The Quiet Road

The boys are back in town. Sadly not them wild-eyed boys referred to by Phil and the rest of Thin Lizzy. Nope, it’s the guys from the IMF, EU and ECB that are tearing up the city. And while they may well be dressed to kill, I doubt they’ll be spending much time down at Dino’s bar and grill. Instead it’s the Department of Finance and the luxurious Merrion Hotel where these boys will be spending their time. And the destruction they’ll wreak will make the best efforts of the wildest rock band pale into insignificance. What Phil and the lads might have done to a couple of hotel rooms, our current visitors will do to the whole country.

The reason for their visit is to “oversee the progress” being made by Ireland. That’s right; they’re checking up on us. They want to make sure that we’re following orders. Otherwise they’ll deny us access to the “bail-out” funds. The standard response to any hint of indignation about this is, “Well, it’s only fair. They are giving us money to keep the country afloat and in return we agreed to some conditions. They have every right to visit every three months and make sure we’re keeping to our end of the deal”.

Except it’s not fair. Not in the slightest. They’re not giving us money, they’re lending it to us. And one of the conditions we agreed to (or rather, our political classes agreed to) is that a huge chunk of those loans be used to pay off the debts run up by private financial institutions. And who are those institutions indebted to? Why, it’s the French and German banks (among others). So private corporations run up debts. The EU and IMF loans the Irish State money to pay back those debts. Leaving the Irish State in debt. What is described as an IMF/EU “bail-out” of Ireland is nothing more than a mechanism to trick the Irish public into bailing out French and German banks. It’s farcical. It’s obscene. And it’s as far from fair as you’re likely to get. How is heaping private debt on the shoulders of as-yet unborn Irish citizens even remotely fair?

The fathers have eaten bitter fruit and the children’s teeth are set on edge. The whole point of that proverb is as a metaphor for injustice!

And look, I’m not saying the Irish State didn’t run up debts of its own. I’m not saying the financial policies of our governments for the past decade haven’t been a bloody disaster. They have been. What I’m saying is that a combination of IMF and European bureaucrats along with the Irish political establishment, driven by an ideology that seeks to redistribute wealth from poor to rich, have decided to compound those disastrous years of financial irresponsibility with the worst possible response. A response that will ruin this country unless we resist it strenuously.

And the first line of resistance should be to prevent the sale of State assets. That’s the next stage in the process, you see. We’ve borrowed the money and are paying off the gambling debts of fools. Fools, incidentally, who show no remorse for their actions. Seán Quinn, David Drumm and the rest of them shouldn’t be in the bankruptcy courts, they should be in the criminal courts for the reckless behaviour that drove this country over a cliff. That they “didn’t technically break any law” is only because our law-makers were criminally incompetent. The very first article in the Irish Constitution states:

The Irish nation hereby affirms its inalienable, indefeasible, and sovereign right to choose its own form of Government, to determine its relations with other nations, and to develop its life, political, economic and cultural, in accordance with its own genius and traditions.

The Constitution of Ireland | Article 1

These men and their ilk have undermined the most basic principle of Irish nationhood. In a very real sense, their actions subverted the constitution. Haul them up for treason and throw them in Mountjoy for 20 years. No, it won’t get the money back, but it might just give pause to those in our banks and governments who even as I write are dedicated to continuing this madness.

And there’s a real urgency about this. Not only because each day that passes sees more debt piled onto the Irish people. But because we are soon to sell off our stake in our own energy infrastructure, our ports, our stake in our airline… even our forests and natural resources. All at fire-sale prices.

This massive wave of privatisations is being done at the behest of the international puppet-masters now pulling the strings of the Irish government. Not content with heaping a mountain of debt on the shoulders of future generations, they intend to take the family silver with them when they leave. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; the outcry about this should not be confined to these shores. Because if these thieves are allowed to get away with this in full view – as is happening – they will not stop with Ireland. You will be next, wherever you live, and they won’t be satisfied until they have laid waste to the world.

In my previous post I argued that the inequities within western society are nothing next to the inequity that exists when you compare the west to the rest. But I also made it clear that I fully support opposition to that inequity (I’m just not keen on all of the language used by those doing the opposing). We can do little about the greater problems of the world if we’re forced to our knees at home. To solve the larger problem we need the power to do so. And whatever small amount of power we may have had is being systematically stripped from us.

My solution is a radical one. And one that will be popular with nobody. So we clearly need to find a different solution.

But if it came to it… sure, sell off the assets. Then once the cheque has cleared (metaphorically) announce a huge wave of nationalisations. Just take it all back (and that includes the offshore resources we let go for a pittance). Implement a hefty wealth tax. Raise income tax for everyone above €60,000; with increasing levels as you rise above €100,000. Cut whatever public spending we can afford to without putting anyone into poverty. Essentially, balance the budget in one fell swoop. Then unilaterally default on our debt and leave the euro. Hell, leave the EU if we’re forced to. Devalue our new currency and begin large training programmes in agriculture and engineering. Get back to basics. Make sure we can feed ourselves and maintain our national infrastructure. Expand our renewable energy and public transport systems. By all means continue interacting with the global economic system, but on our own terms.

