The Complexities of Satire - Are you Punching Up or Punching Down?

If you engage in satire you should always ask yourself: am I mocking the powerful or am I mocking the weak? Am I punching up or punching down? If you are laughing at those who are weaker than you then that means you are a contemptible coward; if you are laughing at those more powerful than you then that is more admirable. Mocking your own group is also generally fine. So context is everything. Where you are standing is everything.

With this in mind let's consider some examples:

(1) a physically non-handicapped person mocking a physically handicapped person is punching down and that is contemptible cowardice. Similarly, a mentally normal person mocking a mentally handicapped person is punching down and is also a coward.

(2) rich people mocking poor people is contemptible, but poor people mocking the wealthy and the privileged is not. Mocking unemployed people is wrong, mocking bankers is fine.

(3) mocking powerful politicians, tyrants, dictators and other such authorities is generally fine. Mocking their victims is not. Mocking bigoted journalists who serve the powerful is fine.

(4) Historically the English had power over the Irish, so an English person mocking the Irish was punching down, but Irish people mocking the English was punching up - this no longer really applies any more, but it did in the past.

(5) homosexuals have traditionally been a bullied and marginalised minority, so a heterosexual mocking homosexuals is as a rule punching down, but a homosexual mocking heterosexuals is punching up.

(6) White people have oppressed black people and black people mostly have less power and wealth than white people, so as a rule a white person mocking black people is most definitely punching down. But a black person mocking white people is punching up.

(7) men have mostly had more power than women so men making cruel jokes about women is as a rule punching down, whereas women mocking men is punching up.

(8) Within Ireland travellers are a marginalised minority, so a non-traveller Irish person mocking Irish travellers is most certainly punching down. Travellers poking fun at non-travellers is punching up.

(9) within Ireland the Catholic Church traditionally had excessive power and they abused that power, so mocking the priests and the Catholic Church was punching up - if you were a Catholic Irish person. But what about British people mocking the backward, superstitious, impoverished Catholic Irish? Well, that's where it got a little more complicated didn't it? As a rule, that was punching down even when the substance of the criticism was correct. But this is where things start to get a bit difficult - a British person might just have wanted to help Irish people who were resisting the dominance of the Catholic Church, so they mocked Irish priests and the mockery was well-intentioned. But because they were British it was different than when an Irish person mocked Irish priests. The British person more than likely just ended up strengthening anti-Irish stereotypes in Britain, helping people who wanted to do down the Irish. In that situation, the British person needed to thread carefully.

THE BIG HARD DIFFICULT ONE!

(10) and now we come to the issue of the day. In Europe Muslims are a marginalised minority, relatively poor and mostly excluded from positions of power. Anti-Muslim bigotry is widespread. Anti-Arab racism is common, So a non-Muslim European mocking Muslims and Islam is generally punching down. A Muslim mocking Islam is fine - it's brave. But a non-Muslim European doing it in the context of the current position of Muslims within Europe - that is a lot more problematic. It's legal, and no one should be forced not to do it, but it's still punching down. Yes, people need to accept such mockery as part of a free society - but it is still punching down.

The complexity of the Muslim problem is this: within many Muslim communities religious leaders are oppressing women, homosexuals and others. So for Muslims to mock their own religious leaders is punching up. But for a Westerner to mock Muslims and Islam is mostly punching down. If a Westerner really feels the need to mock here then the mockery should be focused specifically on powerful and corrupt Muslim authorities - Saudi sheiks, Imams and so on. But in general, for a Westerner there are probably more effective and worthy targets for his mockery, such as the Western leaders who keep on invading and occupying Muslim countries.

Some might say that Islam is a religion, so mocking Muslims is not like mocking someone's sex, race, sexual orientation or nationality. But for nearly all Muslims, Islam as an inherited identity. You may not like that fact that it is an inherited identity, but the reality is that at the moment that is what it is. So mocking someone for being a Muslim is actually not that different from mocking their race or their nationality.

(12) Satire is complex and problematic. For example, not all white male heterosexuals have power - a lot of them are poor with no employment or no decent employment. They have no stable role in society. So mocking them is not really that brave either. In general, satirise powerful living individuals and satirise groups with authority - but beyond that, be careful about mocking broad groups.

Why I support the creation of an Islamic Caliphate in the Middle East

1 - The Greater Middle East should attempt to recreate most of the Islamic Caliphate that existed between the 8th and 12th centuries, the Golden Age of Islam when the Muslim Middle East was the centre of world civilisation and culture.

2 - This new Islamic Caliphate would at a minimum create a contemporary version of the Ottoman Empire, which stretched across most of the Middle East and provided hundreds of years of relative stability in the region - a situation that was preferable to the current fragmentation and chaos.

3 - This new Middle Eastern Union (MEU) would be more effectively able to defend the interests of the region and its inhabitants - it would not be at the mercy of external powers such as Russia, the U.S., Europe and China. After the Ottoman Empire collapsed subsequent to WWI, Europe deliberately fragmented the Middle Eastern region so that the West could control and dominate it. The only effective response for Middle Easterners is to reverse this fragmentation.

4 - The MEU would be similar in organisational structure and scope to the European Union - based on cooperation and not overly dominated by any one state. The EU's capital is in Brussels, not Paris, London, Berlin or Rome. Similarly, the capital of the MEU would not be in Cairo, Riyadh, Teheran or Istanbul, but rather somewhere like Amman in Jordan - this would symbolise the fact that the MEU cannot be dominated by any of the major regional states - neither Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran or Turkey is on its own powerful enough to control the Middle East.

5 - Extremism and fundamentalism are responses to weakness and humiliation - if the Middle East could regain its strength, stability and pride through an MEU, it would be able to develop on its own terms and provide better lives for the people who live there. The result would over time be less extremism and fundamentalism. If the region was more prosperous and stable then there would be less reason for people to emigrate from it to other regions.

6 - You wouldn't know it from the hysterical media coverage, but even over the last decades much of the Middle East has actually been modernising rapidly beneath the surface - life-expectancy has increased, literacy has increased, female literacy has increased, high fertility rates have declined and gleaming hyper-modern cities have sprung up out of nowhere in places like Doha and Dubai. Much of the current extremism and religious fundamentalism is a hysterical, desperate and ultimately futile response to this underlying fact of modernisation. If population increase continues to decline, then the number of angry young men with nothing to do will also decline, and that will also reduce violent extremism.

