"Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one."
Benjamin Franklin (American Statesman, Scientist, Philosopher, Printer, Writer and Inventor. 1706-1790)

Consider the woes of EU Socialism: Pythagorean theorem: 24 words/ Lord's prayer: 66 words / Archimedes' Principle: 67 words / Ten Commandments: 179 words / Gettysburg address: 286 words / US Declaration of Independence: 1,300 words / US Constitution with all 27 Amendments: 7,818 words / EU regulations on the sale of cabbage: 26,911 words / Europe's Problems Summed Up

 

 

 

The Dear Leader has certainly disappointed. The great man was going to unite America. He is of course the most divisive, negative President in history. A man who sat in a racist church for 20 years. Whites cling to guns and bibles according to the great 'healer'. If you criticize this Dear Leader you are a racist. Islam is peace and if you disagree you are a redneck who should be jailed, so says the former Moslem. The great man was going to resuscitate the economy and create or save 4 million [or was that trillion?] jobs. He has lost close to 3 million and killed the only 'shovel ready project' he droned on about at length for one year – the Keystone pipeline. The tax and regulation system continues to push firms offshore – along with eco-cult legislation in which the EPA is now almost a sovereign state. Real unemployment is 20%. Oppressive legislation and union friendly favours, pours out of Washington. Regulations strangle development. Billion dollar green tech and eco-fraud programs bound and caper like monkeys on a see-saw. He has supported a Moslem Brotherhood takeover of Egypt and Libya. Iran can do what it likes. The great man's socialized health care plan is both Unconstitutional and plainly irrational. The US health system is almost completely controlled and distorted by government and both Medicare and Medicaid, socialized systems are bankrupt. So the obvious conclusion is more government control of health care?

On the positive side the Dear Leader did promise to save us helpless idiots and our dear Earth Mother from non-existent rising temperatures and force back the sea levels with magic waves of his divine arm. In the past 3 years both have fallen, but even his acolytes will admit that these decreases were achieved without the great man's intercession. But don't worry mankind's greatest problem is GloblaoneyWarming combined with too much 'capitalism'....both of which can only be solutioned if the Dear Leader is re-elected. So moan the elite and media.

I don't know what people get out of the cult of the Stalinist Obama. Bumper stickers, t-shirts, posturing at the bingo hall? Statism has always failed. Europe is an on-going tragi-comedy attesting to that reality. The great men at Davos will no doubt intone that all is well and the Europe and the Euro will 'survive'. They are wrong of course. But reality does not usually impinge itself on the elite, self-absorbed and self-righteous that they usually are. The Dear Leader Obama was and always will be a radical Marxist, wedded to ideas of income redistribution, class warfare, hatred of the US Republican experiment, a disdain for white European and Christian civilization, mixed with an elite's contemptuous sneer towards the 'little people' who are too stupid to decide much for themselves. Ergo he or someone like him must rule.

The key point of the political economy and the key factor in history is this theme; the struggle of the individual against the collective power of the state. Communalization and collectivization are the 'enemies' of civilized advance. History is the unending story of the fight for freedom, free-will, self-determination, responsibility, and the pursuance of life, liberty and personal happiness defined as living in safety and pursuing what is lawful, accepted and rational. State power opposes these ideals. From Sargon the Great through to the National Socialism's of the 20^th century [German, Russian, Cuban, Venezuelan, Korean, Chinese....]; and the Globalist-International Socialism of the past 20 years; the state in its many forms, guises and vices is diametrically opposed to what makes a society – and an individual – prosper.

"The key lies in understanding that "politics" isn't just about choosing one candidate or another, or even about choosing one party or another.  Politics is the relationship between the individual and the State.  And it is this relationship we humans have been struggling to get right for thousands of years.  We've tried everything -- kingdoms, empires, left-wing dictatorships, right-wing dictatorships, socialist models, models based on religion, and all sorts of democracies and republics.

When our country's constitution went into effect in 1788, the U.S. established a relationship between the individual and the State that was unique in history: the individual was in charge, the State would serve the individual, and there would be an arm's-length distance between the two.  It is this unique relationship -- not our continental size, or our natural resources -- that propelled the U.S. into becoming the strongest, richest, freest, and most opportunity-oriented country the world has ever known.” [Herbert E. Meyer writing on American Thinker. Meyer was Vice Chair of CIA's National Intelligence Council, under Reagan].

All true. Under the Dear Leader and Prophet Obamed, the individual now serves the State. Statism is always manifested by debt; deficits; corporatism in which friends of the State including Green energy firms benefit; corruption; and patronizing patronage. National Socialist Germany was bankrupt due to the above by 1939, making a war inevitable. As with any statist cult the average person loses. Incomes shrink, inflation proceeds apace [denied by the government, the media and 'experts'], welfare blossoms and families fall apart. All of this has accelerated in the past 3 years. Bush II was derided as a 'Conservative'. He wasn't. He was a statist who expanded the powers of the Federal Government. Under his successor the State is now master of all. It is clear that this most incompetent, negative, and inconsequential President in history deserves to be fired. If this does not happen in 2012 America will deserve its fate.  

 This is a necessary book in an age of self-loathing. The British have done more good for humanity than any imperial people in history with the exception perhaps of the Romans until internecine civil wars; inflation; bureaucracy, taxes and a narcissistic culture killed it. One doubts that Crocker is being feted in British Universities, or that his book is de rigeuer reading for the elite, themselves so preoccupied with converting to Islam and the prostrations and minstrels of the eco-climate fraud cult. There is no historical parallel for the descent into virulent self-loathing now endemic in Britain and the West. If you hate yourself, you probably won't succeed in life. When nations and empires are infected with the bacillus of self-hatred it leads to self-immolation and the usurpation by ideologies – even ones vastly inferior – who are sure of themselves. Civilizations don't last forever. They can recede rather quickly:

“Alas that day is here, ushered in by United Nations bureaucrats, liberal internationalists, native kleptocrats, liberated Islamists, and Third World Communists and National Socialists, all of whom emerged as Europe's empires retreated. The retreat of the British Empire was not progress – either for Western Civilisation or in many cases for the countries achieving independence.”

Churchill's great mistake – the UN. The UN via the GlobaloneyWarming scam seeks the power of universal governance and massive international transfers of money from 'White states' to the Third World. The UN is largely a Moslem-Third World mafia responsible for the initiation of giving $2 Trillion to Africa in guilt money since 1965, with nary a positive result or dividend to show. During this same period Africa has generated plenty of tribal wars, carnage, social dislocations and the eradication of once functioning political-economies in 'colonial' states. All blamed on Western states. Jubilee. The Moslem bloc runs the UN and we have indeed liberated Islam to quote Crocker, and reinvigorated the Salafist-Wahabbi theology of intolerance one finds in the Koran through our blood money [oil payments used to fund Islamic terror]; and the withdrawal of empire [leaving Iraq in 2011, will give us the same poor sets of results as the 1932 withdrawal]. The drawing down of empire does have its consequences – few of them noble or moral.

The first 190 pages or so of this book reference the early British empire with its nascent beginnings in the 12^th century under Edward I, to the British Raj and the violent dismemberment of the Indian subcontinent between the Hindus and Moslems. In today's commentary, the entire British enterprise, instigated by the English, was a disaster. Nothing good came of the English experiment in empire. All was disaster, racism, slavery, hate, war, pillage and the imposition of crude English non-civilization, onto the advanced, civilized, wonderful, peaceful, multicultural nirvanas elsewhere. I would imagine that today Rudyard Kipling would be tried for thought crimes in England. Pace Crocker on Kipling:

“..Kipling frames the white man's burden rather differently. It means binding your best men to serve another people, to take up what he says will be a thankless task, yet one that a mature and Christian people must do – to banish famine and sickness, to provide peace and order, to build roads and ports, to seek the profit of another rather than oneself....The British Empire of the twenty-first century academic lecture hall, however, is something utterly different. The idea that the British Empire was a white man's burden is treated with scorn, contempt, and ridicule....the Empire was a vehicle of rapacious, self-serving capitalists responsible for racism, slavery, and oppression on a global scale.”

Indeed. Kipling was born in India of course and was an Orientalist. He knew that the 'White Man's Burden' was the spread of civilization. This is why he welcomed American involvement in the Philippines and Asia. Today of course he would be called a neo-con Fascist, and probably would be summarily beaten in the public square by tender, cross-dressing, Koranic quoting British police 'men'.

I wonder how many Brits know anything about the characters that Crocker introduces including; Sir Francis Drake, Sir Henry Morgan, Sir Charles Cornwallis [for his successful governing of India and Ireland], Sir Walter Raleigh [an Irishman], the Duke of Wellington and the sundry other characters who could not exist in today's world. Crocker does not even go into the vast corpus of English-British genius in the fields of science, literature, the arts, engineering and other domains. Pity, but that would require 4 or 5 volumes. He only mentions a handful in the sphere of the political and military. Yet even this bifurcated and reduced list is most impressive. No other nation state can match it.

This only highlights an obvious point. Today, the mediocrity of the welfare state is all too obvious. Once society becomes a quest for the holy grail of benign paternalism, the devolution to the lowest common denominator becomes inevitable. I can't imagine a personality like Drake in today's Western state with its all powerful bureaucracy. Max Weber was right. It is not Marx's alienation of labour from production and ownership of 'making something' which causes social discord and revolution. It is the imposition of unaccountable layers of bureaucracy which dissociates people from the real world, from living, from trying, failing and trying again; and from real culture. Weber's analysis from 1890 is eerily prescient and applicable to the leviathan of today's state.

The small government structure of Britain only achieved; a scientific revolution, the Industrial 'revolution'; an agricultural revolution; engineering wonders, the creation of modern sewage and water systems; modern orphanages, hospitals and welfare systems; constitutional democracy; and the defence of freedom in 3 world wars. Not bad. Add to this the destruction of slavery – the only time in history a state has warred against the oldest profession, that of capturing other humans and putting them to work. As Crocker elucidates, the British war against slavery was a major impetus for colonialism. The British spent in today's money, tens of billions of pounds and lost upwards of 10.000 men in fighting human slavery from Brazil, to the Moslem states; to India. It took the British most of the 19^th century to stop the cargo in humans. In the mid 1830s as Crocker relates, almost 1/3 of a British national budget was spent to free slaves in the West Indies by buying their freedom and paying off their owners. I don't remember a Moslem state doing the same.

“..between 1530 and 1780, roughly concurrent with the Atlantic slave trade, the Muslim Barbary pirates enslaved more than a million white Christians Europeans. In Africa, slavery was a long-standing domestic industry, and Europeans slavers tapped into it.”

In actual fact some 10 million Whites were taken into slavery over 1000 years by Arabs, and Moslems, including the Ottomans. No one cries over this today. No one is asking the Moslems and Arabs for reparations. Why is that?

