The World of Sunny Banks

In the closing days of 2014 the Swedish newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, published a leader article, which you can read here.  It describes a reality with which we are all familiar from our television screens and newspapers, the reality of a world at war, be it armed conflicts in many countries or peaceful protests by involved citizens.  However, the interpretations which the leader puts on the background to the situations it names is so far from reality that one can only assume that the leader writer is living on a different planet.  I have taken the liberty of translating the leader, and my translation, with no personal comment can be seen here, and those of you who speak swedish can compare the original with my translation.  I have sought permission for the translation, and to quote it in my blog from the leader writers of Dagens Nyheter, but have not yet heard from them.  The copyright on the leader article resides, of course, with Dagens Nyheter.  However, since the document itself is in the public domain, by virtue of its having been published on the internet, I assume that citing it as I do in the following article can break no law.  If I hear to the contrary I shall modify this blog post accordingly.

In the post, the comments in italics are from the leader article, paragraph by paragraph.  Interspersed with them are my comments, in standard typeface.  Here is the article and my critique.  I am sorry but this has to be a long post.  The material demands it.

Amongst despots and demagogues

It has seldom been so obvious as during the past year: Sweden cannot escape from the world. Russia’s aggressive and unpredictable performance places new demands on our security policy. At the same time the civil war in Syria produces a wave of migrants whom we must help to take care of.

It appears that the DN leader writer has managed extremely well to isolate himself from the world – at least the world as you and I and most others know it. Russia has been extremely predictable. For several years now they have encouraged an ever more sabre-rattling world, led by the number one sabre-rattling Empire of Chaos in the west, to try talking – diplomacy and debate – instead of boots on the ground. I do not recognise Russia in the description as aggressive. It was not Russia who sent in Victoria ‘Fuck the EU’ Nuland and the US ambassador to orchestrate the coup d’état in Ukraine. It was not Russia who hired neo-nazis and extreme right-wing forces to drive out the elected government. It was not Russia who saw to it that the new puppet government began an immediate civil war to quell any dissent, mostly arising in east Ukraine. It was not Russia who armed the neo-nazis and extreme right-wing forces.

The protests on Maidan square in Kiev were already in motion when 2014 began, and led to the president‘s resignation and exile in February. The majority of Ukranians preferred EU’s model rather than the corrupt and authoritarian Russia’s. But President Putin was not satisfied.

The majority of Ukranians in west Ukraine, under the thumb of the neo-nazis and extreme right-wing forces, tipped their forelocks and shouted that they wanted to belong to the EU, that is correct, but they saw, or heard, what happened to those who did not shout. It is true that President Putin was not satisfied. He wanted talks to start, and when they did not start, he organised a humanitarian convoy of some 200 lorries, and was accused by the west of using the convoy as a means to smuggle arms and soldiers to east Ukraine. The accusations died out when the International Red Cross confirmed, after having examined the cargo, that it consisted of humanitarian aid. There has been no mention in the western press that there have been a further four such convoys of humanitarian aid, all of which have been passed by the International Red Cross.

The Crimean peninsula was soon overrun by “green men”, secret Russian soldiers who took control and prepared the way for annexation. Thereafter Putin started a separatist uproar in eastern Ukraine which he supported with troops, weapons and advisers. During the summer the rebels shot down a Malaysian passenger plane. The civil war has so far cost 4700 lives. The whole time the Kremlin has shamelessly lied about the Russian intervention.

Putin has also increased his anti-west rhetoric to hysterical levels, and spread myths that USA and Nato want to humiliate and crush Russia. Fighter planes are sent on provocative operations around the Baltic Sea.

The “green men” on the Crimean peninsula were 10 000 Russian troops present at Russia’s Sevastopol marine base under an international treaty which allows Russia to have not merely 10 000 but 25 000 soldiers in the base. Sevastopol has been a Russian marine base since the time of Catherine the Great, and is one of Russia’s main military bases in the south. The very idea that Russia would sit still and do nothing when Victoria ‘Fuck the EU’ Nuland started to agitate for the Ukraine to reneg on the treaty was naive. And when the residents of Crimea in a referendum voted to be considered a part of Russia instead of a part of Ukraine, Putin jumped at the chance, and left the west gasping for breath and taken totally off-guard. Victoria ‘Fuck the EU’ Nuland had not yet fully prepared the world for Ukraine as a Nato member. Oh, and those troops, weapons and advisers turned out to be humanitarian aid, five convoys of it. As for the many accusations that Russia has sent troops, weapons and/or advisers into east Ukraine, the west tried that once, with pictures to back up their accusations. The pictures were examined by a group of respected, senior intelligence experts, all of them ex US military, and found to have the wrong date, the wrong place and a deal of photoshopping. Since then the accusations have been totally without photographic or any other substantiation. And each accusation has been countered by OSCE observers along the Russian border, who say there have been no sorties from Russia to the Ukraine. Nobody has asked them whether there have been any sorties by Kiev-loyal troops into Russia. Regarding that Malaysian passenger plane, the strongest current hypothesis is that it was, in fact, shot down by a fighter plane sent up from west Ukraine, and that the pilot may have mistaken it for a military plane from east Ukraine – which by the way did not and does not have any military aircraft.

With his attack on the Ukraine Putin has broken the European post-war organisation which said that boundaries are not changed by force. The West’s sanctions were necessary and have had their effect. But the Russian total dependence upon oil and gas exports made the autumn’s price crash into a total death blow for the country’s economy. The president is still popular. His poor management is however becoming more and more patent, and his power rests heavily on a kleptocratic clique.

