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Student Fees Protest: 'This Is Just the Beginning'
• Tory HQ attacked as demonstration spirals out of control • 35 arrested and 14 injured in violent clashes at Millbank • Police admit being caught out by scale of student action
Tens of thousands of students took to the streets of London today in a demonstration that spiralled out of control when a fringe group of protesters hurled missiles at police and occupied the building housing Conservative party headquarters.
Organisers said around 50,000 students and academics were demonstrating against plans to raise tuition fees [AFP] Tonight both ministers and protesters acknowledged that the demonstration – by far the largest and most dramatic yet in response to the government's austerity measures – was "just the beginning" of public anger over cuts. Police, meanwhile, were criticised for failing to anticipate the scale of the disorder.
An estimated 52,000 people, according to the National Union of Students, marched through central London to display their anger over government plans to increase tuition fees while cutting state funding for university teaching. A wing of the protest turned violent as around 200 people stormed 30 Millbank, the central London building that is home to Tory HQ, where police wielding batons clashed with a crowd hurling placard sticks, eggs and some bottles. Demonstrators shattered windows and waved anarchist flags from the roof of the building, while masked activists traded punches with police to chants of "Tory scum".
Police conceded that they had failed to anticipate the level of violence from protesters who trashed the lobby of the Millbank building. Missiles including a fire extinguisher were thrown from the roof and clashes saw 14 people – a mix of officers and protesters – taken to hospital and 35 arrests. Sir Paul Stephenson, Met police commissioner, said the force should have anticipated the level ofviolence better. He said: "It's not acceptable. It's an embarrassment for London and for us."
While Tory headquarters suffered the brunt of the violence, Liberal Democrat headquarters in nearby Cowley Street were not targeted. "This is not what we pay the Met commissioner to do," one senior Conservative told the Guardian. "It looks like they put heavy security around Lib Dem HQ but completely forgot about our party HQ."
Lady Warsi, the Tory party chair, was in her office when protesters broke in. She initially had no police protection as the protesters made their way up the fire stairs to the roof. Police who eventually made it to Tory HQ decided not to evacuate staff from the building but to concentrate on removing the demonstrators.
The NUS president, Aaron Porter, condemned the actions of "a minority of idiots" but hailed the turnout as the biggest student demonstration in generations. The largely good-natured protest was organised by the NUS and the lecturers' union the UCU, who have attacked coalition plans to raise tuition fees as high as £9,000 while making 40% cuts to university teaching budgets. The higher fees will be introduced for undergraduates starting in 2012, if the proposals are sanctioned by the Commons in a vote due before Christmas. The NUS president told protesters: "We're in the fight of our lives. We face an unprecedented attack on our future before it has even begun. They're proposing barbaric cuts that would brutalise our colleges and universities."
Inside parliament the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg – the focus of much anger among protesters for his now abandoned pledge to scrap all tuition fees – came under sustained attack, facing 10 questions on tuition fees during his stand-in performance during prime minister's questions. He said there was consensus across the parties about the need to reform the system.
Labour's deputy leader, Harriet Harman, said the rise in fees was not part of the effort to tackle the deficit but about Clegg "going along with Tory plans to shove the cost of higher education on to students and their families". She said: "We all know what it's like: you are at freshers' week, you meet up with a dodgy bloke and you do things that you regret. Isn't it true he has been led astray by the Tories, isn't that the truth of it?"
Meanwhile one student won an unexpected concession from the coalition yesterday. In answer to a question from a Chinese student during his trip to China, David Cameron said: "Raising tuition fees will do two things. It will make sure our universities are well funded and we won't go on increasing so fast the fees for overseas students … We have done the difficult thing. We have put up contributions for British students. Yes, foreign students will still pay a significant amount of money, but we should now be able to keep that growth under control."
Additional reporting by Rachel Williams and Matthew Taylor
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52 Comments so far
Show AllWould love to see something like this in Amerika but most Amerikans are too stultified to realize they are being screwed. Even worse, we cheer when one of our neighbors gets ground into the dirt by the machinery of US capitalism. No, we will not utter one peep of protest as we are beaten and econmically murdered by the rampant greed of the wealthy. We will talk about the "good old days" as the lumbering, moronic, behemoth known as the Amerikan empire slides into the dustbin of history. Well done!
