RTeasing but it’s no joke

We seem to be at the same point economically as about two years ago, with so many official, governmental, institutional pundits forcing their features into a smile and saying that, yes, we do seem to be coming out from what might have been a deep recession. There are features, they say, which they can determine mean that things are looking up.

Some would say that we’re all so low that, frankly, the only way to look is up. Still others would say “But I’ve never had it so good”. Truth seems to be that the hoarders are gingerly investing in projects which they see could support their current, traditionally acquired prosperity.

BP, once “Beyond Petroleum” have dropped the bulk of their Green posturing ( Solar, marine wind farms etc) and plumped for their traditional core business. Oil and gas, from wherever. In this they are not alone. China is today seen to be attempting to join the quest for Arctic oil, smiling as she offers financial backing to cash strapped explorers like the good people of Iceland!

Vast excavators and equally large high-pressure-water-injection-cleaners gather tar shale oil from the Northern steppes of Canada, playing havoc with a once pristine ecosystem. In a very different climate Jordan has probably even more of this oh-so-messy-and-hard-to-extract apology for a resource. Luckily they don’t have the water to go for it yet but I guess they’ll engineer a solution. One pipeline to import water, another to export the product, maybe!

Meanwhile methane leaks, toxic chemicals pollute aquifers and earthquakes shake the ground where the oddly desperate pursuit of “Fracking” has taken hold. But it has taken hold and looks set to greatly increase. People talk of the UK becoming self sufficient in gas (Remember the North Sea?!).

Here the side effects have been well documented. So RT broadcast programmes on the personal and environmental havoc so apparent in the USA. They love to chronicle American disasters and have plenty of material these days.

It’s all producing more of the same. Pushing our Global economy on once again, extracting more resources and producing more stuff for eager consumers, now borrowing from their great grandchildren to afford these luxuries. Borrowing financially and yet also having another impact on these so far from even being born unfortunates.

For these brave souls will also have to make their way in whatever vestige of a natural, clean environment they can imagine up. Vast, impersonal and irresponsible, international conglomerates can make their own rules, steamroller over any complaints and always keep profit as their overriding driver.

Carbon Offsets?

Yes, they laugh at them. The price of carbon is being driven through the floor and it’s the Voluntary sector only which has kept the topic alive. There, though, it’s use is largely to build wind turbines, install insulation or build better tortilla baking ovens for Mexican peasants who can no longer afford the maize flour to make them anyway. (Because of the use of corn for bio-diesel.)

Oh, it’s so time for the next stage in restoration, in wresting the tools of destruction from the hands of those who so carelessly wield them. Are the people ready for this? Do they even care? There is still a chasm between two realities. One is that portrayed above and the other is the individual’s comfort.

Everyone then sympathises with the former. They really do care. However if they sense it will impact on their own lives to actually act, then they will not. That’s the current status.

Lead Balloon

Lead Balloon

This’ll go down like a lead balloon, but it’s what I feel and it bugs me, I said as I posted what was to be my last post to the PDG. There’d been a crazy exchange of views on Palestine and it blew up nastily.  I’d made one well received comment a day earlier:

Armoured Dinner Jacket said he wanted Israel removed from the map. Not, I think, to wipe out the inhabitants but simply that the boundaries and structures of an Israeli state were placed on an existing country, already occupied by an eclectic mixture of cultures in relative dynamic harmony.

A similar process occurred in what is now Turkey after the first world war leading to mass migration and horrendous numbers killed or died of starvation whilst fleeing. Prior to this these people had again lived in eclectic dynamic harmony. Nearly a century has passed and maybe the country has got over some of the outcomes of that period, but not all of them.

And then, if you care to, look at the eternal wranglings of two Christian communities attempting to share Northern Ireland. Peace there is very much imposed

In all three examples – and there are so many more – arbitrary divisions and strictures have/had been installed to the advantage of one section of a community, with little or no thought for the other or previous inhabitants. All three examples are based on the blindness of entrenched religious belief. Which is why the subject keeps resurfacing in this group!

But things had got worse. The Western right gunned down it’s left wing and went for the moslem whom they saw as offensive. The latter became heated!

