Dr Richard AE North is a distinguished blogger and writer, but I do not entirely share his distaste for UKIP, of which he was once (like Professor Alan Sked) a key mover and shaker.
It seems that like many others, Dr North finds constitutional objections to EU membership as irritating as a gadfly. Here's a recent exchange:
[from the main body of his post] To this sad, dysfunctional crew, the EU treaties are "illegal" and those who signed it are "traitors". Any idea of negotiation or agreement is an anathema. They would sooner see the British economy crash and burn than accept a deal with Brussels.
[Me] Bit tendentious. I do indeed argue that UK entry into the EU in 1973 was ultra vires. Why that should make me sad and dysfunctional I'm not quite sure...
[Dr North] This is exactly what I mean .... apart from the fact that we didn't enter the EU in 1973 (or the EEC for that matter), the entry was in accord with our constitutional arrangements. Why does it matter so much that you need to assert that it is "ultra vires"? It isn't...
[Me] But we did enter the EU and didn't know it. We were told it was simply a trading arrangement and didn't know about the commitment to "ever-closer union". But Macmillan, Heath and others did know, because they got legal advice that told them of the constitutional implications. And we do have a constitution, one that very specifically forbids ceding any sovereign power to anyone outside the country. So yes, it was and is ultra vires. The referendum didn't validate the change because again the prospectus was false. If this seems like a boring legal point then let us have done with law - which is a trend I see here and elsewhere.
Constitutional argument is currently raging - among those who read, rather than play computer games - in the USA also ("Washington's Blog" is a good place to start). For example, under the US Constitution - at least as it used to be - Congress declares war, not the President.
It is a bit odd that a passionate democrat like Dr North, who espouses the direct-democracy "Harrogate Agenda", should dislike those who point out that here as in the US, constitutions - the foundations of legislation and power, the source of their legitimacy - have been snipped through like the string on a child's balloon.
For all its many faults - and no human institution is free of fault, as doubtless Dr North will discover if ever the Harrogate Agenda should come to be implemented - UKIP is gaining support because people are becoming aware how radically disenfranchised we have become, and how money and power are clearing away the last obstacles to their unrestricted global rule.
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Monday, September 29, 2014
Saturday, September 27, 2014
Neoliberalism vs. freedom
Here is Mary Wakefield in this week's Spectator magazine, on the use of mainstream Hollywood entertainment to desensitise teenage war criminals:
"Joshua Milton Blahyi (General Butt-Naked to his foes) ... was once a warlord in the Liberian civil war. Back in the bad old days, Joshua specialised in turning boys into psychopaths...
"He began, he said, by promising boys status. ‘They followed me at first because I was powerful and strong, and they wanted to be important like me.’ It was crucial that this first step was freely taken; that it was their choice. After that, the monster-making began. They were shown violent movies. ‘So they can see,’ said Joshua, ‘that these people in the movies, they intentionally shoot people that die, that killing is just a Hollywood game.’ Hollywood movies, I asked, not African ones? ‘Yes, Hollywood films.’
"The next step was to let them play with guns, shooting blanks, showing off, pretending to kill, and then: ‘We give them a knife to stab dead bodies,’ said Joshua. ‘At first it is hard for them, they feel fear. Later they are stabbing the bodies on and on… On and on and on.’
"...You must escalate the violence all the time, he said, so as to keep the boys in line. Once they’re happy killing, you make them rape, torture, behead. There are things Joshua made his young recruits do that are too horrible and too sad to repeat..."
Overleaf in the print edition, we have James Delingpole's panegyric to violent computer gaming, headed:
"The greatest joy of playing Grand Theft Auto V? It lets you give the finger to the PC brigade. It’s condemned for its outrageous sexism, racism, misogyny and violence. But it’s damn good fun."
And one in the eye for his false opposite, "feminazis".
John Ward's piece last night also has a go at the brainless dichotomies offered by neoliberalism, starting with:
"Problem: On the whole, regulators of markets have no experience of commercial life….and thus they tend to both miss the villainy – and come up with daft regulations that just get in the way.
"Neoliberal solution: Deregulation. No more regulators at all."
We have seen what financial deregulation has done since the 1980s. And the latest twist is global regulation in favour of big money - TTIP and so on.
Neoliberalism - as far as the term has any sense to me - may be neo, but it is not what I understand by liberalism. It is not about promoting the freedom of individuals, but - as far as I can see - destroying their defences against oligarchic power and wealth. Now international law is co-opted, so for example if GATT stalls at Doha in 2008 because smaller countries worry about American export disruption to their domestic markets, the US crashes into the TPP to find another way round. The juggernaut rolls on.