Yeah. As I say, popular with nobody. It’s a strategy that will produce hardship and require sacrifice. Crucially though, those who can afford to contribute the most will be expected to. Given Ireland’s population and resources, I don’t believe that anyone need go hungry or without shelter; but we’ll have to say goodbye to most of our luxuries for the foreseeable future. And let me just say this while you’re thinking of a better solution… such a manifesto will be a far better preparation for the future than anything being proposed by any political party, or by the IMF, the EU or any financial institution. It would offer unborn generations a sustainable society instead of an unsustainable debt.

You know that “We Are The 99%” slogan adopted by the Occupy Movement? Well, at the risk of alienating many of my regular readers, I have to say it annoys the hell out of me. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the point it’s trying to make. And I see how it cleverly allows Occupy to assert a non-partisan stance. “We’re not left or right”, it says. “We’re not about the working class or the middle class. We’re about The People. We’re about You and Me.” It’s a good strategy. Good branding, if you will.

The problem I have though is… well, it’s kind of a lie. Not in the pedantic sense that “it should be 97.6% instead of 99%”. No, it’s a lie in the sense that the distinction it makes is not necessarily the important one. Because the Occupy Movement is – in part – actually a reaction by disenfranchised western consumers to a reduction in their ability to consume at levels to which they became accustomed.

No, that’s not all it is, but that’s why the first people took to the streets of New York. It’s why there are people camping outside the Central Bank on Dame Street here in Dublin. And it’s what those people are doing on the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. They are protesting because they feel that their standard of living is under threat.

Which it is. Everything I’ve written here lately about private financial institutions raiding the public purse is true, so far as I can tell. The populations of the “industrialised west” are under attack by the market forces of private capital. And we have every right to fight back. I’m not objecting to the Occupy Movement, I’m objecting to the slogan.

Because the lay-offs and the foreclosures, the regressive taxes and vicious cuts to public services, the mantra of austerity… these are all attacks on a lifestyle that doesn’t represent 99% of the world. Not even close. They are attacks on a level of consumption that was always unsustainable. That these attacks are being carried out; not so western society can move towards sustainability; but so that a tiny minority can continue to hoard ever-increasing mountains of wealth is – it goes without saying – obscene. But the people Occupying Wall Street were not there when the property boom of the nineties and early-to-mid-noughties provided the illusion of increasing wealth for the masses in the “developed” world.

See, for decades, we in the west have been consuming vastly more that our fair share of global resources. And we’ve been doing so at the expense of billions of people who had no voice. Or if they did, we rarely if ever listened. Sure, we might have given some spare cash when Bob Geldof came on the TV to shame us in the 80s. But the very fact that the term “ethical consumerism” exists speaks volumes about the level of delusion suffered by the world we built. And it is an attack on that world that sparked the Occupy response.

Our collective conscience was bought and paid for with bread and circuses. The bread came in a dozen different combinations… from Happy Meals to Artisan Loafs (made with the finest imported olives and sun-dried tomatoes, no less). And the circuses appeared on 236 different channels beamed via satellite to our 43″ plasma screens. We bombed distant nations so we could fill our cars with cheap petrol allowing us to drive to shops where we bought Smart Phones made with rare metals that only cost a pittance thanks to the millions dying in Central Africa in our Resource-War-by-proxy.

And I do mean “we”. This article is being written on a computer with components which I’ve no doubt are of ethically dubious provenance and being read on a device much the same. It is possible to completely drop out of your own society, but almost nobody does because it’s only just about possible. It’s certainly far from easy.

Which is why I have such a problem with “We are the 99%”. The accuracy of the number isn’t at issue. It’s the fact that the people camping on Dublin’s Dame Street ultimately have more in common with the 1% they decry, than with the downtrodden masses whose nations we have spent decades pillaging for resources. And call me a cynic if you like, but if we were to discover untold riches in Mozambique tomorrow… near endless lakes of sweet crude oil lapping against shores of the finest coltan and platinum… and if we were to buy back the illusions of the nineties and the noughties; sending our armies to Africa to secure those resources and put money back in our bank accounts, cheap petrol in our new cars and a sense of security in our continued consumption… I just don’t think the Occupy Movement would last very long.

Sure there’d still be anti-war protests. And we’d all pile into coaches to drive to the big city where we’d raise our “No Blood for Oil” placards; the irony noted but never likely to force a change in behaviour. And then, having protested against the politicians who took us to war, we’d re-elect them in the name of stability when they promised us tax cuts and the continuation of a comfortable life.

Our civilisation is an unsustainable disaster. It is destroying the world in slow but inexorable steps. And it needs to be radically reconfigured into something that places justice and sustainability at its core. The fact that anti-capitalist protests began long before these days of austerity is cause for some small hope, and if the Occupy Movement can help with that reconfiguration – or even just prompt discussion and thought on the subject – then it is to be supported in any way we can. I’m not defending the austerity policies that are ransacking Europe and beyond (anyone who has read this blog for the past few years will know that). And I’m certainly not trying to justify the further concentration of wealth at the very top. I’m just pointing out that for many years the people currently Occupying Dublin, London and New York were closer to the top than perhaps they realised and weren’t particularly interested in relinquishing that position. As their anger now demonstrates. Fighting for a fairer distribution of wealth is a noble cause. But claiming to be “The 99%” just seems in bad taste to me.

It’s a lot like when the Congestion Charge was being introduced in London… forcing people to pay in order to use their private cars in the city… and left-wing critics insisted that it would hit the poorest people the hardest. They were somehow forgetting that the poorest 20% of people didn’t own cars, they were too poor to afford them, and that the money raised from the Congestion Charge – if invested in public transport – would actually help the poorest people.

