I have been watching a soap opera from Angola on the internet.
So what is so special about a ‘telenovela’ from Angola?
It is this: nearly all the characters are black.
All these rich and beautiful people are black. All these people who have servants (alas black servants - just imagine if the servants were white!!!!!), who live in lovely houses, who wear gorgeous clothes, who are surrounded by ultra modern gadgets are black.
I sometimes wonder how I would feel if I’d been labelled black by the racialists, with their ubiquitous images of poor and hungry dark skinned folk, of African people dying of aids, of Africa being a basket case and so called black people as servants and so called white people as the bosses?
The so called black people who have come to this country from the West Indies in the past sixty years are invariably working class. They share a similar cultural outlook to the indigenous working class. You get out of your head on drugs, drink or Christianity, you keep your head down, and you do what needs to be done. Working class survival tactics.
‘Black’ people are mostly working class, and therefore powerless people, for class is a matter of power.
But these Angolans are powerful. Like wealthy footballers, they are supposed to be the poor, in need of care, patronised, but now they are the masters and mistresses of their own destinies.
These Angolans are not aristocrats either, like Nelson Mandela. They are nouveau riche, mere rabble, the lower orders made good.
For centuries Africans have been dragged into the hierarchical power structure, much like working class people in Europe, through war, slavery, genocide, land theft, and above all, through taxation.
Well, Angola has its modern state now. The infrastructure is being rebuilt after the war. Property rights are being created. An undisputed central government can raise its own taxes, create its own armies, fight its own wars.
Like all modern military bureaucratic hierarchies there is massive corruption and patronage. But so there is in Europe, so there is in America too.
Yes, the Angolan telenovela, Windeck is its name, is a marvellous thing, Africans enjoying the same wealth and power as Europeans.
Thursday 31 January 2013
Wednesday 30 January 2013
Regulation versus Law
In a free society men and women are free to be themselves, full grown adults who accept responsibility for their actions. Inevitably they adhere to the rule of law.
In ancient times the people of Israel adhered to the law handed down by God at Sinai. Unlike the neighbouring tribes who trembled in fear at the whims of kings and idols, the Israelites had no king, bowed down to no idol, and trembled only when they disobeyed the law.
After the Glorious Revolution of 1688 England was governed by the rule of law. English law had many many faults, but people knew where they stood, and they were free to go about their business. It was a law based on common law and common sense, developed by centuries of case law. In theory at least, everyone was equal before the law. Everyone was entitled to be judged by their fellows, in the form of a jury, not an administrator appointed by the bureaucratic Authority.
Law and its application formed the basis of English liberty. Unlike most of Continental Europe, England was a free and dynamic society. Europe was the home of despotism, arbitrary power and the Roman Catholic hierarchy.
In a vertical society, where power and authority flow downwards from the sword of the chief robber baron, there is no need for law. All that is needed is regulation.
The king and his ministers hand down a regulation and it must be obeyed. The regulation may be absurd, but it must be obeyed.
There is no rule of law when we are governed by the hierarchy, we simply need to obey the regulations.
There is no need to act responsibly in a bureaucratic society - just follow the road signs!
Free people relate to each other according to general principles. They do not kill, steal, slander, disrespect their parents, disrespect their spouses, mock God or His Sabbath or take what is their neighbour’s.
In a bureaucratic society people relate to the Authority, not to each other. If they can get away with it they will. If they are obeying the regulations, if they are obeying orders, their slave consciences are free.
Whatever we do there is somebody above us to instruct us. Often there is somebody below for us to instruct. Obedience and disobedience, reward and punishment.
In a regulated society we enjoy the freedom of slaves - free from the law and the moral agency that makes us human, free to follow a path laid out before us, free from the need to relate to one another.
All we need to do is to obey orders.
We are free to be independent, but independent of whom?
Independent of each other, we are dependent on the state.
In ancient times the people of Israel adhered to the law handed down by God at Sinai. Unlike the neighbouring tribes who trembled in fear at the whims of kings and idols, the Israelites had no king, bowed down to no idol, and trembled only when they disobeyed the law.
After the Glorious Revolution of 1688 England was governed by the rule of law. English law had many many faults, but people knew where they stood, and they were free to go about their business. It was a law based on common law and common sense, developed by centuries of case law. In theory at least, everyone was equal before the law. Everyone was entitled to be judged by their fellows, in the form of a jury, not an administrator appointed by the bureaucratic Authority.
Law and its application formed the basis of English liberty. Unlike most of Continental Europe, England was a free and dynamic society. Europe was the home of despotism, arbitrary power and the Roman Catholic hierarchy.
In a vertical society, where power and authority flow downwards from the sword of the chief robber baron, there is no need for law. All that is needed is regulation.
The king and his ministers hand down a regulation and it must be obeyed. The regulation may be absurd, but it must be obeyed.
There is no rule of law when we are governed by the hierarchy, we simply need to obey the regulations.
There is no need to act responsibly in a bureaucratic society - just follow the road signs!
Free people relate to each other according to general principles. They do not kill, steal, slander, disrespect their parents, disrespect their spouses, mock God or His Sabbath or take what is their neighbour’s.
In a bureaucratic society people relate to the Authority, not to each other. If they can get away with it they will. If they are obeying the regulations, if they are obeying orders, their slave consciences are free.
Whatever we do there is somebody above us to instruct us. Often there is somebody below for us to instruct. Obedience and disobedience, reward and punishment.
In a regulated society we enjoy the freedom of slaves - free from the law and the moral agency that makes us human, free to follow a path laid out before us, free from the need to relate to one another.
All we need to do is to obey orders.
We are free to be independent, but independent of whom?
Independent of each other, we are dependent on the state.
Tuesday 29 January 2013
The Disappearing Tuaregs of Mali
Yes, the Tuaregs of Mali are disappearing too. They're off to Mauritania. They don't like RTP, ethical foreign policies and humanitarian intervention. I can't say I blame them for getting out while they can with all those foreigners with guns running around all over their homeland.
The French arm of the NATO alliance is helping the army of the Malian state retake the northern area of Mali, the area that proclaimed its independence last year, and which was then overrun by NATO allies called Al Qaeda, thereby providing the pretext for Western intervention and a future occupation by French soldiers, and mercenaries, euphemistically known as security contractors, third world thugs doing the dirty work for first world corporations and governments.
Hundreds of thousands of Tuaregs have fled to Mauritania, fearing for their lives. They are not so much fleeing Al Qaeda, but the Mali army which is entering their lands from the south.
The local people accuse the Mali army of terrible atrocities.
They claim that people are being murdered on account of their race, that the lighter skinned Tuaregs are being ethnically cleansed by the darker skinned southerners.
Half the population of Tuaregs are now refugees.
The land is being emptied.
When the French and the Malian armies entered Timbuktu they found that most of the people had fled.
They were afraid to stay and be on the receiving end of the benevolent reprisals of their humanitarian liberators.
Once again ordinary people have been attacked by the hierarchy of the military bureaucratic complex.
Islamists, NATO, the government of Mali, all share one thing - they wish to destroy the autonomy of a peaceful independent people.
The French arm of the NATO alliance is helping the army of the Malian state retake the northern area of Mali, the area that proclaimed its independence last year, and which was then overrun by NATO allies called Al Qaeda, thereby providing the pretext for Western intervention and a future occupation by French soldiers, and mercenaries, euphemistically known as security contractors, third world thugs doing the dirty work for first world corporations and governments.
Hundreds of thousands of Tuaregs have fled to Mauritania, fearing for their lives. They are not so much fleeing Al Qaeda, but the Mali army which is entering their lands from the south.
The local people accuse the Mali army of terrible atrocities.
They claim that people are being murdered on account of their race, that the lighter skinned Tuaregs are being ethnically cleansed by the darker skinned southerners.
Half the population of Tuaregs are now refugees.
The land is being emptied.
When the French and the Malian armies entered Timbuktu they found that most of the people had fled.
They were afraid to stay and be on the receiving end of the benevolent reprisals of their humanitarian liberators.
Once again ordinary people have been attacked by the hierarchy of the military bureaucratic complex.
Islamists, NATO, the government of Mali, all share one thing - they wish to destroy the autonomy of a peaceful independent people.
Hierarchy and Work
For thousands of years humanity got by with the gift economy. In the last few hundred years the exchange economy took a grip on most human activity.
Even so, there still exist many remnants of the gift economy.
All work is a form of service, and where work is done with an attitude of service, the gift economy carries on.
It is through service that we enrich ourselves and we enrich others. The very essence of what it means to be human is to live in society and to serve.
Without service we live alone, wrapped up in ourselves, going mad. Alone on a planet of seven billion.
Traditional family life depends on each person doing their allotted task. These tasks revolve around food, shelter and clothing. There is no question of not doing them.
There is no question of being ‘paid’ for doing them, no idea that time might be divided up into work and leisure.
Until very recently the important work was done by the women, and the men provided the extras. The care of the young and the old and the maintenance of the home and often the provision of food and clothing was often the gift of women.
When the man came to the woman with his gift he was duly honoured, some might say humoured.
With recent technological changes there is much less work for the woman to do in the home. The woman scorns the man’s gifts. Man and woman have learnt to serve themselves.
They work in large organizations, similar to the schools they were forced to attend when they were young.
The schools teach them that work is drudgery, that everybody exploits everyone else, to look out for number one, never to give, always to take.
The schools teach the people not to work with each other but to work with Authority.
They must ever look upwards to Authority, never across to each other.
They must work alone, with the aim of pleasing Authority, the one who dispenses rewards and punishment and smiley faces.
Their colleagues are not their friends, they are their rivals.
To give something away for free seems bizarre.
We perform our allotted task, and if we please our ‘superior’ we are duly rewarded.
We work for ourselves, slaves to exchange, working joylessly, insanely trapped inside ourselves. Success, ambition, self, fighting each other like rats in a sack.
Even so, there still exist many remnants of the gift economy.
All work is a form of service, and where work is done with an attitude of service, the gift economy carries on.
It is through service that we enrich ourselves and we enrich others. The very essence of what it means to be human is to live in society and to serve.
Without service we live alone, wrapped up in ourselves, going mad. Alone on a planet of seven billion.
Traditional family life depends on each person doing their allotted task. These tasks revolve around food, shelter and clothing. There is no question of not doing them.
There is no question of being ‘paid’ for doing them, no idea that time might be divided up into work and leisure.
Until very recently the important work was done by the women, and the men provided the extras. The care of the young and the old and the maintenance of the home and often the provision of food and clothing was often the gift of women.
When the man came to the woman with his gift he was duly honoured, some might say humoured.
With recent technological changes there is much less work for the woman to do in the home. The woman scorns the man’s gifts. Man and woman have learnt to serve themselves.
They work in large organizations, similar to the schools they were forced to attend when they were young.
