At the End of the Day

All pleasant and correct

The other night, Gary Lineker introduced 4 swimming finals on BBC1. On Channel 5+1 there was Police Academy 5 and Ghostbusters 2. On More 4, Season 14 of River Cottage. The 50 greatest magic tricks were on Watch. And on BBC2, there was Episode 5 of 29 from season 33. Do you ever get the feeling that television now is the triumph of quantity over quality?

I’m Home Alone at the moment. One day I will go into the reasons why, but not just yet. Suffice to say this year has been something of a horrible anus. Pretty much everything from the pension fund to my favourite pastis water-jug has been broken or just gone down the tubes. Within a day of arrival, the hedge clippers died, followed in short order by the dishwasher. Then the downstairs loo cistern plunger snapped, and the washing machine stopped rinsing. The pool cleaner had a cerebral episode from which it has only partially recovered, my favourite hammock split, and the cafetiere took to going “Urrrr” but not much else. Now my netbook has died, and over the last few days I have been camp commandant in charge of three bitches: one with wanderlust, one in season, and one who thinks hiding in the garden and 11 pm is hysterically funny. I am that man constructing a conning tower with searchlights.

I’m not good on my own : I am what the shrinks call ‘group dependent’ – or as my wife puts it, “You need an audience”. Three terriers make a terrific audience, but wagging tails are not quite as satisfying as the thunder of applause or an explosion of mirth. So of an evening down here (assuming no hard-pressed Athenian is giving me the lowdown on yet more elite embezzlement) I often watch some decent telly or  surf around for bizarre stuff on the virtual superhighway of unregulated bollocks. Unregulated bollocks is different to MSM bollocks, in that its purveyors do actually believe the delusional drivel they transmit; but it can be very funny indeed. Even more satisfying, though, is the odd gem that never quite makes it into the Big League.

Last night on one of the endless BBC digital channels there was a so-so documentary about finding life on Mars. All my life I have been a wide-eyed fan of space travel and boldly splitting infinitives into the Final Frontier. I decided years ago that the physical version of space exploration will be the subject of great hilarity fifty or more years from now. To my great satisfaction, everything Einstein suggested continues to be proved correct by colliders and French scientists, and so I’m still firmly of the view that Electromagnetic timeless rope from one place to another will be the breakthrough allowing us to go wherever we like. Such a thing does, of course, beg the question as to why no aliens have been to check us out yet…although the unregulated mad would have you believe that they’re all around us. Harriet Harman fits the theory, but as far as I know there’s only one of her.

The Mars thing fascinate me chiefly because, to the commonsense layman, it seems perfectly obvious by now that there’s never been life of any kind whatsoever on the Red Planet. The BBC docu I was watching tried manfully to suggest that there just might quite possibly who knows and you never know once upon a time have been a spoonful of water on Mars sufficient to sustain something or other for seven nanoseconds, but it failed to convince.

For an ageing heretic like me, this doesn’t add up. Mars has a thin atmosphere, and is too far from the sun to support life. The gamma rays alone – cuting through the diluted Martian stratosphere like a steak knife through butter – would’ve zapped anything aeons ago.

But finally, a gem from French News online that I must share with you.

The jet set will soon be able to order prime Saint-Geniès des Mourgues boeuf to complement their Château Pétrus in those top class restaurants in the capital where nothing so vulgar as price is ever raised.

Thanks to adventurous agriculteurs in the village of Lunel-Viel, in the Hérault department of south-eastern France, beef farmers are now being encouraged to let their cattle tipple generously on strong Languedoc wine. The principle being that the taste of properly prepared beef can only improve if during l’élevage,the cows have regularly consumed generous quantities — two litres a day to be precise —  of Saint-Geniès des Mourgues.

If the Japanese feed their Tajima or Kobe beef on beer mash why can’t we be French and fatten ours with vin, asks Jean-Charles Tastavy president of a local wine marketing group and the man who has led the bold four-month experiment where Angus and Camargue breeds were fed special diets supplemented by Languedoc wine.

According the French new agency AFP he hit on the idea after reading about studies done in Canada and Spain showing that happy cows give the best meat. What could be happier — he might have answered if he had been asked — than a cow driven to drink, or rather well supplied with some of the best local muscat?

“For each animal, alcohol intake should be equivalent to the amount recommended by health authorities for a human being, namely two or three glasses of wine a day, which in cow terms amounts to about one or one and half litres a day,” he said, (cue a whole new sub industry as wine growers line-up to offer wine tasting for discerning cattle, and while we are at it will the beef that choose wines stoppered with cork rather than screw caps sell for an even higher price?)

Together with the Conseil Général de l’Hérault  M Tastavy has now registered the “Vinbovin” trademark and set out rules for breeding a new special wine- enriched beef for French tables.

Speaking to AFP about the development, M. Claude Chaballier the Languedoc cattle breeder who carried out the wine feed experiments said: “The cattle greatly enjoyed their menu of rolled barley and hay washed down with two litres of Saint-Geniès des Mourgues , consuming it with relish. Indeed I even thought about giving them Muscat next time so as to imbue the meat with a musky taste,” said M. Chaballier, director of the the Hérault breeders union who added that “the better the quality of the wine on the cattle menu, the better the meat that will emerge.”

This marriage of wine gastronomy and livestock has met the highest expectations of all those involved. “We subjected it to some close tasting scrutiny and it was exceptional”, M. Chaballie said.

The only downside is the added cost of the feed even if the wine-enriched diet is only introduced in the last 4 months of the cow’s life. Their daily meal costs accompanied as they now are by high quality wine, rise from 5 to 15 euros. However this is offset by the retail price at the butchery where a kilo of wine-enhanced bouef will cost “hundreds of euros for the noblest cuts”.

Laurent Pourcel, a Michelin-starred chef agrees with the farmers. “This is a luxury concept for fine dining and farmers have all the incentives they need to produce it. “The texture is very special, beautiful, marbled, tender and caramelizes perfectly during cooking. It has a fine and very strong taste.” he said.

Mr. Pourcel has already convinced some of his Parisian colleagues that this is the next big thing on their luxury menus. “All the great Parisian restaurants will take it,” he predicts.

On the whole, I think Monsieur Pourcel’s expectation exceeds that of the Mars scientists by some distance. But all thinhs are relative.

GREEK CRISIS: Geithner intervention threatens to split Athens coalition

Venizelos….inspecting the American gravy train?

Commentators on the Coalition/Troika negotiations are underestimating the geopolitical dimension

Emboldened by an American promise of support – and terrified of being wiped out politically if further Troika burdens are placed upon the Greek people – the faux and moderate Left part of the Greek Coalition is in disagreement with right-wing Prime Minister Antonis Samaras this evening about how to proceed in its negotiations with the EU/ECB/IMF triad. The Troika itself (aware of an increasing US influence in Greece) is treading more softly than it was last week. Against a background of growing anger in Germany, this is now an extremely unstable situation for the debt markets to analyse…and one from which America can benefit enormously.

The decision to hand tonight (Tuesday) in Athens is which way to jump – into Merkel’s FiskalUnion, or under Geithner’s cloak of protection. And it looks like that choice is causing a split between Right and Left. The coalition leaders met on Monday evening to finalise the austerity proposals, but there was no agreement: Venizelos and Kouvelis suggested that there should be no more taxes, and a renegotiation of the repayment timelines. Samaras disagreed.

But note this from the Collyns-reassured Finance Minister Stournaras: “The point is that our choices should not annul our ability to negotiate and remain in the eurozone….either we take the necessary measures or we return to the drachma within two months”. This isn’t an ultimatum from the American-connected Finance Minister: he is saying, “Make your bloody minds up”. However, just in case anyone was in doubt about the poo-or-get-off-the-pot nature of the situation, his Deputy Christos Staikouras told NET National TV, “Cash reserves are almost zero. It is risky to say until when [they will last] as it always depends on the budget execution, revenues and expenditure. But we are certainly on the brink, we did not receive the aid tranche we were supposed to and we have the pending issue of an ECB bond maturing on August 20th.”

