Your mortgage, the worlds hungry, the next wars . . . .Remember this weeks G7,
xetc | 12.04.2008 10:49 | Faslane | Anti-militarism | Globalisation | Other Press | London
Big picture thinking is a stretch for the people meeting in Washington, but it seems the bulk of the commentators in the newspapers this weekend havent added their 2 + 2 together - forgetting to remember the reason wars often happen, forgetting to see the "creditcrunch/ meltdown/ depression/ crash" is a bit of the same jigsaw as the disastrous, exponential increase in the "cost" of staple foods to the worlds poor.
The G7 meeting is about to drop the ball, possibly in a terminal way.
The "poor" bits of the world have asked it to SERIOUSLY rethink its attitude to the problems, loopholes etc in the "western" bit of the global equation.
Facing what the UKs minister has called a crisis as big as that of the "great depression" - with requests from all quarters to TOTALLY overhaul the logistical infrastructure of the world from a multiple loopholed cash-laundry with betting-shop-rake-offs to something that is adequate to the purposes of the worlds needs - it is all too possible that it might miss the fact that this is a sort of "pre-World War moment" when we might avoid the disasters we are on track for, or sleepwalk into them.
Opinion influencers, each administrations functionaries, columnists, lazy "news" commentators - the entire gamut of informal "you scratch my back, I scratch yours" types, with all their mutually reinforcing group unthink, with or without open "bungs", is a serious weight on free thought.
Global credit crunch is SUCH a euphemism. The flaws in the current system are often put there, then kept there, for the sake of a few quiet, actual criminal scams, or to launder the cash from them, with tax havens etc playing their roles too - but the other way this global idiocy is sustained is with the complicity of little kickbacks, retirement promises, the over-rated threat that all could either get the torture or persecution that occurs to a few if they criticise, or that all SERIOUS alteration to the "systems" to take the criminal scams, waste, thoughtlessness or stupidity out of the situation mean that they end up with the new horrendous administration throwing them out into the streets or putting them to work in paper suits ploughing up the soil with their fingers . . . .
WW2 saw serious, fast alterations to the logistics of this nation to get ammunition where there was a need . . . . without "ifs" or "buts".
Post WW2 there were serious attempts to re-examine global infrastructure - but disruptions of a "heating up" cold war stymied most of them - or diminished them to "titles" with actual serious backing denied them. Its worth looking at the sabotage then smear of the INITIAL "League of Nations" ideas in the USA as mentioned in one or two of the "remember each eleventh" campaigns reclamations of histories in these newswires. . . . but it IS about time we all wised up to the "little" tail-wag-dog disruptrions of those in the "court" - past, present, future - if we are to have much of the latter at all.
The world IS a "house of cards" - but with a difference. Alterations that are "total" - ie global - that affect ALL nations, corporations, stocks, shares, etc ARE MUCH THE SAFEST way to affect things.
30 nations have stopped exports of basic foods in the last few weeks, rice prices have doubled in weeks . . . . much of the poorest peoples of the world spend 60-80 % of their income on food . . . . trying to blame bio-diesel is pathetic. (the largest market for it is europe, at a mere 5bn each year) So is trying to pretend that it is due to governments are too "in favour of farmers(!!!!) in a city/rural split, without a mention of middlemen or speculators, etc". The world trade bodies FORCED farmers to uproot food crops to put in cash crops.
. . . .
. . . . pause for thought about negligence, logic-jumps, etc.
The "magic" of the marketplace upped these prices in weeks - it takes years to "re-tool" farms, in fact, when "the market" - as it is - dictates these alterations in crops we most often end up with gluts in the short term, then poorer farmers, suicides etc.
Check the number of farmers in, say, India, that chose suicide when the idiocy of this market "magic" hit them. Last week, India stopped its exports of rice as it was running out.
Triple A credit ratings for the "securities" of mortgages poor people in the west were "snake-oil-charmed" into taking out by dodgy cheap mesmerist types . . . . credit crunch . . . . government support to the "institutions" that whose decisions to accept these as worthy causes the disaster, then cheaper interest rates paid for by the nation - that arent passed onto the customers, that are also fleeced with higher mortgage payments, all costs passed onto the poorest most . . . . auctions of homes that end up as buy-to-let short-term crowded houses for scores of cheap guest-workers without unions or voices, to cheapen all the rest of us into asking less questions about worse jobs for less pay with less safety for all of us . . . . but more stress.
Magic?
Shoddy cheapening of the existence of ALL of us, that only has winners if they take a vow of almost "flat-earth-ist" short-term thinking, surrender to group unthink, try to scam others into taking the rap for them, then use self deception, denial etc to imagine they get away with it - as that old joke has it, about the drunk who jumps off the 19th floor heard shouting "so far so goo
"
Worse, its all quite easy to sort. It is 2008, progress has actually meant we COULD dispense with the machination of scarcity - but out of a sort of half-arsed denial that certain scams exist, with the short-sightedness of a few peoples increasingly stressed, increasingly scrambled thoughts that it is all for their self-interest that these "opinion influencers" distort societies ideas of itself, or the facts about the world - or the need for re-opening SERIOUS enquiries.
