Category: Politics

The Planet’s Resources

Who do the Earth’s raw materials really “belong” to?

So once again the Falkland Islands have hit the headlines, and as usual for the wrong reasons. The British have given the green light for oil exploration around the islands and Argentina has resisted by imposing restrictions on shipping movements, if not (yet) an all-out blockade.

Who knows where this one will end? It could either fizzle out or erupt into another full-scale confrontation, since big issues are involved, and none bigger than nationalism, for Argentina claims the islands as “its own”.

The history of the Falkland Islands is long and complex, but the idea that Argentina has any fundamental right to these islands is surreally silly. Argentina is owned and ruled by descendants of the Spanish, who took over the land that now forms Argentina (a state in its own right only since the early 19th c) as part of the European colonisation of the world. By all means let us return the Falklands to their original owners, except that the first people to settle there were French for a start. And if you are going to adopt the principle of returning land to its original owners, then we can look forward to most of the population of Argentina returning to Spain and returning the land to the Indians, can we?

The other argument often advanced is that “the islands are near Argentina”. Well, I don’t know when these people last looked at a map but 300 miles isn’t exactly “near”. But in any case, if we are to adopt nearness as a criteria for the reapportioning of land then I look forward to England once again reclaiming France, a mere 21 miles away. And what on earth is Corsica doing as part of France? But of course France must have the Channel Islands, as they are very near – and so on. “Continental shelf”? “We own the land under the sea?” Go down this route and we’ll need a whole new generation of map-makers.

When all the idiotic, overblown, childish and nationalistic guff (which sadly  led to many hundreds of dead in the 1972 war) is stripped away from this debate, we are left with two fundamentals:

  • the right of self-determination
  • the way the Earth’s resources are used

As for the first, there have been British people living on the islands since at least 1833. They have – as I believe all people have – the right to determine their own fate.  This is called self-determination. Unfortunately, it is a noble principle to which the world all too often pays only lip-service. The nation state has become an entrenched, solidified system, mostly because it confers great power on the leaders of each state, who – especially when democracy has not taken root – use the statehood to advance their own power and megalomania. Statism has for centuries run roughshod over people’s fundamental rights. Iraq was a “state”, but one where the Kurds (denied their own state by British cynicism) suffered cruelly under the jackboot of a fascist psychopath. That the British eventually helped to remove this monster (suffering enormous criticism from in particular the country that inspired the world with its own Revolution in 1789) is only a tiny compensation for the original injustice done to the Kurds. They are by no means alone; minorities all over the world suffer in different degrees from arrogant statism: Tibetans; Basques,; American Indians and Australian aborigines among many others. Yes, injustices were done centuries ago, but you cannot wind back history, or where would it end?  How would Europe cope with all those Yanks for a start if they gave the USA back to Sitting Bull’s descendants? Apparently, we all came originally from Africa. Should we all return there and leave our countries empty?

Well, on the Falklands are Brits, and Britain did them the honour of allowing them freely to choose whether they want to be annexed to Argentina. This would in fact give them innumerable advantages, plus of course potentially-disastrous disadvantages. As trust is in short supply, these people prefer not to take the risk and so remain British. That is their right. In refusing to discuss “sovereignty”, Britian is doing no more than strike a blow for self-determination. To give Britain its due, it has pursued the same policy – albeit modestly – towards the (in the eyes of some of them) oppressed Welch, Scots and Irish.

So much for fundamental 1. The Argentinian case is pathetic.

What about the RESOURCES question?

Well, resources are another area where the state jackboot falls with great weight. We all breathe the same air, share the same sun, the same water; but where the stuff under the ground is concerned, it’s every state for itself. Yet casting aside state arrogance, isn’t it ridiculous that state A can derive vast wealth from “its” oil, gold or whatever, while state B alongside it is mired in poverty and misery? So much for “share-and-share” alike. Even belonging to the same race is no help; while some Arabs built extraordinary palaces and Audi Quattros made of solid silver, poor Somalis, Yemenis, and even Egyptians are mired in abject poverty. (Check out this Arab Palace in Dubai, and Mugabe’s presidential palace in Zimbabwe, which is by no means untypical of poverty-stricken Africa)

One day, in a joined-up world which recognizes that we are all brothers, we will share resources “fairly”. Britain could show the way by offering to share any oil resources with – not only Argentina – but all of Latin America (though we could leave out Venezuela …) What a blow for brotherhood that would be!

By Chris Snuggs

Oh, Irony! The Markets and Obama’s Policies

Where are capital markets heading?

In a recent article, Moody’s announced that it may have to reduce the AAA rating of U.S bonds because of excess spending and historic debt levels of the U.S. government under President Obama.

Moody’s Investors Service Inc. said the U.S. government’s AAA bond rating will come under pressure in the future unless additional measures are taken to reduce budget deficits projected for the next decade.