So if “We Are The 99%” is supposed to highlight a disparity between the Haves and Have-Nots, then we should take a look at those who truly Have-Not. Because it’s not really us. It’s not the people camping in Dame Street. And it’s not the people watching them on the news or reading about them on the internet. We are rightly angered by the sight of a small minority syphoning wealth from our pockets. But we should pause for a moment in our anger and realise that we’re far from the bottom of the global ladder. That the masses below us can also be rightly angered by the sight of their wealth in our pockets. Like it or not, in the eyes of billions of dispossessed around the world, it is we who are the one percent.

And so 2011 slips behind us and into the pages of history. While ahead looms 2012. And it looms ominously I’m sorry to say. Not because of Mayan prophecies or the mutating neutrinos of Roland Emmerich, but because the problems of 2011 – despite seemingly endless summits and photo-ops attended by our political class – have not been solved. In fact, the problems of 2011 were often little more than the ones we failed to address in 2010. As for the problems of 2010? By and large they were unfinished business from 2009. And the problems of 2009? Well, I’m sure you can see the emerging pattern.

In South Africa the governments of the world met for a few days and cobbled together a strategy for dealing with Climate Change. In Belgium (and elsewhere) the governments of Europe met for longer periods of time and cobbled together a strategy for dealing with the debt crisis. What unites both strategies is the bizarrely transparent manner in which they fail to achieve their stated aims. I’d always heard that if a job was worth doing, it was worth doing well, but apparently that’s not a philosophy shared by those in power. Had the Durban conference concluded with a joint statement from participants to the effect that they would insist upon compulsory piano lessons for all giraffes, it would have had roughly the same chance of halting Climate Change.

As Kurt Vonnegut pointed out, “We could have saved it but we were too damned cheap.”

Never forget that the reason the big issues facing the world are not being addressed is because the people in charge don’t believe we’re willing to put in the necessary money and effort. And never forget that we put them in charge precisely because that’s what they believe. They promise us easy solutions to problems we know are difficult, and in return we elect them.

Even our more manageable problems, such as the European debt crisis, are left to fester until they threaten to visit catastrophic social collapse upon entire nations. And why is this? Well part of it, and this is really quite depressing, is because our political leaders are completely incapable of admitting that they might be wrong about anything. I really do think it’s a psychological disorder. I’m not sure if it’s something they succumb to as a result of a proximity to power, or whether something about politics attracts those who already suffer from the condition. Either way, it is one of the greatest obstacles to progress.

The austerity policies in place around Europe are just plain wrong. We have created a society that imposes poverty and suffering on the general population unless it is experiencing economic growth. And at the same time we are implementing policies that are guaranteed to prevent growth. Personally I think we need to restructure society so that it no longer relies on growth, but until we do that, economic policies that prevent growth are nothing less than deliberate, calculated attacks on the citizenry by those in power.

The trouble is; even as this becomes clear, even as the failure of austerity slowly sinks in, those in power are pathologically incapable of admitting it. The very fact they supported a policy must mean the policy is the right one. The alternative is unthinkable… that they publicly accept they are fallible. These people should not be running countries, banks or large institutions. They should be heavily medicated, under supervision and kept away from sharp objects let alone the levers of power. They are mid-level bureaucrats of modest ability who have been accidentally elevated to positions of power by a runaway ambition-gland. And it’s broken them; made them delusional. We should not permit them to inflict their delusion on the rest of us.

Ireland, January 25th 2012

In two weeks time, assuming Europe lasts that long, that delusion will once again be inflicted upon the people of Ireland. In what is the ultimate ongoing demonstration that our government represents the interests of casino-capitalism above that of the citizenry, the next of the Anglo-Irish Bank payments will be made. On that day, the Fine Gael / Labour coalition will hand over €1.25 billion of public money to unsecured, unguaranteed bond-holders. It’s mind-blowing really. There is no legal requirement for the government to do this. It is not a condition of the IMF/EU “bail-out”. The payment is not part of the disastrous 2008 Bank Guarantee. Let me repeat; there is no legal requirement to pay this money. Indeed I would argue there is a moral imperative to not pay it.

So why are we paying this money, despite there being no requirement? Because our leaders don’t want to upset the markets. Oh, they’re happy to upset the people they were elected to represent. Happy to cut child benefit and disability benefit. Happy to slash the incomes of the already poverty-stricken. But they don’t want to upset the markets. Markets, remember, that Ireland has been effectively excluded from by crippling interest rates (hence our need for the IMF/EU “bail-out”). The markets will screw us alright, but heaven forbid we Irish upset them.

To a nation the size of Ireland, a payment of €1.25 billion is massive. It represents more than half the spending cuts made in our recent budget. As a letter to the Irish Times recently put it, “the proposed payment is equivalent to the salaries of 5,000 extra nurses for five years”. But it’s only the tip of the iceberg. By the end of this year, the Irish people will have paid roughly €2 billion of unsecured, unguaranteed bonds. On top of that, we’ll also be paying more than €3.7 billion of bonds covered by our insane Bank Guarantee. And that’s for Anglo-Irish Bank alone. Yes, that’s right, more than €5.7 billion of public money is being handed over to investors in a single (now defunct) bank in a single year. It’s beyond nonsense and into the realm of criminally insane.

