Whistling past the graveyard

The following is an Anglicised paraphrasing of parts of a recent post on Jim Kuntzler's US blog. With the US and UK practically joined at the hip on pretty well all areas of policy that really matter, it only required minor tweeking to make it an equally accurate description of our present condition and the stark realities we are faced with.

What's going on in the UK economy right now is a slow-motion convulsion from which we will emerge as a very different nation with a very different economy.  The wild irresponsibility of the media in pretending otherwise is only going to make the convulsion worse, more painful, more socially and politically destructive. The convulsion can be described with precision as one of compressive contraction. Historic circumstances are requiring us to change our behaviour, to make new arrangements for everyday life in all the major particulars: capital accumulation and deployment; food production; commerce; habitation; transport; education; and health care. These new arrangements must be organized at a smaller and finer scale, and on a much more local basis.

The main "historic circumstance" mandating these changes goes under the heading of "Peak Oil."  We've come to the end of our ability to increase energy inputs to the global economy.  The routine "growth" in industrial activity and production that has been the basis of our financial arrangements for 200-odd years is no longer possible.  Offsetting this decline in oil energy "input" with "alt.energy" is a dangerous fantasy because it distracts us from the urgent task of making new arrangements for trade, food production, etc - the very things that would provide jobs and social roles for our citizens in the future.

We are witnessing a comprehensive failure of leadership in every sector and every level of British life - in politics, business, banking, education, news media, medicine, and the clergy. All are determined to pretend that we can somehow continue the habits and behaviours of the pre peak oil era. All appear unwilling to face reality, and all are engaged in mutually supporting each other's dangerous fantasies.

If we don't start attending to the transformation of life in these islands soon, by downscaling our activities, changing the way they are carried out and re-localizing them, we will see society disintegrate - and I use the word "dis-integrate" with purposeful precision. Everything will come apart - our political arrangements, our households, our health and our well-being.

At the moment, banking is disintegrating.  It's happening because the end of regular, predictable, cyclical, industrial growth means the end of our ability to generate credit without limits, and in fact we passed this point by stealth some time ago leaving the banks in "Wile E. Coyote" suspension above an abyss, where they have lately been joined by government at all levels and the indebted citizens of the land. The profound nausea spreading through the offices of Britain is the somatic recognition of exactly where we are in all this: off the cliff.

We're now seeing worldwide a kind of race between the assertion of peak oil and the failures of capital management as to which will provoke a widespread convulsion first.  They are obviously related and whichever gets us in the most trouble fastest, the destination is the same: the absolute necessity to reorganize how we live.  Among the many elements of this is the fact that "globalisation," in the Thomas Friedman sense of the word, is over. The urgent need to re-localize economies makes this self-evident. As a practical matter for us, this means committing to import replacement - making the things we need here in the UK and Europe in other words.  "Globalisation" now joins the many other fantasies that we can no longer indulge.

But - as we approach the 2009 festive season, our entire political class, regardless of party, remains resolutely committed to GROWTH which, translated means 'sustaining the unsustainable'.  That is their 'for public consumption' refrain at least; whilst, under cover of the phoney manufactured GWOT, those who pull the strings forge ahead with building the Security State they know will be required to deal with the shit-storm we are faced with.

Four (futile) policies to kickstart the economy

Yet another post prompted by one of my comments on another blog. This time 'ConservativeHome'. It was in reply to a prospective parliamentary candidate's recipe for fixing our economic woes. Kid's stuff really but what else can you expect from wide-eyed eager to please youngsters with a juicy parliamentary career beckoning? It (my comment that is) went something like this:

Understanding the importance of staying 'on message' is pretty fundamental to the career prospects a PPC so a gold star to Kwasi Kwarteng for pushing all the right buttons in that regard. What I find so depressing though, is the apparent failure of politicians of ALL parties to recognise the real nature of the problem, let alone say anything sensible about addressing it. (I say 'apparent' because, at senior levels, it most certainly IS recognised and clearly understood too).

That 'real nature' is summed up by one stark fact: The 'perpetual' exponential growth on which our globalised economic system (or more accurately 'Ponzi Scheme') depends is NOT perpetual at all; it is in fact over, Finito, Kaput. As Ken Boulding so eloquently puts it:

"Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever on a finite planet is either a madman or an economist"

The last decade has witnessed production peaks in many of the resources that fuel the global economy, particularly oil. It is the dawning realisation among those who control the worlds principle concentration of power and wealth that those peaks are never going to be exceeded that is the root cause of what we euphemistically insist on calling 'the economic slowdown' and similar anodyne absurdities. Cascading surreptitious actions - largely hidden from public view - to protect power and wealth as much as possible in a beggar-my-neighbour fashion are still proceeding apace and all our representatives can do is talk about printing money - sorry 'quantitative easing' - sounds better doesn't it?

At Privy Council level all this is known only too well. Can't admit as much to the lower orders and Joe Public though. Don't want to precipitate the civil unrest that is in any event nigh on inevitable. Best to keep talking the talk whilst beefing up the Surveillance/Security State the better to maintain law and order when the same realisation finally dawns on Jo P - and the S really does HTF

Gallows Humour

Hilarious, wry, black humour - US style. The general principles illustrated being equally applicable to the UK.