7 - Given the proliferation of education and communication technologies all over the Middle East, there is every reason to think this process of modernisation will continue, especially if an MEU can be created. But the modernisation will take place on terms decided by the people who live in the region – it will not and cannot be imposed externally.

8 - A Palestinian State in the West Bank and Gaza would be a member of the MEU. The MEU would recognise the state of Israel in return for Israeli recognition of a Palestinian State. Israel would then have full diplomatic relations with the MEU, and even eventually become an associate member, perhaps even becoming a full member over time.

9 - The West should give up any fantasies it has about controlling and dominating the Middle East. The West does not have the power to do this, as was demonstrated in the fiasco of the recent Iraq War. If the West stopped invading and militarily occupying Muslim countries then tensions between the West and Islam would decrease. The principal reason many Muslims resent the West is that the West keeps invading and occupying their countries.

10 - I am not arguing that the above is necessarily going to happen – just that it should happen and could happen.

Seven Predictions about the Future

It is, of course, not possible to predict the future with much accuracy, but that should not stop people giving it a go for fun. Overall, I am really optimistic about the next hundred years – possibly because I don’t see much point in being pessimistic. So here are my seven predictions for trends that will dominate the coming decades:

(1)     The global population will stop growing and then start falling. This will happen quicker than people expect and it will be a good thing. (a) It will make the world more stable because there will be fewer angry young men with nothing to do. (b) It will reduce pollution and end the threat of global environmental catastrophe. (c) It will facilitate the rewilding of large areas of the globe. (d) It will facilitate more aesthetic architecture and landscaping. Declining population (along with more technological progress) will not actually damage living standards – it will increase them. (Also: women will continue to have more and more control over their own lives and men will continue to whine about it).

(2)     Technology (the information revolution, machines, robots) will mean fewer and fewer stable middle-class private sector jobs. The private sector model of stable employment will collapse. For societal stability a Basic Income will eventually be required, as well as a Right to Work. Essentially, anyone who wants to work will have a right to a public job, in return for which they will receive extra income above the Basic Income. If people want to work for themselves outside the public system then they can also do so, and they will still receive the Basic Income. The Basic Income will be an unconditional right for each and every citizen whether they work or not. These ideas seem outrageous and unworkable now – but once they are implemented they will work fine and they will seem as natural as the air we breathe. Humankind will be liberated from the scourge of wage-slavery, just as it previously liberated itself from chattel-slavery and serfdom.

(3)     The relative power of the West will continue to decline and this will cause chaos but in the end it will be a good thing, allowing non-Western regions to take more control over their own destinies. The EU model of transnational co-operation will be copied by regions such as Latin America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. This will allow these four regions to defend their interests against other regions and also against the mega-states of China, the USA and India. As the developing world becomes wealthier there will be less emigration and immigration. People will tend to stay where they are.

(4)     There will be another financial crisis, even bigger than the last one. Public rage at this will give rise to a new phenomenon of anarcho-terrorism against the financial system – there will be targeted assassinations of CEOs of investment banks and mutual funds, plus bombings of global financial centres. All this will eventually lead to a final overthrow of the current financial system – the sector will come under democratic-public control and\or ownership.

(5)     As noted above, and contrary to what everyone now expects, emigration and population movements will decline and people will tend to stay where they are born – this will lead to more localism and to strong native communities – people will take more and more pride in their local food, land, buildings, wildlife, environment, communities, religions, families, heritage and traditions. They will increasingly make their own food, clothes and furniture.

(6)     In parallel with this there will be a handful of global cities that will be multiethnic, youthful, dynamic centres of innovation, connected with each other, autonomous, increasingly detached from their localised hinterlands. In these global cities new forms of voluntary institutions will develop to gradually replace the profit-maximising corporation – these new institutions will evolve in unexpected ways from cooperatives, universities, charities, social networks, clubs, online communities, political parties, associations, unions, and so on.

(7)     Despite all the progress, people will continue worrying, and being miserable and they will continue to think that the world is about to end at any moment, and that they live in the worst time in human history, even though for most people it will be the best time in human history to be alive.

Are opponents of same-sex marriage homophobes? Do you care?

At pivotal moments in our nation’s history, when people are dazed and bewildered, and when things look like they could go either way, I like to emerge from my lair and sort the matter out. The recent heated debate in Ireland about whether or not opponents of same-sex marriage are homophobes is one such momentous moment. Is your mind going around in circles trying to get to the bottom of the great impenetrable question of what exactly a homophobe is? Do you find yourself lying awake at night, tossing and turning, wondering whether you might be a homophobe? Are you bored off your head listening to people drone on endlessly about this idiotic question? Well fear not! I intend to bore you about it as well. Duty calls for a clarifying intervention from www.brianbarrington.com.

There is an argument that people who oppose same-sex marriage are not necessarily homophobes. In my view this is incorrect. People who are afraid of equal rights for homosexuals are homophobes – they are afraid of homosexuality.

The argument against this is that many people who are against same-sex marriage, like perhaps some elderly relatives you might have, are really nice people and therefore not homophobes. Do you really want to label these nice people that you love so much with the horrible term “homophobic”? Well, it is true that they may be nice people but being a nice person and being a homophobe are not incompatible, just as being a misogynist\sexist and being a nice person are not incompatible. Nor is being a racist\xenophobe and a nice person incompatible. For example, perhaps you have elderly relatives who are very nice people but who are also sexist and racist – the fact that they are nice does not stop them being sexist and racist. Someone who thinks women should stay in the home and not work may be a nice person, but they are also sexist. Similarly, someone who thinks all blacks or foreigners should be “sent home” may be a nice person, but they are still racist and xenophobic.