We’re constantly being told that we must live within our means, while those doing the preaching are throwing our money away. It’s time we put an end to this idiocy.

Earlier today the TV news broadcast a report about the victory of Mitt Romney in the Iowa Caucus. This signals the beginning of the 2012 US Presidential Election and is the first step taken by the Republican Party in choosing who will run against Barack Obama in November. The report on RTÉ included short clips of the two front-runners, Romney and Santorum, speaking to their supporters. I was fascinated by Romney’s veiled reference to Manifest Destiny when he described America as the “hope of the world”, and by the openly religious language used by both candidates. In fact, in the case of Santorum I found the phrase “aggressively religious” leaping unbidden to mind.

Of course, I’ve long been aware that the United States, for all its superficial similarities, is very much “a foreign country” from a European perspective*. I don’t mean that in any pejorative sense, but simply as a description of the experience I had when I lived there. Just as with the time I spent in Egypt or Brazil, there was a real sense of being “outside Europe” when I worked in the US heartland, which is pretty odd considering the wide gulf that exists between many European cultures. I’ve lived in five European countries and I married a woman from a sixth. Yet despite the language barriers and the clear cultural differences, I felt much more of an alien when I lived in the English-speaking American Midwest than when I lived in Athens or Berlin.

No amount of US sitcoms or Hollywood movies can prepare a European for time spent in Ottumwa or Des Moines or Columbus. There’s a sense of dislocation precisely because everything seems so familiar on the surface, and yet the people you work with and spend time with clearly possess a very different value system. There’s the strange ideological attachment to gun-ownership, which I found quite disconcerting at times. And there’s the extreme patriotism, which in most European countries would be considered close to the dodgy end of nationalism despite being part of the mainstream of US society. And most of all there’s the heavily religious aspect of American life. Even coming from an Irish Catholic background, I found the seriousness with which many Americans take religious belief to be remarkable.

Although the United States is clearly in decline, it remains the only superpower at this moment in time; certainly the only superpower capable of projecting military and economic power around the world. One imagines that China or India might be at the stage where they could flex their muscles should they so wish, and test the dominance of the United States. But right now they haven’t done so, and so long as that’s the case, the US remains the only global superpower. Which is why US policy matters to the rest of the world. And why we should never forget – particularly when they have a Republican president – that US policy is not necessarily guided by the same considerations as those of European governments.

Witness, for example, the stark contrast between otherwise bosom-buddies Tony Blair and George ‘Dubya’ Bush when it came to their faith. Both professed to be religious Christians. But while Bush spoke proudly of leading his staff in daily White House bible readings, Blair’s irritation when asked by Jeremy Paxman if he ever “prayed together” with the US president (50 seconds into this video) was palpable. Blair clearly viewed the very premise of the question as being an attempt to ridicule him; as indeed, from a European sense, it probably was. But Bush would never have reacted in such a way and would almost certainly have taken the question at face value. That clip of Blair’s discomfort – almost embarrassment – when faced with questions about his faith (a faith that, let us not forget, he expressed openly in his writing) always calls to mind Matthew 26:31-75.

Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice…

Take the – admittedly more extreme than most – Rick Santorum who, having made it clear that he was running on an anti-abortion platform and “the sanctity of the American family” (which is almost certainly a reference to his profoundly homophobic views), came out with the following…

… America is a moral enterprise. Our founders understood that for the constitution to work, it had to be based on something deeper, something grounded. Our rights came from a creator [Santorum points upwards to heaven] and the creator has rules… ‘Nature and Nature’s God’, that was another phrase in the declaration of independence. They understood that through reason and through faith we could build a strong country from the ground up, based on a moral society. John Adams said our constitution was made for ‘a moral and a religious people; it is wholly inadequate for the governance of any other’. That is the mission of America…

YouTube | Rick Santorum Speech At The Iowa Straw Poll (from 4:30)

Prior to the report on the Iowa Caucus, the RTÉ news had run a story about the increasing tensions between Iran and the west, complete with a clip of President Ahmadinejad working himself into an impressive fury and shaking his fist at America. So when the Santorum clip was shown, Citizen S who was sitting next to me, wondered aloud, “how is that any different to the rhetoric of the Iranian government?” My reply… “it’s not”.

Indeed this point is made rather well by Ronald Wright, author of What is America? A Short History of the New World Order in this interview…

It’s well worth watching that clip. Wright lucidly explains how America developed as a nation riven with tension between religious fundamentalism and predatory capitalism, and how it has somehow managed to combine the two into a strange hybrid that has antecedents in the ‘frontier spirit’ of the 17th and 18th century and still looks forward with evangelical zeal to a world reshaped in its own image. The fact is, there are few things more dangerous than a powerful person who believes God is on their side. It makes them reckless with the lives of others and it provides them with a spurious justification for idiotic decisions. And it’s all the worse when that person feels backed into a corner, as the decline of the debt-ridden American Empire must surely do to future presidents.

