China bashing and the myth of democracy

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Listening to Damian Gramaticus, the BBC's man in Beijing, describing the Chinese system as authoritarian, secretive and corrupt on Radio Four this morning, I once again felt the power of our media to tell us what to think about the world.
The propaganda message is unrelenting. In the run-up to the People's Congress in China, which will anoint the new party leaders, we are being constantly reminded how flawed and undemocratic their system is. It is as if they need to keep telling us that the Chinese desperately want our democracy and are being cruelly denied it by the Communist party. So Cold War, it's like the 1980s all over again.
Are BBC journalists telling the truth? I don't think so, not when they so assiduously paint a picture of a 'regime' denying its people's aspirations. For when it comes to aspirations, I find it hard for any Western government to claim that it is democratic in the sense as representing the people's will. In Europe, Britain and North America, we have a system that constantly enriches the 1% richest, while imposing austerity on the majority.
This is done in the wake of a financial crisis caused by the deregulation of the banking system over many years, carried out on 'our' behalf, but which the 'people' never asked for.
An economic system built on debt was hoisted on western electorates without it ever being put to the electorate. Of course, we can easily see the faults of China's model of 'democratic people's dictatorship' in which a pyramid of bodies each chooses their leaders, giving the people little or no say in who rules them.
But democracy is not, as our media would have us believe, simply a matter of having a choice of personalities at an election every four years. Americans just 'chose' Barack Obama over Mitt Romney, but this was the 'choice' between two candidates backed by the millions of dollars donated by corporations, and from two parties that each uphold a system of debt-based capitalism that has seen the gains of growth go into the hands of the 0.1% for the last three decades.
So the question isn't as facile as how you choose your president or parliament. It is how accountable are these representatives. If they are hardly accountable at all, then how real is the democracy we have? Yes, to some extent we have 'freedom of speech' - mostly thanks to the internet - but media is controlled by billionaires, whose message is overwhelmingly in favour of the system as it is. We do not have a free flow of ideas accessible to the majority about what kind of system they would like to live in. Education is increasingly a matter of privilege and birth - money buys access to the best schools for the wealthy.
I would wager that for most countries, the higher the liabilities of the banking system, and the more 'open' it is to the free flow of capital in and out of the country, the more likely that conditions for the masses will stagnate, the more inequality will intensify, the more indebted the state will become, and the more eviscerated and elite-manipulated will become the system of democracy.
If you live in a country where capital movement is restricted, and banks' liabilities cannot exceed a certain amount, that is a country whose wealth is based on real economic activity, where the state has a reasonable degree of control over the flow of finance and over the ownership of assets within the country's borders, it is more likely that state policy will have a beneficial impact on the majority of the population.
China has adopted many elements of capitalism, including fee payment for public services such as education and healthcare, private housing developments and massive wealth inequality. Billionaires are now integral to the Communist elite, which means that potentially they can exert a stranglehold over policy, as the party moves further away from socialism and marxism. But for more than three decades reform and growth did raise millions out of poverty in a way not witnessed in that splendid democracy, India.
However, the clamour from the west is now for 'reform' in China - and when they say reform they mean a combination of mass privatisation of state assets and the introduction of the western system of representative democracy. The thing about the latter, it is not government of the people for the people, but it is mostly government of the rich for the rich. Look how it worked out in Russia to get an idea of what China could have in future - how different it would be from now is questionable. The people simply get to choose which representatives of the owning class they prefer. This is what the BBC - as the state broadcaster under a monarchichal democratic oligarchy - will never tell you.
Further, the social contract under a dictatorship may well be more honest than under a democracy, since the deal is 'we will let you continue to rule if you provide benefits for the people, but if you simply enrich your elite families and leave us in poverty we will rise up and attempt to overthrow you'.
This is what happened in Syria - the ruling family forgot the deal and the people rose up. This is why in dictatorships there has to be a deal, because the stakes are very high, whereas in democracies, the deal breaks down because the leaders leave office every four years and thus avoid accountability - and take cushy directorships in industry. While in office, they are under no obligation to do what they said during the elections since 'representative' does not mean delegate, and most members of parliament are placemen under the thumb of party whips and hacks. Rather like in China.

Is Saville going to bring down the Tory establishment?

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The Jimmy Saville case has opened a can of worms. This reaches beyond the BBC into the political establishment. Ever since the Waterhouse enquiry into the North Wales abuse scandal in the late 1990s, the names of certain senior Conservatives have been mentioned as being at the centre of a notorious paedophile ring.
Sir Ronald Waterhouse ruled that the names of alleged abusers remain anonymous during four years of hearings that ended in 2000, so none were mentioned in the press reports of the time. Only a handful of low-level abusers were convicted. The big names escaped justice.
The Guardian's Nick Davies did some deep digging into the case, and refers to the main figures involved without naming them. Scallywag, the defunct muckraking journal founded by the late Simon Regan, named names in a series of shocking but unprovable claims that can be read in this blog. (This blog has no new entries this decade, so I am not sure if this means it is written by Regan before his death aged 58.) If even half of what it claims is true, the exposure of such scandals to the public would make MPs expenses and the hacking affair seem like the most piffling of non-events. These allegations implicate Lady Thatcher in a cover-up. Will David Cameron's new enquiry deal with this and potentially see his party's name ruined like the Catholic church in Ireland?
Jimmy Saville's crimes are now being exposed. Meanwhile the Prime Minister has announced a new enquiry to re-examine the work of the Waterhouse enquiry and allegedly uncover what it missed.
The problem with public enquiries run by establishment figures is that they tend to bury the really bad stuff in a sea of data and mind-numbing detail. But make no mistake, the North Wales paedophile ring, if exposed, will rock the establishment to its knees. The Tory grandees from Cameron down must, right now, be planning a survival and deflection strategy. That strategy will involve these new enquiries, who runs them, their remit, and how they are reported.
Tom Watson MP, who helped to give us Leveson and to ask the tough questions others were avoiding, is taking a lead in all this. We should recall, of course, that Murdoch has survived the hacking scandal and come back fighting. But North Wales and Jimmy Saville are different. Millie Dowler's phone was hacked. North Wales involved the systematic abuse, and in some cases murder, of scores, hundreds of vulnerable children. The stakes are much higher. How can a democracy be kept in the dark for this long? Can the establishment limit the damage of this scandal? Will victims and the public be denied justice again?

Hollywood stars to make 9/11 'truth' film

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Woody Harrelson, whose father once confessed to being one of the shooters in the assassination of JFK, and Martin Sheen, a man who played POTUS in West Wing, are fronting the first Hollywood movie to take on the official 9/11 story from a 'Truth' perspective. September Morn is due for release next year.

The first piece I saw on this in The Guardian by Rory Carroll uses all the loaded terms that ensure people dismiss the very idea of any government collusion with the attacks. The piece generated nearly 1000 comments, which is fairly typical of anything to do with 9/11. It may be more than 11 years ago, but the controversy will not go away.
It is fitting that it should be Hollywood stars who challenge the official conspiracy theory - that 19 hijackers pulled off the attacks unaided - since 9/11 is to my mind the greatest Hollywood-style reality spectacular ever seen. It successfully hypnotised most of the world for a decade. It's heartening that the big stars have decided to put their money and reputations into this.