Category: Power Dynamics

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All in the Mind Power Dynamics

Double Ungood: Brave New World Film

Things might not have panned out quite how George Orwell predicted in his infamous dystopian novel, 1984. In many ways rather than progress towards austere authoritarianism, modelled on Stalin's Soviet Union, penalising expressions of excessive joy, the latest phase of corporate globalisation has seen the spread of mass consumerism and commercialised hedonism as tools of social engineering. It is much easier to control an atomised populace mesmerised and distracted by mass entertainment, online games and trivial pursuits, than a disgruntled collective of workers frightened into submission. Overtly negative language instils fear and apprehension and can only influence people if counterbalanced by a deluge of positive messages about life and the organisations the establishment would like us to cherish. However, Orwell did foresee the gradual adaptation of language to change the way people think, or more accurately suppress certain thoughts altogether.

In Orwell's 1984 the government set about to phase out negative words. In a transitionary period, a simple negative prefix un could be used, hence ungood for bad. Thanks to positive psychology, so popular with corporate management, and neurolinguist programming (NLP), we can observe the ame trends today. A negative is now often the absence of a positive or replaced by deceptively neutral but prescriptive adjectives, e.g. a behaviour may be described not as wrong, bad, immoral, evil, indecent or selfish, but simply as inappropriate, i.e. possibly appropriate in an officially approved outlet for our frustrations, but not in the referenced context.

Indeed the worst abstract noun today is negativity itself. Any language or behaviour that meets this definition is simply deemed out of bounds, not acceptable, incompatible with our enlightened, tolerant and diverse brave new world. It provides the ultimate pretext for silencing dissent. Public organisations claiming to be open and democratic, often define all unpalatable opinions as "negative".

https://www.youtube.com/embed/ek5vse2_Aq0

Brave New World movie from 1980

In his 1931 novel, Aldous Huxley presciently anticipated many modern trends. Note how negative thoughts were reserved for outcasts known as savages, those who lived outside modern society and didn't take soma (chill pill, antidepressant) or participate in conditioning sessions. Critical thinkers were treated for deviance or banished to remote islands and any defiant behaviour was treated, as it is increasingly today, as a sign of psychiatric malfunction. View the film above and you will see what I mean.

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Power Dynamics

Monbiot denies peak oil.

In reply to:‚ We were wrong on peak oil. There's enough to fry us all

Dear George,

Once again I feel constrained to write to you in defence of cool-headed rationalism rather than vapid emotionalism. I refer of course to your recent piece in the Guardian on peak oil. I would really welcome any hard‚ facts that led you to change your mind since the concept gained public awareness in the late 90s. Geologists have long known of huge reserves in Alaska, the South Atlantic and even deep under the Antarctic Ice. We have long‚ known of vast reserves of tar sands. Peak oil refers to the maximum commercially viable extraction rate of easy oil, as present in‚ the Middle East, Venezuela and formerly in Pennsylvania and Texas. Once we start drilling 3000 metres below the Mid Atlantic seabed, as Brazilian surveyors already are, the EROEI‚ a concept‚ with which‚ I hope you are familiar, will diminish very fast in any currency and oil will lose its relative advantage over alternatives, which unfortunately either yield much less (biomass), are unreliable (wind), require enormous infrastructure and maintenance (solar and tidal energy) or are downright dangerous (nuclear). However, don't take my word for it, Richard Heinberg has dealt with your assertions much more eloquently than I could:‚ Peak Oil Denial.

I had previously written about your refusal to attribute‚ our ruling elite's support for the invasion and occupation of Iraq to control of the oil supply. You seem to have a‚ wonderful knack for pandering to our establishment's self-righteousness (namely we did it for democracy‚ freedom and human rights). You also expended considerable literary resources on your condemnation of 9/11 truthers, likening them to climate change deniers. To the best of my knowledge, nobody denies the destruction of the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001 or the murder of around 3000 office workers, although many Americans and others fail to believe the official explanation for this terrorist act. So why would you join William Engdahl and others in denying the reality of finite resources on a finite planet? For the environmental movement, the timing could not be worse, only two week's ago James Lovelock admitted overestimating the scale and consequences of man-made climate change. While our collective overconsumption has undoubtedly affected our planet's ecosystem, I remained somewhat sceptical of some of the more extreme predictions, mainly because the so-called scientific consensus has frequently been wrong on so many issues. Continued human hyperactivity is‚ very likely to disrupt natural climatic cycles, but maybe not before other technological constraints begin to thwart our suicidal drive for growth at all costs. Indeed the message climate change and peak oil deniers have been getting is quite simple: The enviro-fascists were wrong, the party can go on. We can keep expanding markets and place all our uncritical faith in the next generation of technofixes. Remember in geology a century is but just a split second, yet in this period our‚ population has quadrupled and our per capita consumption sky-rocketed. We are indeed treading unchartered territory and may not be fully aware of the consequences for another 50 to 100 years.

