Just looking around

Thought I'd look around the place for abit, maybe put some new windows over there or whatnot.

Happy Father's day out there to all the dads.

Hello?

I thought I was guest blogger. Strange here, not what I am used to at all.

The Price of Oil

L'Ombre de l'Olivier writes of the real reason for the collapse of the Soviet Union and is our first guest blogger:

Excellent SF writer Charlie Stross has a post where, inter alia, he links to a fascinating paper by Yegor Gaider (former PM of Russia) on the reasons why the Soviet Union collapsed. It is well worth reading in its entirety but I'll summarize it as:

1. The collectivization of Soviet agriculture meant the Soviet Union could not feed itself
2. To buy food it needed hard currency
3. Hard currency was available by selling oil
4. Unfortunately in the mid 1980s Saudi Arabia decided to drastically increase production and thereby wrecked the sums of the Kremlin and left them in a total mess. The Saudis did this because they perceived that as the best way to stop the Russians gaining more influence on the Arab world and as revenge in part for Afghanistan.
5. The Kremlin tried to borrow money from international banks but in about 1989 the banks decided the Kremlin was a bad credit risk
   

Thereafter the Kremlin got money with lots of strings (e.g. about not using force in E Europe) that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. This story doesn't mention the "Reagan outspend the military" idea that many Americans are keen on but it doesn't matter directly as indirectly, that idea is true. The Americans made it clear that military attempts to get at more food (or control of oil wells) wouldn't work hence non-military means had to be used. And non-military means meant loans that would be cancelled if the Kremlin did things the bankers didn't like. QED.

There are a bunch of lessons that can be drawn from this. One is that if we in the "West" want to kill Islamic fundamentalism, dictatorial totalitarianism and the like probably the best thing we can do is find an alternative energy source that is as cheap as oil and which we can produce ourselves. Another is that a country that can't feed itself is dreadfully vulnerable.

(This post also appears at my own blog l'Ombre de l'Olivier )

[alan johnston] j'espère aussi qu'il sera libéré

Alan Johnston, enlevé à Gaza le 12 mars, pourrait être libéré dans les prochaines heures.

"J'espère qu'Alan Johnston sera libéré dans les prochaines heures si Dieu le veut", a déclaré le représentant du Hamas à Téhéran, Abou Ossama Al-Motti, dimanche matin. "Il sera libéré. S'il veut rester à Gaza il sera notre invité mais s'il veut partir pour la Grande-Bretagne, il pourra le faire", a-t-il ajouté.

Alan Johnston, correspondant de la BBC à Gaza, a disparu depuis le 12 mars. Il était apparu en bonne santé dans une vidéo diffusée le 1er juin par le groupe Armée de l’Islam, qui avait revendiqué son enlèvement dans un enregistrement sonore le 9 mai.

[people quiz] ten names from history

1] Born at at Braunau am Inn, surname possibly Schicklgruber, 173 cm tall, twice decorated for bravery in war, painted in his early years, spoke positively of his Christian heritage.

2] Named Mortenson, signed by The Blue Book modeling agency, appeared in in Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay!, said: "Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you're a human being, you feel, you suffer."

3] Pioneered Satyagraha , urged disobedience of the salt tax, could not stomach his English landlady's mutton and cabbage, killed by Nathuram Godse .

4] Known as "El Dragón" , born in the parish of Crowndale, one of the first slave traders, died of dysenterya major east-west road in Marin County, California is named after him.

5] He was a silversmith, developed an intelligence and alarm system, worked for the Committee of Public Safety, participated in the disastrous Penobscot Expedition, later opened a opened a hardware and home goods store.

6] Known for her politically incorrect behaviour, she won eight Olympic medals, including five golds, and six Commonwealth Games gold medals, winning gold for the same event at three successive Olympics, was alleged to have climbed a flagpole in the Emperor Hirohito’s palace, taking the Olympic flag.

7] She stands at 1.66m (5'4) and weighs 48kg (106lbs), many coaches did not like her because they thought that she was too "heavy" and "ugly", one of the most decorated gymnasts in history, dropped her hoop in Sydney in 2000 and lost gold.

8] Had a lifelong association with the Victor Talking-Machine Company, made millions of dollars, was present at the San Francisco earthquake, is pictured wearing a bedsheet, draped like a toga, in his first publicity photograph because his only shirt was in the laundry.

9] Is the author or editor of fourteen political books, appeared on Sunday Service on BBC Radio Five Live, educated at Ashdon County Primary School, spent a year teaching English at the Gymnasium Besigheim, was nursing assistant at the Werner Wicker Klink in West Germany, sold his bookshop, pioneered a new form of media.

10] Married her second cousin, powerful enough to eliminate anyone who was a potential threat, had a brothel under an assumed name and organised orgies for upper class women, won an all night competition with a prostitute.

Answers here

[debt economy] and unbridled acquisitiveness

The Age leads today's edition with a photo of a luxury yacht and the caption:

Billionaire says week-long wedding party on Cote d'Azur "nothing lavish".

