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Tuesday, 1 April 2025

From Oliver Twist to Oliver Subsist… (527)

Labour’s recent budget is cruelly Dickensian in an age of billionaires. We may even see our first trillionaire very soon. And these two things, as has been underlined on this blog many times, are directly connected.

Few socio-economic observers with at least one foot in reality would disagree that the real way out of poverty and decline is for wages to rise, the wealthy to be efficiently taxed and for work to really pay. Real wages for really decent jobs mean more tax revenue after all. Our current system has the state subsidising wealthy companies through supplementing ever poor wage values.

Many fiscal observers on both sides of The Pond and in successful EU countries say as much so it’s not complicated, it’s not a secret.

What Starmer and his Chancellor Rachel Reeves are doing with their recent slashing of benefits to the most vulnerable, is blowing up the bridge that gets many of the most financially exposed, over the croc-infested raging waters of life. And they are doing it before putting the necessary new measures in place that might lead to an economy where ordinary people can actually thrive or at least live decently in our late-stage capitalist society of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’.

Starmer & Reeves are implementing survival of the financially fittest. It’s a sod the poor, disregard the disabled, fail the elderly, abandon children living in poverty and disgusting housing conditions attitude.

Instead of society sheltering the needy, the super-rich ‘shelter’ their wealth offshore. Their £millions are, after 40 years of the wreckage of privatisation, often from the proceeds of the garage sale of our infrastructure. They are no different, therefore to the oligarchs of post-soviet Russia.

But if Labour are going full Oliver Twist, why not just re-introduce Work Houses?

Literal and figurative Dickensian attitudes and callousness are emanating from Labour. Starmer is Mr. Bumble dishing out cold gruel to ungrateful wretches who dared to hope for 'more' from the party of Kier Hardie. The first Kier being a Scottish Trade Unionist, true working-class hero and founder of The Labour Party. See The Herald  .

Again, there’s talk of future house building to ease the shortage. No hard assurances that this government will ensure it is affordable housing. No mention of the fact that many young folks are hobnailed not just by prices but the life-crippling student debts they owe. Student loans were introduced by the last Labour administration and thankfully still kept at bay here in Scotland. But for how long?

Many of the things the Scottish government has managed to protect; free prescriptions, free elderly care, publicly owned water infrastructure - are under threat as the level playing field between Westminster and Holyrood fails to materialise. Holyrood is left in the invidious position where anything that goes wrong is blamed on them but without independence, they do not have the free reign to act like other successful small independent nations.

It is no coincidence that Finland has been voted the happiest country for the 8th year in a row with experts citing, among other things, a “strong welfare system”. But others in the top ranks include, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden.

Small self-governing nations clearly work. While Scotland is treated like a colonial enclave that should shut up and put up despite differing from England in so many ways and on so many big political issues – some listed above but also, Scotland rejected Brexit, Scotland called for a ceasefire in Gaza when it might have made a difference to Palestinians and hostages.

And up here in Scotland we have the absolutely useless Labour puppet Anas Sarwar, like the hopeless undertaker Mr Sowerberry in Oliver's story. Though Scottish Labour call themselves that, they are anything but. They are an uninspiring side-show to Westminster with no sense of Scotland or its people.


The latest Labour let-down for ordinary folk is just one more reason why Scotland needs to be able to work for the people who live here, free of the chains of Westminster colonial think.

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Thanks for reading. And, as always, do check out my other writing -

My BOOKS

Tuesday, 4 March 2025

WHAT IS WRONG WITH US? (526)

We know what is wrong with Trump et al.

But what is wrong with us? What the hell is wrong with US?

As one of the ‘observers from a distant planet’ (it seems…) I was told during the EU referendum that – referring to those who voted for Brexit – though it didn’t have that handle then – I was being disingenuous. A little condescending. Unfair. Everyone has a right to their opinion.

To which I can only wonder – but do they though?