Reminds me of that film "The Wrestler". Very appropriate that the US ends its days as a washed-up 80's wrestler, still muscle-bound thanks to the ruinous regimen of steroids, but now with a terminal heart condition and reduced to trading on past glories performing nostalgic tricks for a dwindling fan-base while sleeping in a rusty trailer home in the middle of nowhere.
Great analogy!
In his book, Empire of Illusion, 2008, Chris Hedges uses the world of wrestling to connect the dots for his thesis.
Well that's not going to happen to me! I am an American, and I will work through this,I'll figure it out.
While the bombs burst in the air, at the dawning not so bright...here in the land of the free, and home of the brave.. etc.
That Sucks ! How terrible, and sad, that we would let that happen without a fight.
Dispersed. Americans are too dispersed. No one belongs anywhere. There are no communities, no connections, no centers.
agree! and the elites use it against us so well,
>^^<
Oh come now, the former run down town halls and city squares have been "upgraded" and "transformed" into newer shiny sparkling shopping malls! Just obey the rules and you'll be fine.
Rule number one: No discussing democracy on private property.
Rule number two: No waiving placards or protest signs on private property.
Rule number three: Just go shopping.
Have a nice day.
According to students here 9000 or some $14,000 is nothing Cal students pay more than that, they're some protests about the now yearly adjustments upward to the State University fees.
I can't get too upset, I'm sure they'll make it back after all a sheepskin is still an entry card to high pay and good jobs.
Cry me a river, college is a luxury I never could afford.
>^^<
But a sheepskin is no longer that entry card.
The professional jobs just aren't there any more and the ones that are are so low paying that students can't hope to ever pay their loans.
Maybe not, but you need that advanced degree (at least a Master's) and fluency in the relevant foreign language to emigrate to a civilized country.
As far as the modern "Investor Class" is concerned a highly educated workforce is no longer needed or desirable. There was a time in History when they gave Corporations a competitive edge. Now they are a "Cost to the bottom line" as their work can be outsourced to Countries wherein wages paid are 1/3rd and more of what they would pay a Graduate from a domestic University.
By increasing the Costs of an education they can ensure that only the sons and daughters of the "Ruling Class" get the high paying jobs that remain inside of the country.
Its a class war folks from one end of the Globe to the other and at this point The war is being won by the Blankfeins of the world appointed by "God Himself" to rule the masses.
Pretty much nails it.
Just remember, work would have always been outsourced to other countries, but companies would face high tariffs for that. The real problem is WTO changing the rules.
Just don't be too sure that they are going to win it.
No, I think the corporations need educated people--if educated narrowly in technology. The thing is--just as with blue collar workers--they are seeking to outsource the costs of education. They would hire someone trained in India at a fraction of the cost of someone trained in Massachusetts. They do not want to pay the higher taxes to enable universities to do their jobs in the United States, but they will skim of the best and brightest graduates from other countries, graduates who received practically nothing from the corporate world.
Of course, corporations have no need for those trained more broadly in the liberal arts. They will do nothing to aid such students. Why should they?--some of them might even question the ugliness corporations are promoting.
Neither to the individuals being educated nor to the society at large is education purely an economic factor, a quantifiable commodity. I think it was that shopkeeper’s daughter Maggie Thatcher who started turning education into a business and looking at education as purely an economic resource. It is wrong thinking that has become general. Education should be seen as the development of human potential in all its aspects.
The privatizing of higher education is the final step to move to a new Middle Ages of privileged classes and indenture to life long debt. We just train humans according to the economic necessities of corporate interests. Have we not gone far enough down that road of turning universities into corporate profit centres? Why don’t we just get rid of arts, music, and culture in general and just concentrate on those areas that make money. Why bother with pure science if it cannot be applied? Do we really need people to study Latin, Greek, and Samarian, and why should we care about a bunch of old pots, it’s only archaeology?
Look at how low putting money, wealth, and material as the “be all and end all” summit of society has brought the USA, and the UK is now falling over itself to run down the same damned hole which puts all of life from birth to death or from private delivery room to private undertaker in the hands of some merchant and usurer.
After having watched Americans completely miss the point about socialized health services, I can hardly expect them to understand this area of higher education, an area which having been privatized and corporatized in that country for a long while now has been a significant cause of its decline to the serious “dummed down” of its society. Health is a social good, and the costs should be spread, because so are the illnesses, mental and physical, and their prevention, spread and effect society as a whole, not just economically but in every way. People should not have to die for lack of money in any civilized society.