I suspect it's because you fear the consequences. Indeed I also note your disagreement‚ with Jonathon Porrit on the population issue. You simply fail to recognise it and accuse, albeit diplomatically, true‚ environmentalists of wanting to depopulate the planet through Draconian measures such as sterilisation and‚ eugenics.Yet any rationalist would distinguish science from ethics. If we get the science right, we can then consider its ethical implications and act to avert suffering. If we get the science wrong, through misplaced faith in dangerous‚ technology or overreliance on finite resources, then the ethical consequences can be catastrophic. Yet since the mid‚ 1980s, and increasingly since the advent of New Labour, the trendy left has been enamoured with the neoliberal‚ Globalist project, its growth mantra and its imagery of multicoloured happy consumers sipping lattes and fondling their iPads. Humanitarian intervention, outsourcing and mass migration were key tools‚ of the new globalist world order. Yet the left seems to have confused the noble causes of International solidarity and‚ humanism for an economic system that thrives on hyper-competition and hyper-consumption addicted to growth at all costs. Its advocates in the British media stop at nothing to accuse its intellectual opponents of authoritarianism (green fascists), racism (anyone opposed to cheap labour and free trade) or conspiracy-theorism (anyone refusing to believe orthodox propaganda)‚

In short, I suspect you changed your mind on peak oil, not because of any new evidence, but because of peer pressure to embrace growth and remain politically correct on immigration and‚ population. Well done! So as 1.3 billion Chinese, 1.2 billion Indians and 700 million Africans strive to emulate Western European living standards, will they kill each other in the process? Will we ever learn from experience?

I'd prefer to see tens of billions more human beings over the coming millennia than destroying the ecosystem on which our civilisation depends just to squeeze in a few billion more here and now.

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Power Dynamics

Italians and Greeks don’t pay taxes

The title is ironic and may be partly true of course as many oft-repeated statements are. The most obvious riposte in defence of small-time Italian and Greek entrepreneurs is neither do large multinationals and awareness-raising charities, pay very much tax, more on that later. The accusation serves a simple purpose, to justify the huge cutbacks in public expenditure enforced by the newly appointed governments of Italy, Greece and, to a lesser extent, Spain, while the UK continues to bankroll one of the world's most generous, intrusive and life-altering welfare bureaucracies. If we believe the neoliberal intelligentsia, Greece, Spain and Italy need to urgently balance their books while their citizens should embrace the opportunities created by deregulated labour markets and start paying taxes. By contrast, the same economists support the injection of huge sums of virtual cash into the economies of countries like the UK and US and urge the government to refrain from reducing social welfare for fear of triggering a much maligned recession (would that be a bad thing in a country notorious for frivolous consumerism) in an economy almost entirely reliant providing services to international trade.One of the most obvious differences between Southern and Northern Europe, until recently, has been the strength of small independent businesses relative to that of large conglomerates. On paper countries like the UK have plenty of small businesses, but most are contractors, often sole traders who merely set up a limited company to pay less tax, but in reality work exclusively for, and very often on the premises of, large multinationals or smaller firms, who in turn provide services to large multinationals. Very few British small business are active in the primary or secondary sectors and those that either occupy a niche enabling to sell their merchandise at a premium or resell their products to larger companies. Smallholders in Wales, Northern England and Scotland have one of the highest suicide rates in the UK. Most successful small businesses provide services or sell repackaged or assembled products. As a result, most UK residents work either directly or indirectly for large corporations and their taxes are managed either by their employer or accountants. Even a small café owner relies on corporate largesse with the autonomy of a modern shoeshine boy.
Yet much of the wealth entering the UK is generated from the exploitation of foreign resources, whether human, edible or inanimate. Multinationals can shift production from one region to another or just subcontract to suppliers, to take advantage of the most competitive labour forces and lower rates of corporate tax. They merely need to pay tax of revenue generated directly in the UK, a small percentage of their global operations. International gangsters like Abramavich pay zero tax as Non Doms, while trillions of untaxed pounds are traded on the London Stock Exchange. So when the BBC claims Southern Europeans don't pay taxes, they mean they cannot have submitted themselves to the control of large multinationals. To illustrate my point, Amazon.co.uk, Britain's biggest online retailer, generated sales of more than £3.3bn in the country last year but paid no corporation tax on any of the profits from that income. They can afford the very best corporate tax lawyers, yet small businesses cannot.
Another classic way of dodging taxes is to set up a not-for-profit foundation, e.g. in the tax year 2010-2011 former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, paid just over £350,000 tax on £12 million earnings. Even your average modern school student can work out that's just 3%. Many charities are little more than lobbies for various socio-political agendas, whose main beneficiaries are power-hungry multinationals. This is particularly evident in health, as pharmaceutical and healthcare organisations seek to expand markets for their products and services by raising awareness of perceived conditions. A charity for attention deficit with hyperactivity disorder may sound innocent enough purporting to represent parents concerned about their children's behaviour, but by medicalising their condition, they promote pharmaceutical solutions or generate demand for other interventions. As such organisations occupy plush buildings in city centres and spend millions on marketing, one wonders if they derive their funds from street fundraisers or sponsored activities. The records of many such charities reveal huge contributions from spurious trust funds, apparently independent, supported by parastate entities, i.e. big business. Yet they enjoy almost complete tax exemption.
As Italian, Greek and Spanish small business people go bankrupt and resort to drastic measures like suicide, multinationals evade billions.

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All in the Mind Power Dynamics

Two billion quid Stasi

We seem to have only superficial cuts in the huge state and corporate bureaucracy monitoring every aspect of our lives. If we needed any proof the current ConDem alliance is mere continuation of the same big business party previously marketed as New Labour, we now have it. No sooner were plans for a hi-tech identity card ditched and believers in mandatory RFID chips dismissed as conspiracy theorists, as the government plans to let GCHQ intercept our e-mails, browsing history and log into our social networking accounts server-side, for our own benefit of course. Surprisingly rather than rise to the technical challenge, some the biggest players in information technology have decried the proposals as not only intrusive and open to abuse, but expensive and unworkable.

