Young Master Smeet
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http://theconversation.com/markets-threaten-greek-democracy-ahead-of-election-36034This tells us some of the story in greece:
Quote:These policies brought a reduction of the fiscal deficit by €17.4 billion, at a cost in national income of more than double that figure. No western European country has suffered such a collapse of GDP since the end of World War II. We cannot find one example of a developed capitalist country with a lower national income than it had four years previously in any year between 1945 and 2010.Quote:Europe and most countries of the world need radical measures to restrict – or better still eliminate – the power of finance. The choice is democracy, however flawed it might be, or the dictatorship of finance. It really is that simple.Of course, in Chile, as I've been reading up recently, it wasn't an automatic process. They had to assasinate the head of the army, Schneider, and then his sucessor managed to discredit himself at the worst possible time…it's like a football goal, fifty percent planning, fifty percent luck, to pull off a coup.
http://theconversation.com/why-jihadism-appeals-to-religiously-illiterate-loners-36106This is a very perceptive article about the sorts of people attracted to these kinds of actions:
Quote:We continue to see jihadist terrorism as being about religion more than anything else but “religious avengers” of this kind are often actually religiously illiterate. This is particularly true of Western Muslims who have been lured to fight for Islamic State, or who have carried out attacks at home[…] Those drawn to jihadism are usually not particularly religious prior to their involvement with violence. They are either raised in largely secular households or possess only a rudimentary grasp of their parental faith, which rarely extends to religious practice of any sort. […] These sorts of melodramatic crises of identity can prove useful for Jihadist recruiters. They can use the confusion to sell a new utopian identity around the Ummah or global community of believers – which does not recognise colour, race or nationality and is besieged from all sides by evil forces. This radical interpretation of a religious community becomes the sole locus of identity and belonging.The hearts cry of the oppressed, the soul of a soulless world, etc. so the real anti-dote is a real, physical, practical sense of belonging, a materialist antidote.
Ach, it was easier to find than I thought (lousy reference they gave).http://www.historytoday.com/martin-pugh/womens-movement
Quote:In Britain, on the other hand, domestic politics complicated and delayed female enfranchisement. While the women enjoyed allies amongst Radical Liberals, they had to adjust to the unexpected dominance of Conservatism in the late Victorian era. In time the suffragists' arguments began to reflect a Conservative view, and a growing number of Conservative MPs supported them. Yet this advance only aroused suspicions amongst Liberal and Labour politicians as to whether women voters would favour the Conservatives and whether a limited measure designed to enfranchise property-owning women would damage their party interests. This antagonism between feminists and the left-wing parties eventually provoked die militant suffragette campaign which was a distinctive feature of the movement in Britain'. But militancy actually delayed enfranchisement in the sense that by repudiating and alienating the labour movement the Pankhursts deprived their campaign, of die working-class support which would have frightened the government.There will have to be collective democratic agreements, not least a decision what to do about industrial scale grazing. I'd guess, myself, that aside from hunting genetically modified whales[*], animal raising will become restricted to marginal land that isn't any good for crops. the point is though, that it will be a democratic decision, and one that will doubtless be hotly debated.Now, where did I put by cybernetically enhanced Chimpanzee slave? [*] The genetic modification will be that they die painlessly when you give them a funny look.
ha, finally found the primary source:
Bernard Shaw wrote:"Mrs. William Morris had to have her meat. She regarded my diet as a suicidal fad. There are people to-day who regard it so in spite of the fact that I'm on the way to ninety .They still look upon a meatless day as a penance, as they look upon all pleasures. It probably is: a man who dropped his aitches was preferable to a man who dropped his meat. She did not conceal her contempt for my folly. When I dined with them my appetite returned, as it always does at the sight of a particularly nice pudding. Mrs. Morris pressed a second helping"on me which I consumed to the entire satisfaction of the family. Then she said: 'That'll do you good, there is suet in it!' That was the only remark she ever allowed herself to make to me. When I die, if ever I will, it will be put down to my diet.http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0115/070115-fossil-fuels
Quote:A third of oil reserves, half of gas reserves and over 80% of current coal reserves globally should remain in the ground and not be used before 2050 if global warming is to stay below the 2°C target agreed by policy makers, according to new research by the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources…The authors show that the overwhelming majority of the huge coal reserves in China, Russia and the United States should remain unused along with over 260 thousand million barrels oil reserves in the Middle East, equivalent to all of the oil reserves held by Saudi Arabia. The Middle East should also leave over 60% of its gas reserves in the groundThat shows, in part, the vastness of reserves, and our ability to adjudge how much is there, and to think about using them in such way as to manage them for future generations into perpetuity.
