The folly of the exploiters

A greater German than any living today, Immanuel Kant, posed a simple question in 1781 in his famous Critique of Pure Reason: What can I know? For those of us for whom media studies means studying the media rather than two hungover lectures a week and the occasional special-needs circus of a student demo, it's a good question. But for us, the question reduces to; What will the media let us know?
We now know that the European project was a grand folly, that the Greeks lied about their bona fides in order to ride the gravy train of the euro, that you cannot transmute the base metal of fiscal union into the glittering gold of political union and, oh yes, that the MSM was either clueless about all of this or willingly connived in covering up this Emperor-sized Ponzi scheme.
We also know that anything even vaguely resembling democracy - demos; the people, kratos; power - is viewed by the EU elites as though it were a soiled nappy. The last Greek to tentatively suggest a referendum over EU policy was back tending his olive grove before he could say autos ho Sokrates.
But more than anything we know that our political leaders have a quasi-autistic belief in their own unassailable correctness. The various, increasingly shrill, pronouncements on the inherent rightness and indubitable fortitude of the European project remind me powerfully of the opening to The Qu'ran:

"This book is not to be doubted."

How much more, and for how much longer, will ordinary people be led into socio-economic chaos because of the delusional belief systems of a self-appointed [don't make me laugh by mentioning their respective elections] cabal of Enlightenment deniers?
Almost exactly a century after Kant's masterpiece, in 1880, another great German, Nietzsche, had the following to say in his little-known essay The Wanderer and his Shadow:

"The exploitation of the worker was, it has now been realised, a piece of stupidity, an exhausting of the soil at the expense of the future, an imperilling of society. Now we have already almost a state of war; and the cost of keeping the peace, of concluding treaties and acquiring trust, will henceforth in any event be very great, because the folly of the exploiters was very great and of long duration." [Section 268]

World Leaders' Guide To Debt.

More Debt.

Headlines  offer us this gem, “Markets worldwide have tumbled on fears over global debt  “ and the answer is, “Meanwhile there were reports the European Commission will discuss so-called eurobonds, in which the eurozone issues debt for all its members.”

I am astounded that these idiots can't understand that if you are bowed down and cowed with debt, you have to stop trying to borrow and gamble your way out. These worthless "bonds" are not promises to pay the bearer anymore because it begs the question, "With what".  The answer is future growth earnt by future earnings and production. At least that used to be the plan.

What is not considered is that this plan is no longer valid. Bonds due for maturity now, used in the past to fund vote winning bubbles and booms, are in danger of default today. As Bonkers Midget Byrne said "there's no money left". The cost of building this bankrupt EU is a major factor as to where all the money has gone.

Not only on buildings, bureaucracy and bungs but into a vast web of corruption that is still not fully understood. So what's to happen? My view and one shared by many,  one example here but there are many more, is that it is already in it's death throes.

One thing is for certain, all this debt will cause pain and suffering. Just as post military conflict does. We can but hope that the rich and mighty who have profited so far are forced to suffer with the rest of us. I'm no socialist or communist leftie pillock but surely any sensible brain can figure out that the obscenity of colossal individual fortunes is not enhanced by the starvation and deprivation of millions and millions of human beings. Let's face it, politically motivated, corporate greed has got us to this point. Unless the architects are punished alongside the builders flattened under the rubble of this collapse, there is little hope of a new direction and single storey buildings.

I close with this thought. Globalisation was created to spawn the "Too big to fail" meme. Guess what? It isn't, any more that than the EU. A grand plan, about to show us all that its poor philosophy and its inherent weakness, is run and was created by, small minds. Some things are simply too big. Debt is one of them!