I was answered, but spent some time pondering before dropping my lead balloon:

V, you create odd parallels (Pakistan etc) for quite obviously the land was occupied even if their governance was unclear in the aftermath of the most brutal world war, when over sixty million people were tragically killed, often in horrendous circumstances. Palestinians, with houses, families, shops,farm-holdings, workplaces of appropriate post WW2 nature were all there – it was not an empty lot.

Imagine they’d chosen south western Sweden to colonise and not Palestine.

I agree national-identity-belief is way beyond its use by date. “Country” is becoming outmoded. Nor was it relevant to any of the three areas I discussed, least of all the Jewish refugees/emigrees. You cannot have an identity on land thousands of miles away from your home and place of birth.

“Zionism” was originally the deep desire to establish an exclusively Jewish state within the area then known as Palestine. Zionism was a radical, tiny minority within the “Jewish diaspora”, most of that religion being happy to live wherever they lived, anywhere in the World, as any other religion. As you mentioned above this dates back pre-WWOne.

Now Zionism has evolved to the maintenance and seeming expansion of the country so founded by Zionists in Palestine after the second world war. Maria’s UN references I’m sure are also true.

To be anti-Zionist is not anti semitic – far from it. The trouble comes, of course, from the obvious truism that all today’s Jewish Israelis are de facto Zionists. Cannot avoid it, although many also seem sympathetic to Arabic Palestinians.

If my grandparents had been driven from their homes and killed or rehoused in a ghetto camp, by aggressive guerrilla fighter/invaders, backed by the United Nations pretty much from day one I’d be very unhappy, too. As it is, the situation leaves me deeply uneasy. So many unhappy precedents have been established and I see no simple solutions.

Which I did post. Then left the group because there’s too much right wing trash in it.  I don’t  put V in there with that. However he later posted this long winded and lame reply, full of the weakest logic you could imagine.

Look, read and groan a s I did:
V.

1.

“you create odd parallels (Pakistan etc) for quite obviously the land was occupied even if their governance was unclear”

Every land is occupied — you wouldn’t demand that turkey vacate their area, would you? Yet there was a state with clear governance in the area where they now live — the Byzantine empire. And when the frankish tribes arrived to the area that is now France, it was peopled by Gauls and other celts, as well as romans. And england is the result of successive invasions by saxons, angles, jutes, danes, normans, etc. So, how far back should we look to determine “possession” of the land? 200 years or 2000? I don’t think in terms of land “belonging” to someone, but if we were to use such concepts, then would be fair to say that it should belong to those people that live there NOW, not a 1000 years ago, not even a 100 years ago, but NOW!

But I must stress that I don’t think in such terms. I don’t accept the concept of “national state” as rational, and when “nation” is equated with “ethnicity”, it gets divisive.

2.

“Imagine they’d chosen south western Sweden to colonise and not Palestine.”

Wouldn’t have been logical, now would it?

By the way, a few hundred years ago, the souther part of sweden belonged to denmark. And as late as 150 years ago there were still some “freedom fighters” (or bandits, to be more precise), that proclaimed allegiance to denmark.

3.

“You cannot have an identity on land thousands of miles away from your home and place of birth.”

Oh, but you can! Having this kind of identity is what allowed jewish people survive without such country for 2000 years.

By the way, if you were to agree that they should be allowed a country of their own, where do YOU think they should have placed their new country?

4.

“Zionism was a radical, tiny minority within the “Jewish diaspora”

Initially, yes. But it was the time when nationalistic ideologies were growing stronger everywhere, and strongest in europe — italy, germany, france, etc. And with growing nationalism, anti-semitism was growing as well (case in point — The Dreyfus Affair).

5.

“Maria’s UN references I’m sure are also true.”

They are. But that doesn’t make them unbiased or fair. If we condemn zionism, then we must condemn the whole idea of “nation state” (which is the dominant state building concept today) as well . And if we allow one instance of this idea, then we must allow others.

6.

“The trouble comes, of course, from the obvious truism that all today’s Jewish Israelis are de facto Zionists.”

Just like most frenchmen support the idea of having an independent sovereign France.

ENDS

“So, do I bother to answer this? For my own good or maybe to post on blog. Then it would make an interesting unresolved discussion . Yeah, I’ll do that.”

1. OCCUPATION OF THE LAND.

This was an invasion and not an eviction. The end result is the same – a mono-cultural identity – but the Zionists came from all over and bulked up the overwhelming minority population to become the dominant section. So many were driven from their homes to create the new reality. In Turkey the majority population were driven by their government to push out the minorities – Greeks and Armenians chiefly – in an appalling act of barbarism.  Harder to reverse but that is where the morality lies, of course.