Having said all that, and it pains me that religious discussion has become so polarised that I feel obliged to add this disclaimer; none of this is meant to be an attack on religion in and of itself. I believe the mytho-poetic aspects of religion and religious faith are of genuine importance to the future well-being of humanity. I believe the sterile atheism currently in fashion is also extremely dangerous in the long run; though in a different way to the various flavours of religious fundamentalism that grips much of humanity today. I believe that those “intellectuals” who are making a living tearing at the fabric of religion are doing terrible damage to our culture and our collective psyche. Yes, we need to radically re-evaluate our relationship with religion, but it needs to be done constructively and with subtlety and sensitivity. The boorish attacks of the new atheists are as unimaginative and unintelligent as the fundamentalist literalism of Rick Santorum or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Today I was reading an article (There is Another Way) on David McWilliams‘ website and I found myself mentally stumbling over a particular line. It’s about halfway through the piece… “economies grow because of the human capital of the societies”, he says.

Now, I like David McWilliams. He’s probably the most famous of Ireland’s celebrity economists, but don’t let that put you off. I certainly don’t agree with everything he has to say. And if, for example, we were to reduce things to the simplistic left/right dialectic that I generally try to avoid on this blog, then it’s safe to say that I’d be a good deal to the left of McWilliams. Beyond that, although he is currently one of the most vocal opponents of the current austerity orthodoxy, he still retains far too much of the dogma of mainstream free-market economic theory for my liking. Nonetheless, he was one of the very few economists to publicly warn of the financial crisis quite a while before it hit… a fact that – along with his likeable media persona – has garnered him the celebrity status he currently enjoys. He also organises the Kilkenomics Fesital which, although I’ve not been to it myself, sounds like a splendid idea (high-profile economists and well known stand-up comedians are invited to take part in performances, public interviews and conferences… a most appropriate combination of participants).

Earlier this year, at a conference called European Zeitgeist 2011, McWilliams was asked about the “bail-outs” that have been received by three (so far) EU members. His response succinctly sums up the sensible position on the subject…

However, regardless of his likeability and sensible views on the current financial crisis, David McWilliams still falls into the great trap that pretty much every economist of note succumbs to… to use the language of Systems Theory, he confuses the map with the territory. That is, he tends to see economic analysis as descriptive of the real world as opposed to merely being a model of it… and a flawed one at that. The distinction may be a subtle one, but it is massively important.

A couple of months ago, McWilliams hosted an online seminar (or “webinar” to use the parlance of our times) in which he gave a short lecture on the European crisis and then responded to questions from the disembodied audience. I put my question to him. Now, regular readers of this blog could probably guess what I asked with a fair degree of accuracy, but for the rest of you, it went something like this… “David, while acknowledging that the current financial and economic crisis is a real problem, what do you say to people who suggest it is but the tip of the iceberg; that a far more serious issue is that of resource depletion – in particular, but not limited to, peak oil – and that this will result in a near-term crisis that will make the current one look positively modest in comparison?”

To his credit (and my surprise), his response essentially acknowledged that there was a lot of truth in my suggestion and that the global economy may well experience very serious shocks as a result of resource depletion in the not too distant future. The reason for my surprise was not simply the fact that most economists fail to make that map / territory distinction and therefore completely forget that economics is no more than a conceptual model of a physical world and that economic laws and theories are only accurate insofar as they tally with the laws of physics. That they are essentially descriptions of past events and cease being at all relevant when the physical conditions of the world they describe change radically. No, I was also surprised because McWilliams makes little or no reference to the notion of resource depletion in anything he writes.

This is why I get frustrated when I read statements like “economies grow because of the human capital of the societies”. McWilliams is a very smart man and appears to acknowledge the near-term possibility of a radical change in the physical conditions within which human society – and therefore economics – must exist. The depletion of oil and other petroleum products is a complete game changer. And it makes statements such as the one about human capital completely redundant. While the statement may be (indeed, is) relevant in a world where the availability of cheap energy is a given, it is nonsense in a world of diminishing energy supply. In that world, economic growth is entirely dependent upon access to that diminishing supply of energy.

This is because an economy is – in very rough terms – the amount of work occurring within a society. Some would insist that should be restated as “the amount of productive work occurring within a society”, but that’s not the case because, in practice, many people are paid for unproductive work and that money is still part of the economy. But what is “work”? Well, a definition from a Business Studies course might claim that work is “paid employment at a job or a trade, occupation, or profession”. And that’s all well and good for passing your end of term exam, but if economies are built on physical systems (which in the final analysis, they are) then it’s really the physical definition of work that’s important. And while the most mathematical of definitions is the somewhat abstract “work is the product of a force times the distance through which it acts”, we only have to wander as far as the First Law of Thermodynamics to find work equated with energy. Indeed energy is defined as “the ability to do work”. Therefore, with decreasing energy resources comes decreasing work.

This is something that cannot be avoided and something we desperately need to start facing up to. Every available piece of data seems to point towards the fact that we have already passed peak oil (2006 seems to be the agreed year for a peak in conventional crude oil). Indeed, this is playing a not insignificant role in our current economic problems, and yet we are still at the very beginning of the resource depletion crisis. Each moment we continue to wilfully ignore this issue is a moment spent making the problem worse. Which is why people like David McWilliams; intelligent people with a public platform who are apparently aware of the looming crisis; should be talking about it. They should be shouting it from the rooftops until they’re hoarse.

What they shouldn’t be doing is insisting that despite the current downturn, despite the currency problems and despite the issue of unsustainable debt, the underlying structure of the world is the same as it ever was, and that a return to growth is just around the corner if we simply make better economic and financial decisions. Because ultimately that is what “economies grow because of the human capital of the societies” translates into. It is a statement that reflects a deep economic orthodoxy and that’s something we just can’t afford right now.