Education is not training humans for economic utility for and by the corporate and capital system. Education is a lifelong project for development of individuals and society and is a social good. The cost should be shared by the society that benefits. The privatization of this essential human need for developing human potential in individuals and for the benefit of society as a whole, is putting humanity firmly in the hands of usurers.
These are the two most important areas in which the concept of taxation and redistribution of wealth should be in effect. If we had reached the 21st C without usury, and had “invested” our assets more in health and education, perhapse we would not have need to invest in war and weapons, euphemistically referred to as “defence”. Alas in our ignorance we choose to be and are governed by the paid servants of money changers.
British universities are far far more corporate job training centres than American universities, though. American universities provide a far more rounded education than British universities. For example, if you are studying engineering in a British uni, you will be studying engineering, and nothing more, you are being trained for your future job, nothing more. You are not required to take classes in anything else, unlike in American colleges where you are: someone majoring in music or history, in an American college still has to take some classes in math and science, conversely someone majoring in engineering or math still has to take some classes in history, in the arts / music; in fact, if you want to take classes in non related subjects in a British uni, you will have to jump through lots of hoops, lots of paperwork and make work bureaucracy (which is something beloved of British universities).
In an American college, studying mechanical engineering and philosophy, or computer science and classical music, or mathematics and dance, is perfectly feasible, as long as a student has the aptitude and the interest. In a British uni, the very idea of doing so is laughable.
Well stated.
You write:
"someone majoring in music or history, in an American college still has to take some classes in math and science, conversely someone majoring in engineering or math still has to take some classes in history, in the arts / music; in fact,"
The dancing philosopher mechanical engineers asides, you may have a point. It has been a while since I was directly involved in academia and in contact with students from either countries in that respect, my teaching was mostly in Japan, although my Scottish uncle was the dean of romance languages at a prestigious US university. But generally speaking, when I saw American university entrance level education standards and first degree graduate standards they where much lower than those of the UK, meaning that UK students had more of an in depth general educations prior to university entrance so that, for example, the curriculum of the “GCE higher” in Mathematics with a pass of B or C was about an equivalence or better than that of the American graduate of dance that had taken a minor in maths at the end of his fist degree.
Standards have tumbled, certainly in the UK so this may be less true today, than it was in say the 80s and 90s. Although in my more recent discussions with younger US graduates I am often baffled at their limited general knowledge. But in any case, that we are reduced to corporatized sausage factory education, with less thinking and more training, stuffed into the first 23 or so years and in virtually for-profit institutional formats, yet in a short term dynamically changing social and technical context, while we appear to be racing to the bottom in compromising standards to satisfy ever lower common denominator evaluations, yet increasing the costs to the students and maximizing profits for institutions and minimizing rewards and increasing work loads to academics, in America and Britain … all seems a mighty shame.
But I can see the problems. I know less about America, but Europe is absolutely full of bright graduates from excellent universities form countries like Portugal, Poland, the Ukraine, ex Yugoslavian nations, the Czech or Slovak republics etc. with excellent qualification but who are completely frustrated, working at driving cabs, delivering pizzas, at call centres, or working on building sites. The system that put economic cart before the life’s values horse, and called education a field for competition rather than for excellence for its own sake.. that system is broken, and we’ve lost the discipline, ethics, and above all ethos to fix it. Humanity is the poorer today, but necessity is the mother of change.
Well, you need to keep in mind that degrees in the US are for 4 years, kids go to college right after HS.
In contrast, in the UK, degrees are for 3 years, kids do NOT go to uni right after HS. They spend about 1 1/2 years doing A levels, in college. In essense, the first year or so of US college is the equivalent of UK A levels, or the International Baccalaureate (IB), something European students do, some UK students choose to do the IB too.
This is why entrance requirements at UK unis are higher than they are at US colleges / unis.
I do not know how standards were in the UK 30 years ago, but I do know that now, if you go talk to students studying engineering in a UK uni, you will find that the vast majority of them are only interested in joining corporations and earning money. Many of them have little to no interest in engineering, much less being educated in history, in philosophy, etc. Not only that, you will find that many of them, if doing stuff like Aerospace engineering, are eager to join military industrial corporations, to design weapons, because that is where the money is; they give no thought at all to what those weapons are used for.