Here is another argument against the view that opponents of same-sex marriage are homophobes: “There are some homosexuals who are against same-sex marriage. Are they homophobes? Are you saying that these people are self-hating homosexuals? Surely that is very bigoted of you.” Well, it is true that there are some homosexuals who are against same-sex marriage – these homosexuals oppose equal rights for homosexuals so they are, in fact, homophobes. This does not necessarily mean that they hate homosexuals, it means that they are afraid of granting equal rights to homosexuals.

In the past there were doubtless some women who opposed giving women the vote – these women were sexists and misogynists because they were afraid of granting women equal rights. In the past there were doubtless some blacks who opposed ending racial segregation – these blacks were racist because they opposed granting blacks equal rights.

So people who oppose same-sex marriage are, as a matter of fact, homophobes. Now, a separate question is whether or not it is “helpful” or prudent to call them homophobes. Perhaps it would be better to go easy on them and not use provocative language, so that we can keep the debate civilised, and gently encourage people to accept same-sex marriage, rather than calling them terrible names? Well, maybe. But in my view the best tactic for expediting equal rights is by making opposition to equal rights appear wrong and pernicious, and that means labelling opponents of equal rights for homosexuals what they are: homophobes.

But ultimately I think it makes little difference one way or the other. In Western societies same-sex marriage is either legal or it will soon be legal – this is inevitable because the power of the idea of equal rights will eventually overcome any homophobic objections to it, just as the power of the idea of equal rights eventually overcame any sexist objections to women having the vote, and also eventually overcame any racist objections to blacks having civil rights. So you can call objectors to same-sex marriage homophobes if you want to, or you can call them principled conscientious objectors - you can call them fried-chicken if you like. It won’t make any difference. Same-sex marriage is going to become legal - it is just a question of when not if.

Reader complains about the all-too predictable anti-Romney position of this blog

A reader writes: “All the anti-Romney, pro-Obama talk is becoming dull. Living as I do outside the US it has been absolutely impossible for me to find a single pro-Romney supporter. I was hoping that by coming to www.brianbarrington.com I could get a fresh perspective. Something that would go against the grain. But alas no.”

BB SAYS: Sorry, but on this question I find it impossible to go against the grain just for the sake of it – the US Republicans are currently a brain-dead party and when they are in power they cause immense damage, both to Americans and to the world. For me to take up a contrarian position on this would be irresponsible.


So I am going to make a hopeful prediction: Obama will win the US presidential election tomorrow, with at least 290 electoral college votes, and probably 303 electoral college votes. (270 electoral college votes are needed to win).

As far as I can work out, Romney has made himself somewhat competitive in the Presidential election by promising that if elected he will govern as a sensible Massachusetts liberal, just as he did when governor. Effectively, Romney has thrown the right-wing nutters in his party under a bus. However, if Romney is elected the right-wing nutters will all come crawling out from their lairs for one last hurrah, and they could have a seriously negative impact. 


But even if Romney-Ryan scratch out an unlikely victory tomorrow the Republicans are a political party in deep trouble. Basically, there are too many young people, women, blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Asians, homosexuals and well-educated socially liberal urban professionals (and not enough old white rural Christian men) for the Republicans to win without great difficulty. And it’s only going to get worse for Republicans, who are reacting with panic and embracing irrationality. “If we lose this election there is only one explanation - demographics,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). “If I hear anybody say it was because Romney wasn’t conservative enough I’m going to go nuts,” said Graham. “We’re not losing 95 percent of African-Americans and two-thirds of Hispanics and voters under 30 because we’re not being hard-ass enough.”’

In every election, since 1992, Democrats have either won the White House or fallen a single state short of the presidency. Even before the Presidential election begins Democrats already have 237 electoral college votes in the bag in states that would never vote for the Republican Party in its current form (the Northeast, the West Coast and much of the Great Lakes area). This means Democrats only have to pick up another 33 votes in swing states to win. In contrast Republicans start out with only 191 electoral college votes in the bag (the Deep South and Fly-Over America) – meaning they have to pick up 80 votes in swing states to win. So the Republicans start out with a major handicap.

If Obama does lose we will have to be patient and wait another few years to watch the Republicans get their well-deserved comeuppance. But if Obama does win we should avoid the temptation to gloat too much and we would be wise to keep in mind an important fact: the white male working class populace in the US is in crisis – in the last 30 years they have seen their status collapse, their job-security disappear, their incomes stagnate, their position in society eroded. Admittedly, Republican policies since Reagan have played a large part in bringing about this situation, but that is not the point: this damaged class is mostly made up of decent people and they need decent jobs and they also deserve a respected place in their society. This is something that should be remembered over the coming week regardless of what happens in the elections.

Explaining Mitt's inexplicable Vice-presidential Choice

THE CONUNDRUM

Mitt Romney looks like the kind of guy who would steal money off your granny in order to buy himself caviar. Not only that, he IS the kind of guy who would steal money off your granny in order to buy himself caviar. So, after Republicans had chosen this Gordon Gekko wannabe as their Presidential nominee, you would expect them to put forward someone a bit more humane for Vice-president. Surely they would choose someone who can at least do a passable impression of being a member of the human species?

Not a bit of it! For their VP pick, the Republicans have chosen a dorky android by the name of Paul Ryan, an Ayn Rand fan who looks like the kind of guy who has spent his entire life sucking up to people who would steal money off your granny. In fact, Ryan HAS spent his entire life sucking up to such people, doing everything he can to reduce their taxes. Paul Ryan is the Smithers to Mitt Romney's Montgomery Burns.

What do Mitt and Paul propose to do if they are elected? They barely even try to disguise the fact that their sole aim is to defend the interests of the mega-wealthy while screwing over the middle class, and everyone else as well. Mitt and Paul want to reduce taxes on rich people while simultaneously reducing spending on health, pensions, welfare, education, infrastructure and everything else - except military expenditure, of course. That might sound like a caricature of what they are proposing. But no ... that is actually what they are openly saying they will do.

Have the US Republicans lost their marbles? Why has this happened? How has this happened? Why!? How!?