Very sage analysis from the usually very well informed Juan Cole:http://www.juancole.com/2015/01/sharpening-contradictions-satirists.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook
Quote:Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, then led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, deployed this sort of polarization strategy successfully in Iraq, constantly attacking Shiites and their holy symbols, and provoking the ethnic cleansing of a million Sunnis from Baghdad. The polarization proceeded, with the help of various incarnations of Daesh (Arabic for ISIL or ISIS, which descends from al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia). And in the end, the brutal and genocidal strategy worked, such that Daesh was able to encompass all of Sunni Arab Iraq, which had suffered so many Shiite reprisals that they sought the umbrella of the very group that had deliberately and systematically provoked the Shiites.I was heartened by the pictures of crowds of solidarity at Place de la Revolution, hopefully these crowds can hold the line and see off any NF attempt to exploit the Islamist bifurcation strategy.
Quote:We have a model for response to terrorist provocation and attempts at sharpening the contradictions. It is Norway after Anders Behring Breivik committed mass murder of Norwegian leftists for being soft on Islam. The Norwegian government launched no war on terror. They tried Breivik in court as a common criminal. They remained committed to their admirable modern Norwegian values.and
Quote:“Sharpening the contradictions” is the strategy of sociopaths and totalitarians, aimed at unmooring people from their ordinary insouciance and preying on them, mobilizing their energies and wealth for the perverted purposes of a self-styled great leader.I hope this is followed up by a public show of support: demonstrations in favour of free speech rather than calls for some sort of state clamp down. The main beneficiaries, I fear, will be the Front National…
This is a very interesting article:http://theconversation.com/sun-and-wind-could-finally-make-electricity-too-cheap-to-meter-34166
Quote:When the UK’s electricity industry was privatised in the 1990s its power plants had the capacity to generate more than was needed. This was despite the fact many of these plants had already been in service for decades. The national transmission network was also well established. This meant the cost of electricity was largely determined by fuel prices – mainly coal and gas.Quote:A free market for electricity would be likely to produce extremely high prices in winter, particularly at periods of peak demand, but very low prices at times when the demand can be met entirely by renewable energy. If these energy costs are passed on to the customer, we could see the cost of using an electric kettle to make a cup of tea at 18:30 in January being many pounds, but electricity costing almost nothing during long periods in the summer.The market isn't working for providing energy (although the above article does seem to ignore the possibility of using renewables to produce hydrocarbons for later use, so wind can make gas).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30525539
Quote:Goldman Sachs has suggested $930bn of projects, worldwide, could fail to get the go-ahead next year. And the North Sea is seen as one of the higher-cost, lower-return regions for investment.This is, again, the difference between the speed information travels through the market, and the real timepractical implementation of decisions will mean that this contraction in oil investment could have knock effects for years to come, as plants and staff are mothballed, knowledge and skills are lost and it will take time to replace them and the necessary infrastructure to resuscitate the Scottish oilfields (adding additional costs that such projects would not need to incurr now).Obviously, while in socialism would have to 'rest' lnes of production that were unnecessary, we wouldn't need to dismantle the infrastructure and get it's pesky value off our books. Oil capitalism is about to eat itself.
http://may2015.com/ideas/is-ukip-hurting-labour/
Quote:He goes on to suggest that “New Labour’s move to the liberal consensus on the EU and immigration in 2001, 2005 and 2010 left many of their core voters out in the cold a long time before Ukip was around”.Evans confirmed his findings at the constituency level, by looking at who Ukip voters in “Labour seats” voted for in 2010 and 2005 (the piece doesn’t elaborate on “Labour seats” – presumably they mean the 258 the party won in 2010).He found only 18 per cent of Ukippers in Labour seats are 2010 Labour voters, whereas 39 per cent are 2010 Tories. But if you look back to 2005, 30 per cent of Ukippers voted Labour, while 31 per cent voted Tory.They do make an interesting point:
Quote:The Government is also failing to clamp down on employers who do not pay the National Minimum WageIn each year since 2010 the Government has issued fewer fines than Labour’s last year in Government, with the overall value of fines issued to businesses falling by over 53 per cent compared with 2009/10 in 2012/13.As we've always said, minimum wage legislation needs to be enforced, , and simply turning a blind eye allows employers to ignore the law (that and letting it slide in real value terms).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_IndependentSee what you mean. I knew they'd had a recent spat with gerry Adams when he mentioned the IRA raid on their offices (his argument was that establishment politicians who lionise Michael Collins are a bit cheeky to criticise the provos, fair enough, as far as it goes).