IME, having studied in the US and UK (fairly) recently, and being of the age where I have friends / family who have done so recently, UK students tend to be more corporate job inclined.
I agree with you about Europe. UK education is extremely rigid, not just relative to US education, but also, European education. I have friends who have studied in both Germany and the UK, or Spain and the UK, and the observation they all make is that UK higher education is extremely narrow and rigid. No studying outside of your chosen field, combined with the fact that, what classes / modueles you need to enrol for / study, and when, is all laid out for you: in other words, training for your future corporate job.
American higher education certainly has its flaws, but for all those flaws, it still provides outstanding opportunities to get an education; IMO, it still is one of the good things about America, something that for all the flaws, the US should be proud of.
It's sometimes easier for foreign students to get into US schools because Americans aren't very well educated (not ready for college, anyway) - but it often takes at least 5 years in the US to complete a 4-year program now. Even so, the US and UK (and most Asian countries) are still just 'training' people - not actually EDUCATING them. That's the result of empire and fascism (corporatism) - and it's not going to get any better anytime soon. Part of the problem is/was Americans in the labor class THINKING they were 'middle class' when they weren't, and expecting to live like the middle class just because the rest of the world was decimated by WWII. All that has changed.
Very eloquently stated. I agree with you completely...
As an aside note:
If it weren't for community blogs such as this one, I would be absolutely convinced the entire population were mad as hatters. Thanks CD posters for letting me know there are still educated, critical thinkers still out and about. Peace....
Very good point ! I agree, my only wish is that we could organize and do something. I think we need to talk things out, but we are loosing the battle, and soon we need to act . We should not wait until horrible things happen.
Horrible things that happen are the changes which in turn are the mothers of invention. No one will work, or be rewarded, to prove a soothsayer of doom or the dark visionary wrong, but they'll be happy to follow a blind, greedy delusional clown over the cliff for a mere whiff of escape.
Just like Health care should be fundemental !! A part of living,can't live with out it !
Much more is needed. MUCH more!! If there ever was a time to hit the streets in protest day after day this is it. The time is NOW!! Yesterday in fact.
I don't know about Brits, but Americans aren't willing (yet) to get shot down in the streets - and that's what it takes, sometimes for decades, to EARN freedom with human and civil rights. Americans gave up what their forebears fought to get - when they could have stood their ground. Now there will be hell to pay to get back to Square One. The British Empire ended with WWII - but they've been sailing on the US' coat-tails ever since (as have the Japanese, who also lost their empire.)
If you aren't ready to let your own blood spill in the streets, then you aren't ready for freedom - or the right to live in a 'civilized' society.
Boy these protests in Britain, France and Greece sure look great from here across the pond! Energized people standing up to the neoliberal abuse and kicking against the pricks. Wow! Keep going!
In America all we have are millionaire news clowns like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert telling us that activism is only for crazy people and that the only sane response to total political and economic disenfranchisement is to sit back and watch their TV shows from our couches.
Bravo ! Well said ...
Ah, but Jon Stewart has the ear of Timothy Geithner -- a two-hour meeting behind closed doors in April, 2010. Maybe, they were already planning "The Rally to Restore Sanity."
Boy I wish that was our biggest problem.
No, they protest war too, but not with such passion !
Still they don't have near the serious issues we have, that need fixing.
Student fees have already been doubled in the States (my kid's tuition has gone from $4,000 a semester to $8,000 - double the amount - and that is attending a state university at in-state rates). Just a handful of students in CA and a few other select states made an attempt to protest when it happened here and that was the extent of it. Now, everybody is paying the higher price and those who can't afford it, either mortgage the rest of their lives to the vampire banks or simply drop out of school. No fuzz and no fight.
Now Amerikans can understand why people the world over do nothing when they are being oppressed, brutalized and terrorized by a sanguine dictatorship, something Amerikans have always claimed they couldn't understand. Amerikans have always criticized and exhorted others to fight against their oppressive governments until the day the oppression came to Amerika and it was them who had to do the fighting against their criminal government. Now, they show what a bunch of fleeced sheep they really are and take it all laying down.
Actually, Brits have taken their time.Rioting started in France weeks ago. Wonder where it starts next? Any bets on Ireland? Wonder how long it will take to cross the pond?
There was a brief moment at the end of the 90s (think WTO riots) when Americans could be roused to riot against the corporate monstrosity. That NEVER happens any more, and it isn't going to happen this time.