The schools teach them that work is drudgery, that everybody exploits everyone else, to look out for number one, never to give, always to take.
The schools teach the people not to work with each other but to work with Authority.
They must ever look upwards to Authority, never across to each other.
They must work alone, with the aim of pleasing Authority, the one who dispenses rewards and punishment and smiley faces.
Their colleagues are not their friends, they are their rivals.
To give something away for free seems bizarre.
We perform our allotted task, and if we please our ‘superior’ we are duly rewarded.
We work for ourselves, slaves to exchange, working joylessly, insanely trapped inside ourselves. Success, ambition, self, fighting each other like rats in a sack.
Sunday 27 January 2013
Negra Sombra by Rosalia de Castro
Galicia is a country in north west Spain. It is a land of mountains and sacred rivers, fjords and the wild sea, smugglers and saints and even the occasional werewolf.
The greatest poet of the Galician language is Rosalia de Castro.
This poem was written soon after the deaths of two of her children. Literally, the title means ‘Black Shadow’ but I have taken the liberty of calling it ‘Dark Shadow’.
Negra Sombra
Cando penso que te fuches
Negra sombre que m’asombras
O pe do’s meus cabezales
Tornas facendome mofa
Cando maxino qu’es ida
No mesmo sol te m’amostras
Y eres a estrela que brila
Y eres o vento que zoa
Si cantan, es ti que cantas
Si choran es ti que choras,
Y es o murmurio do rio
Y es a noite y a aurora
En todo estas e ti es todo
Pra min y en min mesmo moras,
Nin m’abandonaras nunca,
Sombra que sempre m’asombras
Dark Shadow
When I think that you have left me
Dark shadow that hangs over me
Standing guard by my pillow
You scoff at me again
When I think that you have gone
I see your shadow on the sun
You are there in the star that shines
You are there in the wind that groans
When I hear a song it is you who sings
When I see tears it is you who cries,
You are there in the murmur of the river
You are there in the night, and at the dawn
You are everywhere and in everything
You are always there, with me and within me
Never do you ever leave me
Dark shadow who darkens my days
The greatest poet of the Galician language is Rosalia de Castro.
This poem was written soon after the deaths of two of her children. Literally, the title means ‘Black Shadow’ but I have taken the liberty of calling it ‘Dark Shadow’.
Negra Sombra
Cando penso que te fuches
Negra sombre que m’asombras
O pe do’s meus cabezales
Tornas facendome mofa
Cando maxino qu’es ida
No mesmo sol te m’amostras
Y eres a estrela que brila
Y eres o vento que zoa
Si cantan, es ti que cantas
Si choran es ti que choras,
Y es o murmurio do rio
Y es a noite y a aurora
En todo estas e ti es todo
Pra min y en min mesmo moras,
Nin m’abandonaras nunca,
Sombra que sempre m’asombras
Dark Shadow
When I think that you have left me
Dark shadow that hangs over me
Standing guard by my pillow
You scoff at me again
When I think that you have gone
I see your shadow on the sun
You are there in the star that shines
You are there in the wind that groans
When I hear a song it is you who sings
When I see tears it is you who cries,
You are there in the murmur of the river
You are there in the night, and at the dawn
You are everywhere and in everything
You are always there, with me and within me
Never do you ever leave me
Dark shadow who darkens my days
Saturday 26 January 2013
Three Centuries of Morality - Sundays with John Ball
Do we repent of our sin or of our sins?
It depends on whether your religion is a faith or whether it is a rule book.
In Arabia there is a Moslem sect called the Wahhabis. It’s values of life denial are spread throughout the world by the dictatorial government of Saudi Arabia. Many Moslems scarcely recognize it as being Islam at all.
A change of emphasis has come about in Islam. It is changing from a religion of understanding into a religion of morality. It is a result of societies moving away from power structures such as family and tribe, to power structures that revolve around the army and the state.
The collapse of the religion of understanding and the rise of the religion of morality coincides with a century of fascist regimes in the Moslem world, both secular and pseudo religious.
Moralistic religion is censorious by nature and it loves to punish. Its adherents are unhappy people who hate. Morality is an ideology that knows not love nor freedom. It is a cult of death, no religion at all.
Wahhabi Islam, which originally emerged in the eighteenth century, is closely related to the morality of Europe, the Nihilistic morality that led to the Nazis and the Bolsheviks, people who threw away the old religion and embraced the death cult of reward and punisment.
The Bolsheviks abolished the Russian Church to justify the morality of their crimes.
The Nazis were the products of the Prussian bureaucracy that had abolished the Lutheran and Reformed faiths and substituted them with Pietist morality.
A moral person, a person who repents of their sins, rather than their sin, is self absorbed, forever examining themselves, disguising crime as morality, turning away from the reality of others, isolating themselves from their fellows and turning their face ever inwards.A moral person, a person who repents of their sins, rather than their sin, is self absorbed, forever examining themselves, disguising crime as morality, turning away from the reality of others, isolating themselves from their fellows and turning their face ever inwards.
The Hasidic movement in Judaism was a similar reaction to the increasingly authoritarian nature of eighteenth century society. Such self absorbed mysticism would have been unfeasible in an age of mutual dependency and communal land distribution.
In eighteenth century Britain there was similar hypocrisy and self absorption with the Methodists, the first Christian group outside the Roman Church to officially believe in Free Will, whose preoccupation was personal morality, this in a time of enclosures, new property rights, the destruction of ancient communities and the pauperization of ordinary people.
As authoritarian structures conquer, as capitalism spreads, as the state encroaches ever more, faith is replaced by a rule book, awareness of our innate sin is replaced by the monitoring of our personal sins, righteousness is replaced by morality, virtue by crime.
It depends on whether your religion is a faith or whether it is a rule book.
In Arabia there is a Moslem sect called the Wahhabis. It’s values of life denial are spread throughout the world by the dictatorial government of Saudi Arabia. Many Moslems scarcely recognize it as being Islam at all.
A change of emphasis has come about in Islam. It is changing from a religion of understanding into a religion of morality. It is a result of societies moving away from power structures such as family and tribe, to power structures that revolve around the army and the state.
The collapse of the religion of understanding and the rise of the religion of morality coincides with a century of fascist regimes in the Moslem world, both secular and pseudo religious.
Moralistic religion is censorious by nature and it loves to punish. Its adherents are unhappy people who hate. Morality is an ideology that knows not love nor freedom. It is a cult of death, no religion at all.
Wahhabi Islam, which originally emerged in the eighteenth century, is closely related to the morality of Europe, the Nihilistic morality that led to the Nazis and the Bolsheviks, people who threw away the old religion and embraced the death cult of reward and punisment.
The Bolsheviks abolished the Russian Church to justify the morality of their crimes.
The Nazis were the products of the Prussian bureaucracy that had abolished the Lutheran and Reformed faiths and substituted them with Pietist morality.
A moral person, a person who repents of their sins, rather than their sin, is self absorbed, forever examining themselves, disguising crime as morality, turning away from the reality of others, isolating themselves from their fellows and turning their face ever inwards.A moral person, a person who repents of their sins, rather than their sin, is self absorbed, forever examining themselves, disguising crime as morality, turning away from the reality of others, isolating themselves from their fellows and turning their face ever inwards.
The Hasidic movement in Judaism was a similar reaction to the increasingly authoritarian nature of eighteenth century society. Such self absorbed mysticism would have been unfeasible in an age of mutual dependency and communal land distribution.
In eighteenth century Britain there was similar hypocrisy and self absorption with the Methodists, the first Christian group outside the Roman Church to officially believe in Free Will, whose preoccupation was personal morality, this in a time of enclosures, new property rights, the destruction of ancient communities and the pauperization of ordinary people.
As authoritarian structures conquer, as capitalism spreads, as the state encroaches ever more, faith is replaced by a rule book, awareness of our innate sin is replaced by the monitoring of our personal sins, righteousness is replaced by morality, virtue by crime.
Friday 25 January 2013
The Joker
This week saw the second inauguration of President Barack Obama of the USA.
Mr. Obama is much loved by Progressives everywhere, and is a big fan of Big Government, aka the Welfare Warfare State.
He is the first US President to be elected on account of the colour of his skin. Modern Progressives, like the Progressives back in the first half of the twentieth century are racialist.
Where as most of us see people, Progressives see categories.
Like the Black Prince, who was so fond of hunting in these parts, there is clearly dark skinned ancestry in my family too, yet in your twenty first century I am classified as ‘White British’ though I’ve never called myself such. I am an English peasant. England is the land where I have lived. English is the culture to which I belong.
As far as the Progressives are concerned Barack Obama is a Black American.
But he is not an African American.
His mother was of European ancestry and his father was from East Africa.
The African American people are an agricultural people, of West African origin, many of whom emigrated to the industrial north of their country in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Their experience is similar to that of Sicilians who emigrated to Milan and Turin or to that of Andalusians who emigrated to Barcelona and Bilbao, or the Irish who left for Glasgow and Birmingham.
President Obama is no more an African American than I am an Italian or Spanish peasant.
President Obama was born in Hawaii, and lived in Indonesia of all places, far far away from New Orleans or Detroit.
If anything, he is a Nobody from Nowhere, a typical member of the rootless bureaucratic class.
But with his tanned skin and daring names (Hussein, like Saddam, and Obama, a bit like the evil Osama), with his caring egalitarian rhetoric the President is a Progressive dream.
He is homogenous. President Obama is a Progressive, but without the guilty pale complexion.
Mr. Obama is much loved by Progressives everywhere, and is a big fan of Big Government, aka the Welfare Warfare State.
He is the first US President to be elected on account of the colour of his skin. Modern Progressives, like the Progressives back in the first half of the twentieth century are racialist.
Where as most of us see people, Progressives see categories.
Like the Black Prince, who was so fond of hunting in these parts, there is clearly dark skinned ancestry in my family too, yet in your twenty first century I am classified as ‘White British’ though I’ve never called myself such. I am an English peasant. England is the land where I have lived. English is the culture to which I belong.
As far as the Progressives are concerned Barack Obama is a Black American.
But he is not an African American.
His mother was of European ancestry and his father was from East Africa.
The African American people are an agricultural people, of West African origin, many of whom emigrated to the industrial north of their country in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Their experience is similar to that of Sicilians who emigrated to Milan and Turin or to that of Andalusians who emigrated to Barcelona and Bilbao, or the Irish who left for Glasgow and Birmingham.
President Obama is no more an African American than I am an Italian or Spanish peasant.
President Obama was born in Hawaii, and lived in Indonesia of all places, far far away from New Orleans or Detroit.
If anything, he is a Nobody from Nowhere, a typical member of the rootless bureaucratic class.
