And as our civilisation sinks slowly into the sea of mediocrity…

A lot of the world, mostly but not exclusively the “white” occupied areas, are enjoying unparalleled wealth and freedom. I am sure many would disagree, but in my opinion at least, this is only because we take for granted so much of what is available to us. Central heating, colour tv, computers, mobile phones, are all luxuries which, not so long ago, would be signs of almost unimaginable wealth. Similarly with travel. In the immediate post war period a trip to Australia took three weeks by ship and was out of the financial reach of the great majority unless subsidised by the state. Now it is 24 hours away and at a price less than the average weekly wage. The cinema hits of the ’50’s revelled in exotic locations which were truly out of reach by the vast majority, but which are now common venues for holidays.

Yet this wealth and freedom has come at a price, for we are increasingly constrained by the state and its overarching mediocrity. Risk has been abolished and along with it that once fashionable business ethic, empowerment. Shocking examples of this, of the contempt with which workers are suborned into extensions of the system go far beyond the nightmare world of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. There it was the physical actions of workers which marched to the rhythm of the machines, now it is the minds. The cashier at the supermarket checkout now has to ask the pensioners if they are over 18 before they can purchase alcohol. It is an absolute, there is no place for judgement in the brave now world of mediocrity. “Just doing my job” (and afraid to loose it).

The only imperative now is safety. Risk is forbidden, blame is everywhere. It is as though we are in complete denial of the lines from the funeral service, “In the midst of life we are in death”. Death now is unacceptable for all but the very old.

We look on in horror at the events in the middle east where death and destruction are everywhere. We ring our hands in grief yet persecute those of conscience who decide to take direct action in defence of humanity, for surely, beheading prisoners is inhumane. Yet only 80 years ago, many from around the world went to fight fight for democracy in Spain among them 4,000 British volunteers along side volunteers from the USA, Canada and the Balkans with 800 volunteers, which included about 400 Bulgarians, 160 Greeks and 25 Yugoslavs. Good to know that George Orwell would now be classed as a terrorist.

Instead of honouring those now willing to risk their lives we persecute them and class them as terrorists. This is a high price to pay for doing the right thing, but in the elimination of Risk, no price, it seems, is too high.

Support Shilan Ozcelik, 18, the first Briton to be arrested for trying to fight against Islamic State in Syria and now in Holloway woman prison London. Shame!

http://kurdishquestion.com/index.php/kurdistan/statement-by-uk-kurdish-organisations-about-shilan-ozcelik-s-imprisonment/723-statement-by-uk-kurdish-organisations-about-shilan-ozcelik-s-imprisonment.html

Oil crisis? it’s simple

There’s oil in the ground. To get it out, the price needs to be $70 per barrel. The price is $50 so the oil stays in the ground. When (if) the price goes back up to $70, the oil in the ground will be pumped out and sold. So, for the foreseeable future the price of oil will not exceed $70. Forget all those experts from Bloomberg making contrary predictions (and getting paid for it). Take it from me for free.
And soon I will bring you the truth about sex, puberty and fidelity. Take it from me, after 50 years of on hand experience I am beginning to understand, much as I understand about the price of oil.

Political power grows from the barrel of a Gun

Is this often quoted saying from Mao Zedong true? Or is the pen really mightier than the sword, as the saying that has been around in various forms for the past 500 years would have it? Actually combining the two is perhaps the real way of the world. Sure, guns are powerful, but so are ideas. The secret to success seems to be having a good idea and then backing it up with force. Or is it the other way around, get the guns, seize power and then come up with an ideology. That seems to be the case with lots of “insurgent” groups, from the Lords Resistance Army in Central Africa to the Islamic state in Syria/Iraq. What they both have in common of course is money. Getting control of a diamond mine or an oil field pays for the guns and leaves a profit so it can make good business sense. Add an ideology, whether it be perverted Islam or Christianity and you have the perfect combination, pen (message) and gun.