Why is the opinion of someone who spends their time brain addled with reality TV or febrile celebrity bollocks or other complete mind-numbing social media gobbledygook and who then puts that opinion into play at the ballot box, as valid as people who’ve been paying attention?

And now that its all gone to very completely absolutely predictable shite, can I please at least be pissed off about it?

May I – as I did in a recently published letter - now refer to them as not so much turkeys voting for Christmas but turkeys who voted for a permanent parking space at the abattoir and daily stuffing?

And it is that x1000 re Trump and America. Both having burst upon us like a giant plague of boils in 2016. And here's an old doodle from that dark year...



They/we’ve known what Trump is, ever since he descended the gold elevator with mannequin Melania. And if the glitzy descent wasn’t a metaphor/warning/visual premonition, I don’t know what was.

The appalling Zelenskyy ambush in The Oval Office was just the most recent horror show in a tired, long-running franchise that has us anxious and weary in equal measure.

Rape wasn’t enough. 32 felony convictions weren’t enough. Migrant infants put in cages, separated from their parents – some, to this day, not reunited – not enough. The constant grifting; from MAGA bibles made in China to cheap gold hi-tops, to the eve-of-inauguration meme crypto scam. Just what was it about this man that Americans thought was going to turn out well for them?

Ditto – here – Farage and Johnson. We knew who they were. Con-men. Mad egoists. Chancers and most of all racist.

And yes, in all cases, the legacy media has given them a massive leg up. Why, ratings? Because they thought it was entertaining? Who knows. What we do know is that all these men were allowed to get away with behaviour that would have been career-ending for almost any other politician. Even in these days where our expectations are so low.

I know racism dressed up as jingoism never loses its attraction for a lot of people. Add to that now – the very obvious draw of aggressive misogyny. But, are so very many millions of voters really willing to go for all that knowing that pretty much every other aspect of their lives will be ruined?

Yes.

Clearly.

Is it that we’ve just given up?

Overwhelmed by the things we’ve relied on all our lives that no longer work – here in the UK that includes, public transport, all infrastructure, affordability of anything, education – at all levels. Care for the vulnerable yada yada yada.

And what of the soft right and liberal Left?

Well, Biden along with previously Rishi Sunak (remember him?) and subsequently Sir Keir Starmer, were happy to facilitate Netanyahu’s Gaza slaughter devastation. Starmer – as leader of the Labour Party - refused to get rid of the 2-child benefit cap leaving many vulnerable youngsters in poverty and appalling living conditions, while simultaneously refusing to cap bankers’ bonuses (remember bankers – they brought the economy down in 2008 and most of us are still paying for that one way or another).

Biden lost the plot and started to think that his presidency and his family were more important than America. Then – having left the VP in an absolutely impossible position – trying to fight an election in a few weeks that her opponent never stopped fighting since he left the White House so very reluctantly last time – claimed if he’d still been doddering around - he’d have won.

Is the whole world suffering from delusions?

I glance around my immediate world at the vape-addled youngsters all talking in TV reality show soundbites while the hedgerows and motorways are an open dump. Paths are a minefield of dog shit and everywhere, unhealthy, miserable-looking people are staggering along clutching ‘energy’ drinks and throw-away food (at least that is what they tend to do with it – plus the packaging) and yes – faces are never more than 4 seconds away from being zoned into their smartphones and whatever is going on there. Shopping for tat. Gambling. Videos of shite. Etc

I think the clue may be in our clothes. If you glance around, just see how many folks you can spot wearing entirely black or at least something black.

Are we all pre-mourning as the world slips away?

And when was the last time you heard any mention of the thing that is actually gong to wipe out us humans – the climate crisis?

So – yes – any engaged person can see what is so very wrong with Trump, J. D. Vance, Putin, Orban, Milei etc, (apart from they all have terrible hair) but we put them there. All these idiots, walking disasters were elected.

So

WHAT IS WRONG WITH US?