This afternoon BST, PASOK leader Evangelo Venizelos presented to his parliamentary group of MPs  a 10-point strategic framework, reiterating calls for the extension of Greece’s fiscal adjustment period by two years. So in many ways at the minute, the Geithner envoy intervention is having a telling effect. As we’ve seen for some time now, this issue is about more than Greek eurozone membership: it is about even more than Greek contagion. It is about securing America’s future.

A  number of American Sloggers emailed and threaded after the latest update on the long-running plan by Washington and the Pentagon to hive Greece off from Europe….and Germany’s resistance to it. A common reaction was that the US has many bases already, and the entire gamble wasn’t worth it. I comment threaded myself at one stage, to make this point:

‘It’s not just oil/minerals or just a base or just Islamism: it’s the confluence of all that plus Russian, Chinese, German and Turkish influence in the area. The US is a fading Empire desperate to carry on being the Top Cop on the planet. Geopolitics is as much about egomania as it is left-brain stuff.’

An influential Greek wrote to me today as follows:

‘I read your article today. More and more frequent visits of U.S. agents in Greece have the purpose to convince Greece to go to a new nest. If this can be achieved there will be two two benefits for the US: the weakening of Europe, and the strengthening of Israel and US influences in the Middle East. I believe we will see more of this in the future – the “Greek corridor” (Israel-Cyprus-Greece) [that] can ensure the necessary survival of Israel while in case of hot crisis , it can be used to transport aid to the Theatre of Operations in the Middle East. This vital corridor cannot and should not be allowed to be checked by Turkey as it will then be vulnerable to any intervention.’

I posted on Aril 29th last about the electronic comms cable being jointly laid by Israel, Cyprus and Greece. These three nations see themselves as inextricably linked and capable of leveraging their strategic importance to the big boys. Last June 21st, I wrote a piece about Putin’s ambition to turn Cyprus into a Mediterranean Cuba. It took the MSM a week to catch on to that one. Last year, the Russians gave Cyprus a $2.5 bn loan at a massively discounted rate…on vastly better terms than those offered by the catatonics in Brussels. The Kremlin has many servicemen on the island, and many investments in the Greek half, while the President is a pro-Moscow Communist. Turkish Cyprus is a hotbed of Islamism, and was a refuelling point for the soi-disant ‘peace flotillas’ of which we heard so much in 2010.

Since last February, I have been a lone voice using sound sources, local knowledge and strategic nous to show a consistent American attempt to hive off Greece and thus provide both reassurance and supplies to what security services throughout the West now refer as The Greek Corridor. My piece on Wall-Street cooperation with Washington  to get Greece ‘amputated’ and thus ripe for American adoption went viral very quickly on February 16th this year. The guys over at Zero Hedge still think I’m a hoaxer: but that plan keeps resurfacing, and as time goes on it gets harder and harder to deny it. I said Geithner’s envoy had given his Greek friends a ticket to ride, and now Geithner is here himself.

To get your head round this, the first thing one must do is to stop thinking about Greece as a small country with a big debt, full stop. This is geopolitics, not conspiracy theory – and geopolitics is often about opportunity. Greece is being bullied by Berlin-am-Brussels because, without making an example of them and playing for time, Franco-German banks would’ve fallen over and caused a major disaster. But it didn’t take long for American thinkers to see this desperate ploy as their big chance to cement a presence where it really counts at the moment: at the south-eastern end of the Mediterranean.

Others dismiss Greek Aegean resources as chickenfeed, and point up the strong Turkish-held belief that some of them belong to Ankara anyway. But this is precisely what it’s all about. Let me offer you something that every knowledgeable writer in this theatre accepts, be they Greek, American or German: All three intelligence services have massively underplayed the undersea wealth under the Aegean. So too has Mossad, without a shadow of a doubt. Putin (ex KGB) knows this, Schäuble (ex German Interior Minister)  knows this, the Fed Treasury knows it, and so too does the Athens Coalition. Both the Americans and the Russians are determined that Turkey won’t get its hands on one ounce of rare earth or a single drop of oil. These are the stakes, and they’re why this is massively important.

If one draws a slightly wobbly ellipse within the Mediterranean/Arab world as follows -

-  what results is the sphere of influence every major national player would like to be in….because it has rapid flashpoint response, the overwhelmingly biggest energy form on the planet, the epicentre of unstable religious fanaticism, and above all massive supplies of post-modern minerals required for the next stage of economic growth. The Slog essay on Syrian complexities last Saturday used precisely the same perspective.

Talk to those on the ground and at sea in the Med area, and you will learn that Cyprus is swarming with Russian engineers and Greece with American engineers – in the same way that Black Africa is covered in Chinese engineers.  The American elite doesn’t give a crap about Europe beyond two considerations: the euro is a potential competitor to the dollar, and the eurozone screw-up is a massive threat to Wall Street and US debt management costs. It just happens that on the arse end of Europe is Greece, and neutralising its debt-threat is the treble-chance jackpot for Washington: less fiscal contagion, more access to industrial wealth, and the long arm of the law made shorter when things get out of hand.

Important geopolitical factors vary and transmute over time. In the nineteenth century it was naval routes, trade access and Imperial cachet. In the twentieth century, energy, political philosophy, and nuclear stability. In the 21st so far, it is morphing into energy, efficient exploitation, control of fanaticism, and – connected to this – power over nuclear proliferation. But always, unfailingly, it is about business.

Also today at The Slog: How Delaware shenanigans may yet break the world’s greatest soccer brand

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amazingly, the greedy Glazers are going ahead with the New York Man United flotation

Despite the widespread doubts about price, viability, debt, dual-control share structure, and team performances under their tutelage, the Glazer family has decided to go ahead with the NYSE public offering of Man Utd stock…at $20 a share.

I posted last week about what New York thinks of the Glazers, and why the offering will be a flop. Since then, the cash-strapped cryogenic family has decided to go ahead anyway. It will make the Facebook disaster look like the launch of Apple.

I contacted a senior, close observer of the situation today, who offered this quote: “Anyone who invests in this should be taken away in a Yellow Van”.

This idiotic and desperate launch is not taking place for the good of United, but instead to bail out the hopelessly over-leveraged Glazer carpet baggers. Worse still, the flop will do irreparable damage to a Club already facing criticisms of being in decline after last season’s lack of big trophies and preponderance of indifferent team performances. And of course, all the brokerage and flotation fees will be dumped on the Reds….not the Guilty Glazers.

Fellow Red Devils, we need some more FUCM and Newton Heath moments to try and derail this cynical ploy. In the meantime, let’s get viral with this information, and ensure that those raping the Club realise they’ve been rumbled.

Milton Friedman at 100….

….is dead. So is Marx. So is Keynes. None of them are relevant to the New Future. It is time fiscal economics moved on.

Milton Friedman (left) would’ve been a hundred years old today, and all over the Western world, people who worship him, and use his quotes ad nauseam – but never talk about the consequences of his ‘ideas’ in the real world – are writing hagiographic guff about his influence. What follows is one from the Slog archives – even more relevant today – about the stifling idolatry applied to the likes of Marx, Keynes, and Friedman…none of whom knew about Libor rigging, speed of light trading, Russian market blagging, Ebay, eurozone meltdown, Northern Rock, gold price manipulation, intrabank online swindles, and a thousand other ‘free market’ atrocities.

There was an interesting piece in the New York Times recently (where else?) by Paul Krugman, in which he rather oddly argued on the side of the bankers (“there isn’t a structural problem really”) to make the following liberal (“let’s spend our way out of trouble”) point:

‘All of this strongly suggests that we’re suffering not from the teething pains of some kind of structural transition that must gradually run its course, but rather from an overall lack of sufficient demand — the kind of lack that could and should be cured quickly with government programs designed to boost spending.’

It’s the same one-dimensional thinking that could just as easily be applied to Merkel, Schäuble, and the 1922 Committee in its insistence on more and more cuts to services, and tax cuts for those with money to spend: it’s all about demand. But even more depressing is Krugman’s example as to how this sort of return to growth can be achieved: an article written in June 1939 saying the same thing as those (like me) who argue there is a structural problem with the model of capitalism we’re using:

‘The paper in question was published in June 1939. Just a few months later, World War II broke out, and the United States — though not yet at war itself — began a large military buildup, finally providing fiscal stimulus on a scale commensurate with the depth of the slump. And, in the two years after that article about the impossibility of rapid job creation was published, U.S. nonfarm employment rose 20 percent — the equivalent of creating 26 million jobs today.’

