1% > 99%

The year 2011 has been no stranger to protests, television news and twenty-four hour news programs showing pictures of angry people, protesting and setting fire to things. The Arab Spring and London riots are still in the recent memory, but these protests are different. There is a memetic feeling of anger towards the rich and the greedy, which has spread across the globe, and these people have no idea who to be angry towards.

What started out as a protest organised by the Canadian anti-capitalist side Adbusters, localised to Wall Street in New York seems to have set off a spark in the minds of people all over the world. This started out as a simple statement; ‘We are the 99%’. Protestors were demonstrating against social inequality, and the greed of many of the rich in America, as well as corporate greed; the 1%. With the Forbes Billionaire list for 2011 featuring 1,210 names, this means that there is at least $1,210 billion in the United States, with this wealth being very unfairly distributed. Most of these riches and these corporations also benefit from tax cuts that the 99% want to see repealed.

The 1% contains people who earn more than $593, 000 per year. That said, protestors are not only speaking out against the huge in-balance in wealth, but they are also protesting against how this 1% have managed to augment said wealth in the aftermath of the financial crisis, when most Americans are either losing wealth or remaining constant. The fact that these people have managed to develop and grow their wealth over this time, while the rest of the nation is still suffering is a point of great anger. The protests have cost the city of New York $3.2 million in police overtime, and

All the more shocking is the media coverage of the Occupy Wall Street. Starting on September 17, it took any news outlet two days to cover the protests, and the coverage since has been anything but favourable. Fox News has criticised the protestors since the outset, calling them ‘incoherent’, while the Long Island Republican Congressman, Peter King, has called the protestors ‘anarchists’, ‘unpatriotic’ and ‘anti-American’. The protestors have been criticised for not having a list of demands, and lacking a universal voice.

Only on day 24 of the riots did Mayor Bloomberg of New York condone the protests, saying ‘people want to express themselves, and so long as they obey the laws, we’ll allow them’, while on day 30, Barrack Obama himself said he is not only supporting the protestors, but he is working in the interests of the 99%. In October, the protests spread to Washington DC, Seattle, Los Angeles and San Francisco, to name a few.

On the 15^th October, the protests crossed the Atlantic to London, beginning in solidarity with the American Occupy protests, and being backed by the UK Uncut movement. These took place outside the London Stock Exchange, with protestors now camped out over night outside St Paul’s Cathedral. Like their brothers in America, the British protestors are acting out against how the government and bankers have dealt with the economic crisis. They are angry that cuts are being made to the general population, while bankers are still making vast sums of money, all of this after we, the people, bailed the banks out. Protestors are said to be after ‘accountability’. One protestor appeared on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral dressed as Jesus, holding a sign that read ‘I threw the moneylenders out for a reason’, obviously protesting the inherent evil of money.  On the 17^th, protestors issued a nine-point manifesto, calling the current system ‘broken, undemocratic and unjust’ and saying the people ‘refuse to pay for the bankers’ crisis’. Only eight arrests have been made at the time of writing.

Out of all the protests, only one was actually violent; Rome.  As 200, 000 people gathered to protest in solidarity with the Spanish Indignado movement, against the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, who the governments of the Europe have had to bail out. At least one hundred and thirty people have been injured, as police threw tear gas and used a riot hose on the crowd, though this is more a case of a peaceful protest being hijacked by a small violent element, known as black bloc. Witnesses have stated that protestors have been trying to stop the violent protestors setting fire to cars, defiling religious iconography, and attacking buildings, causing at least $1.4 million in damages.

As said earlier, these protests seem to be memetic, spreading because of a general feeling that something is not quite right with the world at the moment. People are angry at the economic situation, and how governments seem to be more concerned with pleasing the banks and the corporations than then people they have been voted in to serve. When the recession happened, People argued that it was a logical continuation of the capitalist system, the biggest flaw of a system that relies on eternal growth. These protests too are a logical continuation of a system that relies on growth and greed, where the governments are in the pockets of corporations and banks. The people are sick of the bankers and the rich hoarding all the money of the nation, in a manner that would make Ayn Rand proud. I think we are about to witness the next step of capitalism in the next few years, one that deals with the greed and masses of wealth acquired by a small percentage of the population where the people take back the power from the corporations. Either way, these protests show no sign of curbing any time soon, and I am surprised they have not happened sooner.