Whenever your browser, mail client or any other TCP/IP application requests a resource from your Internet service provider or mobile phone company, the fact is logged. There is no need for surveillance software to run on your device. The problem is the sheer volume of traffic makes it very hard to make any sense of activity and what constitutes a request? Most high traffic news sites are saturated with advertising and tracking services. To post comments you are invited to log on via your Facebook, Yahoo, Google or Hotmail accounts, so in practice way over 90% of traffic can monitored via a handful of social networks, search engines and email services. I'm beginning to think maybe Richard Stallman was right after all:

As our society grows more dependent on computers, the software we run is of critical importance to securing the future of a free society. Free software is about having control over the technology we use in our homes, schools and businesses, where computers work for our individual and communal benefit, not for proprietary software companies or governments who might seek to restrict and monitor us.

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Power Dynamics War Crimes

Demagogue sweeps to victory

Many on the left in the UK and elsewhere are celebrating George Galloway's resounding victory in the last Thursday's Bradford West by-election. With a turnout of just over 50%, the former labour stronghold saw a massive swing away from New Labour and the other mainstream parties to the left-leaning Respect coalition. Just ten years ago I would have been over the moon about such a spectacular win for the superficially radical left. Yet beyond his firebrand rhetoric, can Gorgeous George really offer a viable alternative or would his populist policies, if ever implemented, dig our proverbial hole even deeper.In recent parliamentary elections Respect candidates seldom muster more than 2% of the popular vote. Considering the level of public disillusionment with the big three parties (Labour, Liberal Democrats and Conservatives), their mendacity and their indistinguishable policies once in power, protest votes on a scale seen in Bradford should surprise nobody. Bradford has more than its fair share of social problems, high rates of welfare dependency and a large and prolific Pakistani community. To Galloway, such constituents represent an opportunity to rant and rave about the evils of imperialism and proposed cutbacks in the Welfare state. Such demagoguery has its appeals. A leaflet exclaims Bring back our boys from Afghanistan and urges us to bring back industry to Bradford, and stop government cutbacks. Indeed Galloway would like to spend more on child benefit and healthcare while letting more immigrants join the labour force and claim benefits. Galloway is a latter-day cornucopian. He genuinely believes that by redistributing wealth from the grotesquely rich there will be plenty to go around and we can continue to go forth and multiply without a worry in the world. Yet Bradford's social problems are caused largely by the side effects of unsustainable global corporatism that Galloway wants to milk even more.
The stark reality on the ground in Bradford is one of little hope for a large section of the city's youth population, divided into three main groups: Muslims (mainly of Pakistani descent), offspring of single parents wholly dependent on benefits and a shrinking traditional white working class. To these groups, we can add a recent influx of Eastern Europeans who have miraculously taken many of the jobs shunned by the local population. While Mr Galloway may bemoan child labour, sweatshops, temporary contracts, payday loans and betting shops, his constituents depend on them for their shopping and lifestyle. In so many inner-city streets across the UK we see betting shops next door to pawnbrokers, remarketed as Cash Converters. A quick perusal of available vacancies in West Yorkshire reveals some unsettling truths. Most are in care. While superficially this may seem like progress, as all good societies care for their citizens, why is demand so high and why do so many young citizens suffer from mental health problems and learning disabilities? Yet many refuse to admit the bleeding obvious, a mix of benefits dependency, alcoholism, fatherlessness, divided communities and inbreeding combined to produce a new generation that lacked a sense of purpose other than to enjoy themselves or breed the next generation of welfare dependents. Bradford's distinct communities suffer different sets of social problems. In the white section, the two biggest problems are clearly dysfunctional families and lack of initiative, while in the Asian community a high birth rate, inbreeding and sectarianism place huge demands on the rest of the wider national community.
To the likes of Galloway, such observations are both xenophobic or misanthropic, for he would like us to believe more public investment can bring back industry to the North of England. Such a shift would dramatically increase production costs and would, based on recent experience, merely provided more jobs for newcomers willing to get out of bed in the morning. Does Respect plan to quit the European Union and World Trade Organisation so it can impose tough import controls? Does it propose to limit per capita consumption through huge price hikes in consumer goods as we pay workers decent wages? How would Bradford's gadget-addicted youth survive without affordable mobile phones and game consoles?
Of course, countries can be much more self-sufficient and guarantee their people food and job security at a price. Cuba miraculously coped in the 1990s, but its citizens have to make do with ageing infrastructure and its birth rate is stable. More important, Cuba can feed itself, even with horse-drawn ploughs, while the UK, with one of the world's most highly mechanised farming industries, only produces just over half of what it consumes and if Scotland were to declare independence England would rely even more on imports.
True radicals would champion self-empowerment through hard work, community cohesion and economic policies fit for our grandchildren. Instead, Mr Galloway offers only rhetoric, while expecting a morally corrupt system to continue to subsidise idleness and irresponsibility.