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Thanks for reading. I’m no longer going weekly on this as having to tune in in a forensic way to what is happening in the world too regularly will drive anyone under the duvet.

Do check out my other writing – novels, children’s poetry and stories about the environment. Cheers.

My BOOKS (avail in all good online book stores)

Tuesday, 21 January 2025

The Profit Beast. (525)

The Profit Beast is humanity’s nemesis, the ‘end times’ foe we should all lift our heads and take a good look at. Nothing at all that we need so desperately to deal with; the approaching climate crisis tipping point, ill-health, destitution, abuse, exploitation, environmental damage – none of these things can or will be dealt with because doing so would enrage the Profit Beast.

The Profit Beast is vast, invulnerable and on his final course, Truth.

The Profit Beast, fed by out-of-control consumerism and co-conspirator advertising, are now such a perfect symbiotic mechanism that we stand little chance of outrunning this man-made monster.

Is this just scare-mongering about a grim dystopia? Pause for a moment and look up from amnesia-inducing smartphone or mind-numbing TV and take a quick glance at real reality.

Two commonplace UK cases of catastrophic consumerism and profit before people-ism - are the obesity epidemic, fuelled by the sugar saturated processed food industry and more recently the insidious youth Vaping trend.

According to The Lancet – global obesity levels tripled between 1975 and 2019. Obesity related deaths in the US are around 30,000 annually and 3,000 in the UK. According to the UK government’s Department of Health and Social Care, obesity costs the NHS £6.5 billion annually and is the second biggest cause of preventable cancer. Private profit, public cost – which we’ll come to later.

Still, one of the main culprits – sugary drinks - are not blanket banned in schools. Over and above that, as an additive to the most surprising foods, often those we regard as savoury, quantities of sugar have gone up exponentially in the last 4 decades. In the US, sugar consumption increased 30% between 1977 and 2010.

And of course, there is profit to be made in both causing and then treating the harm when it inevitably occurs. But more of that later too.

Sugar is a marketing preference for the processed food industry. It helps get people hooked on their products and it’s a very cheap bulk additive. The fact that it decimates body and dental health and kills does not matter.

A more recent phenomenon, one that has taken off in the UK like a nuclear-powered rocket, is Vaping. The sheer number of youngsters vaping on my local buses is a depressing sight.

The delivery system for the latest nicotine addiction is not biodegradable and is also an ignition hazard. Ah progress…

The youngest child I’ve seen vaping appeared to be about 9.

But the new vape shops selling the death dummies on my local high-street, look like sweetie shops.

The CDC (Centre for Disease Control) lists one of the known e-cigarette harms as detriment to adolescent brain development. E-cigarette ‘juice’ usually contains nicotine which is addictive. Vapes often also contain carcinogenic chemicals. Plus -

·      Heavy metals such as nickel, tin, and lead in many flavours

·      Tiny particles that can be inhaled deep into the lungs

·      Volatile organic compounds

·      Flavourings such as diacetyl, a chemical linked to a serious lung disease.

But mostly, scientists agree we just don’t yet know the full range of harms though my local vape shop happily displays a neon sign claiming vaping is 95% safer than smoking. How they know what the scientists don’t is anyone’s guess

E-cigarettes attained a fast pass because they were supposed to encourage traditional cigarette smokers to stop. Most young people addicted to vaping have never smoked cigarettes.

Meanwhile we all have to go on being swamped by those huge clouds of exhaled, warm toilet-cleaner-scented lung farts.

The Fentanyl crisis in North America is the much more extreme end of death4profit with opioid deaths outstripping gun deaths in the most gunny place in the world. I hesitate to say that it’s as bad as it could get because where late-stage capitalism and out of control consumerism are concerned, there’s no extreme that is too extreme.

The price to society is not in truncated lives, ill-health and misery alone. It is a huge hit to public services. On the other side, a secretive few, siphon off profits Midas would have blushed at.