But with his tanned skin and daring names (Hussein, like Saddam, and Obama, a bit like the evil Osama), with his caring egalitarian rhetoric the President is a Progressive dream.
He is homogenous. President Obama is a Progressive, but without the guilty pale complexion.
Thursday 24 January 2013
The Jailing of Black America
Orlando Patterson, Professor of Sociology at Harvard University writes in the International Herald Tribune
'America has more than 2 million citizens behind bars, the highest absolute and per capita rate of incarceration in the world. Black Americans, a mere 13 percent of the population, constitute half of this country's prisoners. A tenth of all black men between ages 20 and 35 are in jail or prison; blacks are incarcerated at over eight times the white rate. The effect on black communities is catastrophic: One in three male African-Americans in their 30s now has a prison record, as do nearly two-thirds of all black male high school dropouts. (...)
Black relationships and families fail at high rates because women increasingly refuse to put up with this abuse [in relationships]. The resulting absence of fathers - some 70 percent of black babies are born to single mothers - is undoubtedly a major cause of youth delinquency.'
Abroad, the welfare warfare nations of the West no longer seek to control foreign states. Instead they seek to destroy them, to cause poverty, sickness, civil war, chaos, to weaken their enemy forever.
Similar tactics are undertaken against the ‘insurgent’ domestic population.
'America has more than 2 million citizens behind bars, the highest absolute and per capita rate of incarceration in the world. Black Americans, a mere 13 percent of the population, constitute half of this country's prisoners. A tenth of all black men between ages 20 and 35 are in jail or prison; blacks are incarcerated at over eight times the white rate. The effect on black communities is catastrophic: One in three male African-Americans in their 30s now has a prison record, as do nearly two-thirds of all black male high school dropouts. (...)
Black relationships and families fail at high rates because women increasingly refuse to put up with this abuse [in relationships]. The resulting absence of fathers - some 70 percent of black babies are born to single mothers - is undoubtedly a major cause of youth delinquency.'
Abroad, the welfare warfare nations of the West no longer seek to control foreign states. Instead they seek to destroy them, to cause poverty, sickness, civil war, chaos, to weaken their enemy forever.
Similar tactics are undertaken against the ‘insurgent’ domestic population.
Wednesday 23 January 2013
The Disappearing Blacks of America
This week marks the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade, the court decision that legalized abortion throughout the United States of America.
This landmark ruling has seemingly been a weapon directed at the poor, the working class and ethnic minorities, particularly African Americans.
Regardless of arguments about the exact moment when human life begins, or whether a woman has ‘a right to choose,’ abortion is also a matter of class, race and power.
Most of those who have power within the hierarchy, the supervisor class of ‘liberal’ professionals, are in favour of abortions, whereas the vast majority of abortions are performed on women of the powerless, supervised sections of society.
Blacks in America are 13% of the population, yet undergo around 36% of the abortions.
A black woman is five times more likely to have an abortion than a white woman.
On average 1876 black women undergo abortions every day in the United States.
Since 1973 approximately 16 million abortions have taken place on black women.
If those potential human beings were still alive today there would be 16 million more blacks in America. Instead of 36 million blacks there would be 52 million blacks.
There would be 36% more African Americans.
Throughout the world abortion is a method of population control aimed mainly at the poor and the powerless.
Whether abortion is back street or legal, abortion will always affect the working classes more. The rational choice for many women, in a world of welfare dependency, medicated despondency, loss of skilled jobs and the mass unemployment of potential fathers, is to have a termination.
Whereas families were once the backbone of working class life, increasingly marriage and family is becoming a middle class luxury.
In a world where the people serve the Economy, instead of the Economy serving the people, the masses of the Powerless are becoming surplus to requirements.
In Arabia the girls are disappearing, in the United States it is the African Americans who are being sucked out and thrown in the incinerator.
This landmark ruling has seemingly been a weapon directed at the poor, the working class and ethnic minorities, particularly African Americans.
Regardless of arguments about the exact moment when human life begins, or whether a woman has ‘a right to choose,’ abortion is also a matter of class, race and power.
Most of those who have power within the hierarchy, the supervisor class of ‘liberal’ professionals, are in favour of abortions, whereas the vast majority of abortions are performed on women of the powerless, supervised sections of society.
Blacks in America are 13% of the population, yet undergo around 36% of the abortions.
A black woman is five times more likely to have an abortion than a white woman.
On average 1876 black women undergo abortions every day in the United States.
Since 1973 approximately 16 million abortions have taken place on black women.
If those potential human beings were still alive today there would be 16 million more blacks in America. Instead of 36 million blacks there would be 52 million blacks.
There would be 36% more African Americans.
Throughout the world abortion is a method of population control aimed mainly at the poor and the powerless.
Whether abortion is back street or legal, abortion will always affect the working classes more. The rational choice for many women, in a world of welfare dependency, medicated despondency, loss of skilled jobs and the mass unemployment of potential fathers, is to have a termination.
Whereas families were once the backbone of working class life, increasingly marriage and family is becoming a middle class luxury.
In a world where the people serve the Economy, instead of the Economy serving the people, the masses of the Powerless are becoming surplus to requirements.
In Arabia the girls are disappearing, in the United States it is the African Americans who are being sucked out and thrown in the incinerator.
Tuesday 22 January 2013
War Without End, Amen
According to the Sun newspaper
‘Britain may send RAF planes and unmanned drones to neighbouring Mali to help France fight Al Qaeda rebels intent on taking over the country, The Sun can reveal……..The PM (Cameron) said, “The threat has grown, particularly in North Africa. It will require a response that is about years, even decades, rather than months.”’
What?
To mop up a few hundred foreign terrorists with little support amongst the local population?
‘Britain may send RAF planes and unmanned drones to neighbouring Mali to help France fight Al Qaeda rebels intent on taking over the country, The Sun can reveal……..The PM (Cameron) said, “The threat has grown, particularly in North Africa. It will require a response that is about years, even decades, rather than months.”’
What?
To mop up a few hundred foreign terrorists with little support amongst the local population?
Monday 21 January 2013
Allo, Allo, We're Back Again
Bloomberg, September 26th 2012
'China offered to support Mali’s military in its fight against Islamist rebels who have seized northern parts of the country, said Guo Xueli, charge d’ affaires at the Chinese Embassy. “China firmly supports the position of Mali. We are going to bring our assistance to the extent possible, specifically in the military where we already have a very old cooperation.”'
Let China help out, militarily? No chance.
The Chinese have already got their mitts on a lot of the resources that are available in North Africa and they are driving up prices everywhere.
North Africa is France’s backyard, not China’s.
French troops have intervened in Africa over fifty times in the fifty years or so since Africa was ‘liberated’ from French colonial power, the last time being last year in Ivory Coast.
Step 1: Foment long standing rebellion amongst the Tuaregs of Northern Mali.
Step 2: Arrange for NATO trained soldier to overthrow the government of Mali.
Stage 3: Local Islamists and foreign fighters take control of separatist areas (May 2012).
Horror stories emerge, amputations, executions, destruction of World Heritage Sites and so on.
Stage 4: Mali on brink of collapse. Send for the (French) cavalry.
Once again Islamists are used to destabilize a country and to justify a Western military presence.
From now on the government of Mali will be signing contracts that are very favourable to the NATO military bureaucratic complex.
As for the Chinese, they had better learn their place.
'China offered to support Mali’s military in its fight against Islamist rebels who have seized northern parts of the country, said Guo Xueli, charge d’ affaires at the Chinese Embassy. “China firmly supports the position of Mali. We are going to bring our assistance to the extent possible, specifically in the military where we already have a very old cooperation.”'
Let China help out, militarily? No chance.
The Chinese have already got their mitts on a lot of the resources that are available in North Africa and they are driving up prices everywhere.
North Africa is France’s backyard, not China’s.
French troops have intervened in Africa over fifty times in the fifty years or so since Africa was ‘liberated’ from French colonial power, the last time being last year in Ivory Coast.
Step 1: Foment long standing rebellion amongst the Tuaregs of Northern Mali.
Step 2: Arrange for NATO trained soldier to overthrow the government of Mali.
Stage 3: Local Islamists and foreign fighters take control of separatist areas (May 2012).
Horror stories emerge, amputations, executions, destruction of World Heritage Sites and so on.
Stage 4: Mali on brink of collapse. Send for the (French) cavalry.
Once again Islamists are used to destabilize a country and to justify a Western military presence.
From now on the government of Mali will be signing contracts that are very favourable to the NATO military bureaucratic complex.
As for the Chinese, they had better learn their place.
Sunday 20 January 2013
Mali: Friends and Enemies
The London Telegraph: “The French are under no illusion that they face a capable enemy equipped and trained by the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.”
Straight out of the Goebbels School of Journalism.
Just slip in a lie and let people digest it into their consciousness.
The Telegraph writer is trying to make out that the Islamist/Salafi/Al Qaeda fighters in Mali were equipped and trained by ‘our’ enemy, Colonel Gaddafi.
On the contrary, this international network of terrorists and mercenaries, financed by the Arabian dictatorships, are the friends of the NATO military bureaucratic complex, whereas the Libyan regime of Colonel Gaddafi was ‘our’ enemy.
Gaddafi had wanted to come in from the cold, and he was fooled into believing that he had been forgiven.
Sadly for him, Colonel Gaddafi believed that he could maintain an independent source of power in Libya.
He believed he could remain friends with ‘ourselves’ and with China and Russia too.
He tried to finance the African Union. He hoped to introduce a Pan African currency, a sort of African Euro.
Libya was sitting on vast deposits of ‘our’ oil and ‘our’ water amongst many other natural resources.
Gaddafi and his allies were naïve. The invasion of Africa has begun.
NATO provides the bombs, but the ‘Arab Fighters’ are the shock troops.
Al Qaeda are the friends of our masters, in Afghanistan fighting the Russians, in Bosnia destroying the independence of non aligned Yugoslavia, in Chechnya fighting the Russians, in Iraq spreading terror amongst the pro Iranian Shia majority, in Syria destroying thousands of lives, wreaking havoc, destabilizing the regime, in Libya providing the hard core of the rebellion, giving a casus belli for NATO intervention.
Again, in Mali, they are providing the excuse for the NATO military occupation.
Al Qaeda has its own objectives of course, and no doubt they believe they are using NATO, and sometimes NATO has to have them put down, but most of the time they are just extremely nasty and useful idiots.
Islamists are simply the patsies of the West.
Straight out of the Goebbels School of Journalism.
Just slip in a lie and let people digest it into their consciousness.
The Telegraph writer is trying to make out that the Islamist/Salafi/Al Qaeda fighters in Mali were equipped and trained by ‘our’ enemy, Colonel Gaddafi.
On the contrary, this international network of terrorists and mercenaries, financed by the Arabian dictatorships, are the friends of the NATO military bureaucratic complex, whereas the Libyan regime of Colonel Gaddafi was ‘our’ enemy.