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Power Dynamics War Crimes

Branding Cuba

If you want to get away from the adverse effects of mass consumerism, extreme concentration of wealth, social unease and poverty, Cuba is an intriguing destination. Like in many countries your experiences can be filtered both by your cultural prejudices and expectations and by your tour operator. Many tourists just head for the beach resorts of Varadero, Cayo Coco, Guardalavaca, Cayo Largo del Sur or Baconao near Santiago. They see Cuban life on the periphery through the rearview mirror of the rented cars and happy to encounter the charm and friendliness of thousands Cuban hustlers or jineteros, who gather at all popular tourist attractions to offer a multitude of services in exchange for convertible pesos, buy souvenirs and admire revolutionary graffiti replete with portraits of Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos. To many such visitors, mainly educated upper middle class Europeans, South and North Americans, Cuba is ripe for a dose of globalisation, inward investment and democratic reforms.My interest in Cuba was slightly different. I wanted to see how an ostensibly non-capitalist country is faring in a predominantly capitalist world. How could Cubans survive without the benefits of Wall-Mart, Starbucks, international banks, PlayStations, XBoxes and a steady diet of consumer advertising? Were all Cubans eager to hop on the first boat to Miami? Were they crying out for the kind of multi-party elections we purportedly enjoy in the enlightened West. In my late teens and early 20s I had been active in various leftwing Trotskyite grouplets, before growing disillusioned with the prospect of a worldwide revolution driven by a vanguard party and becoming much more concerned with the practical issues facing our species such as the environmental sustainability of the primary economic model of continuous material growth, i.e. before we can begin to distribute resources more fairly and eliminate poverty we need a sustainable model of development so future generations can enjoy the same level of material wellbeing. I had never really had any illusions with the former Soviet Union, having briefly travelled in Erich Honecker's old East Germany, or Maoist China, but the Cuban Revolution was essentially anti-imperialist and its alliance with the Soviet Union more a matter of convenience rather than strict ideology.
If you measure wellbeing by the state of strategic infrastructure such as roads, railways, telephony, electric power, plumbing etc... then Cuba will disappoint you. Just 90 miles or 140km south opulent Miami, Havanna (La Habana) is, with the exception of a few areas of Habana Vieja (old Town), Vedado and Santa Maria, in a state of disrepair, attempting to add new life to infrastructure inherited from pro-US Bautista era with a few additions during the countries 30-year long alliance with the USSR.
Consider your classic high-budget tourist staying a couple of nights at Havanna's immaculately opulent Hotel Parque Central, visiting Habana Vieja before relaxing by the pool of a newly built Varadero hotel complex. To such a traveller Cuba is a mere playground with a Hispanic flavour and rather unique Che Guevara branding. Why not have your picture taken smoking a Habanero cigar, wearing a Che T-Shirt and drinking a Mojito? Since the fall of Stalinism in the Soviet Union and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism as a new official enemy of the great North American dream, advertisers in Western Europe have exploited Che as a rebellious sex symbol appealing to a certain faux counter-culture mindset (to understand this concept better, read

The Rebel Sell: How the Counter Culture Became Consumer Culture

by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter

Many observers have wondered whether Raul Castro's cautious reforms will usher in a new era of capitalistic growth with trendy multinationals setting up shop across Cuba. In Centro Habana, I did see one discreet shopping mall, but most shop names were unrecognisable. Over the last 20 years not only have shopping centres become indistinguishable across the UK, but in much of the world from Tokyo to Johannesburg, Toronto to Buenos Aires, but not yet in Cuba. Everything is still very low key, almost like a blast from a recent past, such as err the 1970s when each country had its distinctive commercial flavour. With the US's global economic influence declining and friendlier trading neighbours in nearby Venezuela and Mexico, the relative benefits of succumbing to US demands to open up markets are waning. In 1990s following the breakup of the former Soviet Union, Cuba weathered the storm of international isolation by becoming almost self-sufficient and taking drastic measures to cope with a dearth of imported oil. Cubans still love their cars, but only those who can earn hard currency can afford fuel or maintenance. In Havana, it seemed all car owners had become tax drivers. Outside the main cities, the roads are largely desolate, a few trucks, buses, horse-drawn buggies and rental cars driven by affluent tourists.
Cubans seem very eager to talk with foreigners, but surprisingly at least compared with other countries, few wanted a visa. One guy did complain about not being to travel, but on the whole, Cubans seemed surprisingly aware of life abroad. Not only do many have relatives in the States or Europe, but they can pick up Spanish-medium TV stations from Miami. Yet despite the lure of shiny gadgets and higher wages, most seem content to stay, measuring their welfare not against North America's gated neighbourhoods, but against neighbouring Haiti, the poorest country in the Caribbean and Jamaica with the highest crime rate.

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All in the Mind Power Dynamics

Hedonism Ablaze

What a coincidence! Just days after the US administration agreed to raise their country's debt ceiling and let the global consumption party go on for a few more months or maybe years, In London marauding mobs run riot, loot retail outlets and set commercial and residential buildings on fire. Reportedly it all started in Tottenham Hale, North East, on Saturday evening when demonstration against the police shooting of a minicab driver and alleged drug dealer, Mark Duggan, descended into violence, just four miles from my bedsit. Eye witness accounts and video footage clearly show that police lost control and were unable to contain the ensuing disorders. Some observers have dwelled on the conflicting evidence behind the initial incident, whose background builds on longstanding mistrust between the police and local communities. In 1985 a notorious riot on the Broadwater Farm Estate after Cynthia Jarrett, an African Caribbean woman, died during a police search of her home, later saw a Policeman, PC Keith Blakelock killed. Early reports indicated just another example of police brutality against an innocent man. It now looks much more like another case of police incompetence, as both bullets fired were police-issue, but the 29 year-old victim and father of four was undoubtedly involved with narco-trafficking Star Gang. That may not have justified his death, but like many other lads from sink estates in a city with over 50 billionaires he opted to service the service sector by not only facilitating the distribution of drugs, but living by the law of the gun.