This is pretty  cool thinking from Krugman: we’re in the mire, quick – let’s get a war going and then supply it. This isn’t what he means of course, but the argument is so narrow as to be laughable. His problem in the piece is that he is arguing within the strangulating confines of  a sterile debate about theory and process…but in 2012, when he is offering 1939 solutions – comparing a debt free US with the zillion-dollar indebted America we see today. His article is the perfect quintessence of how and why we are failing to tackle what is, really, The Global Cultural Crisis: the one that should’ve begun in 2004, then was kicked down the time-line to 2008, and is still unravelling in 2012.

For people like Krugman and Buckley, the past is for shaping the future, and the present is for kicking into the future.

Think about it for a second. Wolfgang Schäuble is driven by memories of the Weimar 1923-25 hyperinflation: an event caused by direct money-printing following the draconian exconomic sanctions of the First World War. It all took place 23 years before he was born. The Tory’s ‘radical’ committee is called the 1922. A substantial proportion of votes in the first Greek election this year were cast in support of a theorist who died 130 years ago. Angela Merkel’s approach to life was learned in a Communist State that collapsed 22 years ago. The British Prime Minister (when he isn’t making it all up as he goes along) clings to the at least partly discredited ideas of Baroness Thatcher who, along with Reagan, let loose the dogs of banking on us. His Government is dominated by rich public schoolboys and Oxbridgers living in a fantasy world of good old days when everything was getting better and better.

The Right across the West cleaves as strongly as ever to the ideas of Milton Friedman, a bloke whose monetarist laissez-faire principles insisted  that a self-correcting economy would result in the absence of regulation….as opposed to the absence of wealth apart from the rich 3%. That same rich 3% now manipulates markets from gold to Government bonds across the world….all in the name of the Mighty Milt. He proposed the idea of trickle-down wealth, which in practice works in the opposite manner. Friedman spent thirty years developing his ideas: thirty years in which there was no global internet, China was a sleeping Red, satellite communication was unknown, and Bob Diamond had reached the tender age of twelve. There were no SOL trading software packages, deep liquidity pools, Hedge Funds (beyond a tiny sector after 1949 doing what Hedgies should do) or segmented multivariate bourses.

The Left clutches the comfort-blanket of Keynes ever more closely to its one-more-heaving breast. J M Keynes, the man whose opening words in talking about State economic stimulation were “it should never be attempted unless the public finances are in good order” is presented as the man who’s ideas never failed, but he wouldn’t recognise a single element of the globalist investment banking system that is so out of control in the contemporary economic environment.

In the UK, Labour is led by two men who seem incapable of getting beyond Keynes, and thus fail to land even a kid glove on the Friedmanite economic thinking of Camerlot’s right wing. All they need to do this is some Lesson 1 maths, but they’d rather support (and be supported by) a trade union movement representing a mass workforce that’s been devoid of the mass thing for two decades. The most powerful woman in the Party believes every word of socio-psycho-gender theories put forward between 1968 and 1971, and then proved completely wrong a quarter of a century ago. In the States, even Ron Paul – by far the most thoughtful and inventive of the Presidential candidates – can’t get beyond the idea of currencies based on the gold standard. Why gold in 2012? Because that’s what was used in 1926?

Francois Hollande in France represents a soft-left view that has failed wherever it’s been tried. Even in Greece – where the Establishment Parties are being deserted in droves – the successful breakthrough occurred among those Parties admiring the ideas of a dictator who shot himself in 1945 after reducing Europe to rubble, and a Soviet system that imprisoned and killed more of its citizens than any other State in history – including the one run for forty years by a mad paedophile in Beijing.

Why is this? The explanation varies depending on which tribe one is talking about at any given time; but basically, it’s a species thing largely involving a terror of the future, and a suspicion of The New Idea. We are all haunted by the ghosts of economies past.

Bankers quote the past purely from sociopathic greed. They point to it as a track record…while noting, in half-point type at the bottom of every investment contract, ‘The past is no guide to the future’. I think this is what folks call hedging.

Bureaucrats in general (and Brussels in particular) stick rigidly to the past as a form  of self-preservation. They are The Preservatists I’ve written about previously: like all contraceptives, they stop unexpected things from happening. But then they happen anyway, and so the functionaries defend themselves by saying that the event was unforeseen.

Economists have only ever worked with a rear-view mirror while driving through the fog. It’s tough to be a visionary while driving like this, but Marx managed it, basing his dialectical materialism on the idea of socialism being the synthesis of the agrarian and capitalist systems. This really was using the past as a predictor of the future, and it failed – as Marx himself accepted in his fading years. Free marketeers of the Friedmanite School admire the work of Adam Smith, a Scottish mercantile theorist who died 222 years ago, when half the global producers of 2012 hadn’t been discovered let alone exploited. Well vivat professores and all that, but could they at least have been alive in the 20th century please?

Large multinationals recite the theories of Ted Levitt ad nauseam. Levitt is the man who invented globalism, and then rationalised it with a stream of assertions, very few of which bear any interrogation at all. Yet his ideas continue to evoke hero-worship among the bollocks-school of global marketingspeak. Just a few weeks back, Michael Hiles put this on his blog:

‘I re-read this book almost yearly, and it reminds me again and again what an advanced thinker Ted Levitt was and how his ideas continue to shape business today.’

They sure as hell do, Michael. You and I may have noticed the mercantile zero-sum disaster that is now  upon us, but not Mr Hiles. To be fair, Levitt’s early ideas were right on the button: focus on the customer, not your ability to extrude stuff in a certain way. But his most enduring and nihilistic theory was that of the unstoppable inevitability of the dictates of Globalism. This has given us, among many other putrid things, a Newscorp with every British Government and both houses of Congress in its pocket, an AOL that behaves like the Moonies, a Microsoft that keeps unstable software on sale by shoving eveyone else out of the way, a Goldman Sachs perverting the actions of well-near every Government and investment market on the planet, and above all, ISPs dishing out joke service and poorly designed products from the safety of a million silos – the diametric opposite of the customer-facing model espoused by Ted Levitt.

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Are there ways of looking forward not back? Of course there are, but it’s risky, long-term and unpopular. Hence its non-adoption by the increasingly clueless corrupt cadres of the political class. But there ways through are there, if creative thought is applied.

The internet has proved itself on several occasions to be something politicians transmit on, but never listen to. This is not so of multinational business. Large globalist concerns react very swiftly to bad publicity and online pressure groups. The evidence thus far suggests that making life uncomfortable for anti-social business online is a far quicker and more effective thing to organise than the standard lobbying routes…all of which are crowded out with people who have far larger sums of bribe-cash than any of us. Today’s agents of change are outside, not inside, the legislative assemblies of the world.

Social anthropology is a highly pertinent discipline: most economic and fiscal theories ignore it completely, imagining that a ‘model’ somehow doesn’t have any real people to take into account. Social anthropology is completely absent from the mindset of supranationalism in general and the EU in particular. It makes zero impression on the thinking of the current German political executive, and roughly the same amount on the actions of Brussels bureaucrats. The fact that the FT’s Gillian Tett talks more sense about Japan, the US, China and regulation than most other commentators put together demonstrates the power of a mind looking first at people, and why they do what they do. Ms Tett, before she become a sought-after financial journalist, was a social anthropologist. Her Book ‘Fool’s Gold – How the Bold Dream of a Small Tribe at J.P. Morgan Was Corrupted by Wall Street Greed and Unleashed a Catastrophe’ is the best book about financial culture and mores ever written. I’d be willing to lay odds that nobody in the UK Coalition or the Obama White House has read it.

Neuroscience in general (and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy [CBT] in particular)  offer enormous insights about the effects of testosterone and the learned response that dominates so much of Bourse activities.