Fracking

I’ve written about this before. (And no, it’s not a sex tale).
It’s about extracting natural gas from deep shale rock formations. Last Sunday there was a long article in the Daily Mail’s colour supplement.
From the article:

Here are two visions of the future.
The first one lies at the end of a muddy track in the village of Banks, a 20-minute drive from Preston, Lancashire. It consists of a derrick about 60ft high, a few temporary buildings, a generator and some specialist machinery in a fenced square compound.
Powering the derrick and the drill at its centre is an eerily quiet electric motor. Today, on the first Friday of October, the bit it turns at the end of the drill pipe lies about a mile beneath our feet, boring steadily downwards at a rate of up to 500ft a day, depending on the hardness of the strata. It’s heading for a thick deposit of carboniferous shale, a rock made from the compressed mud which lay on a prehistoric seabed more than 300 million years ago, its upper edge some 7,500ft below the dark green fields of ripening cauliflower that surround the compound.
Locked within the fissures inside that rock is an immense quantity of natural gas – virtually pure, unadulterated methane, of a quality so high it could be pumped direct to domestic and industrial users, and to electricity generating stations……………………….

And 

The second vision is taking shape at the end of the Thames Estuary, where the foundations are being laid for the 217 turbines of the London Array, the world’s biggest offshore wind farm.
Covering 90 square miles, this too will have the capacity to generate 1GW (one billion watts). The turbines’ construction has been priced at £2 billion, four times as much as the Kentish gas plant, although this does not include the cost – perhaps a further £500 million – of connecting them to the National Grid, via 300 miles of undersea high-voltage cables.
Without the labyrinthine system of ‘green’ taxes and Government subsidies known as the Renewables Obligation, which is already adding an estimated £100 to the cost of every British household’s electricity bill, and an average 20 per cent to the charges paid by businesses, the wind farm could never be built, because it would be hopelessly uneconomic…………….

Which one do you think makes sense?
How it’s done animation Click on the Link  to see the active Animation
And the scenario in the sidebar

 If only

Following on.

From Mark On Saturday.

Mark's excellent piece on Saturday has prompted me to pick up on his theme of the declining Chatterati, (a word coined by Oldrightie) and the rise of more eclectic bloggers. The clip shows such a significant parallel to today but with the added impetus of today's communication capabilities even John Lennon would have embraced to powerful effect .As it was his music did the work now available, for now at least, to all of us.

Now I shall revert to my passionate feelings about The European Union. Here we have a mighty, shadowy and unwholesome construct dominating all our lives. That includes the whole planet, gambling with a collapsed monetary system and banking collapse heavily brought about by the EU construct.

This failed edifice to hubris and rank stupidity, never properly thought through and designed to garner all that is flawed about human nature and ignore all that is good, has reached it's inevitable finale. In great measure it's billions of euros propaganda machine and cosy media control has not succeeded in its Orwellian belief because of the Internet and blogging.

A perfect example is the paltry few hours the great salvation of last week's debt parcel passing concept lasted. Within less than one working day the parcel was placed firmly on an empty chair in Beijing. Its sister smaller but lethal packet was dropped by the Greeks and a referendum announced likely to be the EU's camel straw.

Now in Lennon's time all this frantic musical chairs would have been presented with a massive dose of media led spin and hype. The reality of the desperate scenario hidden from most of us. Only the steady decline in our life styles would have eventually been noticed but the causes less well observed.

The selfish greed of Corporate earth, the smugness of luxurious banker life styles, aped by politicians, would all have ducked under the radar. The "occupy" protests, love them or hate them, are children of the communication revolution. Just as the Arab spring, Greek economic torture, Libyan and Syrian despot cradles of vicious killing and evil, would all have been less than obvious without blogging. Where occasionally highlighted they would have been grease stained within hours or swapped for reality TV.

The suggested growing future where you either follow blogging or join in to make a difference is one that appeals to many. It is becoming a medium for "left" and "right" to discover jointly held morals and bring together the best of every philosophy and creed. Not a good recipe for those who would govern, is it. Their mantra is divide and conquer. One step forward as one ideology takes power, quickly followed by several steps backwards when usurped by their pals purporting to be of a different hue, yet much the same in their passion for power at any price.

As The EU wobbles and shakes, soon to tumble like the Twin Towers, we can be grateful that the aftermath will likely be an emerging world of greater hope and fairness. We can but try. We, so far, still have the tools. The pen may yet prove mightier than the sword. Or the keyboard more powerful than nuclear bombs!