"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 'experts' said that Greece did not matter. These apologists cited Greece's small economy, 10 million population [1/3 the size of Beijing]; and its peripheral nature to the German dominated Euro bloc. So much for being experts. In 18 months the Euro has fallen from $1.46 to $1.28. This is just the beginning of the Euro's path to being a Zeuro. No 'expert' today can make a coherent argument as to why the Euro is worth more than the US dollar. European per capita income, living standards and assets per household are 30% less than in the US. The Americans have their own bankruptcy issues of course. But the game is further along in communal Europe. In the Euro zone of 17 disparate states with little in common, real debt levels are well above the government stated ratios of 90-130% of GDP. If you add in the $1 Trillion plus in promises to bail out Greece, Spanish banks and Franco-German banks with poor assets in Spain and Italy, the average debt to GDP ratio is well above 150% - even for France and Germany.

So Greece did matter. The big brains were wrong. This bankrupted state, which lied to get into the Euro-zone to hide its debts under a DM-Euro currency union, and to receive monies from European 'Stabilization Funds'; was apparently not big enough to matter. Or, as the Keynesians argue, it has not received enough 'fiscal stimulus' from the Franco-German core, itself a collection of 2 nations verging on insolvency. The fact that Greece will exit the Euro currency bloc is simply a foretaste of more to come. First Greece, then eventually France. The road to the Zeuro passes through Madrid and Rome, but terminates in gay Paris.

The only way to 'hold' the fixed exchange rate disaster which is the Euro 17, is to literally print $3 Trillion to $5 Trillion Euros. A fantastic sum. The ECB will have to print this much money to 'save' Greece [$250 billion]; Spanish banks [$500 billion]; Italian banks [$500 billion] and Franco-German banks with exposure to non-performing assets in Spain, Italy and Eastern Europe [$1 Trillion at least]. Along with financing Greece, and various national banks, the ECB will have to print money to replace lost fiscal power, or to substitute for the inability of Euro governments to go to debt markets and sell their bonds at high rates of interest to fund their extravagant socialist paradises.

This gap in 'funding' the socialist welfare nirvana in the core Euro countries is easily $1 Trillion over the next few years. The Euro 17 spends $6.5 Trillion per annum, or 55% of total GDP. The ECB is going to have to print money; give it to the banks; who will then in turn 'lend' it to national governments. This process has been going on of course for 20 years. This is why Europe is in such a mess. So the smart people will answer that more of what fails needs to be tried [maybe with a little more emotion and rhetoric]. Clever words will be used to categorize this fraud such as 'quantitative easing', or 'economic stimulus creation'. Little pieces of pretty coloured paper untethered to a metallic standard will at some point in time, become worthless.

Four questions remain about the Zeuro zone.

How long will it hold together ?

How many trillions of Euros will be printed ?

What will the real inflation rate be ?

What are the real-world consequences from this failed experiment at political and monetary socialism ?

Greece will be forced to exit the Zeuro zone. Spain will be next. Why ?Spain has $332 billion of liabilities to the Euro central bank [ECB], $125 billion already committed to the Euro-stabilization fund, and another $99 billion for the wonderfully named 'Macro Financial Asset Fund', and various guarantees for other bank and European funds, all of which totals over $600 billion. Spain's public debt-to-GDP ratio is only 69%, but add in these other guarantees and commitments and the real number is well over 130%. This is before the needed bailouts of their banks. If Greece is bankrupt what is Spain?

France's 'official' debt-to-GDP is 86%; but as with Spain, when you include France's commitments to the ECB, the ESFS, ESM, EIB and other programs, the number is about 150%. Besides these transnational and financial supports, the French state is a committed socialist construct with welfare, transfers, agro supports, pensions and public spending to buy votes and produce obedient knaves that consume 56% of GDP. There is no chance of 'austerity' or spending cuts within France, especially with Hollande and the far left radicals [in post-moderm terms these are now called 'centrists'], in power. The French have not balanced a budget since 1974. It is highly unlikely that a higher tax and spending regime under Hollande will acquaint itself with fiscal and market reality. Borrowing costs in France will rise, putting more pressure on the Euro. The Economist recently wrote:

"...France has not balanced its books since 1974. Public debt stands at 90% of GDP and rising. Public spending, at 56% of GDP, gobbles up a bigger chunk of output than in any other euro-zone country – more even than in Sweden. The banks are under-capitalized. Unemployment is higher than at any time since the late 1990s and has not fallen below 7% in nearly 30 years, creating chronic joblessness in the crime-ridden banlieues that ring France's big cities. Exports are stagnating while they roar ahead in Germany. France now has the euro zone's largest current-account deficit in nominal terms. Perhaps France could live on credit before the financial crisis, when borrowing was easy. Not anymore. Indeed, a sluggish and unreformed France might even find itself at the center of the next euro crisis."

If Spain defaults on its debt or on its obligations to the sundry Euro bailout funds; or cannot bail out its banks without massive [read $500 billion or more] of freshly printed beautiful pieces of paper [which some call money]; then we will see French banks default. Not only is the socialist political-economy of France unsustainable and insidious, but the entire nexus of government and banking, a cozy relationship full of corruption, greasy palms and political settlements, will unravel. When it does happen the Euro will be dead.

The 'crisis' in Europe is just beginning. In 2013 many states have to roll over sizeable amounts of debt. Depending on what happens in Spain the interest rates for this debt must rise and do so considerably. Nations like France can ill afford more interest payments and will be squeezed. One should not expect any austerity worth the name in France or Spain. In Euro-Janus-face speak, austerity means 1-2% of GDP in spending cuts. What the Euro states need is 20-30% reductions in spending and flatter, more intelligent tax structures to attract capital and jobs. It will never happen. The only question for the Euro is when does it die ? What year will it be buried ? That is the only debate.

In America vs. Europe, the potentially destructive nature of the Euro-zone was summarized:

“With declining productivity, government control of the economy has increased during the past 10 years. The average share of government tax revenues as a % of GDP is just over 50% throughout the EU. This does not include regulatory costs...Fiscal imprudence, rising government control, labour and market rigidity and manipulation of treaty obligations are serious issues that point out the need for liberalization within the EU.” [p. 174-5]

Since this was written things have gotten a lot worse. The EU and its subset, the Euro-17 nation currency union, has been without question, a signal failure. Why is this so? Let's look at the Euro and list 3 obvious reasons why it has failed:

1. The Euro was in part the attempt by Germany to guarantee her exports under an Euro-DM currency. Since the inception of the Euro German exports have risen by 80% in 10 years. It has not stimulated, however, economic development in the other Euro states.

2. The Euro raised prices across Europe through artificially over-stating a fixed rate between national currencies and the DM [or Euro]. This has raised wages, production and consumer costs across the Euro 17, depressing competitiveness, innovation and business activity. Unit Labour costs in Europe 2000-2012

3. The Euro was not only a political project, but also a means to hide national debts behind a DM backed supra-national currency. Governments ignored the Maastricht criteria on deficits and debt to GDP. They have merrily spent as much as they wished to buy votes and socially engineer their Euro paradises believing that the DM [read Euro] financier [namely Germany], would bail them out.

The Euro inflicted the worst of fiscal and monetary moral hazard on European citizens and businesses. It has allowed governments to lie about deficits and debts, and not even mention off the balance sheet liabilities which total some $100 Trillion. It did nothing to force reforms in the distorted and corrupted practices of government, big labour groups and unions whose power blocks capital and job formation. The nexus of big governments, unions and corporations is alive and well and even flourishing as never before. No reforms in labour practices or in capital markets have been seen since the advent of the Euro. No structural changes have occurred in the past 10 years.

The Euro simply entrenched and deepened the European fetish for socialism and state power. It will lead to bankruptcy and the dissolution of an unnatural currency area, in which disparate nation states do not share common monetary, fiscal, trade, labour or capital cycles and flows. In following the Euro 'crisis' the media will of course focus on 'left' vs 'right', and 'austerity' [of which there is very little] versus 'stability'. 'Radical' reforms will be juxtaposed against 'moderate', 'balanced' plans to address Europe's debt bomb. Odes to Europe needing 'bazookas', 'more firepower' and 'overwhelming force' to deal with its inevitable fiscal implosion will tantalize these mainstream media 'experts'.

Of course these mavens of analysis will completely miss reality and the relevancy of facts. The Euro is unnatural; it has created massive moral hazard; it defies economic logic; it is ultimately un-democratic; and it will certainly fail. The Euro dream of supplanting the US$ and becoming the world's reserve currency, and giving European 'soft power', hard economic leverage is a shambles and will be shelved within 5 years.

 Ms Moczar is an American professor of Medieval history and a practising Catholic. For over 30 years she has had to fight against both anti-Church [read anti-Catholic] bigotry within academia and the classroom and the categorization and depiction of the Middle Ages as some mindless 'Dark Age'. As with 'Global Warming' such ideas are 'settled science', even if they are spectacularly wrong and insipid. But then again Aristotle's 'vitalism' in which life forms just spontaneously appear was 'consensus science' for 2000 years.

This short book at 190 pages, is a good summary of the 7 great lies often told against the Catholic Church. Anyone interested in the Church, or in knowing the real story behind the lies needs to read this book. These 7 myths pervade our culture and educational systems, but they are premised not on facts, but fancies and sometimes, open bigotry. Voltaire's musings that Gothic Cathedrals could only have been built by uncivilized Gothic tribes after Rome's non-existent 'fall', and that nothing before the age of Descartes mattered until one ran into the late Roman empire; has about as much connection to reality as a trace chemical causing climate catastrophe. The Middle Ages were anything but dark and ignorant. Indeed compared to the proliferation of cults today they might appear to be profoundly enlightened. But as with many good lies Voltaire's ignorance gets transformed into fact.

Moczar compiles and refutes the 7 most egregious and obvious lies about the Catholic Church which are:

1. The Dark Ages

2. The Church as the enemy of progress

3. The Crusades as all bad

4. The Inquisition

5. The Church against Galileo

6. The Corrupted Church

7. The Church as the destroyer of the Ameri-Indians

An infamous lie is of course the 'trial' and non-torture of Galileo:

“That brief episode in 1633 has become both legendary and infamous....St. Robert Bellarmine, cardinal and friend of the Galileo's, had made it clear that since the astronomer's theory had not been proven to be true, it must be held only as a theory....Why did the Church go to such lengths to obtain a retraction from Galileo?....the public mocking of the Pope, in the Dialogue that Galileo had published in 1632...the blanket discrediting of scientific...authorities such as Aristotle, whose thought contained much that was valuable for Christian scholarship; the possibility that there existed some alternative theory...Galileo's theory included erroneous details...” [p. 109-12]

Galileo's 'trial' was a quick affair with 4 people attending and after he signed his retraction he went back to live comfortably at his Tuscan villa working happily until his death on physics.  

There are plenty more lies about the Catholic Church of course, but Moczar is writing a short summation, not an Encyclopedia. We know that the Dark Ages were remote but hardly barbaric. There was a contraction in Europe beginning with the Moslem invasions of the Mediterranean in 632 AD, which cut off the Mare Nostrum from Eastern trade routes and supplies of materials, including that of Papyrus. The 'Dark Age' may have lasted from the Moslem takeover and destruction of civilized Visigothic Spain to about 900 AD or some 200 years. Indeed the socio-economic progress post the Moslem invasions of the 8^th and 9^th centuries, and that of the Vikings and Avars in the 9^th and 10^th centuries are staggering. Rationality flourished as did technological progress. This says nothing – as Moczar explains – of the artistic, literary, and educational developments during this period. Everything from hospitals [5^th century Monkish inventions], to university curricula and advance agro-production were invented in the supposed Dark Ages.

Moczar explains the above and makes some key points in dismissing the other lies about the Catholic Church, including the incredibly ignorant premise that the Church held back development in Europe. Without the Church of course, there would not have been a European civilization worthy of that name, nor would Europe have conquered the world. Some facts presented by Moczar:

-Early Churchmen encouraged the development of both religious and secular learning

-The Church created the first public school system in the world in late Roman antiquity

-Convents and monasteries establish nurseries, orphanages, and libraries starting from the 4^th century.

-The Church defended both religious and secular freedoms and academic inquiry into irreligious subjects.

-Examples of medieval scholarship “would fill volumes.” Indeed the list of thinkers, tinkerers, scientists and innovators is huge.

-The 'Thomistic' method dating from the 12^th century and premised on the rationalist faith of St. Thomas was 'the real cause of the scientific breakthrough', developed by Roger Bacon, Francis Bacon, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Descartes.

-Church 'philosophers' maintained since the time of Augustine that the highest faculty of the soul was the intellect and that truth was an artifact of divine creation. Faith is only achieved by rationality.

-As trade developed the Church dropped its opposition to charging interest on loans or making a healthy profit. The ban on usury was adopted in a localized-agriculturally-based economic age. As manufactures and commerce spread out from localities to the international market, the charging of interest and profit became accepted by the Church by the 11^th century.

-Medieval Guilds established a welfare state with payments for sick days, hospital visits, and even death benefits for families.

-The Crusades in many ways saved Europe. See here for more details.

-The Church never forced conversions – except in the cases of Moslems and Jews in Iberia and that policy was enacted for good historical reason, namely the former destruction of Visigothic Christian and quite superior [to anything the Moslems built in Spain] Christian culture by the Moors along with their Jewish helpers.

-The Inquisition was a state policy, not a Church policy. The Church turned over 'heretics', or those who were creating social discord including acts of treason, to the secular state. It was the state which 'burned' those found guilty, though most people convicted of social malfeasance were let go, or given light prison terms. Torture was not use by the Church to exact confessions – contrary to Hollywood portrayals.

-Some of the 'Inquisition' was appropriate in that 'dualism' or the embracing of death [to free the soul] as coveted by the Albigensians became serious cults of sociopathy and carnage. Babies were starved to death for example in order to free the soul from the chains of materialism.

-During the 16^th century the Spanish Inquisition executed less than 2 people a year on average or about 170 in total. This is 1/10 the number of young Moslem girls who are killed each year in dis-honour killings by Moslem families.

-The burning of Witches was mostly a Protestant reaction consuming 10.000 men and women during the 'Enlightenment' period, and mostly along the Rhine area.

-Copernicus, Kepler, Brahe and even Galileo were all funded by the Church. All of them were men of faith.

-Cortes and the Spaniards outlawed the slavery of Indians by 1538. La Casa and other church leaders established natural law rights and private property rights for Indians in the New World.

-By 1540 in the New World printing presses, hospitals and even public schools for Indians had been set up.

-There is little doubt that the Indians were better off under Catholic rule, than Protestant.

There is of course much more. But the above is a good sample of what Moczar offers. The anti-Catholic bigotry which pervades most of the modern world, is a product of course, largely of Protestant initiated slander and misrepresentation. There are many reasons for this including the rather extreme positioning of Luther and the Reformation; the anti-Spanish nature of English Protestant writers; the need for many in both the Protestant and secular realms to defame the Church for both religious and political reasons; and perhaps the attempt to rewrite history by modern Marxists and the cult of science [scientism] to cast any metaphysical project [excepting Islam usually], in the worst light possible viz a viz rationality, progress and 'progressive thinking'.

Keep in mind that today's world is beset by cults – the cult of warm, the cult of homosexuality, the cult of narcissism, the cult of science explaining 'all', the cult worship of the state, the cult of relativity and so on. Slandering the Church might make people feel emotionally satisfied but misrepresenting reality is hardly a sign post of rationality and intelligence. It is bigotry and myth-making. That is all it is. A good book and a great read for anyone interested in the reality of the Catholic Church and how it bequeathed – at least in part – the modern world to our present age.

Copied with permission.  Old, indebted, state ridden Japan, US and Europe.  Hungry, ambitious and energetic China, India and Brazil. 

Next we have a chart shared with us by Niall Ferguson, showing how the US and Japan (and to some extent Germany) have seen their share of world GDP fall relative to China and India. He argued (as did several speakers) that the relative growth in the world is moving from Europe, Japan, and the US to the emerging markets. This is estimated data through 2016 from the IMF.

The following chart is also from Niall and shows gross government debt-to-GDP. This may be difficult if you are not looking in color, but the US (when all debt is counted) does not look all that much better than some of the problem countries in Europe.

"We are monitoring the BROAD rise in Youth Unemployment Rates, across the EU (this March, versus March of last year):

--- Bulgaria ... 32.8% ... up from 26.7%
--- Portugal ... 36.1% ... up from 27.6%
--- Denmark ... 15.1% ... up from 13.7%
--- Ireland ... 30.3% ... up from 28.7%
--- Cyprus ... 28.8% ... up from 18.8%
--- Hungary ... 28.8% ... up from 25.4%
--- Netherlands ... 9.3% ... up from 6.9%
--- Poland ... 26.7% ... up from 25.7%
--- Slovenia ... 16.5% ... up from 16.3%

"The Summer of 2012 could easily become the Summer of Social Dissent in the EU..."

There is no austerity going on in Europe. The 'cuts' to public spending are a piffle compared to total GDP, or total spending. They are fiddling at the margins. The spending 'reductions' and tepid 'reforms' are so laughable that only the media could call them austerity.

austerity [ɒˈstɛrɪtɪ]

n pl -ties

1. the state or quality of being austere

2. (often plural) an austere habit, practice, or act

3. (Economics)

a.  reduced availability of luxuries and consumer goods, esp when brought about by government policy

b.  (as modifier) an austerity budget

Perhaps given the above definition of 'austerity', which is the reduction of goods provided by a government, the Europeans are in the desperate throes of 'austerity'. Woe betide anyone who actually wants to seriously reduce government however. The Euros are fiddling at the margins of their massive welfare state, with various 'austerity' packages amounting to less than 1% of GDP. Consider these facts:

Total 17 Euro Nation GDP: U$12.5 Trillion

Total 17 Euro Nation Government Spending: 51 % of GDP or U$ 6.4 Trillion

Total 17 Euro Nation 'Austerity': Billions US$: less than 60 billion or .9% of total spend.

These massive Euro cuts, which are 'destroying' the fabric of European society are certainly, in-toto, less than $100 Billion USD, juxtaposed against the Leviathan spending of some $6.4 Trillion! What austerity exactly is the media chattering about?

In Spain rioting over not much:

“Spain is bracing for a series of demonstrations against austerity and labor-market reforms this week, including May Day rallies on Tuesday and potential marches in Barcelona on Thursday, when the European Central Bank holds its governing-council meeting in Spain's second-largest city. The Spanish government has imposed border checks in case activists try to disrupt the ECB meeting.”

What huge, dislocating 'reforms' and cuts are the Spanish unhappy about?:

“Spain's government continues to push its austerity program. On Monday, a top Spanish official said the government will seek an additional €10 billion ($13 billion) in spending cuts from regional and local governments, bringing the total to €20 billion this year. The measures, which include lower spending on public services such as health care and education, are part of a broader package of painful cuts already stirring a public outcry amid surging unemployment.”

Wow!

The Spanish economy's GDP is U$1.5 Trillion. So a $20 billion cut equals an unbelievably painful and offensive 'cut' of 1.3% of GDP or 2.6 % of total government spend. Zowie. Spaniards are rioting over cuts – many proposed not implemented – equalling 20% of the amount of fraud that they wasted on solar panel firms and installations, a program since disbanded. The Spanish will happily expend $100 billion on green tech corruption, but riot in the streets over 'austerity' totalling next to nothing and not affecting their balance sheet whatsoever.

The situation in Greece is similar. A population of 10 million has about $500 billion in declared national debt, probably far less than what it really has in debts and exclusive of off-the-balance-debt which the good politicians in the interests of the children's future never mention. Greece's 'austerity reform' and 'massive cuts' total $5 billion or next to nothing for an economy of $350 billion. The BBC:

“The austerity measures include: 15,000 public-sector job cuts, liberalisation of labour laws, lowering the minimum wage by 20% from 751 euros a month to 600 euros...”

 Wow, what austerity. Relieving the job-killing burdens of over-regulation in the labor market? Positively neo-con. Lowering the minimum wage which if too high, will force employers not to hire lower-skilled workers. Positively right-wing. Firing a small fraction of those hard-working unionized bureaucrats who retire at age 52. Positively fascist or evangelical, or both.

 Nothing illustrates the myopia and dystopia of public discourse, media misinformation and Euro-zone socialism better than discussing Europe's 'austerity'. What austerity? Without reforms to to the tax system, labour and capital markets, the Euro-zone will simply fade into irrelevancy and the Euro itself will be disbanded.

The first part of the book reviewed here, outlining 'pre-Socratic' philosophy is quite enjoyable. The second part of this 431 page opus is not nearly as good. From Socrates down to Aristotle – difficult men to understand to be sure – the text is too dense and littered with abstruse howlers aimed at Christianity, intended to debase 'religion', but which only serve to depreciate his own work. The intended audience is the layman, and in that regard the philosophies of ancient Greece from the 5^th to 3^rd centuries need to be simplified and presented in less detail. At times it is quite hard to follow the complexity of discussion. The author is certainly knowledgeable and has the ability to get to the heart of what these men have 'invented' and what they are trying to say; yet at times he engaged in an awful amount of verbal gymnastics to get to the point.

Gottlieb is obviously a 'scientist' in the sense that he believes philosophy and science are entwined. At one point he mentions that science and philosophy may have parted ways in the 6^th century BC [Pythagoras]; or perhaps post-Socrates [4^th c. BC]; or maybe even as late as the 17^th century AD [the so-called, self-proclaimed 'Enlightenment']. It is clear that this philosopher feels that both science and philosophy are self-reinforcing. In that vein Gottlieb is clearly part of 'scientism', the cult of which maintains that science can and will explain everything and that any philosophizing to the contrary is the hobgoblins of little Christian minds, medieval, dark and superstitious.

This constantly reiterated theme becomes boring and dogmatic, denigrating both his work and the reader. It reminds me of a book medievalist Cantor wrote, in which he ranted about the invasion of Iraq in 2003 by his personal bete-noir, the liberal anti-Christ G.W. Bush. Such references and personal animosity have no place in a work on the Middle Ages. Gottlieb falls into the same trap. At the very least his jihad against 'faith' is unbalanced and certainly not evenly or intelligently discussed. Science can't explain everything, it never has. 'Evolution' is valid but does not explain the world at large in-toto – in many ways it is still a theory waiting to be proved. Inanimate material cannot become animate. Single cells cannot self-produce to become multi-cell. Life-forms have appeared and disappeared en-masse [many more time than just the extinction of the dinosaurs]. Hard-core atheists like Anthony Flynn studied science and converted to the Church on the premise that rationality and reason could only point to Plato's 'master craftsman', or Newton's 'watchmaker'. Science can be as much of a cult as any pagan construct.

Gottlieb relates the story of Aristotle's 'settled science' which was a 'consensus' for 2000 years that all smart people subscribed to. This was of course the theory of self-generation, or the idea that life just appears when it wants to. Aristotle called this 'vitalism'. This mystical theory of self-propagation was accepted by all 'scientists' and philosophers until the 19^th century when thanks to Pasteur and others who studied and experimented with germs and the genesis of disease, it was demolished as physically impossible. So much for consensus science. A fact to be kept in mind when the faithful of the cult of GlobaloneyWarming invoke 'science' in their case. Ask them for their source data, their models, their inputs, their calculations and experimental proof and ask them why a trace chemical emitted by the earth mother would affect anything. Activists are not scientists and neither are philosophers like Gottlieb though such people like to hide under the cult brand of scientism.

Gottlieb's main error is to assume that the 'Church' was hostile to science or inquiry. This is bunk. The Church funded most of the main scientific work of the Middle Ages including the work of Galileo whose astronomy was not novel, [he got it from Copernicus who was also funded in total, by the Church] and whose trial is largely a myth [4 people were at the trial and it amounted to Galileo signing a paper that he would stop attacking the person of the Pope in his missives]. When philosophers such as Gottlieb drenched in their own theology – that of scientism – go outside the boundaries of their domain knowledge, they go from a higher purpose [a truly remarkable compendium of ancient philosophers and their ideas] to the basely stupid and ignorant. Christianity as a theology is not 'afraid' of science, anymore than Christian scientists from Roger Bacon, to Copernicus, to Harvey were afraid of 'science'. The great age of 'Reason' was developed in the Middle Ages. It is only ignoramuses during the 'Enlightenment' era, in which secular witch-burnings were common [10.000 dead mostly along the Rhine area]; who labelled everything before as dark; and who bowed down like simpletons to all things 'classical' and ancient. Gottlieb's mistake and one which is a serious weakness in this book, is that the gratuitous attacks on Christianity reveal more about his own shortcomings and lack of knowledge, than anything else. They also have absolutely nothing to do with the topic he is writing about.

Some fatuous phrases include:

“God of Genesis. Reading Plato without biblical blinkers, we can see that this requited plenty of imaginative interpretations; but the Christians were happy to provide it. The main differences between Plato's God and the biblical one are these: his God is not the most important thing in the universe...he is not the only God but has many assistants; his is not omnipotent...” p. 204

This is called polytheism, Christianity is called a monotheism...

“Kant pointed out three drawbacks of such attempts to pull a Christian rabbit out of a celestial hat. First, much of the apparent harmony of nature follows necessarily from the laws of matter; so any Being offering further 'counsel and dominion', is....redundant...Secondly, seeing nature primarily in terms of the purposes of an intelligent being can make scientific inquiry lazy....it might point to a Master-Craftsman who has organized pre-existing matter, but it cannot reach further...” p. 205

Christianity embraces natural law and the development of nature as proof of a divine essence, and far from making people lazy, it was only in Christian Europe that the principles of scientific inquiry were implemented and developed. Nowhere else in history do they make an appearance.

“...in the seventeenth century, William Harvey [a practising Christian] attributed his discovery of the circulation of the blood to his belief in the intelligent design of the human body....[his] hunch paid off, so the Master-Craftsman with his rational designs has had his uses, even if he is in fact non-existent.” [p. 217]

And what have the 'evolutionists' ever discovered in the areas of science, math and medicine ? And on what authority and with what proof do we know that Harvey's inspiration does not exist? Gottlieb's musings and his hatred of anything opposed to the cult of science?

“Darwinian natural selection does indeed show how it is unnecessary to postulate any sort of God, or occult mechanism...” p. 235

Christianity is not occult but rational. Faith can only be achieved by applying reason. Scientism requires blind faith. Gottlieb must surely know that huge gaps exist in Darwin's theory, a fact borne out by Darwin himself who said that his findings were contradicted in part by the geological record. His theory also does not answer the origin of life question, something that science has no explanation for, unless you believe that dead matter springs into life-matter.

“From the point of view of an especially narrow-minded and conservative Christian living in the later Middle Ages, that might be a fair summary of some of Aristotle's effects on Western thought..before Christianity found ways to assimilate them, they were viewed with suspicion and sometimes banned.” p. 279

This is simply a lie. Christianity debated Aristotle long before the 12^th century. From the 4^th century AD onwards there are numerous Christian thinkers who melded parts of Aristotle and Plato into theology. These works were never banned and Gottlieb offers no proof that they were. He simply dismisses Christian scholaticism as some expression of the 'occult'. In fact one can list hundreds of Christian rationalists who merged ancient philosophy into Church doctrine. Moslems can point to at most 2 such individuals. Other mysticisms have few if any intellects who attempted the same.

There is a lot of utility in this book. The section on the Epicureans, Stoics and Sceptics for instance is particularly interesting in that the influences of all 3 are still with us today. But the constant and rather idiotic refrains against Christian theology, about which the author has little knowledge, detracts from the worth of the entire effort. Instead of promulgating his cult of scientism in which Darwin explains all [or that rationality is the only reality, which it clearly is not]; the author would have produced a truly exceptional and important summary of philosophy, if he had only stayed in the domain of objective philosophy. Scientism promulgated as a model to explain everything is not only rationally deficient it must leave its adherents somewhat cold, lifeless and bigoted.

 [Carried on from another article]

Churchill's 1937 essay "This Age of Government by Great Dictators" is a meditation on political change. It is an essay of sweeping historical breadth, telling a tale that begins with early European history, where kings were granted a power sufficient to remedy the defects of an earlier, chaotic age and were elevated to an almost godlike status. While this was an improvement on anarchy, the accidents of individual birth and character were unstable foundations on which to risk the fortunes of nations: "At one period Pericles or Augustus, at another Draco or Caligula!"

Once society was set on a firm footing, various kinds of constitutions were invented to restrain the excesses of kings. This idea took special hold in Britain:

[T]his doctrine of averaging risks by means of constitutions, and of keeping kings without returning to anarchy, became deeply ingrained in the people of a small island amid the northern mists who seemed to have a genius for common sense. Out of it arose by many painful processes the famous English Parliamentary system and constitutional monarchy.

Pomp and power were separated, and power underwent division and subdivision, ensuring the rule of law rather than whim. These ideas spread across the globe to the great benefit of mankind; the political forms and institutions to which they gave rise varied, but the fundamental conceptions remained the root from which civilization flourished and spread:

The English conception, wrought by the island nobility from the Magna Charta to the age of Anne, spread over wide portions of the globe. The forms were often varied, but the idea was the same. Sometimes, as in the United States, through historical incidents, an elected functionary replaced the hereditary king, but the idea of the separation of powers between the executive, the assemblies and the courts of law widely spread throughout the world in what we must regard as the great days of the nineteenth century.¹⁹

The point of "This Age of Government by Great Dictators" is to convey a warning. The story Churchill tells does not end with the "great days of the nineteenth century" in which the continued progress of the world seemed assured. It was just when the progressive faith was at its greatest, when the illusion of mastery over the fortunes of man had taken on its most vibrant hues, that hopes failed:

"Then came terrible wars shattering great empires, laying nations low, sweeping away old institutions and ideas with a scourge of molten steel."