I’ve been keeping a pretty close eye on the negotiations, tantrums, pratfalls and other shenanigans that go to make up European politics of late. My mind has been well and truly boggled by the cavalier fashion in which politicians from across the political spectrum (though mostly on the centre-right, for it is they who hold the balance of power in Europe these days) have relegated the interests of the people below the interests of financial institutions and other corporations.

Of course, it has become part of the standard rhetoric of the left (and I’m just as guilty of it as anyone) to suggest that our political establishment has effectively ceased representing those who elected them and now focus exclusively upon representing the rich and powerful. It’s a line that’s gotten old through constant use. But rarely has this claim been so self-evidently true as during the past few months.

Now, there are those who would argue that there’s no reason why the interests of financial institutions and other corporations should necessarily conflict with those of the population at large. And I’m more than willing to concede that. There are all manner of hypothetical scenarios (and even a few historical ones) in which the interests of the rich and powerful complement the interests of the rest of us. However it is only the irredeemably partisan or the unfortunately half-witted who would claim our current situation qualifies as such a scenario.

We have allowed ourselves to be manoeuvred into a position where the very people we elect to represent our interests are gleefully handing our collective wealth over to the already super-rich. Where hospitals and schools are being closed in order to funnel public money into banks. Where croneyism and outright corruption have become the basic modus operandus of government. And where those who are already poverty-stricken – or in danger of becoming so – are expected to tighten their belts so that the wealthy may accumulate ever more obscene fortunes.

Both politics and finance are supposed to serve the wider population. We elect politicians to represent our interests directly. The financial institutions that make up modern Market Capitalism are, theoretically at least, permitted to exist by society in order to make the distribution of wealth an efficient process. Certainly there is nothing written into the rules of the Free Market system that says the wealth much be distributed equitably, but there should be a basic fairness to the system… one that, at the very least, allows the vast majority of people to live comfortably. If the Market does not achieve this aim then it is failing society as a whole and needs to be replaced with something else. After all, it’s supposed to be The People who ultimately call the shots and decide how society is structured. Not a handful of bond traders, political insiders and bankers.

Right now, however, we have arrived at a situation where politics and finance have united against the wider population. For several decades they have been united in self-interest and marginal cranks such as myself have been decrying this and warning against the inevitable tragedy that would result. However, at the same time, this unholy cabal was careful to provide a half-decent standard of living for the wider population (yes, yes, largely at the expense of the billions of poor in the so-called “developing” world, but I’m talking specifically about the people, governments and institutions of Europe). This staved off revolution and also effectively muted much of the criticism from the marginal cranks in the anti-capitalist brigade. It’s difficult to convince someone that they’re being screwed-over by the wealthy elite when they are flush with endorphins from their purchase of a 42-inch HD LED-backlit flat screen TV. We’re all monkeys after all, and easily distracted by shiny toys (me as much as anyone… a recent gift of an iPad2 has left me cooing and swiping the touch-screen like any other monkey – and I don’t even like Apple!)

But the past couple of years have seen the beginnings of a shift… we are leaving the world of Huxley and rejoining that of Orwell. No longer are the financial and political elites willing to share even the crumbs of the great wealth they are accumulating. They have become so self-assured in their positions of power that their rapacious appetites extend now even to those crumbs. Public services are slashed to the bone, yet increased taxation on the rich cannot even be considered. In nations without jobs, welfare benefits are cut and then grudgingly distributed, yet corporate tax rates are sacrosanct. The few remaining assets of a demoralised populace are flogged to ultra-rich investors at rock-bottom prices in order to pay off debts run up by those self-same ultra-rich investors.

Last Friday this wealth-grab by the powerful played out in an odd fashion in the theatre of European politics when David Cameron (the right-wing British Prime Minister) threw a strop and stormed out of negotiations supposedly designed to solve the European debt crisis and save the euro. Well, he “used his veto”, which amounts to the same thing in Brussels. His stated reason for this break with the rest of Europe was his desire to protect the City of London… in other words, the UK’s financial sector.

There was much that was odd about this whole process. Firstly, Cameron’s veto doesn’t really protect the City of London… I could write a whole post on why this is the case (and may yet do), but in reality he may actually have exposed The City to significant harm should the other 26 EU members draw up a treaty that covers financial services. It’s also worth pointing out that while about 10% of Britain’s GDP is generated by the financial sector, a whopping 40% is generated by exports to the EU… his veto doesn’t affect Britain’s position in the Common Market, but it may well foreshadow a serious strain in the relationship between the UK and Europe; a strain that places the 40% at risk despite doing little to protect the 10%. He was effectively attempting to place the interests of his City Chums ahead of the interests of the general populace and may simply have succeeded in shafting both.

Also, by playing to the rabid euro-sceptic wing of the Tory Party, he has driven a massive wedge down the middle of his coalition government which may or may not turn out to be a political disaster. Incidentally, every time I see that over-fed jubilant Tory MP call Cameron’s strategy a triumph for Britain’s “bulldog spirit” I can’t help but think, “yeah, you waddle around shitting where it’s inappropriate, only pausing briefly to lick your own balls… truly an appropriate image for the modern Tory”.