The saddest part of all the destruction that has followed is that many young people in towns and cities across the UK see little future other than to party and re-enact some gangland fantasy. The more talented youths may aspire to becoming pop musicians, actors, dee-jays or film producers. A few entrepreneurs may open hairdressers, pubs, nightclubs, restaurants and gyms,. And a few conscientious individuals may be drawn to the caring surveillance professions such as social workers, police and learning support assistants, but many just choose to live on benefits. The purpose of life in London has now become simply having fun or rather exploiting other people's desire to indulge in frivolous entertainment. The city has long been a parasite on the world stage, importing huge quantities of additional goods through the proceeds of a global casino.

As riots spread to other London boroughs on Sunday and Monday, a pattern began to emerge. Thousands of hyperactive youths, a small but sizable minority in a city with over 8 million inhabitants, enjoyed re-ennacting the kind of wanton mayhem they had previously seen on TV and simulated on game consoles. Rather than protesting against the evil capitalist system that enslaves them they could not wait to get their hands on the latest electronic gadgets. Admittedly some food outlets were trashed too, many fast food eateries, but these were no food riots. Britain's generous social security system ensures nobody goes hungry unless they choose to squander their benefits on booze, drugs and gambling. Indeed the scenes of ransacked shopping districts reveal another grim reality. Most shops sell non-essential merchandise. One happy looter posted a picture of his bounty on Twitter, a vast collection of video games and other gadgetry. Was this some kind of statement against the UK/US invasion of Iraq, a sign of solidarity with starving Somalis or attempt to redistribute wealth from the rich to poor? The looter may have feigned his opposition to the excesses of British imperialism or pretended to care about malnourished Africans or the urban poor in a grotesquely overpriced city. But no, he just wanted some instant gratification.

As more reports come in, the choice of looting targets seems to reflect the spirit of our times, to name but a few "The Sony Distribution Centre" in a large warehouse filled mainly with DVDs and game consoles in Enfield and the Party Superstore in Clapham. The big babies are throwing their toys out of their hyper-consumptive prams.

In reply to a New Labourite:

I wonder if New Labour's supporters will ever question the wisdom of economists whose advice has bankrupted the US and European economies in the name of growth? While New Labourites may distance themselves from the current ConDem coalition, they actively supported the previous administration with almost identical policies and equally subservient to the unaccountable multinational organisations who really run the country.

Recent debt-fuelled economic "growth" in the UK has mainly relied on banking and frivolous media services, aided only in part by North Sea Oil (the UK as a whole is now a net importer of oil and gas). Once demand for these non-essential services crumbles, as it surely will, Britain will have to start living within its own means. However, after 30 years of unashamedly pro-globalist policies (by which I mean reliance on global trade), a huge public and private debt and a large section of the working age population on benefits, the country will be ill-equipped to weather any storms. In a historical context globalism is but the last stage of imperialism, so let's call it global imperialism.

Circular Arguments over Immigration:

While mass immigration may create new jobs by boosting demand, that's an entirely circular argument, e.g. before the 2004 influx of Eastern Europeans there were 600,000 unfilled vacancies, 4 years later the UK still had the same number of unfilled vacancies, but a million more residents boosting the country's reliance on imports. The UK's population has not grown at such a fast rate since the end of WW2. During the 1970s and 80s more people left the UK than entered. Indeed we've witnessed a steady brain drain of talented Brits to the US and Australia and from countries like Nigeria, India and now Poland to the UK. We have a shortage of surgeons because many of the best UK born surgeons work in private hospitals abroad. The oft-repeated claim that "the economy benefits from immigration", means big business gets a short-term boost in profitability due to the influx of enthusiastic workers and total demand rises, but what is good for the economy in the short term is not necessarily good for society in the long term. These arguments made sense in countries like Australia, the US, Canada or Argentina. Indeed for some time now, UK economic growth has been consumption-driven. This logic fails to take account of rather obvious socio-envionmental factors. Southern England is now the most densely populated region of Europe and Londoners would starve within a week in the absence of food imports. Who said we need to boost aggregate consumption? We should be doing exactly the opposite. If you believe infinite economic growth is possible, then surely you'd have to believe in infinite energy and dismiss man-made climate change as a green plot to depopulate the earth (as some pro-growthists do), but you don't because it would be politically incorrect.

As we hit limits to growth, the consequences of a recent consumption frenzy growth will significantly reduce the earth's carrying capacity (i.e. more consumption per capita => fewer people). Yet new Labour's policies actively encourage procreation through Europe's most generous child benefits leading to a benefits-driven baby boom and these babies become young adults wanting to emulate Jeremy Clarkson because that's the consumer culture your friends in big business keep marketing. This observation may horrify you, I hear you murmuring "racist" or maybe sexist, but the facts on the ground are pretty undeniable, so don't shoot the messenger. We should not subsidise irresponsible procreation, because it will inevitably lead to more social problems further down the line. You know that. I know that, so stop pretending otherwise.