The 20th century did not live up to the promise of progress. The world now learned (or re-learned what had been forgotten) that political change does not necessarily follow any consistent direction. The 19th century thinkers had pinned their hopes on the spread of democratic institutions and principles, believing that, once built, their temples would stand forever; but their mistake was soon to be revealed. Churchill points out that democratic regimes are as subject to degradation as any other because they, like other political forms, carry their own dangers with them:

Democracy has been defined as "the association of us all in the leadership of the best." In practice it does not always work this way. Vast masses of people were invested with the decisive right to vote, while at the same time they had very little leisure to study the questions upon which they must pronounce; and an enormous apparatus for feeding them with propaganda, catchwords and slogans came simultaneously into existence.

Democratic regimes, because they demand the participation of their citizens, demand responsibility from their citizens. When responsibilities are shirked, either because conditions are not favorable to duty or through laziness, the control of the people will become an illusion and, eventually, not even the illusion will remain. Flatterers will sway the people. Demagogues will convince them to surrender their power for safety or comfort. Propagandists will play on their fears. Tyrants will be born:

Alike in fear of anarchy and in vague hopes of future comforts a very large proportion of Europe have yielded themselves to dictatorship. Nations which had either driven out or confined within constitutional limits the old careful kingships of the past, made haste to rally in the parades and processions of a set of violent, wrathful, resourceful, domineering figures cast up by the bloody surge of war and its cruel lacerating recoil. We have entered the age of the dictators.

Thus, the 20th century witnessed a regression in political terms. Nations were again subject to lords, but their new masters wielded power many times greater than the ancient kings. The reader recognizes the spirit of Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini, but Churchill's warning is for those who have not yet fallen under the yoke of such men, for those countries which imagine themselves immune from such a transformation, including Britain. He warns that whatever political victories may have been won, the danger of tyranny is never finally removed.

 [Follow up from another article]

The common political heritage shared by America and Great Britain was the basis for Churchill's appeal for aid from the United States in the early years of the Second World War. The initial success of that appeal had much to do with a personal relationship. Churchill worked very hard at strengthening the bonds with the leader of Britain's greatest ally, and the working friendship between Churchill and President Roosevelt has rightly received a great deal of scholarly attention. But have Churchill's criticisms of FDR been lost or ignored in the shadow of their wartime partnership? The two had their disagreements, even over the conduct of the war, and they certainly did not see eye to eye on dealing with the Soviets with regard to post-war arrangements.

Less well-known and almost completely ignored are Churchill's comments on the political, economic, and social policies Roosevelt pursued in the New Deal. Churchill's critique of the New Deal reflects a concern that even regimes built on the principles of freedom can become corrupted and lose their way. Writing in a period in which dictatorships were thriving, he pointed out that the United States was not immune to the political degradation that was affecting much of the rest of the world. He warned America, in a lesson equally apt today, that the moment of social and economic crisis is also the moment of political danger.

In "Roosevelt from Afar,"²¹ Churchill expresses sympathy with and admiration for Roosevelt's desire to deliver his people from the economic problems that had plagued America since the Great Depression, but the essay has another purpose as well, as he wrote to the editor of Collier's: to warn against the possible ill-effects that New Deal programs might bring about. "I have tried to strike a note of warning while at the same time expressing my sincere sympathy with the great effort the President is making," Churchill writes.

This article was a difficult undertaking. For a statesman to remark on the domestic policies and personalities of another country without exciting resentment or even wrath requires diplomatic skill. We can therefore believe that Churchill was very careful in his writing. We know that he went so far as to leave final judgment to the American editor: "if there are any phrases which you think would cause offence...you are quite at liberty to soften or excise them without reference to me."²² Yet despite his caution, "Roosevelt from Afar" does manage to convey serious warnings about America's Depression-era economic and social policies.

Churchill begins by describing the severe economic crisis affecting America and the world, and he expresses admiration for Roosevelt's willingness to take up the challenge:

Although the policies of President Roosevelt are conceived in many respects from a narrow view of American self-interest, the courage, the power and the scale of his effort must enlist the ardent sympathy of every country, and his success could not fail to lift the whole world forward into the sunlight of an easier and more genial age.

Churchill describes Roosevelt's challenges as he arrived at America's highest office at the moment of crisis: "He arrived at the summit of the greatest economic community in the world at the moment of its extreme embarrassment. Everybody had lost faith in everything." The United States was gripped by desperation. It was a moment of both opportunity and danger. Great or terrible things might be done:

"We must never forget that this was the basis from which he started. Supreme power in the Ruler, and a clutching anxiety of scores of millions who demanded and awaited orders."

Roosevelt chose to seize direction of the whole scene, and "[s]ince then there has been no lack of orders," writes Churchill. (That is certainly true, given that Roosevelt issued an extraordinary number of executive orders--more than all of his successors through Bill Clinton combined.)

Using a word that must be shocking to Roosevelt apologists, Churchill notes that the President aspired to a very high degree of control:

"Although the Dictatorship is veiled by constitutional forms, it is none the less effective. Great things have been done, and greater attempted."²³

But Churchill is very careful to attribute any of Roosevelt's possible excesses to misguided followers rather than to Roosevelt himself. "[T]he President has need to be on his guard," he writes; "[t]o a foreign eye it seems that forces are gathering under his shield which at a certain stage may thrust him into the background and take the lead themselves. If that misfortune were to occur, we should see the not-unfamiliar spectacle of a leader running after his followers to pull them back."²⁴

These, however, are the forces that Roosevelt deliberately set loose and encouraged. While Churchill describes them as dangers to "President Roosevelt's valiant and heroic experiments," it is clear from the essay, as well as from the history of the New Deal, that these are in fact dangers arising from those very experiments.

The Trade Unionism Threat

The first great danger Churchill addresses is the rise of trade unionism. Once again, he begins by praising Roosevelt for his attempt to reduce unemployment by shortening working hours and thus to spread employment more evenly through the working class:

Thus the Roosevelt adventure claims sympathy and admiration from all of those in England, and in foreign countries, who are convinced that the fixing of a universal measure of value based not upon the rarity or plenty of any single commodity, but conforming to the advancing powers of mankind, is the supreme achievement which at this time lies before the intellect of Man.

But this remark is immediately followed by a warning:

"[V]ery considerable misgivings must necessarily arise when a campaign to attack the monetary problem becomes intermingled with, and hampered by, the elaborate processes of social reform and the struggles of class warfare."²⁵

Great Britain had much experience with trade unionism, as had Churchill himself. As President of the Board of Trade, Home Secretary, and Chancellor of the Exchequer, Churchill had been involved in shaping government policy toward labor disputes and strikes. The General Strike of 1925-1926, and its political implications in particular, had given Churchill strong negative views on the subject:

[Labor unionism] has introduced a narrowing element into our public life. It has been a keenly-felt impediment to our productive and competitive power. It has become the main foundation of the socialist party, which has ruled the State greatly to its disadvantage, and will assuredly do so again. It reached a climax in a general strike, which if it had been successful would have subverted the Parliamentary constitution of our island.

On the other hand, Churchill was willing to admit that the trade unions in Britain had become a stable force in the industrial development of Britain and were, in any case, much better for society than "communist-agitated and totally unorganized labour discontent."²⁶

Churchill's warning for Roosevelt and America consists in the observation that the development of trade unionism in Britain occurred over a period of some 50 years, allowing time for economic adjustments and the abatement of immediate passions. The New Deal aimed at greatly accelerating this process, which he said posed real dangers:

"But when one sees an attempt made within the space of a few months to lift American trade unionism by great heaves and bounds to the position so slowly built up--and even then with much pain and loss--in Great Britain, we cannot help feeling grave doubts."²⁷

The conflicts involved in such a transformation, he warns, could "result in a general crippling of that enterprise and flexibility upon which not only the wealth, but the happiness of modern communities depends."

Nor was this transformation occurring through a careful balancing of the interests of employers, labor, and society as a whole; rather, it was occurring through accelerated government intervention:

Our trade unions have grown to manhood and power amid an enormous network of counter-checks and consequential corrections; and to raise American trade unionism from its previous condition to industrial sovereignty by a few sweeping decrees may easily confront both the trade unions and the United States with problems which for the time being will be at once paralyzing and insoluble.²⁸

Yet such sweeping decrees are exactly what characterized the New Deal under Roosevelt, as illustrated by the compulsory unionism of the National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) and the National Labor Relations Act (1935).

Redistribution

 The second great danger involved in Roosevelt's experiments is "the disposition to hunt down rich men as if they were noxious beasts." Churchill notes that this is "a very attractive sport" and one common to societies plagued with economic woes. But economic redistribution through penalties on the wealthy does not benefit a society in the long run because it drains the wellsprings of economic development:

The millionaire or multi-millionaire is a highly economic animal. He sucks up with sponge-like efficiency from all quarters. In this process, far from depriving ordinary people of their earnings, he launches enterprise and carries it through, raises values, and he expands that credit without which on a vast scale no fuller economic life can be opened to the millions. To hunt wealth is not to capture commonwealth.

Moreover, the rich man is elusive prey. It will take time and determined effort to finally bring him to bay and wrench his wealth from him. Until then, it will be squirreled away for protection and so will not be spurring enterprise. The chase may be exciting, but the returns are poor, Churchill argues:

But meanwhile great constructions have crumbled to the ground. Confidence is shaken and enterprise chilled, and the unemployed queue up at the soup-kitchens or march out to the public works with ever growing expense to the taxpayer and nothing more appetizing to take home to their families than the leg or the wing of what was once a millionaire.... It is indispensable to the wealth of nations and to the wage and life standards of labour, that capital and credit should be honoured and cherished partners in the economic system.

Churchill notes that there is some justification for the anger of the American people against their great leaders of finance but cautions against indulging anger at the cost of destructive economic policy. Given that some abuses exist, the question becomes how to resolve them:

"The important question is whether American democracy can clear up scandals and punish improprieties without losing its head, and without injuring the vital impulses of economic enterprise and organization."²⁹

Churchill places this American dilemma in a broader context by pointing out that the U.S. is not the first country to deal with the question of whether "it is better to have equality at the price of poverty, or well-being at the price of inequality." Churchill lamented the drift toward socialist policies in his own country in the 1920s (and, as pointed out earlier, again in the 1940s), pointing out that these schemes produced little but economic disaster.³⁰ He did favor government action to ease the pains of the poor in modern industrial society, however. Indeed, his political career is marked by a great concern for social justice, a concern which is echoed in his cautious admiration of FDR.

Ultimately, however, Churchill held that free markets should be allowed to operate without centralized, bureaucratic controls destroying the principle of competition that is the mainspring of economic health.³¹ The capitalist system can create concentrations of wealth, since free competition results in inequalities of property, but the removal of reward for investment and risk will stultify economic development and ultimately harm society as a whole.

Throughout his discussion of the economic choices America faces, Churchill refers to "the Russian alternative"--the nationalization of production, distribution, credit, and exchange to cure the abuses and inequities of the capitalist system. While this is not a choice Churchill recommends, other countries have made it, and it was an option. "It is, however, irrational," he argues, to take a middle ground between the two systems and "to tear down or cripple the capitalist system without having the fortitude of spirit and ruthlessness of action to create a new communist system."

Furthermore, Churchill believed that the American people would never willingly accept the "dull brutish servitude of Russia," though he also believed that a nation can slide into doctrines it would not accept wholesale with open eyes. Choices can sometimes be clearer to outside observers, and Churchill warns that America should not weight the scales against capitalism:

There it seems to foreign observers, lies the big choice of the United States at the present time. If the capitalist system is to continue, with its rights of private property, with its pillars of rent, interest and profit, and the sanctity of contracts recognized and enforced by the State, then it must be given a fair chance.

This means that government should not make it impossible for private business to thrive by suppressing free-market competition: "There are elements of contrivance, of housekeeping, and of taking risks which are essential to all profitable activity. If these are destroyed the capitalist system fails, and some other system must be substituted."

Given the regulatory activities of the National Recovery Administration, increases in taxes on successful businesses, frequent anti-trust lawsuits, and FDR's anti-business rhetoric, Churchill's words can only be read as a rebuke to the New Deal approach to reining in "the vital impulses of economic enterprise and organization."³²

Conclusion

Churchill's critique of the New Deal does not, of course, nullify his admiration for FDR, especially as it developed through what is known as the special relationship in the Second World War. While they had their disagreements, Churchill's gratitude toward Roosevelt was immense. Speaking in the House of Commons a few days after Roosevelt's death, he expressed that gratitude not only for himself, but for Britain and for Europe as a whole: "For us, it remains only to say that in Franklin Roosevelt there died the greatest American friend we have ever known, and the greatest champion of freedom who has ever brought help and comfort from the new world to the old."³³

The critique does, however, have importance. Written in the context of worldwide collectivist trends which were destructive of freedom, it reveals his opposition to the philosophy of the New Deal as equally dangerous to political and economic liberty. Churchill thought seriously about not only the unity of spirit between Great Britain and the United States, but the ways in which both countries were subject to the dangers of abandoning the supports of law and liberty in times of crisis. Britain and the United States were bound together in the defense of freedom, and Churchill knew that freedom must be guarded internally as well as externally.

During the 1930s Churchill wrote many articles on the fact that collectivist trends were ultimately destructive of personal freedom, and that even in times of great domestic political crisis the liberties and freedoms of the individual must remain supreme above the needs of the state.

Churchill was particularly aghast and against the National Socialist and Marxist concepts of the redistribution of wealth. Churchill rightly believed that state power in which private property and wealth would be 'relieved' from one 'class' and given to another class, [which then in turn would became a dependent of the state], ultimately leads to the destruction of personal freedom.

There is no factual evidence to counter this argument. Churchill correctly had faith for example, in the honour and the ideals of the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence in which personal and individual freedom, would in good measure provide adequate support and protection for those who needed it. Socialism in any of its variants leads to the destruction of culture, wealth and opportunity. Yet in the modern era the opposite conclusions are forwarded as both moral beacons and economic truths.

----------

In the 1920s and '30s Churchill surveyed with unease the collectivist trends that were sapping the internal strength of his own country and threatening to create instability abroad. Looking at Churchill's political thought as a whole, we see a statesman in agreement with America's first principles and a staunch defender of individual liberty, Anglo-American constitutionalism, and limited government in Britain and worldwide. Churchill's ideas on these matters stemmed from his explicit agreement with the crucial statements of these principles by the American Founders.

During World War II, Churchill and England of course, needed American support and intervention in order to survive the onslaught of Jihadic National Socialism. This self-interested policy should not tempt hobbyist historians into assuming that Churchill supported FDR's policies, in-toto, in either foreign or domestic affairs. When you are in desperate need of help, you can usually overlook themes, policies or ideas that you might find offensive.

At a time when America was undergoing significant political change due to the Great Depression and FDR's New Deal, Churchill had much to say about political change in the United States. It was Churchill's view that, while the governing forms of the United States and Britain differ, the governing principles are the same: Both countries were built upon principles of freedom. 

“They do not belong to the State or Government as a right. Their exercise needs vigilant scrutiny, and their grant may be swiftly withdrawn. This terrible twentieth century has exposed both our communities to grim experiences, and both have emerged restored and guarded. They have come back to us safe and sure. I speak, of course, as a layman on legal topics, but I believe that our differences are more apparent than real, and are the result of geographical and other physical conditions rather than any true division of principle.^”

Churchill was not engaging in sentimental reflection when he gave such speeches. The unity of principle he pointed to was, and always had been in his view, the basis for unity of action. Churchill was never hesitant to proclaim the benefits of the Anglo-American political tradition, which he often touted as a blueprint for other nations:

“All this means that the people of any country have the right, and should have the power by constitutional action, by free unfettered elections, with secret ballot, to choose or change the character or form of government under which they dwell; that freedom of speech and thought should reign; that courts of justice, independent of the executive, unbiased by any party, should administer laws which have received the broad assent of large majorities or are consecrated by time and custom. Here are the title deeds of freedom which should lie in every cottage home. Here is the message of the British and American peoples to mankind.^”

Churchill noted that socialism grafts itself onto nationalism and the particular features of the nations it has infected. In Germany, the Weimar regime was destroyed and Hitler was propelled to power through national patriotism, tradition, and pride combined with discontent about inequalities of wealth. In Russia, the program of Communism was buttressed by national sentiment and imperialist aspirations. The next country Churchill mentions, in a shift that must be shocking to those who wish to read the article as simply a pro-New Deal argument, is the United States, which he says has experienced developments similar to those inspired by socialism in the dictatorships:

In the United States, also, economic crisis has led to an extension of the activities of the executive and to the pillorying, by irresponsible agitators, of certain groups and sections of the population as enemies of the rest. There have been efforts to exalt the power of the central government and to limit the rights of individuals.

The combinations at work in the United States during the 1930s, were however different. Passions and economic jealousies have been unleashed, but they have formed combinations not with imperial ambition or twisted racial pride, but with a sense of public duty and the desire for national prosperity. However, the result, Churchill warns, can be just as dangerous:

"It is when passions and cupidities are thus unleashed and, at the same time, the sense of public duty rides high in the hearts of all men and women of good will that the handcuffs can be slipped upon the citizens and they can be brought into entire subjugation to the executive government."

He had always rejected any policy or propaganda that would use crisis to extend the power of the state as subverting individual liberty and perverting the purpose of government:

“I hold that governments are meant to be, and must remain, the servants of the citizens; that states and federations only come into existence and can only be justified by preserving the "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" in the homes and families of individuals. The true right and power rest in the individual. He gives of his right and power to the State, expecting and requiring thereby in return to receive certain advantages and guarantees.”

When one has once defined government in terms of its purpose, a test has been introduced by which to judge the goodness and legitimacy of the government. Churchill gives the tests by which he judges the civilization of any community:

“What is the degree of freedom possessed by the citizen or subject? Can he think, speak and act freely under well-established, well-known laws? Can he criticize the executive government? Can he sue the State if it has infringed his rights? Are there also great processes for changing the law to meet new conditions?”

Churchill judges Great Britain and the United States to be in the forefront of civilized communities according to these standards. This status is due only in part, Churchill writes, to "the good sense and watchfulness of our citizens." A vital support for freedom also lies in the independence of the courts:

“In both our countries the character of the judiciary is a vital factor in the maintenance of the rights and liberties of the individual citizen. Our judges extend impartially to all men protection, not only against wrongs committed by private persons, but also against the arbitrary acts of public authority. The independence of the courts is, to all of us, the guarantee of freedom and the equal rule of law.”

In other words, the safeguard is to be found in a structural feature of both the American and British constitutional arrangements.  

These remarks hardly appear sympathetic for instance, to FDR's frustration with the Supreme Court's repeated striking down of New Deal programs as unconstitutional and his active search for ways to limit the powers of the Court. Of course FDR famously tried to "pack" the Court with justices more subservient to his political will. Churchill's position is that the United States, a political union with a complexity analogous to the Empire, requires both federalism in order to function properly and the Supreme Court to enforce the principle, especially in time of crisis.

A perusal of Roosevelt's speeches will readily show that he was impatient with those like Churchill who would oppose an evolving interpretation of the Constitution that would permit the federal government to take an increasingly active role in the life of the states. In his Annual Message to the Congress in 1937, for example, Roosevelt called for an "enlightened view" of the Constitution:

"Difficulties have grown out of its interpretation but rightly considered, it can be used as an instrument of progress, and not as a device for the prevention of action."

Churchill defends the "rigidity" of the American Constitution as a safeguard of freedom rather than seeing it as an obstacle to the political programs of the New Deal.

“A true interpretation, however, of the British or the American Constitution is certainly not a chop-logic or pedantic interpretation. So august a body as the Supreme Court in dealing with law must also deal with the life of the United States, and words, however solemn, are only true when they preserve their vital relationship to facts. It would certainly be a great disaster, not only to the American Republic but to the whole world, if a violent collision should take place between the large majority of the American people and the great instrument of government which has so long presided over their expanding fortunes.^”

FDR's radical socialism was an experiment in vogue with the times which lauded statism, 'great man' power, relativity and the creation of a leviathan to control society and enforce social peace. FDR's New Deal was of course a dismal failure. It buried the US with debt, bureaucracies, social programs and 'guarantees'; and invited the US Federal government to micro-manage most aspects of existence either in business, or in private social affairs. It is simply a lie to credit these policies of failure with 'saving' the US from the Depression. They made things worse, a fact born out by the reality that US unemployment, business activity, investment levels and social discord were higher in 1939, than in 1930. Government and state power, rarely make things better. Trampling on the Constitution is not a program of enlightenment but despotism. These insights were plain to Churchill who wrote about them with intelligence and vigour during the 1930s.

========

Sources: Reprinted and reassembled and edited with permission, URL

"Liberty and the Law," July 31, 1957, in Complete Speeches, Vol. VIII, pp. 8682-8683.

"What Good's a Constitution?" Quoted in Schlesinger, The Politics of Upheaval, pp. 495-496.

“Philosophers have regularly cocked an eyebrow at what passes for the common sense of the time; the punch line comes later, when it is 'common sense' that turns out to be have been uncommonly confused.”....

”Many of the earliest known philosophers made their first reputations in what could be regarded as a branch of show business. They appeared in public, often in resplendent clothes, and held discourses or recited poems. Such performances attracted passing audiences, devoted followers, and sometimes ridicule.” [p.3]

This is a clear, entertaining and excellent synopsis in the first place, of ancient Greek philosophy and the path to 'reason' and the methods of science in accounting for natural phenomena, and the 'laws' of physics and indeed of existence. The author is a philosopher who recounts with great knowledge the real facts behind the 'great thinkers' of the Greek tradition, traducing myths, fables, and inaccurate theories about who these men were, and what they were really trying to do and say. The husking of the real philosophical wheat from the irrelevant and mythical chaff is one good reason to read this book.

The author does a marvellous job of placing pre-Socratic and Platonic philosophy and the first forays into scientific thought, into perspective relating the development of early philosophy [co-joined with science], in its proper historical and cultural context. This is usually missing in many accounts or summaries of ancient patterns of thought, theologizing, rationalization or enquiry.

The reader will discover the following for example, which is new for many people, especially those who are not deep into the study of the ancients:

-”Even if those who believed in Poseidon and the other gods also entertained the possibility that there were natural explanations for earthquakes and such things, the fact is we do not know of anybody before the Milesians [Greek city on the coast of Asia Minor] who actually came up with any such explanations [in referencing the big '3' of Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes in the 7^th century BC].

-”Alphabetic writing first arose in Greece in around the eighty century and was becoming widespread by the sixth. This allowed everything that could be said to be written down easily, a novelty that is hard for us to appreciate. By crystallizing beliefs, myths, theories and stories of all kinds, it made them available for examination and criticism...for all their shortcomings the Milesians seem have been the first to try and exploit this opportunity.” [p.20]

-”If the philosophy of Thales demonstrated one essential facet of scientific thinking, namely the urge to simplify and reduce observable phenomena, Anaximander's work exemplified an additional and equally fundamental one: science says there is more to the world than meets the eye.” [p.10]

-”Aristotle wrote – exaggerating, but not ridiculously – that Plato's philosophy 'in most respects followed' the Pythagoreans. It is certainly true that Pythagorean ideas were swallowed up by Platonism...”

-”....what exactly is it on which the philosopher is supposed to fix his gaze? For the Pythagoreans, it was apparently the heavenly bodies, wheeling in their orderly and harmonious paths through the sky. For Plato, it became something more abstract, which the heavenly bodies symbolized: the ideal Forms, of which earthly things are inferior copies...” [p. 29]

-”Kepler [1571-1630] was a confirmed (if rather belated) Pythagorean. His faith that the heavens must be arranged in a harmonious pattern that reveals itself in simple mathematical relationships led him to formulate several generalizations about the planets. Some of them are misguided fantasies....” [p. 37]

-”However, although we can safely say that the notion of mathematical proof was developed by the Greeks, and at some time before Euclid..[4^th century BC]...there is no reason to think it is Pythagoras or his followers who deserve all or even any of the credit for inventing it. Rigorous deduction is more clearly seen in the work of Parmenides...” [p. 39]

-[Heraclitus late 6^th century BC] “You will not find out the limits of the soul by going, even if you travel over every way.” So his voyage of discovery sailed inwards. He turned to introspection to describe...dreams, the emotions, and character (Man's character, he reflected, is his fate).” [p. 43]

-”In Parmenides' [who lived in the late 6^th century BC in Grecian Italy] version, nothing ever changes, whereas in Heraclitus' everything always does....It was the thought of Parmenides which had a far greater impact. The ideas of Heraclitus survived only in Plato's misappropriation of them.” [p. 51]

-”Parmenides abstract argument may be reason run riot, but at least it is reason running, and apparently for the first time. By its attempt to spin a web of ideas out of one principle – that of avoiding all thought of 'what is not' – in a logically rigorous way, it inaugurated the systematic use of deduction outside of mathematics.” [p. 62]

-”....extreme examples [of Parmenidian logic].. are the writings of Hegel and his followers. In his lectures on the history of philosophy, Hegel said that 'Parmenides began Philosophy proper', buy which he seems to have meant that Parmenides was the first thinker wise enough to anticipate Hegel.” [p. 63]

-”Zeno's paradoxes [5^th century BC follower of Parmenides who created riddles ridiculing other philosophical theories through logical examination], particularly those about motion, have outlived the other main arguments in Presocratic thought. They have been discussed in detail by mathematicians, physicists, and philosophers from his day to this.” [p. 67]

-”Empedocles' [5^th century BC from Greek Sicily] earth, air, fire and water – the pigments of which the real world were mixed – were not quite the same as what we mean by those words. 'Air' covered all gases, and 'water' all liquids, and metal counted as a liquid because it melts...” [p. 76]

-”On the central question of biology, Empedocles hit the mark with surprising accuracy. He said that creatures owe their useful and fortunate features to the fact that there were originally many sorts of creatures and that the strange, deformed ones failed to survive..” [p. 79]

-”It is not true that philosophy was solely concerned with scientific questions until Socrates came along. Several philosophers, including Pythagoras and Heraclitus, discussed 'questions about life and morality and things good and evil' long before he did.” [p. 85]

-”...highpoint in the ancient world with the so-called 'atomists', Leucippus and Democritus [5^th century BC], who can in some respects be seen as seventeenth century [AD] thinkers ahead of their time.” [p. 88]

-”Democritus studied with Leucippus and took over the one idea for which the latter is remembered: that innumerable tiny atoms career around in empty space (called 'the void') until they collide and adhere to one another...” [p. 97]

-Lucretius [who wrote On the Nature of things, 1rst century BC] made it plain that his poem was designed to liberate man from superstition, the fear of death and the tyranny of priests: When man's life lay for all to see foully grovelling upon the ground, crushed beneath the weight of Superstition, which displayed her head from the regions of heaven...a man of Greece was the first that dared to uplift mortal eyes against her...Lucretius' heroic 'man of Greece' was Epicurus; but it was really Democritus and Leucippus who first rattled the bars of nature's gates in the name of atomism.” [p. 96]

-”What these Sophists wanted [5^th century teachers of higher education paid for their services and notable in rhetoric and legal education and full of moral and cultural relativity]; was a philosophy that embraced everyday experience. This desire puts them in the opposite corner of the philosophical ring to Plato....[who] had a view of knowledge that was bulging with veins of Orphism [life after death, transmigration of souls] and Pythagoreanism...beyond the world of everyday experience to the purified truths of reason.” [p. 118]

-”Protagoras [5^th century Sophist] meant when he famously said that 'Man is the measure of all things'. This sort of view is relative to each believer, because it holds that truth is relative to each believer, or, more often nowadays, relative to each group or community of believers.” [p. 119]

This is but a small taste of the pre-Socratic philosophy which is offered. The only small criticisms or observations are that the author does not include the Near Eastern influences on Greek thought. Sumeria, Babylon, Hurria, Mitana, Assyria and empires in Syria, Anatolia and Israel [via the Hebrews a Canaanite sect], all had a significant impact on Greek development. As well no mention is made of Minoan and Egyptian influence on the perspective of Mycenaean and later Doric Greek society. One of the key central facts of Greek history is that the imperial regime of Mycenaean civilisation is replaced with a society of independent and autonomous Greek poli or city states. This happened after the Dorics wiped out the existing Cycladian and Minoan civilizations. The establishment of this new order is of central importance in the development of the Greek 'golden age'.

As well the author is adamantly hostile to organized religion even though Christian theology melds both Platonic and Socratic methods, along with the rationality of Aristotle and even of Empedocles and Democritus with metaphysics. No mention is made of the 1500 years of Christian philosophical mutation and growth, in part adduced to the secular theologies of both pre-Socratic and post-Platonic and Aristotelian cadres of philosophy. The sterile refrain of modernity that 'science is good' and 'Christianity is bad' is simplistic and ignorant.

But this is of course a book on philosophy not history or theology. In that regard it is well worth reading and learning from the author's profound knowledge of the subjects he discusses.

 The real issue with the Yuan or RMB is of course the US Congress, its President, lax fiscal policy and a terrible monetary policy. The American political system is drugged on debt, deficits and national-socialist spending and corruption. Governments now account for 45% of US GDP the highest in American history. This means that $7 Trillion per annum is transferred from private individuals, firms and holders of US debt, to a level of government to spend. This is equal to $22.000 for each American.

US National Debt levels are far beyond the $15 Trillion as stated by the good media. Illegal off-the-balance accounts for guaranteed payments in pension, health and welfare total well over $60 Trillion. Each American owes some $80.000 in debt right now. It is unlikely that with an average annual income of $50.000 and average per capita net assets of $80.000; that many Americans can write a cheque today for their share of total debts.

In order to keep the charade going US governments and politicians will do the following:

1. Keep the Central Bank or Federal Reserve politicized and printing money with which it can buy Treasury Bonds. This will monetize and reduce the real value of the outstanding debt.