THE EXPLANATION

There is, in fact, a simple explanation for all this. Mitt Romney, as we all know, is a monumentally weird and unlikable person. Remember, this is a man who once drove all the way to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of his car. When the terrified dog had an attack of diarrhoea, an unperturbed Mitt pulled over at the next petrol station, hosed down the dog, put him back on the roof of the car, and then cheerfully continued on his trip. That's the kind of man we are dealing with here. Mitt, who has made a fortune asset-stripping companies and then putting all his profits in the Cayman islands and Switzerland, won't release his tax returns - because then everyone would see the extent of his tax evasion, and his greedy financial shenanigans.

So, in the race for the US Presidency Mitt only has one advantage over Barack Obama - he has vastly more money to spend, thanks to the support he has from a series of his mega-rich gazillionaire chums, who are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into pro-Romney Super-PACs. Mitt's only hope is that he can spend Obama into the ground. But in order for this to happen, poor old Mitt has to energise his base (i.e. the gazillionaires) and that means doing exactly what they tell him to do. And what they told him to do was to select Paul Ryan as his VP nominee, because Paul Ryan's name is synonymous with wanting to reduce taxes on the mega-wealthy while simultaneously reducing spending on everything else.

What we have here is a naked, brazen attempt to finally turn the US into an outright plutocracy, by perpetrating a war against its general population. Mitt and Paul want to complete the work started by George W Bush (remember him? Shudder). It would be a sad outcome for what has been the world's greatest democracy. 

Will Mitt and Paul succeed? Only time will tell. 

But I'm inclined to think that not even Americans will tolerate this.

Why Greece will not Leave the Euro

I am going to make a rash prediction: Greece will not leave the Euro.

All that is required for this is the following: the ECB does what is necessary to keep Greece in the Euro. If the ECB acts rationally and in accordance with its legal mandate and obligations, then this is what it will do – it is obligated to ensure the stability of the Eurozone monetary system, and Greece is part of that system. The ECB has all the tools necessary to do this. Greece will only leave the Euro if the ECB acts irrationally and fails to fulfil its legal obligations. To date, the ECB has acted rationally and has fulfilled its legal obligations.

In order to understand what has been actually happening here one must first of all ignore the meaningless posturing of politicians and the “markets”, and look at the real, meaningful events.

Consider the two most meaningful and important REAL events that have happened this year:

FIRST MEANINGFUL EVENT:

Earlier this year the interest rates on Spanish and Italian debt started increasing to dangerous levels. What happened? The ECB lent lots of money to Spanish and Italian banks on the condition that they would then lend it to the Italian and Spanish governments. The interest rates then went down. If the interest rates again reach dangerous levels, the ECB will do the same thing again. The significant thing here is that the Italian and Spanish banks did what they were told to do by the ECB - they actually have no alternative, since they are effectively bankrupt and thus utterly dependent on the ECB for their survival.

(Previously, I argued here that the ECB should lend money to governments via the EFSF. Instead, the ECB has lent money to governments using the private banks as conduits rather than the EFSF, thus maintaining the charade that “the markets” are doing the lending.  I am glad to see that the Mario Draghi followed my advice and put my plan into action, but he found an even cleverer way to implement it!).

SECOND MEANINGFUL EVENT:

Consider the recent withdrawal of deposits from Greek banks, and other periphery banks. Most of that money is being put in German banks or other core country banks. The German banks have no one to lend this money to (they are hardly going to lend it back to Greece!). So what are they doing with these new deposits? They are depositing them in the ECB to get some interest. What will the ECB do with that money? It will lend it back to the Greek banks and periphery banks, in order to replace the deposits lost in the withdrawals, thus ensuring the stability of the Greek monetary system. Or it will lend it to periphery governments who will then nationalise the banks (The ECB effectively did the same thing when there was a run on Irish banks a few years ago).

CONCLUSION:

These events demonstrate two things: the ECB will willy-nilly do whatever is necessary in order to make sure that neither governments nor private banks in the Eurozone collapse. It has a legal obligation to do so, since its mandate requires it to guarantee European monetary stability. German politicians cannot stop the ECB doing this even if they want to. (A THIRD MEANINGFUL REAL EVENT of the last year was that the German hawks were removed from the ECB board and replaced with political appointees commited to preserving the Euro).

The over all effect of these policies is the following: private European banks are rapidly becoming wards of the ECB. Their balance sheets with the ECB are exploding, effectively putting them under the complete command of the ECB. The ECB tells them what to do and they do it. They are under de facto control of the ECB.

Now: the Eurozone banking system is by far the biggest banking system in the world. In other words, the largest component of “global markets” is gradually being placed under effective public control i.e. under the control of the ECB, which is a non-profit maximising public institution. The profit-maximising institutions are being controlled by a non-profit-maximising institution. The private banks are no longer profit-maximising institutions, since they effectively destroyed themselves in their quest for short-term profits (in the run up to the Great Recession).

Thus, attempts by the “markets” to abolish the Euro will lead the abolition of the markets.

(Incidentally, this will happen even if Greece leaves the Euro. If Greece leaves the Euro capital controls will be implemented all over Europe, thus abolishing the free international movement of capital i.e. thus abolishing the “markets”. That would be an irrational thing to allow to happen. Far better to gradually strangle “the markets” by slowly placing private banks under complete public control).

Consequently, there is no need for European populations to elect Communists or Leftists to power in order to abolish the “markets” since this is already occurring right before our eyes, albeit in a gradual manner, unannounced by the authorities and unnoticed by the general population.

Remove Finland from the European Union

I don’t know about the rest of you but I am increasingly sick and tired of the recent carry on of the Finns. I have tried my best to hold my tongue, but I cannot in good conscience keep silent any longer. The treacherous Finns have been causing trouble all over the place. They have even been suggesting that Greece should be kicked out of the euro. Well, I say: kick Finland out of the euro. Finland is barely even a country. It is just a mobile phone company with a few saunas. So let’s see how many mobile phones they can sell when their new currency appreciates by 5 million percent against every other currency. And Nokia is screwed now anyway since they do not make good smart phones. These arrogant Finns need to be taken down a peg or two. Give the so-called “True Finns” what they want and then let’s see how they get on.

Have you ever met a Finn that you liked? Think about it. Seriously. Think hard. Have you ever met a Finn full stop? The other Scandinavians do not even regard Finland as part of Scandinavia. The Finnish language is of uncertain provenance. Where did this mongrel dialect come from? Nobody knows. Are the Finns really even Europeans? Give the Finns back to Russia and see how they like it.