The public sector clears up the private sector’s mess. Private profit – state clear-up. Private wealth – public cost; medical services, police, charities, social services etc. All paid for - not by the wealthy who hide their obscene wealth and avoid the taxes that would fund the very services they over-burden with their greed.

In the US in the case brought by Oklahoma City after years of opioid carnage – one lawyer estimated the opioid epidemic – started by the prescription medications for a quick fix for pain in a society addicted to quick fixes - accounted for 80 percent of city crime. Yet another cost to the many for the gargantuan profits of a tiny few. In Oklahoma’s case the ‘few’ making eye-watering profits out of the deaths of young athletes, workers with back pain, teachers, nurses etc, were Perdue Pharma who assured people that their killer drug Oxycontin was safe – while in possession of proof it was not.

And while advertising is the inducement mechanism, The Profit Beast also protects itself pouring large fortunes into lobbying.

Statista reckoned that in 2022 the US food industry spent $7.5 billion on advertising processed food. Perdue used false figures when advertising OxyContin as a miracle drug and spent $800m+ lobbying to block warnings that it was unsafe. And the Sackler family who own Perdue and knowingly promoted the killer opioids, became so rich from their product of mass destruction, they featured on Forbes rich list. Now they’ve taken their murderous product to countries even more poorly regulated than the US.

Of course, if profit can be made out of causing the problem, it can also be made offering solutions.  Big Pharma gave the world Oxycontin. It also now provides a drug to keep users alive if they OD – so they can carry on using. No one gives addicts their lives back. The food industry gifts us global obesity but then, especially in the ‘developed’ world, profits massively off the diet industry. We now have ‘miracle’ drugs to reverse the obesity The Profit Beast gifted us. Side-note – as early as 2023 the hysteria surrounding the new wonder anti-obesity drug Ozempic was apparently triggering eating disorders. We won’t continue down the hell hole on that one.

Try this one. The drug alcohol (no one who uses it calls it that obviously) has been consumed by humans for most of civilisation but, as with other consumables, it changed with industrialised production. It now accounts for around 3m deaths globally and wretchedness, ill health and disease for countless more.

 The Institute of Alcohol Studies in London – in reporting how alcohol is marketed to children and young people - stated in 2023 that UK primary school children develop early alcohol brand loyalty and were more able to id alcohol brands than ice-cream or biscuits.

There is no low too low.

Heineken used prostitutes to help get brand foothold in Africa. Just to put things in perspective, global sales of the alcohol market are $1,300 BILLION. Meanwhile the WHO have identified 200 illnesses caused or made worse by alcohol…

Global human catastrophe and crises are no dampener to PB. During Covid, here in the UK, the pandemic was seen by the Conservative government (under Boris Johnson) and their rich pals – fast tracked to government contracts – as just another chance to get richer with £millions of public monies spent on contracts for medical equipment that either did not work or did not materialise. During WWII we’d have called that behaviour profiteering and members of that same party then believed profiteering should be punishable by firing squad.

Even the perverse profits related to butchering women’s bodies not for health but for money, has gone stratospheric. The plastic surgery industry, which used to be the preserve (literally) of the rich and famous and ‘fading Hollywood stars’ is now on any street here in the form of trout-lipped young women with orange skin, fillers and Botox that looks both ugly and painful. One currently popular procedure, the infamous Brazilian Butt Lift or BBL has a rate of 1 death per 4,000 procedures. It’s just another example of wealthy (predominantly men) profiting from deaths of, mainly young, insecure women. Often in private clinics like those that came under scrutiny after a cluster of horrific deaths in Miami Florida, where surgeons were performing up to 8 procedures per day with public hospitals – or morgues - picking up the pieces. The Profit Beast chewed up the whole principle of ‘first do no harm’.

And not only does the public sector pick up the pieces – which is a huge financial benefit for the private sector that rarely pay for their mistakes or corporate criminal conduct - the wealthy and powerful never seem to shoulder any responsibility or repercussions which simply drives the behaviour. Are they all sociopaths?