Increasing the oddness of the Cameron sulk, though, is the fact that the draft treaty on which he has turned his back is a right-wing financial-political-elite wet dream. What’s being proposed by the Franco-German alliance and eagerly lapped up by the rest of the nations involved is a terrible betrayal of the people of Europe. It runs the risk of legally restricting future national governments from adopting left-wing economic policies. It runs the risk of setting back the power of labour unions by a hundred years. It runs the risk of permanently transferring sovereignty from national populaces towards international financial institutions. And all the while it – bizarrely – completely fails to address the current European debt crisis or do anything to stabilise the euro.

Last week’s summit can be summarised as an attempt by the European elite to use the current crisis as cover for imposing a permanent state of austerity on the wider public without even trying to solve that crisis. It’s the kind of thing that Cameron should have eagerly embraced, but was too beholden to his own marginal cranks to do so. And by being the only nation outside the proposed treaty, Britain may end up being damaged as a whole, despite the treaty being a betrayal. It’s all very odd.

What Europe needs right now is a couple of socialist revolutions followed by mass nationalisations. I can only hope that the Irish government, for one, is quietly printing new banknotes and making plans – however provisional – to exit the common currency. I have my doubts they’re smart enough for that, but we may well find out in the coming months.

A few months after the United States invaded Iraq, Dubya Bush sent Condoleeza Rice on a whistle-stop tour of US allies. Presumably her job was to gauge how much support was out there and to shore up whatever there was. I was living in the UK at the time and I recall the protests that greeted Rice’s arrival in London. A few days later she touched down in Athens and the news reported a huge demonstration that ended with petrol bombs being thrown at the US Embassy. It occurred to me that there was an important cultural difference on display there. It’s not about which response was right… whether Rice’s visit merited placards or petrol bombs. It’s that it takes far less provocation to get the Greeks to reach for the petrol bombs than it does to get the British.

This is something that I’ve constantly borne in mind during the Greek protests. The austerity measures being forced upon the Greek citizenry aren’t that much worse than those being forced upon us here in Ireland. But Occupy Dame Street notwithstanding, the Irish citizenry is a long long way from general strikes and petrol bombs. Which isn’t to say that we can’t be pushed to it. Our history of armed uprisings is quite emphatic about that. But we appear to be slower to be roused to such action.

Why that should be, and whether it’s for the better or the worse is beyond the brief of this short post, but it’s worthwhile to place the Greek protests in that context. Which is to say… if relatively limited austerity measures will provoke the protests we’ve seen, then the potential for a populist movement toppling the government is very real indeed when you consider the far more draconian measures coming down the line as a result of the “bail out”. Something akin to revolution has been brewing in South-eastern Europe over the past few days. And lest you think I’m guilty of hyperbole, I present two pieces of evidence. One you already know about. Another that’s just been announced and which may or may not catch the attention of the global press.

The one you know about is, obviously, the referendum announcement. I was incredulous when I first heard it on the news yesterday. Papandreou couldn’t have created more chaos if he’d started chucking live grenades around the Head of State meeting. First he agrees to the terms of the “bail-out”, then – after every other EU leader holds a press-conference in which they speak of their relief at the deal being finalised and how it would have been disaster for Europe if they’d failed – he goes on TV and retracts his pledge and instead tells Europe he’s going to consult the Greek people. The same people whose response to the current deal includes general strikes and rioting.

It seems pretty clear to me that Papandreou arrived back in Athens, fresh from agreeing to the European “bail-out”, only to be met by grim faces. And he was told… “If you do this, your government will fall. And whatever replaces it will not implement that deal anyway”. He was backed into a corner and did the only thing he could; he bought some time for Europe to come up with a way of easing Greece out of the euro as gracefully as possible.

How do we know he was backed into a corner? Well, that’ll be the other piece of evidence. A few hours ago the Greek government surprised a lot of people (including those in the military) by announcing a wholesale change of the entire military top brass. The Heads of the Army, Navy, Air Force and National Defence Force were all replaced earlier today. On a day where the Prime Minister is clinging to power by his fingertips, where his government’s majority has been whittled down even further by defections and prominent members of his own party are calling on him to resign. On a day where global markets are plunging as a result of Papandreou’s referendum announcement and European politicians are – not to put too fine a point on it – completely freaking out, does anyone think the Greek government has anything at all on its agenda that isn’t extremely urgent? And there’s not a lot of reasons why the replacement of the military high command becomes urgent.

Papandreou has played his final cards. The referendum might turn out to be a slice of political genius (opposition to the “bail out” is running at 62% according to the latest poll I saw… that’s not insurmountable) and the current government may somehow survive within the Eurozone by gaining a public mandate. But in my view, the odds of that happening are significantly worse than those poll figures suggest. With internal pressures beginning to fracture the government and something very strange going on with the military, it seems unlikely that Papandreou will be in power long enough to hold the referendum. And there’s no guarantee that his successor will feel the need to honour Papandreou’s commitment to a public vote.

One thing I am looking forward to though, is just what Vincent Browne will have to say about this all on his show tonight. I can almost hear his apoplectic spluttering as he confronts whatever lamb the government have sent to the slaughter… “But wha… wha… why are the Greeks getting a vote on this vital issue but the Irish are not? Does the government believe Irish citizens are not to be trusted? Or maybe that we’re all too stupid to understand what’s going on?”