Ever since Lordy won the Eurovision Song Contest the whole tone of that event has lowered to the point now where it can no longer be taken seriously as a music competition. I blame the Finns. The rot started with them.

In the long run what has Finland got to offer Europe? In this definitive list of 66 beautiful towns of Europe, not a single Finnish town appears. What has Finland contributed to European culture? The composer Sibelius, we are frequently told. If I had a euro for every time I have heard a Finn drone on about the “genius of Sibelius” I would be a rich man. But ask yourself this: if Sibelius is really such a great composer, then why have you and I never heard any of his music?

Who has given more to European civilisation, Greece or Finland? Well, for starters, Greece INVENTED European Civilisation. If Greece had never existed, there would be no Europe; if Finland had never existed, no one in Europe would notice its absence.

The overweening Finns have been demanding collateral for the money they are lending Greece in the bailout. Oh puh-lease! If it wasn’t for the likes of Greece, the Finns would have had no one to sell their surplus mobile phones to in the first place. It’s not Greece’s fault that there is nothing to do in Finland except work really hard making lots of mobile phones to sell to Greece. Nor is it Greece’s fault that there are plenty of fun things to do in sunny Greece that make it seem less necessary to spend all of your time working hard to make mobile phones – especially when you can just get the Finns to do it for you and then buy them with money that you have, in effect, “borrowed” from the Finns with no intention of paying back. Why would the Greeks need to work when they can have such a good time lying on the beaches of beautiful islands or having a riot in Athens? The Finns are basically jealous.

Enough! It was not always like this. In years past, Finland was a country you could respect. It was a country you could believe in. It was a land of hopes and dreams. Who can forget the immortal Monthy Python song eulogising Finland?

Finland, Finland, Finland,
The country where I want to be,
Pony trekking or camping,
Or just watching TV.
Finland, Finland, Finland.
It's the country for me.

You're so near to Russia,
So far from Japan,
Quite a long way from Cairo,
Lots of miles from Vietnam.

You're so sadly neglected
And often ignored,
A poor second to Belgium,
When going abroad.

Would Monthy Python take the trouble to write such a complimentary song about Finland now, given that country’s recent disgraceful performance?

I doubt it.

Occupying Wall Street – a New Birth of Freedom?

Previously we discussed the progressive protests and revolutions that are breaking out all over the world and terrifying the hell out of people with power and in positions of authority. One place where such progressive protests and revolutions appeared to be strangely absent was in the United States of America. At the time I thought this might be due to the uniquely docile and obedient nature of the American populace. Well, it turns out that this was just anti-American racism on my part. At the end of the day Americans are just like the rest of us – as is shown by the current Occupation of Wall Street. The protestors may not succeed in conquering Wall Street this time and the occupation may fizzle out, although thus far it appears to be gaining momentum. But if not today, then one day the people will rise up and conquer Wall Street - and history will remember the current protestors as heroes.

In an important way, this attempted revolution in Wall Street is the Big One, in the sense that it is going straight to the heart of the matter – to the epicentre of “the markets”. If it gains traction you would be surprised at just how fragile the current system is, and at just how quickly it could fall to pieces - it is an ideological construct based on a series of myths and fantasies, so it could easily collapse like a house of cards.

Today, we fear and obey “the markets” in the same way that we used to fear and obey God. “The market” is this weird abstract entity that everyone lives in terror of, even though no one has ever seen it – just like God used to be - omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent. Everything must be done in order to appease and satisfy “the markets”, just as things previously needed to be done in order to satisfy and appease God. Our leaders act in order to try and calm the rage of “the markets” in the same way that they used to act to try and calm the rage of God. We must not raise taxes on the wealthy, not because God would disapprove, but because “the markets” would disapprove. We must reduce government expenditure, not because God will throw a hissy-fit if we don’t, but because “the markets” will throw a hissy-fit if we don’t. We must reduce the amount we spend on health and education not because God demands it, but because “the markets” demand it. The poor and the vulnerable must be sacrificed because “the markets” demand it, just as previously the poor and the vulnerable needed to be sacrificed because the gods demanded it.

Of course, in previous eras the power of God did not actually come from God himself, but from people’s belief in the power of God. The same is true of “the market” – its power over us comes, not from the market itself, but from our belief in its power and its omnipotence – and from the belief that this power is inevitable and immutable. “The market” is like the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz – if we saw it for what it really is, it would no longer wield its power and people would see that things do not have to be like this. “The markets” can only do what they do because the laws allow them to get away with it – ultimately, because we allow them to get away with it. If Wall Street is to be successfully torn down then first we must tear down the walls in people’s minds that prevent them seeing that things do not have to be like this.

Of course, no one who can think still believes in Capitalist propaganda. Does anyone think financiers deserve the money they get? Only the severely brainwashed still really believe this, because we have all seen financiers being bailed out by the taxpayer and have seen them protected and molly-coddled by the nanny-state. We have seen how our system of socialism for the rich involves vast forced transfers of wealth from the less well off to the better off. People have now stopped believing in this stupid system. And once people stop believing in a system it cannot long endure – it is already dead. The pent up anger and rage of the people towards the system is now literally immense.

Can you hear the fear in the voices of the apologists for power and wealth as they desperately try to fool you into believing their lies and their propaganda? They don’t even believe it themselves. They die with their conceits, and only piteous scorn upon their folly waits.

Who's Afraid of the Internet?

Who is afraid of the Information Revolution? Who is afraid of the Internet?

People who work in media and publishing hate and fear the internet and the Information Revolution. So do politicians. And government armies and the police. It terrifies them. What about doctors? They hate it and despise it – or if not quite yet, they soon will. Lawyers? The same. What about IT professionals? Surely they must be happy about it? Nope. Even people who work in IT hate and fear the information revolution because each new major development renders most of their jobs redundant. So the answer to the question “Who is afraid of the Information Revolution?” would appear to be: everyone. Everyone is afraid of the information revolution. Or at least, everyone who makes their living and who gets their power from controlling access to information.