Gaddafi had wanted to come in from the cold, and he was fooled into believing that he had been forgiven.
Sadly for him, Colonel Gaddafi believed that he could maintain an independent source of power in Libya.
He believed he could remain friends with ‘ourselves’ and with China and Russia too.
He tried to finance the African Union. He hoped to introduce a Pan African currency, a sort of African Euro.
Libya was sitting on vast deposits of ‘our’ oil and ‘our’ water amongst many other natural resources.
Gaddafi and his allies were naïve. The invasion of Africa has begun.
NATO provides the bombs, but the ‘Arab Fighters’ are the shock troops.
Al Qaeda are the friends of our masters, in Afghanistan fighting the Russians, in Bosnia destroying the independence of non aligned Yugoslavia, in Chechnya fighting the Russians, in Iraq spreading terror amongst the pro Iranian Shia majority, in Syria destroying thousands of lives, wreaking havoc, destabilizing the regime, in Libya providing the hard core of the rebellion, giving a casus belli for NATO intervention.
Again, in Mali, they are providing the excuse for the NATO military occupation.
Al Qaeda has its own objectives of course, and no doubt they believe they are using NATO, and sometimes NATO has to have them put down, but most of the time they are just extremely nasty and useful idiots.
Islamists are simply the patsies of the West.
Saturday 19 January 2013
The Priesthood of All Believers - Sundays with John Ball
‘And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did shake, and the rocks rent.’
As you know, I don’t mind being called mad, but I do mind being called a priest. That’s because anybody who calls himself a priest is a phoney, a toady of the Evil one, a lackey of the thugs. I’ll tell you why.
The Old Testament Jews had a priesthood that offered a sacrifice to God on behalf of the people. They performed this sacrifice in a room in the Temple from which the ordinary believer was absent.
The ordinary person needed a priest to intercede for him, to approach God for him, for God was hidden behind a curtain in this room.
But when Jesus, the Son of God, the Son of Man, the Lamb of God, the Christ, was crucified, God himself had enacted the ultimate sacrifice.
Jesus was the final sacrifice.
Throughout Northern Europe the pagans, our own ancestors, gave up human sacrifice and animal sacrifice and sent their priests away to do something useful.
Through Jesus Christ’s ultimate sacrifice we no longer need to appease God. We don‘t need to propitiate his righteous anger.
Jesus is the final sacrifice and so we don’t need priests any longer. Through Jesus we have direct access to God. No more priests getting in the way. Now we are all priests and at the same time the priesthood has been abolished.
Hierarchy is the Greek word for the rule of the priests.
A Christian knows no hierarchy.
A Christian does not distinguish between slave and free. We are all free in Christ, free from the power of sin, free from guilt, and free from the intervention of the priests.
Of course the thugs and the kings of this world love a hierarchy. They want the rule of reward and punishment to continue. They don’t want us to be free.
They have used the Roman Church to deny Christ and re-establish the rule of priests. In your twenty first century you have experts and public servants, but in my day, back in the fourteenth century it was the priests of the Roman Church.
They said that salvation came through obedience to the Roman Church, that slavery is freedom. They demanded that we fight wars to expand the rule of the priests, to kill our fellows. They told us that war is peace, that might is right.
They banned us from reading the Gospel of Christ.
But Mr. Wycliffe and his friends translated the Bible into English and we began to spread the true Gospel.
We learnt that the priests were false, that slavery is slavery and that war is war.
Now we are all priests in Christ, and we are all free in Christ.
For knowing the Truth and speaking the Truth I was hanged drawn and quartered. Today they would drug me and send me to a mental hospital.
Different method, same war.
But the Truth lives on.
As you know, I don’t mind being called mad, but I do mind being called a priest. That’s because anybody who calls himself a priest is a phoney, a toady of the Evil one, a lackey of the thugs. I’ll tell you why.
The Old Testament Jews had a priesthood that offered a sacrifice to God on behalf of the people. They performed this sacrifice in a room in the Temple from which the ordinary believer was absent.
The ordinary person needed a priest to intercede for him, to approach God for him, for God was hidden behind a curtain in this room.
But when Jesus, the Son of God, the Son of Man, the Lamb of God, the Christ, was crucified, God himself had enacted the ultimate sacrifice.
Jesus was the final sacrifice.
Throughout Northern Europe the pagans, our own ancestors, gave up human sacrifice and animal sacrifice and sent their priests away to do something useful.
Through Jesus Christ’s ultimate sacrifice we no longer need to appease God. We don‘t need to propitiate his righteous anger.
Jesus is the final sacrifice and so we don’t need priests any longer. Through Jesus we have direct access to God. No more priests getting in the way. Now we are all priests and at the same time the priesthood has been abolished.
Hierarchy is the Greek word for the rule of the priests.
A Christian knows no hierarchy.
A Christian does not distinguish between slave and free. We are all free in Christ, free from the power of sin, free from guilt, and free from the intervention of the priests.
Of course the thugs and the kings of this world love a hierarchy. They want the rule of reward and punishment to continue. They don’t want us to be free.
They have used the Roman Church to deny Christ and re-establish the rule of priests. In your twenty first century you have experts and public servants, but in my day, back in the fourteenth century it was the priests of the Roman Church.
They said that salvation came through obedience to the Roman Church, that slavery is freedom. They demanded that we fight wars to expand the rule of the priests, to kill our fellows. They told us that war is peace, that might is right.
They banned us from reading the Gospel of Christ.
But Mr. Wycliffe and his friends translated the Bible into English and we began to spread the true Gospel.
We learnt that the priests were false, that slavery is slavery and that war is war.
Now we are all priests in Christ, and we are all free in Christ.
For knowing the Truth and speaking the Truth I was hanged drawn and quartered. Today they would drug me and send me to a mental hospital.
Different method, same war.
But the Truth lives on.
Friday 18 January 2013
Henry Miller
Along with Georges Simenon, Henry Miller is probably my favourite twentieth century author. He knows all about living in a town of quiet despair.
He knew how guys live, so little solitude and so much loneliness, all hollowed out and filled with horse manure.
He knew how you like to dance for your supper. He knew how little you have left, not even your dreams, not even each other.
Sometimes I feel so cold, and I wish I was back in the fourteenth century, and I would play and we would all dance and drink that loco mead and chew hemp and sit round a warm fire.
Aye, things have changed and not always for the best.
‘Still more soothing and fascinating to my spirit were the coloured reflections which danced over the surface of the water below. They danced like festive lanterns swaying in the wind: they mocked my sombre thoughts and illuminated the deep chasms of mystery which yawned within me. Suspended high above the river’s flow, I had the feeling of being detached from all problems, relieved of all cares and responsibilities. Never once did the river stop to ponder or question, never once did it seek to alter its course. Always onward, onward, full and steady. Looking back towards the shore, how like toy blocks appeared the skyscrapers which overshadowed the river’s bank! How ephemeral, how puny, how vain and arrogant! Into these grandiose tombs men and women muscled their way in day and day out, killing their souls to earn their bread, selling themselves, selling one another, even selling God, some of them, and towards night they poured out again, like ants, choked the gutters, dove into the underground, or scampered homeward pitter- patter to bury themselves again, not in grandiose tombs now but, like the worn, haggard, defeated wretches they were, in shacks and rabbit warrens which they called “home”. By day the graveyard of senseless sweat and toil; by night the cemetery of love and despair. And these creatures who had so faithfully learned to run, to beg, to sell themselves and their fellow-men, to dance like bears or perform like trained poodles, ever and always belying their own nature, these same wretched creatures broke down now and then, wept like fountains of misery, crawled like snakes, uttered sounds which only wounded animals are thought to emit. What they meant to convey by these horrible antics was that they had come to the end of their rope, that the powers above had deserted them, that unless someone spoke to them who understood their language of distress they were forever lost, broken, betrayed.
He knew how guys live, so little solitude and so much loneliness, all hollowed out and filled with horse manure.
He knew how you like to dance for your supper. He knew how little you have left, not even your dreams, not even each other.
Sometimes I feel so cold, and I wish I was back in the fourteenth century, and I would play and we would all dance and drink that loco mead and chew hemp and sit round a warm fire.
Aye, things have changed and not always for the best.
‘Still more soothing and fascinating to my spirit were the coloured reflections which danced over the surface of the water below. They danced like festive lanterns swaying in the wind: they mocked my sombre thoughts and illuminated the deep chasms of mystery which yawned within me. Suspended high above the river’s flow, I had the feeling of being detached from all problems, relieved of all cares and responsibilities. Never once did the river stop to ponder or question, never once did it seek to alter its course. Always onward, onward, full and steady. Looking back towards the shore, how like toy blocks appeared the skyscrapers which overshadowed the river’s bank! How ephemeral, how puny, how vain and arrogant! Into these grandiose tombs men and women muscled their way in day and day out, killing their souls to earn their bread, selling themselves, selling one another, even selling God, some of them, and towards night they poured out again, like ants, choked the gutters, dove into the underground, or scampered homeward pitter- patter to bury themselves again, not in grandiose tombs now but, like the worn, haggard, defeated wretches they were, in shacks and rabbit warrens which they called “home”. By day the graveyard of senseless sweat and toil; by night the cemetery of love and despair. And these creatures who had so faithfully learned to run, to beg, to sell themselves and their fellow-men, to dance like bears or perform like trained poodles, ever and always belying their own nature, these same wretched creatures broke down now and then, wept like fountains of misery, crawled like snakes, uttered sounds which only wounded animals are thought to emit. What they meant to convey by these horrible antics was that they had come to the end of their rope, that the powers above had deserted them, that unless someone spoke to them who understood their language of distress they were forever lost, broken, betrayed.
Thursday 17 January 2013
Orphans
You have the Welfare State.
In my day we looked after each other. We had the village and the family.
Sometimes we would go to see the monks or the nuns who lived a few miles away down in the valley, but, for the most part, we simply helped each other.
It is a very strange idea, this one that you have, that the robber barons and their servants should arrange for your welfare.
But they have left you with no land to live on, so what choice do they have?
They have not left you with the means to look after yourself.
The whole world is a pauper.
If you are on hard times you don’t turn to your family, but to the bureaucrat.
He will give you the money.
All day long your children are taken from you, to be ‘educated’ by bureaucrats. They are not allowed to stay with their parents, to learn the jobs that need to be learnt.
They are cooped up in day prisons, and hardly ever go ‘out’ to play.
When do you see children roaming the fields and dreaming in the woods?
If you are ill you go to see a medical bureaucrat. Nobody knows how to use the herbs anymore.
There are few herbs in the fields and the woods these days.
If you cannot cure each other or educate your young, what is the point of a family or a village?