Why?
My suspicion is that it has something to do with the ability of the internet to diffuse the rage people feel. Typing your feelings and "communicating" with like-minded people is very like expressing them in the streets, at least from an emotional perspective.
Stir in the chilling effect of new draconian "terrorism" laws, a militarized police force that sits around all day hoping some hippies show up so they might test their new toys on them, dope the hapless populace up on anti-depressants and liberal clown shows like Jon Stewart, mix in a whole pharmacy of mood-altering ambient garbage in the drinking water, spice with a Madison Avenue-created spokesmodel for empire in President Obama -- a guy who effortlessly spouts flowery nonsense about Gandhi and MLK at the very same moment he's blowing up families ten thousand miles away-- and there you've got America's paralysis.
Is it a nightmare? Yeah, it is. Living in this country right now feels like living in hell for any thoughtful, politically aware person. What's to be done?
Beats me jack, my solution is emigration. Good luck!
Could not have said it better myself.
I guess we have to be content with our "rage" being expressed in those pre-fab signs at that moronic "Rally to restore sanity" rally, all the while Obomber is touting how great it is that India is actually creating jobs...maybe for one more plutocrat.
We are now witnessing the final death throes of student solidarity. When fees go up 50%, and CampusWatch infiltrates sociology classes, we know education is breathing its last.
fake, American cities/public spaces have been re-engineered to discourage public gatherings and with crowd control in mind. That and most everyone drives to the shopping mall.
The Taming Of The American Crowd is an interesting read.
http://www.monthlyreview.org/books/tamingthecrowd.php
Fake,
Yes, but there's more, the absence of anything in the US called National Student Union. US citizens thought French students were out in the streets having a good time, totally unaware French high school and college students are in unions and are taught from a very young age to engage in resistance. They aren't afraid to stand face-to-face with their militarized police force (and, to be honest, I find French police more frightening than our homegrown variety). And both the UK and France have their own poor excuses of leaders (please let this be the first loud response to Cameron's Monty-Python-induced Big Society). So what? Those British students have something called National Student Union!
In the US we have allowed unions to be undermined, co-opted, or even disappeared, so who's going to organize this sort of thing? Resistance isn't spontaneous.
(Even their music spurs them on --- hope they were raising hell with Muse's Uprising blasting through the streets.)
Inaccurate reporting.
The acts of the student protesters were acts of counter-violence. The Corporate State has been levying and increasing violent acts upon the students (and others) day after day, month after month, year after year. The students response was justified and tepid in comparison. Expect more of the same.
"Yes, foreign students will still pay a significant amount of money"..
A good friend who worked in college admissions before having his hours cut and benefits axed has seen this first hand. Wealthy students from China, Saudi Arabia, or in any of the nations that have extreme wealth at the top will send their students to North America, and pay a full priced tuition. The admissions process will typically favor the full paying foreign student over a high achieving state tuition eligible student who may ask for financial aid.
This is the ugly side side of "outsourcing" at home. Colleges and state Universities have become pure business. If only we could see protests here....sure, like that's gonna happen.
Remember when our parents taught us about sharing? We were made to feel shame for not sharing. As we grew older we found they were right, it is only fair to share. Sociopaths do not understand the concept of sharing. Usually they are nice people, even fasinating people. Women especially are very clever sociopaths. They love the attention. We have been ruled by a bunch of psychopaths for quite a while. In the USA I would guess it started with Johnson. Then Nixon up to Obama. Carter seems to be along with Ford two who were not very sociopathic. Still, Ford pardoned Nixon. It is now time for good people everywhere to challenge evil. Yes these people are evil. The Golden Rule seems to be absent in their minds. They still do not know about thou shall not kill or love your neighbor. To them we are enemies. Paranoia makes you think people are enemies. Listen to the cowards justifying crimes against humanity. Do they stop? No, they keep creating more enemies. Time for the people to start cogging up the wheels. Without people they cannot control anything. They don't know how to fix their cars, meals, plumbing etc. Without us they are helpless. This must be why Chairman Mao had a cultural revolution. Time to have a cultural revolution. Last time the hippies tried it using non-violence. That did not work to the benefit of society that unleashed its pit bulls on us and controlled the media. Chaqrlie Manson was not a hippie! He was a product of a cruel prison system. The only ones who thought he was a hippie were Nixon and his cronies. The only thing I can tell younger people is we were in a war between the old status quo and a Brave New World. Many battles have been fought. The war is not over. The battle rages on. We are all in the battlefield. Some survive and some die. Still the war goes on. The day we have world peace the battle will be won. The day we conquer hunger the war will be over. The day we cure disease the war will be over. The day peace breaks out will be the end of the most barbaric civilization in history. The sooner the better. Hare Krishna
Just remember that the 'enemy' of civilization can never be killed - just knocked down, and not out. That's what happened in the US - people became too complacent, and worried about 'what other people would think' or about 'losing their job and being blacklisted' or being clubbed, thrown in prison, or even murdered by the police state.
