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Blogorrhoea
riffs further on a subject

D-Squared Digest wrote about yesterday, of what constitutes a decent living:

Compelling, eh? Maybe this is why that rhetorical champion of neo-classical economics, the
US ruling class, has effectively gutted ‘The American Dream’ upon which it so much depends
to legitimate itself. It has produced a society in which upward mobility has become all but
impossible (certainly, that scerotic ol’ Europe they’re always slandering does far better on
this index, as, for the moment, does Australia). And maybe this is why the American ‘consoomer’
(like her Australian counterpart) has been forced into unprecedented levels of debt. In the
‘west’, stuff like internet connection, mobile phones, suits, cars, parking money, fast food,
cosmetics and child-minding are, for many, no longer luxuries – their absence condemns one to
marginalisation, alienation, unemployability, ignorance, loneliness, social and democratic
irrelevance and economic stasis. When the credit bubble gives its last pop, pundits will nervously
monitor their finance-sector equities and berate their societies for their wanton expenditure.
The suddenly huge underclass, effectively and traumatically ejected from society, will be noticed
only in so far as they will be blamed, not only for their own suffering, but also for the inconvenience
of scarlett ledgers on Wall Street. We’ve managed to get away with treating the billions in the
periphery like this for a long time. Wonder how easy it’ll be to ignore once we’ve imported this
social cancer into our own comfy polities …

DrShrink wonders
if Bush doesn’t understand why people disagree with him:

Its a worrying thought, not that he is continuing on his own strategy convinced its ‘correct’,
(every politician does this every day), but that he does not understand what the flaws are,
or the basics of his opponents strategies and how they could work.

I fear he simply does not comprehend why everybody doesn?t agree with him.

New to the left

Each day I list the blogs new to the linklist. Want to be added? Use the
form, Luke.
Entry does not guarantee winning. No purchase necessary. Offer void where
prohibited. You must either be a fiery liberal spirit or in the vanguard of
the workers revolution to participate. At a pinch we’ll take dedicated left
anarchists and the like as well. No wishy washy centrists need apply.
The decision of the judges is final.

Nick Kessler

Connecting the dots.

Thinking it Through

A blog with a more “historical” perspective. By Tom Spencer.

March to Hyde Park: times and routes

• 
  The Don’t Attack Iraq demonstration will begin at
  12.30pm on Saturday
  


• 
  There are two assembly points, one in Gower Street
  for those travelling from the north, and Embankment
  for London and everywhere else
  


• 
  The marches will unite at Piccadilly and continue to
  Hyde Park, where speakers will include Jesse Jackson,
  Bianca Jagger, Tony Benn and Charles Kennedy
  


• 
  The rally is due to end at 5.30pm
  


• 
  For information about coaches, drop-off points,
  tubes and trains go to the Stop the War Coalition
  website at stopwar.org.uk
  

One million people may march in London anti war demo on Saturday!

From The Guardian

-“Our best recruiting agents have been Bush and
Blair,” says Andrew Murray, chair of the national
coalition. “The only people who we are not attracting
are high Tories and new Labour cheerleaders.”
-“It’s a new movement, out of anyone’s control. It’s
like a tidal wave. The people organising it are not in
control. It has its own momentum.”
-[T]he talk is that there could be a million people or
more descending on Hyde Park.

More than 450 organisations, including such disparate
groups as Greenpeace, Americans Against the War and
Britons versus Bush – a group of Bedford cabdrivers –
have joined 11 political parties including the SNP,
the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and the Greens, and
affiliated themselves to the Stop the War Coalition.

For weeks organisers have been confidently predicting
that attendance at the rally on Saturday will top
500,000, easily outstripping the autumn’s Countryside
Alliance march. But now they are daring to believe
that the turnout may even outstrip their own original
estimate, and the talk is that there could be a
million people or more descending on Hyde Park.

National organisers sense that support may have
doubled in the past six weeks and has not yet peaked,
a feeling confirmed by local groups. “We had two
people in our group before our first meeting and 100
after,” says Jane Mayes of the Carlisle coalition. “We
have now booked four coaches and will probably book
another two. We have more than 3,000 signatories and
last week the local art college students had a sit-in.
It’s really snowballed.

“I’ve been involved in protest stuff since I first
went on the Aldermaston march as a child and I’ve
never known such strong public opposition to any
government policy, such anger and such determination
from people to have their views heard. People are not
at all equivocal about it – they don’t care much about
UN resolutions and “proof” – they just seem to think
it’s a crazy and dangerous idea and can’t really
believe that Blair could be serious about it.”

Wow.