With all  previous invasions, and please let us not return to those barbaric times, the end result was that the invading population was absorbed into the native over time – or vice versa. So Celtic women were wedded to Roman legionaries and William’s Normans were blended in over the next century or two.

As for personal ownership of land, well I’m sure we’d got there by 1947. So the Palestinians owned the properties that they were driven out from by the Zionist terrorists. After all there are huge efforts put into re-finding art treasures that were stolen by the Nazis and returning them to their previous , often Jewish, owners. The land thefts performed by these terrorists were more recent than the Nazi ones and far more blatant.

2. WHAT IF SWEDEN?
“It wouldn’t have been logical” is not an answer. My point was that this alternative would have been an equally aggressive land theft. Obviously Nazi Germany had been into Sweden, just as Palestine was involved in the World War – Palestinians being anti-Nazi, of course. There’s an irony there, too, don’t you think?
With the Danish squabbles that was simply local governance and did not involve mass re-settlements and terrorists driving people from their ancestral homes. Did it?

3.IDENTITY TO LAND

The Jews did not survive for 2000 years only because they dreamed of returning to Palestine. They survived by, well, living wherever they happened to be. As you say elsewhere, if they’d chosen to any of them could in those days have simply travelled there and set up shop in Jerusalem, Gallilee or wherever. They all chose not to – or maybe some did resettle over the centuries. Maybe more left. That detail is lost, I’m sure.

4. NATURE OF ZIONISM

Most Jewish people then as now stayed were they lived. It was the zealot Zionists (If that’s not biblical tortology!) who became the invading terrorists. Yes, there was anti-semitism in Europe, USA and elsewhere – I often feel that Israel was allowed to be created by the Zionists as a kind of conscience payment. But, of course, it was a particular sub-section of the Jewish community which was thus rewarded. The terrorist type.

5. NATION STATE

So the UN is a biased and unfair organisation, is it? Well, yes, I agree, but there is nothing in that which should allow us to condemn nation states per se. Zionist terrorists were not a nation state. They were indeed a bunch of terrorists and were not like, for example, Nelson Mandela’s ANC in that they neither lived in Palestine nor were they an oppressed majority living under hostile colonial settlers from Europe. They were simply members of a globally settled religious orthodoxy. And, of course, in Europe they’d recently gone through the vile Nazi regime’s actions in WW2.

6. NATIONALITY

No, a comparison with France does not work. France is multicultural but they all speak French, all live under the same constitutional rights and have not recently had a large part of the population killed or deported to detention camps. Point here is that by settling in the land now called Israel Jewish individuals accept the existence of a Jewish homeland, with Jewish centred constitution, so they become Zionists. Arabic and Christian residents of that land are not then Zionists – although they could be, I suppose! Jewish people elsewhere in the World are quite probably just Jewish people, though a proportion do take up the mantle of Zionism when they “defend the Jewish state”, even if they stay in the Bronx, China, Iran or wherever. Even Sweden. I’m sure.

Point is every other country on Earth has recently evolved its population reasonably gradually. Yeah, loadsa traumas, of course – look at Sri Lanka with Tamil versus Indian National identities. But Israel was in very recent times stolen from its settled, indigenous population. You have to go further back for examples of Zionist style settlement. The USA was one such, I guess, and earlier Mexico by the Spaniards and, of course, Australia by the British. We know them all to have been wrong and would not act in that manner now so why did we allow Israel?

Protecting their paradigm

There is much talk in chat rooms as well as in mainstream media of conspiracy theories. I was once referred to a website called the Conspiracy Café as a home to supposedly paranoid discussions and whispers about the dastardly and underhand methods by which the empowered excluded the disempowered such that they had to gather and mutter dejectedly in such establishments, be they real or virtual.

Although I have always seen the utility of this label, I have never really subscribed to its general application as I have not been able to understand how those running the conspiracies were always able to run such a tight organisation, with never any leaks.

Of course organisations, commercial or public, have undisclosed information and penalties to any of the group who might release these secrets to the general public – or sell them to a competitor. But a conspiracy is different. This involves groups gathering together to strategically warp public understanding of an issue, painting a picture which is contrary to facts known only to themselves and consistently denied if they are uttered by someone outside of the group of cognoscenti.