In the teeth of self-evidently unsustainable, fossil-fuelled, exponential economic and population growth on a finite planet, and with the real implications of 'peak-oil' becoming unsettlingly clear, this video encapsulates many of the State's instinctive responses; not to mention the true nature of its government.

I particularly liked 'Democracy at gunpoint', Celebrating uniformity of speech', 'One media - one voice', 'Fighting terrorism by creating it', 'Lest they forget - we'll remind';

and my favourite: 'Financial security through financial insolvency' which of course is the established (but teetering on the brink of collapse) first principle of Western globalised economics.

And ........ with all coins minted in depleted uranium - what else?

oh! - and watch for the 'a proportion of every Halliburton purchase is donated to.....' bye-line at the end - priceless !

UK 2017: under surveillance

Neil Mackay in Scotland's Sunday Herald provides the following introduction to a report commissioned by the UK Information Commissioner entitled "A Report on the Surveillance Society":

IT is a chilling, dystopian account of what Britain will look like 10 years from now: a world in which Fortress Britain uses fleets of tiny spy-planes to watch its citizens, of Minority Report-style pre-emptive justice, of an underclass trapped in sink-estate ghettos under constant state surveillance, of worker drones forced to take on the lifestyle and values of the mega-corporation they work for, and of the super-rich hiding out in gated communities constantly monitored by cameras and private security guards.

This Orwellian vision of the future was compiled on the orders of the UK's information commissioner - the independent watchdog meant to guard against government and private companies invading the privacy of British citizens and exploiting the masses of information currently held on each and every one of us - by the Surveillance Studies Network, a group of academics.

On Friday, this study, entitled A Report on the Surveillance Society, was picked over by a select group of government mandarins, politicians, police officers and academics in Edinburgh. It is unequivocal in its findings, with its first sentence reading simply: "We live in a surveillance society." The information commissioner, Richard Thomas, endorses the report. He says: "Today, I fear that we are, in fact, waking up to a surveillance society that is already all around us."

The academics who compiled the study based their vision of the future not on wild hypotheses but on existing technology, statements made about the intentions of government and private companies and studies by other think tanks, regulators, professional bodies and academics.

The report authors say that they believe the key theme of the future will be "pervasive surveillance" aimed at tracking and controlling people and pre-empting behaviour. The authors also say that their glimpse of the future is "fairly conservative. The future spelled out in the report is nowhere near as dystopian and authoritarian as it could be."

Read how UK 2017 might look here

.... And remember - you will have nothing to fear so long as you're not doing anything 'wrong'. Because Big Brother is a good, kind, beneficent Big Brother. A Big Brother who always has your best interests at heart; who can be relied upon to protect you from wicked 'Terrorists' and anything else harmful to your wellbeing - including yourself.

Big Bother is Watching YOU

As with the proposed National Identity Card system, it is not the principle of road usage pricing (carrying an ID card) that should concern people, but the 'Big Brother' implications of the database technologies underlying them.

In the case of ID cards a database will record every instance of use to confirm identity. It does not take much imagination to envisage a near future where access to almost any building (for example) becomes conditional upon a swipe of the card, with centralised logging of person/time/place and a friendly 'security guard' on hand to ensure that 'authorisation failures' are handled 'appropriately'.

Similarly - and potentially even more intrusive - with the road pricing technologies under discussion: Norwich Union already has a 'Pay as you Drive' insurance offering based on GPS technology. A National road pricing system would likely be similar, but with the complication that the GPS 'gizmo' in every car would need to be absolutely tamper-proof. This from 'The Register':

"Obviously, the device needs to be difficult to remove or subvert, and as the charging system will need to distinguish between a vehicle spending a week in an underground car park and one driving around London with a strategically positioned piece of metal foil, the device probably has to be as much about reporting the vehicle's status regularly as it is about being a charging mechanism. Having the box measure and report mileage would provide one possible mechanism for catching evaders, but if by law all vehicles in the country need to have the ability to report position and status, other uses for the system will emerge, and the national ID scheme for cars will be with us........ You can envisage these in-car boxes getting fiendishly complex and expensive as the system designers try to lock out abuse and the custodians of sundry Government databases try to get a slice"

We are moving rapidly into a world where The State and its Agents will have access to far more information about your movements than you could possibly remember yourself. On 'An express train to a Surveillance State' in fact.

Scary eh?

Update 1.

Pondering the matter further, another prospective - and related - use for the ubiquitous CCTV surveillance camera emerges - no doubt already covered by our surveillance supremos: Suppose each installation were fitted with an active RFID receiver such that, in addition to visual video footage, any passing RFID chips straying within range were also recorded and matched against an appropriate database. It would only require the proposed ID card to have a suitable RFID chip built in ( or, better yet, everyone to be personally 'chipped at birth' - by order!) and .....

Well, have a look at this (The latest RFID chips are 1/60 the size of those pictured below) - and think about it.

