Alex Callinicos/SWP vs Laurie Penny/New Statesman Facebook handbags

[LLETSA]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noreena_Hertz

Thanks. Another one I'd never heard of until she cropped up on here.

You learn summat new every day.

 

[audiotech]

Don't know if this has been posted?

Lies in London
By Laurie Penny

http://boingboing.net/2011/04/01/lies-in-london.html

 

[butchersapron]

She should know

 

[frogwoman]

Those young people came from all over the country. They were students, schoolkids, workers and union members. Nine months ago, many of them were political interns, members of the Labour party or volunteers for the Liberal Democrats.

NO

 

[frogwoman]

Although there were a small number of genuinely violent agitators in attendance on Saturday, most of them middle aged, drunk and uninterested in the main protest, a great many of the young people who chose to mask up and wear black in order to commit acts of civil disobedience had never done anything of the kind before.

Middle aged AND drunk

 

[killer b]

wasn't she all three?

 

[frogwoman]

She's only two years older than me. If I ever get like this please kill me.

 

[sihhi]

In the first instance, there were not a 'few hundred' dedicated 'criminals' on Oxford Street and in Picadilly on Saturday, but thousands and thousands of people, mostly under thirty and unaffiliated, many of whom had come straight from flag-waving and banner-holding on the main march through Whitehall to join in with the peaceful actions planned in central London. These actions had been organised by the campaigning group UKUncut. Some of them, such as the store occupations, were potentially unlawful- but they were peaceful and politically motivated, like all of UKUncut's previous projects.

Secondly, the 'black bloc' - a phrase that will undoubtedly be used to terrify wavering tabloid readers for years to come - is not an organisation, but a tactic. It is a tactic used, rightly or wrongly, to facilitate the sort of civil disobedience that becomes attractive to the young and the desperate when every polite model of political expression has let them down. Although there were a small number of genuinely violent agitators in attendance on Saturday, most of them middle aged, drunk and uninterested in the main protest, a great many of the young people who chose to mask up and wear black in order to commit acts of civil disobedience had never done anything of the kind before.

Those young people came from all over the country. They were students, schoolkids, workers and union members. Nine months ago, many of them were political interns, members of the Labour party or volunteers for the Liberal Democrats. Nine months ago, many of them still believed, however naively, that the democratic process might deliver real change. Now a new spirit of youthful unrest has been born into an ugly and uncomprehending political reality. A generation has been radicalised by the betrayal of their modest request for a fair future, and by repeated experiences of police brutality against those who chose to resist.

Where were these drunk people? On what streets?

Who are these ex-political interns? In the thousands around Picadilly/ Oxford Street?

In all of London in 2010 there were about 3,000 members of Young Labour for 15-27 year olds.
It just sounds circumstancial and iffy from Laurie Penny again.

British banks and major tax-avoiding companies were attacked because these companies are seen by large swathes of the public as being responsible for the banking crisis and for subsequent ideological decisions on the part of the current government to mortgage healthcare, welfare and education. In the rush, Spanish banking giant Santander was also vandalised - and we need to be asking ourselves just what has made our nation's children so very upset with world finance that they believe any bank is fair game.

Spanish multinational banks = Good Banks. ?!?"!"?? ???

British Banks = Bad Banks?? !?"?!?"? ?"

They are worried by the prospect of a run on the banks engineered by digital people power, as just occurred in Holland, and they are worried about the prospect of a general strike. It's safe to say that the government has a lot less to worry about this week than it did last week- and activists, anarchists, unions and the Labour movement all need to be asking ourselves why.

They are not worried by a run on the banks being engineered digitally. They are not worried by the internet or by facebook or twitter.

Why does government have less to worry about this week? It makes no sense.

 

[frogwoman]

Political interns of the world unite.

 

[ymu]

She seems to think Santander weren't a legitimate target, on the grounds of being a Spanish bank.