2. Inflate away US total debts by devaluing the US dollar which should spark trade tensions as the Americans force other currencies to remain higher [the price to be paid it will be said, for US hegemony and global stability].

3. Reject any efforts to curb spending, deficit accumulation, or reduce debt levels or governmental power. There is simply too much money and power as well as votes to lose.

4. Never, ever, return to a metallic standard either mono-metallic [gold]; or bi-metallic [gold and silver].

Instead of addressing the national socialization of the American political-economy, it is highly likely that whatever 'party' is in power [the Republicrats]; the US will pursue these 4 policies. The rest of the world will have a valid claim against the US. These policies are destructive, short-sighted and will lead to a day of reckoning in which not only America will be ravaged, but most of the world economy.

The RMB-US dollar exchange rate is a case in point. American nationalists will use the RMB as a 'straw man', to beat when self-agonizing over China and the Chinese trade deficits. America is very lucky there is a China to buy its Treasury Bonds. Without these purchases the US would be officially bankrupted. The Chinese-American model, or Chimerica, is rather straightforward and incestuous:

• Western firms with Western technologies produce in China for export back to the West

• This industrialization lifts local the Chinese economy or part of it, out of poverty, and employs tens of millions of people

• The cheaper products benefit Western consumers who search out cheaper products since wages and incomes are largely stagnant;

• The Americans pay for the imported Chi-merican product in U$

• These U$ are sent back to China and converted to Yuan

• The Chinese government withdraws excessive Yuan from the banking system through bond sales 'sterilizing' the currency;

• The Yuan is thus kept in a pegged range with the U$

• Excess central bank reserves in China are used to buy US Treasury debt

• The US Congress uses these purchases to incur massive deficits and spend money it does not have....

This is the cycle of Chimerica. China is not to blame. Neither is the value of the RMB. The China model is premised on Western capital, products, technology, and export of Western-desired products back to North America and Europe. It is not a 'Chinese' model per se but the use of non-Chinese product production and business processes to provide goods for richer country markets. Over 50% of Chinese trade is foreign affiliated trade in goods and services – Walmart shipping to Walmart as it were.

Due to these facts the Chinese currency is not a problem. Profligate, inane, corrupt, baseless, national-socialized American fiscal policy is the issue. The Chinese Yuan is supported by the state through sterilization and capital controls. If you removed these controls the Yuan will devalue not revalue making the trade deficit even worse. But that is not even the real problem. The true locus of blame for high trade deficits is with politicians and the unaccountable, unelected civil service. Their penchant to erect grand bureaucracies and spend money is what is driving both the US fiscal deficit and its dependency on China. This won't change.

The trade deficit with China is not the problem. The US political and governmental system is the problem. When it all blows up – and it will – it is going to have incredible political-economic repercussions worldwide. Maybe at that point, a reform of the US political-economy will become a priority. Or maybe not. 

 There are many myths about China. If one travels there, especially along the eastern seaboard, the development and change taking place is simply astounding. You can't describe the transformation in meaningful language. The 5 senses are overwhelmed. No other sites in the world compare to Beijing and Shanghai and the creation of the modern from an antiquated broken, pre-modern. The seaboard of China is history's largest construction project and scene of its greatest forced march from poverty to civilization. But this rapid renaissance obscures facts and generates myths. For the New York Times, CNN, and most major media, China is the apogee of social and economic 'modelling'; which must be imitated, accepted and venerated. Indeed the Chinese will rule the world according to these panjandrums of statism. In the real world however, the myths are as destructive as what actually occurs in a one party totalitarian state.

One can summarize the myths about China in the following list:

1) The China 'Model'

The China 'model' of development is this: Western technologies, Western money, Western manufacturing; and Western marketing are creating firms, jobs and exportable products. Most of China's development is export-led, with Western firms exporting back to Western states, or in the case of car companies and luxury goods firms; selling to the local Chinese market. There is very little domestic Chinese development in any meaningful sense compared to the influx of Western firms and their technologies. Foreign affiliated trade in goods and services is well over 50 % of Chinese GDP including exports back to the West; and Western goods sold to the 300 million middle and 'richer' class of Chinese consumers. This means that most of China's growth is built on Western capital.

2) China's 'model' and GDP give it real power

Due to the above, China needs America and Europe; more than America and Europe need China, even given that the Chinese own $1 Trillion in US bonds. According to the World Bank, China's GDP is $6 Trillion or about 40% of US levels. However the Chinese economy has a lot more than $ 1 Trillion [its US bond purchases] in dependency on US money, trade and imported oil which runs through sea lanes controlled by the US navy. Almost half of China's GDP, or $3 Trillion, is dependent on foreign capital and trade.

3) China is capitalist

This is an absurd claim, made on CNBC and the lame-stream media. China is about as 'capitalist' as Brazil or Argentina. Everything in China is managed by the Communist cult or party. Every single industry, bank and large enterprise is connected to the Central Party. Chinese cities, townships and provinces, are run by the cult and the elite for their own benefit. At some point the model of the cult uber alles will fail. It always does. Corruption, nepotism, greasy palms, in-fighting, resource wastage and unaccountability will take its toll. Whatever you want to name China, 'capitalist' is not the right moniker. The state runs everything.

4) Growth will go on forever

This is an equally implausible claim by the Sinophiles. Economies don't expand forever, they can't. Bubbles in capital, real estate, and infrastructure will form and pop. A corrupt political system must distort markets, prices, and the benefits of development. China is so reliant on Western trade and capital, that the very nature of its progress will likely be its undoing. Unless it develops domestic industry, intellectual property [which it rampantly steals from Western firms]; and expertise its economy will at some point be susceptible to state-created dislocations.

As well the rifts in Chinese society are huge. The gaps between the East and the rest; between rich and poor; between regions; intra-region; and between those who rule and those who have no power; is so great, that social dislocation is inevitable. A main concern of the State is revolution, rebellion, violence and instability.

5) The US is to blame for China's isolation

A favourite theme of most Chinese is that the US is to blame. According to many Chinese the Americans are 'ringing' China with enemies. Korea, Japan, Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia are all 'hostile' to China thanks to American meddling. The US is warring unnecessarily across the pacific and wonderful Islamic world, and is trying to destabilize Moslem minorities within China. Further the US is constantly trying to make China look 'bad' and caricature the Chinese as voracious users of resources, intent on East Asian domination and wedded to Chinese imperialism as China builds up huge armed forces. In the Chinese view, the Han people are pacific, noble, charitable and have no longing to expand Chinese power in Asia. It is the Americans who cause trouble.

While individual Chinese are certainly hospitable, kind and friendly, a one-party totalitarian regime is usually not. China is openly allied with Turkey, Syria, Iran and other Islamic states whose pre-modern political program is at odds with civilization. Chinese state owned firms buy firms and resources at will in Africa and Latin America, with the Chinese media declaiming against any Western obstruction in Western states to the same. There is no reason why a modern state would want its key resources owned by the Communist Cult of China. And of course China has very bold ambitions about dominating the natural resources, water and political processes in East Asia. Neighbouring states have every reason to be nervous. The Chinese demand for water alone could entail a war.

6) China will rule the world and the RMB will be the reserve currency

No it won't. China does not offer anything new or innovative. There is no compelling reason why states would 'join' its new world order. Its 'model' is based on extracting Western monies and technologies to develop an export sector. Its currency will simply devalue once it is de-linked to the US$, there is no reason why the RMB would increase in value. The state has spent about $8 Trillion in debt on infrastructure and city-building – a fantastic amount for an economy of $6 Trillion and one that entails future inflation if not insolvency. The social welfare system is immature and social incoherency a fact of life. Its military does threaten neighbouring states and being friendless is not a path to world dominance.

China does of course possess some strengths. A high savings rate, a rapid industrialization, a smart dynamic population, and the ability to attract investment to satiate a burgeoning domestic revitalization replete with fairly low taxes and reasonably low wages. But like all good things, the development of China will at some point ebb and diminish. When it does contract and retrace the world economy will be impacted of course, but this should be expected. China has severe issues with social imbalances, a lack of water, the massive importation of oil and natural resources [over 60% of its usage]; and with a corroded political-economic structure. These constraints will make themselves felt at some point and though China will remain a force, its march to pre-eminence will never occur. Like it or not the Chinese will always have to deal with the collective superior of the 'White Devil' and his world.  

 Scott's book is sure to enrage the Marxist-Post Modern-Moslem axis of not-so-benign intolerance and historical revisionist bigotry and deceit. It is an work which should be read by anyone who is curious about these often-described 'Dark Ages' of 'barbaric and savage' Europe. Rome fell in a German inspired palace coup one day in 476 AD. Apparently and immediately, all became 'Dark', decayed, vicious and neolithic. Only with the arrival of wise Arabs and compassionate-caring Moslems from the 7^th to 10^th centuries, drenched in learning and achievement, did poor, decayed, stupid Europe 'emerge from the Dark Ages'. Ah those wonderful, happy Moslems. Saving civilization! What a trip. It is all bunk of course, but so too is a lot of what is accepted as 'wisdom'.

Building on Pirenne's seminal work in the early 20^th century Scott destroys the post-modern myth of 'civilized' Islam furthering the great onward march of man, juxtaposed against the savagery of a naked and toothless Europe. Scott further elucidates, proves and satisfies the common sense fact that the Moslem invasion of the Mediterranean basin must have, as a matter of logic and inevitability, neutered the Romano-Byzantine civilisation; destroyed and distorted millennial-old trade and cultural patterns and effaced European contact with the 'East' forcing Europe inwards in a defensive war with a fanatical, Jihadic, imperialist, vicious and quite bloody Islam. Ah, facts are such inconvenient truths for the post-moderns. To these large craniums Islam is love, happiness and endless rose petal throwing, with loving Moslems entranced in dances of blissful multi-cult orgiastic harmony.

Scott's historical narrative which is supported by archaeology and extant sources are sure to profoundly derange the pious cult of tolerance and diversity. But reality usually does. The Moslem narrative of a thriving 'golden age' is of course, unsupported by archaeology and extant sources. Cordoba pace the Great Man [or God?] Obama was the apex of multicultural development circa the 9^th century. I have been to Cordoba. Not one single piece of archeological evidence exists to support this Moslem claim, nor is there any factual data or physical proof whatsoever that Cordoba possessed 3000 mosques and a plethora of magnificent buildings settled in a megapolis of 500.000 thousand earnest, Plato-quoting Moslems, busy with science, math and medicine. What you find in Cordoba is a miserable little mosque from the 9^th century and a small wall. Maybe Moslems can explain this lack of evidence as they rant about golden ages.

In any event, Scott's narrative is premised on facts and evidence, not Academic balderdash and theorizing. In assessing Pirenne's theory Scott makes the follow key claims:

-Like modern day abortion fetishers, the Romans were great practitioners of killing babies. Due to infanticide the population was on a steep decline. This impacted everything from military might to economic development, tax levels and agricultural output. The exception to this forced population reduction were the Jewish and Christian populations. Viewed in this light Christianity would have saved, not hindered Roman culture.

-After Rome was taken over by the Ostrogoth's [clients of Byzantium] there was no 'Dark Age'. Instead there was an increase in economic and cultural activity, since the weight of the Roman state and the interminable civil wars were removed. The exception to this would be central Italy during the reconquest by Byzantium of much of the former Western Roman state.

-The great cities of the Roman world were in the East. There is no doubt that from about the mid 7^th century onwards, this region did descend into a Dark Age with whole cities and economies disappearing. This was of course due to the invasions of the Moslems. Constantinople shrivelled from a city of 1 million in 600 AD to maybe 40.000 by 750 AD. How else to explain this except through the Arab invasions which denuded Byzantium of most of its empire and eradicated trade ? Co2 ? GlobaloneyWarming?

-The Arabs through ignorance of farming techniques, and the reliance on goats, devastated large parts of North Africa and the Levant, turning what was once the most important food producing areas of the Roman world into deserts.

-Islam is a political program not a faith in the Western sense of that word. It promulgates aggressive Jihad and violence. Academics have the immature idea that anything called a 'religion' must be such; and that all 'religions' are the same. There is not one single academic study or program, which portrays this ecological destruction or teaches it.

-Moslem raids, pirates and wars destroyed agricultural, irrigation systems, trade patterns and production of key products throughout the Mediterranean littoral. Papryus the mainstay of Roman literacy for centuries was cut off from its source in Egypt to Europe hastening the costly invention of parchment.

-Contrary to myth classical civilization was alive and well in Europe; hotly debated, open to criticism and change; and integrated with new systems of both secular and theological patterns of belief. The list of Christian and lay figures involved in classical education during the post Rome era is endless, as is the list of inventions throughout the width and breadth of society.

-Monks for instance not only fused rationality with Christianity they also built history's first public hospitals [5^th century]; public school systems; and were deeply involved with advanced agricultural techniques, industry and water power development.

Before the Arabs invaded the Mare Nostrum and wiped out higher cultures, life was rather pleasant for most people – not all, but for many.

“It was a time of wealth; it was a time of opulence. Cities, or at least towns, flourished, as they had under the Caesars, and life continued remarkably unchanged from the latter epoch. It was money and not a barter economy; and the fundamental unit was the gold solidus. With this wealth luxury items were imported into the west in great quantities: fabrics, jewelry, spices, wines, and very many other of the things which made life pleasant for the urban elite.” [p 47]

With the arrival of Islam and the Moslem Jihad, so ardently defended by the multiculturalists, and bien-pensant elite; life descended into an Oriental hell of terror, slavery, subjugation, humiliation and not-so-benign Arab domination. Scott quotes an Arab geographer of the 9^th century who catalogues the Arab destruction of Asia minor. The same would apply to Western cities and regions:

“In days of old cities were numerous in Rum [Anatolia] but now they have become few. Most of the districts are prosperous and pleasant and have each an extremely strong fortress, on account of the frequency of the raids which the fighters of the faith [Moslems] direct upon them. To each village appertains a castle where in timr of flight they may take shelter.” [p. 159]

How tolerant. The Arab chroniclers discuss in detail the slave trading of Christians, sacking of cities across the Mediterranean world; the reduction of forts and the 'effeminacy' of the advanced states of post Roman Europe. Being effeminate would indicate an urban literate culture not a nomadic, warring society. Slaves and women were highly sought out by Moslems.

“The impact of Islamic piracy on the Mediterranean is a question that has never been fully understood or appreciated, in the English-speaking world at least. For a thousand years the Middle Sea, previously one of the world's great economic highways, was reduced to a hunting-ground fro slavers, a devastating fact which, incredibly, is barely mentioned in multitudes of textbooks published annually.” [p. 168]

Some 10 million 'Whites' were enslaved by the Moslems from Russia, eastern, central and Western Europe from 630 AD to 1900 AD. I doubt there is one academic program anywhere in the Western world which even mentions this fact.

“Furthermore, we should note that the Viking raids, which devastated much of northern and western Europe for about two centuries, was intimately to the Muslim demand for European slaves, begging further the question of how this could be viewed as in any way beneficial to Europe and European civilization.” [p. 196]

In the post-modern view, slavery, war, Jihad, destruction and pagan savage violence is 'civilization'. Indeed without Islam 'Europe never would have escaped its Dark Age'. This is what passes for historical 'fact'. It is simply asinine.

Without any doubt this is a great book full of facts, sources, commentaries on various studies, arguments for and against themes and beliefs; and a lucid overview of the historical development of the 'real' Islam within the Mare Nostrum basin. It is a worthy addition to Henri Pirenne's iconoclastic work and a book which clearly lays out what caused the contraction of Europe between 720 and 920. It was of course the Moslem Jihad. A fact that escapes our over-trained and indoctrinated elite for whom lies are facts, and facts are myths.  

 Apologists for the greatness of multi-culturalism will point to a crumbling artifact like the Great Wall[s] of China as proof that all societies and cultures are 'great' and 'equal'. The Great Wall is a curious and extraordinary relic indeed. It is a series of walls, 6200 km in length, built over 1800 years, with a clear majority of the building projects taking place during the Ming Dynasty of roughly 1300-1600 A.D. The Wall however, never kept out the Mongolian and Manchurian steppe tribes. Chinghis Khan and his descendants had little trouble with the structures, subduing China in the 13^th century, and the Manchu's repeated that feat taking over China in the l7^th. The Wall was a failure.

Walls are usually expressions of a failure in policy. When you visit the Wall you can't help but notice that it serves little real military purpose. The Walls in the north of China run impressively up and down the tops of the low range mountains which guard the Chinese capital and the river systems which generate a fertile area of cultivation and civilization – sure to attract dusty nomads from the desert eager to participate in the fruits created by more advanced societies. The rebuilt walls are great fun to trot up and down on like bipedal goats, with some of the walls so severely inclined that you literally slide down the other side. But beyond the luxury of good exercise the Walls serve and served no real objective.

Historically the Mongol and Manchurian horsemen would never trod their ponies up and down steep mountain ranges. They never did. This is not how mobile forces operate. The Mongols were mobile archers who operated on the plains. They did not attack or try to conquer areas unsuited to their method of military engagement. By building a wall over a mountain range you are not achieving much, except to spend vast sums of money and men in its construction, artificially inflating domestic industry but certainly ruining your finances. More than 1 million men died building the Walls and billions in today's money was spent on this public works endeavour. Surely there were cheaper and better ways to achieve policy objectives than building thousands of kilometres of wall over terrain that the enemy would never use for invasion anyways ?

But the 'experts' say, the walls stretch more than 3.000 km to the West, surely that provides a bastion of safety and obstruction against armies carried on ponies? Not really. The capital investment of creating a sprawling public works project is enormous. It is however a tithe of the total costs of public construction. Maintenance and operational costs to make the Walls effective would have drained imperial budgets and led to high taxation, confiscation, coerced levied labour, and widespread social discontent.

Once built you now have to staff the Walls and their stockades with an incredibly numerous army which demands food, armour, entertainment, women, and eventually military action. The logistics of this alone are staggering. Food and material supply and industry are diverted from the market economy to the military economy. Distortions in prices of foodstuffs must surely follow, making the peasant's life that much harder and breeding more social tension and resentment. The Wall will also demand a permanent army of occupation along its perimeter territories, sure to breed military tension, rivalries and likely a civil war.

Given the crude composition of the Walls – mostly wood, cheap mortar, rocks and stones – they also must crumble over time. This necessitates a permanent maintenance to make the Walls a coherent line of defence – a fiscal impossibility over hundreds of years. Indeed you would need a second army – the maintenance army – to keep the line in repair. Once ignored gaps will of course open up in the Walls, ones certainly wide enough for armies to pour through, as budgets, maintenance and the will power to support the Walls collapse.

The Manchus conquered China in the early 17^th century by going right through the gaps in the decaying Walls and taking advantage of social strife, rebellion and peasant uprisings in Ming China. The Wall was proven useless. Beijing or Peking was conquered very quickly by the pony riding Manchus. A small force of Manchus effaced the Ming civilization of some 250 million Chinese.

“The Chinese empire was conquered by about 120,000 Manchus. ....In 1644, the Manchus took advantage of the rebellion and chaos in the Chinese empire and moved south. Forming an alliance with a Ming loyalist general, they entered Beijing in June and almost immediately took power for themselves. A combination of military campaigns and diplomacy enabled them to wipe out the remains of Ming resistance, and they soon won the all-important support of the Yangzi valley gentry. By 1673 they had completed their conquest of China, though they continued to expand well into the next century, bringing Xinjiang and Taiwan into the motherland.”

The Great Wall[s] had so impaired the Ming dynasty that its internal implosion was guaranteed. It was a failed policy and one generated by a mixture of weakness, poor judgement and supremacism. The Han Chinese had always believed themselves to be superior to the Mongols and Manchus. It would have been cheaper and better policy to open up trade, commercial and cultural contacts and to staff a large, advanced and mobile army to shadow and thwart any invasion plans. It would have taken far less money and men. I wonder what the modern pious multi-culturalist has to say about these facts ?

Chinghis Khan was supposedly 'forced' to invade China because the Chinese refused to trade with the Mongols. Life on the steppes is harsh an uncompromising. Trade is necessary and the Silk Road is testimony to the far reaching power and impact commerce can have on societies. By denying Chinghis' tribes access to manufacture, money and comestible items, the Han Chinese through an arrogant supposition that they were the centre of the world, sealed their own fate. Better to have opened up the Mongol plains to Chinese civilizational and cultural imperialism, and to maintain a visible and mobile form of military engagement, than to wall off the world, and pretend that a structure of wood, bricks and stones, would forever ossify the order of things; and solidify Ming greatness.

Walls are usually pretty good indications of a failure of policy and vision. This is the great lesson of the perhaps not-so-Great Walls of Ming China. 

Source

An untold story of Beijing and China's development is water – and the engineering projects that are trying to divert water from the South to the North. This infrastructure 'boom' is hidden to the eye. What one sees in Beijing is modernity, speed, money and especially size. Big, bigger, and huge. Size in everything matters. Scale and scope are meant to impress. In fact it overawes in many ways.

Here in Beijing, everything is on an enormous scale. A city with an official population of 20 millions, most likely has a real population of 25-30 millions. Urbanization stretches forever off a complicated lace network of highways and ring roads; with endless apartment blocs dominated by mountains of new corporate, hotel and financial towers fading into the horizon. Its U$200 billion plus economy is 16% the size of Canada's, increasing by 5 fold in the past 25 years. It looks set to double within 10 years. Per capita income is over U$10.000 and rising. Real estate is 3-5 times more expensive per square foot than most large Western cities. Large fancy cars parade down choked avenues. Money is the secular idol of a city that sees no limit to anything. It is hard to convey the dynamism of such a place and its size.

Everything seems massive. The Forbidden City is the biggest palace compound in the world at almost 8 million square feet in size. Tianamen Square is larger than Red Square, neatly sealed off with a huge Mao-soleum housing the body of what can only be described as the leader of the cult of Mao. The $40 billion Olympic venue and park is the largest Olympic site in history, and is over 6 times the scale of the area in Athens at a cost of $ 40 billion. This does not include the tens of billions used to tear down the sea of apartment blocs, old buildings and contaminated earth which dominated the area 30 minutes north of the center; to make way for the complex of huge new offices, corporate megaliths; and hotels which surround the site like modern day medieval towers protecting the inner keep. In just 5 years the Chinese built what is essentially a huge city to host the Olympics. One can be in awe of ancient edifices and building techniques. But this marvel is surely one of historical import.

Yet in spite of this success and dynamism there is one important problem – water and the lack of it. It is China's biggest threat. The Middle East has more water than northern China. Northern China is basically a desert one created by historical human usage and de-vegetation; and by a natural lack of water courses, sheds and riverine systems. 80% of China's water is in the 'south'. Yet the north is 40% of the economy containing a 1/3 of the population. Unless the north somehow gets more water it will implode. The Ministry of Water Resources has said that if business continues as usual, supply of water will not be able to meet demand by 2030. The local supply deficit is about 60% of current water usage. This gap between demand and faltering supply will only widen.

In Beijing the main river the Yongding, is at times dry. The local government is spending many billions each year renewing this river and its downstream sources. It is highly polluted. Yet without this major river Beijing would never have developed from a desolate settlement into a metropolis. At one time of course Beijing was on the coast and was a major port [during the Ming dynasty]. It is still the main source of irrigation for the farmland outside of Beijing, and the rivulets and lakes throughout the city are its tributaries. Centuries ago, there were vast waters in the western side of the capital city full of fish, lotus, and waterfowl, and temples. The Ming and then the Qing or Manchu elite built pavilions, gardens and villas on its banks. Now it is a greenish-brackish polluted mess and at times in danger of drying up in places.

2030 will come fast. Over 100 projects in China are diverting water from the well supplied 'South' which enjoys a per-capita water surplus, to the North. These are engineering projects of a scale previously unknown. They drive hundreds of billions in capital and operational spend each year. I read somewhere that in the past 5 years the Communist Central Government has spent $ 8 trillion on these public works projects – a large percentage of which was funded by debt. Like many things in China it is hard to know if this is true or not. But the scope of the water issue probably understates the necessary investment. $8 Trillion is just a start. Just in Beijing alone the water problem is going to cost Trillions to resolve.

The great threat to China is not geo-political, American hegemony and rivalry, the 'globalism' of trade, technology, finance and culture, and not Western 'predations' in Korea and Japan. It is water. A more basic problem cannot be found. And I would not bet against the Chinese finding a solution to this most banal and yet vital of issues. 

The most emotional topic for Churchill, with regards to empire, was of course India. As a potent sensitivity the Raj and British rule in India surpassed even Churchill's odd and in my opinion quite weird affectation for French 'civilization' premised on a romantic, yet historically inaccurate view of France as a paradigm of civilized progress. Churchill was unbalanced about France. He was extremely emotive about India.

During the 1930s when Churchill was out of office he was fed secret information by his supporters and informers in the government about the Nazi threat and the build up German arms. Though he tended to exaggerate the data Churchill's basic theme stated stridently from 1934 onwards, was true and valid - Europe and England were at risk from a likely future war with the Nazi's. The German cult was clear in its intent of reconstituting German war making power and expanding the Reich to other lands; and its leader had written a blueprint of German territorial demands in Mein Kampf. But for a society which has just exited from the horrors of the First World War, Demosthenic railings against foreign powers fell largely flat. Peace at any costs was the desire.

Most historians agree that Churchill's warnings about Nazi Germany were diluted by his rantings [as most would brand it], on India and Indian self-government. This is only partially true. It is accepted wisdom that Churchill fought a 'rearguard' action against any form of Indian independence, especially outside of the Empire. Whilst true that the India question did indeed cloud over the Nazi threat, it is mistaken to believe the revisionist view that Churchill's stance on India was irrational. Indeed much of his objection would appeal to a wide swathe of socialist-Marxist opinion today, steeped as they were [ostensibly at least], in appeals for fairness, female rights, equality, better living conditions and the political reality of Moslem-Hindu tension and rights to self-determination. Churchill objected to Indian independence outside of the Empire for 5 good reasons;

1. India was much better off with British rule since it was the British who had the power, the capital and the technology to keep the various parts of India together peaceably.

2. India's caste system needed to be reformed before self-determination could exist. Churchill objected to the '60 millions' of Untouchables, and the second-class status of women within Hindu and Moslem society.

3. An independent India under Gandhi's rule would repudiate trade and close it markets. Gandhi's financial backers were rich mill owner's and they had no interest in the British Imperial system of trade [an internal tariff free bloc with external tariffs].

4. The British white paper plan on Indian statehood [1931-2] were too complicated, and would never in any event satisfy majority or national opinion. [This was a very potent argument in fact and quite true since the white paper, supported by Gandhi and his extremist nationalist group, planned first for local and provincial reforms and autonomy, but for not a federal government which would only follow at some indeterminate future date. It was an unlikely idea and workable.]

5. In the event of another global war India would be indispensable to the British for both manpower and raw materials. British power would likewise be indispensable [as it turned out to be], if India itself was threatened by a foreign power [Japan in the case of WW2].

These are all rational objections to Indian statehood and even Dominion status within the empire. But today the view is that 'Gandhi' and his supposed plurality in India were 'right'. Gandhi was never a saint but a man beholden to 'capitalist' interests and one who never represented a majority of either Hindu and certainly never, Indian Moslem opinion. His group never had more than a significant, though small minority support of Indians. Gandhi's ignorant policies of self-reliance, where India would reject all Western methods, technologies and trade; and in which villages would become self-sufficient, was the stuff of a puerile mind totally incapable of dealing with the complexity of a modern political-economy. It would consign India post-independence to some 40 years of abject miserable socialist failure in which literally millions of people would die of starvation and hundreds of millions more would be mired in a deformed, impoverished existence. So much for Gandhi and sainthood.

Unlike Gandhi Churchill was concerned about the average Indian and the population at large. Gandhi was in the main a political servant to his rich mill owning masters. This must surely offend his revisionist claim to saint-hood forwarded by the pious socialist. Churchill was a politician and a statesman, serving himself but in so doing, needing to serve others. This must also offend the earnest communalist. Churchill rightly saw that Indian independence would only be achieved if the general living conditions of the average person in India could be improved and broad representation, premised on the British model, enacted. Autarchy, rejecting investment, ejecting British capital and institutions would be the quickest road to penury. As well, as Gandhi must have known but rejected, a precipitous British withdrawal would lead to a civil war between the Hindus and Moslems, which did indeed happen in 1947 killing and injuring millions.

The 'India episode' of the 1930s did much to damage Churchill's reputation. Contemporary rivals, the media and revisionist Marxist historians have had a gleeful time feasting on this carcass. But there is little in the debates over India, which substantiate their claims that Churchill was a reactionary imperialist coveting unlimited power to order hundreds of millions of 'brown people' around like pawns on a chessboard. Churchill aptly sums up his rational defence of the British Raj:

“Dominion status can certainly not be attained by a community which brands and treats sixty millions of of its members, fellow human beings, toiling at their side, as 'Untouchables', whose approach is an affront and whose very presence a pollution. Dominion status cannot be attained while India is prey to fierce racial and religious dissensions and when the withdrawal of British protection would mean the immediate resumption of medieval wars. It cannot be attained while the political classes in India represent only an insignificant fraction of the three hundred and fifty millions for whose welfare we are responsible.” [Daily Mail article November 1932]

Entirely correct. Churchill on a few occasions had met with Indian leaders of various parties and representatives of various interests including Gandhi who never represented more than a fraction of the Indian polity. He always assured the Indians, and there is no reason to doubt his veracity on this topic, that Indian independence would eventually be achieved once certain conditions in the political-economy and in social welfare had been met. There is nothing 'reactionary' in such observations. It is only common-sense.