This question occurred to me recently when Tony Blair (yes – the UK war criminal) was yet again being platformed by the London media earlier this month, complaining that the UK benefits budget was over-burdened by those claiming sickness assistance. And there are issues with how sickness assistance is administered in the UK however, if you or I had been responsible for an illegal invasion on the far side of the world leading to innumerable civilian deaths, decimated an entire country, de-stabilised the region, harmed military personnel and birthed ISIS – we’d keep a more modest profile. Not call-me-Tony.

Furthermore, Blair is the man who turned UK universities into Ponzi schemes, introducing US-style tuition fees that have left millions of young folks in life-limiting debt and stress while he has never known a day’s want in his life.

As F. Scott Fitzgerald said of the rich “they are different from me and you”. The problem is they run everything from that position of unknowing and uncaring. What they are aware of is that repercussions will not touch them so they experiment and gamble with our lives.

Sometimes you may not even intend to consume a product. It’s forced on you or your family without knowledge or consent. But you still pay. For example, the ‘forever’ chemicals produced by companies like 3M (subject of the film Dark Waters staring Mark Ruffalo).

3M were found to have polluted huge swathes of Minesota over decades, increasing rare cancers among children. And – yes – like Perdue – the company knew their product was dangerous.

The dumping of both chemicals and plastics is a global problem especially in poor countries or those with poor regulations e.g. the horrific chemical pesticide leak from the US company Union Carbide in Bhopal India in 1984 which killed nearly 4,000 immediately and poisoned the lives of thousands more in the following years. Of course – because it was in India and not the US, victims and their families stood little chance of being properly compensated. Low-grade safety concerns are integral to a consumer industry where profit is everything and consequences are for mugs.

OR

You could just casually hand money over to the chronically wealthy in exchange for anxiety and debt. No need to lug STUFF home from the shops or get it delivered or spend years knowingly or passively consuming poison. We call this gambling and that too is epidemic (post 513 Gargantuan Gambling Gremlin).

But if you thought gambling was the bottom, the ultimate way for con artists to fleece the gullible – the 21st century gave us a new low. Crypto. And if we needed a more perfectly timed example – there was Trump fleecing his own supporters with what is technically called a meme coin or ‘shit’ coin, on the eve of his inauguration, flanked by his pet billionaire oligarchs.

Natural disasters kill people indiscriminately, but out-of-control profit motive is killing us and rotting our world and poisoning our children with no curbs on its euthanising enthusiasm.

There is no area you could now point to, it has not corrupted and corroded. Cheap deadly housing like Grenfell here in the UK. Mass housing built for quick profit on flood areas or known earthquake fault lines. Housing crises – again I’ll use the example here in the UK; after good quality council housing was sold off by Thatcher it was never re-invested. The post-war dividend of good healthcare, affordable decent housing and decent state education was sold down the river (the river flowing with effluent thanks to privatisation of water companies) for the profit of the few whose response is to hide their ill-gotten wealth in off-shore accounts.

At the more immediately violent end - war.

Industrialists benefitted in WWII from the sale of armaments just as arms companies have been raking it in from the genocide in Gaza and the slaughter and devastation in Ukraine. But wars make countries and ordinary people poorer in all ways. The few have profits; the many have incalculable loss and deep lasting scars.

True, The Profit Beast is no recent manifestation, its dehumanising effect has haunted us for centuries. The Atlantic Slave Trade is a grim and iconic example which besmirches human history with infamy and shame as possibly the contemporary world’s most heinous, long lived ‘civilisation-sanctioned’ act of profit-before-people. As a side issue – for anyone who thinks black slavery ever fully ended in the Southern US states - do read up on The Restitution Centres of Mississippi!

Go walk the famine roads of Ireland – built in the late 1840s, belated public works meant to provide literal starvation wages. The horrific trauma of The Great Famine in Ireland is often, rightly, put at the feet of an uncaring English government that had a racist and merciless view of the Irish and treated Ireland as a colony, useful for its land and resources – its people barely regarded as human. What is often missed is that Irish Catholic mid-level farmers – who saw the devastation of their fellows all around them – continued to sell good quality food abroad that could have stayed in Ireland, because they got a higher price.