Eckhart Tolle is a Buddhist-influenced writer on social and personal equanimity whose slim volume The Power of Now is one of the largest-selling books in history. Devoid of fluffy psychobabble and offering a profound insight on almost every page, it should be required reading for any market trader trying to get past tricks and monthly targets out of the mind – instead to focus solely on the circumstances of right now…and the consequences of any and all actions in the long term.

The key point about this tiny fraction of suggestions is that they are out of the ordinary, and designed to make the future better – not rationalise the ridiculous and time-wasting process of clinging to a piece of wreckage called the Past. This applies to nothing more tragically than the model of capitalism we have in 2012.

We have tried State command and we have tried Every Man for Himself. Neither worked – except for a corrupt and privileged minority. For a time we tried mutualist capitalism for a limited number of product fields and services, and on the whole it has worked – as the CIA’s website records clearly and with the necessary numbers to make it stick. But even that is not the entire answer or anywhere near it: the development of a bigger and better mutual business sector is really a form of fine tuning. Only facing up to the reality of failure and thinking within different criteria across the piece of capitalist endeavour and finance will get us to a better future – what I’ve been pushing as Radical Realism for some eighteen months now.

This article first appeared in slightly longer form as The Saturday Essay on May 12th 2012.

Postscript: Since writing this piece, and after revisiting it, I am minded to change the term Radical Realism to Radical Futurism. What does anyone think? All comments welcomed on the thread below, or at jawslog@gmail.com

Greece: the Washington v Berlin poker game returns…to Athens’ advantage.

US Treasury Secretary Geithner may yet wind up being Greece’s saviour.

A few airy vapours emerged in the way of rationales for US Federal Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s session with German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble today. The two men ‘expressed confidence in euro-area member states’ efforts to reform and move towards greater integration’, ‘welcomed the Irish example of placing successfully longer-term bonds last week and Portugal’s continued success in meeting program commitments andzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…..’

Bazooka Geithner was scheduled to travel on to Frankfurt Monday afternoon for a session with European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, and no doubt at that time they will talk about Borussia Dortmund’s women’s soccer friendly against Inter-Milan’s mixed-sex 2nd XI next Thursday. It promises to be a storming game, but most people watching ClubMed developments (especially those in Athens) could be forgiven for suggesting that Greece’s future location as a sphere of vital influence was the main reason Mr Geithner was talking to two of the most powerful financial players in Europe.

The eurozone has been a pimple on the backside of global money for two years now, but while the buttock-blemish just keeps on getting bigger, nothing seems to bring it to a head. My theory is that the problem is now so big, it has expanded far beyond the fiscal arse, and is about to launch an assault on the head: but whether I’m right or wrong, there’ve been so many jigsaw bits, clues and signs falling into place of late, you’d have to be Mr Magoo in a tank not to notice them.

What’s going on here is a high-stakes poker game between Washington and Berlin. And once again, we are talking Greek default into the welcoming arms (in every sense) of America v Merkel’s FiskalUnion vision wherein Greece stays in the eurotent…along with its strategic, mineral, and energy importance to Brussels.

Here are some examples of what I mean.

“One thing that’s started happening among eurobankers is debt syndication,” a Madrid based debt expert told me late last week. “The situation here has gone beyond critical…Spain is a cert for full-on bailout. And Greece is running to fall backwards. So senior bank executives are looking to spread risk: they’re happy to lend the same target sum, but to five clients not one. And preferably across three EU States. I asked two guys last weekend [21st/27th July] what they most feared right now, and it was Germany throwing the towel in. So in that outlook which, you know, I think is not unreasonable, you can see why the target setters have said ‘same goals but more borrowers’.”

The anti-Greek feeling among Bankfurters has been growing of late, I am certain. This tendency is also, we now see, shown to be far closer to the German public pulse than that of the Merkel inner circle. Early today Bild splashed the results of a poll by the Emnid research institute. They showed that over 70% of respondents wanted Greece to leave the eurozone if it couldn’t stick to its repayments schedule; while a technical majority of 51% (the first time I’ve seen one) felt Germany would be better off without the euro. The poll is significant, in that it shows any gentle shoving of Athens towards the Exit Lounge would give the MerkeSchäuble Coalition Government a clear electoral advantage next year. Equally important, it showed that Fritz in the street thinks doing nothing Brussels-style is not an option.

The one pair of cold eyes into which Tim Geithner hasn’t stared yet belong to Angela Merkel. Being a born geopolitician, she will still be mulling over what the greatest risk might be: Germany taking on board a Hindenburg of debt, or Berlin-am-Brussels losing the resources and power to have the deciding say in the Middle East….via Greece.

Yesterday I posted about Geithner sending special envoy Collyns to lick the Greeks all over, and reassure them of just how valued they will be as and when a return to the Drachma takes place. I’m confident that German intelligence is aware of the content of their discussion; and I’m told that this is reflected in reports coming back from Athens today about the Greek government finally resolving to draw a line in the sand about Troika demands.

What I suspect might be happening now is that the usual suspects among Greece’s elite of troughers are balancing the horrors of losing the Brussels gravy train against the potential of joining an American version with more First Class carriages.

What’s more, I’m reasonably sure that the Troika is in possession of Berlin’s knowledge about the American offer. This from Athens News yesterday (my italics):

‘…the atmosphere at the [Friday Coalition/Troika] dinner was “exceptionally good” and marked a change in the attitude so far of the representatives of Greece’s creditors….‘

A couple of hours ago (4pm BST Monday) Greek PM Antonis Samaras was due to hold talks with PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos, and the minor Party Democratic Left’s leader Fotis Kouvelis. I’ve had wildly conflicting reports today as to who if anyone will object to what in the way of Troika demands. Kouvelis, however, is felt by many to oppose any more pension or salary cuts. And some sources think all three men will not budge on auctioning State assets. As this has been a consistent (and from their viewpoint, totally understandable) foot-dragging subject since the first Greek bailout, The Slog’s informants may well be right. However, Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras and Labor Minister Yiannis Vroutsismet met earlier today: Stournaras was the recipient of envoy Collyn’s alleged ‘total support’ message last week. So it’s very possible that the Greek side now feel they have more cards for when the next Troika session occurs.

Even the scheduling for that keeps changing. I was told last Saturday that it would be this evening, but now I understand it has been postponed. According to Athens News the story is that the Troika is digging in ‘until a package of measures is agreed’.

This is a very finely balanced diplomatic situation, but you have to take your hat off to Geithner this time: he seems to have learned the lesson of the EU Poland summit – viz, Yankee bombast doesn’t play well in Europe. Indeed, he is displaying considerably more craft and subtlety at the moment than Hillary Clinton over at State when it comes to Obamite Arab foreign policy. As everyone in the US tells me, love or hate the guy (to quote one trusted contact) “Tim Geithner is not just another money-f**king banker…he’s a cultured man who does see the higher game.”

Make of that what you will. The point is, it’s hard to see how the Federal Treasury Secretary can lose in this situation. If Germany embraces Greece as a preferable alternative to having the Pentagon crawling all over it, then Germany picks up the tab for whatever the eurozone downside turns out to be…and reassures the markets that Berlin is, after all, the final guarantor. This can only go down well on Wall Street. On the other hand, if Merkel goes with German public feeling (or is arm-locked into doing so) then Timmy can write in his memoirs how, in one all-or-nothing hand, he secured Greece as a US base for all time from which to exploit rare-earth minerals and exert fast-response influence on the Iran-Israel-Sunni Middle East farrago.

In conclusion, let me just add one thought that continues to intrigue me. The total Greek debt as of now is roughly $390bn. The US total debt is $16 trillion. For US bank collapses to start happening on the basis of a sum owed in the region of 0.7% of America’s national debt (collapses that could balloon US debt management costs enough to sink the entire country) strikes me a risk not worth considering for longer than 0.07 of a second.

This in turn leads me to ask three further questions. One, is Israel no longer deemed to be of value to the Obama Administration as an ally? Second – even more mind-concentrating – are the derivative multiple indices potentially accruing from eurozone meltdown so terrifying, the US would be happier ‘adopting’ a Greece outside the eurozone, rather than take the risk of a Greece inside triggering the nuclear reaction? And third, if that’s the case, what on Earth is Washington going to do about Spain and Italy?