While Churchill's attitudes to India were emotional and complex, they were not detrimental to Indian interests. His enemies, various Indians with self-interests such as Gandhi and his acolytes, revisionist Marxists and racialists who conflate white with evil; do not make a convincing case that Churchill wanted to dominate India and use it for British purposes; or that he never assented to Indian self-determination. His warnings about Gandhism and its destructive outcomes were never taken seriously. Indeed the violence unleashed by Gandhi's pacifism took his own life and generated a war in which millions were killed and wounded and in which the fundamentalist Moslem state called Pakistan was formed – a force for destabilization and uncivilized regression if there ever was one. These facts apparently do not impress themselves on the preening revisionsts and the do-good socialist commentators. Maybe Churchill was right after all.

 It is hard to comprehend anyone defending what is in essence the sex slavery of women, or prostitution as it is called in the media and in more polite circles. Objecting to females sold as meat is not a matter of supporting bygone eras of emotionless sexual avoidance, such as the suppressed 19^th 'Victorian' prurience, itself an age ripe with sexual hypocrisy and double standards. Nor is criticism of sex-slavery a form of Christian totalitarianism, in the guise of suspect morality, tenets of absurdity so beloved by Marxists who hate anything to do with their very own cultural and spiritual development. Objecting to sex-slavery means you are human with qualities of morality, and one who understands the parameters and limits of behaviour. Sex-slavery is not something that a mature society, one with confidence and high standards, aspires to.

The issues with female sex-slavery, which is the correct name for prostitution, have nothing to do of course with female liberation, free-will, choice or emancipation. In fact the opposites all apply. Sex-slavery is a throw back to barbaric eras and zones of animalism which fetish the selling of flesh as akin to that of selling a consumer product; rife with criminality, drug use, psychopathy, and the destruction of culture. Governments – themselves largely statist-marxist concepts – view sex trafficking as a legally taxable item, a normal transaction worthy of a value-added tariff, all in the name of liberation, medical supervision, and safety. I am sure the rhetoric defending female sex slavery will over time incorporate tearful odes to the children's future, and mother earth.

Modern sex slavery, is part of a society obsessed with porn, low-culture and sex in general. The Cultural-Marxist warriors have spent 100 years annihilating Western culture from within. This Cultural Marxism is now the prevalent theology in today's advanced world. It has detonated Judeo-Christian boundaries and morality; and erected the primitive cults of secularism and narcissism. Part of the Cultural Marxist doctrine is to normalize all matters of sexual expression. The Gay culture, now so dominant in many urban areas and educational systems, is a direct product of Cultural Marxism. Multiculturalism is as well a derivative of post-modern Cultural Marxism theology. So too is the inane defence of sex-slavery.

Very few cultures long survived their descent into animalism – which sex-slavery is a part of. The cult of Ishtar or the 'sacred prostitutes' was a dominant force from about 2200 BC to 600 BC in the empires of the Akkadians, Sumerians, Assyrians and Babylonians. It seems frankly insipid to base our own society on bronze age barbarisms in which women had few rights and were viewed largely as fertility vessels. The Roman elite post Augustus, became a cadre of feminized, sex-addled parasites, whose incompetence did much to weaken Roman culture, the civitas, and the loyalty of the average peasant to the idea of Rome. Sex-slavery was rampant in male-dominated Roman culture. Again, a return to 'legitimizing' modern sex-slavery sounds like an iron-age theology. Sex-slavery informed in large part of course, the Moslem lust for Jihad, and the Viking invasions of Europe. The Viking raids were linked to the sex-slave trade with Islam. The Moslem Jihad in Spain, France, central and Eastern Europe and Russia were driven by plunder, rape and sex-slavery; in which 10 million whites were enslaved, many of them females, used for sex by Moslems and Arabs and stuffed into harems. Today no doubt, the really clever people would opine that harems are fine – female liberation, power and all that.

Sex-slavery generates many unintended consequences. It does create a violent mafia in sex trafficking which will search the world over for their victims and break every law imaginable to ship their meat into advanced states. Many of these women who are lured and captured and forced into the sex trade are beaten by these mafia elements, abused, punished and exploited earning more money for their masters than for themselves. Even those females that willingly enter the flesh trade will be prisoners to some criminal element, if not drugs and other criminal ventures. Crime always moves in to the areas which are infested with the flesh peddlers. Drugs, violence and social disintegration always follows prostitution. Anyone who has studied the fleshpots of Europe knows this. European governments love the sex-slavery of their brothel-areas because of the tax revenues they accrue. The city of Amsterdam would be bankrupt without this trade.

Sex-slavery in any form is dehumanizing. It turns women into trash. It has to destroy their psychologies. It degrades your society and allows men to view women as tools, toys and pleasure orifices. Children viewing it will be warped with wrong messaging. Yes prostitution does exist. Yes we can't get rid of it. No we should not elevate it and allow women to aspire to the enslavement of their flesh for money. Sex cults are neither productive, educated, advanced or civilized. They retard progress. To say that sex-slavery is progressive and liberating is to state that imprisonment is freedom; whoring is work; selling flesh the same as apples; and criminality legal.

It is absurd. But so too is the entire Cultural Marxist project. 

Churchill was blamed by Keynes and sundry revisionist historians for putting Britain back onto the gold standard on January 1 1926 and thereby 'cementing' an artificially high Pound sterling rate to the US$, abetting a rush to the Great Depression. Neither gold, nor the gold standard caused the Great Depression. Nor does a high currency exchange rate cause by itself an economic contraction. The Great Depression was caused in the main by two factors, namely; central banks attempting to manipulate market forces; and state governments increasing taxation which curtailed capital and investment, whilst trying desperately to pay of the debts of the First World War. By the mid 1920s for example over 40% of the UK's budget was used to pay off war debt.

When most major economies had returned to the gold standard by the mid 1920s there was a marked shift from unproductive ossified industries such as mining and cotton production; to new more dynamic sectors such as advanced manufacturing of cars, consumer products and electronics. The mechanism of the gold standard [see here] also exerted a tight discipline on national finances and for major powers like Britain provided positive trade balances.

Economies began to 'take off' and the 'roaring 20s' were born during the middle years of that decade. The decline began with France. The French fearful of British trade dramatically lowered the exchange rate of the Franc and began to redeem British Pound Sterling for English bullion. Instead of issuing a paper note against these gold inflows [which the gold standard 'rules' mandated]; the French hoarded or 'sterilized' the inflows. This held down domestic inflation. In normal operations the English central bank would then increase rates to re-attract gold inflows. But given the existing threat of deflation the English central bank decided to do nothing and instead appealed to the US central bank to lower American interest rates and discount rates to banks; in order to reverse the outflow of British gold by making British rates artificially higher. This enacted what Bernanke has preached for the past 5 years – an easy monetary policy of near zero rates and liquified US banks through central bank money-printing. In 1927, these policies unleashed a torrent of US speculative and investment furor in US stock markets and new industrial ventures. Stock markets soared around the world, and money poured into both equities and business investments. The 20s were indeed roaring.

By the middle part of 1928 the US central bank was alarmed by this 'irrational exuberance' and reversed its easy money policy. Gold flowed out of England and Germany back to the higher interest rate environment in America. As in France, the US central bank hoarded the gold 'sterilizing' its effect on inflation and domestic prices. Yet at the same time, the expanded credit from easier policies was still coursing through world markets and investments, just as the gold base for that expanded credit was contracting and disappearing.

By 1929 the system became insupportable. Even worse governments had now prevented citizens from exchanging paper currency or IOUs for gold. The 19^th century check on government policy was lifted. This meant that in effect central banks could mingle the restrictions of a gold standard with the extremely elastic effects of a controlled fiat currency. Market forces were principally excluded from exercising a restraint on the system, which they had enacted during the 19^th century when world trade had increased by a factor of 10 times.

With the Americans and French hoarding gold a global money shortage developed. Deflation in wages and prices had to follow. The Depression was a cataclysmic decline in prices, wages, revenues, trade and monetary asset values. Central banks had ignored the 'rules' of the orthodox-19^th century gold standard and cheated to keep their own economies stabilized. Monetary policy at once too loose and then too tight had precipitated investment and business cycle shocks and contractions. The gold standard – or more accurately the unorthodox gold-based system - was shattered. But it was not the orthodox gold standard but simply a set of policies which must be viewed as an evolution from 'hard money' based on metallic value, to 'soft money' premised on coloured paper with no metallic backing and only of value because governments have 'promised' to pay a certain current value for that piece of paper. A shift in other words from tangible asset based monetary and currency value; to something approaching mysticism and even blind faith. 

 In my little library of 1000 volumes on Churchill, Toye's is a very good addition and find indeed. This book makes you think, presents new information and ranks up with the best of the works which analyze Churchill and the era in which he lived. There is no need for Marxist revisionism, and imposing current mores – which may or may not be superior to ones in times past – on figures from other epochs. This is not history but distortion. In contrast, Toye amasses a mountain and information and parses it, looking at Churchill the man in politics and how he truly viewed the Empire. It is a fabulous theme.

Toye focuses on 2 aspects of Churchill's long career and does a superb job of sourcing, investigating and compiling the material. First, there is Churchill the defender of the British Empire and what it stood for in his own mind, namely: fair play, social and moral progress, civilization, military might, white-paternalism, economic and technological development.

“The strength and splendour of our authority is derived not from physical forces, but from moral ascendancy, liberty, justice, English tolerance, and English honesty.” [Election speech November 1903, p. 93]

Second, there is Churchill the flinty politician always on the lookout for political advantage. The political context is always important when analyzing Churchill's position on any topic. He was 'fluid' in the means to achieve goals, visions and his own ends.

Churchill's support of the 'empire' could wax or wane depending on the political moment and his own personal [and rather egotistical] necessities. For example, Churchill declined the offer of Colonial Secretary during World War I in 1916 after he was disgraced by the Gallipoli-Dardanelles fiasco, and hesitated for quite a long time in 1920 before accepting the Ministership of the same. The Near East today is in some measure a product not just of Churchill, but rather the experts in the department of Middle Eastern affairs he set up and staffed within the Colonial office, and who collectively, shaped the nation states, borders, and to some extent even, the geo-political divides of the Near East. Churchill usually bowed to expert advice. In any event here we have Churchill, depicted by Toye, as a less than enthusiastic standard bearer of empire and high Minister of all things Colonial.

Toye begins his book with the historical background of the Empire, the competing visions of imperial expansion within British Society, and the attitudes of Churchill's father Lord Randolph. From this base he traces Churchill's education at the hands of mostly pro-Empire enthusiasts who dominated the private school system, and Churchill's own ideas about the British imperial system garnered through travel and war in Africa and Asia. In this light I would recommend that you read 'My African Journey', which is a compendium of Churchill's travels in the first decade of the 20^th century throughout Africa, and the 'Malakand Field Force', his work on fighting the Pathan Moslems along the Afghan-Pakistani borderlands. For example Toye quotes from a speech given in 1920 in the House of Commons by Churchill which reiterated his position from 'My African Journey' on the fact that indigenous populations had no right to be 'idle'. They were as capable as Whites. The speech is about the need to resettle European Jewry in Palestine which would benefit Arabs, Moslems, and the world in general. It is a portrait of the barrenness of Arab and Moslem society in Palestine. As true today as it was then:

“Left to themselves, the Arabs of Palestine would not in a thousand years have taken effective steps towards the irrigation and electrification of Palestine. They would have been quite content to dwell – a handful of philosophic people – in the wasted sun scorched plains, letting the waters of the Jordan continue to flow unbridled and unharnessed into the Dead Sea.” [p. 148]

Of course it was the Jews who developed 'Palestine' and it was the Jews who created a modern functioning and wealthy nation state. Arabs are better off in Israel than they are anywhere else. Churchill the tepid Zionist knew this. He also knew that Britain was the world's largest Muhammadan power during the early 20^th century, and that British interests were served [and his own political interests] by appearing to be even-handed on the question of Israel and of Moslem sensitivity to social and geo-political matters in the Near East and Asia.

Most people don't know that Churchill was a social reformer in his early career from about 1906-1914 [see here for a review of his speeches on reform]. His policies during this period were 'radical' and openly socialist in some respects. Along with Lloyd George and Asquith, Churchill was a prime architect of the nascent British Welfare state. His rationale was simple, according to Toye:

“Churchill declared that the empire was no 'weary titan' but emphasized that if Britain was to keep it 'we must have an Imperial stock'. This required a free, well-fed, and well-educated population: 'That is why we are in favour of social reform'.” [p. 63]

As Churchill commented, he saw little glory in an Empire which ruled the waves but could not flush its own toilets.

As Under-Secretary in Colonial Affairs [1905-08] Churchill, as rightly described by Toye, argued for 'native' equality with Whites in British possessions as long as the 'natives' were educated and 'civilized' [an elastic reference point to be sure]. He roundly condemned acts of brutality against Zulu's and Indians in East Africa. He also, as depicted by Toye, sought to harness the strengths of the 'White' dominions around English concerns and needs, causing more than a few uproars in Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. It is fair to say that Churchill was viewed by most in the Dominions as a centralizer of English power and a man to be distrusted since he put England and her concerns above the independence and freedom of the Dominions. Churchill was portrayed as a Colonial Secretary who thought he ruled the empire by decree.

Whites in Asia and Africa generally felt that Churchill by 1920, had become a 'radical' against Empire and 'White privilege'. Churchill seem to believe in the restraint of 'White' power and the elevation of 'Native' rights. For instance in Parliamentary debates in 1920, Churchill brilliantly and tactfully heaped scorn on the army and its commander Dyer, for the 1919 Amristar massacre of some 379 Indians, with 1700 wounded. The British empire would simply fall apart if it was kept together only by force and the 'natives' were abused by White-racialists:

“What I mean by frightfulness is the inflicting of great slaughter or massacre upon a particular crowd of people, with the intention of terrorizing not merely the rest of the crowd, but the whole district or the whole country.” [p. 152]

In East Africa 'Whites' were somewhat alarmed by Churchill during his stay as Colonial Secretary. According to Toye in East Africa during the early 1920s, 'whites feared that Churchill would not safeguard their interests sufficiently and sent a delegation to Britain to press their case'. Churchill advocated equality of Indians -the civilized ones it should be emphasized – with Whites in all matters throughout the British dominions in Africa. The same held true for Blacks.

The rights of Indians within the African possessions was always a divisive political issue. So too was the question of Indian independence from the Raj. On these matters Churchill met with Gandhi and other Indian representatives and assured them that over time native self-government – within the Empire – was a surety but it would take time. Churchill rightly believed that in the early 20^th century India was better off within the British system. It guaranteed, peace, development and progress. As Toye states, in Churchill's one and only meeting with Gandhi, the Indian sooth-sayer who purported to represent a great mass of Indians [he didn't], made little to no impression whatsoever on the British statesman. Even Gandhi and his acolytes agreed that British civilization was in the main good for India.

Churchill's pragmatism on Colonial affairs reflected his position on Ireland. He wanted a divided Ireland to remain within the English Imperial orbit, but as a self-governing entity in the south, and as a British controlled state in the north. Churchill supported both an Irish Free state or southern home-rule, and the right of Ulster or the northern counties to remain firmly within the Empire. Post World War I until 1922, Churchill was instrumental in brokering agreements to solution the Irish question. Being a Victorian-romantic, Churchill wrongly believed that southern Ireland would willingly stay within the Imperial system. Post 1922, this was an impossibility, but he showed good sense in recognizing the change in Irish politics and popular opinion over its attitude and linkage with the British empire.

One reason this book is so interesting – even though a few facts are incorrectly presented – is that Toye places Churchill's defense of the Empire within the context of politics, itself derived from shifts in the political-economy and socio-cultural ethos. Churchill was not a jingoist, but neither was he a Little Englander. He was not a Marxist Globalist like HG Wells who in 1922 proposed a world government and a world currency and the destruction of the British empire. But neither was he an exponent of unbounded and fantastically costly expansion – his rejected proposal in 1921 to withdraw Britain from Iraq is a clear example of a hard-headed man of finance.

In the main Churchill wanted all peoples within the Imperial system who were 'civilized' to be treated the same, and the use of violence and military power curtailed and managed judiciously. The 'Dominions' would of course be somewhat subservient to the concerns of England. From this point of view he was also certainly not a socialist-relativist equating African or Asian mysticism and savagery with English or British civilization. Neither did he want the 'White' Dominions to be completely free of English control. Certainly none of these viewpoints is 'racist' or overtly and uncomprehendingly 'Imperialist'. They are in the main practical and center around the question, 'What is best for England and her territories?' In all of this he was most certainly correct. 

 “It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time.” WSC

Churchill was arguably the 20^th century's most influential political personality for one important reason: in the Wet representative democracy and some form of market capitalism survived the onslaught of fascism thanks in part to his leadership. It is the 'West' with its heritage and ideals about liberty, freedom, free markets and rights, which affirms the hopes of all of mankind. Without Churchill it is debatable if Europe would have survived Hitler and the pagan Nazi fascists. Without moral and philosophical lucidity and valour civilisation falls to the pagans. Churchill had intelligence, insight, and moral and philosophical clarity and courage. The twin fascism's of national socialism and communism which murdered 100 million people and destroyed progress in the victim societies by generations, were modern expressions of barbarity as pernicious to progress as slavery; Islamic submission to a moon deity; or Napoleon's mad warring and destruction which held back European growth and progress for two generations. Fascism reposed in gang rule, one party rule, one man rule, divine rule with no human free-will, or submission to a pagan cult, is an ugly creed that never dies.

In the past century social and political revolutionaries helped change the basic ideals and constitutions of society. The weeds of Socialist Marxism in the guise of Obama for example, does not spring from infertile ground. The positives of recent historical development still outweigh the crushing power of the negatives. Inventors, writers, scientists, business men, activists for various causes and media personalities all effected change and innovation that has propelled the world onto a trajectory today that in 1936 was beyond even the most lurid of science fiction fantasy. Thankfully more people now live under representative government than ever before in history, yet it would have been a brave man in 1936 to predict that 70 or 80 years later society would have developed in such a manner with such astounding progress. A simple fact bears this out. In 1936 the average life expectancy was less than 40 years in industrialized countries. Today's life expectancy is trending towards 80 years. Though others might have had a more immediate and dramatic impact on human affairs in the 20^th century, few were as emblematic of freedom and the Western Enlightenment concepts of fair economic exchange; rational thought; political pluralism; human and civil rights; military preparedness and civilized courage, as Churchill.

Churchill was the 20^th century's most influential person, because he represented, defended, and extended the franchise of the orthodox Anglo-Saxon Liberal-Parliamentary order. Yet his lessons, attitudes and beliefs are already forgotten. In this sense he was the last of the 'conservatives'. The Liberal-Parliamentary order never was the 'end of history', but merely the most successful method of organizing society yet developed. But we need to clarify some terms. First big L 'Liberal' does not mean the socialist small l liberalism of of left wing Marxists. Big L Liberalism is references the Orthodox Enlightenment based Liberalism of the 17^th to 19^th centuries namely, small government, low taxation, a strong military, a society keen on progress, innovation and self-reliance. In essence those ideals are branded in today's parlance by the term 'conservative' used as pejorative by socialists and small l liberals. Big L Liberalism rejects much of the cultural and program bankruptcy espoused and supposed by the welfare state, or more aptly the national-socialist political-economy.

Second, I use 'parliamentary order' on purpose. Mass democracy has its defects including mob-rule, socialist pandering to buy votes and a general apathy that the 'state' must do 'something' on each issue. Representative parliamentary and republican processes and institutions are necessary for society to develop. 'Parliamentary order' references legal, political, and systemic processes which allows a society to progress morally, spiritually, legally, economically, and militarily. Mass democracy has led in part to the emasculation of systemic processes and virtues but also to the establishment of massive systems of welfare and vote-buying which breaks society apart into little groups that must be catered to and bought. Mass democracy leads in short to corruption, bankruptcy and the curtailment of freedom.

In contradistinction to what we have today, orthodox Liberals or conservatives, believe that systemic processes, virtues and respect for individual rights and private property and ownership trump socialist vote buying and pandering to 'rights' groups. Churchill was one of the great defenders of systemic conservative human progress based on orthodox Liberal ideas. This creed is premised on millennia of experience, millions of social, economic and moral transactions and the affirmation that collective results premised on freedom of information and the accumulation of literally billions of decisions, coupled with parliamentary institutions, are far better guides to enlightenment and progress than following the utopian dreams and dictums of self-appointed and self-absorbed elites and 'great men', who desire to create the mommy-state to accrue power and control.

 Churchill called Keynes, the tweed wearing 'economist' or mystic the, 'most able opponent of the return to the Gold Standard'. True enough. Keynes was also the most dominant voice of anti-reality embedded in the cult of demand management and the creation of fiat currency. Inimical more than rational. Churchill's tenure as Chancellor of the UK from 1924-1929, is usually presented as a less than favourable demonstration of his grasp, or lack of it, of finances. This criticism is undoubtedly true in some respects. Churchill's strength was in the crass business of politics and geo-political affairs. He was not a financial literate. He did have the good common-sense to ignore Keynes however.

Churchill's rule over British treasury affairs is not however, a desultory epoch, nor one devoid of good design and ideas. It was the era of the 'roaring' 20's in which the global economy took off from 1924 – 29 thanks mainly to the American bail-out of the German banking system [will this happen again?], an ease in tariffs and taxation, and the flowing of capital into trade and job creation; not to mention consumer inventions. The post-World War I malaise, social instability, high unemployment, and the burden of war repayments was finally put to rest in 1923, in part even for Germany, thanks mainly due to American governmental and banking monies liquifying the international political-economy.

Churchill took over at a good time, and this fact is usually missed out by historians focused on this period. One of the great disappointments of most Churchilliana is the complete lack of political-economic perspective. One rarely reads about the mundane factors of micro and macro economics and the conditions of life. How did people live? What jobs were prevalent? What changes in the economy and in social mores were being undertaken? How 'biased' was the media? What politic theologies were being forwarded? Technology, capital flows, trade balances, income growth or decline, economic health or contraction; all of these and plenty more impress themselves upon all politicians. Yet I can't remember reading one volume in the mansion of Churchilliana which layers on the reality of the political-economy to any of his positions or at times, even his political positions. Maybe my memory is bad, but it surely is true that most approaches to polemics miss these essential points.

The roaring 20's was maybe not so uproarious as our history books tell us, but the 5 years before the Great Depression do seem to be a period of development and general improvement. Much of this was due to the return to gold – another factor missed in most history books. The return to the Gold Standard had its origins in the instability of the immediate post war period, and the 19^th century orthodox economic attitude that mono-metallic currency bases were mandatory for sound money management. Nothing since 1919 has refuted this iron law of currency value. Between 1921 and 1925 the American and British governments co-jointly planned the return of Western currencies to a gold standard. The pros and cons were debated and the ill-effects well known, but there was an almost unanimous agreement that a fixed exchange rate, where a certain amount of gold would support a certain quantity of paper money circulation, was necessary. Today of course the opposite consensus exists. Fiat currencies de-racinated from any metallic exchange is now the accepted 'wisdom' of most economists.

When Churchill came to his Chancellorship position in 1924 the return to gold was already a fait accompli – a fact not mentioned in most texts on the subject. The civil service as well as the Conservative government of the time both agreed to this unalterable fact. It is inconceivable that Churchill would have risked a veto on this policy, a decision which would have left him high and dry within his party, and open to a barrage of professional and media criticism. In 1924 the cult of Keynes had not reached critical mass, and diseased the profession of economic analysis. Printing colored paper un-moored to a metal was not yet a received 'truth'.

In the 19^th century the gold standard helped inaugurate an increase in world trade by a factor of 10. British and American power was of course a mandatory corollary to allow this fantastic increase in wealth to occur. The gold standard did function in the main quite wonderfully. Itwas a natural working system, arising from the need to have an independent source of wealth calculation, medium of exchange and security. Banks held gold reserves and would issue a paper guarantee that would allow a depositor to exchange money for gold in the marketplace. Central banks began doing the same and over time this IOU would become a national currency paper.

Importantly the amount of money in circulation, issue by a central bank, was limited by the amount of gold reserves. This idea does not exist today, which is why the U$ has devalued 96% since 1913 in real terms, especially degrading in value since the end of the fixed exchange regime in 1971. If a central bank in 1926 printed too much money and caused inflation, a citizen would go to a bank and exchange the paper notes for gold. The metal would be drained out of the system and the central bank would have to cut the money supply in order to repair its holdings of gold. Today no such obstruction exists for modern central banks.

Constant fixed exchanges also stabilized and improved trade since they were founded upon gold. If a central bank kept printing money, the rise in local prices due to inflation would decrease exports. People would go abroad in search of cheaper imports and assets. This would subtract gold from the domestic system eventually forcing a change in policy. Likewise if a state received a lot of gold from abroad, it could print more money against this asset base, thus revaluing domestic prices upwards which would make foreign goods more affordable. Gold would eventually lead to a sort of equilibrium, since excessively bad policy would lead to financial ruin and long before then, the system would likely recalibrate and force policy changes. Unlike today therefore, countries in 1926 could not 'print deficits' forever and use their exchange rates to 'bail out' bad monetary policy.

Bank of England Chairman Montagu knew his history, and the fact that the British imperial system took off after 1821 when it returned to the gold standard [and slew the inflation from the Napoleonic wars], was well known to him. In 1922 at a conference in Genoa, Montagu and others brokered a deal to return to the gold standard. Payments in gold back bills of exchange at pre-war exchange rates were agreed upon for the main trading nations. Those of the second rank would use the bills of exchange from first world states in trade. It was hoped that the 2 tiered system would lubricate international commerce.

Thus was the world when Churchill became Chancellor. In 1923 unemployment was at 12% and many inefficient heavy industries were in trouble particularly in the north of England in coal, mining and textiles. The first world war had stimulated an excess in production in these industries, far outstripping peace time demand and export opportunity. There was little that one could do to 'save' these industries except hand them welfare and subsidy cheques – an ineffective and over the longer term, deleterious policy still in vogue today. Unionization was rampant [reaching a peak oddly during World War II]; to about 35 % of the workforce or some 8 million people. Unions had no interest in shuttering businesses, decreasing wages, or more imports and competition.

There was little doubt that in the short term the unions, ineffective businesses, poorly run manufacturing and industrial concerns, and archaic textile production would all suffer. Churchill asked experts from both 'groups' including gold-standard 'deniers', to make their case so he could comprehend the impact of returning to gold on January 1 1926, as per the deal at Genoa and the agreement reached between the Americans and British during the period 1921 to 1925. Proponents knew that returning to the standard would be 'hellish', but felt that the pain would produce longer term gains in efficiency, new industrialization, trade, and stability. Keynes as almost the lone dissenter, opined that only government could manufacture prosperity, by increasing the money supply, stoking inflation, subsidizing jobs; and limiting import competition. He was obsessed with full employment and believe in the mystic power of government ot 'protect' not only jobs, but also wage levels and to manage both. Keynesian theology had already converted many on the Continent to its religion of demand management and during 1923-5 many Euro economies were implementing and feeling the negative effects of the Keynes cult and its diktat. These failures were known to Churchill. Keynes ignored the reality that British economic weakness was structural, riven by heavily protected industrial centers which were failing; high wages; poor to non-existent productivity in many sectors; and bloated unions. Printing money would not solve these structural issues.

Based on the available information Churchill made the right decision. On April 28 1925 he announced or reconfirmed, the move to a gold standard on January 1 1926. It was the proper policy choice, and one that was not politically popular with many in the working 'class'. The easier and more 'political' decision would have been to follow Keynes, print money, 'support' full employment and centralize the management of wages. To Churchill's credit he rejected this path. There certainly was pain involved in the transition. But the pain was structural, and an economy can only overcome systemic weakness with real policies which unravel rigidities in labour, capital, unions and government. Printing money, and engaging in the mysticism of 'managing demand', does nothing but add to debt, future taxes, near term and even longer term inflation, increase wages and further rigidify labour and capital markets, both of which eventually come under government regulation. The roaring 20s was built in part, on the stability of gold, not of Keynesianism. The 'Great Depression' had little to do with this system, but much to do with government interference, beggar thy neighbour tariffs and trade reduction, massive taxation, and unsound monetary policy.  

One of the more diabolical personalities of the 20^th century was certainly economist John M. Keynes. His theories on macro and monetary economy, which have more akin to mysticism than physical reality, are still taught as dogma cum truth in university. Keynes' irrational and entirely unfounded set of principles have no place in policy, education or even in abstract theory.

One hears from the 'Left' – which is most of the voting population – that Keynes was 'not a Keynesian'. This is rather banal. Keynes was indeed a virulent Keynesian and extremist. The entire edifice of massive fiat currency debt and attendant monetary devaluation, in train since 1971 [and one could argue before this date]; when the Bretton Woods system and Gold Standard fixed exchange rate were disbanded; is directly attributable to his malevolent influence. We know this from the debate in the UK during the 1920s, when Churchill was Chancellor [1924-28] and Keynes sadly, an adviser to the government.

One can summarize Keynesian macro-economics, developed from 1920 to 1924 during the Gold Standard debate, and then expounded during the 1930s into his seminal works, into the following 3 points:

1. Aggregate demand is the most important macro-economic 'variable'. The supply side or productive means of society is not the chief concern of government. When the economic cycle is weak, or when wages and purchasing power are declining, government must 'stimulate' the aggregate demand through spending and social works programs. Income redistribution thus becomes an economic goal, buttressing overall demand and easing social tension.

2. Fiat currencies and flexible exchange rates are better than fixed rates such as the Gold Standard. Keynes reasoned that a fiat currency will allow governments maximum flexibility to use monetary policy to stimulate national aggregate demand. In his seminal 1936 work 'The General Theory', he advocated driving interest rates towards zero. The rationale was that with zero rates, capital would cease to be scarce, and income distribution would become normalized and 'more fair'.

3. Protectionism of industries and thus of jobs, is more important than trade. Governments must use tariffs and other barriers to preserve wages and jobs in the national market, no matter how obsolete the industry might be.