The U.S. retains its top rating for now because of a “high degree of economic and institutional strength,” the New York- based rating company said in a statement today. The ratios of government debt to the U.S. gross domestic product and revenue have increased “sharply” during the credit crisis and recession. Moody’s expects the ratios to remain higher compared with other AAA-rated countries after the crisis.

What this means in practical terms is that the cost of borrowing by the U.S. government will rise, which will increase spending via more borrowing or higher taxes or more money creation to pay for the higher interest costs.  Sound like a vicious cycle to you?

Has anyone noticed the absolute irony of the world capital market having a seat at the table that assesses the viability of Obama’s policies? Obama, who has spent the last year denigrating free markets and capitalism, and has laid the blame for the credit crisis squarely at the feet of those greedy capitalists, now has to deal with a rating agency, which plays a pivotal role in the functioning of those very capital markets, evaluating the creditworthiness of his policies and those of his budget director, Peter Orszag, pictured here.

Peter Orszag, Obama's Budget Director

How wonderfully ironic!

The U.S. would not be the first.   Ireland was recently downgraded, and Japan lost its AAA rating from Moodys in November of 1998; both faced higher borrowing costs as a result.

By Sherry Jarrell

Tax, Law, Crime and Morality in Banking

More holes than in a Swiss Cheese!

There is currently a merry old ding-dong spat going on between the German and Swiss governments. Basically, someone has got hold of information about German citizens with bank accounts in Switzerland where they are hiding large sums on which they should pay German taxes.

This or these enterprising whistleblower(s) are offering to sell this data to the German government for a hefty fee. The German government is on the point of accepting to buy this “illegally-obtained” information from the (from the Swiss point of view) criminals who have stolen their secret bank data.

This story raises a large number of fascinating questions. It has long been common knowledge that Switzerland offers banking facilities with few questions asked. Any self-respecting criminal or tax evader has or had a secret, numbered Swiss account.

What has always amazed me is how they have got away with this for so long, stuck as they are in the centre of Europe. How is it possible that other countries have allowed Switzerland to become a haven for money obtained illegally in other countries?

For it is clearly immoral to profit from the illegal activities of foreign nationals, isn’t it? What exactly is the difference between this behaviour and “receiving stolen goods”? Worse, we have to remember that the largest sums come from drugs. Anyone willing to look after (or launder) drug  money is complicit in the misery and deaths of millions of drug addicts worldwide. Yet the Swiss have pulled off this trick for decades. The Swiss banking (and government) fraternity has never shied away from shady dealings, being until the end of WWII covert supporters of the Nazis.

Well, Angela Merkel is going to do a deal with presumably Swiss “criminals” (according to the Swiss government) in order to recoup money it is owed by German criminals (according to Germany). What a merry old moral maze we have here. But in truth, the world is now too small and inter-connected to allow either tax evasion on a vast scale  or the safeguarding of criminal funds.

Switzerland has to decide whether to remain as a supporter of tax evaders and gangsters (including of course African Presidents who have ripped their countries off in a big way) OR to join the real, civil, honest and inter-connected world.

The rest of us should stop tolerating this connivance with crime. “Client secrecy” is no excuse for condoning and profiting from crime.

More on the whole  Nazi gold in Switzerland story is here.

By Chris Snuggs

The Wobbling Euro

Europe puts on a grand farce for the rest of the world to watch and wonder at.

The “Greece scuppers the euro” soap opera is steaming along at top speed and the iceberg ahead is more than big enough to sink the Euro, the flagship of those seeking a United States of Europe.

The Euro coin

Several very interesting things are becoming clearer about all this:

A) Greece (and for that matter some other countries) was NOT “ready” for the straitjacket of a single currency in the same bed as Germany, Holland and other serious (well, sort of ) countries, particularly in the North ….

B) The EU hierarchy set some stiff rules for entry to the Euro, which Greece LIED about to gain entry.

C) I firmly believe the EU leaders KNEW that Greece’s figures were the delusional fruits of fraudulent pretention, but they PRESSED ON regardless.

The question is, WHY did they let Greece in? And the reason was – I maintain – their GREED. Not directly for money (though that is ever in the background) but for POWER. The more countries in the Euro the bigger the organism and all organisms seek to grow to their maximum.

The bigger the Eurozone the more unstoppable the momentum would appear (and “appear” is certainly the right word) and the more power would accrue to Brussels and Frankfurt. POLITICAL GREED overcame economic and financial logic.

But the chickens always come home to roost and the result could now be the OPPOSITE of what they wanted to achieve.

Coming back to the roost

Instead of a tight core of financially-stable and righteous Eurocountries that could have thrived as a model for others to emulate and join, Euroland has become a haphazard bodge of totally-disparate economies that has every chance of unravelling in chaos.