Stay tuned.

 

Empty seats and the emptiness of the Olympic ideal in 2012:

THE TRUTH

The BBC vs Andrew Gilligan v The Slog

I hate to get all 1984 and thought-control about this empty seats furore, but the following comparison of what the numbers tell us about the enduring Olympic disgrace (going back several decades) of unused VIP seats should give everyone with an open mind and a soundly functioning brain serious concerns about what exactly the role of the BBC is these days. But most of all, it should make us examine just how the Olympic ideal has now been perverted by mindless Mammon

Although the general tenor of MSM comment today about bum-free seats is one of ‘why-oh-why-always-the-Olympics’, that’s bollocks: as a football fan who has attended most big occasions in that sport over fifty years, I can say without question that we are dealing with the anthropology of hierarchy here: every must-see event – be it the Wimbledon Men’s final or the World Cup Soccer Final – is always dominated by the rich, the alphas, and the celebs. So in that context, let’s just examine the three sources below in turn:

1. The BBC’s Q&A. ‘It is not just because of the Games’ sponsors failing to take up seats, Games organisers Locog and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) have said.’ Well Auntie, they would say that, wouldn’t they?

‘”No-one should run away with the idea that large numbers of seats will be empty throughout the Games,” said Lord Coe on Saturday’.

Well of course, Seb has been feeding us double-talk on all this since Day One: this is the man who said security had “not been compromised” by the abject failure of G4S to supply, as it were, security. (This morning, Slogger Ron Whitehand reports G4S employees spotted asleep on the job by soldiers in the compound, and several fence holes that haven’t been mended for days).

And of course, the BBC didn’t cross-question Lord Coe of the Blackout. They ‘had checked’ he said, “and the vast majority of no-shows at stadia weren’t sponsors”. Well they wouldn’t be would they, Seb? I mean, according to you, they only got 8% of the tickets.

But the BBC didn’t interrogate that piece of Soviet maths either…because it was ‘confirmed’ by the IOC:

’8% of tickets have been made available to sponsors and 75% per cent to the public. Another 12% go to National Olympic Committees and 5% to the Olympic family – people like IOC officials and the media. The gaps are due to people from a range of those different groups not filling them, the IOC’s Mark Adams has said.’

I need to someone to explain to me here HTF Mr Adams knows that. What’s he done, checked the number of every empty seat against his vast files of numbered VIPs and ‘the public’, and then rung them while stuck in a Zil Lane to ask them why they aren’t there? How would he know an Olympic sibling from a Stratford oik? But as for the overall explanation, “fair play” seems like a reasonable response: 75% of the seats went to the public.

Until, that is, you read the Daily Telegraph’s version.

2. Andrew Gilligan in the Telegraph Gilligan is the greatest MSM bollocks deconstructor we have.

‘Lord Coe claimed last week that sponsors need special consideration because they have contributed a “mountainous amount of money” to the Games. In fact, only around 7 to 8 per cent of the money being spent on the London Olympics is coming from private sponsors. But they get a lot more than 7 per cent of the seats – around 13 per cent in total, 20 per cent if the Olympic Family are included, and up to 50 per cent at the most desirable events.’

This is terrific journalism: drilling into the figures to explode the spun woffle of Coe & IOC dissembling. It is essentially a qualitative examination of privilege and favouritism, and a succinct demonstration of how impossible it can be to tell Olympic family from sponsor from celeb from VIP. Indeed, Gilligan’s conclusion sounds all too familiar in the light of a decade of lies from the political and banking classes in our country:

‘The seats they get also tend to be the best ones, with the paying punters disproportionately confined to binocular-view accommodation in the rafters.No other major sporting event gives so low a proportion of its space to ordinary people. Yet at the same time no other sporting event takes so much from the taxpayer and ordinary people, or imposes so much inconvenience on them.’

Spot on. And now for meeeeee.

3. The Slog

I was in the middle of doing the sums from the BBCNews drivel when @OurOlympics drew my attention to the Torygraph piece. Some of what I was going to say has already been incorporated in the above, but anyway:

i. If BBCNews can let the Coe and IOC conkers pass as an ‘explanation’ for row upon row of naked seats, then we might as well give up on it as a serious news organisation – and I say that as one who has virulently opposed every underhand attempt to replace it with the Hunt-Murdoch-Sky axis of amorality.

ii. Just analyse some of those IOC numbers, and the way that when it suits them, they’re separated, and when it doesn’t, they somehow transmute into a miraculous blend of obfuscation. A classic phrase from Mark Adams: “Another 12% go to National Olympic Committees and 5% to the Olympic family”…ah right, so 1 in 5 tickets go to Yoooooou then? But then “75% of the tickets go to the general public”….er, but not many for the big occasions? Um, no.

iii. The FA Cup Final is sponsored, but whether sponsored or not, it has never been an even minor call on the public purse. (Wembley is the national stadium, not just the FA Cup final’s venue: so far, we’ve built just the one in the last 90 years). Staging the Olympics (something I opposed from the start) will cost this country upwards of £12 billion by the time all the bills are in and have been squirrelled away off balance sheet somewhere. Why are 1 in 5 tickets going to those who directly gain from the event, as opposed to those who directly paid for the overwhelming proportion of its cost? Why are the gainers in the Zil Lanes, while the payers have had Boris Johnson yelling at them to f**k off out of the Tube system for four weeks beforehand?

Because, my Slogger friends, it’s the way the world turns in the 21st Century: They Say, We Pay. They Fail, We Zirp. They Rig, We Lose.

But I will make one final point, because I think it deserves consideration. Maybe a lot of those seats are empty because – after the unbelievable brass neck of making us, the taxpayers, raffle for the tickets – those who wound up in Row 310 watching a Synchronised Callisthenics Qualifying Round found something more interesting to do nearer the time. Like, for example, walking with a loyal, honest and loving dog and two small kids across Balham Common.

I loved what the Olympics was. I detest what it has become. I despise the Boris Johnsons and Lord Greens and David Camerons and Danny Boyles and Tony Blairs and Lord Coes and Sarah Fergusons who use it to further their feeble careers or go there to be seen. I think professionalising the thing is the equivalent of privatising the Church of England: it isn’t commerce’s to privatise in the first place, and it is the antithesis of what it should stand for.

A bunch of psychopaths in Beijing bagging it for their totalitarian ends four years ago was bad enough. But London 2012 is fulfilling all my worst fears: it displays – already – all the self-awarded grandiloquence, politicisation, unaccountability, incompetence, lies, media bullying, brand control, unthinking celebration and creative mediocrity that have, together, become the defining features of Great Britain. We are become a post-Imperial foam of bubbly irrelevance tossed about on a sea of econo-fiscal disaster.

Still: crack open another bottle of the ’36 Olympische Krug Speziale, Herr Oberst.The Russians are only in Potsdam: they won’t be here for hours yet.

Troika’s Athens demand: More axe, and more tax

TROIKA READS RIOT ACT TO GREEK COALITION

Evangelo Venizelos more Friar Tuck than Robin Hood

But Privatisation demands may produce stalemate today

I’ve been getting some irate emails from Greek Sloggers of late – especially those who earn a living suplying goods to the Athens Government. Their bitch is simple: while the new Coalition is very happy to suck up to the Troika, monies it owes to its own citizens can go hang. As one correspondent remarked last Thursday, “It’s easy to balance the books if you don’t pay any bills”.

The day before, the Troikanauts came to town with a very clear message: no more backsliding, or no more money. But it all depends on how you define ‘backsliding’. If a Vesuvius of debt just erupted and you’re on the side of the mountain, chances are you’ll backslide. In fact, the reality is, you’ll perish.

Prior to the meeting, the key Greek Party leaders -  Antonis Samaras, Fotis Kouvelis and Evangelos Venizelos – had pledged to stand firm on ‘no further cuts, and no further taxes’. At the meeting, the Coalition presented further spending, pension and salary cuts, with an update on the progress of tax collection following the recent elections. Together they totalled just under €13bn

The Slog can reveal that the tax situation is dire. It is 20% won’t pay, and 80% can’t pay. The savings are impressive, but the Athens regime is miles off target. (As any government faced with this mad Troika fantasy Herculean task would be). However, in the context of an economy at close to standstill, Coalition leaders put their case for no further attacks on the populace.