Either consciously or not, we are all supporters of these death cults since it is our money which actually buys the guns. Not directly of course but every time we fill our cars, every time we buy a diamond ring,  we are supporting them. Support terrorism, use more oil!

An exception to this Mexico. There the death cults stalk the land solely for the money. They may be shocking in their barbarity but at least they are honest. It is only about the money.

A big mistake

We, and I mean the secular/Christian/Jewish world have made a very big mistake. Gradually we have given up on the idea of free speech and moved into a regime where “offending” somebody has become not only unacceptable but has become a criminal offence. That is a very slippery slope and the end result will be a disaster. The latest atrocity committed by Islamic militants in France is an indicator of this, as was the attacks on the Danish newspaper which published a cartoon satirising the Muslim faith. For me it is simple. If you come to our country you accept our social norms. And that includes the possibility that you might be ridiculed. If you don’t accept that, then there really is no place for you in our society which is based on free speech. I really do believe that the vast majority of people are not religious. They may be so in a social sense, but actually believing that there is a divinity judging human affairs? I seriously doubt it. My own experience is that the “religious” are often hypocritical. The evidence is all around us. Yes, I accept that some, driven to do “good” by religious conviction are a boon to the poor and hungry. I applaud their efforts, but I still think that their motives are seriously questionable. I give it ten years before this script is banned. You have been warned!

Imagine

Let us imagine you have put all your savings into stored energy. A good plan. Everybody needs energy. But now let us imagine that you discover that next year a machine will be made that produces energy for nothing, That is will take a really common material, let us say salt for example, and from it produce electricity. Lots and lots of electricity. What price now that energy store you have. What to do? Why the answer is simple, sell it now for as much as you can get while you still can. Just like OPEC is doing now.

You can’t always get what you want

The Rolling Stones may have sung it, but apart from children, most of us know that it is true. To take a UK example. 84% of the British public believe that the National Health system should be run in the public sector yet slowly slowly, drip by drip it is being privatised. 66% of Brits believe that the railway system should be in public ownership, yet it is sold to the private sector on the grounds that only corporations can manage it successfully. What makes this even more macabre is that German state railways can set up corporations and run railways in Britain. Anybody but Brits in Britain it would seem.

It is not as though Corporations have a great track record. Take Capita, that great service supplier. From personal experience I can assure you that the nick name given by the financial services sector to this is actually Crapita, a far more appropriate title.

In 1515 Machiavelli published “The Prince”, a guide to running a state. He is clear about the role of mercenaries, you can’t trust them. They are only doing what they do for the money. For them that is all that matters. What was true then is just as true now. Yet still it goes on. Prison Service, Probation Service, Security Service all in the process of privatisation with absolutely no evidence that the result is any better.

Am I being hypocritical here?  After all, I have spend a life time in private enterprise and only a few months in the public sector. I don’t think so. What I know is that money is a good score card for a limited type of success, but only one type. Public service, the desire to do the “right” thing remains, for many, the best motivator. Unfortunately, not for our politicians

Congratulations Chelsea Clinton, but you are wasting your time.

So former President Clinton is a grandfather. Nice. I like all children and yes, they can bring joy to lots of people. And, of course, all hope that the child will grow up on a planet with lots of diverse wildlife, especially elephants, Chelsea’s particular pet cause. But of course, she is wasting her time.

Last week, for the first time, a serious scientific study was reported in the journal Science which contradicted the prevailing theory that the world population would stabilise by 2050. To quote one of the authors, “Population is going to keep growing. We can say that with confidence.”

Since most of the growth will be in Africa, it’s probably the end for the Lions, Elephants and all the other diverse wildlife which is fighting for room to live. The ultimate predator, mankind, will soon finish them off. Preserving them now flies in the face of reality.

Of course Chelsea Clinton did her bit for the planet by postponing her first child until she was 34. She had a choice. Other women are not so fortunate. Tragically there is still hope. The ebola virus is now raging in West Africa, the true home of the population explosion. The awful truth is that, just as in mediaeval Europe, it will take millions of deaths to stabilise the situation. With fewer people, labour will not be over supplied, labour costs will rise, and people will finally have an economic value beyond that of a commodity to be exploited.