This week also, Charles Hugh Smith looked at the "clerisy", those who serve themselves by serving the world's would-be masters:
"The Status Quo around the world--from France to China to the U.S.--is optimized to protect its Elites and the sprawling Upper-Caste of academics, managers, think-tank toadies, technocrats, apparatchiks, functionaries, factotums, lackeys and apologists who serve the Elites, and are well-paid for enforcing the Status Quo on the disenfranchized castes below..."
What a shame it would be if, in his efforts to get noticed by Rupert Murdoch, Jame Delingpole should eventually find himself wearing the livery of the clerisy.
Can anything stop them? "What chance has the world?"
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"Joshua Milton Blahyi (General Butt-Naked to his foes) ... was once a warlord in the Liberian civil war. Back in the bad old days, Joshua specialised in turning boys into psychopaths...
"He began, he said, by promising boys status. ‘They followed me at first because I was powerful and strong, and they wanted to be important like me.’ It was crucial that this first step was freely taken; that it was their choice. After that, the monster-making began. They were shown violent movies. ‘So they can see,’ said Joshua, ‘that these people in the movies, they intentionally shoot people that die, that killing is just a Hollywood game.’ Hollywood movies, I asked, not African ones? ‘Yes, Hollywood films.’
"The next step was to let them play with guns, shooting blanks, showing off, pretending to kill, and then: ‘We give them a knife to stab dead bodies,’ said Joshua. ‘At first it is hard for them, they feel fear. Later they are stabbing the bodies on and on… On and on and on.’
"...You must escalate the violence all the time, he said, so as to keep the boys in line. Once they’re happy killing, you make them rape, torture, behead. There are things Joshua made his young recruits do that are too horrible and too sad to repeat..."
Overleaf in the print edition, we have James Delingpole's panegyric to violent computer gaming, headed:
"The greatest joy of playing Grand Theft Auto V? It lets you give the finger to the PC brigade. It’s condemned for its outrageous sexism, racism, misogyny and violence. But it’s damn good fun."
And one in the eye for his false opposite, "feminazis".
John Ward's piece last night also has a go at the brainless dichotomies offered by neoliberalism, starting with:
"Problem: On the whole, regulators of markets have no experience of commercial life….and thus they tend to both miss the villainy – and come up with daft regulations that just get in the way.
"Neoliberal solution: Deregulation. No more regulators at all."
We have seen what financial deregulation has done since the 1980s. And the latest twist is global regulation in favour of big money - TTIP and so on.
Neoliberalism - as far as the term has any sense to me - may be neo, but it is not what I understand by liberalism. It is not about promoting the freedom of individuals, but - as far as I can see - destroying their defences against oligarchic power and wealth. Now international law is co-opted, so for example if GATT stalls at Doha in 2008 because smaller countries worry about American export disruption to their domestic markets, the US crashes into the TPP to find another way round. The juggernaut rolls on.
 |
| From a review in the Sydney Morning Herald of Ludwell Denny's book, "America Conquers Britain" (1930). |
This week also, Charles Hugh Smith looked at the "clerisy", those who serve themselves by serving the world's would-be masters:
"The Status Quo around the world--from France to China to the U.S.--is optimized to protect its Elites and the sprawling Upper-Caste of academics, managers, think-tank toadies, technocrats, apparatchiks, functionaries, factotums, lackeys and apologists who serve the Elites, and are well-paid for enforcing the Status Quo on the disenfranchized castes below..."
What a shame it would be if, in his efforts to get noticed by Rupert Murdoch, Jame Delingpole should eventually find himself wearing the livery of the clerisy.
Can anything stop them? "What chance has the world?"
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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Thursday, September 25, 2014
After the conference?
This little figure of a clown was carved from linden wood by Pascal Bosshardt of Thannenkirch in Alsace. We were there last year and bought the figure after watching him at work. To take the photo I stood the clown by a pound coin to give an idea of scale.
I'm fascinated by this kind of skill, probably because I'm so far from being able to emulate it. I just don't have the coordination between hand and eye, the sense of scale and proportion. This was one of his simplest pieces too.
I don't know what inspired M Bosshardt to carve it, but to my eye the clown could be an ironic reference to politics. A clown blowing his own trumpet. Doesn't quite work because his expression has a touch of melancholy.
After the conference?
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MAD
AK Haart raised the question of how over-entertainment and superinformation are changing us. I think it's at least as serious an issue as the phoney drugs war.
Mentally Addictive Devices (MAD) seem to me to be shortening attention span, overstimulating and exhausting the mind with trivial and repetitive tasks, and fostering a hazy expectation of instant gratification in other aspects of life.
They also divert attention from pursuing action that furthers one's real long-term interests - there are students flunking college because of their addiction to computerised role-playing games.