The Troika reply was a curt “More axe and more tax, or no further money”.

The Coalition response was immediate capitulation. All three leaders are now reportedly ready to to satisfy international lenders by lining up further austerity ideas when the two sides meet again today.

Greece is currently ‘surviving’ on a bailout of  €140bn in loans, but release of the last instalment (around €36 bn) is being withheld. Today will be a telling debate between Troika and Coalition: until the government makes more cuts and institutes major privatisations, no more money will arrive.

The Athens government will do anything to keep control of its State assets. So we might, at long last, be at an impasse.

Greek media reported that the government may end universal healthcare, and go ahead with a proposal to cap health care subsidies at €1,600 per annum. The idea is something of a sick farce, given that the Health Service is already not paying its pharmacy bills, and so ordinary Greeks are running out of essential medication. But I understand that, once again, the Coalition is turning a blind eye to the €65bn annual tax evasion practised by those in the elite of Greek business. There will also be no salary cuts for tax collectors, military personnel, and the Judiciary. Just fancy that.

What we have here – and the consistency is depressing – is a ruthlessly hypocritical Troika of face-saving maniacs raping a corrupt and illegally privileged governmental class. The outcome of this obscene sexual union cannot be anything other than taxpayers in the other 16 Eurozone countries subsidising and minimising the losses made by bondholders – while ordinary Greeks pay for the excesses of embezzlers and tax criminals in their own elite. Add to this the glaring reality of any kind of recovery being ruled out by austerity, and you can see why, for once, the Greek Left and the european bond markets agree: this charade of consensual scorched earth will blight Greece, and doom the eurozone.

“The Troika men came to Greece as doctors, and prescribed the medicine they said would save the Greek economy and people,” Yannis Panagopoulos, the head of the GSEE union, remarked bitterly. But from the start, most of us knew that the Troika consisted entirely of Harold Shipman* clones.

*For Greek, US and other foreign readers, Dr Harold Shipman was a British NHS physician eventually unmasked as one of the most prolific serial killers in recorded history, with over 250 murders being positively ascribed to him. Ironically, he had achieved the status of being a ‘preferred supplier’ to the UK’s State Health Service.

SEE ALSO: Geithner gambles on Greek default, sends envoy to embrace Greece after return to Drachma.

I don’t know

The Delingpolar One has written about a compelling anti-warmist scoop in the Telegraph blogs this morning.. It’s well worth a read, because yet again it shows how an injudicious (oh alright then, deadly) combo of scientific hysteria, incompetence and hubris can transmute into a shibboleth. Nasty types, those shibboleths: never met a shibboleth I liked. An odd sect. Avoid them at all costs.

More broadly however, my problem with the entire climate debate is that I simply don’t know. If stopped in the street by some earnest clipboarder, I would answer “don’t know” to every question.
The reason I don’t know is because – like absolutely everything today – there are two contradictory and extreme points of view, called “all” and “nothing”. All we DKs are thus invited to tick is one or the other. But we never will, because we don’t know.
Tory v Labour are equally polemic articles of faith, to which I tick “irrelevant”. Because there, you see, I know: 67 years of frittered money and lost opportunities make the data irrefutable.
For United v City, I tick “United”, because while my team has a philosophy and a glorious history, City merely has a lot of money.
For Delingpole v East Anglia Uni I tick “Delingpole” because he is always right about everything, and EAU is clearly full of inane no-hopers who fiddled the data. (A large number of scientists do, and it’s called ‘ego’.)
But Liberal Right-on v Conservative B’stard I tick “neither” (or I would if it was allowed) because both Right-on numpties and B’stards irritate me enormously. And when it comes to the climate debate as a whole, I think there are numpties who, having lost the battle on socialism, are now determined to force everyone to have fifty recycling boxes and use lights that don’t work. But I also know there are B’stards who would like to press on with their earth-rape for all the wrong reasons. And both of them are crooked: they care (respectively) about only local government Unionised jobs, and the shareholders.
Further, Ozone hole v No ozone hole is a big tick for “ozone hole”, and the evidence of toxic sun-stuff  coming through that hole is hard to deny.
Peak oil/gas v Plenty of oil/gas is an even bigger tick for “we’re swimming in the stuff”. Although it’s harder to get at now, new forms are coming onstream. But it suited Obama, the Saudis, the Russians and the oilcos to say we’re running short (for, oh, only about 37 nefarious reasons) so I do know about that one.
Ice is melting v No it isn’t, well, I’m a “Yes it is” chap because you can go and watch it happening fairly easily. The key question of course is “why?” and I’m a don’t know re that burning issue too. Even though it may be cooling as an issue over time.
However, in 50 years the global human population has trebled, and in the last twenty, industrialisation of a ‘dirty’ nature has doubled. So that might have something to do with it. But for the  reason set out in para 2 above, I don’t know. I can’t even write “don’t know for sure”, because that would suggest I’m edging rapidly towards one side or other. But I’m not. I simply don’t know.
That said, I do know that NASA last year took some measurements at the top of the stratosphere, and these showed with alarming ease that the greenhouse effect was at most half as big a problem as had been originally thought.

Do I come out anywhere on all of this? It’s very hard to really, because I know Greenpeace to be cynical Communist liars (at the top); but I also know that every multinational pr corporate I ever met was a sociopath who would blow up the planet to get his or her bonus.
Usually, my bottom line is this: humanity always overestimates its effect and power on and over nature. But if some of this IS our fault, then an insurance policy would be nice.
I’m not sure, because I don’t know.

PS But I’m a tad clearer on this one: The role of  stalemate in three-dimensional Syrian chess.

GREECE EXCLUSIVE: Geithner envoy ‘assured Athens of US support on return to drachma’ – sources

Meanwhile, the EFSF robs Petros to pay Pavlos

The US Treasury’s Assistant Secretary for International Finance Charles Collyns had a meeting with Greek Finance Minister Yiannis Stournaras in Athens on Wednesday morning. The official Greek media version was that Collyns ‘expressed the support of US-Finance Secretary Tomothy Geithner to Greece and his confidence in Greek efforts. Yinannis Stournas briefed Collyns on the situation of the Greek fiscal condition, and the key challenges of the Greek economy’.

In fact, Washington sources told The Slog last night BST that Collyns – a confidante of both Geithner and Stournas – was on a specific mission to impress on Greek Finance bosses the US Treasury’s sincerity in offering Greece “almost unqualified support in the event of a return to the drachma”. The White House is betting on the strong likelihood of Greece becoming formally insolvent before any more bailout monies are available from Berlin-am-Brussels.

Charles Collyns is uniquely placed to deliver the message credibly to the Athens government: he was at the IMF for many years, and is a personal friend of Geithner going back a long way;  but significantly, he is also an old classmate and close friend of Yiannis Stournaras himself.

As The Slog reported earlier his year  US Government covertly attempted to isolate Greece from the eurozone last March, in a bid to both make the country an important and loyal base for military intervention against enemies in the region, and itself play a beneficial role in the exploitation of Greece’s energy and mineral assets under the Aegean ocean. This move shows that the Obama White House remains determined to follow this course of action. A number of informed sources in Europe believe that the Greeks have had all the EFSF monies they’re going to get. On that basis, they would probably default on or around August 20th.

One day soon – allegedly – that EFSF will become the ESM. But it’s becoming increasingly hard to see how future bailouts are going to work given the likely contributors to the fund. As Yanis Varoufakis noted on his blog yesterday, on August 20th Greece is due to borrow €3.2 bn from the EFSF, in order to pay back the ECB. This idea is potty enough, but are we now to believe that Spain can cough up €600m for Greece, while borrowing another €3bn for itself?

That the whole ball of wool is unravelling could not be clearer given examples like these. Yanis Varoufikas urges Greece not to borrow the next tranche. I think he’s farting against thunder on that one. But as the American moves suggest, the money may well not be forthcoming anyway.