Beside this - the main headline announces:

Debt crisis forces mass super raid [meaning superannuation]

And the opening paragraphs:

Tens of thousands of Australian families are being forced to raid their superannuation savings to pay off crippling personal debts. Since 2001, the amount of money taken from superannuation accounts to pay off debt has quadrupled.

It is also possible to have money released from a superannuation account to prevent foreclosure of a mortgage or the exercise of a power of sale over a principal place of residence.

Forgive me but two things immediately strike the eye:

1] The problem itself;

2] The sheer gall of the newspaper running the photo and caption beside that particular lead story. It is as akin to running an airline disaster movie on a flight. It's a disgrace and the sub-editors would have been horsewhipped years ago.

As for the problem itself, one wonders, you know. One really wonders if we're so far into this madness now that we can neither see what we're doing nor wish to discuss it. There have been four major pro-active moves going on in the west since the end of the last world war:

1] The weaning of the citizenry, by the financial institutions, off "live within your means" and onto the debt economy;

2] With the nexus between unit cost and wages now broken, via the mechanism of credit, prices are now free to soar to levels where the only way to purchase anything substantial is to go into hock for it, thereby turning the finncial insitutions into mother pigs and us into little piglets;

3] The fuelling of acquisitiveness. I am no socialist but still one must give the nod to R.H.Tawney, who wrote The Acquisitive Society [1961] in which he understood the dynamics of a society mad for ever escalating personal riches.

4] At the same time:

He [Tawney] was deeply opposed to centralization and saw the problems of an over-concentration of power in the hands of the national state. He was critical, for example, of the support of many socialists in the 1920s and 1930s for the 'Police collectivism' of Russia.

In other words, statism and the wresting of the mechanisms of real power from the citizenry into the hands of a self-perpetuationg elite, masquerading as elected leaders. Was John F Kennedy an accident? Was he heck. Is pre-selection a free rising to the top of the most meritorious? Is it heck.

5] The systematic suppression of Christianity and the Christian ethic by:

a. the rise of anti-christians like Swaggart and the like as its most vocal spokespeople;

b. the relativism and non-action of supposed church leaders - Ramsay, O'Connor and the like, along with the church in Russia, failing to take firm stands, as they are charged to do by their office and instead relegating Christianity to the Sunday "comfort zone" and leaving the moreal crusading to people like John Howard, PM of Australia;

c. weaning people onto the god of acquisitiveness and replacing chapels of G-d with chapels of tat, i.e. smooth tiled and glitzy shopping emporia;

d. the progressive stacking of the education and legal system with morally and religiously relative humanists in key strategic positions, in order to influence policy and take decisions with reference only to similar thinking people;

e. with people's attention effectively distracted and an apathetic malaise in its place, the real attack can take place [take your pick which article to peruse].

The suppression of the "Calvinistic" work ethic and notions of fair pay for a fair day's work, living within one's means, caring for our fellow man, the offering of atonement and redemption, the need to place limits and perspective on our desires, the intolerance of deviance, the championing of the family as the key unit of society - all of these require suppression in order for the new system to work.

6] With all that hard work done, with the people now defenceless and at the mercy of the ruling elite financial cabals, the new feudalism can begin - the increasing Statism, the removal, step by step, of citizens' rights, the re-ordering of the means of economic interaction even down to removal of coinage and its replacement by electronic buying and selling, controlled from centres in the hands of the financial institutions, the replacement of real money on a gold standard with fiat money [Roosevelt was the most to blame for this] and the inexorable move towards the next crash.

The Fed is in the hands of the Morganistic cabals, interest rates are in their hands, personal debt is in their hands, political power is effectively in their hands and the only people who even get a sniff of power are of a certain type.

Call it the Twelve True Fishermen, call it the Skull and Bones, call it what you will. The manifestations metamorphose and reappear in diferent forms but the vermin at the top remain the same - men and women like Tony and Cherie Blair who sold their souls early to be allowed a shot at grasping the Main Chance - these are only victims, almost as much as the very people they're oppressing on behalf of their masters.

The new feudalism is here, the era of the police state - and men and women like ourselves are doing absolutely nothing to stop it, outside of the blogosphere and in one or two other places. And yet even the blogosphere is like an old man in the corner, muttering indistinctly to himself and not hurting anyone.

And yet there's hope - the MSM and its controllers are certainly paying great attention to one of the last media to be suppressed [around 2012, on the grounds of national security].

Trouble is, there are no free lunches and never ever have been.

Let's all get out of the debt economy, live within our means, rediscover our spiritual roots and then the whole world of the people driving this destructive process ever onward and downward will collapse. The fuel of greed and personal acquisitiveness on which the New Feudalism depends will simply evaporate and the calls for war and the state of emergency will never eventuate.

Cassandra, at the Lighthouse, has approached this issue from another direction but we've both ended up in the same place.