Waves of Migration and Social Breakdown

Advocates of mass immigration had claimed before 2003 we needed an influx of highly skilled Eastern Europeans because native Brits lacked these skills, although as you no doubt remember the Home Office estimated only 5000 to 13000 Eastern Europeans would move to the UK in the first year after their countries joined the EU,. The classic example was the Polish plumber. First why did British-born young adults not aspire to these jobs? Second how does simply importing skilled and semi-skiled workers form abroad address a skills shortage among the home-bred population? It doesn't. More important a large proportion of this new unemployable underclass in the London area are themselves descendants of immigrants from the 1950s and 60s, whose parents and grandparents had filled a skills gap. So many conflicts we see now are between different waves of immigrants, something that can only get worse in the event of economic meltdown. However, in the 1960s unemployment in the UK was negligible, two-parent families still very much the norm and housewives valued members of society. Fast forward 40 years and most of the manufacturing and skilled manual jobs that made the British working class proud have been outsourced or assigned to new communities. Whether you like it or not, only a small minority of people will ever excel in the kind of cerebral jobs created by a knowledge economy. I know from personal experience that while millions of people are proficient in the use of software applications, only a few have the mental discipline required to write programs. Hence there are more IT recruiters (talking the talk) than programmers (walking the walk). Back in 1997 your friend, Tony Blair, boasted about how Britain led the world in IT. I presume that's why so few young adults from the XBox generation can write more than a few lines of client-side Javascript code. Much of the rest of the knowledge economy revolves around marketing goods we don't really need and promoting various social agendas (hence growth in the charity sector), which in turn serve to create new markets.

Do you seriously think British born young adults cannot learn plumbing, bricklaying or farming? Their forebears did. Why did they become de-skilled? And if there was such an urgent need for friendly smiling retail and catering staff, why could big business not tap into the large pool of British unemployed, many of whose parents were immigrants themselves? Why had they become so demotivated and unwilling to get out of the bed in the morning? You may blame Thatcher, who oversaw a tremendous rise in benefits dependency, but Tony Blair followed in her footsteps albeit with different rhetoric.

"Tariq Jahan had lost his 21-year-old son Haroon, murdered in the Winson Green area of Birmingham by thugs who drove at him in their car in what appears to have been a racist attack. No one could be more aware of the simmering racial tensions between Asians in his neighbourhood and those of Caribbean ancestry".

So why should we tolerate further erosions of civil liberties turning us all into suspects to deal with the side effects of over-development and its recent manifestations as unbridled consumerism, narcissism and media trivialisation of violence. Yet as a result of these policies we will soon be cajoled into accepting even more authoritarianism

Attacking our Communities?

Globalist policies destroyed these communities. A community requires shared values, customs and social cohesion that cannot be built if its composition keeps changing. Ordinary people cannot afford to live in London except if the government, read taxpayers, subsidises rents. Indeed among the main beneficiaries of New Labour's welfare and immigration policies have been landlords, who in many cases can charge what they like because the Department of Word and Pensions will pick up the bill. As a result we have mind-boggling cases (that I have witnessed personally) of families subsidised to the tune of £3000-4000 a month? Let's do some maths. A typical semi in London is around £320,000 ... that means a couple needs to earn £80,000 per annum to get a mortgage, while real average salaries are closer to £30,000. Indeed in Scotland, I knew many on 15/16 K per annum as late as 2009. In case you haven't noticed there has been a whole scale exodus from vast swathes of London. Deny it if you will, but normal working people cannot afford to live here, unless like me they can tolerate a single room. So we have the chattering classes on 100K+ a year, wealthy advertising and media executives, and then street after street of houses converted into flats and rented to a motley crew of migrant workers, home-grown benefits scroungers and miscellaneous gangsters. What a wonderful community!

Categories
Power Dynamics War Crimes

Let’s Disown Tony

Has anyone actually read Tony Blair's much publicised memoirs. Well within 3 months of the book's release and despite all the media, half-price copies were on display on Waterstones. Don't get too angry with this guy, for he has only ever been a politician in the sense of a polite public relations guy. He liberated Kosovo from Serb nationalists only to put in place a bunch of Kosovar Albanian gangsters, still supervised by NATO troops. Then in the wake of 9/11 he supported the liberation of Afghani women and the hunting down of Osama Bin Laden. Nearly ten years later Osama Bin Laden is still at large, Afghani women are still subject to Sharia law and Afghanistan is still plagued by civil war. But our multinationals gained privileged access to the world's largest supply of lithium. Tony went on to campaign for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein evil regime. Over one million deaths and $3 trillion later, Iraq is still quagmire, but our multinationals gained easy access to the world's cheapest oil supply. Libya has oil too ( see Libya, All About Oil), but only a small malleable population and a leadership willing to do business with the West. So in 2008 Tony flew out to cut a deal with Muamar Gaddafi. Three years later his successor, David Cameron, decides to support military action to overthrow Tony's friend and let in another bunch of gangsters willing to do business with BP Amoco.

I just couldn't resist reproducing this gem from Ken Silverstein:

Is there any way this country can officially disown Anthony Blair? Those of us who were never fooled by him now have to watch as he cashes in on his time as Prime Minister in ways which are actually shaming. His dishonesty, his lack of embarrassment and his greed are all so great that it is now possible to imagine him ending up munching gonads on I'm A Celebrity, perhaps trying to restore his fortunes after yet another failed property speculation.

I had to watch the ludicrous transformation of this man, who to my personal knowledge did not know in 1997 that they spoke Portuguese in Brazil, into a supposed World Statesman, the victor of Kosovo and the scourge of Saddam. These two wars, one dubious, the other indefensible, were conducted on the basis that Mr Blair is a dedicated foe of tyranny. Quite a lot of people still believe this piffle. But how can they now, after Mr Blair's trip to Azerbaijan, there to open a formaldehyde factory?