One of the best parts of the book is Crocker's history of the British in India. An enterprise which any objective observer knows, benefited India rather grandly. The terms of trade for the English were negative by the high point of Victoria's reign. Huge quantities of capital were invested by the English in railroads, roads, schools, hospitals, the civil service, ports, agriculture and manufacturing. The once profitable trade with India was dry by 1880. The Indians were exporting vast cargoes of cotton and calicoes, along with other items such as spices and lower cost manufactures back to the mother country. Given this reality India was 'growing up' and at some point would assume independence. Some of the personalities involved in the 'conquering' of India include:

-Sir Robert Clive [the first conqueror of India]

“In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the British population in India hovered at about 100.000, compared to more than 250 million Indians. The British believed they ruled in India not only by power...but by force of personality.....and British justice, decency, and fair play, which justified the entire endeavour.”

-Sir Charles Napier [an Irishman who conquered the Sind]

“Imposing the British Christian value on women...was not easy: 'There is only one crime I cannot put down – wife killing! They think to kill a cat or dog is wrong, but I have hanged at least six for killing women: on the slightest quarrel she is chopped to pieces..I will hang 200 unless they stop.”

-George Curzon

“Curzon wanted to leave the Indian civilisation alone and govern through the British Raj and the native aristocracy. In this, he felt, there was stability, order, and a hope for continuity and permanence...He built more railroads than any other governor-general...He advanced agrarian reforms...He promoted massive new irrigation projects....He toured every hospital he could find, generally pleased at the efforts of British doctors and civil servants and unimpressed by the fatalistic attitude of native Indian officials.”

The British controlled India because their civilization was superior. India today would be far worse off without the British legacy. When India was carved up between the Moslems [Pakistan] and the rest [India]; slaughter and war was inevitable.

“Winston Churchill had warned that an independent India would degenerate into communal carnage: he was right. Hardened British officers....found themselves unable to stomach the sadistic mutilations and mass murders that followed independence and partition....not even Gandhi survived the chaos he helped unleash; he was assassinated by a Hindu nationalist.”

True enough. Millions were killed and displaced. Today, Pakistan's main geo-strategic imperative is the reduction of India and the demolition of Hindus. Maybe empire is not so bad after all. The most successful states in the world follow the British model with Canada, the US, Australia, and New Zealand being former colonies. So much for 'failure'.

More on Crocker's important work to follow. 

Water, the world's most important commodity and the largest future market. Clean-up, reuse, information gathering, work-flows, river redirection, watershed management...hardware, software, services, solutions of all varieties will be deployed. Some surmise that wars will be fought over water scarcity. China's northern region might be a desert by 2030. Over 100 projects are redirecting water into northern China from southern China. We might see more of this across the world.

1) Famed investor and China-'Bull' Jim Rogers:

“I don’t mind if China has civil war, epidemics, panics, depressions, all of that. You can recover from that. The only thing you cannot recover from is water … China has a horrible water problem in the north. India has a worse water problem, there’s no question about that; America, in some places, has water problems. If China doesn’t solve its water problems then there’s no China story … I’ve been around the world a couple of times, I’ve seen whole societies, cities, countries that disappeared when the water disappeared.

They’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars … they’re spending staggering amounts of money trying to solve their water problem. I am presuming that they will. Now, maybe they won’t, and if they won’t, in twenty or thirty or forty years, the whole story’s over.”

2) BusinessWeek:

“The country that has a long history of devastating floods and droughts arguably faces an even bigger water crisis today. After almost 30 years of double-digit economic growth and the migration of hundreds of millions of villagers to the cities, China has been barely able to meet the spike in demand for water. Its resources were scarce to begin with and pollution has made clean water even scarcer......

The scale of the challenge is enormous. Every year, on average 15.3 million hectares of farmland—13% of the total—faces drought. Today some 300 million people living in rural areas, or nearly a quarter of China's population of 1.3 billion, don't have access to safe drinking water. And among more than 600 Chinese cities, 400 are facing water shortages, including 100 that may see serious shortages, says Ma Jun, director of the Beijing-based Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs and author of China's Water Crisis. The country would need another 40 billion cubic meters of water a year—about a tenth of the volume of Lake Erie in the U.S.—to meet the needs of all of its city dwellers fully. "China is facing a dire situation in its water supply," says Ma.”

3) Ken Pomeranz, Environmental Historian:

“Rice, for instance is a very thirsty crop, but China’s rice production has been moving steadily North for many years for a number of reasons: expensive land in the South being taken out of agriculture, pollution, climate change (rice needs warm days, but also benefits from cool evenings), new varieties that are a bit less thirsty, etc. How much more of that will happen? Where are the limits? What are the prospects for a real breakthrough with drought-resistant GMOs? Or an environmental disaster with them? To what extent will very water-intensive industries, such as chemicals, relocate in response to actual or feared water shortages? What about the effects of electrical blackouts (partly due to low water levels in dams’ reservoirs) on industrial location decisions?”

4) Nature News:

“Since the 1950s, China has constructed 86,000 reservoirs, drilled more than four million wells, and developed 58 million hectares of irrigated land, which generates 70% of the country's total grain production. Efforts to conserve water have lagged far behind. The largest threat to sustainable water supplies in China is a growing geographical mismatch between agricultural development and water resources. The centre of grain production in China has moved from the humid south to the water-scarce north over the past 30 years, as southern cropland is built on and more land is irrigated further north. As the north has become drier, increased food production there has largely relied on unsustainable overuse of local water resources, especially groundwater. Wasteful irrigation infrastructure, poorly managed water use, as well as fast industrialization and urbanization, have led to serious depletion of groundwater aquifers, loss of natural habitats and water pollution.”

The biggest market in China is not infrastructure or 'consumer goods'. Demand management and the idea that the consumer is 70% of the economy is a myth. Without water there is no industry. The largest future market in China will be the commodity named water. At some point not only will water be priced on a market system for usage; but entire sectors and new technologies will be developed to manage water; clean it; redeploy it; service watershed areas and collate information around the most precious resource on the planet. China might be facing a 'water disaster' but it will be resolved with technology and brains.

 Big government, the nanny-mommy state is really your friend. Or so the bureaucrats and career politicians with nice pensions proclaim. The US Congress and Senate is contemplating yet another 'regulation' to save us from ourselves. SOPA or the Stop Online Piracy Act, is redundant and a Trojan horse for the mommy-state to control Internet content. It will destroy jobs, distort information and give government more powers to see what people [via Domain Name Servers and eventually IP addresses connected to the DNS servers] are either doing, or what information they are accessing. No thanks.

The purported concern is that 'foreign' sites are 'stealing' copyright. Boo hoo hoo. In the US alone there are no less than 13 'Acts' regulating and protecting copyright. Why the heck do we need more regulation around this issue ?

• Copyright Act of 1790 - established U.S. copyright with term of 14 years with 14-year renewal

• Copyright Act of 1831 - extended the term to 28 years with 14-year renewal

• Copyright Act of 1909 - extended term to 28 years with 28-year renewal

• Universal Copyright Convention - ratified by the U.S. in 1954, and again in 1971, this treaty was developed byUNESCO as an alternative to the Berne Convention

• Copyright Act of 1976 - extended term to either 75 years or life of author plus 50 years (prior to this, "[t]he interim renewal acts of 1962 through 1974 ensured that the copyright in any work in its second term as of September 19, 1962, would not expire before Dec. 31, 1976.");[1] extended federal copyright to unpublished works; preempted state copyright laws; codified much copyright doctrine that had originated in case law

• Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988 - established copyrights of U.S. works in Berne Conventioncountries

• Copyright Renewal Act of 1992 - removed the requirement for renewal

• Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) of 1994 - restored U.S. copyright for certain foreign works

• Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 - extended terms to 95/120 years or life plus 70 years

• Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 - criminalized some cases of copyright infringement

Key international agreements affecting U.S. copyright law include:

• Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works

• Universal Copyright Convention

• Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights

The above already protect copyrighted material from 'theft'. There is no point to SOPA. As Wired Magazine wrote:

“The International Intellectual Property Alliance—a kind of meta-trade association for all the content industries, and a zealous prophet of the piracy apocalypse, released a report back in November meant to establish that copyright industries are so economically valuable that they merit more vigorous government protection. But it actually paints a picture of industries that, far from being “killed” by piracy, are already weathering a harsh economic climate better than most, and have far outperformed the overall US economy through the current recession.  The “core copyright industries” have, unsurprisingly, shed some jobs over the past few years, but again, compared with the rest of the economy, employment seems to have held relatively stable at a time when you might expect cash-strapped consumers to be turning to piracy to save money.”

Let's view SOPA for what is – another power grab by unelected bureaucrats.

The platform named the 'Internet' has created 10s of millions of new jobs, most of them unknown to the apocalyptic forecasters and sundry Marxists of the 80s and 90s, who were annually predicting the end of the world, or at least the end of all meaningful jobs. IT accounts for 17% of the US economy – the biggest industry by size of GDP. SOPA is just another national and transnational attempt to distort the market; regulate content and create a Trojan Horse so that in the future, a 'SOPA 15' circa 2020, will allow the bureaucrats to actively manage content and compile lists of what you are reading via DNS and IP traffic reporting. From such lists punishments can be meted out. The state has every vested interest to control everything you read and every thought you process. SOPA is another lame attempt by Mandarins to isolate, divide and conquer the peasant mass. Go away. 

 Euro, soon to be a Zeuro. Europe has long been infected with the disease which first appeared with some force in the mid 19^th century from the revolutionary slogans of 1848 to the mindlessness of Nietzsche's sad little writings which attempted to create 'supermen' out of a culture which was becoming socialist. All people, cultures, ideas and nations are equal. Fairness means everyone is the same. Equality is where all people and states are equally poor and miserable. Any 'gaps' in wealth, productivity, talent or initiative must be 'reduced' by government. If you try hard you are a criminally liable idiot, a threat to the state. Life is a large vacation punctuated by periods of unproductive, unsatisfying labour. The tenets of Christian civilization – rationality, gratitude, humility, hard-work, the reduction of the ego, the Golden Rule – are all relics of superstition and stupidity. Narcissism, self-absorption, 'free' benefits, TV and cults are the coveted idols of sophistication.

When your society is built upon the foundations of Rousseau and modern cultural Marxism it is bound to fail. When a currency is created to 'hide the decline', and allow governments more unfettered access to printed money currency, regulations, taxation, and power, the end is only a matter of time. Of course European 'leaders' now 'demand' a fiscal union. That is after all the whole point of the Euro exercise. Create a monetary disaster which implodes fiscal reality, and then offer 'solutions' which involve more government centralization and unfettered power.