 

Meanwhile in Spain…

It is only through Reddit that I heard about the protests in Spain, in boycott of the nationwide and local elections on Sunday 22nd May. These protests are against the high rate of unemployment, and a general feeling of frustration with the government and the unstable economy. Last Sunday, when these protests first began, organised by a group on the Internet called ‘Youth Without a Future’, police broke up them up using excessive force. I have seen dissatisfaction with the bailing out of the banks, which the protestors seem to think has affected the economy and led to the current high rate of unemployment. As the name of the group suggests, there is a feeling of hopelessness, of no future for the youth of Spain. The chant of the protestors: ”esta mierda no es democracia”; ‘this shit isn’t democracy’.

The government has placed a ban on the protest, believing their is no serious reason for such an organisation of people, only for thousands of citizens to show up in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol in defiance of the government. Police are on scene trying to break up the demonstrators, but these protests are not limited to just Madrid. Similar gatherings are occuring in Seville and Chávez, indicating this is not an isolated incident, but a nationwide feeling. Political parties have taken various stances. The Socialist Party have shown support, saying that they “don’t see anything wrong in letting them continue expressing their outrage and discontent”, while other parties, and the Electoral Board have shown distain for the protestors.

Politicals aside, as I am no expert in the politics of Spain, what concerns me is the complete lack of media coverage. Upon hearing about this on Reddit, I went the BBC News website to find out more from a trusted source. Nothing. Even now, four days after the initial protests, there is not a scrap of information on the BBC website, and I have had difficulty finding information on other news sites. Posts from Spanish members of Reddit indicate that local and nation media were initially ignoring the protests, while now they are covering it, and streaming street webcams in Madrid and Barcelona have been disconnected, but apparently, only in areas where protests are taking place. It seems that the Spanish government are very much trying to cover this up.

This brings me back a point I made in my earlier post on the Egyptian protests: how scary it is when a government can attempt to not only silence its citizens, but stop the outside world from looking in. Where it not for the random sites on the Internet I look at, I would not know about it. No-one I speak to about this seems to know what I am talking about. While this might be an issue of relevance, i.e. that it simply does not matter to people, I’d like to point out the media coverage of the protests in Egypt and Libya earlier this year. This is just as relevant as those, in my opinion.

Perhaps the events here do not have the same sensationalistic qualities that the riots in Egypt had.

 

Did Bin Laden Win?

The death of Osama Bin Laden at the start of last week was met with an overall feeling of happiness and relief. Outside the White House, Americans were chanting ‘U-S-A’ and celebrating their defeat of the world’s most number one man. Since then, conspiracy theories have emerged about the relationship of both America Pakistan and Bin Laden, respectively. The celebrating Americans suggest this is a victory, but what if he won?

Many Americans, and people all over the world, saw the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers as an act of excessive vandalism, a declaration of violence. They thought Al Quaeda had stolen a national monument as an attack on the US, but they never considered the possibility that this was not his aim. After fighting the Russians with the mujahidin in Afghanistan, he saw how the war had drained Russia financially, and their defeat here was key to the fall of communist Russia in 1989. Bin Laden had much to do with the final fall of the USSR and from this it is likely he learnt that all superpowers are only as powerful as their economies, possibly playing as a key tactic in his attacks on the US. In the 9/11 attacks in New York, Bin Laden created bait that America could just not ignore: an attack larger and more public than Pearl Harbour that was seen all around the world. I remember as an eleven-year-old boy, watching people throwing themselves out of the windows because they knew the end was nigh, and even then knew the world had changed.

Bin Laden knew the response would cost America dearly, culminating in two war expensive wars in Afghanistan ($455.4 billion) and Iraq ($802 billion), on top of the cost of trying to track down Bin Laden. This, as well as the expensive changes to security across the world, costing 28.6 billion in the US, means that America has spent a considerable amount of money as a response to the 9/11 attacks. Given that by the end of the 2011 fiscal year this will have cost the US $1, 291.5 trillion, Bin Laden might have succeeded. This weight on America’s economy is likely to have had a huge part in the 2008 recession, and Bin Laden was probably watching from the sidelines as America’s economy threatened to tumble and tear itself apart, the same way that Soviet Russia had done nearly twenty years before. In 2004 Bin Laden joked about the cost of America’s response, saying that orchestrating 9/11 only cost $500, 000.