This is the essence of Keynesianism. It was manifest in Keynes' objection to the British returning to the Gold Standard in 1925. In Keynes' view the Gold Standard was a 'barbaric relic', which impeded the stimulation of demand and the flexibility needed by governments to expand the money supply and smooth out business cycles, especially recessions. He lobbied Churchill on the above 3 points but lost out to the mainstream view of the time, which held that gold was the only real currency and that the value of printed paper had to be tied to a certain quantity of possessed and stored gold. If a government printed money, without increasing the gold supply the currency value would naturally fall, and people would exchange the paper for gold. Real incomes would fall, import prices would increase, exports would likely strengthen. If the government printed too much money, inflation would be manifest. The only way to restore the currency value to its previous level would be to attract or buy gold and hold it in reserve.

Keynes rejected this and the entire thesis of Orthodox economics. In his view of the world, stated in his major works, man was not 'free' to conduct economic exchange. He had to be regulated in that exchange. A government's main task was to have a balanced economy, close to full employment. In this regard gold, fixed exchange rates, free or fair trade, and the lack of deficit financing in periods of economic growth, were inimical to the realization of the social good. Monetary and fiscal powers had to be centralized. Rates of interest must be driven close to zero. Printed money or fiat currency, was mandatory, replacing the old notions of mono-metallic value and linkage.

Keynes did not trust the market, nor the actors in a market system. He convinced himself that a market system could never attain full employment – the crux of Keynesian mysticism. In place of the chaos of a market, governments had a social duty to intervene and use all available monetary and fiscal techniques to redistribute incomes, sustain even poorly run businesses, neuter trade which corrupted local jobs; and manage what he termed 'economic prosperity'. This mandated social engineering. In an oft-quoted letter that Keynes wrote to Austrian economist Friedrich A. Hayek in 1944 he expressed his desire for such centralization:

"I should say that what we want is not no planning, or even less planning, indeed I should say that what we almost certainly want is more. Moderate planning will be safe if those carrying it out are rightly oriented in their own minds and hearts to the moral issue. Dangerous acts can be done safely in a community which thinks and feels rightly, which would be the way to hell if they were executed by those who think and feel wrongly."

Notice the mystical nature of this supposed 'economist'. 'Moderate planning' – what does that mean? Does it mean the number of civil servants or fiscal spend, or moderation in statist thought? What does he entail by 'oriented in their own minds and hearts'? What does this statement of emotionality and opacity mean? Does Keynes or any other central planner know what is in the hearts and minds of everyone at the aggregate level? This is rather unlikely. Is his idea of 'moral' issues the same as everyone else? Does he or some central planning King or Prince get to decide what is moral, right and necessary? What if they are wrong?

Keynes was a Keynesian. And an extremist at that. His ideas of unfettered fiat currency manipulation informs all modern economies. A return to the Gold Standard is politically impossible now and would only happen if the entire political-economy of key nation states crash in a depression. Even then, the Keynesians who control governments would obstruct such a return. Central-statist planning under 'Conservatives' as well as Socialists runs amok throughout the advanced nations. Civil service power is unimpeded, and social engineering is so advanced that there is no real possibility to limit or contract governmental power. State coercion and relevance has increased in a globalizing world, not diminished. Rates are indeed zero today as they have been for most of the last decade plus. Thus all three key issues of Keynes' platform make up our macro-political economy.

Keynesian is the political-economic foundation of the modern world. This is why modern states are in such financial trouble. Keynesian economics is more mysticism than rationality. It is not premised on real world events, or core principles of economics and monetary policy. It is a social experiment, designed to usurp the free-market and impose socialist engineering. Even when it fails its defenders claim that it is not Keynesian theology which is to blame, but some other evil. This is surreal and mistaken. At some point one can only hope that the entire corpus of Keynesian liturgy is jettisoned for economic reality. A gold standard would be a good start. The political obstructions to sound fiscal and monetary policy are however, almost impossible to overcome without a general economic calamity to stimulate needed reform. Such is the legacy of the homosexual, tweed wearing Brit, who tried to wear down Churchill with his effusive propaganda as to the merits of centralization.  

The coming Ice Age – caused by C02 which follows climate and is 1/3 of 1 % of atmospheric gases? Hmm right. That is why the cult of Greenist Warm has mutated their self-interested, activist fear-mongering to 'Climate Change'. Yes apparently the climate has changed and will continue to do so regardless of Co2 levels. We are in a trough of colder than average temperatures when one looks at the earth's climate over a billion or more years.

Climate today is cool and getter colder. Most likely a mini-ice age is forming, not a warming up of the dear Earth Mother. But no matter. If you develop an insipid computer data model and program it full of unscientific algorithms, then the warming trends will produce cooling, since the trace chemical C02, mostly emitted by Mother Earth, will 'trap' infrared sunlight re-radiating it and heating up the earth's surface.  The warmer areas will collide with cooler regions causing climate disruption.  No negative feedback loops and other causal variables are allowed to enter into the programmatic thinking of the activists cum scientists. Or if they are they are minimized. Natural physical laws are ignored or amended as the cult of Green reshapes the physical universe to fit into their religious cult's dogmatic view of the world.  Thus warming causes cooling. This lying, corrupt fanaticism is now called science.

874 discrete events are now apparently caused by GlobaloneyWarming including dead camels; the Arab slaughter of Blacks in Darfur, genetic changes, suicide, an increase in crime and extramarital affairs; more dead birds, cane toad invasions, and women taking up prostitution. Who would have thought that the trace chemical C02, and by extension all human activity, was so evil? The Greenie cult of death and irrationality leaves little to chance in their propaganda campaigns. Bad hair-cuts and sagging jeans were sadly left off the list for now. All due to a climate which has gotten cooler in the past 14 years. Now that is settled science! A trace chemical which follows Climate is now history's most criminal toxin.

C02 has always followed climate [See Palisad for the most informative detailed graphics on what the Vostok and Dome Ice cores mean and why they strongly mathematically suggest CO2 follows temperatures and has little effect on them. This is what you need to see to understand “feedback” or the postulated “amplification.”] The lag is about 800 years. Maybe the UN-IPCC would condescend to interrupt their propaganda and their activism and actually partake of some science. Or at least they can attempt to answer some simple questions, one of which would be, 'how can a trace chemical which follows climate, cause it ?' Or 'if C02 compounds the increase in warming why isn't there a runaway greenhouse effect like Venus?' Activism is not science. Neither is science-fiction.

Further reading:

• Petit et all 1999 — analysed 420,000 years of Vostok, and found that as the world cools into an ice age, the delay before carbon falls is several thousand years.

• Fischer et al 1999 — described a lag of 600 plus or minus 400 years as the world warms up from an ice age.

• Monnin et al 2001 – looked at Dome Concordia (also in  Antarctica) – and found a delay on the recent rise out of the last major ice age to be 800 ± 600

• Mudelsee (2001) - Over the full 420,000 year Vostok history Co2 variations lag temperature by 1,300 years ± 1000.

• Caillon et al 2003 analysed the Vostok data and found a lag (where CO2 rises after temperature) of 800 ± 200 years.

• A colorful but informative and link-filled presentation is here.

• Excellent summary of the papers on the lag at CO2 science.

 The cult of Globlaoneywarming comes right out of pop-science fiction. The irrationality of stating – with the case closed – that an increase in a trace chemical which is 0.03% in weight of atmospheric gases, and which is 95% emitted by the Gaia goddess herself, is a human-created 'crime' which somehow 'traps' infrared light and heat and deranges climate patterns, is so absurd, so unscientific, so banal, that it must have originated from a Carl Sagan novel. In fact much of the cult of Warm's 'inspiration' did indeed flow from the pop culture and the ramblings of both fantasists and quack-scientists during the period from about 1940 to 1970. These activists and futurists posited that both Mars and Venus suffered from the 'greenhouse' effect and that the hated-human was creating the same set of destabilizing conditions here on earth. No other explanations suffice it appears.

Mars and Venus?

Globaloneywarming qua ClimateChange, is of course about money, power, Green-Red activism, a hatred of the human, and world government. Any solution no matter how utterly fascistic [in the real sense of the word which means destroying the individual and elevating the collective], is warranted, as long as saving Gaia informs the reason, the motivation and the objective of the action involved. But the neo-Delphic earth-centric cult flows out of a rather mindless and irrational pop-science fiction culture, one that was utterly wrong about the properties of the planets nearest to earth, namely Mars and Venus.

Hollywood still portrays Mars as insufferably hot. The planet is of course dead cold with temperatures oftentimes around -220 C. Venus is the opposite. A dead planet but with a temperature as high as 600 C. Both however are roughly the same size with apparently the same chemical composition in their atmospheres – one dominated by Co2 which makes up over 95% of the atmospheric gases. Why then are both planets so different in their climate? I doubt that we really know. Just as much as I doubt that we humans understand anything about our own climate which is composed of about 1 million variables.

Greenhouse?

The main explanation is that the Co2 concentration on both Mars and Venus works differently then the thin trace of Co2 in our own atmosphere. Light from the Sun passes through the Earth's atmosphere, which is transparent to visible light and warms the surface of the Earth, which in turn 're-radiates' the energy in an infrared form. This is what we are taught anyways. This new energy stays 'trapped' to use the Warmist term, in the Earth's atmosphere pushing up our global temperature. There are of course negative as well as positive feedback loops in this process – a fact that the UN-IPCC-Warmist cult leaves out of their 'modeling'. The Greenhouse effect is thus unlike a 'greenhouse'. If the earth was a greenhouse in the sense that the average human understands that word, our climate would be like Venus'.

The major components in the earth's atmosphere are nitrogen and oxygen and these are NOT not 'greenhouse gases'. The most important Greenhouse gases are water vapor, methane, and carbon dioxide (CO2). It's the CO2 that worries people when it comes to Global Warming. Carbon dioxide makes up only about 330 parts per million of our atmosphere – an amount which is below normal if you look at the long history of the earth's planet. The trace chemical Co2 is such a minor element of our atmosphere that you could increase it 100x and it would be 3% of the total atmosphere and would change little in our climate. It is fantastic to claim, as the warmists do, that our lower-than-average-levels of C02 if they double to 0.06 % of atmospheric gases would have anything but a minimal impact on climate. This is why they don't release their databases for public vetting.

C02 and the end of life

What about Venus and Mars? Unlike Earth's atmosphere, their atmospheres are about 95% CO2. But apparently it is not the percentage of CO2, it's the total amount in the atmosphere that counts. Venus has a very thick atmosphere where at the surface, the atmospheric pressure is ninety times that at Earth's surface. The Martian atmosphere, in contrast is supposedly very thin at less than 1% the pressure of Earth's. Mars barely has any so-called greenhouse effect.

For the last 60 years or so it is the 'greenhouse' effect and Co2 which has exercised the feverish minds of activists now labelled as scientists and great writers. The idea being that even a minimal rise in an infrared trapping chemical like Co2 would bring about catastrophic swings in climate as supposedly have been observed on the surface of Mars for example, even though the climate makeup of Mars is utterly different than that of the earth's. This is why the cult of warm now brands terrible winter weather as part of the warming process. Supposedly NASA has seen the same process take place on Mars, where dust storms have displaced Co2 levels and led to swings in temperatures. Again these 'guesses' are now declared 'science' and if you declaim against them or propose alternative theories, or ridicule the idea that a trace chemical causes anything by itself, you will be branded. An obvious question is this: since the climate of Mars and Venus are not comparable to that of the Earth, why are we basing 'climate policy' on second and third-hand observations and theories about these 2 planets?

Fantasists

The American Institute of Physics: a firm believer in the cult of GlobaloneyWarming published a paper which actually refutes its support of the cult of Warm. The paper highlights the spurious and disingenuous influence of fantasists and activists, from Sagan to James Hansen. It would be as if we built our society strictly along the lines of a Swift novel, or the mumblings from Plato declaring them both to have put forward unalterable truths. Utopias don't exist. Neither does globaloneywarming.

“Already back in 1940, Rupert Wildt had made a rough calculation of the greenhouse effect from the large amount of CO2 that others had found in telescope studies of Venus; he predicted the effect could raise the surface temperature above the boiling point of water. But raising it as high as 600°K seemed impossible. Nobody mounted a serious attack on the problem (after all, very few people were doing any kind of planetary astronomy in those decades). Finally in 1960 a young doctoral student, Carl Sagan, took up the problem and got a solution that made his name known among astronomers. Using what he later recalled as "embarrassingly crude" methods, taking data from tables designed for steam boiler engineering, he confirmed that Venus could indeed be a greenhouse effect furnace. The atmosphere would have to be almost totally opaque, and this "very efficient greenhouse effect" couldn't all be due to CO2. He pointed to absorption of radiation by water vapor as the likely culprit.

Sagan, a science fiction fan from his early years, was among those who had dreamed of a living sister planet of swamp and ocean, but now he had to admit that "Venus is a hot, dry, sandy... and probably lifeless planet."..............

In a 1971 paper, James Pollack argued that Venus might once have had oceans like Earth's It seemed that such a "runaway greenhouse" could have turned the Earth too into a furnace, if the starting conditions had been only a little different. (Into the 21st century the question of whether Venus was in fact once a watery planet remained unresolved.)..................

The greenhouse effect of the sulfates could be calculated, and by the late 1970s, NASA climate modeler James Hansen stated confidently that the sulfates together with CO2 "are responsible for the basic climatic state on Venus." Hansen had originally become interested in the greenhouse effect when, in response to Sagan's primitive calculations, he tried to derive a better explanation of why the planet's atmosphere was so hot. Now Hansen's findings about sulfate aerosols strengthened his belief that these particles could make a serious difference for the Earth's climate as well. Sulfates were emitted by volcanoes and, increasingly, by human industry, so Venus had things to tell us about climate change at home.”

The antecedents of the cult of warm are in the science-fiction arena and with 'embarrassingly crude' models of activists from NASA and other institutes. These crude models are still crude, perhaps even cruder today; and it is revealing that the cult of warm will never release their database models, algorithms, assumptions and variable explanations and details. This is science? Garbage in, garbage out. There are 1 million variables in climate. You can't model such complexity. Period. Focusing on 'sulphates' or 'greenhouse gases' might have some utility. But they are neither the sole reason for climate as it exists; nor are they the sole reason for any 'changes' in climate. How does the cult of warm explain the last major pole shifts on the Earth, where for instance the North Pole shifted from roughly Ecuador to its current position? Are magnetic pole changes now subject to levels of C02? Please.

In general, any objective observer would state that 'greenhouse gases' are still a small part of the climate issue. We understand very little about our own oceans for example, and the interplay of heating, cooling and current movements within the 99% of the cubic volume which is water on this planet. We might be better off spending time, money and energy understanding our own planet better, including its water mass, than positing weird theories based on far away second hand observations of Mars and Venus – 2 planets which in-toto, we know very little about. Activism and science-fiction projection is not science. Neither is the cult of warm. 

Pirenne's empiricism and search for the historical truth led him to the obvious conclusion that the European Dark Ages did not begin until the 7^th century, with the Moslem invasion of the Mediterranean basin and the destruction of some 600 years of cultural, economic and political unity. 476 A.D. was little more than a German inspired palace coup, and the Roman empire was dissolved into German principalities, in which both the culture, and the essence of Rome lived on. There was no fall.

Pirenne proves that the Roman empire was not dissolved, but extended and changed with the Germanic takeover [see review part one here]. Indeed archeology reveals a resurgence in all matters of advanced society in the 6^th century – gold, more building, more roads, more exotic products and lots of written records and literature. The destruction of Mediterranean culture, economy and urbanization came with the Moslem invasions. Nothing like it had been seen.

“The swiftness of its [Islam's] victory is comparable only with taht by which the Mongol Empires of Attila, Jenghiz Khan and Tamerlane were established....In 634 they [Arab Moslems] seized the Byzantine fortress of Bothra (Bosra) in Transjordania; in 635 Damascus fell before them; in 636 the battle of Yarmuk gave them the whole of Syria; in 637 or 638 Jerusalem....at the same time their Asiatic conquests included Mesopotamia and Persia. Then it was the turn of Egypt [642]...Next the invasion...submerged the Byzantine possessions in North Africa....The intensity of the results were out of all proportion to the numerical strength of the conquerors.” [p. 150]

By 711 Spain was conquered. Hundreds of thousands of Christians were dead and enslaved. In 720 a Moslem principality occupied southern France and the Narbonne. Slaving and looting were annual Moslem events in both Spain and France. Toulouse was besieged and Moslem forces occupied the key passes in the Alps slaughtering traders and caravans, and laying siege to important monastic centres like St. Gall in Switzerland. Moslem expansion in Francia and northern Italy was not fully checked until 759 A.D. It would take another 150 years to completely eject the Arabs and Berbers from southern France and clean them out from the key islands in the Gulf of Lyons. In 846 of course the Moslems ravaged Rome and the entire littoral of the Tyrrhenian sea was emptied of trade, urban life and population. Marseille once a thriving port became a dead ghost town by 750.

Moslem destruction, enforced slavery and squatting was the modus vivendi:

“And this subjection they enforced wherever they went. After the conquest they asked nothing better than to appropriate the science and art of the infidels as part of their booty; they would cultivate them to the glory of Allah....The conquered were their subjects; they alone were taxed; they were excluded from the community of the faithful. The barrier was insuperable.”

After 720 or so the Western Mediterranean became a Moslem lake, and the Roman empire with its Gothic legacy states finally perished:

“The Frankish empire having no fleet, was powerless. Naples, Gaeta and Amalfi still possessed a fleet. But their commercial interests impelled them to abandon Byzantium, as being too remote, and to enter into relations with the Musulmans. It was thanks to their defection that the Saracens finally succeeded in taking Sicily. The Byzantine fleet, it is true, was powerful...but once Sicily was taken it was almost completely cut off from the Occident....”

Navigation and commerce was disrupted – fatally. Africa and the East were split off from the Occident.

“As for the commercial activities of Africa, the continual ravaging of the country from 643 to 708 undoubtedly put an end to them. A few rare vestiges of commerce that may have survived disappeared after the taking of Carthage and the foundation of Tunin in 698 [a major slave trading port].”

and

“Thus, it may be asserted that navigation with the Orient ceased about 650 as regards the regions situated eastward of Sicily, while in the second half of the 7^th century it came to an end in the whole of the Western Mediterranean.”

Papyrus from Egypt, the essential product for writing and literacy simply disappears from Europe. Gold the mono-metallic currency of pre-Islamic invasions is replaced by silver and barter. Archaeology reveals that Oriental products ranging from wine and spices to silk are not found post 720 AD in Western Europe, or if they are, they are in such miserable small quantities as to signify only a black market trickle. The main commerce with the Musulmans was of course in slaves – a trade brokered in large measure by the Jews.

“The most important branch of Venetian trade was the traffic in the Slav slaves of the Dalmatian coast.”

The Vikings or Northmen hooked up with the Musulmans between 800 and 900 AD to exchange northern European and 'Russian' slaves for Moslem products like wine and spices. Arab coins en-masse have been unearthed in Scandinavia dating from this period. War, piracy, slavery, environmental and social destruction turned Europe in upon itself. The ties with the world of the Mare Nostrum were severed. Urbanization, literacy, wealth, and even collective will all declined:

“...[the] unexpected advance of Islam. The result of this advance was the final separation of East from West, and the end of Mediterranean unity. Countries like Africa and Spain, which had always been parts of the Western community, gravitated henceforth in the orbit of Baghdad....The West was blockaded and forced to live from its own resources. For the first time in history the axis of life was shifted northwards from the Mediterranean.”

Eventually northern European civilization would come to the rescue of the southern. Together both would drive the Saracens out of Spain, Italy and parts of North Africa. The Moslem Jihad would be rolled back somewhat. But that imperialist impulse never leaves Islam. This fact is another 'inconvenient truth' that Europe is rediscovering today.

In 2006 Tsar Vlad said,

‘Russia needs a strong state power and must have it. But I am not calling for totalitarianism.’

Indeed. Just call it Putinism. Statism married to Kremlin Corporatism.

Why Putin? With all mafia regimes state ownership and corrupt markets only limit Russia’s potential. But facts are facts. The GDP of Russia is now quadruple that of the level of 1993 or about $1.9 Trillion – 80% bigger than Canada's. Indeed this remarkable accretion in GDP is a magnificent feat, and is far superior to the economic development of China during the same period. GDP per-capita is about $16.000 per person. This is a 7 fold increase since 1993 – a staggering increase.

Economic growth is the key to Putinism. GDP is growing at 5-7 % per annum and inflation runs at about 9% p.a., though this high rate is offset by income growth per worker, of $900 per annum. Unemployment is 1/3 of real Western European levels or 7%. In 1993 a middle-class did not exist, now about 20 per cent of Russians are demonstrably middle-class. In essence given current economic trends by 2020 50 % of Russians will be in the middle class versus zero percent circa 1990. The economic gains are not marginal, and no one in 1993 would have been brave enough to forecast a Russia with an economy almost 2 times the size of Canada's, and a per capita income of $16.000 some 20 years later.

Simply put, most Russians feel richer, more secure, and happy. Add economic growth to the Russian nationalist rhetoric issued by Putin, and the Kremlin controlled media, and you have a society in which most voters – while not 'content' – prefer to let the current regime further develop the Motherland and restore pride and morale, rather than trust to new faces that might derail the project of Russian renewal. Never underestimate Russian pride, or the view of Russians as a special nation.

Further, the Chechen issue is quiet. Russian tennis stars dominate the sport. Even the national hockey team is competitive again. NATO had its missile bases chased out of Eastern Europe. The Ukraine is run by a Kremlin puppet, Yanukovich. It appears that Putin's supporters have plenty of evidence to cite as to why Russians should venerate their dear Tsar.

The Dark Side

The Russian political-economy is of course Oriental and incredibly corrupt. It has always faced figuratively and theologically, towards the east. The ideology and essence of Russia can be found between the invasions of the 'Rus' or Varangian Vikings in the 9^th century; and the eradication and domination of Russian civil society by the Mongols in the 13^th. One does not easily escape one's history. This is true for national units as much as it is for individuals. Great man rule was an early fact of the first Kyivian Rus' empire. It was a necessary antidote to first combat and then overthrow Mongol-Tartar rule. It became institutionalized during the reigns of Peter and Catherine. Putin is simply, if improbably, just another Tsar. Even the Russian church is now in line, stepping in rhythm to the beat of the 'new' [read 18^th century] Russia.

Dancing Bears

Putin is immensely popular. Medvedev was simply a puppet. Master Putin will be around for 12 more years one would expect. His successor will be hand-picked. The King handing off to the Prince. For anyone expecting change, you won't find it in Russia. 4 years ago it seemed so obvious to make the following statement:

“Putin and the KGB have now have their trained dancing bear, Mr Medvedev, and the Russian people have been duped or forced, to accept him. Not even the dancing bear himself really believes that he is in charge. It will be Putin, the KGB and Gazprom, the state owned energy colossus which will continue to run Russia. Little has changed since the days of Peter the Great. Mafia cliques and secret police manage the world's 7th largest economy. At least Medvedev's name in English – bear – is suitable. Russians even under Peter the Great were and are very fond of dancing bears. 

Journalists are jailed in Russia for any dissent against the state. Private corporations like Yukos are nationalised, and directors opposed to Kremlin policy are jailed or worse. 'Spies' like Litvienko or other persons of influence who disagree with official post-KGB policy are killed. The Russian army is notoriously corrupt and it is a fact that it makes deals with Chechen Muslim warlords – money in exchange for guns and other favors. Russia is #135 on Freedom House's list of 'free' states – somewhat better than under Stalin, who did after all, have a democratic constitution passed [1935].”

Dancing Bears all jigging to the tune of the Kremlin. Kremlin controlled oil and gas revenues flood the state budget. All major firms and concerns are managed by the Kremlin. Corporate Fascism, so emblematic of the Mussolini-Hitler era, is alive and well especially in energy, media and telecoms. Even so-called private firms understand that what the Kremlin wants it usually gets and that annoying the state is a quick way to either losing your assets – or your life. A functioning private economy in Russia in the major industrial sectors is not a reality. Whether owned by the state or not, the key areas of economic life are controlled and managed by the Kremlin and politics and corruption trump transparency and price signals. This has to limit Russia's individual and collective economic potential.

Will Russia ever change?

It is fairly clear that change in Russia will not happen until political reform is initiated and this will only happen when Russia creates a genuine middle class. This will not occur until about 2020. The vast majority of urbanized Russians live in housing that would be condemned in most Western cities. The average salary for a lucky worker in Moscow might about $800-1200 US per month and families shack up together in small, fetid apartments to allow economies. Infrastructure development in most areas vital to economic and job creationism is lacking. Improvements to health care and social welfare are quite noticeable but still somewhat unreliable and in general, not enough for most of the population.

Corruption still runs amok. Education certificates, driver’s licenses, and official papers of all varieties are regularly ‘bought’. Due processes are not followed; an independent legal system is a dream; state-owned media blare nationalist pulp for the consuming masses; Communism is widely lamented as the 'great era of power and a better life'; and babies are not conceived. Russian women are leaving the country en masse, and those that remain have less than 2 babies each – far below the 2.1 replacement level. 

Demography, a rising middle class and higher aspirations and expectations might force some changes in the Kremlin and within the Putinist theology. But it is highly doubtful. Young middle class voters want 'in' on the system of politics and governance of course. But all elites are loathe to give up their privileges. Entrepreneurs want to be left alone. As long as they generate jobs and don't enter 'key' markets they will be. The internet might well change and challenge the endless statism of the Kremlin controlled media. Or maybe it will be used as it is in Canada, the UK and even the US, to impose more governmental power over its citizens. The real challenge is for Russia to keep its talent and not export its women, capital and brains abroad. The threat of an exodus might engender some change and minor concessions by the regime to the middle class. Yet one should not underestimate this central issue. Demography, keeping talent and buying off the middle class are the real challenges the Putinistas will face in the coming 10 years. Stability is one thing. Ossified corruption and degradation another.  

Pirenne was a Belgian historian whose great works were constructed between about 1910 and his death in 1935. Few historians were as original, detailed, independent and devoid of arcane theological axes to grind as Pirenne. Nor were many as dedicated to truth. The veracity of his research and writings has earned him few academic admirers who still attempt to trash and maim his main theorem, namely that when Rome fell in 476 AD life carried on as much as it did before. The great impairment of European civilization only came with the irruption and brutal severing of the Mediterranean world from its past, culture, trade linkages and shared ethos, by the barbarian invasions of Islam from 634 AD to 800 AD.

Pirenne was most certainly correct. Rome splintered into German-controlled centers of power, and life largely went on as before, with taxes and state corruption and bureaucracy much reduced. The exception was in Anglo-Saxon England. When the Moslems detached the northern Mediterranean from the southern during the 7^th and early 8^th centuries, the great schism and degradation of European commerce, culture and artifacts began. Society became smaller, poorer, and more local. Specie disappeared. Trade markedly declined and society became fractured. Moslem slave trading, violence, piracy and raiding was a daily feature of life. This state of affairs lasted for about 200 years. Yet I doubt if one college in 10, teaches any part whatsoever of this theory.

For most of the 'sophisticated' class, Rome crashed, the Europeans were instantly tossed back into pre-pagan savagery; the 'Dark Age' of illiterate banditry crassly asserted itself, and only through the lassitude and benevolence of Moslems in Spain and Sicily, along with a few refugees from Byzantine with the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Turks; were the skin-wearing, lice-ridden, toothless, unclean European primitives, finally able to claw and pull their stinking heaps out of the mire and into the sunlit uplands of Oriental inspired civilization. In this fantasy the Europeans were reduced to Cro-Magnon status for much of 1000 years. Fantastically, within 100-150 years they were bestriding the world, engaged in the process of imperialism in which the entire planet would succumb to European power. From zeroes to heroes in no time. Instant 'Enlightenment'. Such is what passes for historical accuracy in the post-modern, happy-Marxist era of disinformation.

Pirenne's thesis is so remarkable precisely because it is so accurate and full of common-sense, proof, archeological certainty, and buttressed by extant documents and coinage. Certainly parts of what he writes could be amended. But the entire construction is as solid as Herod's great temple. Some examples include:

-Mare Nostrum, or our lake, the Mediterranean, was a complete cultural unit under Roman control and after 476 AD, it increasingly fell under the influence of Byzantium, the Eastern Romans and heirs to the empire. All of the lands along the Mare Nostrum, including the realms of the Occident which bordered it, were more or less homogenous in culture, ambitions, monetary and social systems and in theological inclinations.

-During and after the Western-Roman era the location of maritime traffic and shipping was in the Eastern Mediterranean, and specifically in the hands of the 'Syrians' the great merchants of late antiquity. This fact carried on well after the fall of Rome [which was in effect a German-effected palace coup].

-The Goths and German 'barbarians' did not dismantle the Roman Empire but were subsumed by it both in terms of population and in culture. The Goths never numbered at any one time, in any one incursion more than 100.000 or so people, with perhaps 10% being military men. Even if 5 million Germans over 100-200 years entered the empire, they were swallowed up by the mass of some 70-100 million Romans which inhabited the lands of the Mare Nostrum.

-There was little in the way of a cultural conflict between the Goths and Romans: ”The paganism of the Barbarians did not inspire them with a hatred of the Roman gods, nor did it excite their hostility toward the one God of the Christians.” [p.22] Given this fact the Germans were not disposed to eradicate Roman society and culture, and impose themselves. Quite the opposite in fact.

-The Germans did not bring a superior culture, language, religion or set of ideas to replace Rome's. When they settled in the empire they took over the customs, administrative apparati, the legal system, the villas, agricultural estates and latifundas, Latin, and also the general culture and literature of the Romans. The Germans offered nothing to replace Roman civilisation.