The Mayan prediction that December 21 2012 will herald the end of the world, might only be about Europe. Europeans, or at least their elite, are fond of neolithic fetishes after all [Globaloneywarming, hating the human, mindless TV, Islam etc.]. Maybe the Mayans were predicting the Mayanization of Europe? Europe reduced to a post-war, or post-Euro sea of ashes and devastation. Maudlin the investment-guru writing on the Zeuro-zone. It elicits a chuckle or two:   

 “After much deliberation, I have come to this astounding insight: The Mayan academics who created the code were not in fact astronomers or even astrologers. No, it is clear they were another breed of even more dubious forecasters, called economists. Once you approach the glyphs with that understanding, it becomes clear they are not predicting the end of the world, merely the end of Europe. One symbol clearly shows the Greek flag dipping to the ground. Another depicts the Italian flag with its wheels coming off. Oh, and you don't even want to know what they have prognosticated for the French.”

Maybe the star-gazing Mayans had insight into the black magic produced by the insemination of socialism, with cultural Marxism. It is an ugly beast indeed. Why is the Zeuro-zone bankrupt? 3 easy reasons:

“There are three main problems in Europe. The first is that most of the banks are massively insolvent, because they have 30 times their capital invested in the second problem, which is the sovereign debt of countries that are going to have trouble paying that debt. If the banks have to mark down the debt to what its real value is – or to what it will soon be – they will be bankrupt on a scale that makes 2008 look like a waltz in the park.

....For most of the past two years, European leaders have tried to deal with the problems as though they were short-term liquidity problems: "If we just find the money to buy some more Greek bonds, then Greece can figure out how to solve its problems and then pay us back. Given enough time, the problem can get solved."

They have now arrived at the understanding that it this not a short-term problem. Rather, it's a solvency problem of the various governments, which of course creates a solvency problem for their banks. They are now addressing the problem of solvency and providing capital until such time as certain countries can get their budgets under control and the bond market sees fit to provide the capital they need.”

Solvency crises don't magically disappear because the Mandarins running Europe yawn over their sumptuous banquets that they will 'do everything' they can to save the Zeuro, before devouring their second main course and running back to their palaces post digestion. Not even the divine magic hand of the 'Great Man' Obama can wave away the ills of Europe. The Zeuro project was always a political-social project. The Euro's destruction is however, an opportunity to impose more 'union' including the eradication of fiscal and the remaining political independence of the 27 nation states that make up the bloc.

I don't see what the average person gets from all of this. The elite get an empire – impoverished, riven by divisions and corruption; infiltrated by Islam or 'Islamism' if you prefer; unproductive, ageing, culturally and fiscally bankrupt and decrepit. But the new Mayan elite get the power, based on their loyal union elite and governmental-working elite. But for the average person not connected to the unions and the neo-politburo, it is hard to fathom what they get from the Euro socialist-Marxist experiment. Peace ? Good bread ? Unlimited time off ? Penury ? A stultified coddled life ? Thought police ? No freedom ? The eradication of their savings ? A low standard of living ? The cults of Islam and GlobalWarming? This seems to be a pretty lousy trade-off. You get peace for an existence unworthy of the name.

Or maybe the Euros are simply trading in reality for the culture of the Maya. Shamans and priests running the society. Everyone afraid, superstitious, uneducated, and supine. Science and rationality non-existent. The earth and celestial cults erasing cognition. Freedom unheard of. Sacrifices made daily to the elite's 'gods' including the human. Maybe this is what Europe wants – a return to the Mayan neolithic. And maybe that is what the December 21 2012 prediction is really about. Europe imploding and becoming Mayan. 

The usual lament is that 'we don't build anything anymore' in advanced economies. This is not true. 15 % of GDP is in manufacturing and if one adds in software and technology development – which is a manufacturing process – the number is 30%. IT accounts for about 15% of US GDP making it the single most important industry. There are three factors about manufacturing which the mainstream media never reports.

1. The first is that high taxes, ridiculous regulation, labour rigidity through governmental laws and 'rights', and the total cost burden per worker have all risen by more than 50% in the past 30 years. This is a real cost solutioned in part, by offshoring some aspect of manufacturing overseas.

2. The second fact is that unionization has in large measure added to the problems of the above. Unions are literally forcing firms to go bankrupt. See GM, Chrysler, and now Hostess [detailed below] as prime exhibits.

3. Offshoring leads to Inshoring. There are over 10 million inshored jobs in North America, created in the past 15 years.  The manufacturing process is not monolithic. Inshore jobs include retailing, distribution, creative design, high quality production, client management, and ancillary product creation. It is simply untrue that nothing is made in an advance economy.

If you want to increase 'Inshoring' reduce the burdens of government and of labor. Reform or eradicate unions. Hostess the maker of the Twinkie is a classic example of union created bankruptcy. Its sordid tale can be summarized: [see also the WSJ for a summation though unions are not blamed]

-2009 filed for Chapter 11

-$500 million in losses the past two years

-20.000 unionized workers

-No flexibility from the unions about the use of technology, better processes or productivity enhancing reforms.

-Post 2009 the Unions would not lessen their rules about work. Drivers could not unload their trucks. Trucks could not service more than one large store at a time. Hours and over-time, not to mention worker numbers strictly regulated.

-$100 million per annum paid out to retired workers, or even workers who did not work for the company in benefits.

-$150 million per annum in welfare state costs [health care etc.]

-High prices due to labor rigidity and costs.  [Sounds like GM]

The Hostess firm made more than just the fat enhancing Twinkie. But thanks to union greed, 20.000 people will be without jobs. The only way to salvage the assets is for a private capital firm to buy Hostess, fire the union, hire non-Union labor and return the firm back to reality. But that is unlikely to happen. In 2009, the firm was bought by a venture capital firm who decided to 'play nice' and appease the unions. Within 2 years its $350 million buy-out was in ruins, the firm a shambles, and the entire workforce disbanded.

In a normal market without government and union distortion there will be a mix of offshored and inshored processes and job creation. This should be encouraged. But when governments and unions view firms, capital and humans as fodder and plunder, the result is predictable. More job losses, more laments about 'the greed of those who offshore', and more demands that 'government must do something'. It appears that government is already doing more than enough to encourage job destruction – along with their union friends.   

The Apple cult. We can add as well the Google cult. Great firms to be sure. Apple was near dead in the 1990s – its operating-system closed to the Microsoft platform, its development eco-system limited to what Apple would approve, and its management arrogant and short-sighted. Times change. Businesses develop in spurts and have to suffer downturns [or recessions], in order to improve themselves. If building products and services was so easy, everyone and every business would grow to Applesque or Googleian proportions. This rarely occurs.

RIM's stock price has declined in 4 years from $75 per share to $15. Yet the poorly named products with funny numbers continue to do well. RIM has 75 million clients and is deeply embedded in the corporate market – unlike Apple.  It is very profitable firm generating over $200 million in quarterly profits.  It has proprietary and world leading technology in network delivery, security, wireless email and mobile application development. The Playbook is a very good tool and much more appropriate for business than the larger iPad – which needs a separate contract to be ubiquitously wireless making it more expensive than the RIM product. RIM's QNX's OS is going to be embedded into auto computers and the mobile-auto market has plenty of future potential. Traveling living rooms which are computerized activated by voice running on the embedded QNX OS.

There is plenty of time left to revitalize the BB eco-system. Personally my BB devices have proven themselves to be excellent in all aspects. I would never join the Apple cult and pay out the cult dues on new over priced units.

RIM's first problem is lousy marketing and the fact that the media drools over every Apple device. Apple could coat a stick with cow manure and wrap it in a box and the Media will chant that this is the greatest product ever. Apple did not invent any of its consumer products, Jobs et al improved on what existed. Good for them but the game is far from over. RIM's second problem is that they need new blood at the top. Basillie and Laziridis are great leaders but the firm has grown too large and is now in unfamiliar territory for the entrepreneurs. Never underestimate your competition - RIM will learn and grow.

Jenkins in the WSJ makes some excellent points about Apple and RIM:

“Open and closed were never the absolutes they appear to be. Remember, the Web and Web browser saved Apple as much as Steve Jobs did. And the iPod and iPhone would not have been so conquering if Apple had not been prepared to make iTunes available on Windows. The iPhone now wouldn't be clawing its way into corporate America if Apple weren't prepared to entertain email clients other than Apple's.

Today's ecosystem wars are in many respects just a revisitation of yesteryear's operating-system wars. Those wars also seemed to have a winner-take-all flavor—until Netscape came along to deliver access to a Web-based cornucopia of information and applications that didn't need Windows.

There's another reason for future openness we hesitate to mention: Antitrust regulators at some point will likely add their weight to the competitive pressure if they see the public being locked into a choice of only two ecosystems, Apple's or Android's, for all their TV, etc.

So the future may be friendlier to BlackBerry, Nokia and Windows Phone than it now appears. People don't want to dress the same. They don't want to carry the same device. The market may soon become welcoming to manufacturers making a multitude of gadgets for a multiplicity of tastes and preferences without requiring users to forgo membership in the Apple or Android clouds or both.”

There is more than enough market space for a RIM to survive and thrive. As Jenkins also suggests, it would help RIM to have an office in Silicon Valley. They need to fire whoever does their marketing. Management needs new ideas and energy. All of RIM's problems – product delivery, client expectations, rising costs, poor marketing – are soluble. It might be a brave man who predicts a RIM Renaissance, but it or more likely to be a foolish man who orders RIM's tombstone in 2012.

The great conflation. Averroes equals 200 Western men of letters, philosophy, theology and science. But so it goes with the post-modern cult. Ask anyone who the great Moslem 'thinkers' were and you will get 3 names – al Kindi [an Arab], Avicenna [a Persian] and Averroes. A poor harvest indeed.

Out of obedience to cultural diktats I read my Averroes, a Moslem mathematician and philosopher from Cordoba who lived from 1126 – 1198 AD. Now what? He is famous – supposedly -- for his reintroduction of Aristotle into Western discourse. The problem with this theory is that Aristotle's logic was thoroughly understood and analyzed by 300 AD within the West. It was further elaborated upon, accepted, rejected and reformed by many minds from the 'fall' [or gentle decline into another civilisation] of Rome, until the 14^th century. Aristotle was well known in other words, to the Europeans and much debated for 700 years before Averroes poked out his nose from the cult of moderation and tolerance and told the world – especially the Jews who took up Averroism – that Aristotle was completely right. This is hardly a 'breakthrough' in philosophy or grandeur in 'thinking'.