A classic example of this is the concept of alien life forms exploring our planet, arriving in flying saucers. There has been and continues endless discussion of this topic. Many conspiracy theorists will demonstrate to you clearly how our governments have made contact with these extra terrestrials but are withholding the information from us as we would not be able to handle it.

Books, films, pubs and chat rooms have this as a recurring theme but perhaps the only thing we really take away as fact from this is the concept of conspiracies.

In my exploration and discussion of public health issues, notably the vaccination saga, a very cogent thread of explanation can be pinned on conspiracy. It works both ways as the corporate response to criticism can be “Oh, so you say it’s all a great big conspiracy, do you”, and they refer derisorily to “conspiracy theorists” in dismissing criticisms put to them. Rational, well argued critiques supported with masses of information.

So I have searched for a descriptor of this behaviour and come up with the concept of “Protecting their Paradigm”.

Earthmovers speak of “The Paradigm Shift” as the momentous change in understanding that is leading to the new reality. It can even be a goal – “We need a paradigm shift to bring about our capability to deal with this situation”. Of course, I reckon, this is frequently opposed by sloth, inertia or just contentment with the status quo. As in “We don’t want one of your paradigm shifts”.

That being so these reactionaries will move to protect their personal, organisational or corporate paradigms. Protecting their status quo. In fact their paradigm is their rallying point, their focus and their contextualiser. Their castle, even.

You attack their paradigm then there’s no reasoning required as instinct propels them to defend it. “Get your filthy hands off my paradigm or else you’ll feel the full force of my wrath”. Then they’ll gather together in the keep to discuss the best tactics they can use to force away, even destroy, this attack on their stronghold. It’s a mindset thing and to attack this is to trigger survival mechanisms and so bend all rationality to the cause.

Protecting their paradigm.

Cox’s just a pippin.

Trouble is he’s also a media star and so can say what he pleases and it’s given gold plated status. Look, I’ve done this complaint before but it’s just been set off anew and I’m afraid, I feel compelled to respond. It’s this goofy all knowing scientist at the true alter of all that is known and is understood by me/us, this latter being one and the same thing because of the scientific terrific method.

But the horrible crew are like Ben Goldacre clones and as gullible as you could mention but it don’t matter – you cannot penetrate their smugness. Anyway it is also a very financially secure position to take so why should they rock the boat. Well, I’ll tell you, children, it’s because it’s amazingly unscientific and, both personally and generally,  profoundly damaging.

I could just say “Stick to your own science, Brian, where you obviously do have some familiarity with data and their interpretation”. Staring at printouts of interstellar radiation was never my sort of thing and I profess no abilities in that field. Yeah, I can comment on comets and planets and the possibility of life in other star systems, of course. And I have views on the edge of the universe and the Big Bang Theory and so on, And I do a mean discussion of the Dawkins Principle and whether Steve Jones is actually just a corruption of the ether.

But I know lots about two subjects which you and other tediously ill informed comi-scientists keep dragging up – health and climate change. And you are conceited in manner and pathetic in content in both disciplines.

Health has two subcategories and, yes, you’re wrong in both. By far the most crucial is the Goldacre style derision of people who point out the fallacy of the primitive practice of “Vaccination”. Now I know Ben thinks that the MMR is a God given potion, perhaps akin to Getafix concoction in the Asterix tales, that all kids need circulating in their blood streams but, please, where’s the evidence?

Look, that’s a rhetorical question because I know damn well that there is none. There have never, ever been any controlled trials to indicate that the MMR has any benefit to the recipient child. Not one. Nor have there been for any other such potion. They’re not done because they cannot be – it would be unethical.

So instead the attempt to justify their use is based on a perceived decline in rates of infection since the introduction of the jab. “Look” they say “Measles cases have declined since we started the jabs.”

It’s true that measles used to be a significant dispatcher of young children. Young, undernourished children living in poor, cold and damp conditions, with poor hygiene  practice and often very cramped – several in one room and so on. However, long before jabs came along, living conditions were improved, pretty much throughout the twentieth century but most importantly out from squallor was the first half of the century. Mortality from infectious diseases such as measles dropped drastically and by the time a measles jab was offered, death from measles infection was very rare. Measles was a rite of passage, two weeks off school and lots of Lucozade and grapes. Your GP would think nothing of it and there was no worry at all.

