have meant nothing to me, really, except that they were completely on edge around me. I also noticed that none of the nurses were black. Only staff – cleaning people, food service people. They all had an air of hostility toward me. Which I found puzzling. But then a friend of mine from school came to visit. He’s Nigerian. The staff were all completely friendly toward him. They looked absolutelly stunned when they saw him interacting with me. After that, they seemed very confused around me. Aha! A Clue.

There are also the things that friend has said to me. He’s been here since he was a kid. He has obvious emotional scars from being treated differently. He tries to joke about it, but his pain is obvious. It’s very hard to fight oppression from the position of an oppressed person. It comes off as defensive. It IS defensive, and understandably so. Sometimes I just want to flip a switch in his head to make him see that he is not deserving of bad treatment. He’s practically angelic in his demeanor. The only thing I’ve ever seen make him angry is prejudice.

It takes a bit of experience, a bit of education, to overcome fear of people who are different from you. What I see in London is organic segregation, meaning people of different races don’t do a lot of mixing. There is some, of course. There will always be people who are above this sort of primal distrust. But the number of people who aren’t above it here is a sign of an undereducated, underprivileged population.

Class and race and income desparity compound each other here. On top of that, last year’s police intervention in the student protests and the subsequent decision of parliament to cut student university fundingsent a message to young people. “We don’t think your future is important. We don’t care how much you protest, we’re not going to help you.” So now, the primary source of hope for improving their lot in life has been taken away. Because how is anyone going to afford an education?

You see, the rich don’t send their kids to the same schools as the poor and working people do. They have stopped having a vested interest in the comprehensive education system (what we call ‘public school’ in the U.S. means ‘private school’ in the U.K. so here I mean the publicly funded school system) I was mistaken about this before coming here. I thought American schools had fallen far behind most European schools, including the ones in the UK. It turns out that’s not true.

I haven’t quoted a lot of sources in this piece, and I don’t have time to go digging for all the stats right now, but if you want something to think about in trying to decide if this is true, think about this.  Why are the childrren of rich parents generally well-educated, successful, and also rich? Isn’t it because their parents give them an education, money, support and teach them skills like handling money? Aren’t most of their friends of the same social class and income level? Why would being poor, not having the resources to pass on, or the knowledge have any less effect on poor people’s children? If the only way out of this cycle is through education and education is substandard, higher education out of reach, what incentive do young people have to contribute to the community? What incentive do they have to follow society’s rules when society is obviously helping other people but doing nothing for them?

This leads me on to the question, what’s the point of having government? Is it, as James Madison said, “to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority“? Aren’t people expecting more from their hard-earned tax monies these days? Like fair treatment, a stable economy, human rights and the potential to live a better life?

Now apparently, the English Defense League, an organization with a reputation for being racist and anti-immigrant are planning a march through a largely Muslim area. Reportedly, police are planning to allow this to happen. It seems a little like allowing bonfires during a drought somehow.

Filed Under: England, Personal, Politics
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