“While Maimonides [the great Jewish physician and Torah reformer of the 12^th century], with all his admiration for Aristotle, dared to contradict his theories, or at least sought to attenuate them when they were in direct opposition to religion, Averroes indorsed them to their utmost extent, and seemed even to take pleasure in emphasizing them. "God," says Averroes, "has declared a truth for all men that requires for understanding no intellectual superiority; in a language that can be interpreted by every human soul according to its capability and temper. The expositors of religious metaphysics are therefore the enemies of true religion, because they made it a matter of syllogism" (J. Müller, "Philosophie und Theologie," including the Arabic text, pp. 104 et seq.)”

Averroes simply accepts everything that Aristotle posits. This is rational science ? In his own words Christianity is simply a metaphysical syllogism, or in lay terms, a set of words of cant which offend the true God. Islam by extension must be as bad as Christianity, though Averroes gets around this by accepting the figurative essence of the Koran. In any event the statement above is a main reason that Averroes was exiled by his Moslem masters from the multi-cultural intellectual 'ferment' of Cordoba to Morocco. So much for Islamic learning.

Averroes also denied free-will or at least restricted it unlike Maimonides. "Our soul," says Averroes, "can have preferences indeed, but its acts are limited by the fatality of exterior circumstances; for if its deeds were the production of its will alone, they would be a creation independent of the first cause, or God." This is fatalism. Your own will is limited because it is something independent of what a God would allow, since that God controls all externalities. Ergo no true free-will. This is a problem. Without free-will there is no freedom and no need for the separation of church and state. So tell me again what his contribution to Western civilisation was ? Let us not forget that Averroes was also a devout Moslem who supported Jihad, though modern minds would call that a 'moderate' position since he advocated Jihad only when the Infidel would suffer certain defeat.

In G.R. Evans' excellent book, 'Fifty Key Medieval Thinkers', he outlines the Christian reaction against Averroism – today of course the censors would term such refutations hate speech. Back in the non-existent 'Dark Ages' this was termed debate and discourse. Albert Magnus completed the 'Unicity of the intellect against Averroes' in 1256; Aquinas the 'Summa against Gentiles [or Unbelievers]' a short while thereafter; and others until 1277 joined in condemning Averroes and his Aristotelian disposition that a God would be entirely removed from earthly existence, and that in all matters of importance, philosophy and theology were incompatible, itself a nonsense given the great stream of Neo-Platonist thought one finds in Christian liturgy. One can read Augustine in the 5^th century to witness the Platonic influence on both Pauline and early Church theology.

So apparently 3 'Moslems' – Avicenna [11^th century], Averroes [12^th century], and al-Kindi [9^th century] – are the equivalent to about 200 learned men I can list who existed in Western society between 600 and 1500 AD. Not to mention a score of artists and literary geniuses. I can't name one single Moslem artist nor literary inventor during this same period, though some Persian poets do float to mind. But we are assured that the 'big 3' of Islam, are the equivalent of hundreds of Western thinkers.

Nay sorry. They are better. Without them, the cultural Marxist myth goes, there would be no learning in the Western world. The 'Dark Age' in which Europeans were running around unclothed, unclean, hairy and stupid would never have ended....The massive inventions of the mind, the spirit, and of reason which set the stage for the 'Reformation', and 'Enlightenment' [itself a period of witch burning], would never have taken place. The Western world was already in the ascendant by 1000 AD, long before Averroes regurgitated his Aristotle and denounced Christianity. There is nothing unique in Averroes and certainly little new commentary that one would deem 'brilliant'. He simply reiterates what Aristotle said in his works on Logic. How banal.

So I read my Averroes, now what ?

Source:

U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000

Fed budget: $3,820,000,000,000

New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000

National debt: $14,271,000,000,000

Recent budget cuts: $ 38,500,000,000

Let's remove 8 zeros and pretend the numbers reflect a household budget:

Annual family income: $21,700

Money the family spent: $38,200

New debt on the credit card: $16,500

Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710

Total budget cuts: $385

============================================================

Is the US Middle Class disappearing? If it is that bodes ill for the future of the Western nation state. If the Middle Class is dying in the US, it must be dead elsewhere. The greatest obstacle to National Socialism, Divine Right Rule, Paternalistic Despotism, or Enlightened Absolutism is of course a strong Middle Class of family-oriented people, who are 'centers of power' in opposition to the endless march of government. Take away this bulwark in a post-modern, post-Christian age and there is little left to oppose the might of the State. Inflation, debt and the destruction of oppositional centers to power usually presage the end of empire.

In times past the ability to own business and property, with a capability to defend their rights legally and physically, married with an extremely jaundiced view of 'government', defined the Middle Class. The only method to develop a cadre of 'middle income families' is through trade, free investment, freer markets in capital and labour, and the limitation of private property theft by a parasitic class of civil servants and politicians. Part of Europe's problem is that both labor and capital are rigid, and the middle class has long lost its aversion to ever-more government. In fact most middle income earners are socialist or Marxist.

Families need jobs and jobs are killed off by excess taxation and regulation. It is also a cultural mindset. Most voters want bigger government and less freedom. Too many people view working as arbitrary. They would much rather join the ranks of government workers and earn 2x more than they could in the private sector and 4x more when pensions and sick-day payoffs are added in. Or they believe that the 'system' or someone's 'stash' owes them welfare, health care, education, housing and pensions. Once the culture becomes communal collapse is a matter of time.

A good article about the disappearing American Middle Class is “30 Statistics That Show That The Middle Class Is Dying Right In Front Of Our Eyes As We Enter 2012” It is unlikely that the great swathe of people are 'disappearing' as the article suggests. But some of the 30 points listed are painful to read. Some highlights include:

#1 Today, only 55.3 percent of all Americans between the ages of 16 and 29 have jobs.

#2 In the United States today, there are 240 million working age people.  Only about 140 million of them are working

#11 Since 1971, consumer debt in the United States has increased by a whopping 1700%.

#12 The number of pages of federal tax rules and regulations has increased by18,000% since 1913.  The wealthy know how to avoid taxes, but most of those in the middle class do not.

#13 The number of Americans that fell into poverty (2.6 million) set a new all-time record last year and extreme poverty (6.7%) is at the highest level ever measured in the United States.

#18 Food prices continue to rise at a very brisk pace.  The price of beef is up 9.8% over the past year, the price of eggs is up 10.2% over the past year and the price of potatoes is up 12% over the past year.

#25 Since Barack Obama took office, the number of Americans on food stamps has increased by 14.3 million.

#26 In 2010, 42 percent of all single mothers in the United States were on food stamps

#27 In 1970, 65 percent of all Americans lived in "middle class neighborhoods".  By 2007, only 44 percent of all Americans lived in "middle class neighborhoods".

#28 According to a recent report produced by Pew Charitable Trusts, approximately one out of every three Americans that grew up in a middle class household has slipped down the income ladder.

#29 In the United States today, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.

Some caveats. Poverty for example. In my little mind government 'statistics' are rarely pure and full of transparent reason. Poverty figures suit many different stakeholders who access public funds, not to mention the expansion of agencies and bureaucracies. The definition of poverty keeps rising, not falling. Real poverty levels are probably no more than 5-10 % of the total population. People with iPhones, cars, fridges and running water are not 'poor'. But the point made is that many families are struggling. Between taxes and real inflation this is obvious.

Two other aspects from this list are also true. First, thanks to National Socialism and Corporatism, the elite and their politically connected businesses are getting richer each year and holding a higher share of national income. See #29. This corruption is widespread and profound. It significantly distorts the political-economy. Second, social spending has gone up 5 x faster than GDP growth in the past 50 years – a sure sign of income redistribution which in the end retards economic development. Poverty has climbed if you believe the published figures. When social spending is so astronomically high the distortions in income, job creation, wealth generation, mobility, and even innovation are negatively impacted. How can more people be in trouble today than 50 years ago if the nanny-state which is so omnipresent is the solution to society's ills ? The math does not add up.

Statism makes matters worse not better when huge tracts of society and the political-economy are national-socialized. Poverty will increase not decrease. Just as revenues will go down not up when taxes are raised. But such facts will be lost on those who want the complete socialization of everything and the infantilization of all people. By then the Middle Class will indeed be long dead, and there will be the elite run either by Marxist or Eco-fanatics or both; and the rest. The trend is rather clear on that point. 

2012 is the most pivotal election in the US since 1980. Americans will either choose to revert back to their Constitution, and to what truly makes a country great and repudiate Marxist-Eco socialism, or they will vote to follow Europe over the abyss into the dark hell-hole of communal suicide. No salvation post 2012 if the Americans choose poorly. Worse the entire geo-political structure of the planet would reverberate with chaos and danger. America becoming Sweden is a project of immorality merged with ignorance.

Steyn's 'America Alone' the precursor to this work 'After America', was a flawed demography survey in which America would survive while most of the rest of the world would collapse due to a higher birth-rate. As reviewed previously, the problem with such a deductionist approach is that most of America's high birth-rate comes from Hispanics. The core of America, or 'Red State' America has a slightly higher than replacement rate. The true population growth lies in the Hispanic community. Like Jews some 80 % of Hispanics vote for the [un]Democratic party. This collection of sophists, Marxists, eco-communists, union workers, rich lawyers, Hollywood-sexual deviants and lovers of the big nanny state are only too happy to turn America into a Moslem-dominated larger version of poor, disgruntled, disturbed Belgium. Steyn misses the key point about the political-economy - Culture, not birth-rates is King. And when your culture is run-amok Socialism what happens? As Steyn writes in After America:

“In America, federal spending (inflation adjusted) went from $600 billion in 1965 to $3 Trillion in 2008 [it is actually $3.5 Trillion in 2011].”

“By 1788, Louis XIV's government in France was spending a mere 60% of revenues on debt service, and we know how that worked out for the House of Bourbon shortly thereafter.”

...”by 2020 the government will be paying between 15 and 20 percent of its revenue in debt interest. Whereas defense spending will be down to between 14 and 16 percent.”

“...debt service projections for 2015 would increase from $290 billion to $847 billion. China would be in a position to quadruple its military budget and stick US taxpayers with the bill.”

Bankruptcy is always ugly. So is the cultural decline associated with the big-Nanny PC Marxist state. Steyn quoting a British historian on the current cultural apathy and decline:

“...[no we can't] land on the moon, swiftly win wars against weak opposition and then control the defeated nation, secure national borders, discover breakthrough medical treatments, prevent crime, design and build to a tight deadline, educate people so they can work before the age of 22.....”

The Obamabots were screaming 'Yes we Can'. I guess they meant, Yes We Can do nothing and still enjoy a great standard of living. Or Yes we Can never grow up. You can live in Sweden, or the future USA, and be a child your entire life. The mommy-state will do everything for you from wiping your nose to issuing state-approved toilet paper to wipe your backside with. Let's not forget the 27.000 words in EU legislation organizing and regulating the sale of cabbage. God forbid that anyone would actually buy some cabbage which was unregulated by an encyclopedia sized bureaucratic diktat. That too will come to America. 30.000 word dictations on the sale of napkins.