Same for Chicken Pox, Mumps and so on. The crucial factor was your internal resilience and so your natural immune function, assisted by parental love and good diet, in a warm and cosy home brought about a full recovery in the vast bulk of cases. Were there were complications it was easily related to a breakdown in the support network as described above. For example in the Bronx, in New York, a poor district, there was frequently damage to eyesight resultant from measles infection. Investigation  found them to be chronically short of Vitamin A in their diets. They were given this as supplement and in improved diet and eyesight damage was eradicated as a problem subsequently.

Crucially, though, there is another cruel side to the explosion in the use of these toxic inoculants on infant metabolisms. These are the many side effects, ranging from cot death through allergy and asthma to chronic conditions such as autism and SSPE. With a list like that of outcomes, plus the fact that their use could have no benefit in fighting infection, because lifestyle has already achieved that, in order to maintain both their role as Dispensers of Health to all Brave Children and to avoid the Colossal Liability for Payment of Damages to the Millions of Damaged Children a Defense-and-a-Denial had to be mounted.

Sadly, Brian, you  are part of that. Sweet little peer reviewed Brian is just a part of the wide ranging support unit established to protect the Medico-Industrial Complex from admitting to its sins and, indeed, its liabilities. This is not a conspiracy and Brian knows nothing of it. It is peer group pressure and subtle use of our intensely hierarchical social and corporate mechanisms. Protecting their paradigm, as their castle, it’s where they operate from and cannot be questioned.

Moving on in the knowledge that I have already written reams about the vaccination saga and that I have references to every point and so many more there is then the whole, wholesome alternative health arena. Ben’s other favorite hate is homeopathy because it’s quite clear that there is nothing in the remedies and that they cannot thus be achieving anything. Except that, as my homeopathist friends say to me, “they work”.

Now the Placebo effect is giving a drugfree pill which cures because the patient thinks it is a powerful medicament and his/her body responds. Or it just covers natural remission.  So maybe the homeopath is tuned to that facility and triggers it. Used to be called bedside manner. Otherwise I can quote the Benveniste story but, whatever, I like and trust my friends and am happy that they achieve great outcomes with their clients.

Homeopathy is but one of a vast range of alternative health disciplines. Some others seem even more outlandish but, at worst, they give clients personal space and time to repair. And the body has fantastic self repair mechanisms.

Others, though, are far more measurable and have much cross over in their actions. For decades now I have practiced Yoga, the ancient art of stretching, breathing and balance. For thousands of years the outcomes have been followed, and the internal connections noted. Health and fitness correlations have been drawn. There are two elements here – firstly there is practice to maintain health and secondly there are corrective procedures.

Acupuncture seems to follow those same connectivities and a number of other alternative health procedures do likewise, as massage and osteopathy for example.

Finally, in the alternative medicine sphere, we still have diet and nutrition, herbs and herbalism. These are pretty mainstream nowadays but oh so poorly packaged. Are eggs good or bad for you? Milk? Grains? Meat? Sugar? Can you simply have too much food? Do herbs have curative properties? This is now widely accepted but Ancient Chinese Herbalism is much frowned upon and the new Global regulations, under the Codex Alimentarius, are set to seriously limit the use of such remedies.

Point is that there is utterly no reason to deride these health skills. As less than 15% of visits to a GP have a positive outcome for the client (Official stats, quoted by doctors 2011) Established Medicine hardly puts up stiff opposition. Alternative medicine has a substantial and valid contribution to make to the maintainance of the people’s good health.

Which leaves the Climate Change Agenda. Again there’s a fog of “We thinks they do protest too much” in the air. Look, noone with half a brain cell disputes the measurements taken by the hosts of climate scientists scattered around the globe. I’ve taught the increase in atmospheric CO2 levels to so many students and we’ve discussed other CC gases as well. Then I’ve written about the ocean currents and ongoing forest loss and the ever increasing use of fossil carbon. We have undoubtedly got a number of problems. Issues. But which are they and how can we best tackle them? These last are not so clear and the bland comments coming about “Climate Change Deniers”, equating them, in effect, to those who deny the World War Two death camps, are of no help and no little insulting to victims of the Nazi Holocaust.
So sea level rises are happening. This is nothing new as sea levels have probably never been stable. 15000 years ago, at the tail end of the last glacial period, sea levels were roughly 120 metres lower than at present. You could walk from Galloway thirty miles west to find the sea or, if you went east, then you could walk over to mainland UK and carry on to continental Europe without even seeing the sea. No Irish Sea, no North Sea.