While these wars were going on in the aftermath of 9/11, America cracked down on security, enacting Orwellian laws like the Patriot Act, infringing further on the rights of their citizens, and creating Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay. This in turn paints America as a brutal and vindictive power; potentially disillusioning it’s own citizens. His death, ironically, further serves this purpose. It seems there was no attempt made to capture Bin Laden, and that the Navy SEALS were sent as an assassination squad, turning him into a martyr, murdered by America, without the knowledge of the Pakistan government. He should have been tried for war crimes, but it is likely that he was viewed as too dangerous to be left alive. This perception of America policing the world could also be seen as another attempt to discredit America, and turn her allies against her.

So while the man might have died, cowering behind his wife as Navy SEALS raided the compound where he was living, he did not die a failure, with his ideas changing both the landscape of the modern world, and draining America of many of her resources, leaving her not the nation she used to be.

 

it’s a charlie sheen thing.

“how many drugs did charlie sheen take?”
“enough to kill two and a half men”
-simon pegg

if you have access to any form of television screen or the internet, then you will have heard about charlie sheen. i have to admit, until a week or two ago i had not heard of him. i knew who he was, but could not put a name to the face, yet in the space of one week he has gone from being an actor in a (fairly average) american comedy, to being a cult sensation, famously gathering one million followers on twitter in one day. (i also believe this is before he made a single post…can’t be sure about that though)

what started off as a ‘celebrity meltdown’ a la linsey lohan has soon turned into a cult sensation, and he has turned into a caricature of himself. obviously now it is clear this isn’t a meltdown; he knows exactly what he is doing, and what he is doing is an utter rebranding of himself. there are t-shirts and a clear tongue in cheek to everything he does. famous for his long partying, that has now utterly eclipsed his acting career (apparently he was in platoon? did not know that..), he has now put such a heavy focus on this that he has turned into a cult sensation. now, given that he knows exactly what he is doing, i think charlie sheen must have the best publicist in the world. governements around the world, and banks might want to hire this guy to sort out their ‘image problems’.

here is why. were charlie sheen any other actor, having been fired from his main role, he’d have gone to rehab, been all humble about overcoming his problems and addictions, moved onto deeper films to show his new found spirituality and love for life/career. no, charlie sheen says he quit drugs because they bored him, and upon being fired, instead of having a meltdown, actually starts promoting an exaggeration; a caricature of himself. this way, he does not fade away from the light of fame, but transcends his role as a celebrity to become a cult icon. much like chuck norris or mr t, he has gone on to become something so ridiculous that it is part of every day culture. everyone jokes about mr t or chuck norris doing ridiculous things; now it is charlie sheen’s turn, as shown in his ‘winning recipes‘ cooking video. hilarious stuff.

watching the video interviews and the videos on his website, it is clear this is what he is doing. his eyes bulge as he says the most stupid, and yet funny things. he reminds me of rock stars from the good old days; so unashamed of anything they are doing, and at times even reminds me of hunter s thompson in his iconoclastic and zealous mode of speaking. either way, charlie sheen is here to stay, and i have to admit i am sort of glad. i don’t think he is having some breakdown, and i don’t think he has any huge problems such as the media have pinned to him, other than his huge ego. it is entertainment of the most ridiculous type.

 

the king of limbs

in case you have not heard, radiohead have finally announced their next record ‘the king of limbs’

it is available from here to preorder; http://www.thekingoflimbs.com/ as either a digital album for £6/£9 depending what format you wish for, or a special disk set for £30.

the artwork reminds me quite a bit of the creepy bears from the kid a/amnesiac era, and given the sound of ‘these are my twisted words’, i’m predicting a very trippy and electronic affair, as opposed to the more polished ‘in rainbows’ (one of my favourite albums). come release day, we’ll see!

available for download this coming saturday the 19th.

 

a nation severed; the egyptian revolution.

the egypt riots have struck terror into the hearts of the population of the world around.

videos of violence such as the one above are terrifying, and depict a seemingly repressive and violent police force. i’m not just talking about the governments, who might be scared of a copycat revolution, much in the same way the jasmine revolution in tunisia instigated the egypt riots.i’m not going to pretend to be an expert on the situation, because i am honestly not that informed on the actual politics of the situation, but the video above tells you most of what you need to know. i want to talk about the people who live under the power of the state.