The absolute material wealth and well-being of the human species has increased hugely over the last couple of centuries because more work has been done by machines, robots and computers. Also, the quality and quantity of information available to people has increased and improved, thus allowing them to act more rationally and more effectively. Life-expectancies have increased, infant mortality has decreased, literacy has rocketed. Not only that, the world has become a much, much safer and more civilised place. The oppression of women, ethnic minorities and homosexuals has decreased and become less and less acceptable. Violence has decreased. Basically, for most people things have been getting better and better in every way. Technological development (particularly since the Industrial Revolution) has allowed us to largely abolish slavery and serfdom and replace them with wage-slavery (or “employment”). The onset of the recent Information Revolution will transform our societies just as dramatically, but as yet most people are only dimly aware of just how dramatic this transformation will be.

For example, as indicated above, professional employment is increasingly going to become a thing of the past. Computers and robots will render most “professional” jobs more-and-more irrelevant. Most of the following professionals will no longer be needed very much and you will not need to pay much or anything for their services even if you do ever want them: surgeons, doctors, dentists, pharmacists, lawyers, judges, professors, journalists, architects, engineers, bankers, stockbrokers, financial advisors, accountants, tax consultants, bureaucrats, intelligence agents, managers, salespeople - as well as information technology professionals. Even at the moment, most professionals spend most of their “working” day surfing the internet, pretending to work, drinking coffee, and going to lunch, simply because there is actually very little for them to do (everyone, that is, except me, since I work incredibly hard myself). And they only get paid what they do because artificial barriers to entry allow them to enjoy monopoly power for the moment. Eventually, this farce will end and the barriers will be torn down. So if your self-respect depends on the status and money you hope to get from paid professional employment then be afraid. Be very afraid. On the other hand, if you are a nice person who is fun to be with then there is no need to be afraid of the Information Revolution – you will have high status in the new world that is coming.

MAny people are fretting about the increase in unemployment due to the recent recessions. But they are looking at this problem from the wrong perspective. Unemployment is only a problem because people’s status in society is currently determined by their job. That may have been feasible in the world of the Industrial Revolution. It is utterly unfeasible in the world of the Information Revolution. The best way to get rid of unemployment is actually to get rid of employment. Employment is a new concept. Until the industrial revolution the concepts of employment and “jobs” scarcely existed. We only imagine this to be the natural order because that is all we have experienced. But it wasn’t like that in the past and it will not be like that in the future.

Currently, the biggest determinant of a person’s status in society is their employment or job. Success in employment chiefly indicates two things about a person
a) a capacity to endure boredom and
b) an ability to suck up to people who are responsible for your “success”.
Why either of these abilities should determine a person’s status in society is beyond me. Nevertheless, that has been the case for some time. Anyway, that will all change now – your status in society will increasingly depend on your moral qualities and your social qualities i.e. it will depend on how nice you are and on how creative and fun you are to be around. That is why the mediocre people who currently thrive in the tedious world of professional employment are so terrified of the Information Revolution.

Personally, I am looking forward immensely to the annihilation of employment and an end to wage-slavery. We managed to get rid of slavery and serfdom. Now for the next (and perhaps final) revolution: the elimination of wage-slavery and employment.

Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker knocks it out of the park ... again. Is he the most intelligent human being alive? You decide.

http://edge.org/conversation/mc2011-history-violence-pinker

Religion in the Modern World

Many if not most human beings have a profound and ineradicable yearning to be part of a genuine, officially sanctioned spiritual and religious community with shared rituals, customs and beliefs. These shared rituals need to be something that all the Community and all the Family participate in during the most important life-ceremonies surrounding birth, coming-of-age, marriage and death. This gives meaning and structure to people’s lives and gives them a sense of stability and belonging. People bound together like this feel grounded and they do not feel like isolated atoms. Today, this yearning is not easily satisfied in modern, individualistic societies. Consider the temples, cathedrals and mosques at the centre of ancient cities – these buildings were the visible expression of the collective hope and shared spiritual outlook of the people who lived there. The people who lived in these cities were part of real communities; but the people who live in our fractured and fragmented modern cities are not part of genuine communities – they are isolated atoms, at best clinging together in small, degraded cults. At the centres of our old cities, the temples existed beside the market-places – the temples testified to a higher human need than those of just the market place. But in our new modern cities there are only markets at the centre.

In the modern world there is a kind of spiritual anarchy that leaves people at a loose end. People drift around from cult to cult, feeling vaguely lost. There is no officially sanctioned purpose or structure to life – people have to try and find their own meaning as best they can, and more often than not they fail to get very far with this. If every individual goes off and finds the cult that he likes best, then how can that provide a shared space where Communities and Families can act as one and experience being a unity? The centre cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

Why did this happen? Why was religion, so to speak, banished from the central square of human cities? How and why did this change come about? It happened because of the Modern or Enlightenment notion of the separation of “church” and “state” – the separation of religion from politics. The Enlightenment guarantees freedom of religious worship. The point of this project was to end religious intolerance, persecution and wars. Because of this, in Modern countries religion became a purely private matter – no particular religion can lay any public claim to the centre of our cities. Every religion has equal rights and none has a special claim. This freedom of religious worship is at the heart of modern societies. This arrangement has its benefits but it also has its problems (as outlined above). Is there any way around these problems? What, if anything can be done about this?

The traditional organised religions are now dead or implausible to many – their rigid and dated doctrines often no longer suffice. There is no returning to their special, privileged status at the heart of the city, especially in our diverse, globalised, scientific societies. A multiplicity of established religions in different countries with competing claims also sets up lethal tribal and religious conflicts between various peoples which we can no longer afford. There is no going back. But trying to replace the old religions with “new religions” works even worse – such manufactured cults are contrived and ridiculous (at best, they are the religious equivalent of Esperanto) and have even less claim to be at the heart of the city. So what to do?