But from that time it took maybe 8000 years for enough ice to melt to finally cut the UK off from Europe, to flood the region archaeologists have christened Doggerland.  Over that time sea level rise was considerable faster that anything we can measure now. And they’d had a CO2 rise too, similar to our more recent one, of nearly 100ppm at ice age end.

The other thing nature achieved during this long transition was to re-establish vast tracts of forest, which had been lost during the glaciation and through subsequent sea level rise (slightly complicated dynamic, here!)

So, yes, I’m sure that there is anthropogenic climate change and that there is resultant sea level rise but slowly. I feel that it is vital we reduce our use of fossil carbon but at the same time we should embark on a global reafforestation programme, to marginal lands, to soak up a lot of the excess carbon dioxide. Sixty to seventy parts per million could be so fixed – and think of the labour required in these work starved times.

By making sarky insults at those who quite rightly say “I see no sea level rise” “I see no climate change” you cannot then negotiate an informed solution to the weighty problems we all now face. It is far too entrenched and single issue. There are a host of other environmental problems caused by current and past planetary environmental management, such as losses of biodiversity, community isolation, microclimate distortion, huge impacts on weather systems, desertification and all manner of water provision problems. All of these are ameliorated by renewed establishment of the forests.

In summary you sound snooty and spectacularly ill informed. Luckily I’ve done your research for you in these cases so that you can avoid being so dumb in future. Trouble is it don’t half diminish any faith I could have placed in your other utterances. Truth is that the scientific peer review system is another word for a cabal. Closed shop. You don’t get us – we’re part of the Union. Please – open up, open out, embrace objectivity.

Welsh Incident – Robert Graves plus addendum

 

‘But that was nothing to what things came out

From the sea-caves of Criccieth yonder.’

‘What were they? Mermaids? Dragons? Ghosts?’

‘Nothing at all of any things like that.’ ‘What were they, then?’

‘All sorts of queer things, Things never seen or heard or written about,

Very strange, un-Welsh, utterly peculiar Things.

Oh, solid enough they seemed to touch,

Had anyone dared it. Marvellous creation,

All various shapes and sizes, and no sizes,

All new, each perfectly unlike his neighbour,

Though all came moving slowly out together.’

‘Describe just one of them.’

‘I am unable.’

‘What were their colours?’

‘Mostly nameless colours, Colours you’d like to see; but one was puce

Or perhaps more like crimson, but not purplish.

Some had no colour.’

‘Tell me, had they legs?’

‘Not a leg or foot among them that I saw.’

‘But did these things come out in any order?’

What o’clock was it? What was the day of the week? Who else was present? How was the weather?’

‘I was coming to that. It was half-past three

On Easter Tuesday last.

The sun was shining.

The Harlech Silver Band played Marchog Jesu

On thirty-seven shimmering instruments

Collecting for Caernarvon’s (Fever) Hospital Fund.

The populations of Pwllheli, Criccieth, Portmadoc, Borth, Tremadoc, Penrhyndeudraeth,

Were all assembled.

Criccieth’s mayor addressed them

First in good Welsh and then in fluent English,

Twisting his fingers in his chain of office,

Welcoming the things.

They came out on the sand,

Not keeping time to the band, moving seaward

Silently at a snail’s pace.

But at last The most odd, indescribable thing of all

Which hardly one man there could see for wonder

Did something recognizably a something.’

‘Well, what?’

‘It made a noise.’

‘A frightening noise?’

‘No, no.’

‘A musical noise? A noise of scuffling?’

‘No, but a very loud, respectable noise —

- Like groaning to oneself on Sunday morning

In Chapel, close before the second psalm.’

‘What did the mayor do?’

‘I was coming to that.’

I was coming to that

Well, come on. What?

Well, come on. What?

Oh, how it echoed in my head.

Time and time he’d said it and now

What did he say?

I listened back to myself.

Listening.

And I saw myself.

Agog and Aghasting

Hearing all he had to say.

My, and every one person was spellbound

And no-one believed a word

Except it might have been true

Well, it could have been true because

These things happened

Especially on the Traeth

And last thing at night

On a summer evening

As you walked back home

Was he drunk then or was he tipsy?