And they override alertness to real physical risk. Look at those who walk blindly across a road while on their cellphones; and the poor girl murdered on a Birmingham bus last year had previously noted the strange behaviour of what was to be her killer, but had merely commented on it on her phone - I think the phone gives the illusion of society and so misleads one into a false sense of security.
What if Orwell's eternally ruling Party had realised that you could subjugate the people with endless dreams?
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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Mentally Addictive Devices (MAD) seem to me to be shortening attention span, overstimulating and exhausting the mind with trivial and repetitive tasks, and fostering a hazy expectation of instant gratification in other aspects of life.
They also divert attention from pursuing action that furthers one's real long-term interests - there are students flunking college because of their addiction to computerised role-playing games.
And they override alertness to real physical risk. Look at those who walk blindly across a road while on their cellphones; and the poor girl murdered on a Birmingham bus last year had previously noted the strange behaviour of what was to be her killer, but had merely commented on it on her phone - I think the phone gives the illusion of society and so misleads one into a false sense of security.
What if Orwell's eternally ruling Party had realised that you could subjugate the people with endless dreams?
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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Ur-language: "Politics"
One of the striking aspects of archaeolingustics is how certain words have survived millennia almost unchanged - one thinks for example of "atman" (breath, to blow) in Cave Six, the ancestor of the German "atmen" (to breathe) and "atman" (vital breath, the soul) in Sanskrit. The glyph for "atman" is found close to the depiction of a hunter using a blowpipe to bring down some as yet unidentified arboreal creature; given the age of the painting, this has sparked a lively debate on the tools that early Man may have developed before the Rift Valley diaspora.
Similarly, there are several images of what appear to be mouflons in a non-hunting context, suggesting that they may have been domesticated much earlier than the c. 8,000 BCE date previously theorised, perhaps owing to the local geography and micro-climate at the time and the protection offered by the size and depth of the cave complex.
Long duration of settlement and relative prosperity and security may also have fostered more complex forms of social organization not re-created until after the last Ice Age; this may explain the apparently formally-arranged groups of humans in some of the images. One of these shows such a group gathered around a flock or herd, possibly for the purposes of division, which may have been unequal, seeing the crown or helmet on one of the figures. Alternatively, it may have been to do with some form of treatment, since the co-habitation of man and animal promotes diseases and pests.
It is possible, therefore, that one of the compound words found beside this image may either have a purely literal meaning or, as Professor Strumpfhosen has controversially suggested, be the world's first example of metaphor: "poli" (many) and "tics" (bloodsucking insects). As the Professor remarks, some things never change.
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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Similarly, there are several images of what appear to be mouflons in a non-hunting context, suggesting that they may have been domesticated much earlier than the c. 8,000 BCE date previously theorised, perhaps owing to the local geography and micro-climate at the time and the protection offered by the size and depth of the cave complex.
Long duration of settlement and relative prosperity and security may also have fostered more complex forms of social organization not re-created until after the last Ice Age; this may explain the apparently formally-arranged groups of humans in some of the images. One of these shows such a group gathered around a flock or herd, possibly for the purposes of division, which may have been unequal, seeing the crown or helmet on one of the figures. Alternatively, it may have been to do with some form of treatment, since the co-habitation of man and animal promotes diseases and pests.
It is possible, therefore, that one of the compound words found beside this image may either have a purely literal meaning or, as Professor Strumpfhosen has controversially suggested, be the world's first example of metaphor: "poli" (many) and "tics" (bloodsucking insects). As the Professor remarks, some things never change.
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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
I sit on a man's back
I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.
Leo Tolstoy - What Is to be Done? (1886)
Yes I know it's only another quote, but it seems about right for the party conference season.
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Ur-language: "Managers"
Researchers at the E207 Caucasian cave complex, the world's oldest continuously-inhabited site, believe they have deciphered another part of the ancient wall-scratchings in Cave Six.
It has already been established that the Ur-word ancestor of the Chinese word "ma" (no) and Italian/French "ma/mais" (but) is "man", a generalised negative. More difficult, but extremely exciting, are the pictograms that appear to represent abstracts, including the one that is tentatively rendered as "thought" or "reflection".
It is now theorised that the Ur-etymology of "manager" is "man" (not) + "ager" (much idea).
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It has already been established that the Ur-word ancestor of the Chinese word "ma" (no) and Italian/French "ma/mais" (but) is "man", a generalised negative. More difficult, but extremely exciting, are the pictograms that appear to represent abstracts, including the one that is tentatively rendered as "thought" or "reflection".
It is now theorised that the Ur-etymology of "manager" is "man" (not) + "ager" (much idea).
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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.
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