Freedom isn't free - you have to fight for it, day in and day out. You have to be alert (not paranoid) for the first signs of sociopathy and fascism. Europeans should have learned that from WWII. The UK was never occupied by the Nazis, so they really didn't learn the lesson very well. But I was ashamed of Europe when it wouldn't stand up against blatant war crimes being so openly planned and executed. (The UK never did, and sure isn't about to start - in fact, they were among the worst perpetrators.) France continued crimes against humanity after WWII, while other European countries tolerated monstrous behavior all over the world. They all solved their 'Jewish problem' with a monstrous war crime that plagues us today. I don't see anyone who is without guilt here - the question is, who will stand up and draw the line? I don't think those UK students and their supporters will do that - it will have to get far worse, just as it did in the Soviet states and Asia.
This isn't about tuition fees - this is about human rights and a civlized world. I guess the world isn't ready for such an enlightened idea yet. The last attempt at such a noble venture was cut short by WWII - and never regained its strength. Well, it took 75 years for the USSR to die - the US just started its (serious) death-throes in 1980 - seems we have a ways to go yet (like another 45 years?).
Lots of good comments so far, especially those addressing why we don't protest the high cost of education here. I'll add another reason.
We have been more and more indoctrinated to believe that education is a privilege.
P.S. It makes me sick that our parents generations received an education largely funded by public dollars (as it benefits the public to have an educated society) and now they decide the younger generation must pay for education themselves (everyone for themself attitude).
The students in London... check it out:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/video/2010/nov/10/student-protest-london-millbank
The British PM, 'call me Dave' Cameron, has said in response to yesterday's events that the only place for debate about the tripling of HE tuition fees 'is in parliament'. He and the vast majority of the corporate British media are totally fixated on the trouble at Millbank, blaming it, as usual, on an 'anarchist element who went intent on causing trouble.' The saturation coverage by the BBC in particular has been quite relentless in painting a picture that totally diverts attention away from the fact that virtually all of the protesters at Millbank were run of the mill, largely middle classed students who won't be affected by the fees rise but were just angry at the impending draconian cuts that mean ordinary British people will be footing the bill for the economic calamity brought about by the very richest people in our society. To say we are up against it when one witnesses the media machine in full swing like it has been over the NUS demo, is a bit of an understatement. The message is, 'keep working hard for your bosses, stay meek, and suck it all up. If our politicians lie and make pledges they then go on to break, it's the economy stupid. We must surrender all to the market gods for they are our future.' And, unfortunately, people in their millions totally swallow it.
But for how long? If the coalition government get their cuts, so many people are going to be affected, the demos will surely only get bigger and more frequent. There are only so many so called 'anarchists' the media can point the finger at. I expect, however, that all future demos in London will be very heavily policed and that there will be a return to the 'kettling' tactic that so effectively stopped the G20 protest in its tracks. It will only get nastier from here on in. The only way I can see the tide changing in favour of Joe Public is if Joe Public turns out in such numbers to protest that the police can't possibly control/kettle the crowd (they could have easily kettled yesterday's protest and stopped it from moving/growing in numbers and won't make the same mistake again) and the media can't blame 'small elements of anarchists/trouble makers' when the inevitable rioting starts - it will take hundreds of thousands. Large scale protest against the neo-liberal agenda in the USA being beamed into living rooms across the UK would definitely help the cause, not only here but across the world.
Hmm, so Britain will slash its military and educational budgets, and public protests erupt over one of these cuts.
Now if the U.S. had done that...
There is an economic reality in the world today. Pretending there isn't and everyone can afford everything is fools gold for children.