“To open a restaurant in NYC requires dealing with the conflicting demands of at least eleven municipal agencies, plus submitting to twenty-three city inspections, and applying for thirty different permits and certificates.”

In 'After America' Steyn corrects the obvious problem with his first book, that being the fact that culture is king, with a long brood about American decline and the domestic and geo-political chaos which would inevitably follow an American self-implosion. After America then what ? UN world government dominated by the Moslem bloc ? A Chinese 'protection zone' throughout all of East Asia which allows a water-starved China access to watershed and riverine areas in neighbouring states under the rubric of 'stability' ? A Greater Russia reconquering the weak bits of Eastern Europe ? A Moslem Caliphate built on the 'Arab Spring' springing up from Tripoli to Ankara and wiping out any Jews and Christians foolish enough to remain in the lands of Muhammad ?

If and when America goes bankrupt and its military becomes the size of Canada's token 19.000 under-funded police force, the world will most certainly become a far uglier place. The America-haters should read this book. Their wish to demolish the largest obstacle between civilisation and the resurrection to power of theologies from the neolithic era, might well occur. Jubilee for the big brains.

If you object to the cultural Marxist multi-cult nirvana and Socialism:

“The evolution from -isms to phobias is part of the medicalization of dissent: the Conformicrats simply declare your position a form of mental illness.”

Speaking of cabbage, Public workers make a lot of it:

“In 2009, the average civilian employee of the United States government earned $81,258 in salary plus $41,791 in benefits. Total: $123,049. The average American employed in the private sector earned $50,462 in salary plus $10,589 in benefits. Total: $61,051.”

High cost of Low regulation:

“By 2005, the costs of federal regulatory compliance alone...were up to $1.13 Trillion or approaching 10 % of GDP. In much of America it takes far more paperwork to start a business than to go on welfare.”

High taxes and poor regulation means offshoring:

“From 1947 to the start of the downturn in 2008, manufacturing declined from 25.6 percent of the economy to 11 percent, while finance, insurance, real estate, and 'professional services' grew from 13.9 per cent to 33.5 percent.”

Depreciated, useless Lower Education:

“In 1940, a majority of the U.S. Population had no more than a Grade Eight education. By 2008, 40 per cent of 18-24 year olds were enrolled in college.....the typical American is almost twice as old by the time he completes his education as he was in 1940, and has spent over twice as long in the classroom...”

The blessings of Euro-UK socialism?

“...debauch your human capital. The UK has the highest drug use in Europe, the highest incidence of sexually transmitted disease, the highest number of single mothers, the highest abortion rate; marriage is all but defunct, except for toffs, upscale gays, and Muslims.”

and

“...In Wales, Northern Ireland, and parts of northern England, the state accounts for between 73 and 78 percent of the economy...”

And the outcome of America's Socialist failure? The reduction ad-absurdum of once virile and intelligent US culture, into the apathetic stupidity and finally dissolution that all communal programs demand. Culture is King:

“Culture is not immutable. But changing culture is tough and thankless and something America's ever weakening assimilationists no longer have the stomach for. So go with the numbers: the SouthWest will be Mexican, and Washington's writ will no longer run....” and in quoting Andrew McCarthy; “Civilization is not an evolution of mankind but the imposition of human good on human evil. It is not a historic inevitability. It is a battle that has to be fought every day, because evil does not recede willingly before the wheels of progress.”

All true. The American fetish with Marxist-PC-communalism will end in a disaster. No one knows what shape that destruction will take. The US dissolving into disparate nation states is surely one likely outcome. So too is global chaos. Going bankrupt and destroying a successful culture and replacing it with post-modern gibberish and shibboleths has its consequences. History is not necessarily linear not does it evolve in 'stage theories' to broad sunlit uplands of hopey dopey change and rainbows, in nice steps and progressions. Oftentimes a civilization crashes, regresses, dissolves or simply breaks apart, ripped and torn asunder by various forces of culture, finance, external aggression, and population decline. Steyn's book outlines why American hegemony might well fall, and what will happen if it does. 

The Christian story, and the concomitant rise of reason, European civilization and the modern world, is the greatest story in human history. Even teeth-gnashing, hair-pulling Marxists, Obama Worshippers and pop-culture devotees who loathe Christians [but love Muslims]; owe their very existence to Christians and the medieval Europeans, who created all of the foundations for our modern world political-economy. For many people who are chained and in bondage to various politically-correct totalitarianism's and multi-cult worship, this signal fact is lost and debauched. For these personalities nothing much good has ever come out of White culture, Europe, Christianity or the ridiculously named 'Dark Ages'. Apparently it wasn't until Voltaire and his friends, including their progeny Hegel, Marx and Lenin appeared that 'reason' rescued us from darkness. Or perhaps it was the Arabs and Muslims. Or maybe the Hindus. Or the Confucians. Or was it the Hittites and the Sky God Baal?

In any event, even Christian haters can partake of Christmas and the celebration of the modern world, built by Christian and Judaic culture. But what is Christmas historically?

Western Christmas:

The modern Christmas story is premised on the birth of Christ as described in Matthew (see Matthew 1:18-2:12). Roman Catholics first celebrated Christmas, or what was known as the Feast of the Nativity, as early as 336 AD.

The word Christmas:

Christmas comes from the old English verbiage for the Mass of Christ or "Cristes maesse". Xmas as a short form came into use during the 4^th century. The letter X is the Greek letter chi, an abbreviation of Khristos (Christ), and also represents the cross on which Jesus was crucified.

Origins of Christmas:

Most likely the mass of Christ celebration started in the 4^th century [after Constantine declared Christianity as the Roman Empire's unifying theology]. It became a substitute for the pagan celebration of the winter solstice. The 12 days of Christmas and its traditions such as caroling, gifts, yule log, the wishing of good cheer to all, and the holiday feasts can all be traced back to the early Mesopotamians who performed 12 days as part of a festival honouring the changing of the seasons, fertility and the appeasement of various Sumerian and Assyrian Godheads.

Paganism merged with Christmas:

It was during the crucial 4^th century that the Romans appropriated pagan theologies and incorporated them into Christianity. This process of dissolving pagan artifacts into Christian liturgy and practice lasted until the early modern period. During the fourth century, the Roman Church took the pagan Roman winter solstice celebration called the festival of 'Saturnalia' and seamlessly merged it into Christian practices. Hence the use of December 25^th as the 'birthday' of Christ. [Most likely Christ was born in April]. The Saturnalian feast was dedicated to as the birthday of the unconquered sun or Sol Invictus. In modern parlance 'saturnalian' means a riotous celebration. During this festival the Romans exchanged small gifts. This practice found its way during the medieval period, into Christmas celebrations.

Popular Culture:

Christmas past-times changed and became deeply embedded in the North American popular culture. Santa Claus and other traditions were added. Books by men such as Washington Irving in 1820 in his iconic, 'The Keeping of Christmas at Bracebridge Hall' resonated with a population which expanded Christmas celebrations out of the purely theological and into the commercial. In 1860 American illustrator Thomas Nast, building on European stories about Saint Nicholas who was a Christian pastor in Turkey and the patron saint of children, to create Father Christmas or Santa Claus. Saint Nick's story was elaborated upon by many writers and cartoonists and soon became an emblem of the Christian spirit of giving, and spreading joy to the world's children.

Real meaning of Christmas:

The commercialization of Christmas has overshadowed its cultural and theological purpose. Christmas should be not only about feasts, drinking, gift-giving and the joy of children, but also a sober reflection on what the Book of Matthew – the progenitor of the entire Christmas enterprise – has to say about ethics, rationality, faith, good works and character. Reading passages from the Book of Matthew would undoubtedly reinforce the Christmas and Western spirit and generate a cultural shift in reason, optimism, hope and morality.

Merry Christmas.

GDP is a poor measurement of economic size. It was developed by Kuznets during the great statist monarchy of King FDR a man who tried to run America as leader for life [no term limits for the King!]. Nominal GDP includes government spending. Spending by the state is not a part of the real economy or Real GDP. It is a part of the statist-fantasy economy. The state can borrow a few trillion dollars from overseas lenders, erect statues, pyramids and memorials to itself or its chosen elitist representatives, and declare a net benefit to the 'economy'. This is rather absurd. The state in North America and Europe accounts for at least 40% of GDP. The goal is 100%. This 40% must be subtracted from the total GDP to arrive at a real economic size. When juxtaposed against real debts the glaringly obvious fact is that we are bankrupt – every single Western state is insolvent when you compare real debts to real GDP:

Source [see also CIA Factbook]

Never in history has any state survived when real debts are 200% or more of real GDP. [See Braudel's history of modern Europe for example.] We are at double, triple or quadruple that level right now with no end to the spending and debt madness in sight.

It is not just Greece and the 'periphery' of Europe which is a problem. The entire construct of Western National-Socialism and the nanny-state is the problem. Government is simply too large, and doing too many things poorly. All experiments in National-Socialism fail. China has spent about $8 Trillion in the past 10 years on infrastructure. Rotting ghost towns pockmark the nation. Its nominal GDP at PPP is about $7 Trillion. China has therefore consumed its entire economic size in debt in just 10 years. There is no indication that the spending frenzy in China will stop. States including China, simply implode when the carnivore called debt simply digests the real economy.

The Age of Aquarius has plundered future generations to erect a system rotted with fraud, corruption, double-dealing and oppressive fees and taxes. No one disputes the need to help people in need with education, health or welfare. What is also indisputable is that the current system is inefficient in achieving the state's objectives on social issues; but very efficient in parting people from their money – much of which is wasted and most of which has been pilfered from the unborn.

“Scientists believe carbon dioxide used to comprise less than 0.03% of the atmosphere – 280 parts per million – prior to the industrial revolution. Currently, at 390 parts per million, it's approaching 0.04%. Barring emissions reductions, by the year 2100 that number could reach 0.06%. All this fuss is based on a hypothesis that says our planet is so unstable a slight increase in one particular trace gas will trigger disaster.”

There is little science to Globaloneywarming or ClimateBaloney. Co2 is a trace chemical and follows climate of course. Canadian journalist LaFramboise has done the world a service in exposing the lack of rigor, science, and the clear activism within the UN-IPCC and its derivative institutions such as East Anglia and even NASA. Activism is not science. Originally reviewed here, Laframboise presents the following facts which should enrage any biped who enjoys living in a modern world:

-The 'we use only peer reviewed science' claim is a lie. Of the 18,531 references in the 2007 Climate Bible, 1/3 was non peer-reviewed. Keep in mind that the rest is peer reviewed by people in the Green 'industry' and not be outside 'skeptics' or people who want to see original source material, information and code.