”There was hardly a trace at all, of 'Germanic principles'. Under the new kings the old system of government survived, though doubtless in an imperfect form. There was only one novelty: service in the army was gratuitous, thanks to the distribution of land. The State was relieved of the terrible war budget which had formerly crushed the people.” [p. 54]

-In the Western empire, post 476 AD, the Kings were laymen and the Church subordinate to the state – much as it had been in Roman times [p.57-60].

-Constantinople was the pre-eminent Mare Nostrum power and 'it was to Constantinople that the kings submitted their disputes...' [p. 63] The Byzantines controlled the sea lanes, shipping, trade and dispersed a higher culture throughout the Occident.

”In short, despite its losses, the Empire was still the only world-power, and Constantinople was the greatest of civilized cities. The foreign policy of the Empire embraced all the peoples of Europe, and completely dominated the policy of the Germanic state. Until the 8^th century the only positive element in history was the influence of the Empire. And it is an undeniable fact that the Empire had become Oriental.” [p. 73]

-From 476 AD until the 8^th century vast quantities of papyrus, spice, gold, wine, silk, textiles, art, olives, cooking and heating oil and other necessities were circulating widely and deeply throughout Western Europe, borne along the Eastern Mediterranean and Asian trade routes controlled by Syrians, Greeks and Jews. Based on extant records there was no noticeable decline in trade until the 8^th century. [p. 80-105]

-Gold as the mono-metallic form of payment reigned in Europe, Anglo-Saxonia excepted, until the 8^th century.

In reading the first part of Pirenne's well-sourced work, one apprehends that Rome did not fall, but simply mutated into another and plausibly better society. The basic structures of life and culture were largely unaffected by the Gothic invasions. Gold still ruled, trade was deep and profound, the roads, canals, waterways, public baths and great estates went on in use as before. The Eastern Roman empire, even before and certainly after Justinian's reconquest of Italy, North Africa and Spain, was the power prima-inter-pares and the cultural locus of civilization. The Germans were merged into the Romano-civilizations and little of 'Germanic principles' can be found post 476 AD in the various Gothic kingdoms. In other words the Roman world did not dissolve in 476 AD or anytime thereafter. The great Mare Nostrum civilization was in tact – until the carnage and dislocation spread far and wide by the adherents of the cult of Muhammad and Al-Lah, destroyed it.  

The goose-stepping onward march of National Socialism. Federal per capita spend in the US went from $7.500 in 1962 [in constant 2005 dollars], to $32.748 in 2010, or a 400% increase. In 2012 the spend per capita should reach $37.000 or 500% more than in 1962. Per capita income rose during the same period from $15.243 to $35.737, or roughly a 220% increase, or about half of the spending increase by government [a comprehensive set of tables are here]. GDP per job went from about $40.000 per job in 1962, to $70.000 in 2010 – less than double. To put this into perspective government spending has therefore outpaced income growth by a factor of 2 times, and GDP per job growth by more than 3 times. In other words government is raking off and gorging itself on the increase in economic activity fuelled by a population increase from 183 million in 1962 to 320 million in 2012, and by rising productivity engendered by technology and capital.

The impact of National Socialism is most easily seen in Federal spending. In 1965 the US Federal government spent a little less than $1 Trillion in today's money. In 2012 it will spend $3.77 Trillion or a 370 % increase from 1965. The median household income has only increased 27% in real terms during the same period [study by the Heritage Foundation]. The $ 1 Trillion total federal spend in 1965, is now the annual amount spent by Federal programs on 'welfare'. Total entitlement spending including welfare, socialized pensions and health care now total $2.4 Trillion – or $300 billion more than revenues.

The 'war on poverty' has been an absurd failure. Even doubling the current level of entitlement spend would do little to alleviate poverty which in reality probably affects less than 10% of the population as the definitions of poverty keep changing and expanding. Yet it buys votes and appeals to the mindless rhetoric of 'love and compassion' and other bumper sticker sloganeering. In the real world the creation of National Socialism and the reliance upon the state eviscerates your culture, destroys your soul, and bankrupts your political-economy. It empties treasuries as well as heads.

The dependency crisis, manufactured by Socialist Mandarins, can be further highlighted with some base facts:

-In 1962, 18 % of the population [including government workers], depended on government for aid; in 2010 it was 91.2 million, or 29.5% of the population.

-In the late 1960s, 12% of Americans paid no income taxes. By 2000 it was 34%, and in 2009 it had reached 49.5%.

-In the late 1960s, federal housing assistance was about $2 billion of 2005 dollars. Under Bush [the statist], it went to $43 billion, and in 2010 it reached $59 billion.

-The proportion of births out of wedlock in 1960 was 5.3%, but by 2009 it was up to 41%.

-Social Security needs 2.9 workers to pay taxes for each retiree receiving benefits. The current ratio is 3.3 workers per retiree, but it will reach 2.9 in 2015 and drop to 2.0 in the 2030s.

-One in 5 Americans (not including government employees) depend on government aid.

Government runs the US political-economy in its entirety. Freedom is a historical oddity, a fetish for the 'red in the tooth', orthodox Liberals and their Libertarian allies. It is a myth that the US is a free market society. Fully 44% of GDP is now controlled directly by government through the tax and spend system, itself an imposition of statist power and oftentimes arbitrary and injudicious injustice. Corruption flourishes as the State-Union complex grows in demands and in strength.

Socialists and Marxists have spent 100 years trying to turn the average citizen into a knave. The only obstruction to their claim that the individual be subsumed into the collective, are the bond and financial markets. At some point when entitlement spending, designed to buy votes and turn citizens into obedient automatons, is more than your revenues the end cannot be too far away. 

 One of the greatest geo-political threats to East Asia is China's insufficient, polluted and dwindling supply of water. This problem presents of course a technological opportunity. Technology, both hardware and software based will be a necessary part of solutioning China's obvious water based problems. It is clear that China's 10% per annum GDP growth will outstrip its water supply at some point within the next 30 years. This fact is especially true and poignant in northern China which is home to over half of China's GDP and 40% of its population. Northern China is desiccated and could revert to being essentially a desert. The geo-political and internal social dislocations which could result from a reduction in available water supply in China, and the desertification of its north might indeed be monumental.

Communist SEPA:

China's top-down, Communist controlled hierarchical governance structure and its rampant by-default corporatism, is a part of the problem. While the Chinese government does acknowledge the scale of water and environmental damage, its responses remain hampered by local and regional government’s protectionism of its polluting industries as well as the obvious weakness [perhaps a purposeful weakness?], of the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA). Environmental safeguards are widely viewed in China as obstructions to growth. Local eco-groups are usually harassed by the state and its organizations. The rationale is simple. If the Chinese state cannot provide a highly robust yearly growth level, there will be social discord and perhaps widespread civil unrest and violence. In terms of Marxian theology, economics does not trump politics, but becomes a part of the political project. The two are the same.

Dead Rivers and Health:

With regards to water, the trends are not China's friends. Most studies maintain that both urban and rural areas are facing equally serious water pollution problems. Urban inhabitants in China draw 70% of their drinking water from groundwater sources. Between 50% and 90% of urban groundwater, however, is contaminated by agricultural runoff, industrial and municipal wastewater and in some municipalities, even toxic mine tailings. Nearly 50% of above ground rivers have a 'black' [poor] grade of 5 (meaning, not suitable for agriculture or industry). Since 2002, approximately 63 billion tons of wastewater flow into China’s rivers each year, of which 62% are pollutants from industrial sources, and 38% are poorly treated or raw sewage from municipalities[1]. 

In rural areas, 700 million citizens lack access to safe water. Agro-waste is a huge problem. Animal factory farms, known as confined animal feeding operations or CAFOs, produce a total of circa 3 billion tons of livestock manure annually; 3.4 times the industrial solid waste generated nationwide. Much of this manure finds its way into the watershed complex. As well chemical spills are common in ex-urban and rural areas. According to SEPA over half of China’s 21,000 chemical plants are located along the Yellow and Yangtze rivers . Few of these plants have stringent eco-safeguards or regulations. It would be natural to assume that the chemical spill off from these plants into rivers is commonplace.

Given the above facts, human health must suffer as a derivative of water pollution. The Chinese Ministry of Health has publicly commented on a disturbing trend of higher than normal rates of tumors, cancer, spontaneous abortions and diminished IQs among populations living near polluted rivers and lakes. These occurrences number in the millions. Water borne pollutants also affect agricultural output and productivity leading in some cases to diminished food output and higher food imports [mostly from the USA which has tripled its food exports to China in recent years].

While agriculture still consumes nearly 70% of water resources in China, water consumption in industrial and domestic sectors has of course been rising at a rapid rates and most of these sectors are very inefficient in their usage of water [2]. A study done 10 years found that the amount of water used for every $10,000 worth of GDP in China was 537 m3, four times the world’s average and nearly 20 times that of Japan and Europe (Economic Daily, August 8, 2005).  By 2012 it would be expected that these ratios are even worse. Water planning and proper usage is not an important facet of Chinese industrialization or production.

Depletion in the North and West and ghost-towns:

In the dry north, grain production accounts for more than 45% of China’s GDP [3]. In northern and western China, the degradation and poor productive usage of water and land resources has caused desertification to advance at an annual rate of 1,300 square miles, affecting 400 million people. Some 24,000 villages in northern and western China have been abandoned or partially depopulated due to growing desertification [4]. Continued desertification will exacerbate rural migration into cities as well as increase the severity of the spring sandstorms [5]. The lack of water access in the north and west will only lead to a population exodus to the already overcrowded eastern periphery. This migration of souls will intensify pressure on an already over-burdened eastern China water-infrastructure. When one considers that the largest river in China – the Yellow River -- often does not flow to the ocean for up to 200 days a year [6], the potential socio-environmental impact of further human migration and demand, is clear.

'Dammed' if you do or if you don't:

Water conservation is not emphasized or practised. The converse is official policy. Increasing the supply of water through major dam and water diversion projects continues to be a cornerstone of Beijing’s response. The 'South-North Water Transfer project', which comprises three canals that will bring water from the Yangtze River to quench the thirst of the arid north is one of the largest projects in world history. Part of the rationale for damming the unique and beautiful Tiger Leaping Gorge, one of the more than 200 dams planned in southwest China, is to divert its reservoir water to Lake Dianchi in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, to dilute its pollution problems. These enormous water transfer and dam projects are costly—in terms of money, loss of agricultural land, ecological damage and hardships on relocated people—and increasingly are leading to protects by displaced locals and eco-groups.

Government response:

The central government is well aware of the above issues. They are reacting and oftentimes the policies are both sensible and beneficial. But they do not supersede the stated goal to both increase water supply from the south to the north; and to keep the economy growing at 10% per annum. Included in the central party's actions on the water crisis are the following:

-The government has been adopting new laws, such as the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Law, and updating old ones to strengthen water pollution enforcement.

-A strengthening of water protection measures including the reforming of water management laws and institutions are ongoing.

-SEPA announced it would tighten the supervision of polluting industries and wastewater emissions affecting major drinking water sources.

-The central government is revising its national standards on drinking water quality, forcing collaboration among SEPA, the Standardization Administration and the Ministries of Construction and Health.

-Water protection has been increasingly prioritized with ambitious goals for river clean ups in the 10th and current 11th Five-Year Plans.

Huai River:

In spite of the above, the basic premise of government is to grow supply and divert the water resources of the south to the north. The Huai River is an emblem of this policy and it can hardly be called a success. Despite a 2 decade-long central government campaign that began in 1993 to clean up the river, it is still one of the most polluted in China and millions of people in the basin suffer from significantly higher rates of cancer as well as other health problems. There are huge difficulties in pressuring local governments to regulate the very industries that prop up the local economy. Any attempt to create a link between economic growth and 'green issues or progress' have failed. Even lawsuits pertaining to water problems, pollution, eco-standards or human health conditions endangered by water issues, are routinely ignored or made illegal at the local level.

China's water problems remains perhaps the greatest issue facing the country. Currently there is little in the Chinese political-economy which gives most analysts much hope, that the problems will be addressed properly or constructively to ensure economic growth, whilst halting social, environmental, health and pollution concerns. Technology will be the basis of a solution, but only within the context of the merged economic-political concerns which dominate China.

------------------------

Some Notes
1. U.S. Department of Commerce, International Trade Administration, 2005 Water Supply and Wastewater Treatment Market in China, Washington, DC.
2. For example, only 43% of the water consumed in agriculture is used efficiently for irrigation, compared to 70% to 80% in developed countries. See U.S. Embassy in Beijing, China’s Water Supply Problems, 2003, available at http://www.usembassy-china.org.cn/sandt/ptr/water-supply-prt.htm. Chinese urbanites have increased their per capita daily water consumption about 150% between 1980 and 2000—from less than 100 liters in 1980 to 244 liters in 2000. At least 20% of the water supplies to cities are lost through leaky pipes, so this official per capita consumption figure underestimates total urban water use. See Dabo Guan and Klaus Hubacek. (2004). “Lifestyle Changes and its Influences on Energy and Water Consumption in China,” Proceedings of the 6th Conference for postgraduate students, young scientists and researchers on Environmental Economics, Policy and International Environmental Relations, Prague (October 7-8), p. 389. Guan Xiaofeng. (2005). “Water Crisis Needs Urgent Solutions,” China Daily, November 1, available online at http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-11/01/content_489327.htm.
3. Lohmar, Bryan, Jinxia Wang, Scott Rozelle, Jikun Huang, and David Dawe, China’s Agricultural Water Policy Reforms: Increasing Investment, Resolving Conflicts, and Revising Incentives, 2003. Economic Research Service Agriculture Information Bulletin Number 782. (Washington, DC: United States Department of Agriculture), p. 3.
4. Lester Brown, Outgrowing the Earth: The Food Security Challenge in an Age of Falling Water Tables and Rising Temperatures (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005). 
5. 100 sandstorms are expected between 2000 and 2009, a marked increase over the 23 in the previous decade (Geotimes, October 18-21, 2005). The impact of these sandstorms extends well beyond China’s borders to Korea, and Japan, and the U.S. west coast.
6. Wang Yahua, “River Governance Structure in China: A Study of Water Quantity/Quality Management Regimes,” 2005. In Promoting Sustainable River Basin Governance: Crafting Japan-U.S. Water Partnerships in China, IDE Spot Survey No. 28, Jennifer L. Turner and Kenji Otsuka (Ed.), (Chiba, Japan: Institute of Developing Economies/IDE-Jetro, 2005), p. 23-36. 

Some recent facts and observations which contradict the Globaloney-Climate-Fear-Mongering cult and its addiction to money, power, control and regulation. Facts and reality make no impact on the Warmists of course. But ignoring data and lying is now called 'science' and activists are now relabelled as dispassionate 'scientists'. Likewise bug gene investigator David Suzuki is a 'climate expert' and US political buffoon L Ron Gore is a high priest of disinterested morality and Mother Earth concern. Right.

1) MIT Professor Lindzen's recent presentation to the British Parliament. An excerpt:

1. A doubling of CO2 , by itself, contributes only about 1C to greenhouse warming. All models project more warming, because, within models, there are positive feedbacks from water vapor and clouds, and these feedbacks are considered by the IPCC to be uncertain.

2. If one assumes all warming over the past century is due to anthropogenic greenhouse forcing, then the derived sensitivity of the climate to a doubling of CO2is less than 1C. The higher sensitivity of existing models is made consistent with observed warming by invoking unknown additional negative forcings from aerosols and solar variability as arbitrary adjustments. Given the above, the notion that alarming warming is ‘settled science’ should be offensive to any sentient individual, though to be sure, the above is hardly emphasized by the IPCC.

And on page 28 of this presentation:

“Our present approach of dealing with climate as completely specified by a single number, globally averaged surface temperature anomaly, that is forced by another single number, atmospheric CO2 levels, for example, clearly limits real understanding; so does the replacement of theory by model simulation. In point of fact, there has been progress along these lines and none of it demonstrates a prominent role for CO2. It has been possible to account for the cycle of ice ages simply with orbital variations (as was thought to be the case before global warming mania); tests of sensitivity independent of the assumption that warming is due to CO2 (a circular assumption) show sensitivities lower than models show; the resolution of the early faint sun paradox which could not be resolved by greenhouse gases, is readily resolved by clouds acting as negative feedbacks.”

2) The worst winter in decades in Europe is apparently proof of the GlobaloneyWarming thesis due to mental contortions of irrational, scientifically impossible theories that the warm makes its cool...... An ice age is far more likely than winter disappearing from northern climes:

“Habibullo Abdusamatov, a scientist from the Pulkovo Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences considers that the sharp drop in temperature will start on the Earth in 2014.

“According to the scientist, our planet began to “get cold” in the 1990s. The new ice age will last at least two centuries, with its peak in 2055.

“It is interesting, that the same date was chosen by the supporters of the theory of global warming.

“The expected decrease in temperature may … become the fifth over the past nine centuries, reports Hydrometeorological Center of Russia. Experts call this phenomenon the “little ice age”, it was observed in the XII, XV, XVII, XIX centuries. This cyclicity makes the theory of upcoming cold weather in XXI century look like truth.”

3) Every year is the warmest year – even if it isn't. The globe has been cooling rapidly since 1998 – a fact never reported by the LameBrain Media. John Coleman the founder of the Weather Channel states the obvious:

“Question 1. What percentage of the air is CO2?

Respondents' answers: nearly all were 20% - 40%, the highest was 75% while the lowest were 10%- 2%.

The Correct Answer: CO2 is less than a mere four 100ths of 1%! As a decimal it is 0.038%. As a fraction it is 1/27th of 1%. (Measurements for CO2 vary from one source to another from 0.036%- 0.039% due to the difficulty in measuring such a small quantity and due to changes in wind direction e.g. whether the air flow is from an industrialized region or a volcanic emission etc)

Nitrogen is just over 78%, Oxygen is just under 21% and Argon is almost 1%. CO2 is a minute trace gas at 0.038%. For a detailed breakup of the atmosphere go to:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#Composition

Question 2. What percentage of CO2 is man-made?

Respondents' answers ranged from as high as 100%, with most estimating it to be between 25% and 75%.

The Correct Answer: Nature produces nearly all of it. Humans produce only 3%. As a decimal it is a minuscule 0.001% of the air. All of mankind produces only one molecule of CO2 in around every 90,000 air molecules! Yes, that's all.

Question 3. Is CO2 is a pollutant?

Respondents' answers: All thought it was a pollutant, at least to some degree.

The Correct Answer: CO2 is a harmless, trace gas. It is as necessary for life - just as oxygen and nitrogen are. It is essential to photosynthesis, the basic process that makes plants grow. Without CO2 there would be no crops, no flowers, trees, grass or bushes. Co2 is a natural gas. It is clear, tasteless and odorless. It is in no way a pollutant.

Calling CO2 a 'pollutant' leads many to wrongly think of it as black, grey or white smoke. Because the media deceitfully show white or grey 'smoke' coming out of power station cooling towers, most think this is CO2. It is not: it's just steam (water vapor) condensing in the air. CO2 is invisible: just breathe out and see. Look at it bubbling out of your soft drinks, beer or sparkling wine. No one considers that a pollutant - because it's not.

Question 4. Have you seen any evidence that CO2 causes a greenhouse effect?

Respondents' answers: Most did not know of any definite proof. Some said they thought the melting of the Arctic and glaciers was possibly proof.

The Correct Answer: There is no proof at all. The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (the IPCC) has never produced any proof. There are, however the following proofs that it can't cause a greenhouse effect.

• It is true that CO2 can absorb heat a little faster than nitrogen and oxygen but it becomes no hotter because it cannot absorb anymore heat than there is available to the other gases. This is against the laws of thermodynamics. All gases share their heat with the other gases. Gas molecules fly around and are constantly colliding with other gas molecules so they immediately lose any excess heat to other molecules during these collisions. That's why the air is all one temperature in any limited volume.”

So we have records in cold, ice and snow set almost every year in some part of the world. Co2 is a natural chemical that is less than 1% of all gases and necessary for life. Volcanoes have more impact on the climate – as do sunspots – than 100 years of human activity. Trillions has been wasted on everything from climate studies, to hybrid cars, to ethanol destroying engines, to Wind farms – all in the name of the earth goddess. And this is a rational, enlightened, informed, and profoundly nuanced culture of intelligence and insight? More likely it is the real Dark Ages, with the Middle Ages looking resolutely more cultured and civilized.

Now a 'new' plan to give the Greeks $130 billion and cut bondholder value by 70%. Surely this will work – if implemented – for 6 months before another round of moral hazard funding is needed ?

No worries according to sundry economists and MSM talking heads. Greece is small. Greece is unimportant. Greece must be put 'in context'. It is 5% of the Euro economy and worth a bag full of pistachios in the great scheme of Global GDP. It is a moral project and the EUtopians will fight for the Euro because the Euro is right. The irrational fantasy of international socialism is credited with 'stopping another European war', when in reality it was the Cold War and US military power and bases on the Continent, resonates with the elite and the chattering media. It is completely divorced from reality – much as yet another 'plan' to bail out Greece aka French and German banks who hold about $2-3 Trillion of bad sovereign debt. Nice business model. The State is the banking system. The Banks are the State.

Grecian austerity measures or 'massive' cutting of budgets, account for 2% or less of GDP. Wow. The entire edifice of what got Greece into trouble in the first place will not be harmed nor reduced in any meaningful way. The retirement age might creep up. Pensions and free education reduced somewhat. But the nexus of socialism with corruption which finds its expression in unions, high taxes, bribes, and a paternalist corporatism will not be impacted. The 'huge fiscal cuts' endlessly and mindlessly repeated by the MSM are in reality skin abrasions, not surgery on the Greek fiscal body. No real reforms will be initiated of course.

Neither will the Greek economy be able to grow. Saddled with the Euro the Greeks have no ability to set proper wages based on supply and demand. Monetary, labor and capital rigidity and indeed capital scarcity will doom Greece. Greek wages are up 30% in the past 10 years – thanks to the Euro where all prices revalued upwards and government laws supporting minimum wages, higher union wages, and the 'right' of workers to have raises.

The best plan for Greece is to exit the Euro or ZEuro. A controlled withdrawal would force Greece to reduce needless budget spend and restore financial confidence through sound monetary policy. A devalued Drachma would restart the manufacturing and tourist industries and deflate external Greek debt. It would also end the Greek drama for the rest of the EU, though it is clear that the entire zone is technically bankrupt.

But this will never happen, so there shall be an endless stream of rhetoric, meetings, press releases and never-to-be-implemented bail-outs announcements. The real concern of Europe is of course the Franco-German banking system. The Greeks get nothing out of these 'bailouts' except a loss of sovereignty, social unrest and yet another reward – moral hazard – for implementing failed socialism.  

It is all for the 'children's future'.

“On May 1, 1937 Adolf Hitler declared: “the youth of today is ever the people of tomorrow.  For this reason we have set before ourselves the task of inoculating our youth with the spirit of this community of the people at a very early age, at an age when human beings are still unperverted and therefore unspoiled.  This Reich stands, and it is building itself up for the future upon its youth.  And this new Reich will give its youth to no one, but will it take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing”. (Noakes & Pridham, 1974, p. 345)

Always for the children.......Witness North America.

A left-wing, Marxist US government cares deeply about the children's future, still tied to a corrupt and non-scientific GlobaloneyWarming/Mother Earth paganism; whilst trying desperately to socialize US health care; expand unionism; print money and deficits until the county collapses; maintain the ponzi schemes in government pensions and social security; and expand the power of the state over the individual to such a degree that an American from 1950 would equate with Russian Sovietization. This is what smart people call hope and change. In Canada, a supposed 'right wing conservative' government wants to build massive prisons and fill them with anyone caught doing anything criminal; give the police unfettered access to every citizen's network history; destroy warrants; and allow the state to spy on its citizens in something that comes right out of Huxley's 'Brave New World'. This is what clever people call 'right wing'. In reality the 'right' and the 'left' simply merge in their eagerness for complete control. There is no 'right or left'. Just the state and its unenlightened despotism and you.

History is basically the his-story of the struggle between the centralized state and despotism, with the individual and human free-will and choice. Most of the processes, conflicts, evolutions and revolutions can be viewed within these two parameters of opposite theologies. On the one hand, the state or Leviathan, is the only instrument of morality, stability, and justice. On the other, the individual is the keeper of culture, morality, progress, innovation, energy, family and mores. Human development only blossoms when the individual and the 'rights of man', along with the declaration of human independence, prevail. When the state is omnipotent, progress stalls, culture degrades and civilization regresses.

Statism has never been either 'left' or 'right'. Looked at nationally and imperially, history is the struggle of the state against every centre of opposition to state power. The family, the church, the shop keeper, the small business, the entrepreneur, the bingo club, the dance hall, the sports team, the stock exchange, the resource owner, the farmer, the orchard, the local bank.....All are centers of power opposed in part to the state and its desire to control everything. The state by its own logic expands. The bureaucracy by its own design deigns and demands control.

The Nazis for example are always portrayed as 'right wing' reactionaries. In 1928 the Nazis won 3% of the vote. In the various regional and national elections in 1932, they won close to 40% buoyed by an alliance with 'conservative' forces. Internal memos by Goebbels and his staff warned Hitler that 1932 was the highpoint. The Nazis had peaked. They had to seize power or watch their ungainly coalition falter and disperse. Improbably at their most vulnerable point Hitler was appointed Chancellor on January 30 1933. Now most historians label his Nazi-Conservative alliance 'right wing'. But were they? Hitler was a dedicated Marxsit.

“We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions.” [From Hitler's Speech of May 1, 1927, quoted in John Toland (1976), Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography, p. 306]

Statists like the Nazis, are all things to all people aren't they? They appeal to all classes with simpleton programs and simpleton solutions.

The 25 points of the Nazi charter demanded that the state be the only arbiter in people's lives and the most important theology in society. The below points are the essential verbatim quotes from the Nazi charter. Are they 'right wing'? Of course not.

• Citizens are entitled to a job and a decent standard of living.   If this cannot be achieved, foreigners (with no rights as citizens) should be expelled.

• Nationalisation of public industries.

• Large companies must share their profits.

• Pensions must be improved.

• Help for small shops and businesses; large department stores must be closed down.

• An all-out battle against criminals, profiteers, etc., who must be punished by death.

• Improve education so that all Germans can get a job.

• Improve people’s health by making a law for people to do sport.

• Abolition of the Army, and a new People’s Army in its place.

• German newspapers must be free of foreign influence.

•  Strong central government with unrestricted authority.

I don't see orthodox Liberalism in any of the above. This is a program by the state to assume complete jurisdiction over the education, work, lives, health and outlook of its population. If by 'right' you mean Orthodox Liberalism or Conservatism – a very large tent of ideology – than Nazism was the opposite creed. It truly was national-socialism, which bought off the various powers amongst classes and the conservative elite. The Nazi skill was in propaganda and lies and Hitler's Mein Kampf on page 403, written in 1924 reveals a key insight which every political party, in every major country now uses. The children:

"The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the  people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of  liberty and almost any deprivation." -Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler, Publ.  Houghton Miflin, 1943, Page 403 

Indeed a veracity from a psychotic delusional freak.

The children uber alles. A 'conservative' government in Canada declaims that the police don't need warrants and must know your every network move, phone call, email and site visited in order to protect the children – if you don't agree you are a child pornographer. An Obamed-Marxist government demands that 'enemies' lists be compiled of anyone in any position of influence who might possibly usurp the statist intention to turn most of America's citizens into knaves and clients of the state. The children are being taught in US schools that socialism is good, the US Republican experiment worse than bad. Hence the necessity of destroying those 'enemies of the state'. Bush II derided as a 'neo-con' – whatever that might mean – doubled the US national debt and had little qualms about buying old people's votes via a $100 billion drug prescription price-cap program. Bush was also deeply worried about the children being left behind. How nice and and how consistent. Be deeply worried and concerned about the seniors and the children.

"In an interview with Time magazine, Bush defended the signature domestic policy accomplishment of his administration, which he signed into law ten years ago this week.

“In some circles, punching No Child Left Behind is a way to basically say, I’m against Big Government,” Bush acknowledged. “In fact, No Child Left Behind is a way to promote efficient government. In a lot of these debates, you don’t hear real detail or analysis about how to improve the law. In essence, it’s No Child Left Behind is big government.”

Bush said his proposal was truly conservative and has been effective at producing accountability in local schools.”

A Federal government meddling in education and under Bush increasing its useless spend on a broken system by 50%, is the opposite of being 'conservative'. It is statist.

As Huxley wrote:

“Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they’re so frightfully clever. I’m really awfully glad I’m a Beta, because I don’t work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don’t want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They’re too stupid to be able. . . .”

Children programmed as little good state-serving automatons. The Alphas uber alles. All we need is a 'village' [of idiots] to program the children and be worried about their future. It is always about the children. The fastest way to unbridled state power and control. Just chatter about the children. Science closed. Adolf and the experts said so. Neo-cons and conservatives agree. 

 He will be remembered for his dismantlement of America.

The Great Man Obamed, the new prophet of the socialist dialectic the urge for 'fairness', compassion, equality and governmental control over all facets of the miserable human's existence has been an utter failure. The only tangible accomplishment was the killing of Bin Laden, itself an event which should have transpired years ago, but thanks to US-CIA incompetence was apparently an impossible assassination until a mole in the Pakistani security forces shone a light on the Moslem 'radical' and his hole. The rest of the Great Man's tenure has been unpretentiously awful. The endless assault of statism, ongoing since T.R. Roosevelt and propelled forward by so-called 'conservatives' like Bush II, who are in reality Statists, is reaching a climacteric under the Obamed. Foreign, fiscal, economic, social, and even constitutional policy is a shambles. The Leviathan, unleashed some 80 years ago, is not the benevolent apparatus of security and peace beloved by Hobbes. It is a monster which will consume its own children.