Does that explain his observations?

Well I’m sure he was both although

It was a sunday evening.

And they had Temperance then

And no-one could drink in the pubs at all

But I’m betting he had a club to go to -

They always did that after the service,

After the preacher telling them

What to think

And when to do it.

But that would not have clouded his judgement

He always saw what he saw.

And he saw no need for embellishment

When he came to speak.

So they were then, all over the beach

Strange, strange beings – no colours and no feet?

Most certainly there and maybe some kind of pink

And I’m sure the Mayor addressed them but

Then it gets.

Dieu I have to think.

Look, he told me lots of things and forgot a whole lot more

Those creatures, they were there then and, well, yes,

All over the shore

No, he couldn’t get the colours right

and he might have missed the limbs

Did he say they repeated that morning’s chapel hymns?Yes,

There, on the sands, as the waves rushed up

Those not quite so welcome visitors opened out to sing.

And the mayor?

Well, he joined in.

 

Author’s notes Somebody suggested the poem by Robert Graves was not finished. Well, of course it ain’t – it’s a shaggy dog/soap poem I’m sure. Above is where it took me!

An Honest Report

In recent years I have felt a growing unease as I’ve watched the progression of events unfolding. Maybe that’s been my mistake – too much watching. However I have always partaken in affairs, too, but there’s been a huge and gathering disconnect. Good human scale work is lauded but is unavailable to any save those who’s workings preclude the survival of such behaviour, such occupations and such sanity.

The brutal application of capital has ripped out vast portions of the soul of humanity, in pursuit of the economies of scale and efficiency. There is no clearer a demonstration of this than in the changes in agriculture and horticulture where the last century or so has seen vast swathes of the human involvement – ie labour – removed in favour of the use of ever larger machinery and ever more toxic agrochemicals, recently backed up with genetic modification of the seedstocks.

The result has been ever more lonely farmers, or farm managers appointed by distant land grabbing corporations, harvesting ever larger silos of grains of ever greater distance from the original food crops and although high yielding often nutritionally poor. Yet it keeps fed the ever growing numbers of our human and livestock populations.

Increasingly soy beans grown on former Amazonian jungle lands stripped of forest and turned to vast open field systems have fed cattle in Europe and on feed lots in North America. “Efficient” but heavily based of fossil fuel use and other indirect subsidy.

Meanwhile the corn grown on the great US prairieland is converted to biodiesel to propel the harvesters which gather the heavily subsidised, directly as well as indirectly, produce. A closed system except that it requires continued subsidies or it too becomes uneconomic. Becomes?

Genetically modified corn has become an addiction, a high priced, annually repurchased, nitrate intensive, glyphosate based factory farm system whose sole outcome appears to be to support the giant Monsanto Corporation. Subsidy in from central government, all profits out to meet demands of seed merchant and chemist Mr Monsanto.

Anyway, this is how I see things and how I say things but, you know, nothing changes. The systems continue to prosper. Nobody starves. When Monsanto release their profit forecasts they are praised for the good they do. I stay on the back foot and defend my position, repeat my diagnoses, but feel disempowered. I do nor doubt my truth, my objectivity, but it’s hard. “Why do you say that? How do you gain? Why not just live your life? Ignore it.” I cannot, though, because it seems to ensure extinction, and I don’t want that. Even many years down the track. I want humanity to be part of a sustainable future for the planet. So I moan, I protest and remain outside the loop.

Which is why it was wonderful to find folk on the fringes with a powerful voice saying the same. Max Keiser is a former Wall Street trader of some form who has slots on reasonably radical but free for all television news channels. He obviously had a Damoscene conversion and strongly now dissects the operations of the Global financial disasters that are all around us with a cohort of generally wise guests he chats with and interviews. It is such a relief to realise others have the same viewpoints as myself.

Yesterday he conversed with a woman who’s been part of the Bush Senior’s education/finance team – and left (another conversion, I think!) She professed, however, faith in the US to come through as “We have our ever productive agricultural sector” Max came back at her much as I would have, citing all I just have in this piece and she had to agree. Wholly. She then went on to say that “Yes” she realised that and what she meant was that the land had the POTENTIAL to be super productive and appropriately so. A wonderful moment.