 

Greek update: Troika and Greek Coalition slug it out on more axe & more tax

OPENING OLYMPICS CEREMONIAL BIAS: A Fluffy lashes out.

Everyone with a functioning sense of humour – your moment has come.

These genuine post extracts and comment threads come from John Walker’s right-on site. I wanted to cry when I first got there, but now I can’t stop laughing. I urge you to go there and watch knee-jerk ignorance in action; but if you’re short of time, here are some wonderful extracts:

From the text of the post:

‘…Because, Rick, when you call something “multicultural crap”, it means you’re a racist bigot….’

Ah, right – so race is culture. Fine. Judaism is Communism. Five fingers are three. Etc etc. Oh dear.

‘….I still meet many people who do not understand how the Daily Mail is not just another tabloid, not just as bad as the rest of them, but instead something far more despicable and dangerous. It’s one of the most popular papers in Britain, and when we say, “Just ignore it – they’re just trying to get hits,” I shudder. We do not ignore evil – we challenge it and get angry about it. We make more people aware. Some people reading won’t have realised.’

Bless me, he still meets poor ignorant worms who won’t have realised, disadvantaged Unternmenschen that they are. We who are superior must educate them politically to control their base instincts, in the hope of them becoming perfectly correct. Like us: not populist. In fact, not popular at all, and going bust…like The Guardian.

Thomas Hobbes, eat yer f**kin’ heart out.

‘That the Mail would write a piece arguing that the NHS is a bad thing, and should have had no part in the Olympic opening ceremony, is not a surprise. They’re a vicious and spiteful paper, and their agenda against the poor and needy is over a hundred years old….’

I know this next bit will sound just as bad as Johnnie Walker, but (a) it’s irresistible and (b) at least I have awareness of the irony. An NHS closing Wards and discharging folks with a pack of paracetamol is a bad thing. The NHS has three-fifths of knob-all to do with athletics. At its inception, the Daily Mail was a sensationalist Yellow Press medium that supported the poor and needy to an almost lachrymose degree.

The comment thread:

“I’ve never met a daily mail reader, I’d probably choke them to death on sight if I did, I’m increasingly losing my patience for intolerance.”

I could spend a year decontructing his corker, but I’ll settle for aahhhhahahahahahahaahhahhhaoonoplease don’t it hurts aaaahhahahahahah, as time is limited.

“I LOVE the NHS. Yes, there are mistakes made occasionally, and sometimes those mistakes lead to tragic circumstances, but it is the best Health Service in Europe…”

Er…quantify ‘occasionally’, ‘tragic’ and ‘best’. Ignorance is not so much bliss as blather.

“John Walker, you seem to be one of the most conscientious and humanistic people I’ve ever met or read. You really are incredibly good to the core, and it saddens me that your level of care for humanity is not the default…”

Hooooughweeeeeeeuuurrggh, oh that’s better.

I remember, in his last cringe-making year in Office, Gordoom Brooon once remarked at PMQs that “the international sex trade in young women is totally unacceptable”. It struck me at the time as the most unnecessary condemnation in history, but that probably has something to do with the fact that I was born 1900 years after the fall of the Roman Empire. I think condemnation of the Dacre Mail comes under the same heading.

But my goodness me, when the Leftie spleen is vented, oh how we laugh.

Related: That Global admiration in full

ANALYSIS: Why Syria is a potential Sarajevo that could engulf us all

Handled properly, the Syrian impasse could solve major problems faced by its neighbours and the major powers who want control over their energy. Far more likely, however, is that personal and political ambitions will make things worse.

The deteriorating situation in Syria brings to mind two great American adages: “Opinions are like assholes, everyone’s got one” and “If it walks, flies, quacks and lands like a duck, chances are it’s a duck”. Well, I have opinions about Syria….based on evidence, motive, opportunity and knowledge of the belief-systems and cynical geopolitics (ie, the history) involved. I’ve always thought that’s the best way to reach conclusions, but then I’m an old-fashioned bloke in a world where any deviation from the script brings accusations of stupidity and bias. However, in the country taken over many years ago by Assad’s Alhawite minority, the situation is rapidly moving from being open to interpretation to open warfare – in which, very quickly, how it all started – and who the ducks are – will soon be forgotten in favour of brainless rallying cries.

The story so far: Bashar Assad is the bad-guy gargoyle chosen by the ignorant (and sometimes cynical) western liberal elite to be The Man Who Must Go. And yes, he is a bad person; yes, he is allied to Iran and virulently antisemitic; yes, he rules by force, corruption and torture. And yes, there are far worse psychopaths (a) waiting inside the country to take over and (b) hoping from the outside for the right result in relation to their energy needs. The Clintonian State department took the decision some time back to dump the protection of Christians in the region, in favour of an alliance with what they see as ‘moderate elements’ within the Muslim Brotherhood…those that the USA believes will ‘win’ in the Middle East. Putin’s Kremlin will not tolerate another Libyan victory for the US-backed Brotherhood: powerful influence in the region is key to the protection of a home economy dangerously dependent on energy exports. The Chinese know the importance of Syrian support for the survival of the Iranian regime they back; like the Russians, they want to either keep Assad where he is…or something close to it. The Israelis detest Bashar Assad, but fear the Muslim Brotherhood: Jews have never had any difficulty telling a swan from a duck. Also, however, they would dearly love to see an isolated Iran….as would Washington. And those mystery men of Saudi Arabia hate the Iranian Shi’ites even more than they hate Jews:  a Brotherhood slaughtering Saudi religious enemies all over Syria would be nice (Saudi Arabia is 95% Sunni), but the Saudi Royal Family fears the radicalism of which they know Brotherhood Islamists are capable. Being a King among radicals is not a safe place to be.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Confused? Well, most people are: but now read on, and see if it gets any clearer. Here is the News:

Russia’s navy chief Vice-Admiral Viktor Chirkov said last Thursday that a flotilla of ten Russian warships off the coast of Syria is “carrying out military exercises in the Mediterranean.” It had no intention of docking in the leased port it has in Syria; but Chirkov did confirm that the fleet is crammed full of marines….who, research shows, tend to be land-based weapons.

There are rumours (none of which I’ve yet been able to confirm with any certainty) that the Saudis are trying to strike a deal with Pakistan’s leader Pervez Ashraf to buy nuclear weapons from Pakistan. A meeting between King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and Ashraf in Jeddah earlier this year attempted to scope out an agreed pov on the dangers in the Middle East, and the need to counter any Iranian nuclear threat. Few observers doubt that, in the past, the Saudis heavily bankrolled the Pakistani nuclear weapons programme. As some form of quid pro quo, Saudi Arabia sends its special forces to Pakistan for ‘special military training’ – whatever that means. There is some likelihood, I’m told, that Ashraf may accede to the Saudi request.

Hillary Clinton is showing signs that the deadly trio of emotions to which she is prone has taken her over completely. That triad of bigotry – liberal certainty, American ignorance about Arabism, and ruthless persistence – is showing itself in any number of ways.

Just as Clinton, Geithner and Obama decided to bet the farm on German hegemony in Europe, now she and the Black Dude are hell-bent on putting all their chips behind Sunni Muslims in general, and the Brotherhood in particular. Cop this Hillaryspeak for a piece of Zen diplomacy – as in, “I want it to happen, and so it will”:

“..it is now certain that the anti-Assad rebels have enough territory and organisation to create
  [safe] areas. “More and more territory is being taken. It will eventually result in a safe haven inside Syria, which
will then provide a base for further actions by the opposition…”

The idea of a homogenous thing called ‘the rebels’ is bollocks, as she knows perfectly well. And the idea that anywhere ruled by Sunni Islamists could ever be safe for Christians and Shi’ites is just plain daft. But Hillary Rodham Clinton is more than happy to do daft if it furthers her strategy of rapprochement with a club (that the Secretary of State, the Pentagon and the White House) feel 100% sure is going to ‘win’  in the fallout from the Arab Spring: the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood.