Since the Obamed can't blame Bush for his failures, he will blame 'Congress', or 'Right Wing Republicans' – itself an oxymoron since the Republican establishment is as disengaged from reality as the [un]Democratic, hence the moniker Republicrats. The Great Man's failure can be summed up in the following, which all have occurred in the past 3.5 years.

-Energy prices have tripled hurting the poor as much as anyone

-Net incomes are stagnant and real inflation [not the government #'s], is about 5% per annum.

-Food stamp usage is up by 30%

-Poverty has increased by 25% [though the definition of poverty is open to vigorous debate]

-The National debt has increased 70% [from about $9 Trillion to $16 Trillion by year's end]

-Over $10 billion in Green Tech bankruptcies has put a lie to the state being a good Venture [or Vulture] Capitalist

-Some 5 million people have dropped out of the labor force with 15 million out of work and another 5-10 million who have stopped looking. This 25 million is about 17% of the working population, though the government says that the unemployment rate is only 8.3% or half of what it really is.

-The average government worker has seen a rise in real benefits and wages of 20%, with an average annual salary and expense payment of $112.000 per annum, versus $67.000 in the private sector.

-The Health Care 'deform' bill is obviously unconstitutional and sold on the basis of 'fairness' a euphemism for complete state control [the US health care system suffers due to the fact that government controls now 60% of all health spend and layers on thousands of laws in each state. There is no real market in US health care].

-The Catholic Church is now being assaulted, and denied its independence in the quest for firms and organizations [and ultimately taxpayers] to pay for female contraception. Why can't a female buy this herself?

-Left wing Supreme Court appointees and a sop to the Gay Lobby and the Feminists, in the bodies of Sotomayor and Kagan, both of who are Lesbian and the former a member of the racist group La Raza and the latter a proponent and abettor of state managed health care.

-Obama's ennoblement of the Moslem Brotherhood in North Africa, who have or will take over Libya, Tunisia and Egypt thanks to US military support. Another war against the Jews and indeed the West and its assets in the Muddled Yeast is inevitable.

This is the record of a man who demands to be re-elected? The media will cover it up, but can one imagine Bush being re-elected with such a pedigree of incompetence? In the real world the Obamed would have been fired 2 years ago and maybe impeached for unconstitutionality in many of his policies and the destruction of US finances.

As William L. Gensert wrote on Americanthinker.com, no one benefits from the singular narcissist Obama, and his worship of himself. The average cult knave of the Obamed theology does not benefit from his radical socialism. Bankruptcy benefits no one, including those who receive their 'fair share' of welfare handouts. At some point the spigot is turned off and the ugly reality of Keynesian Marxism imposes itself – even on the most devoted of cult cheerleaders:

"Our president has never been more than an epigone of a great man.  And the cold glare of history will see Barack Obama for the man he truly is -- and it will not matter what the meaning of "is" is.

"The world will little note, nor long remember" Barack Obama, because contrary to his own opinion, he is the nation's worst president.  He is an arrogant, hyper-partisan, race-baiting, committed socialist -- a man whose deliberate attempts to transform the nation into a banana republic, with pictures of himself on the side of every building, have been thwarted only by his need to win one more election.

....When he departs the presidency, whether it is on 1/20/13 or after four more years of our misery, he will surely sashay into the history books, great or not.  In his next job as emperor of the U.N., he can air out his post-American anti-Americanism to his natural audience -- other anti-Americans -- while maintaining the myth of his autodidactic polymathism."  

Certainly. No doubt the Obamed will trot on to greater things once he has eviscerated the country he loathes. He is simply enacting the policies taught to him at Columbia and Harvard after all. He will be the UN Supremo, probably hectoring us peasants on GlobaloneyWarming and Islamophobia. Maybe he will also become a titular office holder of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation [OIC]. Perhaps he will condescend to fly to Jerusalem on behalf of the UN-OIC to impose peace on the Jews by handing over the entire country to the Arabs. There is verily no limits for the Great Man and his skills. Destroy America, get rid of the Jews, establish a UN World Government......

The socialist who sat in a Black racist church for 20 years has certainly made history by destroying the grandeur of America's. I doubt that future historians will view the Obamed with anything but derision, if there still is a history worth writing about in the future that is.  

 This is a great book which clearly lays out why the West was and still is at least for now, better than the Rest. Western civilization is clearly superior – or was if you are discussing Europe. An important basis for this civilizational pre-eminence was of course the Judeo-Christian cultural construct, which over the 'Middle Ages' led to developments and innovations in every sphere of life. The rational 'Enlightenment' [which was irrational as well]; and the scientific-industrial evolutions had to come from somewhere. Voltaire and Watts did not spring out of the weeds of ignorance and darkness. If you believe that culture is king [and it most certainly is], then Ferguson's linkage of post-Christian Europe with its financial, social and civilizational decline is hardly surprising or controversial. But few make this connection.

Niall Ferguson to his credit recognizes the role faith plays in both the development of reason, and of the political-economy and its social-environmental evolution. His comments are worth reading at some length. On page 264 he gets to the crux of the matter as to why the West is better than the Rest [to quote his own depiction]:

“Religions matter. In earlier chapters we saw how the 'stability ethic' of Confucianism played a part in imperial China's failure to develop the kind of competitive institutional framework that promoted innovation in Western Europe....But perhaps the biggest contribution of religion to the history of Western civilization was this. Protestantism made the West not only work, but also save and read. The Industrial Revolution was indeed a product of technological innovation and consumption.”

All true. Though Weber's Protestant read, work and save ethic, is indeed a prime source of European dynamism it must also be said that the Catholic Church saved Europe and should be given joint credit for its rise to dominance. The Roman church developed the economy, fought wars of liberation and defence against Islam [including the Crusades which bought Europe 500 years of time to develop]; stimulated the creation of schools, universities, enquiry and debate; and financed science and art. The balance sheet of the Catholic Church is usually taught as a negative. This is nonsense. Even with the sordid foibles, corruption and inquisitorial nature of the Church, its influence in European development is undeniably positive and decisive.

So where is the vaunted socialism of post-modern Europe today? The nirvana of collectivism, unions, 30 hour work weeks, endless holidays and partying, no children, kids in university until the age of 30, and people retiring from their 'job' at 55? Back to Mr. Ferguson, the sceptical Scot:

“Europeans today are the idlers of the world. On average, they work less than Americans and a lot less than Asians...For example 54 per cent of Belgians and Greeks aged over fifteen participate in the labour force, compared with 65 per cent of Americans and 74 per cent of Chinese.....The average German worked just 1437 hours – fully 16 per cent less [than the average American].”

Why doesn't Europe work, why does it strike, moan about vacations and want the government to ensure the individual's 'existence'? Why read, work or save if life has no meaning ?

“Europeans not only work less; they also pray less – and believe less.....4 per cent of Norwegians and Swedes and 8 per cent of French and Germans attend a church service at least once a week, compared with 36 per cent of Americans, 44 per cent of Indians, 48 per cent of Brazilians....God is 'very important' for just one in ten German and Dutch people; the French proportion is only slightly higher. By comparison, 58 per cent of Americans say He is very important in their lives.”

When there is no higher meaning in life, and no metaphysical suppression of ego's and narcissism, the rest of cultural decline follows. Twittering micro-messaging is a symptom of such a society. Completely and utterly self-absorbed. Such a culture is not going to go out and conquer the world; invent the unimaginable, or dare to be different. Society simply devolves into a competition for government controlled 'spoils' and favours.

“Britain is already one of the most godless societies in the world, with 56 per cent of people never attending church at all – the highest rate in Western Europe....More than two-thirds of respondents [to a survey for a documentary on British TV], said they recognized no clearly defined moral guidelines, and fully 85 per cent of those aged under twenty-four.”

When most of your young, after passing through state indoctrination schools, believe that morality is 'relative' and that no truth really exists your civilization is finished. No need to read, work or save if there is no permanence in temporal reality, or karma in the world of higher metaphysics and morality.

The Nietzchean ideal of the eugenically defined 'superman', premised on the egotistical self obsessed with pleasure, sex and the 'now'; rendered mainstream by Darwin and Freud finds its echo in pop-culture, the disaster of the 60s revolution and that interminable nitwit John Lennon:

“Who killed Christianity in Europe, if not John Lennon? Was it, as Weber himself predicted, that the spirit of capitalism was bound to destroy its Protestant ethic parent, as materialism corrupted the original asceticism of the godly (the 'secularization hypothesis')?

If life has no meaning why bother to work read, work or save?

Or perhaps to have a purpose in life, the cult of something or other fills the post-Christian vacuum. GlobaloneyWarming in which a natural trace chemical, 95 % emitted by Gaia is 'changing' the climate – much to the delight of tax and regulatory happy politicians and their associates in the Trillion dollar 'Green Tech' scam fills your spiritual need. Platitudes, stupidities, bumper stickers and tshirts replacing the hard work of real faith.

Or maybe you convert to Islam, because you find it exotic to 'Kill, execute, crucify, and humiliate the Christians...' [Sura 5:33] destroying your own 'execrable, racist, fascist, and disgusting culture'; and to have the opportunity to mumble your prayers in Arabic a language you don't understand and become part of an exclusive and separate 'umma' or club destined to rule the world – or so spake the Allah.

Then again you can rage against the oppressive 'Capitalist' machine and join the Occupy Wall Street protests, screaming that you want someone else to pay your useless university degree, guarantee you a job, and secure your future from any risk or unsettling effort.

If that requires too much work – protesting and passing drugs around in public spaces does consume calories – you can worship the great man Obamed, the new prophet, the divinity of hope and change, the most important creation since Muhammad. Elect Obama and pray to the gods of national socialism. Instant moral superiority.

What a confusion. We have just one life and so many cults to choose from.

Christianity is dead in Europe. Europeans have derided, marginalized and ridiculed the very basis for their rise to global dominance. Maybe this is why Europe is bankrupt.

 Highly Recommended, Finest Years, Churchill as War Lord 1940-45.

I have read almost every single book, and article published about and by W.S. Churchill. This one volume work by Hastings' on Churchill's war leadership, while a dense read, is probably in the top half-dozen of the tomes lying within the massive library of Churchilliana. The reason this book is so valuable and interesting is that Hastings lets the facts lead to his conclusions. While he never denies Churchill's skill, genius, determination and importance in Britain's fight for survival against the barbaric Marxist-pagan cult of national socialism from 1939 to 1945, he does not close his eyes to the vanities, peculiarities and weaknesses of the most important Briton in the modern age. Tough, insightful, well-written, and extremely well researched, this book is both a source material and a useful addendum to the Churchill novice, or the scholarly student of Churchill's career.

Some of the 'new' items of information that readers will discover would include the following:

-The pathetic and woeful nature of the British Army and its leadership during the war. [Hastings has written many works on this theme]

-Appeasement and 'ignoring reason' [to quote Hastings], was a strong current in the British elite who for the most part especially from 1940-42, wanted to make a 'deal' with Hitler.

-The endless plots during the war hatched against Churchill in order to remove him, or curtail his power, fomented by his own party.

-Churchill's political base was the labouring, unionized 'class', not the educated elite.

-Paradoxically given the above, the number of strikes and days lost in Britain reached record levels during the war.

-The grand and widespread appeal of Communism in Britain during and after the war. Pro-Russian sentiment was a political and cultural fact during this period.

-Churchill and Roosevelt's romanticized relationship was a myth. By 1943 Roosevelt felt little need to heed or discuss great matters with Churchill and by 1944 the Americans were of the firm opinion that Churchill and the British were more of a threat to 'self determination', 'democracy' and a new global order, than Russia and Stalin. The Big Three of the war, was the Bigger Two by 1994.

-Churchill knew little, and took even less interest in, the war in the Pacific and Asia; and the struggle against Japan.

-Always enamoured of romantic 'side shows', Churchill exasperated his Chiefs of Staff with many inane plans which were tendentious to the overall objective of meeting and destroying the German war machine, head to head. Escapades which failed or diverted resources, planning time and focus included the eastern Mediterranean, northern Norway, most of the Italian campaign, and landings in Burma.

Hastings does not deny Churchill's sublime role and irreplaceable value as a political leader, orator, work-horse extraordinaire, key actor in the Big Three of Russia, the US and the UK; and the embodiment and expression of Britain's past glory. But he is surely right to criticize the obvious weaknesses of this great man including: his impetuosity, weird work habits which exhausted everyone around him, endless orations and opinions on even the most minor points of discussion, his reliance on military theatre instead of having the British forces fight the Germans directly without a massive superiority in men, machines and air cover; and Churchill's overly romantic and by 1943 anachronistic view of the world and Britain's place in it.

Yet for all of this he was indispensable. Without Churchill it is highly likely that Britain would have fallen, and the Nazi assault on Russia would have commenced a few months earlier, making the taking of Moscow almost a certainty based on how poorly the Red Army fought in 1941. At that point there would have been little use for Hitler to declare war on the US. Europe to the Urals and all the industry and resources of the 'lebensraum' to the east, not to mention the industrial heartlands of western Europe would have become the property of the Nazis. Europe would have been an armed concentration camp, with its assets and natural resources fed to the Nazi war machine.

Churchill's problem as Hastings takes much pain to point out was the base fact that Britain's army was decidedly inferior to that of the German Wehrmacht. Man for man the Germans were better. In fact Hastings makes the claim that the British soldier was decidedly inferior in the second World War, in comparison to those who fought in the First. The British never beat the Germans on equal terms in the Second conflagration. This lack of quality obsessed Churchill. It might be the main reason why he delved in political 'theatre' and avoided a head-on clash with the Wehrmacht.

As Max Hastings himself wrote in the Financial Times:

“The navy and air force proved the most effective of Britain’s forces. British and American armies for the rest of the war required a handsome superiority of men, tanks and air support to beat Germans. A large part of the story of Britain in the second world war, it seems to me, is of Churchill seeking more from his nation’s warriors than they were capable of delivering. Most men were doggedly willing to do their duty. But after 1940, neither the country nor the army proved capable of ascending the heroic summits the prime minister aspired to.

....British diplomat Oliver Harvey wrote in his diary on November 14 1942: “The Russian army having fulfilled the allotted role of killing Germans, our chiefs of staff think by 1944 they could stage a general onslaught on the exhausted animal.”

Such cynicism became institutionalised at the top of the war machine. The Americans professed exasperation about this perceived British pusillanimity but themselves became party to it. In July 1943, when Britain had been at war for four years and the US for 20 months, just eight western allied divisions were fighting the Germans – in Sicily, where they lost a mere 6,000 killed. The Red Army, meanwhile, was engaged in the titanic confrontation at Kursk, which eventually involved 4 million men on the two sides and cost half a million lives. Even in 1944-1945, seldom less than two-thirds of the German army was engaged in the east. The Russians did most of the dying essential to destroy Nazism, only belatedly assisted by British and American land forces.”

This might be overstated but rings true in part. Without Russia Britain would not have 'won' the war. Certainly without America Britain was likely doomed. But none of this detracts from Churchill's decisive role in history and the war. He is the prime exhibit that individuals do shape history and that history is not some shapeless mass of Marxian dialectic.

If in 1940 the British had struck a deal [of servitude] with the Nazis, the entire German army and air-force would have been liberated for the attack on the East. The Russians would certainly have succumbed to Hitler's invasion – saved as they were by the winter – if the British had not delayed the German conquest by 3 critical months and distracted the Luftwaffe to Greece and the Balkans in the spring of 1941. As well tonnes of supplies nourished Russia, though Hastings makes the rather implausible claim that they had no real effect until 1943. Other sources will give a different view on the magnitude and importance of these supplies. They were not marginal as Hastings tries to maintain. The Russians also never had to fight in Asia, North Africa, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and in the sea lanes of the Atlantic. The British had to fight a very different war than the Russians, who historically have never been shy to sacrifice enormous numbers of men in military campaigns.

Overall however, this book is valuable and realistic. Churchill was indeed the man of the hour. But even the great men of history need to have their place squarely fastened into the reality of the moment. Without Russia and the US, Britain's majestic defiance might not have amounted to much. But without Churchill she was surely doomed.

Other Reviews

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Excellent historian Wheatcroft writing in the New York Times

“For all Churchill’s exalted words about the “English-speaking peoples” fighting for freedom together, the fact is that Anglo-­American forces played a subsidiary role in the European war. During 1943, while 70,000 Western servicemen, including bomber aircrew members, died fighting Germany, two million Russian solders were killed. Even after D-Day, Russian casualties were far higher; approximately nine of 10 German Army fatalities occurred on the Eastern Front, where the war was decided.

Then there is a delicate subject, the sheer military inadequacy of the British Army: both its incompetent regular officers and its unenthusiastic wartime draftees. Over and again we learn that British troops “showed themselves less effective warriors than their opponents,” as they were consistently outfought by numerically inferior Wehr­macht forces. Although Hastings is no great admirer of Montgomery, he more than any other British general recognized the limitations of his citizen-soldiers, with “many men willing to do their duty, but few who sought to become heroes.”

Slowly and ruefully, Churchill himself came to understand this. That was part of the reason he dragged his feet so hard over the invasion of Europe. His delay caused much vexation in Washington, although the feeling was mutual. The British bitterly resented being lectured to by Americans who, having sat out the conflict for more than two years, were advocating premature landings in 1942 or 1943 that would very likely have been bloodbaths, with mostly British casualties.”

Jonathan Sumption's review in the Spectator:

“Britain created large armies from a small professional core in both world wars of the 20th century. But they never became a really effective fighting force. Its history left it without a military tradition analogous to its great naval tradition. Its liberal traditions ruled out coercion on the scale which would have been required to create one. English public opinion envied the scale and ferocity of Soviet resistance to Hitler, but it had no idea of the ubiquitous execution squads and the ruthless indifference to casualties which had been necessary to achieve it.

Max Hastings’ views about the British army in the second world war are well known, and are pungently repeated here. Its ranks were filled with ‘many men willing to do their duty, but few who sought to become heroes.’ Its leaders, with a handful of exceptions, were risk-averse blockheads, devoid of imagination or initiative. Hastings’ brutal dismissal of Wavell, Auchinleck, Alexander, Richie and Freyburg makes entertaining reading. Even Montgomery, the most successful British general of the war, was ‘egoistic and crass’, defects which made him a liability in an international army calling for high levels of diplomacy in its senior commanders. Brooke was an outstanding chief of staff and an essential foil to Churchill, but Hastings thinks that his caution would have let him down if he had been allowed a major command in the field.

This is a rich and rewarding book, the fruit of many years of reflection on the conduct of war. It is enlivened by countless insights on matters great and small, and by a spare, trenchant style which holds the reader’s attention throughout its 600 pages.”

======

 Obviously we need a Ministry of Compassion to manage 'Fairness'. Fairness is too important to be left to 'market forces' and the unbridled racist blood lust of selfish, greedy neo-cons. Fairness is the key to life. Fairness created the modern world. Fairness means innovation, production, and job creation. Fairness mandates love and compassion – and even commitment to love and compassion. What can be more fair than being deeply committed to profound love and compassion all in the name of fairness ? Fairness is simply fair. 'Fairness' fits onto a sticker for your small hybrid or electric car's bumper. Fairness is your value. You love fairness. Fairness loves you.

An example of unfairness is that 100% of giving birth to children is performed by women. A fair society would mandate that men must share in this process and constitute 50% of the birthing total. Surely no one can object to such a policy of unambiguous fairness?

Everyone is fairly the same, no less a wit than John Stuart Mill said so. We need fairness in everything. Why shouldn't everyone fairly reap the benefits of what racists, imperialists, neo-cons and their atavistic cohorts of barbarian and profoundly phobic-hordes, have plundered ? It would be entirely fair to kill those who don't believe that fair is fair and that all assets and monies must be fairly shared. The science is closed on fair. Kill the Unbeliever. Now that would be fair.

The Ministry of Compassion should implement, immediately, acting now! the following fairness doctrines [they seem hauntingly fairly familiar......]:

-fair taxation in which 10% pay 60% of all Federal Income tax [this should be increased to 100% as soon as practicable]

-fairly subsidized post-secondary tuition for all students, in all programs, at all colleges regardless of their utility or import to society [from 50% to 100%]

-free and fair health care managed by a fair bureaucracy [only those who are un-fairly poor qualify].

-free and fair dental care for those who are unfairly poor

-unlimited and condition-free and fair welfare transfers to those who are unfairly poor [raped by the vicious market]

-unlimited and condition-free and fair transfers from the young to the old [these payments must be doubled – that is only fair for the old and grey]

-free and fair subsidization of all fairly-green technology firms [what can be more fair then green mother earth technology?]

-free and fairly grand pensions to the 40% of workers who work for the fairly equal governmental bureaucracies and the police

But more must be done to equalize fairness. Fairness is being unfairly limited. Unleash the fairness beast:

Social Fairness:

-Free and fair daycare for everyone paid by a 'fair tax' on corporations named the “children's future and fairness tax”

-Free and fairly equal haircuts are to be directed by the 'Compassionate Coiffure Commission.' Some people having nice hair-cuts is simply unfair. This means the nationalization of all hair cutting studios.

-All cars will be the same size [small] and hybrid. Only one colour will be allowed. It is unfair to have some people in nice cars; and others with no cars at all. For those who don't possess an auto, you will be able to fairly share your neighbours at your whim and discretion.

-Free and fair daycare for everyone paid for by punishing businesses in 'unfair competition' to make 'unfairly disproportionate profits'

-Under the 'fairness in sports' law, all teams will be winners, all players will win trophies, and all leagues will end up with all teams fairly tied.

-All citizens will have the same weight. It is unfair that some are large and some are small.

-All citizens will wear the same clothing – regulated by the Fair Dressed Commission. Black and Red coats and pants will be mandatory.

Housing, Job and Asset Fairness:

-Housing must be fairly accessible. All mortgages will be paid by the government. This will be financed by a tax on oil firms under fairness guidelines.

-Given that unemployment unfairly targets those who are the most fair; every citizen will take a turn at being unemployed. After your one year period of unemployment you will be fairly reintegrated back into the workforce, into a job as stipulated by the Compassionate Commission on Workforce Fairness.

-Education is a human right and social asset. It must be fairly and evenly accessed. All private schools will be shuttered. It is unfair that some students might have recourse to a better education.

Business and Income Fairness:

-A fair and compassionate limitation on corporate profits at 10% of net revenues. The rest will be distributed to the government, to the tax revenue category labelled 'Fairness Revenue'.

-Incomes must be fairly capped at $100.000 per annum [this is the 'rich' 1%]; and redistributed by the Ministry of Compassion under the fairness doctrine to those who earn less than $25.000 per annum [the goal is that every single worker in the private sector earns $50.000 per year, that is a fair number].

-Government workers and the police are exempt from the above law. All such workers, given their fairly obvious superiority must make a fair wage of $150.000 per annum [these are the little people and it is only fair they are compensated properly]. These amounts can be paid from the 'Fairness Revenue' fairly plundered from businesses.

Since fairness is the only objective truth, anyone opposed to the above will simply be shot on the orders of the Fairness Gestapo who work for the Ministry of Compassion. It is unfair that anyone would object to fairness. We cannot have deviation. Fair is the truth. Fairness is the decree. Fair and equal the dogma. It is only fair to obey. Submit and be fairly happy. Glory in the mediocrity of being fair.  

 “Tens of thousands of Russians flooded downtown Moscow on Saturday to demand an end to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's rule, casting a strong challenge to his bid to reclaim the presidency in March. The massive protest -- which drew 120,000 people, according to organizers -- reflected a mounting opposition to Mr. Putin's 12-year rule that has badly dented his father-of-the-nation image, even though he's expected to win the vote that would extend his rule by another six years. The protest leaders hope to stage another rally a week before the March 4 election to raise the heat on Mr. Putin. The previous rallies -- the second of which also drew an estimated 120,000 -- were the biggest in Russia since the protests 20 years ago that paved the way to the collapse of the Soviet Union.” WSJ

Vlad and friends will just smile through the protests, stuff ballot boxes on March 4 and win '80 %' or some such number of votes cast. Not much changes in Russia. Yet as the Russian elite becomes further distracted and distanced from the population, ideas of reform and rebellion will spread throughout society. Rulers evincing 'stability' including Charles X of France [post Napoleon]; Franz Joseph in Austria; Cromwell; and even the Romanovs, eventually had their regimes overturned by events, punctuated by a general feeling that the ruling elite or 'strong man', was completely disinterested in, and dissociated from the mass and their real world problems. Nepotism, 'powerism' and 'greedism' might be the theologies of the ruling cohort. They ring hollow with people earning an average wage of less than $1000 per month, and who are pessimistic about their futures. Russian birth rates are spectacularly low for example. A sure sign of general pessimism and cultural decline.

Can Russia and its usually apathetic subjects tear down and replace the Putinistas?

Is Tsar Putin ready to relinquish power and return Russia to change and as he would put it, instability? More likely is 12 more  years of Tsar Vlad the Judo lover. There will be consequences. Reduced foreign investment.  Further nationalisation/Kremlinization of the economy.  More corporate fascism.  More deaths of journalists who oppose the regime.  Few liberalizing measures. Exportation of young people.  A declining birth rate - why have babies if you have a negative view of your future ?  A larger share of Moslems as a % of the population - already at 25%.   More funding of Moslem and Arab regimes as threats to Western interests in the Muddled Yeast.  At least the Great Peter and the Romanovs knew that Russia was better off with the US, the UK, Holland, and France as partners.  Not Vlad the Journalist Impaler.   

Russia will get little out of a new Judo-lovers dictatorship. There are risks to any 'change', but Nemstov et al. or the 'Liberals' who are at best half-hearted reformers; are hardly radical orthodox Conservative-Bolshevik types out to recreate '10 days which shook the world', and turn Russia into a libertarian paradise.  But the big wits will call the Judocracy of Putin, 'stability'.  Sure Russia might be stable - especially when most of its Euro population leaves and most of its assets are owned by a small group of late middle-aged white men in the Kremlin.  Stable indeed.  

The Russophiles will disagree with the above and say that Vlad is the greatest leader since oh I don't know, Robespierre perhaps, or maybe Honecker in East Germany. Maybe he is even as big as the O'Goda in the US ? 

Look at Russia now vs. 1998 they scream  !  Richer, fatter, happier, stable.  One of the worst decisions made by Yeltsin was to trade rocky Russian development and the uneven road of economic and social development  for his own safety and to keep his corrupted $5 billion in stolen dollars.  He handed Russia back to the KGB.  A simple fact.  But for the Russophiles Vlad the Journalist Impaler will be the greatest Russian leader since Trotsky.  A man for all seasons. The embodiment of strong, sober, great-man rule.  Competent. Inscrutable. Looking good in swim shorts. Screw the people.  All hail the King!   Bow to Vlad and be glad. Stability is the cry. Order is the new freedom.

Nota bene;

The Russiaophiles will not like these articles:

Revolution if Putin wins?

Nemstov organizes anti-Putin protests?

 I couldn't help but wondering what Niall Ferguson, whose 'modest, unpretentious' book I am reading is called 'Civilization', and who makes the often, implausible and unsourced claim that the Chinese invented pretty much of everything, would make of the following phrase by Crocker, in his 'The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire', [reviewed here]:

“The irony of the British Empire in Africa is that while it started with slave ships tapping into the millennium-old slave trade of the Dark Continent, Britain became the most powerful force in the world for ending slavery and the slave trade, and the anti-slaving campaign drove the expansion of the British Empire.” [p. 189]

Rather obvious. This fact sends the cultural self-loathing Obamatrons into limp wristed hissy fits of spitting and self-flagellation. How dare the British Empire do anything right? Ending slavery! Oh please didn't the Chinese do that first pace Ferguson?

The British conquered Africa because they had better technology, vaccines, medicine, modern organizational methods, private capital, a market system, independence of character and initiative; a cultural superiority and a supremacy in institutions and political-economic governance. Not to mention self-confidence and a modernizing, industrializing economy. If Ferguson's list of apocryphal Chinese inventions [the usual tired list, blast furnaces circa 10.000 B.C., iron smelting (he might have forgotten about the iron age in Europe), printing, toilet paper, golf....] was really true, it would have been the 300 foot junks of Admiral He and not the literally hundreds of British ships and sea captains, which would have mapped and then quested to conquer a huge, forbidding land-mass. Something in Ferguson's narrative does not make sense. Any society that created 'everything' would also be the first to explore and develop Africa. It is a lot simpler given the monsoon rains and winds to sail from east to west to reach Africa, then to brazen it out going north south and then south to north east to reach the Zanzibar coast, the most hospitable landing point on the Dark part of that Continent.

It wasn't the Chinese 'mining' genius which unearthed diamonds and gold, it was the British who began to use their technology and techniques to turn the African backwater hinterland, into a part of civilisation:

“In addition, in southern Africa the British unearthed diamonds and gold; in eastern Africa they established farms and ranches; in northern Africa they took command of the Suez Canal; and everywhere in Africa they were motivated by something else: a desire for discovery – most famously, to find the source of the Nile.”

Fancy that. Self-confident men and women searching for profit, adventure, personal and social gain; to convert the 'natives' to cvilisation; and to find out truth and reality, such as the main spring of the Nile. According to Ferguson the Chinese had already done this is Africa, at least 2500 years before the hairy, stupid Briton, in his small raft stumbled on the beach at Cape Town gaping in stupidity at the cultural magnificence of local Zulu society.

Crocker goes through a small list of British individuals who changed the course of history and brought a superior civilisation to Africa. A fact which offends everyone who 'knows' that the British Empire was nothing but an evil imposition of an inferior form of social development on superior native customs and mores:

-Wolseley in 1873-4 leading a small force of British regulars and defeating the Ashanti along the poorly named Gold Coast or West Africa securing naval bases, free trade with the Ashanti and access to the Niger. The Gold Coast was formerly annexed in the 1890s.