Your neighbours are strangers who sleep and watch in the same street.
What can you say to people whose lives have nothing to do with your own?
Who is there to serve?
Who is there to receive from?
What does being human consist of for the orphans of the twenty-first century?
The search for individual happiness? A selection of tastes, a variety of consumer prejudices?
In my day we looked after each other. We had the village and the family.
Sometimes we would go to see the monks or the nuns who lived a few miles away down in the valley, but, for the most part, we simply helped each other.
It is a very strange idea, this one that you have, that the robber barons and their servants should arrange for your welfare.
But they have left you with no land to live on, so what choice do they have?
They have not left you with the means to look after yourself.
The whole world is a pauper.
If you are on hard times you don’t turn to your family, but to the bureaucrat.
He will give you the money.
All day long your children are taken from you, to be ‘educated’ by bureaucrats. They are not allowed to stay with their parents, to learn the jobs that need to be learnt.
They are cooped up in day prisons, and hardly ever go ‘out’ to play.
When do you see children roaming the fields and dreaming in the woods?
If you are ill you go to see a medical bureaucrat. Nobody knows how to use the herbs anymore.
There are few herbs in the fields and the woods these days.
If you cannot cure each other or educate your young, what is the point of a family or a village?
Your neighbours are strangers who sleep and watch in the same street.
What can you say to people whose lives have nothing to do with your own?
Who is there to serve?
Who is there to receive from?
What does being human consist of for the orphans of the twenty-first century?
The search for individual happiness? A selection of tastes, a variety of consumer prejudices?
Wednesday 16 January 2013
The Disappearing Females of Arabia
I was reading an article in Asia Times Online about the shortfall of females in many Asian countries. Not all of them are Moslem, but a good few are. The most staggering figures came from that most moralistic and patriarchal country of all, the closest ally of our rulers, Saudi Arabia. In a country of not quite 30 million inhabitants there are almost three million more males than females, a disparity of 10.44%.
Taking into account the greater number of male to female migrant workers this is still an astonishing figure.
As abortion is illegal and difficult to obtain it can only be assumed that many baby girls are murdered at birth.
It is easy to slate the Arabs and/or Moslems as being savage and barbaric, but there must be some rationale, however perverse that rationale may be, behind mass female infanticide.
Why is there a war on women?
Throughout the ages women have always been more useful than men. They have borne the children, fed them, nursed them, looked after the home, dug the vegetable patch, looked after the chickens, made the clothes, mended the clothes, pretty much the lot. The boys have been sent off to play and get out of the way.
But in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the world became more urbanised, and the man went out to work, and the woman stayed at home.
Now, looking after an urban dwelling, be it a flat or a small house, is not the same as looking after a farm. It is a lot easier.
And these days we have ever more labour saving devices, so a housewife is even less necessary.
In the old days for two children to survive and reproduce themselves, a woman might have to give birth to six. Every womb counted. Now, for two children to survive and reproduce, perhaps only three children are necessary. Therefore, reproductively speaking, only half as many women are needed.
Add to this a dowry system. A dowry may be a woman’s insurance in case of divorce, but it must be a considerable burden to a man with several daughters.
In a society where men go out to work and women stay at home, from being the most essential members of society, women have become luxury items.
Of course, Saudi Arabia, could create millions of unnecessary bureaucratic jobs for the women to do.
That has been our solution to feminine uselessness here in England, surely a more humane solution than murdering baby girls.
Or they could just let the girls have some fun.
After all, technology makes us all pretty useless.
Next they could be culling the boys too.
Taking into account the greater number of male to female migrant workers this is still an astonishing figure.
As abortion is illegal and difficult to obtain it can only be assumed that many baby girls are murdered at birth.
It is easy to slate the Arabs and/or Moslems as being savage and barbaric, but there must be some rationale, however perverse that rationale may be, behind mass female infanticide.
Why is there a war on women?
Throughout the ages women have always been more useful than men. They have borne the children, fed them, nursed them, looked after the home, dug the vegetable patch, looked after the chickens, made the clothes, mended the clothes, pretty much the lot. The boys have been sent off to play and get out of the way.
But in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the world became more urbanised, and the man went out to work, and the woman stayed at home.
Now, looking after an urban dwelling, be it a flat or a small house, is not the same as looking after a farm. It is a lot easier.
And these days we have ever more labour saving devices, so a housewife is even less necessary.
In the old days for two children to survive and reproduce themselves, a woman might have to give birth to six. Every womb counted. Now, for two children to survive and reproduce, perhaps only three children are necessary. Therefore, reproductively speaking, only half as many women are needed.
Add to this a dowry system. A dowry may be a woman’s insurance in case of divorce, but it must be a considerable burden to a man with several daughters.
In a society where men go out to work and women stay at home, from being the most essential members of society, women have become luxury items.
Of course, Saudi Arabia, could create millions of unnecessary bureaucratic jobs for the women to do.
That has been our solution to feminine uselessness here in England, surely a more humane solution than murdering baby girls.
Or they could just let the girls have some fun.
After all, technology makes us all pretty useless.
Next they could be culling the boys too.
Tuesday 15 January 2013
The Market Place Replaced By Offices
In my little town there is a market place. For seven hundred years a market was held regularly in the market place.
For hundreds of years we peasants would bring our wares to sell at market.
Until twenty years ago, that is.
Then the market was moved to a car park on the edge of the shopping area, and it consequently declined.
Part of the area of the market place ran alongside the Victorian town hall.
The offices of the local bureaucrats were no longer big enough, so the market was moved, and a new town hall extension was built.
The market was replaced by the seemingly more important work of pen pushing and paper shuffling. The coarse and common people who manned the market were pushed aside to make way for the nice council officers.
The town centre was no longer vibrant. It is slowly dying.
Now human interaction squeezes in where the bureaucrats allow, a little microcosm of the whole country.
For hundreds of years we peasants would bring our wares to sell at market.
Until twenty years ago, that is.
Then the market was moved to a car park on the edge of the shopping area, and it consequently declined.
Part of the area of the market place ran alongside the Victorian town hall.
The offices of the local bureaucrats were no longer big enough, so the market was moved, and a new town hall extension was built.
The market was replaced by the seemingly more important work of pen pushing and paper shuffling. The coarse and common people who manned the market were pushed aside to make way for the nice council officers.
The town centre was no longer vibrant. It is slowly dying.
Now human interaction squeezes in where the bureaucrats allow, a little microcosm of the whole country.
Bureaucracy Must Die
Hierarchy is the basis of capitalism. Like capitalism, which is monetarized hierarchy, the bureaucracy must number and quantify every aspect of human existence, must expand its control over every possible nook and cranny.
Expansion keeps one’s superior happy and the success of the gang is ensured. The successful underling will earn a smiley face from the leader and possibly promotion too.
On the surface the wars of the first half of the twentieth century were wars of rival military bureaucratic complexes.
But, under the surface, the aim was the regimentation of everyday life. Every individual was directed by the state.
The aim of the bureaucrat is to maintain and expand his power. The aim of the bureaucratic class is the expansion of its power.
Inevitably this leads to a loss of power by the individual and the horizontal group. If the hierarchy tells me where I must be, what I must eat, what I can say, what I must think, they have gained my power, they have centralized my power, in the way an atomic bomb has centralized my violence.
The enemy of the bureaucracy isnot the Marxists or the Fascists or the Islamists - they can and do adapt to the prevailing ideology.
The enemies of the bureaucracy are the free trade unions, the syndicalists, the anarchists, the small shopkeepers, the peasants, the independent churches, the schools and libraries set up by local subscription, the businesses, clubs and organizations set up without direction from above.
Today, every aspect of our existence is monitored and regulated. Set up a club or a business and you will be checked up on and directed from above. Education, health, even charity, is now sponsored and controlled by the invisible hand.
Bureaucracy is a cancer that spreads across society, killing everything it touches.
It is a parasite that feeds off the host organism.
When it has completed its work of destruction, both the host society and the parasite die, leaving a new world to start the whole process again.
Expansion keeps one’s superior happy and the success of the gang is ensured. The successful underling will earn a smiley face from the leader and possibly promotion too.
On the surface the wars of the first half of the twentieth century were wars of rival military bureaucratic complexes.
But, under the surface, the aim was the regimentation of everyday life. Every individual was directed by the state.
The aim of the bureaucrat is to maintain and expand his power. The aim of the bureaucratic class is the expansion of its power.
Inevitably this leads to a loss of power by the individual and the horizontal group. If the hierarchy tells me where I must be, what I must eat, what I can say, what I must think, they have gained my power, they have centralized my power, in the way an atomic bomb has centralized my violence.
The enemy of the bureaucracy isnot the Marxists or the Fascists or the Islamists - they can and do adapt to the prevailing ideology.
The enemies of the bureaucracy are the free trade unions, the syndicalists, the anarchists, the small shopkeepers, the peasants, the independent churches, the schools and libraries set up by local subscription, the businesses, clubs and organizations set up without direction from above.
Today, every aspect of our existence is monitored and regulated. Set up a club or a business and you will be checked up on and directed from above. Education, health, even charity, is now sponsored and controlled by the invisible hand.
Bureaucracy is a cancer that spreads across society, killing everything it touches.
It is a parasite that feeds off the host organism.
When it has completed its work of destruction, both the host society and the parasite die, leaving a new world to start the whole process again.
Sunday 13 January 2013
Bureaucracy Must Grow
Bureaucracy is a hierarchy. It’s organization is the same as the organization of an armed gang. There is a person at the top, the commander in chief, and all power flows downwards from that person.
The commander in chief does not gain his power from his followers. The followers are given power by their commander.
Occasionally he needs to be removed. This is a traumatic event, as the natural order of hierarchy is subverted. To prevent the trauma from destroying the whole structure of vertical power, votes taken by a controlled electoral college are used to overcome these periodic crises.
Each person in the vertical power structure is answerable to the person directly above them, and has power over those below them.
Inevitably, those on the ladder of the hierarchy look down on those below them. When they look up, their faces are pressed up against the backsides of those above them.
To justify their place on the ladder of the armed gang of the bureaucracy they must prove their worth. They must seek out ever more business for the bureaucratic gang, ever more reasons to take control over the lives of free individuals.
A bureaucratic gang never claims to be unnecessary. Bureaucrats never claim that there are less threats from foreign armies, from criminals, from child abusers, from disease, from global warming, from animal abusers, from poor teachers, from food poisoning, from depression, obesity and irresponsible behaviour. There is an ever growing need for regulation, ever more need for vigilance, for form filling and for checks.
Once a certain material standard has been attained, there is no other way to maintain economic growth within a hierarchical society than through the growth of bureaucracy and the totalitarian state
The commander in chief does not gain his power from his followers. The followers are given power by their commander.