Dealing with Russia

First we have to consider a little history. The treaty of Paris of 1951 established  a common market for coal and steel among its member states which served to neutralise competition between European nations over natural resources. That was in 1951. Coal and Steel are not so significant now but gas is. So I ask, why is the EU not unifying the purchase of gas?

The European market, over 500 million people, is the biggest mature market in the world. With that buying power the best deals possible could be struck. A united Europe, buying centrally, would have the power to resist the attempts by Russia to deal with each country individually and put serious pressure on them. In that well know phrase (attributed to Aesop, 2000 year ago but perhaps better know through the 1970’s Brotherhood of Man hit United We Stand), “United we stand, divided we fall”.

Alternatively, and for those more familiar with English idioms:-

“We must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

Music Piracy, back to the future

I’ve just read an interesting article on illegal downloads. The author remarks upon the irony of his book being available to illegally download on a number of pirate sites. I sympathise. It must be both psychologically frustrating and financially debilitating to spend hours, if not years writing a book only to have it given away for free.
What to do? I will avoid here any discussion on the morality of such actions. Life is not black and white and in a greyscale moral environment there are more fundamental issues with which to while away the hours.
Let me consider instead another perspective. Before the advent of recorded music, first tubes then discs then cd’s then mp3’s, how did artists earn their daily bread? Simply and exclusively through public performance. They performed, they were paid. No performance, no pay
It all changed with the ability to record music. The performance, once recorded, became a commodity of exchange with a value.
We may well be reverting to that model, with the recorded version just being a form of advertising for the concert. Back to the future.

Gay pride and changing times

An old friend wrote to me earlier with this question:-

On another thing: how can you relate to the brand new pride item of Austria, that is Conchita Wurst and the seemingly unstoppable bandwagon of gay pride? A press comment recently recalled in a Hungarian paper that the Roman Empire died in decadence around 450 but the eastern half of it survived the downfall of Rome by a thousand years. So the turn toward the East of the Hungarian government at least in trade relations seems to be realistic policy and well justified by the stagnation in the euro zone. What is your view of all this? Can the manufacturing industry in Europe still be brought back to life or is it more or less finished?

After a weeks contemplation I have begun to construct an answer.

Let’s look at Conchita Wurst first. I have discussed this with my some well informed people in Austria and was quite surprised at their comments. They were all positive in their reactions and one told me that certainly the whole episode had made him more tolerant. So, a positive result. But, is this a harbinger of imminent collapse, a re run of the decline and Fall of the Roman Empire? The abridged version of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire runs to 903 pages and over 500 of these are concerned with the fall of the Empire in West (Rome). I am being presumptuous in attempting to answer this in 500 words but here goes.

I don’t think it is possible to make any kind of comparison at all. Fourth century Rome was the only Empire around (we have to discount China I think since they and the Romans were in ignorance of each other.) It gained its supremacy through military prowess but it’s economy was predicated upon constant new conquests. So we might say that the deserts of Arabia, the Sahara and the freezing hinterland of the Russian steps were natural barriers to further expansion. Expansion into these areas would bring little in terms of economic gain so would be economically counter productive. So, Rome fell to the Barbarians. Tougher, more brutal (hard to believe) and finally, much better motivated than Rome. It seems to me that the whole of human history has robbery as its leitmotiv. The Greeks, the Romans the Goths the Vikings even the Nazis, all set out to get rich by stealing from their neighbours. At a time when economic understanding stopped at keeping gold under the bed, it really did seem the only game to play. So, if we say that decadence foreshadows a collapse we are in fact saying that the appetite for plunder has finally been satisfied. Surely, on moral grounds, this is not a bad thing?

I have conflated Empire and civilisation. Are there any “Empires”? I don’t think the EU is an Empire. Maybe the USA is, maybe China aspires to be. I am really going to have to give that some serious thought! More later.