During The Highland Clearances here in Scotland (1750 – 1860) around 150,000 highlanders were turned out of their crofts. Homes were burnt, communities destroyed and possessions smashed, food spoiled and even milk poured out so they could not return. Sheep were deemed more profitable than people.

The Profit Beast devours the soul.

Interestingly, though not surprisingly, when the system collapses under weight of greed as it did in the banking crisis of 2008, caused by the bankers, it was the banks that were bailed out to save the economy not the people at the bottom, crushed under personal debt they had no control over. The Profit Beast never pays. It devours then spews out our remains.

The problem we have today is that The Profit Beast becomes bigger, more ravenous and faster moving the more it’s fed and – like much else – it has gone Global. There is no corner it cannot/does not reach.

However - and it is a huge however – if what you conclude here – as I do – is that the poverty, misery, suffering, instability, chaos and destruction is all unnecessary - that is the very point. These are all – and always have been – problems engineered by greed. Specifically, it is created by a tiny handful of men who think they should have all the power and all the resources and more money than anyone could ever know what to do with. They are the moving parts of The Profit Beast. Why we’ve let them have it, is the massive question only psychologists and possibly historians will be able to answer. If, that is, humanity has much history left to make…

In the very most basic terms - if three people grab 97% of an available cake – the other 97 have to survive on 3%. It is that simple. It’s always been that simple. There have been very few times in human history when, if we had equality, we could not adequately feed, clothe, care for and house the vast majority if we had the will to do so.

Argentina is a good microcosm. A hugely wealth country just 100 years ago – it was plundered by its wealthy elite. Now ordinary people cannot afford the basics; inflation is out of control and many have returned to medieval bartering to get the essentials of life. And – of course – they have elected a right-wing nutter Javier Milie who wants to punish the poor more because that is what you do when it’s the rich who’ve run off with everything…

Spectacularly, here in the UK, we continue with that most idiotic remnant of long-gone empire - The Royal Family. £millions of public monies go every year to one of the wealthiest families and certainly the biggest landowners and hoarders of ill-gotten gains, making King Charles the greatest ‘benefits queen’ of all time. This is a man who had a public temper tantrum because a pen didn’t work…

Brexit. While xenophobia and racism were used to get the result, obeisance to The Profit Beast was the driver. The deregulation that leaving the EU delivered was the jewel in the crown for the wealthy, in a country already brought low by 45 years of privatisation and lack of investment in public infrastructure and institutions. Shame on many of the big unions and their blokey bosses for supporting it.

In America, The Profit Beast is on his last course – no longer hiding as it drools and dribbles. Trump is just a manifestation/personification of this phenomena.

Yes, its basic greed but it’s much more. The Profit Beast is willing to cannibalise our fellow human beings just for a fast buck down to the last man woman and child.

And we know. We’ve known for all time.

There is no major religion, creed or philosophy that does not site greed as a danger/evil to humanity. “Money is the root of all evil” is a mantra anyone could recite. I guarantee that for most people in our secular world – asked to list The Seven Deadly Sins - the one they are least likely to miss out is Greed.

But we don’t need deep religion or high philosophy, we can look to the shallow glitzy end of town.

In the quadrilogy Aliens (yup, no. 3 with its panto penal colony isn’t great) we’re repeatedly shown, it is not the horrific aliens that threaten all humanity. It’s the avaricious corporations and the grasping individuals who make them up.

In the fourth film, Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver, is spliced and cloned for profit and dramatically dehumanised before our eyes in 8 manifestations kept in a science facility in what I think is the most gruesome scene in any of the four films.