-Among sources used by the IPCC were newspaper and magazine articles, unpublished Masters and Phd theses, Greenpeace and WWF documents, and press releases.

-21 out of 44 chapters in the 2007 Climate Bible have so little peer reviewed literature that they are simply unscientific.

-Greenpeace controls in large measure many aspects of the 'Climate Bible' which purports to explain to the peasant mass how 'climate works' and what is happening with the climate. For example the IPCC Chair, the former Indian railroad engineer Pachauri, has written for Greenpeace funded publications.

-Greenpeace executives such as Bill Hare fill or have filled prominent IPCC roles.

-Greenpeace activist Ove Guldberg had 'nine chapters of the 2007 Climate Bible base their conclusions [on reefs] partly on his work....Between 1994 and 2000 he wrote four reports about coral reefs and climate change that were funded, vetted, and published by Greenpeace.'

-78 high profile IPCC personnel in high positions were or are World Wildlife Fund members and activists including activists Richard Moss [WWF VP] and Jennifer Morgan [WWF chief spokesman and now Director for the World Resources Institute].

-120 of the top personnel in the IPCC are from the NOAA [National Oceanic Atmosphere Administration] – an activist group dedicated to the myth that humans are causing global warming.

-No independent peer review occurs. It is activists reviewing the climate 'models' and claims of other activists. No independent review of the computer models and their code has ever been conducted [garbage in, garbage out]. This is called a conflict of interest and activism, not science.

-A quasi independent committee investigating the IPCC's quality assurance process found 'significant shortcomings in each major step of IPCC's assessment process.' But of course the science is closed.

-Computer models assume 'positive feedback only'. In nature you have counter-reactions not only positive reactions. “Incredible as it sounds, therefore, the only reason climate models tell us we are at risk of eco apocalypse is because the climate modelers believe our climate system behaves in a manner that is opposite to the way most natural systems behave.”

The IPCC scam reminds me of the Gay Gene myth which greatly profited its founder Dean Hamer, even though not one shred of science constituted his claims [which begs the question of why the lamebrain media would report it as fact....]. The Climate swindle should enrage anyone who believes that scientific truth is only revealed by testing hypotheses and having transparent informational sources given to other experts in the field who are not activists, but people searching for hard facts and truth, who can confirm or deny the hypotheses and testing procedures. Activism is not science. Science is never closed. For fair minded people not blinded by eco-theology and drunk on communalist dogma, this book will at least make you question the real purpose of the UN-IPCC, and those politicians and bureaucrats so enthusiastic about 'human created climate disruption'. Political programs and cults are not science.

The Viking states over 400 years; roughly from about 800 AD to 1200 AD were able to accomplish the following: discover North America, settle Iceland and Greenland; conquer England, northern France, Sicily, parts of the Balkans; found the Rus` Kyiv empire; provide most of the men for the 200 year Crusades to the East; control trade routes from Ireland to Constantinople (the Viking Arc); and invent the most advanced shipping technology in the world. It is enough to send a modern multi-cult Marxist into an epileptic shock.

Today of course the Vikings are famous for men who want to become pregnant; socialized day care; cars that look like small planes; and poor quality cell phones; not to mention men in pony tails and sandals imitating Abba.

A slight cultural diminution. We can see the results. If Sweden was in North America it would be the poorest jurisdiction with the lowest per-capita incomes; the lowest standard of living; and the worst productivity.

The average income for a Swede in Sweden is $36, 600, while the average income in the United States is $45,500—and the average income for a Swede in the United States is $ 56,900 – 55 percent more than the Swedish average. ...Interestingly Sweden also has the 'sickest' workforce in Europe, even though it has 'free' socialized health care, with 20% of its workforce not working on any given day. Considering that only 60% of employable Swedes actually work, this means that the daily employment rate is less than 50%. In other words, more than half of those who could work are being sustained by the half who actually do work.

No one works, but all may receive. Welcome to Nirvana.

Norway is fat on oil and like Denmark dependent on Germany. If the German economy implodes thanks to EUtopian bankruptcy then both states will find that their socialist tyranny is unsustainable.

But perhaps one can be too hard on the Vikings. Could such a beaten down set of societies with no dynamism change, or be forced into a metamorphosis, especially as Europe goes bankrupt ?

The Viking lands basically sat out World War II some minor fighting by the Norwegians and Danes notwithstanding. The Swedes were part of Hitler`s raw material supply chain and discretely an ally – much like the Swiss who became the bank vaults for the Nazi treasure and gold. When Europe lay in ruins in 1945 the modern Vikings collected tribute through the exportation of raw material and manufactured goods. Wealth was created and the Viking Ninny state formed. GDP in the Viking lands doubled in one generation. Reasonably poor states were now reasonably well-off. Socialism was deemed to be the answer to the question of how can a nation achieve societal peace.

In 1993 the Swedish pony-tail state, feminized and collectivized spent 68% of the national income. In 2011 it had dropped to 48 % - below that of France (52%). One has to wonder if Occupy Sweden will get out the longboats and blockade Stockholm in protest. The trend in Sweden is the reduction of the omnipotent state which will simply bankrupt the nation. So it is with Denmark and Norway as well. Expect the cutting to continue.

Interestingly the Nordic states all have a flat tax structure. The ridiculous regressive tax structure of taxing higher incomes more does not exist in post-modern Viking land. Tax rates are punishing on income and capital. But at least the insanity is fairly distributed. Everyone shares in the pain – unlike in North America where half of all workers pay no national income tax which means they don`t support defence, border control, the bureaucracy and the thousands of programs transferring money thither and hither.

Since 1993, Sweden has cut government spending by 20% of GDP, Finland by 11%, Norway by 5%, and Denmark 3% of GDP.  In contrast, the high-debt countries of Greece, Japan, France, Portugal, the U.K., and the U.S. all grew spending as a % of GDP since 1993.. The Vikings are cutting, the rest are debtifying.

Importantly the tax beta in Sweden is 1.0 and just above or below 1.0 for the other Viking states. This means that mostly everyone pays the same rate of income tax regardless of income levels. In North America and elsewhere the progressive tax structure means that almost half the population does not pay an income tax, and instead becomes only a client of the state receiving government money or using the socialized services without paying in. When this happens it becomes politically impossible to reduce government. Too many hands out and too many votes to lose. The culture shifts as well, from one of independence and action to a society in which the employment rate falls below 60 per cent and the multi-cult diversity bores are in power, and post-modern socialist theology firmly in place. The state and multiculturalism as God.

At least the Swedes and former Vikings are moving in the right direction by reducing the awful crushing weight of government and its attendant immorality. No one else is. Maybe there is hope for the Vikings yet.  

Okay there are not completely comparable but analogies do exist and they came to mind whilst reading Max Hastings and his great history of Churchill during the war. Consider the political personalities involved. Newt the politician certainly does remind me somewhat of Churchill. Mercurial, egotistical to a fantastic degree, unprincipled in many ways, wayward, a lone wolf, sure of himself and his destiny.....Newt`s fecund mind resembles the `fertile expedients` issued forth by Churchill`s own calculations and methods. Churchill`s mind created ideas which gained force and form through his own erratic and uncoventional manner of analysis and thinking. Churchill`s idea formation was described by one Cabinet colleague during the 1920s as a snowball rolling down a large hill picking up speed and size as it went until it hit the bottom. In other words an almost unchangeble, unbroken path from formation to realization regardless of propriety, practicality or reality. Newt strikes me as the same.

I have read most of Newt`s books. They are well written – even if ghost-writers did most of the heavy lifting. His books on Health Care reform are for instance, very practicable and full of good ideas. Socialized health care is alive and well in the US and that is why the health system is a mess with government accounting for 55 % of all health spend and intervening in the rest. But would Newt the ultimate insider cad actually reform socialized health care or entitlements ? I have my doubts. Maybe Newt is just for Newt and in love, like Churchill was, with his own image, rhetoric and standing ? Peggy Noonan wrote an excellent article on the Newt and why many simply don`t trust him:

One way to view this is that he is so rich and varied as a character, as geniuses often are, that he contains worlds, multitudes. One senses that would be his way of looking at it. Another way to look at it: In a long career, one will shift views, adapt to circumstances, tack this way and that. Another way: He's philosophically unanchored, an unstable element. There are too many storms within him, and he seeks out external storms in order to equalize his own atmosphere. He's a trouble magnet, a starter of fights that need not be fought. He is the first modern potential president about whom there is too much information. What is striking is the extraordinary divide in opinion between those who know Gingrich and those who don't. Those who do are mostly not for him, and they were burning up the phone lines this week in Washington.

This analysis is appropriate but it probably underestimates the Newt. The man is smart. Intelligent men will understand that once in power, they need to change. The world will not be shaped to their views alone. The process is at least bi-directional.

Consider Winston. Churchill was roundly hated by the elite, the technocracy, even his own party when he assumed power in May 1940. His only support base was strangely enough the working class and Labour. No one predicted his transformation into the most transformative leader of the 20th century. Suddenly Churchill was sober, judicious, energetic, principled, and disciplined. Even his enemies were astonished at the skills and maturity he showed. Could the erratic genius of the Newt undergo a similar metamorphosis ? Or is Newt simply too ingeniously diabolical, too much of an insider cad and too massively corrupt to change ?

Only Newt knows. But one thing is obvious. As in May 1940, the Americans in 2012 will need a transformation and a leader for the moment. If not the Republic will go bankrupt and the USA will collapse. Its hegemony assured of failure. Maybe Newt is the man for the hour. In any event he would be vastly entertaining and a lot more skillful and intelligent than the incumbent.  

 “Entire Muslim societies had been built on slavery; the numbers were so vast that in the ninth century half a million slaves had rebelled in Iraq...” p. 89

“In an age that glorified conspicuous consumption, basking in a cloud of Eastern ambrosia was an essential ingredient of high living.....The profits at stake were immense...” p. 107

“With the downfall of the Mongols the overland routes became unsafe and eventually impassable, and virtually all traffic between the two Continents ceased.” p. 113

“...the Portuguese had broken the Muslim monopoly of the world's richest trading routes with astonishing speed. Yet Manuel's megalomaniacal ambition to sweep from east and west into the Holy Land had never been matched by a realistic strategy of the means adequate to achieve it.” p. 369

This is a very interesting book about how Christian Europe came to dominate the world political-economy. Such an ideal – that Christian Europe was superior to Islam and other Oriental mysticism's – surely sends the modern multi-tolerance cult, and the lovers of cultural Marxism into spitting rages of self-flagellating fits of hair pulling epilepsy. But truth and reality always do that to Lenin's useful idiot class. Cliff's book is extremely well-written and researched. It is an enjoyable 423 page romp through the history of what Cliff rightly terms the clash of civilization's and the extension of Islam's Holy War, appropriated by Christianity only after 400 years of Moslem Jihad against Christian territory to the key economic trade routes of the Indian Ocean.