Categories
Computing Power Dynamics

The Bankers are bankrupt and so are we

Today over a hundred thousand demonstrators will descend on Central London to protest against cuts in public spending. I can sympathise for I've joined many similar protests‚ defending the rights of ordinary working people and against wanton waste and wars. Why should ordinary people suffer because politicians and bankers have wasted billions on wars and billionaire bankers continue to reward themselves huge bonuses? Unfortunately many have misdiagnosed the problem. While undoubtedly many welfare dependents may suffer hardships as a result of cutbacks and some public sector workers will lose their jobs, we do not suffer from underspending on key public services such as health and education, but from huge waste on unsustainable bureaucracy financed mainly by a non-productive tertiary sector, offering services that nobody really needs. Demonstrators will be entertained by the spectre of a former New Labour cabinet minister and now their leader, Milliband, claiming we can keep spending as if there were no tomorrow. Few will dare challenge the previous‚ administration‚ on their grotesque overspending, fuelled by an economic boom based on property trading, banking, lobbying and media, and worse still their bail-out of the very bankers who caused the mess in the first place. In 2008 the country stood on the brink of financial collapse as banks could no longer sustain such a level of bad debt, i.e. debt on loans to people who could never repay. Throughout the late 1990s and early 20 zeroes manufacturing industries continued to close as retail outlets and other services expanded. New Labour oversaw more than a decade of private and public waste. Ordinary folk were urged to indulge in cheap holidays abroad, large plasma TV screens, more cars, electronic gadgets, boozing and gambling. While New Labour monitored and regulated the habits and behaviour of private citizens, it deregulated the hedononism‚ business and let bankers offer loans to those who could never realistically repay. At the same time despite official declines in unemployment, millions remained dependent on a multitude of benefits. In 1997 John Reid responded to demands for the re-nationalisation of the railways by simply stating "We can't afford the projected cost of £20 billion". Since then the government has not only spent more on subsidising private rail companies but has also squandered billions on PFIs (Private Finance Initiatives) to build new hospitals and schools, which the general public do not even own. Inflation-adjusted public health spending has doubled, but the quality of health care has seen no measurable improvement as the NHS is overburdened with the side-effects of hedonism and, dare I mention, unsustainable levels of net immigration. Politicians‚ on both sides of the House continue to talk about economic growth and none more so than Ed Milliband. Yet by growing demand for consumer products and promoting a non-productive service sector, we simply increase the country's reliance on global markets and imports. If the world economy as a whole proves unsustainable and, as recent events in Libya and Japan should surely remind us, energy becomes more expensive (i.e. a higher EROEI = Energy Returned On Energy Invested), we will find it much harder to readapt to the real world, where we need to be largely self-sufficient in food staples and material resources and can only provide for the weak and elderly through hard work. Our current model of development is entirely based on marketing and thus dependent on a plentiful supply of cheap human and material resources. However, as China and India grow and demand a larger share of the world's finite resources, their labour will become more expensive. Why should we rely on outsourcing menial office tasks to India and production to China, Vietnam or Indonesia? Why should their labour subsidise our consumption?‚

Practical Solutions

  1. Phase in a 30-hour working week and give people more flexibility. This may be bad for business and economic growth in the short terms as some of the best workers will be able to work less, but it will encourage a wider section of the population to aspire to high-skill jobs.
  2. Cut all child benefits after the second birth (i.e. allowing for twins, triplets etc.). If couples choose to have more children, they should not expect the state to subsidise it.
  3. Remove all NHS help for IVF and facilitate adoption when couples are unable to have children naturally.
  4. Cut all forms of unemployment benefit after 1 year, unless a person has a genuine disability preventing work. After this period, the out-of-work will be employed on the minimum wage in a vast range of environmental and social projects for up 30 hours a week.
  5. Reward housewives or househusbands who choose to stay at home to look after their children until the age of 14. There are also plenty of new remote working opportunities allowing parents to work part-time if they so choose. Couples could be granted 20 hours of parental time a week deductible from their income tax. The tax system should clearly encourage small two-parent families, in which at least one parent works.
  6. Raise the minimum wage for antisocial working hours. We do not need to shop 24/7.
  7. Treat mental health as primarily a psycho-social issue rather than a medical issue. Cut NHS spending on the promotion of mental health issues and address the very real psychosocial causes. Reduce dependence on psychoactive medicines.
  8. Encourage school leavers‚ uninterested‚ in academic subjects or hard sciences, to undertake vocational courses in practical trades such as plumbing, building, farming‚ mechanics etc. There is no need for 40%+ of school leavers to go to university. We should target further education spending on the 10 to 15% who can make a real difference.
  9. Provide special bursaries for degrees in hard sciences, medicine and engineering.‚
  10. While immigration would naturally fall as a result of declining domestic demand for superfluous consumer goods and services, we should ensure migration is both manageable and socially responsible.
Categories
Power Dynamics

Forerunners of Modern Globalisation

Homo sapiens sapiens first evolved as a distinct species at least 120,000 years ago with some recent finds in the Middle East dated as long ago as 200,000 years ago. On that time scale, the Neolithic agrarian revolution, which took place in most parts of world between 15,000 and 5,000 years ago and only reaching some locales such as Australia with European colonisation, is fairly recent. Prior to the agrarian revolution, communities had a much more direct relationship with their natural surroundings, were largely nomadic hunter-gatherers and so intensely involved in precuring food for their extended families that they lacked the technological means for more advanced forms of political organisation that could subdue other populations.