But, in the second film, in case we don’t get it, Ripley confronts Burke – the rapacious company guy who is prepared to sacrifice everyone and everything for gain – she says

“I don’t know which species is worse, you don’t see them fucking each other over for a goddam percentage…”

We know. We’ve always known. 

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Zero One Zero Two - In this dystopian novella which combines poetry prose, I dally with the delusion of hoping off to another planet when we’ve destroyed this one.

Casey & the Surfmen – In this environmental poem in the epic tradition (audio) I've examine people power. Why do we use it so seldom?

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Reminder (re some recent 2nd hand enquiries) I am not on ANY social media - no smartphone either yada yada - apart from this little blog I only exist in the 'real' world. I think there is a contact avail via the Casey and the Surfmen bandcamp site...

Thank you so much for reading. Normally I post weekly but as this piece is more substantive than usual, and like a lot of folk I am entirely overwhelmed by the current state of the world I’ll leave this to brew for a while. See you in March. 

Tuesday, 17 December 2024

Democracy actually dies in the full glare of the media and us all… (524)

“Democracy dies in darkness” is a quote pompously colonised by The Washington Post which now hangs like a rotting albatross corpse around its neck as owner Jeff Bezos – along with other notable tech billionaires - swiftly pivot away from previous thin moral stances, to pre-obey their chosen overlord and bend the knee to Donald Trump.

Here is the text of a letter of mine published last week in Scottish newspaper The National –

Dear Editor,

Project 2025 attracted focus and panic prior to the November US elections and its negative implications for ordinary Americans.

What is now evident from the foreign funding into Trump org during his last stint in the WH, the ongoing grift, the self-interested placements of billionaires in the transition team, is that Trump is putting the US up for sale in the same way Putin did with Russia.

IN Russia’s case the unwritten devils’ bargain that those oligarchs who made eye-watering wealth out of cashing in on the resources of their motherland and selling out its people, was that they were forever beholden to Putin.

And yes, it begins with getting the turkeys to vote for Christmas. Something we are trained to in the UK (Brexit!). Once that is achieved the rest is easy.

Trump is entirely comfortable with this feudal system and that, not Project 2025, is his blueprint.

It’s a strategy perfected by Putin.

Having got away with an attempted coup – Trump 0.2 has no breaks.

SO, buckle up.

(11th December 2024)

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In summary, Trump is turning the US into an Oligarchy. It’s not just mad man Musk who has been bending the knee to rapist-elect Trump but Zuckerberg and Bezos etc. come to heel like trained bitches offered the canine equivalent of all their Christmases in one snarf.

As leaders (I use the term loosely) around the world work out just how they are going to placate the toddler-man this time or – to use the 1930s term - appease him, it’s like we are all suffering extreme collective amnesia.

So far Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sunda Pachai, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Jeff Bezos of Amazon have all kissed the ring without apparent shame or discomfort or sense of their own titanic cowardice.

Here is MSNBC laying it out.

Ari Melber

SO – Democracy doesn’t just die in darkness it can die out in the open. It can be suffocated in the full daylight; in the glare of traditional and social media and with all of us looking on.

 

Merry Christmas.

That will be the last post until sometime in January.

Tuesday, 10 December 2024

Assad; The Horror & Devastating Western Hypocrisy… (523)

 

“Events dear boy, events…” is what British Prime Minister (1957 - 63) Harold Macmillan was supposed to have said when asked what was the most difficult part of being a statesman.

No event can have rattled the current political stasis more than the sudden toppling of the murderous psychopathic dictator Assad. After a stalemate that has lasted over a decade the Che-esque figure of Al-Julani – leader of the rebels – has pushed through to Damascus and the monster has fled to Papa Putin in Russia.

Misery loves company but so does evil. And as the rebels uncover the abandoned Assad lifestyle - the dozens of cars, the golden interiors to palatial abodes - the similarities to Trump stare right back at us. A spoiled poisoned brat who inherited power and wealth from his father. More on that maybe in another post.

This is an old doodle of mine from 2017 – not the start of the new Assad horrors - but an indication of just how long and how hard Syria has suffered while the world did nothing.