Sabretache's profile

Retired Englishman. Still self-reliant BUT...., until a definitive Blue Pill/Red Pill moment a few years ago, trapped in the 'consensus trance' by nearly 60 years shouldering of "The White Man's Burden"

- By which I mean adherence & loyalty to the Establishment narrative of an essentially benign, well-intentioned, 'Washington Consensus' promoting British State, busily engaged in 'making the world a better place' - or words to that effect. Since rank, position and place are of no consequence to me, I took the Red Pill.

For better or worse, the results are manifest in this blog

In modern Britain, loyalty and adherence to the 'Consensus Narrative' - manifesting, in Richard Heinberg's memorable phrase, as 'The Consensus Trance' and instinctively understood by the ambitious - remains absolutely central to success in Business, Public Affairs, Academia or the Main Stream Media, trumping all other considerations - including intelligence and ability. Why? - Because, proportionate to one's approach and proximity to the thresholds of REAL power, to EFFECTIVELY question it is to threaten and therefore become toxic to the Arbiters of your advancement, whose rank position and place depend upon it.

But... BIG BIG BUT.... It turns out the narrative itself is entirely bogus. It is a clever ego-stroking Orwellian illusion designed, developed and moulded by self-perpetuating Power Elites to serve purposes far and away removed from those of fond and credulous popular belief. The history of Gallileo's run-in with The Roman Inquisition over 'Heliocentrism' and its implications for the teachings of the Catholic Church is an apt analogy.

My own adherence to it was shattered by deep involvement in what on any scale of serious issues facing humanity must rank close to bottom - The UK Campaign for Hunting - but it brought me face-to-face with gross abuse of political power together with the deception and sheer viciousness that our police are capable of when 'given their head' and under orders from their political masters.

The result was my 'Blue Pill/Red Pill' moment and the shattering of some cherished and long-held beliefs (or rather illusions as they turned out to be). As a consequence, life in polite orthodox company (ie among those living the 'consensus trance' which, by definition comprises the overwhelming majority) has become 'difficult'. My contributions to discussions on politics, philosophy and world affairs in general are likely to be considered, in varying degree, unwelcome, threatening, scary, treasonable or simply mad; which naturally enough renders me 'persona non-grata' in circles where I cannot be indulged or patronised as the token madman - which in practice means whenever such discussions arise (attempts at patronising or indulgence being hazardous to the intellectual dignity of those inclined to try so-to-speak)

It has one overriding, neurosis banishing consolation though: that of genuine, relaxed, honest, open-minded, sceptical, illusion less enquiry, free from any pressure - self-imposed or otherwise - to align with the powerful (ALL power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely) and I therefore sleep like a baby.

Some other consequences of 'Taking the Red Pill' - in no particular order:

1. Deep and abiding distrust of 'The State', its Apologists, its Spokesmen and especially its 'Security' Services and Enforcers.
2. A clear understanding that the central operating principle of the State Executive Branch and its myriad collaborators in the Senior Civil Service and Judiciary (including Privy Council rank politicians of all Parties) is deception, compounded by obsessive secrecy and born of fear of the general population, which must therefore be subjected to ever more comprehensive and intrusive surveillance. A safe operating assumption for the average Joe is that, if government clearly wants you to believe a particular proposition, then it is almost certainly false.
3. Conservative, Labour, LibDem, whatever. All are effectively hitched to the 'Consensus Narrative' and hence distinguishable by little more than their differences on the trivia of domestic politics. They generate a lot of heat and noise but very little light; they inflame passions; they inspire blind loyalty and/or visceral dislike but, on the epoch-defining issues of the age they are either silent (eg. peak... oil - or rather peak-just-about-everything) or complicit (eg. the need for perpetual 'growth' on a finite planet as a sacrosanct article of faith - together with the essential 'goodness' and benign intent of the Western World). Deviate persistently and effectively from these 'Articles of Faith' and you (Gallileo) will relinquish any prospect of political advancement (support from the Catholic Church) - If you are lucky enough to avoid the Guantanamo's of this world and escape with your life that is. (As a relevant aside, did you know that, with just 5% of the planet's population, the self-proclaimed 'Land-of-the-Free' boasts close to 25% of its prison population? ( more here ) - and very profitable business it is too for the Private Contractors that run most of it - the shape of things to come eh?)
   
4. Outright rejection of "The 'WAR' on Terror" as an honest, accurate description of the over-arching issue facing the world - The first time in history that we are allegedly waging war on an abstraction with nobody available to agree armistice terms; perpetual war for perpetual peace is the promise; a plausible and to date supremely successful method of keeping populations fearful and thus placid and grateful for the State's 'protection' - very useful for diverting a bit of self-righteous anger at the 'enemy du jour' too (like 'Hamas', or 'Hezbollah', or soto-voce 'Muslims in general', or .... whoever; you get the drift - we just gotta have enemies you see. Scary Evil Baddies - preferably of dark complexion and with unkempt beards - that we can get all worked up about). It will be over when our political masters tell us it's over. In the meantime, be afraid. Be VERY afraid - but take care crossing the road since you're several thousand times more likely to be killed that way than running into a 'terrorist')

To be continued......