By and large human communities kept their distance limiting population growth and conflicts, but traded tools, artefacts and bounties. The earliest human settlers of Europe were not imperialists intent on dominating other peoples or seeking greater wealth for their rulers, but adventurers seeking greener pastures and often responding to regional climatic and environmental changes. Some anthropologists now consider the first waves of Indoeuropeans who expanded from Anatolia or the Crimean region around 7000 years ago to be the first imperialists, who set out to spread their culture on horseback through their mastery of animal husbandry and ability to generate food surpluses and this sustain larger communities. Pre-Indoeuropeans correctly designate the peoples who had colonised the Indo-european linguistic and cultural area before Indo-European expansion as opposed to later waves of migrants such as the Ural-Altaic who rode in from the east. Recent genetic analysis of established communities across Europe has shown how significant proportion of the modern European genome can be traced to a handful of ice-age retreats. The modern linguistic landscape emerged from an interaction between these pioneer communities and subsequent colonisers, but as Stephen Oppenheimer's research into origins of the British suggests, each new wave typically little more 5% to the existing ethnic mix. When pro-Globalists argue Britain has always been of nation of immigrants, they seem to overlook two critical factors, timescale, environmental sustainability and population density. Very early peoples could expand into new uninhabited regions without need for conflicts over economic resources with rival groups and even where other humans had settled in the vicinity, ample space allowed for some peaceful cohabitation and intermingling among groups with similar levels of technological advancement. Comparisons with the world's remaining pre-agrarian peoples may not prove very instructive as they tend to inhabit extreme environments as are usually surrounded by more technologically advanced communities eager to reassign their habitat to other more productive purposes.

Globalisation is simply imperialism on a planetary level, in which old nation states have become little more than regional councils implementing policies dictated by unaccountable supranational bodies. Imperialism means the subjugation of other communities to expand the military and commercial influence of a given ruling class. Historically speaking all nation states, which today form culturally distinct entities, grew out of generations of empire building.

Western European Timelines:
Years ago
20,000 to 11,500 Early Mesolithic with only a few communities in ice age retreats.
11,500 to 7,000 Post-glacial expansion to central and northern European mainly following coastal and river routes.
7,000 to 2000 Gradual expansion of agrarian civilisations and early empires.
2000 to 500 Imperial expansion, nation building, wars, spread of Christianity and Islam and introduction of the feudal system and mercantile networks.
500 to 250 European colonisation of the Americas with outposts in the Africa, Asia and Australasia
250 to 50 Industrial revolution and expansion of great European and North American empires. Consolidation of competing nation states with advanced social welfare structures.
50 to 20 Accelerated globalisation with domination of a US-centred business empire, supported by a huge military-industrial complex and limited national sovereignty, but kept in check by rival regional power centres and national welfare states.
20 to near future Rapid of growth of rival power blocks within the global system and huge expansion of consumption in the world's most populous countries, accelerated pace of migration, disappearance of national sovereignty, increased political instability, early signs of resource depletion.

In the beginning we had small communities around a limited number of extended families. It wasn't until the agrarian revolution that we could produce enough surplus food to enable the development of urban settlements and advanced political organisations. Some such civilisations may have existed as long as 15,000 years ago as evidenced by the archeological finds in South East Asian Malay archipelago, which during the last ice age formed a continuous landmass from modern Java to Cambodia, known as Sundaland. Archeologist Francis Pryor estimates Britain's neolithic population as little more than 100,000 in 4000 BC and Ireland's at around 40,000. In Roman times it barely rose to a staggering 3.5 million, out of an estimated 56 million in the whole Roman Empire, only to decline again to around 1.5 millions in the aftermath the pan-European Justinian Plague between 540 and 750 AD. For 700 years Britain's population fluctuated between around 2 and 8 million before the industrial revolution enabled a huge demographic boom and the excess population could easily emigrate to new colonies.

As recently as 1850 much of Africa's hinterland remained unchartered by European explorers, while to your European the world revolved around their region and nation state with merely tales of remote promised lands. To many French, German and Italian farmers English seemed about as relevant to their every day lives as Latin or Chinese. While the educated classes may have been aware of emerging empires abroad, most ordinary Europeans were only aware of foreign culture through tales from relatives who might have migrated. Indeed the great European exodus did not really get into full swing until the end of the 19th century. In 1850, shortly after the Mexican-American war with the acquisition of California and Texas, the US had just 23 million inhabitants. By 1900 this had soared to 76 million nearly doubling to 136 million in 1940 as Europe plunged into its second episode of mass slaughter of the last century, and most of the rise can be attributed to immigration. Now the US population stands at 320 million. The country may be large, but has ceased to be self-sufficient in non-renewable energy and a net exporter of food (see The Next Crisis Will Be Over Food). Worse still like the UK, the US outsources much of its heavy industry, so much pollution is generated elsewhere to satisfy consumer demand in the US.

My thesis is simple. Nation-state imperialism with rival French, Spanish and British empires has morphed into multipolar globalisation, where US and European multinationals collaborate with Japanese, Chinese, Brazilian or Russian corporations. While the system thrives on consumption generated in Europe and North America, growing demand in India and China means as per capita resources become scarcer capitalists are likely to switch from the current hyper-consumption model, where indulgence is practically subsidised to boost the retail sector, to a more traditional survival of the fittest.