Occasionally he needs to be removed. This is a traumatic event, as the natural order of hierarchy is subverted. To prevent the trauma from destroying the whole structure of vertical power, votes taken by a controlled electoral college are used to overcome these periodic crises.
Each person in the vertical power structure is answerable to the person directly above them, and has power over those below them.
Inevitably, those on the ladder of the hierarchy look down on those below them. When they look up, their faces are pressed up against the backsides of those above them.
To justify their place on the ladder of the armed gang of the bureaucracy they must prove their worth. They must seek out ever more business for the bureaucratic gang, ever more reasons to take control over the lives of free individuals.
A bureaucratic gang never claims to be unnecessary. Bureaucrats never claim that there are less threats from foreign armies, from criminals, from child abusers, from disease, from global warming, from animal abusers, from poor teachers, from food poisoning, from depression, obesity and irresponsible behaviour. There is an ever growing need for regulation, ever more need for vigilance, for form filling and for checks.
Once a certain material standard has been attained, there is no other way to maintain economic growth within a hierarchical society than through the growth of bureaucracy and the totalitarian state
Saturday 12 January 2013
Sundays with Mr. Ball
Revolting Peasant says, ‘I have always been a big fan of Sundays. To my mind a culture that does not take its Sabbath rest seriously has lost the plot. We need a day to digest all the hustle and bustle and busyness of the previous few days and to get a perspective on just what is going on. Some of you may question my penchant for religion, but it is organised religion, the hierarchy (literally the rule of the priests) that is the problem.
So, I have asked an old friend, Mr. John Ball, to deliver us a Sunday sermon each week.
John is of course, technically dead, having been hanged, drawn and quartered back in 1381, but he has agreed to make a come back, free of charge.
Some have called John ‘the mad priest of Kent’. He would like me to point out that he takes great exception to being called a priest. He was indeed ordained as a priest in the Roman Church, but for many years now has been a Lollard, and is a preacher, a prophet some call him, a minister who takes his authority not from the pope but from his faithfulness to the gospel.
I will leave you to Mr. Ball………………’
“Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Revolting Peasants of the World Unite!!!!!!!!!!
When Adam delved and Eve span, who then was the gentleman?
From the beginning all men by nature were created alike, and our bondage or servitude came in by the unjust oppression of naughty men. For if God would have had any bondmen from the beginning, he would have appointed who would be bond and who would be free. And therefore I exhort you to consider that now the time is come, appointed to us by God, in which ye may (if ye will) cast off the yoke of bondage and recover liberty.
No bishop, no king!!!!!
Off with their heads!!!!
Kill them all! The lords, the priests, the lawyers, kill them all, especially the lawyers……..”
I’m sorry to have to cut John off. I don’t want to upset the internet regulator. He gets a little tired and upset sometimes, that is John (and the regulator too).
It’s not as if John is calling for some kind of Christian jihad, even if friend Wat thinks he is.
And as for lawyers, I don’t know what he’s got against them. Okay, I’ve never met one who is both competent and honest, though they never forget to charge, they lie and they are the antithesis of goodwill, but killing them all is a bit extreme.
I will sit John down with a nice pint of ale and remind him to hate the sin but to love the sinner
So, I have asked an old friend, Mr. John Ball, to deliver us a Sunday sermon each week.
John is of course, technically dead, having been hanged, drawn and quartered back in 1381, but he has agreed to make a come back, free of charge.
Some have called John ‘the mad priest of Kent’. He would like me to point out that he takes great exception to being called a priest. He was indeed ordained as a priest in the Roman Church, but for many years now has been a Lollard, and is a preacher, a prophet some call him, a minister who takes his authority not from the pope but from his faithfulness to the gospel.
I will leave you to Mr. Ball………………’
“Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Revolting Peasants of the World Unite!!!!!!!!!!
When Adam delved and Eve span, who then was the gentleman?
From the beginning all men by nature were created alike, and our bondage or servitude came in by the unjust oppression of naughty men. For if God would have had any bondmen from the beginning, he would have appointed who would be bond and who would be free. And therefore I exhort you to consider that now the time is come, appointed to us by God, in which ye may (if ye will) cast off the yoke of bondage and recover liberty.
No bishop, no king!!!!!
Off with their heads!!!!
Kill them all! The lords, the priests, the lawyers, kill them all, especially the lawyers……..”
I’m sorry to have to cut John off. I don’t want to upset the internet regulator. He gets a little tired and upset sometimes, that is John (and the regulator too).
It’s not as if John is calling for some kind of Christian jihad, even if friend Wat thinks he is.
And as for lawyers, I don’t know what he’s got against them. Okay, I’ve never met one who is both competent and honest, though they never forget to charge, they lie and they are the antithesis of goodwill, but killing them all is a bit extreme.
I will sit John down with a nice pint of ale and remind him to hate the sin but to love the sinner
Friday 11 January 2013
Some Ludwig de Mises Quotes
The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing and imprisoning. Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.
Within a world of free trade and democracy there are no incentives for war and conquest. In such a world it is of no concern whether a nation's sovereignty stretches over a larger or a smaller territory. Its citizens cannot derive any advantage from the annexation of a province. Thus territorial problems can be treated without bias and passion; it is not painful to be fair to other people's claims for self-determination.
European governments and parliaments have been eager for more than sixty years to hamper the operation of the market, to interfere with business, and to cripple capitalism. They have blithely ignored the warnings of economists. They have erected trade barriers, they have fostered credit expansion and an easy money policy, they have taken recourse to price control, to minimum wage rates, and to subsidies. They have transformed taxation into confiscation and expropriation; they have proclaimed heedless spending as the best method to increase wealth and welfare. But when the inevitable consequences of such policies, long before predicted by the economists, became more and more obvious, public opinion did not place the blame on these cherished policies, it indicted capitalism. In the eyes of the public not anticapitalistic policies but capitalism is the root cause of economic depression, of unemployment, of inflation and rising prices, of monopoly and of waste, of social unrest and of war.
Characteristically, nowadays in the countries furthest advanced toward totalitarianism even the use of the individual citizen's leisure time is considered as a task of the government.
Within a world of free trade and democracy there are no incentives for war and conquest. In such a world it is of no concern whether a nation's sovereignty stretches over a larger or a smaller territory. Its citizens cannot derive any advantage from the annexation of a province. Thus territorial problems can be treated without bias and passion; it is not painful to be fair to other people's claims for self-determination.
European governments and parliaments have been eager for more than sixty years to hamper the operation of the market, to interfere with business, and to cripple capitalism. They have blithely ignored the warnings of economists. They have erected trade barriers, they have fostered credit expansion and an easy money policy, they have taken recourse to price control, to minimum wage rates, and to subsidies. They have transformed taxation into confiscation and expropriation; they have proclaimed heedless spending as the best method to increase wealth and welfare. But when the inevitable consequences of such policies, long before predicted by the economists, became more and more obvious, public opinion did not place the blame on these cherished policies, it indicted capitalism. In the eyes of the public not anticapitalistic policies but capitalism is the root cause of economic depression, of unemployment, of inflation and rising prices, of monopoly and of waste, of social unrest and of war.
Characteristically, nowadays in the countries furthest advanced toward totalitarianism even the use of the individual citizen's leisure time is considered as a task of the government.
Thursday 10 January 2013
Alexandra Kollontai
Alexandra Kollontai was a Russian Communist who became Europe’s first female government minister in 1919. She came from a wealthy family, one that was well ensconced in the military bureaucratic complex. Her father was a general. It was only natural that she should support the anti working class bureaucratic revolution of October 1917.
She was brought up with servants. Ordering about the lower orders was something she did throughout her life.
A Bolshevik, she became People’s Commissar for Social Welfare. She was especially dedicated to transforming the lives of the women of the menial classes.
They were to be regimented into factories, and their children looked after in state nurseries.
Thus they would be liberated from the bonds of family and enslaved by the hierarchy.
It was all for their own good, of course.
Like our modern Progressives she believed in ‘free love’.
“Sexuality is an instinct as natural as hunger or thirst.”
Or perhaps it is just a release of tension, a discharge, like defecation.
Like modern Progressives she wanted the family to wither away, and for everybody to work for, and to be dependent on the state.
The education of children was to be the responsibility of the state, their day to day care would be the job of the menial parents (if they were shown to be suitable).
Alexandra Kollontai, like her modern successors, was an evil woman working for an evil cause
She was brought up with servants. Ordering about the lower orders was something she did throughout her life.
A Bolshevik, she became People’s Commissar for Social Welfare. She was especially dedicated to transforming the lives of the women of the menial classes.
They were to be regimented into factories, and their children looked after in state nurseries.
Thus they would be liberated from the bonds of family and enslaved by the hierarchy.
It was all for their own good, of course.
Like our modern Progressives she believed in ‘free love’.
“Sexuality is an instinct as natural as hunger or thirst.”
Or perhaps it is just a release of tension, a discharge, like defecation.
Like modern Progressives she wanted the family to wither away, and for everybody to work for, and to be dependent on the state.
The education of children was to be the responsibility of the state, their day to day care would be the job of the menial parents (if they were shown to be suitable).
Alexandra Kollontai, like her modern successors, was an evil woman working for an evil cause
Wednesday 9 January 2013
Guns For All
It seems to be a given in the English media that the availability of guns for the average peasant, as in the United States, inevitably leads to more crime and more violence.
In my town the local constabulary have a slogan, ‘Be Safe, Feel Safe.’ Most people keep themselves safe by staying indoors.
Though I live in town, when I go out on a Tuesday evening, I take the car, even though my destination is a fifteen minute walk away. I don’t want to walk home at half past ten at night. The streets are empty at that time. Walking home is distinctly creepy.
Every now and again a gang of thugs will beat the crap out of some guy, break his skull and even kill him.
If they knew their victim might have a gun the thugs would stay clear. Even if they had guns themselves they would not risk getting hurt.
At the moment only the government and the criminals have guns. The rest of us are powerless.
Guns for all would make us all equal.
I don’t like my wife and daughters walking back late at night.
But my daughters live far away and I know that sometimes they walk home when it is late. As women, they are reluctant to get into a taxi alone.
If they had a gun they would not be reluctant to take a taxi ride.
If they had a gun they would be comfortable walking home at night.
Guns would enable women to reclaim the night.
Guns for all makes us all equal.
In my town the local constabulary have a slogan, ‘Be Safe, Feel Safe.’ Most people keep themselves safe by staying indoors.
Though I live in town, when I go out on a Tuesday evening, I take the car, even though my destination is a fifteen minute walk away. I don’t want to walk home at half past ten at night. The streets are empty at that time. Walking home is distinctly creepy.
Every now and again a gang of thugs will beat the crap out of some guy, break his skull and even kill him.
If they knew their victim might have a gun the thugs would stay clear. Even if they had guns themselves they would not risk getting hurt.