it’s fairly well known now that the egyptian population has been cut off from the rest of the world. what initally started as a blocking of twitter and facebook on the 25th january, presumably to stop images of violence and messages of hate escaping the country, has turned into the government severed all internet connections. this marks a new benchmark of repression and censorship that i have not seen before. the egyptian government under president hosni mubarak was a totalitarian regime, but i never thought a government would stoop to the level of taking off the internet in order to try and contain a revolution. the internet is such a useful tool that it is a scary thought to see that means of expression away from us. in many ways, the internet is the last stand for freedom of speech; not affiliated to any government or cause. more recently, it is being restricted more and more. already, anonymous has threatened DoS attacks on egyptian government websites, same as it did during the tunisia riots in order to disrupt the egyptian government, but with it’s short attention span, i doubt anonymous will achieve anything permanent.

the mere thought of an entire nation being entirely taken ‘off the grid’ is scary enough, especially as egypt was one of the heavily networked nations in the arabic world. admittedly, it is not helped by the relatively small number of internet providers that operate in egypt, which made the task of disrupting the internet relatively easy. such an undertaking is possible, although probably harder, in countries such as the uk, and the us, and is not worth thinking about. not that this article should be self pitying about losing our way of normal life.

i think what we can take from this is the desperation that the egyptian government is feeling in trying to hold onto it’s power, as it slowly starts to wane. a state is nothing without the support of the people. if the people are against you, then eventually the police and state are going to crumble under you, before rising up and replacing you with someone of their choosing. a government should be there at the choosing of the people.

i hope the egyptian population finds the democracy it is so passionately fighting for.

 

an open letter to wikileaks

dear wikileaks,

i have to admit, i find your presence on the internet an interesting one. you harvest information, and that is all you do. i understand why you released the military information; people had a right to know about that. about what happened in iraq and such. but releasing classified information like this [the american diplomacy information]? all you are doing is stirring the pot ! nothing good is going to come from your releasing this information.

now, i am all for freedom of information, and i do feel that governments should be more open with what they are doing. people have a natural distrust for government, so it makes sense to try and build bridges and gain trust. but the information you have released to the world is kind of information that people DO NOT need to know ! you are the equivalent of a kid on a playground, spreading secrets (truths, not lies) and just watching as the chaos unfolds.

while the US opinion of other nations, and/or the demand for diplomats to spy on both allies and enemies might seem extreme, every nation on the planet is going to be similar. with the state of the world being as it is at the moment, it makes sense to be on guard. this might seem nefarious, but i am fairly sure every country is similar right now. the exposed exchange between saudi arabia and the US is going to cause massive problems. no-one needed to know that, and this is going to cause more than a little bit of political attrition. if two people you knew, maybe friends of yours, had a shared secret that could cause massive damage to the people around them, would you still tell people?

Signed

Alex

That Coffee Fueled Guy.

 

chloe swaby- racing car

my friend from university chloe has got a single coming out today. i jam with her from time to time and she is an amazing singer, and i really want her single to be a success. it has been a long time coming.

download here

thanks guys x

 

london student protest.

as many people will know, there was a protest today in london against university tuition fees going up. previously, UK didn’t have tuition fees until the mid 00s, then tuition feels of roughly £3500 per year were placed, meaning a debt of averagely £10500 (this is based on a three year course). now universities might be allowed to choose how much they charge, meaning potentially £9000 a year student fees.

this has been met with outrage. people could potentially be saddled with three times the amount of debt. it also seems silly; if the government raise tuition fees, if the current system of repayment is kept (you only start paying money back when you are earning over a certain amount) then the government is going to be losing money. more money just means a longer payback time for former students.

there is also the argument ‘education is a right, not a privilege’. this i wholly agree with; everyone should have it as a right to get a university education if they want it. a degree, as i am finding out already, is hard work. anyone who wants to work for a degree, should be rewarded for it. people will argue that the more people that have university degrees means your own degree is diluted and worth less. you do not stand out. to those people, i say if you want to stand out, then bloody make yourself stand out; do extra-curricular activities, follow your passions. i might be being optimistic, but  sky’s the limit.

but let’s try and rationalise this. let’s face it, we’re surrounded by a financial crisis, with cuts coming across the board. funding to universities is being cut, so if the universities can get more money. it makes sense in a way. i am not happy with it, but looking at the number of modules cut in the english and philosophy departments in cardiff, only in the last year or so, i’d be more inclined to say it is a fairly reasonable solution. there was a professor at cardiff last year who was saying tuition fees should be raised to a minimum of £12000 because universities are struggling so much. i’d rather pay £6000 and get a quality education, than pay £3500 and get a diluted one. though ideally, i wouldn’t mind paying nothing.