The answer to the problem is quite simple in my view – the established, officially-sanctioned religion of modern society needs to be based on tradition, and not invented from scratch, and it needs to include the teachings of all the greatest and most influential prophets of human history. If this was done correctly it would not be superficial or artificial. The Scripture of this religion would be a compendium of the teachings and stories of the greatest prophets and educators of human history – Confucius, Laozi, Buddha, Mahavira, Socrates, Jesus, Muhammad and perhaps some others. Think what a wonderful book that would be! The most wonderful book in the world, containing the best of all that has been thought and said by the wisest most influential figures of human history. Beautiful, magnificent temples would be built in the centre of each city where everyone would go to worship and meditate together, get married, name their babies, be buried, and also learn the teachings of the great and wise prophets. This official religion needs to be a system of thought and stories with beliefs spanning monotheism, polytheism, panentheism, pantheism, monism, atheism, agnosticism, gnosticism and others. In other words, the established religion of all countries needs to be a modified and much expanded form of something like Hinduism, because Hinduism is like that. Nobody can claim that a religion with doctrines as diverse and tolerant as the one I have described above is impossible, for the simple reason that Hinduism IS such a religion, and it works, and its tradition is older and more enduring than that of any of the other existing great religions. In Hinduism there is no one principle founder or prophet, but a whole series of them, all co-existing. There is no fixed dogma, but a whole range of beliefs and traditions putting forward their claims from under the same umbrella. The religion for our globalised world needs to be something like this, but it needs to fully incorporate the teachings of the other great religions as well.

Some people might worry that such a religion would be an incoherent jumble of all the existing religions, slightly modified. I merely reply: ALL of our existing great organised religions are already merely a jumble of numerous already existing religions, slightly modified. Christianity manages to incorporate the prophets and teachings of Judaism even though the two might appear to be in conflict. The Bible itself is the ultimate cobbled-together, incoherent jumble of a book. Islam manages to incorporate the prophets and teachings of both Judaism and Christianity even though they might appear to be in conflict. As already noted, Hinduism manages to incorporate a huge amount of apparently conflicting ideas and traditions from a massive pile of diverse teachers. The Chinese managed to synthesize Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. The Japanese managed to synthesize Shintoism and Buddhism. In point of fact, all the great “traditional” religions are syntheses of other religions that evolved over time - they built on the best of the past and modified it as necessary.

On the farm of one of my in-laws down in Longford in Ireland there is a six thousand year old dolmen. Every Winter Solstice I dance around it naked, festooned with wild flowers, to honour the gods of my forefathers. This dolmen stood in that field for thousands of years before that arriviste St. Patrick came to Ireland and introduced the teachings of Jesus to our small yet great nation. The pre-Christian world-view of pagan Ireland never completely died out, and still exists deep in Irish hearts, along with the Christian world-view. The Celtic Cross is the visible expression of this synthesis of the Pagan and the Christian in the Irish spirit – the Celtic Cross marries the principle symbol of Christianity with the pagan symbols of pre-Christian Ireland. The point is this: we Irish are both traditionally Pagans and traditionally Christians. The same is true of much or even all of Europe. Traditional European religious rituals and beliefs ARE a synthesis. Christmas, the most popular Christian holiday, comes from Yuletide, a pre-Christian pagan winter festival. Spiritual synthesis can and does happen in all sorts of contexts when it needs to happen, and it enriches all traditions when it does so. It happened in the past and it can happen again now and in the future. Our globalised world needs a new religious arrangement. It may take a few hundred years for the religious arrangement outlined above to come into existence, but (in my view at least) it needs to happen.

The UK riots and the Speeding Up of History

The standard line of the official English-speaking media is that the riots in the UK were fundamentally different from the democratic protests we have been seeing in, for example, the Middle East. The English rioters, we are told, were a bunch of criminal, non-political, inarticulate nihilists who just wanted to steal things. That, of course, is exactly what the official media in the Middle East say about protesters there. Revolutions everywhere consist of large groups of poor people who want to “steal” things (i.e. who want to take wealth off the rich and redistribute it to the less well-off). Fundamentally, the English riots were no different in this respect. If the state is not prepared to redistribute wealth then other methods have to be found. The English rioters were deemed “criminals” but the theft involved was much, much less than the theft perpetrated by the financial industry on England over the past decade. In a way, the riots were a response to that. They are a response to the fundamental injustice of the current system that people live under. People have an understanding of what is really going on that was not previously there. If those with power and wealth behave like a bunch of criminal thugs then why should poor people behave any differently?

So the riots in England were just another manifestation of a growing phenomenon we are seeing nearly everywhere in the world. We are seeing massive protests in Israel, as well as in India, China, and the Arab Middle East. We are also seeing them in Spain and Greece. Latin America has practically undergone a collective revolution with leftist governments taking power, redistributing wealth, and uniting in order to end US control over their continent.

Why are all these things happening now and with increasing frequency? The answer is fairly obvious and commonly understood: the Information Revolution is speeding up history even more and creating the conditions for an outbreak of authentic democracy and progressive forces nearly everywhere around the globe. The ability of the existing power-class to control information (and thereby society) is being destroyed by the internet, by Twitter, by Facebook, by Youtube, by email.

There was a time when any tin pot dictator could destroy an entire town, murdering everyone in it, and hardly anybody would know about it. Now, if the dictator does that, the images are all over youtube in a matter of minutes, and the public outrage is unmanageable.

This change does not just apply to tin pot dictators in minor countries but to traditionally powerful institutions like the US military as well. Until quite recently, the US military could behave basically as it wished in the developing world, and nobody either there or in the West would know much about it. Now if the US military, for example, kills some civilians in Iraq, it is beamed relentlessly into every living room in the Middle East with access to the internet or to satellite TV. This is part of what made the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so prohibitively difficult and expensive for the US. The game has changed, and changed RADICALLY.

The situation in China is particularly interesting. Over the last couple of decades there we have witnessed the biggest move of people in history out of poverty. If China wants to be a world power, then it needs wealth, and if it wants wealth it needs an educated middle class. Educated middle classes do not tolerate being censored by governments, and the power of the Chinese government to control information is eroding fast. This is leading to a dramatic increase in the REAL freedom of the Chinese people.