However, there is one thing almost as upsetting as the way the West sat back while Assad destroyed his own country, used chemical weapons against his own people (his father previously slaughtered – for example – 40k citizens of Hama in one month).That one thing is the sound of gross hypocrisy coming from US and EU spokespeople in relation to Al-Julani – leader of the rebel movement that has ousted the immovable monster.

 

Many are speculating about removing the $10m bounty from the rebel leader’s head – and suggesting that sanctions that have so harmed Syrian civilians for years will be removed ‘if he behaves himself’. Oil taken by the US ‘may’ be returned if he plays nice.

Where were these attitudes when Assad was slaughtering and starving the people of Syria?

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THANKS by the way to Russell - journo at The Herald. I'd used similar text in a letter to that paper and he spotted that I'd credited Assad Jnr with the Hama slaughter actually perpetrated by his father. I suppose you get to the point where one genocidal maniac merges with another... But no excuse for sloppiness.

Tuesday, 3 December 2024

Pussy-grabbed Trudeau v Sheinbaum’s display of balls - a political lesson the world should heed. (522)


Let's be clear, the cosy bro pic of Justin Trudeau at Mar-a-Lago with the convicted orange felon and rapist elect was cringe factor 10.

 

However, add to that his intention presumably was to schmooze up to the man who doesn't understand how tariffs work to save Canadian trade, I hope Justin is taking note of the success of the leader who actually has the balls.

 

Mexico's Claudia Sheinbaum, immediately stood up to Trump. The Mexican Peso immediately rose against the dollar.

 

Other Western leaders could learn from her example. Go to Mar-a-lago to have your pussy grabbed like Trudeau or have some balls like Claudia.

 

If  these men never learn from history it bears repeating here - weakness and appeasement NEVER pay.

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For really great information and uncluttered take on what is actually happening across the pond, I strongly recommend Meidas Touch Network

 

Tuesday, 26 November 2024

‘It’s coming from inside the house…’ (521)

A famous line from many a trite teen horror movie.

IN this case this sentiment relates to the catastrophe with the Democrats approach to the US election and the reason that even seasoned and healthily sceptical commentators got it wrong.

All the fund-raising and door knocking and hugely positive, massive rallies not only was not enough but, with hindsight, was never going to be enough. Any door that may have opened in 2024 to a Dem canvasser was concealing the fact that MAGA was ‘already in the house’.

A con stick is very like a magic trick. It has actually been executed long before the mark realises its even going to happen. All the rest is smoke and mirrors, time-filling while the con sinks in.

For the next four years (at least) the US will be in the grip of a feudal kleptocracy so cultlike and so openly corrupt that those dreading it are taking refuge in the notion that the sheer level of very obvious incompetence and chaos will save what is left of America by constipating government.

But this is not a short-term problem. The world is now in the hands of the tech billionaires and Trump may turn out just to be a useful rich idiot. Certainly, Russia’s cyber reach (see post 519) must now be taken seriously.

Those not taking the placement of Tulsi Gabard (Putin and Assad pal) as a big red flag should remember that the Cold War was sparked because the then equivalent of the KGB had a ‘man in the room’ when the US was developing its atomic bomb which is how they came to have a world destroying weapon themselves for a tiny percentage of the cost.

It’s what they do and most certainly what ex-KGB operative Putin does.

THE US no longer belongs to Americans. Americans did what the UK did when they voted for Brexit. They have voted for massive self-harm and the norms that have been relied on for decades are not disappearing – they disappeared while no one was paying attention.

Norms have been eaten away in the bedrooms and basements of America (and Britain) on the internet.

This is borne out by testament from ex-MAGAs and family members of those who have been consumed.

Like this MAGA Mother 

Worryingly the big draw especially to young men seems to be full on – no excuse misogyny.

Turns out misogyny is as popular as racism…

The monster is not just in the house – its running through the cables in the walls.

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