-Lugard brought serious and honest Victorian governance as well as investment to the Gold Coast. Hospitals, roads, railways and mines were developed under Lugard and the British greatly benefiting both the ruled and the rulers. The area was governed through local councils and elections – something unique to the West African experience.

-Livingston in central Africa, preaching the gospel of commerce, Christianity and civilization. One of the most interesting and avid of Britain's cultural heroes in Africa.

-Chelmsford destroying the Zulu state which had preyed upon both Dutch and British farmers and possessions and had engaged in a long litany of unprovoked and savage attacks on both civilian and military targets. Chelmsford's victory removed the only obstacle between a Dutch and British clash in Southern Africa.

-Cecil Rhodes and others who both forced Britain into the Boer war, and helped her win it. Rhodes was the quintessential imperialist who believed in Britain's divine right to rule and in her civilizing mission. I doubt he is taught anymore in school.

-General Gordon stopping slavery in Egypt and the Sudan. He was murdered by Moslems in Khartoum. A crime paid back by the decisive British victory in 1898 at Omdurman by Kitchener against the Moslem Dervishes [the Dervishes were Sufists who followed a 12^th century Afghan-Moslem cult of superstition and mysticism which included dancing in a trance].

Most don't know that in Southern Africa Britain defended the rights of Blacks to both own land and vote in Dutch and British territory. This was something that the Dutch Boers wanted no part of. The British were great agriculturalists which benefited the local population, many of whom worked as free men on the estates and would later become proprietors. In Kenya and Rhodesia, for the first time in African history, large well managed and irrigated plantations started to produce a variety of saleable and even exportable crop. Tea, coffee, vegetables, fruits and other products were grown en masse.

Throughout Africa the British invested about 5% of their GDP annually into infrastructure. Schools, hospitals, roads, rail-lines, government buildings, law courts, and the infrastructure of a modern political-economy slowly developed on the Dark Continent. One supposes that the Chinese had done this long before the era of Rome. After all they must have invented the infrastructure of the modern world.

Crocker goes into some detail about the British involvement in Africa. It is hard to make the claim that Africa is better off without Britain has the colonial master of must of its territory. Moslem 'extremists' are now in power in North Africa and Egypt. Arab Moslems slaughter darker-skinned non-Moslems in the Sudan – something a modern day Gordon would not tolerate. Somalia is a Moslem wasteland as are vast tracts of Nigeria, Mali, and central Africa.

Only a few states in Africa are 'normal' and function to modern standards. African troubles have little to do with Western or whitey-imperialism. Corruption, the wrong culture, violence, intolerance, tribal hatreds, Islam and other distortions have wasted the $2 Trillion sent by the White world to the Dark Continent. This is the fault of Africa post colonialism.

The post-modern paternalistic racism namely; send Blacks money out of guilt and because 'we' the Western elite feel that they are too ignorant to understand how to build a modern political-economy, has no echo in British imperialism. The Victorians had a mission but not a racist theology. They ended slavery, had a belief that Africans were just as good as anyone else if given a chance at civilization, and developed Africa as much out of a mission to bring a better world to the Dark Continent, as from the baser motives of profit, greed, blood-lust and power. Africa since 1965 has not improved. Witness Zimbabwe or Rhodesia. Maybe there is something good in imperialism after all. Even Niall Ferguson might agree with that. This is why Crocker's book is such a good read. 

 Do you contribute your 'fair share' ? Did the average worker imitate the much maligned venture capitalist Mitt Romney and achieve the following in the past tax year? On his circa $4 million in paid taxes Romney financed, carried and supported the following. Did you do the same?:

-300 elementary school children

-300 seniors on Medicare

-200 military personnel's salaries

-250 people on food stamps

-200 people on other government welfare

-ex of his tax payments some $4 million was sent to various charities helping literally thousands of people

This says nothing of the tens of thousands of jobs 'saved' or 'created' [to use the OGoda's phraseology]. So the question is – what did you do that was comparable?

VC investment management is an exercise in futility and frustration. Imagine if you had $100 million of your own money and you had to earn a return on it by investing in businesses. Most likely 3/4 or more of your investments would fail. Maybe 1/4 might have some level of success. None would be 'guaranteed'. Out of every 5 deals you structure you would probably lose capital on 4 and hope to earn back your lost money on just one deal. Without such investments many firms and jobs would simply vanish. For your troubles you are vilified by the media and the geniuses of the Socialist-Marxist cult; who to quote the Koran 5:33, would like you to be 'executed, humiliated and crucified'. Nice.

In post-modern Socialist Utopias there is lots of love expressed for 'heroes' [police officers with $90.000 a year pensions and unlimited power]; the 'little guy' [now defined as a government worker who will only get $60.000 a year for life after age 55]; the Earth Mother; or the 'disadvantaged' who collect free-housing, free health and dental care, disability payments and housing support. Not much compassion is expressed towards anyone who actually creates a business or engages in job hiring. Poof. So bourgeois. Such types are demonized and spoken of with whispers in polite social groups. Surely you don't want to be one of 'them' now do you?

So a fair question on the meaning of fair. Is it fair that one man supports literally thousands of people? Is it fair that half the population pays no income tax – a tax which supports the functioning of all the duties of a Federal Government including health care, border security, the military and sundry transfers for sundry purposes to the population at large ? Is it fair that venture capital money has created behemoths ranging from Apple to various manufacturing firms, and in the process millions of new jobs, yet the entire industry is calumnied and looked upon by the bien pensant as unworthy? How many jobs do the 'fair' commissars in government, or the union elite so obsessed by 'fairness' create ? None is the answer. They create welfare cheques disguised as jobs.

The reality is clear. The deployment of capital into business ventures is entirely fair and subject to a fair return. So too is the creation of profit and millionaires from such investments. These are fair returns for a risk fairly taken. In a thinking-rational world you would want more venture investments and venture financed millionaires. They pay a lot more than their 'fair share'. In fact the entire edifice of welfare and public transfers, not to mention thousands of worthy charities would not exist without both venture capital and its capitalists.

How is that for fairness?

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.

There is no science about the 'climate'. We know very little about our oceans, atmospheres, or the interplay of perhaps one million variables in climate. Thermodynamics tells us that there is no such thing as a 'global temperature mean', since conditions based around physical laws disavow climate commonality across topographies and landscapes. The IPCC-UN model of climactic fear-mongering is little more than unscientific lurid propaganda one finds in any cult. The theme is simple; shut-up and obey. Fettered submission is not however science. Neither is globalist-socialist activism. GlobaloneyWarming and the cult of money, power, and corruption which manages it and feeds it, is an affront to real science, intelligence, free-will and the worth of human beings. It is a short step from promoting that humans are destroying the earth mother; to proposing programs to eliminate the 'human virus'. Death cults are not scientific. But speak out and you will be damned:

“It takes a lot of courage.  Scientists who report findings that contradict man-made global warming find their sources of funding cut, their jobs terminated, their careers stunted, and their reports blocked from important journals, and they are victimized by personal attacks.  This is a consensus one associates with a Stalinist system, not science in the free world.”

A great article on the fraud of Climate-Baloney [re-printed and abridged with permission].

No consensus:

More and more scientists are revolting against the global warming consensus enforced by government funding, the academic establishment, and media misrepresentation.  They are saying that solar cycles and the complex systems of cloud formation have much more influence on our climate, and account for historical periods of warming and cooling much more accurately that a straight line graph of industrialization, CO₂, and rising temperatures.  They also point out that the rising temperatures that set off the global warming panic ended in 1998.

British Royal Society:

The Royal Society....has been accused by 43 of its Fellows of refusing to accept dissenting views on climate change and exaggerating the degree of certainty that man-made emissions are the main cause.  Most of the rebels were retired, as one of them explained, "One of the reasons people like myself are willing to put our heads above the parapet is that our careers are not at risk from being labeled a denier or flat-Earther because we say the science is not settled. The bullying of people into silence has unfortunately been effective."

CERN:

...  Physicists at Europe's most prestigious CERN laboratory tried to test the solar theory in 1996, and they, too, found their project blocked.  This fall, the top scientific journal Nature published the first experimental proof -- by a team of 63 scientists at CERN -- that the largest factor in global warming is the sun, not humans.  But the director of CERN forbade the implications of the experiment to be explained to the public: "I have asked the colleagues to present the results clearly, but not to interpret them.  That would go immediately into the highly political arena of the climate change debate."

The BEST [Berkeley Earth Surfaces Testing] or worse study:

Recently we've had a perfect example of the enforced global warming consensus falling apart.  Berkeley Professor Muller did a media blitz with the findings of the latest analysis of all land temperature data, the BEST study, that he claimed once and for all proved that the planet is warming.  Predictably, the Washington Post proclaimed that the BEST study had "settled the climate change debate" and showed that anyone who remained a skeptic was committing a "cynical fraud."

But within a week, Muller's lead co-author, Professor Curry, was interviewed in the British press (not reported in America), saying that the BEST data did the opposite: the global "temperature trend of the last decade is absolutely flat, with no increase at all - though the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have carried on rising relentlessly."

This is nowhere near what the climate models were predicting," Prof Curry said.  "Whatever it is that's going on here, it doesn't look like it's being dominated by CO₂."  In fact, she added, in the wake of the unexpected global warming standstill, many climate scientists who had previously rejected sceptics' arguments were now taking them much more seriously.  They were finally addressing questions such as the influence of clouds, natural temperature cycles and solar radiation - as they should have done, she said, a long time ago.

US-American Physical Society:

In America, Dr. Ivar Giaever, a Nobel Prize-winner in physics, resigned in protest from the American Physical Society this fall because of the Society's policy statement: "The evidence is incontrovertible: global warming is occurring."  Dr. Giaver: 'Incontrovertible is not a scientific word. Nothing is incontrovertible in science. In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible? The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this "warming" period.'

Canadian Engineers:

Fifty-one thousand Canadian engineers, geologists, and geophysicists were recently polled by their professional organization. Sixty-eight percent of them disagree with the statement that "the debate on the scientific causes of recent climate change is settled."  Only 26% attributed global warming to "human activity like burning fossil fuels."  APEGGA's executive director Neil Windsor said, "We're not surprised at all.  There is no clear consensus of scientists that we know of."

Weather Scientists:

Dr. Joanne Simpson, one of the world's top weather scientists, expressed relief upon her retirement that she was finally free to speak "frankly" on global warming and announce that "as a scientist I remain skeptical."  She says she remained silent for fear of personal attacks.  Dr. Simpson was a pioneer in computer modeling and points out the obvious: computer models are not yet good enough to predict weather -- we cannot scientifically predict global climate trends.

Dr. Fred Singer, first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, and physicist Dr. Seitz, past president of the APS, of Rockefeller University and of the National Academy of Science, argue that the computer models are fed questionable data and assumptions that determine the answers on global warming that the scientists expect to see.

The only consensus is this; GlobaloneyWarming is an unscientific fraud; one managed by the UN and national governments so they can tax, transfer, regulate and organize the masses of little people to their liking. Totalitarianism is not science. Fettering free-speech is not enlightened discourse. GlobaloneyWarming theology like other cults of submission, has nothing intelligent to grant the human race; and nothing positive to bequeath to human development.  

ClimateGate2.0. The 'experts', 'scientists' and and associated Marxist-Eco Fascist geniuses hard at work manipulating data, deleting emails, avoiding public transparency, and garnering more tax money. All in the name of One-World-Government and Mother Gaia. Now this is settled science!

Links to the good stuff on ClimateGate2.0. A new Thanksgiving tradition. More ClimateBaloney with your Turkey?

• Mann seeks Revkin help against hokey stick critics

• Revkin volunteers for alarmist damage control

• Revkin works for the alarmists

• Revkin says Inhofe speaks for the stupid

• Wigley suggests a ‘front’ author for Science, Nature commentary

• Briffa suggests phony ‘independent’ audit of hockey stick

• No data sharing for Jones

• Wigley, Harvey trying intimidating journal editor

• Snarking (Part 2) — Schellnhuber avenged!

• Snarking: Top German climate scientist gets OBE for ‘spouting bullsh**’

• Jones says media, especially BBC, has alarmist bias

• Wigley knows why paleo-reconstructions are junk science

• Jones says 2-degree C limit ‘plucked out of thin air’

• Alarmists looked to ally with Goldman Sachs

• Climategate 2.0: Phil Jones complains about omnipresent deniers

• Ducking confrontation on ‘Great Global Warming Swindle’

• Alarmist introspection admits dishonesty on hockey stick

• Jones laments blogsites as allowing deniers to find one another/a>

• Systematic deletion of e-mails

• How Phil Jones misleads journalists

• Santer angry over not being able to silence skeptics

• Mann says true temp anomaly not known well

• Silence of the alarmists

• Wigley accuses ‘Mike’, other IPCC-ers of deception, dishonesty

• Spun science isn’t going to end well

• Department of Energy involved in hiding temperature data?

• Jones advises e-mail deletion to avoid FOIA

• Mann says Curry not helping ‘the cause’

• ‘All models wrong’

• IPCC models not worth a darn

• Hulme hired to be the hand of God

• Praying for the ‘Day After Tomorrow’ to work

• Catholicism an ‘extreme’ religion?

• Mann a dead-ender

• Mann paper slammed by colleague as ‘pathetic’

• ‘Hockey stick’ debunking confirmed

• Hide the dissent

• Feelings more important than truth

• Kjellén has a better name for global warming

• Jones bans dissent on extreme weather

• Medieval Warm Period tough to erase

• Mann said skeptics ‘losing’

• Climategate 2.0?

All of the above just proves of course GlobaloneyWarming is real, and that the real criminals are those who dare to criticize the cult and its 'settled science'. What was that again about the Ptolemaic Universe?

The lamebrain media and their friends will downplay the importance of ClimateGate 2.0 and the 5.000 new emails found here, which show the depth of corruption and depravity at the IPCC-UN Climate-Baloney circus. The big brains will refer to the over 15.000 now public documents [Climate Gate 1.0 emails are here], as 'internal politics'. But of course the science is settled. Act Now!, to save the Earth Mother, cuddly ursus maritimus, and of course the children's future, from a natural chemical 95% of which is emitted by the Gaea goddess and which constitutes a whopping 1 % of all atmospheric gases. The math of course makes GlobaloneyWarming fascism real. Human emissions of Co2 at 5% x .01 % = not much of anything. Ergo your SUV is causes Hurricanes.

Climate Gate 2.0. Delicious. But for the eco-cult and the devotees of Globaloney-something-or-other, it won't matter. They will keep goose-stepping in rhythm.

Wattsupwiththat

date: Sat Sep 18 08:48:09 2004
from: Phil Jones <p.jones@uea.xx.xx>
subject: Re: kilimanjaro
to: “Jenkins, Geoff” <geoff.jenkins@metoffice.xx.xx>
Geoff,
The data that are used for the grid box should be within the grid box. They will be low
elevation sites though, and this may be part of the reason. It might be worth seeing if
there is anything in the U/A data – but I reckon there won’t be much in that region.
I’ve heard Lonnie Thompson talk about the Kilimanjaro core and he got some local temperatures – that we don’t have access to, and there was little warming in them. The same situation applies for Quelccaya in Peru and also some of his Tibet sites. Lonnie thinks they are disappearing because of sublimation, but he can’t pin anything down. They are going though.

Some initial snippets floating around the blogosphere:

<3373> Bradley: I’m sure you agree–the Mann/Jones GRL paper was truly pathetic and should never have been published. I don’t want to be associated with that 2000 year
“reconstruction”.

<3115> Mann:  By the way, when is Tom C going to formally publish his roughly 1500 year
reconstruction??? It would help the cause to be able to refer to that reconstruction as confirming Mann and Jones, etc.

<3940> Mann:  They will (see below) allow us to provide some discussion of the synthetic
example, referring to the J. Climate paper (which should be finally accepted upon submission of the revised final draft), so that should help the cause a bit.

<0810> Mann: I gave up on Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she think’s she’s
doing, but its not helping the cause

<2440> Jones: I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the
process

<2094> Briffa: UEA does not hold the very vast majority of mine [potentially FOIable emails] anyway which I copied onto private storage after the completion of the IP

Newsbusters:

<3066> Thorne:
I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run. [...]

<2884> Wigley:
Mike, The Figure you sent is very deceptive [...] there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC [...]

<4923> Stott/MetO:

My most immediate concern is to whether to leave this statement ["probably the warmest of the last millennium"] in or whether I should remove it in the anticipation that by the time of the 4th Assessment Report we’ll have withdrawn this statement – Chris Folland at least seems to think this is possible.

<3062> Jones:

We don’t really want the bullshit and optimistic stuff that Michael has written [...] We’ll have to cut out some of his stuff. [...]

<3373> Bradley:

I’m sure you agree–the Mann/Jones GRL paper was truly pathetic and should never have been published. I don’t want to be associated with that 2000 year “reconstruction”. [...]

<4369> Cook:

I am afraid that Mike is defending something that increasingly can not be defended. He is investing too much personal stuff in this and not letting the science move ahead.

[note: Of course, the "Mike" and "Michael" being regularly disparaged by his peers is Michael Mann, the creator of the thoroughly-debunked Hockey Stick graph which so much of this myth is dependent on. As physicist Lubos Motl notes, these messages "surely show that Michael Mann is a fraudster even according to most of his colleagues." Also for those not connecting the names, Jones is the infamous Phil Jones of UEA. Speaking of which:

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2011/11/22/climategate-20-5000-new-emails-confirm-pattern-deception-and-collusio#ixzz1eXQXk8l7]

Only 5.000 new emails. Only 5.000 pieces of evidence of the science being unsettled, and members of the cult trying to hide the data, destroy it, or find some support for the politically-correct answer of ever-increasing warming. Nice.

This is a criminal fraud. $100 billion per annum is being wasted on Climatehooey and non-science. $37 Trillion over the next generation is being 'demanded' by the UN and the Eco-cult as the minimum spend to move the hated human off of carbon energy to Mother Earth loving 'natural' energies. Indoctrination of young minds. Endless propaganda. Drowning Polar Bears [who can swim 60 miles in reality]. It is a cult. Cults are irrational and mindless. They have no business in a modern civilization.

This is a very good book, well-written, witty, sourced, independent and objective. Leaming is a writer who does not make too many personal statements and whose own views rarely show through her words. She tackles the little investigated era of post-war Britain, when Churchill 'fought on' to reclaim his power and status after his colossal 'order of the boot' and lost election in 1945. Leaming presents the decade from the end of the war to save civilisation to Churchill's final acceptance of 'defeat' and his retiring from active political life in 1955, in an accessible, easy and informed manner. She is a delightful author and one does not need to be steeped in Churchilliana to read this account. There are however some issues with the book notwithstanding, namely the lack of putting the second Churchill premiership into a domestic context.

Post-war Britain was a shambles. The treasury was empty. There were no foreign reserves. The balance of payments was decidedly negative and huge debt repayments to the Americans ensured penury. Conditions on the ground varied from bad to worse. Price controls and rationing persisted until the mid 1950s. Housing was in general, deplorable. The effusion of radical socialism permeated all branches of political and social life. Emigration and escape to other lands especially Canada, the US, and the Anzac drained much of the brains and brawn of the old country.

Economic life in post-war Britain was assaulted by unions, nationalization and strikes. Energy supply was intermittent. Shut downs of industry were common. Living standards declined. The economy became rigidified as more bureaucracies and unions scampered and capered across huge tracks of what once had been fully functioning market systems. Price points were distorted or destroyed. The average Briton was worse off in 1950 then in 1913. It was not just the ravages of war which had decimated the once prosperous island, but the erection of massive government and the infirmities of socialism. The 2 World Wars had made one grand impression on the public – their 'betters' were no better, and they demanded a share of the national 'spoils', some guarantees; pensions, health-care; and a certainty of income and life. The cultural mood had irrevocably shifted from Rule-Britannia, to 'where is my cheque'?

When Churchill was booted out in 1945 and socialism voted in, the end of his career seemed certain. It would have been better in many ways if he had simply retired in 1945. He was not a peace-time Prime Minister – a fact that most of the electorate instinctively understood in 1945. This election was simply a polite invitation by the public to the greatest Briton in history, to lay down the burdens of government and retire to a graceful existence of writing books, speech-making and world-wide acclaim and gratitude. But of course that was not for Churchill. In reading Leaming's book, the one main thought that coursed through my febrile mind was 'why the hell won't he simply retire?'. Churchill through strokes [no fewer than 3 in 10 years], ill-health [including memory loss], old-age [he was nearing 80 in 1955], and vituperative political opposition – much of it from his own party and 'friends' – refused to quit. The main theme one takes away from Leaming's account is this: there is a bathos, a sadness, a profoundly unsettling quality to Churchill. He could not retire from power, from being in the 'center of things', nor from the great stage of public life. This is both surreal and sad. It was if Churchill did not know much about life outside of politics, nor of the everyday world, which has much to offer in lieu of political games, Machiavellian strategies, and clever traps. Yes he was clever. But for what end?

In 1952 Churchill and his party were narrowly reappointed and re-elected. The British economy was still a disaster, 7 years on from the end of the great war. Any normal politician would have focused his efforts on reigniting the economy, shutting down the socialist juggernaut, repairing trade and reforming the tax and spend system. Churchill for instance almost did not write his Nobel prize winning books on the Second War, due to a 90% tax which would have been imposed on the proceeds. What was the point of so much labor and pain when the gains were so small and shrunken? But Churchill completely ignored the local conditions. He knew and cared little for the domestic economy. His great object? A 'summit' meeting with the Soviets to discuss world peace.

Churchill did nothing for 4 years except advance this project. Leaming's entire book is mostly filled with Churchill's plans, plots, cajoles, meetings, missives and declarations to both British and American leaders, including President Eisenhower, on the import of meeting face to face with the Soviet leadership and claim the peace. The war-time leader wanted to be the peace-time victor as well. Even to his contemporaries including war time allies such as Eisenhower or Dulles, this obsession was nonconstructive and unnecessary. Britain was no longer Great but small. The world had moved on. Churchill's fanaticism to claim leadership of the 'West' from the Americans strikes the reader as simply stupid. It certainly offended many in his party and across the opposition benches.

If Churchill had really been a national leader he would have delved deep into domestic political and economic reforms. But he didn't care. Britain in 1955 was in as bad a state as it had been in 1950. nothing much including rationing, had improved. But Churchill as Leaming recounts on page after endless page; was preoccupied with games, strategies, plots and counter-plots to both hold on to his power as leader and PM, and to bring the Russians into a Summit, which he could dominate, and through which I assume, he could claim the moral and political leadership of the West.

Leaming does not offer any real commentary on Churchill's obsessive-compulsion with power at the 'summit'. That is a pity. I would like to have read more about the domestic political-economy of the post-war period and during Churchill's second premiership and why he failed so utterly to resolve the many issues assailing Lesser Britain. Surely there were men inside the second Churchill administration who were concerned with the implosion of British finance and economy. So what were they doing and how did they interact with Churchill? This book does not tell us.

Leaming seems to admire Churchill's dogged never-die style of politics. I think the objective reader of this book will reach a different conclusion. There are times in life when you have to use common sense. There are times in life when the circumstances of the world have changed and you must accommodate yourself to those facts. Churchill was entirely incapable of adaptation to anything which did not fit his own objectives. This is a weakness as much as it might be strength during times of trouble. Churchill had no chance of claiming leadership of the West from 1952-55. He had no business proposing the silly idea of a summit with the Russians either before or after Stalin was poisoned by Beria in 1953. The only reason Churchill hung on as an old man to the levers of power was his all-consuming ego, his narcissism, his disregard for reality and his petulant insistence that he was too big to quietly disappear into civilian life.

This is why Leaming's book is a story of bathos. Sometimes champions simply need to go out whilst they are on top. There is little point in fighting on, if you are fighting on to satisfy an oversized ego wedded to adoration and power.  

China is dramatically altering and effacing East Asian watershed areas in an attempt to feed itself enough water to keep its economy growing and its fractious state in tact. The political-foreign policy issues that a lack of water will promote are obvious. There is little doubt however that the media, along with the Chinese, will find succour in blaming 'markets'; 'globalization'; Co2 induced globaloneywarming; and of course America. Solutions would include a freer market, private capital projects, real price points for water costing and usage, technology to clean up and improve the existing sources of water; and stricter environmental rules on development and water usage. The remedies which will be embraced however, will entail bigger government projects and more watershed distortions, managed only by the state with public funds. This means more debt, no price points and centralized bureaucracies micromanaging local water resources. When it fails most likely the Chinese army will begin marching hither and thither throughout East Asia to secure what even climatemongers will admit is a chemical source necessary for life.

Uneven distribution:

China’s current water crisis is driven by two primary factors. The first of these is China’s uneven distribution of water. Because of its large and diverse geography, China has a wide spectrum of terrains and climate zones. While southern and eastern China enjoy abundant rainfall, the northern and western regions of the country receive very little. This weather pattern can lead to unfortunate and seemingly contradictory effects, with some provinces battling floods while others are suffering from months-long droughts. Source

Massive Engineering projects: [over 100 on order currently]

In the past, the Communist Party has reflexively turned to engineering projects to address water problems, and now it is reaching back to one of Mao’s unrealized plans: the $62 billion South-to-North Water Transfer Project to funnel more than 12 trillion gallons northward every year along three routes from the Yangtze River basin, where water is more abundant. The project, if fully built, would be completed in 2050. The eastern and central lines are already under construction; the western line, the most disputed because of environmental concerns, remains in the planning stages.

The North China Plain undoubtedly needs any water it can get. An economic powerhouse with more than 200 million people, it has limited rainfall and depends on groundwater for 60 percent of its supply. ....“There’s no uncertainty,” said Richard Evans, a hydrologist who has worked in China for two decades and has served as a consultant to the World Bank and China’s Ministry of Water Resources. “The rate of decline is very clear, very well documented. They will run out of groundwater if the current rate continues.” NYT Source

Abuse of watershed areas:

For too long, rivers - the main sources of water - have been abused. Diversion schemes for irrigating crops and dams for flood control, without careful planning, have in some cases reduced flows to a trickle, or worse. The Yellow River, at the heart of China's wheat- and maize-producing area, is a grim example - once one of China's main arteries, water flow now no longer reaches the sea on about 200 days of the year. Source

and

China’s pollution trends are sobering, threatening economic growth, human health and watershed ecosystems. Urban and rural areas are both facing equally serious water pollution problems. Urban inhabitants in China draw 70% of their drinking water from groundwater sources. Between 50% and 90% of urban groundwater, however, is contaminated by agricultural runoff, industrial and municipal wastewater and in some municipalities, even toxic mine tailings. In rural areas, 700 million citizens lack access to safe water. Besides agricultural runoff and pollutants from small and medium industries, a large (and perhaps now the largest) source of water pollution is from animal factory farms, better known as confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Today, China’s CAFOs produce a total of 2.7 billion tons of livestock manure annually; 3.4 times the industrial solid waste generated nationwide (China Watch, December 12).

....Water quality of rivers flowing above ground is likewise severely degraded by pollution, with nearly 50% running black at grade 5 (not suitable for agriculture or industry). Since 2002, approximately 63 billion tons of wastewater flow into China’s rivers each year, of which 62% are pollutants from industrial sources, and 38% are poorly treated or raw sewage from municipalities [1]. Source

The Chinese economic 'miracle' has come at a high cost. Not planning around the basic material needed for life – water – has resulted in its depletion and misuse. If left uncorrected proper water sourcing will have a more important impact on the actions of the Chinese state then ideology, or concerns about world-power status. Without water your state will simply collapse.

Debt. Along with inflation the killer of empires. Braudel's study of Capitalism and of Mediterranean history reveals that any state or empire whose debt exceeds 200% of its total economic size will go bankrupt. Western nation states are now at 500% on average trending within a generation to reach 800%. But the media rarely reports this reality. The 'experts' focus just on total public debt and usually on 'external' debt held by investors or institutions outside of the country in question. This is as if domestic bond holders don't matter, or don't need the money paid back. If you look just at the external public debt of Europe, the total debt burden looks manageable. External debt holders are around 50% or less of the total in most states, with Greece, and Ireland the exceptions :

Source: NYT

Even the total public debt figures are below the key bankruptcy threshold of 200% as given in column 3. But this is of course not the real total debts of these states. You have to add in unfunded, unaccounted for, and off the balance liabilities for health care, pensions, social welfare and any other program in which government has promised a transfer to a particular group. When these amounts are added in the picture is much uglier:

Source

There is no possibility of paying back these massive debts. None. Never in the history of man's development has a state or empire been able to accrue 3-8x its economic size in debt. Bankruptcy is assured. Bankruptcy can be in the form of a hard default [Greece's future]; high inflation [US' future]; or a soft default with stagflation [Brazil in the late 80s and a probable outcome for some of the 17 nations in the Euro].

Total US debt per family is now at $1.5 million. Technically America is bankrupt. So too is Europe. Perhaps enough in tax increases, land sales or asset sales can help close the gap. But without spending cuts and a radical restructuring of the political-economy, culture and expectations, a bankruptcy in almost every nation state is highly probable. The only question will be – what form will the insolvency take and what will be the social, political and military impacts of the insolvency?

Source

In the USA socialized health care accounts for almost $90 Trillion in unfunded promises. As the population continues to age and fertility continues to decline, the payments to seniors in the form of pensions will double within 20 years to $35 Trillion. No nation state can support such an insufferable level of socialized debt.

Source

Nothing will be done of course until the bankruptcy process makes itself felt. Politicians will squabble on the margins but no meaningful changes will be enacted. There are too many votes to lose, and too many media outlets will be offended. When the unwinding of debts does start, these same people will pronounce themselves prescient in predicting the debt implosion and will propose more spending, more debt, more printing of money and more compassion and love as the cure.