The centre to right-wing of the Republican Party began to have serious doubts about whether Clinton knew WTF she was doing when Washington and NATO piled in with financial and air-cover support for the Libyan revolutionaries who toppled Muammar Gadaffi. The Christian Right in particular ( a very powerful interest-group within the GOP) is now becoming increasingly voluble about State’s refusal to condemn Sunni atrocities, and denialism about wholesale Brotherhood actions against non-Sunni rebel groups and Syrian Christians. Equally disturbing is that Tel Aviv has begun being truculent at best (and secretive at worst) in the face of an obvious White House bias against support for the Jewish State.

I stopped having any doubts at all about David Cameron the minute he began mouthing off about how great Recep Erdogan is, and why everyone should help “the advance of democracy” in Libya. I decided once and for all that he is a highly intelligent idiot. The latter Libyan jet-rattling was partly gung-ho jingoism (always good for Newscorp support): but even more, it represented as a whole how William Hague and the Prime Minister have gone totally native when it comes to Foreign Office ‘geopolitical strategy’.

Regular Sloggers know my view of the FCO: it is and always has been anti-semitic, leaky, completely wrong about almost everything, and a serious danger to the long-term security of Britain. It backed the French over the Versailles and Sykes-Piquot treaties, Hitler in the 1930s, Soviet Russia after the Second World War, the French over Suez, the EU over the Commonwealth, and the Americans about absolutely everything. Now in 2012, it has reverted to appeasement of a form of Nazism which – just like the original – cannot be appeased. We should all listen very attentively to what our diplomats say…and then do the diametric opposite.

Above all, however, I am now sure that the FCO stands shoulder to shoulder with Hillary the Amazon liberal.

Anyway, that’s the mix: Britain is an irrelevance, but will do whatever Washington asks. State thinks the Sunnis will win outright, the Russians, Chinese, Saudis and Israelis would prefer a status quo at best, or a stalemate at worst. Tel Aviv in particular has carefully backed any horse that looked capable of ruining the race.

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What we are looking at here is, basically, yet aother Muslim domestic that would be ignored by most of the World were it not for the predominance of oil as an energy form.

While that may read to some like a blinding glimpse of nothing remotely new,  it would do all of us good to consider just how much of our species’ worst points come out when there is potentially not enough of something to go round. I italicise that word because there is actually plenty of oil to go round, but those with an interest in high prices pretend there isn’t….and they find willing allies in half-baked conservationistas: yet more of Lenin’s ‘useful idiots’.

Two developments would solve a lot of problems in the medium term. First, a model of capitalism not slavishly based on growth and output…so everyone calms down about how much oil is left. And second, full-on billions-backed research to move beyond oil as quickly as possible.

As James Delingpole et al have pointed out endlessly, all the fluffy wind and non-nuclear ‘solutions’ are not solutions at all. What the ‘nein danke’ brigade have achieved is an increased focus on the reality of oil and gas as still the only viable sources of global energy less dirty than coal; that is, exactly what the oilcos wanted as a result. The obvious solution is sitting out there 96 million miles away, and by that I don’t mean covering everything in solar panels: I mean the harnessing of that mix of rays the sun gives off, and its conversion into motive, heating and lighting power. The achievement of that aim would change everything for the better within a decade.

As it is, what we have building up in Syria is the potential for a Sarajevo moment. This will, I know, attract the usual salvo of faux-wisdom suggesting that I’m being alarmist. But naysayers need to remember that we are, at best, an alarming species. Our sense of being threatened is way beyond what we really need.

That’s not true of most people beyond a small elite. But the small elite is in the driving seat – and always will be. Their warning mechanisms are set at Sabre Tooth Tiger, even though these man-eaters died out aeons ago. Fear of something unreal causes the social neuroses and tribalisms, the alliances and the geopolitics, that are all around us 24/7. Sadly, it is also true that the other 93% still place far too much trust in those who would lead; at base, they underestimate the cockups and frontal-lobe behaviour of which these soi-disant alphas are capable. And those alphas in turn are far too cocky about their ability to control stuff. Stuff reaches a point, if care is not applied at every stage, where nothing and nobody can control it: the impending global econo-fiscal-financial crisis being a classic case in point.

The distilled, probably over-simplified bottom line emerging in recent weeks is this: the Americans, British, and Saudis are backing the Sunnis, the Sino-Russian elements are backing the Shi-’ites, and the Israelis are backing the nearest possible thing to status quo. Clinton has been taking testosterone injections, and Putin is a controlling ex-KGB macho headcase. Israel is paranoid to the point of mental instability about the threat from Iran. China is the fastest-growing nation, and the most convinced that others may try and interrupt its supply of oil. They are also owed an unspeakably obscene amount of money by the Americans…a debt which Geithner & Co keep trying to devalue. This kind of behaviour creates bad feeling, and situations in which the Karma might, for once, be run over by the dogma.

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Any number of things could spark a proliferating free-for-all in that context. And yet, there is no need for any of it. Even putting aside the bollocks talked about ‘peak terrestrial energy’ by the thinly-disguised Left, for those of sound mind the solution to this impasse is obvious.

America’s shale-gas exploitation is growing exponentially. As I posted last week, North Dakota’s spectacular shale-gas turnaround is a near-miracle that could relatively easily be duplicated elsewhere. The Russian economy remains overdependent on oil exports. Both countries could therefore sit happily with a confused stalemate in Syria (and elsewhere) that kept up the feeling of oil being an energy form in short and unreliable supply: the Americans would be happy with their self-sufficiency, and the Russian economy would boom on the back of potentially high oil prices. (The Saudis too would love those high prices, and Tel Aviv would give stalemate a big tick too.)

This leaves the Chinese theoretically out on a limb. But what if the Americans agreed to guarantee oil and shale gas supplies to China as a commodity barter against unrepayable Treasury notes held by Beijing? Well, hardline trade mercantilists would argue that this would make Chinese exports even cheaper, and increase the US debt further still; however, if the energy was designated for internal infrastructural investment and hugely subsidised domestic heat and light for China’s population, everyone would win: Beijing gets a happy populace, more modernisation, and a growing middle class…while the US gets the deficit down and oil price viability.

Simples.

Except that there are myriad reasons why this won’t come to pass. First up, Romney is pushing hard at North Dakota as an example of American recovery being held back by Obamite ecological regulation. Barack would lose too much face if he suddenly caved in to the Mitt view of life….and, quite possibly, an election made tighter by Europe’s financial collapse. Second, Putin will baulk at settling for anything less than his Alhwite allies staying in power. This – and his overtures to the Communist Prime Minister of Cyprus – are the two hands in which he could easily squeeze Europe’s balls with a blackmail-fuelled oil price. And third, Islam – this religion we are told time and again by some in the Western elite offers a lesson in divinity for us all – is split inexorably between moderates, radical Islamists, Sunnis and Shi-ites.

Neither Muslim schism can win: while the Islamic world is predominantly of the Sunni sect, the Muslims who live in the Middle East, and particularly those in the Persian Gulf region, are often Shi’ite. Globally, the Shia account for an estimated 10 or 15 percent of the Muslim population, but in the Middle East their numbers are much higher: they dominate the population of Iran, compose a majority in Iraq, and are significant minorities in other nations.

So the bottom-line of today’s analysis is this: it’s easy to offer bromides about Syria being just another problem that will be quietly settled in the end because everyone has too much to lose. The Alhawites, Iranian Shi-ites, and the Israelis have everything to lose – as does Putin if he fails to win the right economic outlook for Russia. And Mrs Clinton is, I suspect, already running for the 2016 Oval Office job.  So be very afraid: this could all easily go spectacularly wrong.

 

 

Olympics ceremony ‘Left wing’ furore: some solid market research

Of the 1,706 search engine terms used to tune into the Opening Ceremony issue at The Slog over the last 24 hours, some 46% used the specific terms ‘left wing/left wing bias/left wing rubbish/biased pc/biased liberal’ as their search descriptor.

So those who unfollowed me on Twitter today, no – it wasn’t just me.

While I accept that the sample was by definition self-selecting (and the Slog is demographically biased over 45 years of age) this would tend to suggest that mature Britain had a problem with Danny Boyle’s view of history.

Clearly, we’re just all too old, stupid and bigoted to know any better. Perhaps it’s time we were put down. Even more than we are already.