 

[BigTom]

I think the point with Santander is that (because of spanish laws) they didn't partake in the whole trading and gambling of debts so were not directly responsible for the bank crisis in the way that lloyds/rbs/hbos/natwest/barclays/hsbc etc.. were.
That's why they were able to buy up abbey national and bradford and bingley.

(I think, anyway)

 

[sihhi]

She seems to think Santander weren't a legitimate target, on the grounds of being a Spanish bank.

Yes it's moronic.

a) It's not really Spanish. b) It has been accumulating infintely more wealth for our overlord class than Fortnum & Mason ever did was (not that Fortnum & Mason isn't a legitimate aim either). Since Darling's bank recovery programme it has consumed sections of banks held up by central government taxation.
http://www.whatinvestment.co.uk/ban...nder-agrees-deal-for-rbs-branch-network.thtml

 

[butchersapron]

Nine months ago, many of them were political interns, members of the Labour party or volunteers for the Liberal Democrats.

Is this her mea culpa

 

[Hocus Eye.]

and we need to be asking ourselves just what has made our nation's children so very upset with world finance that they believe any bank is fair game.

She must have popped out of the country for a few years if she doesn't know the answer to that. Also what is it with "our nations children". She is the same age as these "children".

 

[nino_savatte]

I think I may rename her Spenda Penny.

 

[The39thStep]

Middle aged AND drunk

Be rude not to

 

[emanymton]

To return to the origins of the thread, apparently she is speaking at Marxism this year.

As you were

 

[treelover]

'That's it, advisor on introducing the most savage form of neo-liberalism leading to massively high death rates and drop in the total population of about 1 million per year for about a decade. Hey, but she's nice now - one of us.'


Its incredible how Noreena Hertz was able to position herself as a spokesperson, nay quuen of the anti-globalisation movement, at least with the media, with her obscene track record in Russia, has she ever aplogised, how old was she when she went to 'advise' them...

 

[treelover]

'That's it, advisor on introducing the most savage form of neo-liberalism leading to massively high death rates and drop in the total population of about 1 million per year for about a decade. Hey, but she's nice now - one of us.'


Its incredible how Noreena Hertz was able to position herself as a spokesperson, nay 'Queen' of the anti-globalisation movement, at least with the media, with her obscene track record in Russia, has she ever apologised and how old was she when she went to 'advise' them?

 

[Kid_Eternity]

'That's it, advisor on introducing the most savage form of neo-liberalism leading to massively high death rates and drop in the total population of about 1 million per year for about a decade. Hey, but she's nice now - one of us.'


Its incredible how Noreena Hertz was able to position herself as a spokesperson, nay 'Queen' of the anti-globalisation movement, at least with the media, with her obscene track record in Russia, has she ever apologised and how old was she when she went to 'advise' them?

Her partner is some media bigwig so that probably explains why she got all that press...

 

[audiotech]

‎"Long political experience has taught me that whenever a petty- bourgeois professor or journalist begins talking about high moral standards it is necessary to keep a firm hand on one’s pocketbook."--Trotsky

 

[phildwyer]

I think I may rename her Spenda Penny.

That would be funny wouldn´t it?

 

[sihhi]

treelover NH was 23 when she finished her second degree a masters' degree in business administration from Wharton Pennsylvania and started 'working'/advising abroad.

It's not incredible, it's standard. Her parents were company owners - Crochetta Fashions on the art/media/boho end of fashion. She went to Westminster school, a fairly important site for future media people/contact-making with media people. [Jim Naughtie sent his son there, Peter Stothard editor of the Times and Times Literary Supplement sent his daughter]

At some point in early 2000s she began a relationship with Danny Cohen, a media boss. He was first head of documentaries then head of factual entertainment (Channel 4), then Head of E4, then Head of BBC3 and now Head of BBC1. (one year= £232,800). Chicken and egg. Relat

When he was head of Ch4 Documentaries, NH did a documentary called The End of Politics on Ch4 in 2001 and was part of other 'anti-globalisation' type documentaries on Channel 4, though none are listed on imdb.