people keep trying to fault our politicians for being greedy. i am no huge of politicians, and there’s that famous saying ‘the last honest man who walked into parliament was guy falkes, but the politicians are making no money out of this, so you can’t fault them for being greedy here. the raising of tuition fees is to help taxes come down. taxes come down, people have more money, people are more likely to spend, invest in the economy and help us distance ourselves from the 2008 recession. like i said earlier, they might be making a degree of loss as surely they can’t actually receive all that money back from former students.

still though, looking at the images from the bbc news website, it looks more like a 1970s riot than the 1960s style activism it was intended to be. protest leaders have distanced themselves from the vandalism. all i can do when i see those images is think “jesus…guys…reallly?” while i can see people thinking less of students, i can’t help but think people will realise that not every student is like this. not every student who went set fire to stuff. the majority of the protest went peacefully, as it should have been.

 

where the music industry has failed

illegal downloading has been a controversial topic since the metallica lawsuit against napster in the nearly 00′s, and has since been an underlying issue in the music industry. bands such as radiohead have used the controversy to great effect, selling their in rainbows album for any price, and kid a being leaked, only to boost the album to record sales. other critics say that downloading is damaging to the music industry, not beneficial.

largely, the problem is the music industry has been far too far behind the curve when it comes to the internet. when the internet became big in the 90s, many people, such as bill gates, wrote it off as a fad that would never last. as the years went out, it was clear that the internet was here to stay, for better or for worse, and no-one could see the implications of the anarchic freedom the internet provided. not even the millionaires behind the music business. had the big businesses realised the potential of the internet as a source of reaching out to their consumers, a program such as spotify would have come out years before it actually did. every kid who was downloading metallica off napster or limewire would instead have downloaded spotify and streamed music for free, albeit with adverts. of course, it’s entirely possibly that in the era before high-speed broadband, that spotify would have tanked, but this is speculation. the point still stands that the music business should have reached out to their consumers, and offered them a medium to enjoy music, with the mind of creating a loss-lead to entice consumers to buy music.

even when the music industry did utilise the internet to reach out to people, with outlets such as itunes, they completely messed it up. in trying to emulate the track-for-track style of sharing seen in p2p programs, they have lost so much money. in the old days, if you heard a song on the radio for a band, odds are you would go out and buy the cd that it was on, i.e. the entire album. this would be in the region of £10. now with itunes, you hear a song you like, and you can buy that one song for in the region of £1. even to someone without a business mind, you can see the loss the music business.

now, i am all for internet downloading. before the days of spotify, i used to download a fair bit of music, because being a student i could not afford to buy every album i though might be good. i was sick of buying records that sounded awful, in spite of great critical reception etc. as a result, i started downloading music as a means of previewing it- and the cds i heard that i liked, i went out and bought.

there is a argument that says good bands suffer from downloading, in that people will download their album and never actually pay for it. there is so much wrong with this argument i am not sure where to begin.

1) if people download an album they like, but never buy it, there is something wrong with that; a lack of loyality or appreciation of the band. downloaders like this can quite frankly go to hell, and they are the ones who, generally, are causing the music industry harm.

2) if people download an album that is not any good, of course they are not going to buy it. if they are not good enough to buy, then clearly they should not be getting any money anyways- if you release a product that no-one wants, no-one will buy it

3) if people download an album, and like it, odds are they are going to buy it. there is something nice about actually owning an album, with all the random artwork and such that is in the sleeve etc.

4) bands make most of their profit from touring and merchandise. the actual records themselves mostly line the pockets of high up executives.

in a way, downloading has created a manner of filtration in the industry. only the good bands; the bands worth buying are being bought. it also means that you can listen to music you would not normally listen too, on a whim. a good example of this is dramagods; nuno bettencourt’s band while extreme were on hiatus. i listened to that on a whim, loved it so much that i imported it from america so i could own the cd. worth every penny.

in closing, i feel that the music industry has failed to stay ahead of the curve and adapt the business model it already had to the internet-age. when the head of warner bros last week said that cds were dead, i do not think he was lying. fewer are being bought, and with the internet being the anarchy that it is, you will never eliminate illegal downloading, in spite of what gene simmons will tell you. the amount of money that it would cost to find internet downloaders far multiplies the amount you would actually get from them. for better, or for worse, downloading is here to stay, and it is not the bands that will suffer so much as it is the actual record companies themselves. this raises the question of how bands can reach the masses, but with websites such as myspace and sound cloud, good bands will get heard, and people will talk about them. the most effective way of spreading anything is word of mouth.