In the 15^th century the discovery of the printing press in Europe lead to a huge increase in democracy, wealth and freedom, as the old power-order of priests, monarchies and aristocrats was overthrown. Slavery was abolished, human rights were established, women were liberated. Unimaginable events that had never happened in human history happened for the first time. The ability of the then existing power-class to control information (and thereby society) was destroyed by the printing press. This took a couple of hundred years. Now what we are seeing is history speeding up even more. The power of the rulers to control information and society is eroding at such a rapid pace that all sorts of amazing things are likely to happen, not just in a matter of centuries, but in a matter of decades, years, weeks, days, hours and minutes.

Those who currently have power will tremble with fear, and shriek that the world is falling down around our heads and descending into uncontrolled anarchy. And life for most people will improve immeasurably, in ways that were previously unimaginable.

How to solve the so-called “Euro-crisis” (and also save Western Civilisation as we know it)

Here is how to solve the so-called “euro-crisis”: Allow the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) to borrow from the European Central Bank. The loans made to eurozone states by the EFSF, and the conditions attached to them, would then have to be unanimously agreed by all the eurozone governments. By doing this, the EFSF would be a vehicle for creating "eurobonds", but Germany would have effective control over the process.

This would solve the “euro-crisis” in a stroke, and could even save the Western world from continued decline. The plan would have the following characteristics:

1 - The plan would remove the “markets” from the equation. What are the "markets"? The "market" consists of a handful of individuals in a handful of private financial institutions who decide where to put the money they have at their disposal. This handful of individuals has no democratic accountability to anyone. They lend money to governments. Where do they get the money that they lend to governments? Some of it comes from deposits, but most of it is borrowed from Central Banks, at a lower interest rate than that at which they then lend it on to governments. This is how they make their profits. They are useless intermediaries who don't do anything except cause trouble when they start demanding extortionate interest rates from the governments to which they are lending. So they need to be removed from the equation. If the ECB could lend to the EFSF and then the EFSF lent to governments, it would simply remove the useless parasitic "markets" from the equation.

(Btw, if you are wondering where the Central Banks get the money they lend to the private banks – the answer is: they create it out of thin air, by pushing a couple of buttons on a computer somewhere).

2 - The plan would give Germany effective control over the fiscal policies of feckless eurozone states. How much is lent by the EFSF and at what rate, would need to be unanimously agreed by all the eurozone governments – thus giving Germany the required veto. What the loans are to be spent on, and the plan for how they are to be paid back, would also require unanimity. This would ensure that the fund is not abused by feckless states. In effect, any member state that wanted to use the fund would have to hand over a substantial part of their fiscal policy decisions to the other member states. If they don't want to do that, then they don't need to use the EFSF - they can just go to the "markets" (which will still exist) and borrow off them instead. But if they are frozen out from the markets, they would need to have the agreement of the other eurozone member states as to their fiscal policy - this would create a de facto fiscal union in the EU.

3 - At the moment the ECB cannot lend directly to governments, because of the danger that it would print loads of money and cause hyperinflation. Under the above plan, the ECB would not be lending to governments but to the transnational institution of the EFSF, which could only act if there is unanimous agreement between the 17 eurozone governments. Again, the responsible member states could just block anything they didn't like.

4 - The ECB would retain complete control over eurozone interest rates - it would decide at what rate it would loan to the EFSF. Thus, the independence of the ECB would not be at all compromised.

5 - Using the EFSF would probably not require a treaty change - the plan could be implemented quickly. It would not require creating any new European institutions since the two institutions involved (the ECB and the EFSF) already exist.

For the first time in over a decade, I am optimistic about the future of Ireland and the Irish.

Why am I optimistic? The main reason I am optimistic is because I like to be the opposite of everyone else. For example, during the Irish boom I was a prophet of doom, confidently predicting national bankruptcy. Now that everyone is filled with gloom, my infantile contrarianism is compelling me to be positive.

Here are some other reasons why I am optimistic:

• The country is now run by Trichet, Merkel and the European Commission. They more-or-less know what they are doing, unlike the ruling class in Ireland.

• Exports are booming and for the first time in years the country has a balance of payments surplus. The country is selling more stuff than it is buying. We haven’t done that for years. It is a sign that we are finally living within our means.

• Deflation is making the cost of living here more realistic, which in turn can make salaries and and other costs more realistic. That will restore our “competitiveness”. We will recover more quickly than people think.
  

• We are eventually going to default on a lot of the debt. There is no way we can pay it. When things settle down in the eurozone, Trichet or his successor will give us the green light to start reneging on all the debt, and then this “unfortunate little episode” will all be forgotten.

• The boom was a financial disaster but it generated lots of real wealth – roads, bridges, infrastructure, buildings, hundreds of thousands of houses and apartments. Once we default on the debt, the financial problem will be ameliorated but the real wealth will still remain, and people will be able to buy things at realistic prices.

• Lots of young people are emigrating. They will be able to lead decent lives abroad, in nicer climates. They are educated and dynamic and these young Irish people will thrive wherever they go. Then, when things get a bit better here (after we default on the debt) they can come back if they wish. This is better than them staying here, and working their entire lives as debt-slaves to pay off the borrowings of Fitzpatrick, Fingleton and all the other arseholes.

• For the few young people who manage to stay in Ireland, houses and everything else will become an awful lot cheaper. Their lives will be much more pleasant than was previously the case.
  

• There will be a general election in the New Year, and Fianna Fail will be decimated. This will be of symbolic importance – marking a break with the past. But it will only be of symbolic significance. There will be a new government, but that won’t make any difference in reality, since from now on, Irish politicians will just have to do what they are told to do from Europe.

• By the time this is over, there will no longer be any Irish-owned banks – they will all be given or sold to foreign banks. Given that the Irish banks destroyed the country, this is appropriate. It also means any debt-risk in future cannot be transferred by the government to the Irish people. It will prevent booms from happening in Ireland. New Zealand has no domestically owned banks, and it works fine.

• The cosseted, cliquish, ageing, smug, over-paid professional class in Ireland will be forced to reform. They will be given an enormous kick up the arse by the foreigners who now control the country. They won’t know what has hit them.

• What has happened with the IMF\EU bailout is a disaster for the ruling, insider class in Ireland. It is they who are now doing most of the screeching and the wailing. For most of the rest of the country, the disaster has already happened, and the future if anything is beginning to look a bit brighter.