I have no desire to see the Greeks or anyone else in economic trouble, but we cannot build a new Europe – let alone world – on lies and a lack of realism. A touch of hubris is direly needed. More practically, we need more long-term planning and less short-term political greed and cowardice.

If this Greek crisis had happened when the EU was flush with funds then it could perhaps – temporarily – have been bodged over as usual. Now we are still on a financial knife edge, and it could go either way. There is some talk that this crisis could accelerate political and monetary union, but I can’t see individual countries giving up their financial independence to Frankfurt and Brussels …. what is true is that we are in dangerous waters out of control and maybe heading towards the rapids … (or the iceberg …) Most EU countries are already in serious trouble; the last thing they need is a further drain on scarce resources. The Greek patient could well bring down the German doctor …….

One of the funniest things (if you like black humour) was soon after the EU bigwigs fixed a ceiling of 3% above GDP for countries’ budget deficits. In other words, countries joining the Euro had to guarantee to take steps to ensure this ceiling would not be breached, and this in the interests of Euroland as a whole; a sort of collective responsibility.

Yet as soon as FRANCE found it could not apply the self-discipline to keep to this promise (do promises matter at all in politics?) then some French government spokesperson said when challenged on this that “the rule could not be applied to big countries.”

You couldn’t make it up!!!

By Chris Snuggs

Every Economist, Mr. President? No, Sir!

Here’s one person who doesn’t agree with the President.

The President seems to believe that he can say whatever he wants and no one will hold him accountable. He now claims that “every economist, from both sides of the aisle, believes that the stimulus program created jobs.”

I am an economist, Mr. President, and I know, based either on simple first principles of economics, or on a more rigorous controlled study of labor markets in each major sector of the economy, that the unemployment rate would have been much lower today had the stimulus program never occurred.

You are either woefully unaware of the facts, Mr. President, or are purposefully distorting the facts. Neither is good.  When are you going to realize that just because you say something does not make it so? The world does not contort itself to support your version of the truth.

Do not put words in my mouth, sir.

By Sherry Jarrell

Rationing – the New Paradigm?

A World War II practice may reappear.

Some little time ago I wrote about the word “fair”, which I tongue-in-cheek referred to as a Word of Mass Destruction (WOMD) insofar as if one REALLY put into place practices that were truly “fair” then western capitalism would break down completely. (The story of the CEO of Goldsmiths and his $100,000,000 bonus is for another day ….)

Well, my OTHER WOMD is “rationing”.

I was drawn to this topic by the words of a British minister about the desirability of introducing rationing into AIR TRAVEL.  The thinking goes (and to be honest it is in fact obvious, isn’t it?) that IF we are serious about reducing climate change (a VERY BIG IF!!) then we cannot continue to hope to fly where and when we want to as in the past. For aviation is a growth industry despite the current crisis, and as people in developing economies in Asia in particular grow more prosperous they will want to travel more and more. I have seen estimates to suggest that within a decade ONE HUNDRED MILLION Chinese will be travelling to Europe EVERY YEAR.

This is of course totally incompatible with any hope of doing anything serious about climate change. The logical conclusion is that (until some boffin invents an emission-free jet) we MUST reduce flying. This is likely for most adults to be about as palatable as denying burgers and chips to British teenagers, but I really cannot see the alternative IF Global Warming is to be taken seriously (which it probably won’t be until it’s too late).

But let’s for the moment remain positive …. supposing it is decided by some courageous government (are there any?) that we must reduce flying then there are two ways to do it.

A) TAX it so highly that only the rich can afford it

B) RATION it – everyone has a quota of air miles per annum.

Now option A is the usual free-market/capitalist way. After all, Ferraris are rationed by their price; otherwise all males over 18 would have one, or in my case several. But – much as I recognize what the free market has done in terms of wealth creation – we are in a new scenario, aren’t we? Can we really hope to say that only the rich can fly? I think not, and therefore rationing is the only way to do this.

Now, there is a minority of people that abuse anything, and no doubt rationing would be abused by some, somewhere, somehow. But it is the only FAIR way to go about it, isn’t it?

In London and other big cities we are now seeing a TAX imposed on driving into the city centres. Yes, very sensible, but of course, the RICH aren’t bothered. In effect, schemes like London’s are simply a way of excluding the masses from the city centre. The same idiocy is seen on French motorways, which are becoming increasingly expensive. The rich are not bothered by the tolls but the less well-off certainly ARE and so drive on other roads which are less safe; survival of the richest …….

No, the free-market is not going to work in the Brave New World which we are entering. If you have a birthday party for your kids then EVERYONE gets an equal share of the cake. This principle is going to have to be applied in other areas of life, otherwise we are going to get serious social unrest. Besides, any other way is just not FAIR, is it?