The book becomes interesting about 1/3 of the way through, when Cliff actually begins describing the antecedent's to Da Gama's voyages and then gets on to the actual history-changing first and second voyages of the great Portuguese explorer. His history before this point – about 1/3 of the book – is full of inaccuracies about Europe and especially about Islam. The reader should probably ignore the first 100 pages. After that it gets better. The story-telling of Da Gama's voyages and the follow up establishment of trading colonies by Albuquerque is fast-paced, and well researched. Da Gama is revealed to be one of the most intrepid and intelligent of explorers in all of history. It is doubtful if the effeminate and self-loathing culture of Europe today, could have any hope of producing a Da Gama. The ear of European self-respect, and swaggering confidence ended after the 30 years war in 1648 resuscitated but never resurrected until the Great War of 1914.

There are however some issues with Cliff's book and his tendency to revisionism. Revisionist history is bunk and anytime an author engages in rewriting facts, it distorts both the prose and the message. An obvious first problem is that the Moslem Jihad against Buddhists and Hindus is not even mentioned for example. Somewhere between 50-100 million Indians were butchered by the various Moslem invasions, caliphs, emirs and tribes over a 1000 year period. The Moslem Jihad against non-Moslems was very much alive and well when the Portuguese arrived – a fact non unnoticed by the Europeans. One reason why the Christians were accepted by many non-Moslems in India and along the African coast was precisely this bloody fact.

A second issue is the portrayal of Christians as aggressor ignoramuses. The myth of Andalusia is also related ad nauseum, and anytime an author or reviewer invokes this post-modern fantasy, we have trouble on our hands. Dhimmitude, second class knave status, squatting on richer non-Moslem territories and lands; Moslem slave trading, generational pogroms, and incessant warfare against northern Spanish and French Christians, is not inter-cultural harmony - it is imperialism. Cliff also relates incidents in India, in which the Portuguese mistook the Sikhs, the Jains [a Moslem sect], and Hindus as Christians. While the NY Times and other reviewers of this book were locked in uncontrollable laughter and mock condescension over this experience, there was no possibility that a European in the 15^th or 16^th century would have been familiar with these mysticism's or cognisant of their existence. I doubt that a modern day welfare statist, or a NY Times reviewer, cast back 400 years, would have known the difference between sects and cults in the Indian subcontinent. The signal fact was that the Portuguese were clever enough to enlist non-Moslems as allies. If they mistook their oriental mysticism for something akin to a Christian sect, so what. This sounds to me like 'tolerance' and 'inter faith' dialogue so important to the modern multi-cult and NY Times.

This brings up a 3^rd weakness. Though Cliff does enumerate the un-civilizational attributes of the Moslem and Arab traders around the Indian Ocean, and their violent antipathy to Europeans, he does not emphasize it enough. Da Gama's first voyage in 1498 was a fleet of small poorly armed ships. They were constantly attacked, harassed and thwarted by the Moslems. When Arabs and Moslems began butchering unarmed Portuguese civilians and merchants, left under treaty in trading enclaves a more militant response had to be expected. Bigger ships, more cannon, and more soldiers were dispatched from Portugal under Alberquerque and then again under Da Gama. The Moslem's had a monopoly on the trade between the Orient and Europe. They were quite unwilling to give this up. Islam the supremacist militant theology uber-alles was hardly going to cede the control of Indian Ocean trade to the Portuguese without recourse to violence and Jihad. This simply fact almost eludes Cliff. It is as if he blames the Europeans for the irruption of violence between the Christians and Moslems. This is fatuous.

The last issue with the book is a total neglect of the superiority in technology, sailing, navigation, military methods and in commerce, which allowed the Europeans to sail an impossibly long distance and conquer the Indian Ocean littoral and its key trade routes. Sailing 10 or 20 ships around the world is ruinously expensive and dangerous, yet the Europeans accomplished it - and did it so often that a chain of commands stretching from the Cape to China ensured European domination of world trade. How could a 'poor Continent', or state, possibly be 'so impoverished' that it could send men out to conquer the world by sailing vast distances to uncharted waters ? More so for a smallish country such as Portugal, which was the first 'Crusader state' to take the fight to the Moslems in the Indian Ocean. Such a claim or claims, makes little sense. The culture and wealth of Europe by the time of the counter-Jihad circa 1000 AD was already markedly superior to that of Islam. When the Europeans began to end their internal feuding through the development of strong nation states; economic exchange [especially after the 11^th century]; and the formation of capital; they began to look for ways to counter the Moslem blockade of the Mediterranean, Islam's demise was assured.

This fact certainly offends the NY Times reviewer of this book who commented that the 'stupid Christians' found India 'by accident'. Such a statement is one of ignorance and a callous disregard for facts. The Portuguese as Cliff relates, had spent almost a century charting the African coast line all the way down to the Cape. They knew exactly what they were doing when Da Gama pushed around the Cape and headed towards the Orient. Not enough emphasis in my opinion, is given to the social-cultural and technological gap already apparent, between surging Europe and declining Islam and somnolent India. Instead Cliff, like all revisionists, somehow imagines a civilized and 'noble' Moslem Orient juxtaposed against the 'barbarians running around Europe'. He and the NY Times have never been to a Gothic Cathedral or witnessed 14^th and 15^th century European art I suppose.

Still, in spite of the above criticisms and cautions this is an enjoyable and educative read.

Many eons ago in America vs. Europe the prediction of a politically unified European state was rejected. Why? Disintegration is a longer and more powerful trend than super-statism.

“Thus, there might be parallel processes of globalization and the continuing trends of fragmentation and disintegration. Historically political fragmentation often manifested by the quest for self-determination and the creation of new states, had been a trend with as much significance as the (parallel) forces of economic globalization....the stronger the state, the more capable they are in coping with the intricacies of the economic, political, social, technological, and cultural dimensions of globalization.” [p. 82]

Fragmentation is more relevant than super-statism. In this vein the EU won't survive – not in its current state. One should not expect GerFrancia colonialism within Europe. It is hard to imagine independent states, including powerful interests and politicians, giving up their autonomy to GerFrancia. One of the contradictory aspects of 'globalization' [whatever that word may mean and however weak in practice it actually is], is the singular fact that the individual nation state and its socialist-statist structures will actually become more powerful not less. This is however not true at the supra-national regional level. This is because false constructions such as the EU have little legitimacy, institutional power, or even local support.

The disaster of an unnatural and unnecessary currency area does indeed force the idea of a fiscal union and the abolishing of national borders. This is however mere colonialism. The 'core' colonizing the 'periphery' to use Marxist terminology. A cynic might believe that this was the purpose of the Euro currency union all along, as well as hiding debt and entrenching statism. Ever Closer Union, was the EU's motto. Ever greater socialism is the objective.

Fiscal union will not happen and even if it did it would only make things worse not better. The problem with Europe is statism, socialism, the multi-cult cult, Islamic demography and a European culture denuded of any of the concepts which make life interesting including faith; individuality, hard-work, experimentation, private charity and welfare, and higher culture. Europe is a post-modern disaster. Fiscally aligning post modern states into a post modern superstate will result in the annihilation of any hope of a future European Renaissance in faith, culture and the political-economy.

The nomenklatura which manages Europe, including the patriarch of the EU, M. Jacques Delors, are no doubt busy behind the scenes forcing a fiscal union to save their own reputations and historical legacies. Socialism always leads to bankruptcy. A historical lesson lost on the Uber cult of the EU. Delors blames the Germans for not wanting to guarantee an inflation – driven bankruptcy across the EU.....

"Mr Delors was head of the commission from 1985 to 1995 ....He became an object of ridicule in the eurosceptic press. He has admitted that when "Anglo-Saxons" warned a single central bank and currency without a single state would be inherently unstable"they had a point". ...Mr Delors insisted all European countries had to share the blame for the excessive borrowing by countries such as Italy and Greece that have brought the system to the brink of disaster.....However, the 86-year-old singled out Germany for its strict insistence that the European Central Bank must not support debt-stricken members for fear of fuelling inflation.”

Germany and by extension France, is to blame in the eyes of the Eurotechnocracy because GerFrancia won't simply print funny colored paper pieces which parade as money. Nothing like missing the entire point of why Europe is bankrupt.

Europe won't long survive this 'crisis' which has been brewing since 1971 when the gold standard was jettisoned in favor of unbridled Keynesian mysticism and inflationary monetary excess. Some opine that Europe's 'democracy' – which it does not have – will not exist in the future.

Guardian: No Democracy

“The present eulogising of technocracy, of the power of economic technique unsullied by the mob, has always been the harbinger of dictatorship. We should remember how many Britons admired the efficiency of 1930s Germany and lauded Mussolini's trains running on time. Then, too, it was thought unimaginable that Europe would ever go to war. ...

Greece is now talking of a "German protectorate". The technocrat Italian prime minister, Mario Monti, warns his people that "the management of the crisis has suffered from a deficiency of government, and must be overcome with action at a European level". We need not reproduce the Greek magazine's cover of a swastika on the Acropolis to shudder at the phrases "deficiency of government" and "action at a European level". We heard those phrases before.”

Atlantic Council: Inflation if no Fiscal Union

Only after these immediate problems have been resolved can Europe take the longer term steps towards an ever closer political and fiscal union. Or not. These are tough decisions, and politicians might not come up with the right answers. If Europe’s solvency problems cannot be solved through fiscal policy, there is only one other option: inflating away the debts. This might seem a bridge too far for the ECB, but don’t expect them to allow the Eurozone to collapse either. 

FairObserver: A New Europe regardless

“Regardless of what happens, the EU as it we know it today will not survive the next year. The pressures to change are too strong. It will transform into one of three different entities. The first is a hard currency Europe. The second is a soft currency Europe. The third is that the euro zone will survive, but with a smaller number of participating countries clustered around Germany. This too will change the way Europe sees itself, governs itself, and deals with the outside world.”

Europe needs to reinvent itself. Local governance is always best. Citizens controlling their own fiscal and monetary policies is the only method to restrain despotism. A real culture which was developed during the medieval period of European development needs to be reborn. Otherwise Europe will become just another failed experiment in the history of failed socialist and communal regimes.

The cult of the state. A great article on the destruction of the modern nation state at the hands of unfettered and untutored statism. Bankruptcy not only of economics and politics, but of culture.

The following chart brings the numbers into focus (source).  (In 1947, the population of the USA was 148 million.  Today, it's 312 million -- an increase of 111%.)