As for these continuing farcial remarks about "violence" against students the less said the better. Its akin to comments about "oppression" here. Anyone making that claim simply has never seen real violence or oppression.
"Anyone making that claim simply has never seen real violence or oppression."
Interesting point. I spent time in Eastern Europe before the Wall came down and was surveilled because I was American. I was in Mozambique and was arrested for walking on the wrong side of the street and got to see someone executed by firing squad in public for trading on the black market. I saw the townships in South Africa and met soldiers of both sides in Namibia. What I saw was *nothing* compared to what the generations before me saw.
So here you hear comments about violence because a school rate goes up (when 90% of the population two generations ago never EVER thought about university let alone finished one...) or oppression when some government agency decides it can look at your library records.
Seriously?
Sure. Get angry and do something about them. We all wouldn't be here if we didn't believe that, but the outrage? So often the only response from progressives is outrage. That burger beef? OUTRAGE! The police took pictures or a rally? OUTRAGE. It is sort of like a comic book sometimes here...
You have to nip evil in the bud - or it will just take that much more blood in the streets to fight and defeat the police-state. The UK has been decimated by creeping fascism starting with Thatcher - just as the Americans lost their bearings with the Reagan administration. It was all so insidious that a lot of people never saw it coming. The only reason my family did was because they had lived under Nazi occupation - we know our enemy, and we know them well. I haven't felt safe in this country since 1980 - and yes, I know what kind of evil you're talking about. That's why we have to fight it as soon as we can - if you let the infection fester, it only gets that more difficult (and painful) to cure the patient.
Americans know their country is sick - as I'm sure Brits and Europeans know their nations are ailing too. It's just that nobody wants to take that first bullet - but that day will come. And then another will die, and another, and another - until finally the people are so numbed and shocked and outraged by the carnage that they join in solidarity and finally fight back. That's the way it's always been - no reason to expect anything to change now. Power never concedes an inch - they just take, and take, and take as much as they can get away with, and never stop until they are dead. Then another tries to take their place - which is why we must be ever vigilant to protect our rights and freedom. Our ancestors told us that - repeatedly. Seems we never learn. Now it's going to cost us to regain what we have lost - what we so foolishly gave away, despite Ben Franklin's warnings.
Hi Armybrat,
Reading your comments various I gather that you see the present situation and a decisive point in a menacing threat from a growing fascist dominated system. I see fear in what you write but above all your constant reference to waging a war, and willing to spill your blood in the streets, for a revolution….
Have you ever thought that it is in the confrontation of that fascism in the same terms as it presents itself is how you give it shape and power? Your willingness or encouragement of others to use force and violence against the elements of fascist domination is what gives that fascism its convoluted rational to go on and on eroding liberties and grabbing power. Take Israel for example, it uses the “threat” of Palestinian terrorism, or Iranian nuclear development to justify its own terrorism and occupation against the Palestinian people, and clandestine possession and global threat of WMD including some estimated 250 nuclear devises.
Do you think this can be eliminated by confronting Israel? Do you encourage armed conflict and do think more Palestinians their supporters should join military wings of liberation organizations such as Hamas or Hezbollah so as to lay down their lives as martyrs against a cause in which they are so unreasonably outgunned by American support of the Zionist injustice? Will your simplistic “dying in the streets”, which is what they are doing already in Gaza, solve anything further than ending their personal suffering?
You are absolutely right when you say: “This isn't about tuition fees - this is about human rights and a civ[i]lized world.
Do you remember those silly Chinese puzzles where you put your fingers in both ends of a tube? When you try to pull your fingers out it just gets tighter. You have to push your figures in, gently hold the side, and then the fingers slip out easily. In short, you have to change your position and the dynamic, changing the terms and the framework, decoupling the weakest links of the fascists and removing the underpinning of their foundation.
It is the capitalist economic system that is the motor that drives the greed and that is now collapsing because of its own impossible structure and foundation. That self destruction just needs a little push. A usurer has no power over you if you will not borrow or pay interest. Support each other in cooperatives; use your own assets to lend to each other from what you have. Learn to share and build for the benefit of all. Help to give every member of your society a place to develop and contribute. Build your own non-profit, un-taxable institutions. Work together and do it better, and for the right reasons. Don’t waste your life or mind or the lives and minds of others in useless conflict with failing systems of corrupt power.
Design your Shangri-la and enjoy building it together. Those that seek human rights and a civilized world will follow you there.