Of course, once you concede the point on AIR TRAVEL there is – in a world of increasing populations and diminishing resources – no way of limiting the concept purely to air travel, is there?

I am just old enough to remember my Mother’s WWII ration card, which she used up to the very early 50s I believe. Will we soon start to see a modern reincarnation, and not only in carbon credits?

By Chris Snuggs

WWII Ration Card - UK

Organic milk in the USA

The unacceptable face of the big agricultural businesses

Another wonderful link from Naked Capitalism.  This one refers to the way that the definition of ‘organic’ as in organic milk is being twisted and distorted to favour the huge indoor milking herds, up to 10,000 cattle, that in any sensible mind could never be regarded as the organic production of milk.

This to me is a picture of organic production of milk:

An English meadow

This to me is NOT! Yet the milk from these cows is defined as organic!

Organic milk?

This last picture is courtesy of The Cornucopia Institute, another web site worth a visit whether or not you take an interest in farming – after all, one presumes that you do eat!

The article is on the Politics of the Plate website, worth your visit whether or not you are an American, and is, to me, so important that I am taking the liberty of publishing the article in full.
Here it is:
Read this very important article

A Guilty Verdict for Bomber is not “Success”!

Wartime issues – assuming we are at war!

The debate about the Christmas Day Bomber continues.   The pundits continue to define “success” in this case as finding him guilty in a court of law.  They go on and on, repeating over and over again, how the evidence is so strong, how the civilian court system is so reliable, how the shoe bomber was tried in civilian court, and how a guilty verdict is virtually certain.  

This is so wrong.  The definition of success is not whether we find the Christmas Day Bomber guilty in a civilian court.  This man intended to blow himself up on Christmas Day, and take hundreds of innocent Americans with him.  The fact that he is alive today, facing a jury or a judge and possible jail time or, at the worst, the death penalty, is a mere footnote to him.

Has it occurred to anyone that if the military had interrogated the shoe bomber as the failed terrorist that he was, that the odds of the Christmas Day Bomber getting on that plane with those explosives would have been diminished?  And interrogating the Christmas Day terrorist instead of shipping him off to the local prosecutor — for reasons Eric Holder, the U.S. Attorney General, has yet to articulate– diminishes the odds of some future terrorist act?

Eric Holder

We are at war!

These people attacked us as part of the ongoing war with terrorists.   No one should “rest easy” because some lawyer is going to sleepwalk through a trial that may or may not successfully reach the painfully obvious conclusion that the Christmas Day Bomber is guilty! On the contrary, it makes me very uneasy that he is in the civilian court system at this point in time at all, because every moment spent reading this man his rights is a moment that could have been spent gathering intelligence from a terrorist.  His punishment will come in due time.  In the meanwhile, we have to extract as much information from his as we can in order to defend ourselves.

We are at war.

By Sherry Jarrell

Greece – sick man of Europe

A looming low point in the long history of the Greek empire

It seems the EU is considering whether to bail out Greece, in danger of defaulting on its loans, so high is its debt.

Athens

A spokesman has been quoted as saying “it is unthinkable” that Greece should default and that “something would have to be done.”

I imagine the rest of the EU countries (their citizens at least, those who actually pay the taxes) are not exactly slavering over the prospect of their money being used to bail out yet another organism living beyond its means.

And this is the point, we ALL have to start living within our means: individuals, countries, the planet. ANY other course leads to doom. And as an EU taxpayer I feel very hesitant about bailing out ANY country. Not though lack of fellow-feeling (it could be us next time) but because IF you bail them out then they WON’T change their habits. We bailed out the banks; have you seen THEM change their habits? I certainly haven’t, except that they won’t lend small businesses (the TOTALLY INNOCENT VICTIMS of all this) any money. The obscene fat-cat “bonuses” are starting up all over again like mushrooms in the meadow. No, let them go bust; only that will concentrate their minds.

And let us not forget that Greece LIED about its finances in order to qualify for the EU in the first place! An end to lies! An end to the easy option. An end to my taxes bailing out an indisciplined over-spender!

By Chris Snuggs

Understatement of the Century

Still a few things lacking…

The Prize for “Understatement of the Century” has just been awarded to the following statement, even though the century has barely begun. The Awarding Committee decided that no other comment could ever possibly be made that could come close to beating this one from the leader of North Korea.

Kim Jong II

That being said, there was one other entry that had the judges briefly interested: “Gordon Brown is the worst Prime Minister in British History”, but in the end the NK leader won out, since the committee felt that Ethelred the Unready was worse, even if he was usually more ready than Gordon Brown.

Last month Mr Kim said: “We have already reached the status of a strong country in the military field, let alone politics and ideology, but there are still quite a number of things lacking in people’s lives.“

For example …

By Chris Snuggs