Channel 4 jumped at the idea of making a film ... to kickstart their election coverage [2001 GE]. Now, she admits in a low voice as she leads the way up through her tall north London [Primrose Hill] house, they seem to be sufficiently pleased with the results to ask her to do 'a couple more things' for the election.

Most recently in Feb 2011 when DC is Head of BBC1, NH went on Question Time.

Russia and her non-media career it is more complicated.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...ce=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

has info p16 onward

In 1991 she secured a job at William Morris Agency, the entertainment company in Los Angeles but went with Wharton professors to set up St Petersburg stock market. Then taught neoliberalism to Yeltsin's economic team, then started worked for the World Bank in Moscow (and out to the regions such as the factory with 400,000 workers). She claims she became disillusioned when working for the World Bank in Moscow.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/talking_point/article486244.ece is:

"Very quickly I realised that what we were doing was completely misguided and going to impact really negatively on millions of people. I left the World Bank a few months later extremely disillusioned." The period became the subject of, and inspiration for, her Cambridge PhD. ... She is grateful for her time on the other side of the debate. "Accepting the party line for even a brief period makes me extra vigilant."

2001 ES interview
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-933895-the-nigella-lawson-of-economics.do

She grew quickly mistrustful. Visits to factories on the privatisation hit-list compiled in Washington convinced her that little thought had been given to the fate of about-to-be-scrapped Rus-sian workers. "Early on I raised the issue of social safety nets and was quite shocked to see how clearly my concerns were dismissed." But vindication came as she watched the West's hubristic attempts to create a market economy in Russia crash and fail while "human costs were just ignored".

She stayed on in Moscow, advising the new Russian government on economic reform

This suggests she had 'doubts' but carried on. Is 'crash' 1992 when hyperinflation started. Is it 1993 with the street battles in Moscow? Is it 1995/1996 when grain and meat production just sank, hungry people start selling off old magazines, musical instruments, clothes to buy food.
Each crash is attributable to specific government policies which were in many cases demanded as a condition of new credit massively needed because many workers were being paid 8-12 months late.

So year 199-X she left the World Bank.

Then she started working for Credit Suisse First Boston, the investment bank, 'in and on Russia'.

Credit Suisse First Boston ... had heavily involved itself in Russia in the postcommunist era, becoming the dominant dealer in Russian government bonds as well as a major lender to Russian companies and municipalities.

Perhaps she worked under Stephen Jennings asset manager/advisor

Mr. Jennings served as Co-Head of Credit Suisse First Boston (Moscow) from 1992 to 1995. In this role, he was directly responsible for Credit Suisse First Boston's investment banking during a period when CSFB was recognised as the dominant market player in developing and executing pioneering transactions in the Russian marketplace. In 1992, Mr. Jennings led the State Property Committee's pilot voucher auctions, a project that established the foundations for the creation of Russia's capital markets.

Before coming to Russia in 1992, Mr. Jennings was with Credit Suisse First Boston in London, where he worked on investment banking and privatisation transactions in Central and Eastern Europe. Prior to that, he worked for Credit Suisse First Boston and the Treasury in New Zealand, advising the New Zealand and Australian governments on privatisation and state enterprise restructuring and working on a wide variety of private sector M&A and capital-markets transactions.

For a period for NH Russia was 'fun'

But it was 1991 and her American professor asked her to go with him to Russia to work on modernising the stock and commodity exchange. When she arrived it only traded cigarettes and funeral urns, and she soon found that jazzing that up was far more fun than sending out scripts.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/4722576/Adventures-of-a-high-flier.html

The PhD at Cambridge ""Russian Business Relationships in the Wake of Reform" was awarded in 1996.

