Recent Events: Notes

by Gary Tedman

In the coming UK election, the public don't want the cuts that are coming, so the politicians say almost nothing about them, which is saying nothing about the most important economic, political, and thus social crisis in modern times. So things are 'normal' at the top of the UK. And at the top of the EU, well, 'Germany' (meaning its ruling class) seems to regret having courted Greece to join the Eurozone, now that it is expected to act all sociable and bail it out. So things are 'normal' at the top of the EU too. What the journos say, to endarken us, is things like this -: "Germany doesn't want to bail out Greece like it had to bail out east Germany" (to paraphrase S. Erlanger). We thought Germany included its east, so could you say the eastern Germans don't want to bail out Greece like they bail out themselves? Strange. The UK election is now all about aesthetics: which party presents in the least offensive way (we know what they say is rubbish) to a people who are fed up with all of them for the various scandals (expenses) and rip-offs (bankers). If there was a choice to vote away capitalism I think it would do quite well now, but there isn't of course. But of the ordinary people who will vote in this election, they will be, whatever party wins, voting for their own suffering, one way or another, it is thus a kind of political sado-masochism, and it is floating around, welcomed and pointed up by the press everywhere -: "we need to take our medicine, it isn't nice, sir, but there's no choice is there?" they say. I was thinking at that moment of Kyrgyzstan, they seem to have made a new choice. The media didn't much like it and called it a 'bloody uprising', not denoting it by any fancy color names or a flowers anymore (Tulip Revolution, Orange Revolution), and neglecting to add on most occasions that the blood was on the hands of the state military and not the people.