At the moment only the government and the criminals have guns. The rest of us are powerless.
Guns for all would make us all equal.
I don’t like my wife and daughters walking back late at night.
But my daughters live far away and I know that sometimes they walk home when it is late. As women, they are reluctant to get into a taxi alone.
If they had a gun they would not be reluctant to take a taxi ride.
If they had a gun they would be comfortable walking home at night.
Guns would enable women to reclaim the night.
Guns for all makes us all equal.
Tuesday 8 January 2013
Child Care
The government wants to give more money, in the form of tax credits, to women who work for money and who have young children.
They are encouraging women to go out to work and to dump their children in nurseries.
The care of the little poppets has been transferred out of the gift economy and is now a commodity. Money is exchanged. The gift of love has been replaced by the coercion of exchange.
If the fathers earn a living wage and the women look after the children themselves, if the parents entrust their children to a member of their family, the economy does not grow.
People who look after their children properly within the family, are enemies of the system.
As capitalism has developed in the last thirty years, with the ever increasing bureaucratization of daily life, the tax code has become ever more complicated, with tax credits for this that and the other, with the aim of destroying the family and increasing dependency on the state.
This is an agreeable outcome for many people for whom society’s bonds are a burden, and servitude to the state is a liberation from responsibility.
The little darlings may miss mummy, but money is exchanged and the wheels of the economy keep turning, and we, like mice on a treadmill, must run ever faster.
They are encouraging women to go out to work and to dump their children in nurseries.
The care of the little poppets has been transferred out of the gift economy and is now a commodity. Money is exchanged. The gift of love has been replaced by the coercion of exchange.
If the fathers earn a living wage and the women look after the children themselves, if the parents entrust their children to a member of their family, the economy does not grow.
People who look after their children properly within the family, are enemies of the system.
As capitalism has developed in the last thirty years, with the ever increasing bureaucratization of daily life, the tax code has become ever more complicated, with tax credits for this that and the other, with the aim of destroying the family and increasing dependency on the state.
This is an agreeable outcome for many people for whom society’s bonds are a burden, and servitude to the state is a liberation from responsibility.
The little darlings may miss mummy, but money is exchanged and the wheels of the economy keep turning, and we, like mice on a treadmill, must run ever faster.
Monday 7 January 2013
What You Can Get Away With
Hierarchy is ultimately based on servility and force, slavery and violence.
Most people work in a hierarchy.
We claim to be a democracy, because we are allowed to make a choice between strangers once in a while, - who should represent us on the county council, who we should send to the House of Commons.
In our daily lives there is precious little democracy.
Two hundred years ago Napoleon famously mocked the English as a nation of shopkeepers. In contrast to the Continent, where political and social relations were seriously hierarchical, England had developed somewhat differently, maintaining some medieval traditions of independence and equality alongside the fashionable centralization of the state.
There were many tradesmen, labourers, yeomen, people who worked either on their own account or by temporarily hiring their labour to others. Vast estates, like those of southern and eastern Europe, with their semi feudal relations were few in England.
But these days we are heading towards neo feudal social and work relations.
Few people work independently. Most people have a boss.
The most visible example of this is the near disappearance of independent shops. Small independent shops may provide a niche market, but the vast majority of sales go through large anonymous chains, run on hierarchical principles.
Each shop worker wears a uniform and is responsible to a boss, a supervisor, a superior, who likewise wears a uniform and is answerable to their superior.
This work relationship is so ubiquitous that we scarcely notice it anymore. It is simply how things are.
Yet, this social and work relationship is not a ‘normal’ relationship.
It is a relationship that is based on the military model, that is the model of violence.
The robber chief plunders and loots, and rewards and punishes his followers.
Our working lives are run on principles of reward and punishment. Obedience is rewarded. Pleasing our superior is rewarded. Achieving the goals of our own particular gang is rewarded. Considerations as to the rightness of our actions are put to one side.
If an action is not specifically prohibited by the state then we can do it.
But whatever we can get away with is fair game.
There is no need of ten commandments to remind us when we go astray.
Hierarchy is based on reward and punishment. It is the zombie society of the servile. It needs but one commandment, ‘Obey the Regulations.’
Right and wrong, good and evil, is replaced by what you can get away with.
Most people work in a hierarchy.
We claim to be a democracy, because we are allowed to make a choice between strangers once in a while, - who should represent us on the county council, who we should send to the House of Commons.
In our daily lives there is precious little democracy.
Two hundred years ago Napoleon famously mocked the English as a nation of shopkeepers. In contrast to the Continent, where political and social relations were seriously hierarchical, England had developed somewhat differently, maintaining some medieval traditions of independence and equality alongside the fashionable centralization of the state.
There were many tradesmen, labourers, yeomen, people who worked either on their own account or by temporarily hiring their labour to others. Vast estates, like those of southern and eastern Europe, with their semi feudal relations were few in England.
But these days we are heading towards neo feudal social and work relations.
Few people work independently. Most people have a boss.
The most visible example of this is the near disappearance of independent shops. Small independent shops may provide a niche market, but the vast majority of sales go through large anonymous chains, run on hierarchical principles.
Each shop worker wears a uniform and is responsible to a boss, a supervisor, a superior, who likewise wears a uniform and is answerable to their superior.
This work relationship is so ubiquitous that we scarcely notice it anymore. It is simply how things are.
Yet, this social and work relationship is not a ‘normal’ relationship.
It is a relationship that is based on the military model, that is the model of violence.
The robber chief plunders and loots, and rewards and punishes his followers.
Our working lives are run on principles of reward and punishment. Obedience is rewarded. Pleasing our superior is rewarded. Achieving the goals of our own particular gang is rewarded. Considerations as to the rightness of our actions are put to one side.
If an action is not specifically prohibited by the state then we can do it.
But whatever we can get away with is fair game.
There is no need of ten commandments to remind us when we go astray.
Hierarchy is based on reward and punishment. It is the zombie society of the servile. It needs but one commandment, ‘Obey the Regulations.’
Right and wrong, good and evil, is replaced by what you can get away with.
Sunday 6 January 2013
Death on the NHS
There have been many complaints in recent years concerning the decline in standards in the National Health Service. At times people are left to die of cold and thirst and malnutrition.
And then of course, when you are admitted to hospital there is always a good chance of picking up some deadly virus because of the filthy wards.
So it is said.
One big problem concerning hospital generated illnesses is the buildings themselves. In our town, the now demolished Victorian Infirmary had high ceilings and windows that opened. The modern hospital has low ceilings, is overheated, and the windows do not open. It is a breeding ground for germs.
Depending on your point of view, you might claim that the Health Service’s problems are caused by lack of funding, or the funding being spent on bureaucracy.
But I think the problem runs a little deeper than that. Being over worked and under resourced cannot explain dirty wards and callous doctors and nurses rushing you to an early death.
Whether as symptom or cause, I cannot say, but in recent years the government has introduced the ‘tick box’ culture into the Health Service.
Back in the 1940s when the NHS was set up, most people did a job and took a pride in doing it well. They did not need the reward and punishment of a ‘tick box’ culture. Teachers, doctors, nurses, cleaners, civil servants, shopkeepers, tradesmen, worked on principles of donated power. We were still a long way from the ‘greed is good’ egotism of the 1980s and onwards. People worked because to work was to be alive.
Although most men worked in the economy of expropriated power, most women still saw their main purpose in the more important sphere of donated power, of giving from their abundance.
They cared for the young and for the old. There were few ‘kindergartens’ and few nursing homes.
Few services were bought, most were given. There was still a large support network, not just in chapels and at the bingo hall, but in the back yard and in the family too .
Women’s professions were few and frequently reflected women’s domestic responsibilities, cook, cleaner, dinner lady, nurse, teacher. But there were enough professions to ensure the independence of women who preferred to remain unmarried.
All women were drenched in the culture and expectations of the gift economy
As women’s work has become hollowed out and society has collapsed, women have become demoralised. There’s not much dignity in being monitored and regimented.
Grudging work and callous attitudes are the inevitable consequence of the enslavement of all human activity.
At the end of the day, it is pride in your job that gets things done.
This cannot be legislated for, ticked off, bought and sold, rewarded and punished. It can only be given freely.
And then of course, when you are admitted to hospital there is always a good chance of picking up some deadly virus because of the filthy wards.
So it is said.
One big problem concerning hospital generated illnesses is the buildings themselves. In our town, the now demolished Victorian Infirmary had high ceilings and windows that opened. The modern hospital has low ceilings, is overheated, and the windows do not open. It is a breeding ground for germs.
Depending on your point of view, you might claim that the Health Service’s problems are caused by lack of funding, or the funding being spent on bureaucracy.
But I think the problem runs a little deeper than that. Being over worked and under resourced cannot explain dirty wards and callous doctors and nurses rushing you to an early death.
Whether as symptom or cause, I cannot say, but in recent years the government has introduced the ‘tick box’ culture into the Health Service.
Back in the 1940s when the NHS was set up, most people did a job and took a pride in doing it well. They did not need the reward and punishment of a ‘tick box’ culture. Teachers, doctors, nurses, cleaners, civil servants, shopkeepers, tradesmen, worked on principles of donated power. We were still a long way from the ‘greed is good’ egotism of the 1980s and onwards. People worked because to work was to be alive.
Although most men worked in the economy of expropriated power, most women still saw their main purpose in the more important sphere of donated power, of giving from their abundance.
They cared for the young and for the old. There were few ‘kindergartens’ and few nursing homes.
Few services were bought, most were given. There was still a large support network, not just in chapels and at the bingo hall, but in the back yard and in the family too .
Women’s professions were few and frequently reflected women’s domestic responsibilities, cook, cleaner, dinner lady, nurse, teacher. But there were enough professions to ensure the independence of women who preferred to remain unmarried.
All women were drenched in the culture and expectations of the gift economy
As women’s work has become hollowed out and society has collapsed, women have become demoralised. There’s not much dignity in being monitored and regimented.
Grudging work and callous attitudes are the inevitable consequence of the enslavement of all human activity.
At the end of the day, it is pride in your job that gets things done.
This cannot be legislated for, ticked off, bought and sold, rewarded and punished. It can only be given freely.
Saturday 5 January 2013
A Sunday Sermon from John Ball
My old friend John Ball, the 'mad priest of Kent' has kindly agreed to post a sermon on Sundays on this blog. The 6th January is the last day of Christmas, the day of the Three Kings or Three Wise Men, the last day of Christmas, a day when many children throughout the world receive their Christmas presents. (RP)
Christmas is over, and unfortunately yet again I missed Christmas Day, for the six hundredth and thirty second year, one of the sadder consequences of having been hanged drawn and quartered so long ago.
Christmas has changed since my time and one of the biggest changes is the wrapping paper all bright and sparkling, colourful and alluring.