1996-1998 she was the head of the team advising Israel, Jordan, Egypt and the 'Palestinian Authority' [under Israeli occupation]. One response in the Third Way interview is,

Do you think that violence is ever justified?
I think there's a definite distinction to make between violence to individuals and violence to property- not that I'm condoning smashing up McDonald's. But when violence is used as a strategy, in South Africa or the Middle East or Northern Ireland, used by people when they say that everything else is so hopeless - I don't know. I'm just left thinking about the innocent victims who get caught up in it, and ultimately I can't support that.

The people who hired her for the Middle East has been trying to spearhead global/multinational capitalism in the Middle East for the past 20 years. One example is Yagil Weinberg, Israeli telecom company chief executive.

1998 she returned and became a fellow at Cambridge's Management School teaching business and strategy. Then (maybe 1999/2000 when J18 Seattle is in the news) got the "six-figure advance" to write the 'defending the movement' book Silent Revolution.

It actually attacks the very core of Seattle-type protest, it hates and slanders the movement. In the UK, No Logo by Naomi Klein was snapped by Harper Collins. Arrow part of Random House (Britain's biggest publishing firm) wanted something similar so Silent Takeover was made and distributed well it even reached some supermarkets aswell as libraries and WHSmiths.

Its limitations mirror those of consumer activism - unsurprisingly so, given their shared genesis in the discontent of the early 1990s, and their similar methods of expressing discontent. The commonality of interests often centres on a shared general disillusionment, rather than specific concerns or proffered solutions. In some cases protesters are motivated by a sense of common good; but in others they are concerned only with safeguarding their own interests, or those of a limited group - the 'raise less corn and more hell' variety of protest, like the British fuel protests of autumn 2000. As we have seen, pressure groups need to play to the media, which encourages polarised posturing, the demonisation of 'enemies', the oversimplification of issues and the choosing of fashionable rather than difficult causes to champion. Issues such as soil erosion, nitrate leaching, and forest biodiversity in Africa, hardly ever get a look in. And the need for media attention can inspire violence. As Brian, the American student I met en route to Genoa, put it, 'There has to be trouble, otherwise the papers won't report it, we won't get our concerns on the front page.' ...

Various pressure groups ... Because they concentrate on single issues, they may feel no need to concern themselves with the concerns of others, as would occur in a genuine democracy. Sometimes the coalitions of interests are global in their concern, but often they have highly nationalistic undertones. And sometimes the wishes of the demos can be downright nasty, like the British hysteria about paedophiles, largely stirred up by a corporation, News International, through the pages of its News of the World newspaper and resulting in such fiascos as that of the Bristol paediatrician who had to go into hiding because the mob couldn't tell the difference.

In 2001 Jan NH was at protests against the WEF in Switzerland.

According to this
http://www.mail-archive.com/list@ifwp.org/msg14078.html
she attended the Genoa protests, July 2001 but then in October 2001 she was invited for an EU Summit with Bill Clinton.

In 2002 January she was attended the WEF as a speaker and "she was inside the Waldorf, consorting with foreign ministers and Saudi princes. "I see myself as part of a broad movement," she says".

She constantly defended George Soros, Open Institute and many capitalist firms and capitalist countries in the 2000-2002 era.

 

[JHE]

This evening's Dispatches at 9.00 pm on C4: Laurie Penny on universities, salaries and perks etc of top earners in universities and the fees paid by overseas students.

 

[emanymton]

treelover NH was 23 when she finished her second degree ...

I think we have a stalker in the house

 

[butchersapron]

I think we have a stalker in the house

Fuck her. Why is looking at what people have done and said stalking?

FFS

 

[emanymton]

FFS sake it was joke regarding the impressive amount of research performed. hence the

 

[Kid_Eternity]

This evening's Dispatches at 9.00 pm on C4: Laurie Penny on universities, salaries and perks etc of top earners in universities and the fees paid by overseas students.

Yeah I'm not sure she's suited for tv work...

 

[articul8]

She's doing ok to be fair - not sure that chalet trip was necessary but...

 

[butchersapron]

Who cares how good she is, how did she get the fucking invite. Over to to you bubble boy.