There was a discussion between a news anchor and some “expert” pundit on Fox News in the immediate aftermath of the horrific tragedy in Norway, in which 76 people are known to have been murdered. The “expert” was pontificating on the reasons why Norway might be the target of an Al Qaeda terror attack. They’re members of NATO, he pointed out. They recently arrested an Islamist cleric, he pointed out. In the eyes of Muslim fanatics, Norway might share the stigma of the Danish cartoon incident, he suggested. The news anchor interjected… “it has been suggested that the perpetrator of these acts is actually a native Norwegian with a right-wing islamophobic agenda…” To which point the “expert” responded curtly, “I don’t think we should speculate about these things until we have all the facts!”

However much you or I may hate to perpetuate stereotypes, Fox News seems to have no problem promoting the idea that “Americans don’t do irony”.

But sadly, it wasn’t just the rabid right who immediately started to shriek “Muslims!” as soon as the news of a bomb in Oslo hit the airwaves. Peter Beaumont, a columnist with The Guardian, was quick off the mark with his entirely inaccurate and unjustifiable speculation. In an article – Oslo bomb: suspicion falls on Islamist militants – that has since been removed from the website (though is still currently available thanks to Google cache) Beaumont kicks off with the gloriously inept intro…

Oslo police have confirmed the source of the blast that damaged the prime minister’s offices in Oslo was a bomb. The question now is who is likely to be behind it.

The most obvious conclusion would be a jihadist group.

Really Peter? And why’s that exactly?

Is it because most acts of terrorism in Europe are carried out by jihadist groups? Because actually, between 2006 and 2009 (the most recent years for which we have accessible data) roughly 0.4% of incidents categorised as “terrorism” in Europe were carried out by groups with a known Islamist agenda. Yup, that’s a staggering 99.6% of recent terrorist acts carried out by non-jihadist groups. So why the freaking hell is it “the most obvious conclusion” that a jihadist group bombed Oslo?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that Peter Beaumont was alone in coming to that “obvious” (and utterly wrong) conclusion. Merely that he – like a huge number of people out there – have bought into a media narrative that is dangerously flawed and borderline racist. Though of course, given that Beaumont’s article was actually a part of that ongoing narrative, further reinforcing and extending it, he does warrant a tad more criticism than most of the people who have succumbed to the notion that Islam is somehow uniquely linked with terrorism.

In the hastily rewritten article that replaced the “suspicion falls on Islamist militants” one, Beaumont shamelessly spends much of his time highlighting the (ultra-tenuous) reasons why it was understandable for people to leap to the jihadist conclusion without ever referring to his own culpability in this bandwagon jumping.

The most tempting and immediate conclusion was that it would be a jihadist group, as the style of the Oslo attack bore strong similarities to other earlier attacks in Europe and elsewhere.

Really? Which ones? How many jihadist carbombs have there been in Europe? How many jihadist groups have sent a lone assassin to gun down members of a leftwing political youth movement in Europe? I’m not saying these things have not happened (though I personally don’t recall that being the modus operandus of Europe-based Islamist terrorism) but the fact of the matter is that “the style of the Oslo attacks” bears at least as much a similarity to the 99.6% of terrorist acts in Europe that were not carried out by Islamists. So again, why make that connection?

I am not downplaying acts of violence perpetrated by those with an Islamist agenda. I’m not downplaying any acts of violence at all. Being murdered by an Islamist suicide-bomber on the London tube is no more or less tragic than being murdered by an Islamophobic gun-man on a Norwegian island. Neither victim is less dead. And neither perpetrator is less unhinged or less monstrous.

What I am doing, however, is condemning a partly unconscious, partly conscious media narrative that appears to suggest that terrorism is somehow, despite all the evidence to the contrary, synonymous with Islamist extremism. A media narrative that insists the statistically less likely conclusion is the “obvious” one. A media narrative that, by virtue of its focus on jihadist groups despite their relative lack of activity in Europe, is guilty of forwarding a deceptive – and racist – agenda.

Terrorism Vs. Extremism

The other thing I want to address here is the weird way in which the language of (much of) the media switched from “possible Islamist terrorism” to “right-wing extremism“. A jihadist terrorist is an extremist . A Norwegian terrorist is an extremist. When an Islamist group or individual is involved, it’s “terrorism”, and there’s a subtle unspoken sense in which all of Islam – every Muslim – must shoulder some of the responsibility. But when the perpetrator is a Norwegian right-winger, then he’s a “lone extremist”. Possibly mentally ill.

The language we use is part of that. The word “terrorism” doesn’t distance the perpetrators from the mainstream population to quite the same extent as the word “extremism” does. It’s subtle. And I’m fully prepared to believe that the journalists and editors who create this obscene media narrative are largely unconscious of it. But that doesn’t excuse it. And it certainly doesn’t mean we should allow it to go unchallenged. And if we define Anders Behring Breivik as somehow “unhinged” or “mentally ill”, then the same applies to the suicide bombers who blew themselves up in London, or the hijackers who crashed airliners into American buildings.

Which is definitely not to say that I am defining anyone here as “mentally ill”. In fact, briefly donning my psychoanalyst hat, I have to say that I’m increasingly dissatisfied with the medical metaphor of psychology. However, I am calling for consistency in the media when it covers mass murder. Consistency, perspective and a thorough appreciation of the facts. As opposed to the current gung-ho willingness to perpetuate a narrative that is clearly at odds with reality.