(*Pensions, Health Care, Education, and Welfare)

While the GDP has increased by a factor of 5.5, spending has increased by 10.5, or nearly double the GDP growth rate.  This means that there is much less money available in the economy for job-creation, business-expansion and wealth-formation.  If in 2011 total government spending had been at 33% of GDP, an additional $1,132 billion, or $1.13 trillion, would have remained in the private economy.

 Highly Recommended: 'The Delinquent Teenager who was mistaken for the World's top Climate Expert'

There are many things wrong with the cult of science and scientism. Climate hysteria is not based on science but activism. We should not make the basic mistakes of believing scientists, nor of conflating activism with scientific enquiry. Rational free-will thought and rationality is assaulted and demeaned by the claim that science is always right, and that activist claims are now scientific fact. Science is never closed, rarely settled and oftentimes contentious.

As Churchill said, those who refuse to change their positions in the face of evidence suffer from the 'hobgoblins of little minds'. Climate fanatics are cult members who will deny reality and suspend science and rationality in their quest to remake the world. A trace chemical and natural gas necessary for life, which comprises a mere 0.4% of total gases is now a criminal element destroying the earth mother. It is ridiculous. At the heart of the GlobaloneyWarming complex and nexus is the Marxist lust for redistribution of wealth; the communal cult desire to control all aspects of life; the ability to tax and regulate ad-infinitum; and the destruction of real science, thinking and free-will. A global government is surely part of the charade. There are zero benefits for anyone, who is not feeding off of this cult scam, except perhaps a moral certitude, a purpose for living and the ability to posture and flick their hair in a show of superiority at various cocktail encounters. Mindlessness one could call it.

Enter Ms. Laframboise, a journalist and one of the few of this harlot-profession who actually does some reporting and analyzing. Journalism's role is now to cheer-lead various socialist-cultural Marxist causes. Gay sex; Islam is peace; GlobaloneyWarming; economic socialism; Great Man-Obama worship; the illegality and criminality of European culture [and of whites in general] etc. etc. Whatever the mainstream media reports the opposite is usually true. So it goes with the ClimateBaloney hysteria.

This book should be read by anyone who still values the ability to think and rationalize. Do humans really know anything about climate? Of the one million variables in climate is a natural occurring trace chemical needed by flora really causing hurricanes and climate variations ? Who are these 'scientists' ? Are activists on the IPCC-UN really scientists ? Where are the data models, logic, algorithms, testing, source information, assumptions and mathematics behind the UN's models ? Why aren't they available for review ? Is a cult which tells you that you are too stupid to understand climate to be trusted ? Aren't claims to kill off 30% of humans premised on secret meetings, database models, and outputs a little extreme ?

This book will make you angry and upset. You will learn that the entire IPCC process is a sham; that the activist acolytes who pretend to be scientists hold you in utter contempt; that the UN believes that the mass of humanity is stupid; and that the global powers behind the cult movement want to empty northern 'richer' country treasuries of some $37 Trillion and transfer the guilt money to the 'poorer' states for various reasons – none of them having anything to do with science.

Activism is now called science:

• 28 out of 44 chapters (two-thirds) included at least one individual affiliated with the WWF

• 100% of the WG2 chapters included at least 1 WWF affiliated scientist

• 15 out of 44 chapters (one-third) were led (coordinating lead authors) by WWF-affiliated scientists

It is political:

“Honestly. The IPCC was established by politicians, its experts are selected by politicians, and its conclusions are negotiated by politicians.  A predetermined political agenda has been part of the landscape for the past 20 years. For [anyone] to whine that people who disagree with the IPCC are motivated by politics is the equivalent of someone who has lived by the sword complaining that they might die by it.”

“Their overarching message has been that this doesn’t touch the science, that the basic premise that human beings are altering the climate in dangerous  ways remains unchallenged.  I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I hear this argument.  What it conveniently ignores is that we’ve been told for years that the reason we should believe in human-caused climate change is because an elaborate and reliable IPCC process had examined matters and pronounced it a genuine and pressing problem. . . We’ve been urged to believe in the end result because the IPCC’s process is itself trustworthy.”

“What does all this tell us?  It says the IPCC process is broken. It says the verdict that humans are responsible for causing dangerous climate change cannot stand.  A new trial must be held.”

“The real moral of this story is that scientists are merely human.  They can be as short-sighted and as political and as dishonorable as the rest of us.”

There is no peer review:

“What goes on at the IPCC is not peer review as that term is normally understood . . . To sum up, the IPCC is inordinately proud of its review process. It expects us to be impressed by how many people are involved and by how many comments it receives and addresses.  But this process is fatally flawed.  It is not independent.  It is easily short-circuited and circumvented.  Nothing about it measures up to academic peer review.”

Regarding the impact of the IAC review of the IPCC:  “Pachauri lingers, the flagging rule [of non peer reviewed papers] has vanished, and real action on conflict-of-interest has been pushed well into the future.  [While the IPCC has established the new Executive Committee] there’s just one problem.  While the IAC report said it should contain three independent voices, including people from outside the climate community, the IPCC thumbed its nose at that  advice . . . instead gave four of its fulltime staff members seats at the table.”

IPCC does not allow dissent:

“It would appear that the relationship the IPCC has with its expert reviewers borders on the abusive.  First it asks these people to volunteer their time in good faith.  Then it gives its authors the right to dismiss their input with nothing more than a single word:  ”rejected.”  While expert reviewers are expected to comply with the IPCC’s deadlines, this organization feels no need to respect such deadlines itself.  Instead, it nonchalantly adds in, after the fact, arguments and source materials these reviewers had no opportunity to asses.”

“People who know people at the IPCC have their yet-to-be-published work taken into account, but researchers without these sorts of connections are out of luck.”

“But a problem surely arises when journals are run by IPCC insiders themselves.”

 IPCC activists writing in Journals then using their own work as 'proof':

“This is a circular, incestuous process.  Scientists make decisions as journal editors about what qualifies as peer-reviewed literature.  They then cite the same papers they themselves played midwife to while serving as IPCC authors.”

“What’s happened here is that the cart was put before the horse.  The UN didn’t wait around for climate science to mature.  They’d already decided that human-generated emissions were dangerous. Back in 1992, 154 nations endorsed this premature conclusion when they became signatories to the UNFCCC. . . The fourth edition of the Climate Bible, which contains the strongest yet still speculative and qualified language, appeared 15 years later.”

“One day the IPCC may come to be seen as a textbook case of how badly things can go wrong when political amateurs are recruited and manipulated by UN-grade political operatives.”

[The] IPCC doesn’t write scientific reports for their own sake.  Those scientists are there for a purpose.  That purpose is to produce material useful to the UNFCCC.

Pachauri the IPCC chief since 2002 is an activist:

“I am not going to rest easy until I have articulated in every possible form the need to bring about major structural changes in economic growth and development.  That’s the real issue.  Climate change is just a part of it.”

“A grotesque aspect of the malaria issue is that anyone who truly cares about this disease need not concern themselves with global warming.  A world that can’t rouse itself to do more about today’s malaria victims surely has no business using theoretical, sometime-in-the-future victims as ammunition in the climate debate.”

“The claim that 20-30% of the Earth’s species are at risk of extinction has been a hallmark of Pachauri’s speeches . . .  [That chapter] depends almost entirely on a single, highly questionable piece of research. . . five out of 10 of this chapter’s most senior personnel have a formal documented link to the World Wildlife Fund.  There is no way to know which sections of this IPCC chapter represent the opinions of scientists who’ve jumped into bed with the WWF and which sections are . . . scientifically sound.”

 Hockey Stick is junk:

“The essential point here is that the IPCC aggressively promoted a graph that had been produced by a young scientist who’d just been awarded his Ph.D.  Even though that graph overturned decades of scholarship, even though it negated a widespread consensus about what the temperature record of the past 1,000 years looked like, the IPCC didn’t bother to verify its accuracy.”

There is much much more that I will post later.

The take away is this. The IPCC-UN ClimateBaloney is not premised on science. There is no human induced GlobaloneyWarming for a whole variety of reasons, one being that there are 1 million variables in 'climate' and models can't possible 'model' that complexity. Ask anyone in technology. It is an activist agenda, sold by humans who have every vested interest in its success. There is money, power, reputations, guaranteed funding and fame all at stake. Globaloneywarming is a human created hysteria, assaulting rationality, free-will and civilisation. Like other cults – National Socialism, Islam, Great Man worship – it is a sick diabolical demonic theology, ultimately dedicated to destroying the human. 

Bankruptcy is bankruptcy. There is no magical cure. You can't print money forever. Issuing bonds against escalating interest rates is a short term, not a long term method of cash flow sustenance. Rhetoric and torturing words into meaningless phrases and platitudes will only soothe 'the market' for so long. Europe owes 5-8 times its economic weight in total liabilities. The game is up. So what now?

Ever closer Continental Communism. The communal project which was always a political idea, will use the issue of bankruptcy to erase European national identities. Charlemagne's central European empire married to that of the Hapsburg and perhaps the Roman. The main thrust of the EU has always been not-so-benign socialist tyranny. Bankruptcy is a means to an end.

  "Where is it leading? ...Germany is pushing to change the EU treaty. They want the ability to sue in the 

European Court of Justice any countries that break EU budget rules. All of this is a follow up to a proposal made by the European Commission last Wednesday. They want the power to approve EU zone national budgets–before they are submitted to the national parliaments. 

What does it mean? At the very least it means that economic decisions made by national parliaments will be rendered meaningless. They either get it “right,” or they get sued. ...That may be the entire point of this latest exercise. Certain nations (read Greece and Italy at the present time) may be faced with a “lesser of two evils” choice: an effective loss of national sovereignty, but the ability to continue borrowing from the ECB, or independence–and national bankruptcy.

A fiscal merger of bankrupted states including the parlous finances of France and Germany won't save the Euro. It will save the stock markets for a while which will rise on the 'certain knowledge' that Europe has 'resolved its crisis'. Fiscal union of EU states is akin to putting blind destitute drunks together as a club of savers. A few pennies clang into the pot to be mismanaged by the same cast of unscrupulous corrupt technocratic characters who feel they rule the world and deserve divine-right rule over the untrodden, black-faced, dirty masses.

Europe has a two track solution. More union and begging others for help:

So the great escape for Europe is to set up an off the balance fund a la Enron; beg the Brazilians and Chinese to buy some bonds; leverage up another $ 1 Trillion in Euro debt; and hope that 'private' capital will come back. Pray tell what solutions are resolving the systemic liabilities of Old Europe. What ideas are being implemented to lessen ossified corrupted markets, capital restrictions, labor inflexibility, too much spending, and a culture against all change and reform?

No reforms of course. The Euro will be a ZEuro. The details will be messy but the end result is assured.