Jesus is the present of God to mankind, and it is the birth of Jesus, God giving us His precious gift that we celebrate at Christmas.
Grace is God’s gift, love is God’s gift, forgiveness is God’s gift, freedom from sin and guilt is God’s gift. Jesus is God’s gift.
And Jesus came wrapped in nothing but his birthday suit.
In other words Jesus was a gift that came without the wrapping paper.
I heard a man say that Jesus was God’s gift and that we had to unwrap that gift, that we had to do a work to earn that gift, that our faith, our ‘decision’ was up to us.
Consequently, according to this man;
we are partners in our own salvation (God having done the difficult and painful bit).
we need to have faith in our faith,
we can wrap the present up again and ‘fall from grace’.
we can never know blessed assurance.
we can refuse God.
God has offered us salvation, just like some lifestyle commodity.
But God’s love is a gift, not an offer.
The gift of Jesus Christ comes unwrapped.
Christmas is over, and unfortunately yet again I missed Christmas Day, for the six hundredth and thirty second year, one of the sadder consequences of having been hanged drawn and quartered so long ago.
Christmas has changed since my time and one of the biggest changes is the wrapping paper all bright and sparkling, colourful and alluring.
Jesus is the present of God to mankind, and it is the birth of Jesus, God giving us His precious gift that we celebrate at Christmas.
Grace is God’s gift, love is God’s gift, forgiveness is God’s gift, freedom from sin and guilt is God’s gift. Jesus is God’s gift.
And Jesus came wrapped in nothing but his birthday suit.
In other words Jesus was a gift that came without the wrapping paper.
I heard a man say that Jesus was God’s gift and that we had to unwrap that gift, that we had to do a work to earn that gift, that our faith, our ‘decision’ was up to us.
Consequently, according to this man;
we are partners in our own salvation (God having done the difficult and painful bit).
we need to have faith in our faith,
we can wrap the present up again and ‘fall from grace’.
we can never know blessed assurance.
we can refuse God.
God has offered us salvation, just like some lifestyle commodity.
But God’s love is a gift, not an offer.
The gift of Jesus Christ comes unwrapped.
The Foundation of the State
The state is based on violence.
Ultimately it is a protection racket. The basic deal from the state is that they protect you from other hoodlums and from foreigners. In return you pay them. Tax is protection money.
Taxation is the fuel that drives capitalism. Capitalism is the numbering of everything and every activity to ease the transfer of power from the ordinary person to the elite.
The state is based on the hierarchy of the armed gang.
In normal human activity there are natural leaders in one sphere or another, the best cook, the best hunter, the best weaver, the best mechanic and so on. These natural leaders are the opposite of hierarchy. Hierarchy is blind obedience based on fear and violence.
A gang of thugs comes along and demands payment for protection. The peasant has to produce a surplus in order to pay the thugs. But there are only so many clothes a thug can wear, so many pigs or sheep he can roast. So he invents a currency, be it shells, jewels, animal skins or whatever.
One fine day a thug invents money. Money has the picture of Caesar printed upon it, the personification of the state, or the Crown if you like.
A coin, a bank note, is fundamentally a tax credit.
Surplus value is created to feed the beast of the state.
But to maintain their legitimacy, to continue the hierarchy, the state must wage war. It must find enemies abroad and enemies at home.
The enemies may be Communists or Islamists or Christians or men or kiddie fiddlers or Israelis.
The welfare warfare state feeds on violence, it feeds on discrimination and hatred, on persecuting the Other, on gas chambers and firing squads, on identification and terror. It feeds on your taxes.
Ultimately it is a protection racket. The basic deal from the state is that they protect you from other hoodlums and from foreigners. In return you pay them. Tax is protection money.
Taxation is the fuel that drives capitalism. Capitalism is the numbering of everything and every activity to ease the transfer of power from the ordinary person to the elite.
The state is based on the hierarchy of the armed gang.
In normal human activity there are natural leaders in one sphere or another, the best cook, the best hunter, the best weaver, the best mechanic and so on. These natural leaders are the opposite of hierarchy. Hierarchy is blind obedience based on fear and violence.
A gang of thugs comes along and demands payment for protection. The peasant has to produce a surplus in order to pay the thugs. But there are only so many clothes a thug can wear, so many pigs or sheep he can roast. So he invents a currency, be it shells, jewels, animal skins or whatever.
One fine day a thug invents money. Money has the picture of Caesar printed upon it, the personification of the state, or the Crown if you like.
A coin, a bank note, is fundamentally a tax credit.
Surplus value is created to feed the beast of the state.
But to maintain their legitimacy, to continue the hierarchy, the state must wage war. It must find enemies abroad and enemies at home.
The enemies may be Communists or Islamists or Christians or men or kiddie fiddlers or Israelis.
The welfare warfare state feeds on violence, it feeds on discrimination and hatred, on persecuting the Other, on gas chambers and firing squads, on identification and terror. It feeds on your taxes.
Thursday 3 January 2013
All Parents are Suspect
The government is setting up a database to record all instances where children are taken to Accident and Emergency. This is to enable ‘child protection’ experts to find patterns of child abuse.
In other words, if a parent takes a child to A&E they are suspects. The child’s injuries are suspect. The parents must justify those injuries. No doubt the database will be linked up with other databases for teachers and social workers to weave their fantasies.
If a parent refuses a vaccination, if they refuse to give their child mind bending drugs, if they do not wish their child to be seen by a psychologist, it will be taken as evidence of neglect.
A friend tells me of taking his young daughter to hospital twice within one month, after she banged her head on a heavy piece of furniture, both times a great big bump appearing on her forehead.
It appeared sensible to get her checked out.
From now on it would be stupid to do so.
Why give the 'experts' a gun to point at your head, why risk your child being snatched, over something that most likely will have no long term consequences?
Parents will keep their children away from the doctors.
When in doubt keep your children away from the 'experts'.
Child snatching is big business, and an indigenous girl child, like my friend’s daughter, is a premium product.
Not only are adoption/fostering agencies quoted on the stock exchange, but the bureaucratic impulse of social workers is ever to expand their power.
Have you ever heard a bureaucrat say that there is not enough business and that their department should be closed down?
Nowadays all children stay with their parents on sufferance of the state.
If you are young and wish to enjoy your family unmolested, take my advice:
Emigrate
In other words, if a parent takes a child to A&E they are suspects. The child’s injuries are suspect. The parents must justify those injuries. No doubt the database will be linked up with other databases for teachers and social workers to weave their fantasies.
If a parent refuses a vaccination, if they refuse to give their child mind bending drugs, if they do not wish their child to be seen by a psychologist, it will be taken as evidence of neglect.
A friend tells me of taking his young daughter to hospital twice within one month, after she banged her head on a heavy piece of furniture, both times a great big bump appearing on her forehead.
It appeared sensible to get her checked out.
From now on it would be stupid to do so.
Why give the 'experts' a gun to point at your head, why risk your child being snatched, over something that most likely will have no long term consequences?
Parents will keep their children away from the doctors.
When in doubt keep your children away from the 'experts'.
Child snatching is big business, and an indigenous girl child, like my friend’s daughter, is a premium product.
Not only are adoption/fostering agencies quoted on the stock exchange, but the bureaucratic impulse of social workers is ever to expand their power.
Have you ever heard a bureaucrat say that there is not enough business and that their department should be closed down?
Nowadays all children stay with their parents on sufferance of the state.
If you are young and wish to enjoy your family unmolested, take my advice:
Emigrate
Wednesday 2 January 2013
Farewell Speech
On 27th December 2012, in the United States, Ron Paul gave his farewell speech to the American House of Representatives. He is one of the few politicians in the English speaking world who sees things as they are.
In this country, supposedly libertarian members of the Conservative Party and UKIP are in love with the military. The libertarian movement in England, in such organizations as the Freedom Association, are ruling and overseer class movements, more interested in curtailing the protections of the poor than in the dismantling of the military bureaucratic complex.
They wish to dismantle the welfare state, but not the warfare state. Ron Paul, on the other hand, wishes to dismantle both.
I will let the man speak for himself:
“Humanitarian arguments are always used to justify government mandates related to the economy, monetary policy, foreign policy, and personal liberty. This is on purpose to make it more difficult to challenge. But, initiating violence for humanitarian reasons is still violence. Good intentions are no excuse and are just as harmful as when people use force with bad intentions. The results are always negative.
The immoral use of force is the source of man’s political problems. Sadly, many religious groups, secular organizations, and psychopathic authoritarians endorse government initiated force to change the world. Even when the desired goals are well-intentioned - or especially when well-intentioned - the results are dismal. The good results sought never materialize. The new problems created require even more government force as a solution. The net result is institutionalizing government initiated violence and morally justifying it on humanitarian grounds.”
Tuesday 1 January 2013
Anarchy in the UK?
Many self professing anarchists are anything but anarchists, but poseurs protecting the very system they say they want to overthrow.
Unlike Anarchists of earlier times they stick to a rigidly Marxist view of the world. They use a class analysis based on income not power. The true divide is between the overseers, the stooges of the state on the one hand, and the powerless, the overseen on the other.
So called anarchists wish to unite against the cuts. They want the state to grow.
They like to take their income from the state.
They believe in the benevolent state.
Their ‘anarchism’ is limited to fashion and self indulgence.
Strange sort of anarchists!
The answer to ‘the cuts’ is to provide these services ourselves. That is what anarchism means.
Libertarianism is individual self sufficiency.
Anarchy is communal self sufficiency.
Take your pick. What suits one does not always suit another, but both are okay with me.
The state is a hierarchical body. It can never be good.
If big corporations pay very little tax don’t kid yourself that we are paying tax because they don’t! It doesn’t work that way.
Anyone who gets away with paying little or no tax, then good luck to them. I’m sure they can spend the money better than any government, better than the welfare warfare state.
Unlike Anarchists of earlier times they stick to a rigidly Marxist view of the world. They use a class analysis based on income not power. The true divide is between the overseers, the stooges of the state on the one hand, and the powerless, the overseen on the other.
So called anarchists wish to unite against the cuts. They want the state to grow.
They like to take their income from the state.
They believe in the benevolent state.
Their ‘anarchism’ is limited to fashion and self indulgence.
Strange sort of anarchists!
The answer to ‘the cuts’ is to provide these services ourselves. That is what anarchism means.
Libertarianism is individual self sufficiency.
Anarchy is communal self sufficiency.
Take your pick. What suits one does not always suit another, but both are okay with me.
The state is a hierarchical body. It can never be good.
If big corporations pay very little tax don’t kid yourself that we are paying tax because they don’t! It doesn’t work that way.
Anyone who gets away with paying little or no tax, then good luck to them. I’m sure they can spend the money better than any government, better than the welfare warfare state.
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