We all DO need discussions that dont throw out the ideas that "sound" radical when those are what work, when those are what causes most happiness, fastest - for all - with the least turbulence for all.
The "poor" bits of the world have asked it to SERIOUSLY rethink its attitude to the problems, loopholes etc in the "western" bit of the global equation.
Facing what the UKs minister has called a crisis as big as that of the "great depression" - with requests from all quarters to TOTALLY overhaul the logistical infrastructure of the world from a multiple loopholed cash-laundry with betting-shop-rake-offs to something that is adequate to the purposes of the worlds needs - it is all too possible that it might miss the fact that this is a sort of "pre-World War moment" when we might avoid the disasters we are on track for, or sleepwalk into them.
Opinion influencers, each administrations functionaries, columnists, lazy "news" commentators - the entire gamut of informal "you scratch my back, I scratch yours" types, with all their mutually reinforcing group unthink, with or without open "bungs", is a serious weight on free thought.
Global credit crunch is SUCH a euphemism. The flaws in the current system are often put there, then kept there, for the sake of a few quiet, actual criminal scams, or to launder the cash from them, with tax havens etc playing their roles too - but the other way this global idiocy is sustained is with the complicity of little kickbacks, retirement promises, the over-rated threat that all could either get the torture or persecution that occurs to a few if they criticise, or that all SERIOUS alteration to the "systems" to take the criminal scams, waste, thoughtlessness or stupidity out of the situation mean that they end up with the new horrendous administration throwing them out into the streets or putting them to work in paper suits ploughing up the soil with their fingers . . . .
WW2 saw serious, fast alterations to the logistics of this nation to get ammunition where there was a need . . . . without "ifs" or "buts".
Post WW2 there were serious attempts to re-examine global infrastructure - but disruptions of a "heating up" cold war stymied most of them - or diminished them to "titles" with actual serious backing denied them. Its worth looking at the sabotage then smear of the INITIAL "League of Nations" ideas in the USA as mentioned in one or two of the "remember each eleventh" campaigns reclamations of histories in these newswires. . . . but it IS about time we all wised up to the "little" tail-wag-dog disruptrions of those in the "court" - past, present, future - if we are to have much of the latter at all.
The world IS a "house of cards" - but with a difference. Alterations that are "total" - ie global - that affect ALL nations, corporations, stocks, shares, etc ARE MUCH THE SAFEST way to affect things.
30 nations have stopped exports of basic foods in the last few weeks, rice prices have doubled in weeks . . . . much of the poorest peoples of the world spend 60-80 % of their income on food . . . . trying to blame bio-diesel is pathetic. (the largest market for it is europe, at a mere 5bn each year) So is trying to pretend that it is due to governments are too "in favour of farmers(!!!!) in a city/rural split, without a mention of middlemen or speculators, etc". The world trade bodies FORCED farmers to uproot food crops to put in cash crops.
. . . .
. . . . pause for thought about negligence, logic-jumps, etc.
The "magic" of the marketplace upped these prices in weeks - it takes years to "re-tool" farms, in fact, when "the market" - as it is - dictates these alterations in crops we most often end up with gluts in the short term, then poorer farmers, suicides etc.
Check the number of farmers in, say, India, that chose suicide when the idiocy of this market "magic" hit them. Last week, India stopped its exports of rice as it was running out.
Triple A credit ratings for the "securities" of mortgages poor people in the west were "snake-oil-charmed" into taking out by dodgy cheap mesmerist types . . . . credit crunch . . . . government support to the "institutions" that whose decisions to accept these as worthy causes the disaster, then cheaper interest rates paid for by the nation - that arent passed onto the customers, that are also fleeced with higher mortgage payments, all costs passed onto the poorest most . . . . auctions of homes that end up as buy-to-let short-term crowded houses for scores of cheap guest-workers without unions or voices, to cheapen all the rest of us into asking less questions about worse jobs for less pay with less safety for all of us . . . . but more stress.
Magic?
Shoddy cheapening of the existence of ALL of us, that only has winners if they take a vow of almost "flat-earth-ist" short-term thinking, surrender to group unthink, try to scam others into taking the rap for them, then use self deception, denial etc to imagine they get away with it - as that old joke has it, about the drunk who jumps off the 19th floor heard shouting "so far so goo
"
Worse, its all quite easy to sort. It is 2008, progress has actually meant we COULD dispense with the machination of scarcity - but out of a sort of half-arsed denial that certain scams exist, with the short-sightedness of a few peoples increasingly stressed, increasingly scrambled thoughts that it is all for their self-interest that these "opinion influencers" distort societies ideas of itself, or the facts about the world - or the need for re-opening SERIOUS enquiries.
We all DO need discussions that dont throw out the ideas that "sound" radical when those are what work, when those are what causes most happiness, fastest - for all - with the least turbulence for all.
xetc