For the truth is that “Yes, the land is productive” but only in a monopoly-capitalistic manner. It would be far more productive and produce a greater amount of more useful produce if it were converted back to small farmers, preferably growing organically. Remove the huge petrochemical and GM seed input and use money saved to support real populations growing real food. Because the people are the real capital of this planet. They need support. Not Monsantocorp.

 

The mental deficit

Econonomix.

OK, the country is deep in debt.

The World is deep in debt.

And even the debts are deep in debt.

Greece is bankrupt because they cannot borrow sufficient cash to pay the interest on the loans they already have,as well as paying  their usual, everyday running costs. All Europe, nearly, would be in the same boat except some countries can borrow extra money still, despite having pro-rata the same debt. They can still  borrow extra each year both to meet running costs such as state sector wages, new Jaguars and the like and also to meet the interest payments on existing loans.

The loans, in the form of “bonds” and “gilts” (or “guilts”, maybe) are far cheaper for some borrowers than others, who are obliged to offer higher returns – interest – on those they issue. In general, these are the Northern and Western European countries and, heavily, heavily, the United States. Since these are countries who often  buy these bonds, eg  for pension funds, regarding themselves as the better bets, there seems to be an element of prejudice here.

Thus each country has a – huge- debt as well as far larger hidden debts from private, commercial and institutional borrowings. Each year, each country has a figure projected for the money it’s government will require to meet the deemed interest payments on its accumulated government “obligations”. This is not to pay off these obligations, it is solely to meet the interest as, on maturity, each debt will be replaced by another of the same value – “issue of new bonds.”

At this point is brought in the concept of “Deficit Reduction”. Deficit is the shortfall each year between the above projected figure for interest payment and the actual cash scraped together against the bill. So a Deficit Reduction Plan is a scheme to reduce this annual shortfall. It is not a plan to pay off the National Debt. It is merely a plan to stop the annual increase in that debt which can be specifically put down to not being able to meet the “projected figure for interest”, outlined above.

Yes, that’s right. As far as I can see, it would be OK to spend more on doctors’ salaries and frightfully complicated computer programming systems that do not work, as well as Jaguars and Unemployment Benefits and illegal, pointless wars at £50000 per missile, but The Deficit must be seen to be falling to zero even though the National Debt may still be increasing.

But sadly I now have to introduce another imponderable – “Chartalism” coupled with MMT, modern monetary theory. And here the thin line between governments borrowing money and magically creating money vanishes, because governments chartle money into existence by deeming that they can borrow it from themselves only to pay themselves back in the future from revenues to come.  The best analogy I can come up with is to be mortgaging your future tax revenues. I would now refer to “Quantitative Easing” but I’m sure you, my reader, are probably not yet ready for such assault. Suffice to say that it appears to be re-mortgaging your future tax revenues.

So, whereas chartism was all about looking after the rights of long suffering millworkers in their daily struggles to keep a basic life living, chartalism does the same for governments, for it enables them to survive, although all reasonable assessments of their liquidity and viability would deem them wholly and wilfully bankrupt.

Population growth should probably be part of this conversation, too, although it never is. But if there are one million more Brits that ten years ago – and I think it’s greater than that – then that’s a whole lot more cash needed. Maybe £20 billion each year which, by and large, will just circulate with all the rest. But all this background debt and the need to pay interest on it means all the money has to move ever faster as the overall obligation increases.

Let’s go back to the Greek example and their projected default. They are going to be allowed to ignore half their actual national debt so only meet half their interest payments. The banks owed those 200 billion Euros will just have to whistle for it. However the European Central Bank will re-liquiditize those banks which are “badly exposed to Greek debt”. How is this process not the ECB paying off half the Greek debt? And what will the Greeks have to do in return? Live less? Pay higher interest rates or make some other future returns to the ECB exchequer? So how will Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Spain react to this favouritism? Me, too – I’d love to have had half my debts written off. And, anyway, where does the ECB source the funds to pay off half the Greek debt? Can they chortle, I mean chartle, too?

This is reactive, corrupt and essentially fantasy economics. Bullying, extortion and corporate-centred planning. It still promotes the massive, centralised, high tech, high spending state-capitalist system to prevail. This is what has propelled the unsustainable, anti-green agenda which has caused so much damage to our collective environment over the last fifty years and which is ever more bankrupt – both literally and figuratively – with every day that passes