What attack on the Ukraine? Is this a reference to his bombarding the Ukraine with five convoys of humanitarian aid? The reason the West’s sanctions were necessary was to try and save the face of the Empire of Chaos, which has been out-manoeuvered several times over Syria by President Putin and his Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov‚ without question the best diplomat in the world today, in my humble opinion. This pair faced down Obama over destabilising attacks on Syria as a result of the highly suspect gassing of civilians, which a panel of experts at Harvard University have stated, with almost certainty, could not have been fired by Assad’s forces. As regards President Putin’s poor management, the votes are not yet all in. What is certain, however, is that the fall in the price of oil is in danger of destroying the shale oil industry which the US is pushing not only at home, but in all its vassal states in Europe, in spite of massive protests by the people whose lives are jeopardised by the process of fracking. As to his power resting heavily on a kleptocratic clique, how much more kleptocratic is the Washington clique, where the banks own congress and the senate.

In the Middle East the Syrian tragedy became even darker. Over 200 000 people have died in the war. During the year the extreme movement, Islamic State (IS) added a new dimension. That union of fanatical jihadists, professional military knowledge and oil income has had tremendous success on the battle field in both Syria and Irak. IS uses its own infamy as propaganda, calling forth fear in Yazidians and others who get in the way. Beheadings of kidnapped westerners are spread on the internet.

There are strong indications that the so-called civil war in Syria was also engineered by the Empire of Chaos, and that the deaths of 200 000 people can thus be laid at the door of US ‘exceptionalism‘. Certain it is that the professional military knowledge, not to say the arming of IS can be laid at the door of those who supported the psychotic thugs who are opposing Assad, although the provision of weapons was perhaps not deliberate, but a result of the professional military knowledge, which gave them the edge when it came time to take weapons from the armies of the lands where IS now rules.

Bashar al-Assads bloody dictatorship in Syria and a power-crazed shiite elite in Irak co-operated to eliminate sunnies, and fan the flames of the religious split in the whole region. American air raids and a new government in Bagdag stopped IS advances. But to the war in the air must be added some form of boots on the ground. And there are few allies in Syria.

Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship was secular, and, like the earlier catastrophe in Libya, allowed each to pray to his god(s) in his or her own way, and even protected the act of worship. And it was in large part the efforts of the kurds which helped to slow down if not stop the advance of IS, kurds who were hindered at every step of the way, not least by President Erdogan and the new regime in Irak who had another agenda than simply stopping IS.

Iran is also considered the enemy of IS, but supports Assad and has played a destructive role in Irak. The international tug-of-war over the nuclear program continues, a program whose purpose is suspected on good authority to be an attempt to create atomic weapons. The risk is there that Iran‘s rivals answer in the same coin. The Arabian Spring has withered and died apart from in Tunisia, Libya is being torn apart by warring militia groups. Since the coup last year in Egypt the army has consolidated a regime built on weaponry and the suppression of human rights. Ex-general Abdulfattah al-Sisi has re-instated the police state.

Eternally this suspicion about Iran’s motives. I am not going to say that Iran does not have its sights set on being a nuclear power, but one must say that for as long as I can remember, Iran has said it wants nuclear power for electricity supply, and nobody believes it. For almost as long, Israel denied having nuclear weapons, and everybody believed Israel, until belief could no longer be supported by any other than the naive. Ah yes, Libya, former home of that horrible dictator, Ghaddafi. Libya, where schooling and medicine were free, petrol for cars was cheap, newly-weds received a substantial sum of money from the government for the purpose of setting up home, women received a maternal pension from the state; where there was work for all and reasonable wages, but dissent was not allowed. I wonder if one asks the people of Libya which they preferred: the dictatorship of Ghaddafi, with all the features I have mentioned above, or the democracy of the West, with its rubble instead of schools, instead of hospitals, instead of homes, no work, no money, and only the fear of the militia groups who are, as the leader-writer points out, tearing the country apart.

A new war broke out during the summer between Israel and the Palestinian terror organisation Hamas in Gaza. Violence increased the tensions on the West Bank. Peace talks are not on the horizon.

Palestine. On the one side youths with sticks and stones, on the other a brutal army fully equipped by the Empire of Chaos. I accept that there are a number, a very small number, of idiots in Hamas’ armed wing, who lob home-made bombs and hope they will carry over the border into Israel. But do not grant Israel the credit of calling its actions in Palestine a war. It is a brutal occupation and subjugation.

In the near neighbourhood, in Turkey, President Erdogan is becoming more like Putin in his view of freedom of the press and a state ruled by law. If there was a global trend in 2014 it was just that: the renaissance of despots, often with a nationalistic tendency.

The comparison of President Erdogan with President Putin is disgusting. On the one side the man working to convert a secular state to an islamic state; on the other a man struggling to, if not disarm the Empire of Chaos, at least tone down the worst of its brutality towards dissidents, be they individuals or sovereign states. And, yes, his actions in respect of the freedom of the press and the state ruled by law are questionable, but has no-one taken a look at the same things in the Empire of Chaos? More charges of treason under a law from 1913 under Obama’s presidency that under all presidents before him. The persecution of those who demand that there shall be a public discussion of breaches of the first and fourth amendments by government spying agencies. The total lack of accountability or retribution for those who misuse their power.

Xi Jinping has become the one-party state of China’s most powerful leader since Deng Xiaoping. No-one is safe from the corruption police, an effective weapon against political opponents. With the country’s economic progress follow also ambitions and demands on the area. China argues about boundaries and territorial water with most of the countries around the East and South China seas. Japan sees the danger and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe desperately tries to blow life into the economy so that it will be possible to stand up to their huge neighbour. The whole of east Asia encourages the USA to stay in the region as a security policy balance.

This is perhaps the only paragraph in this heavily biased leader with which I have almost no disagreement. However, on the question of boundaries and territorial water, perhaps we can compare China’s actions with those of the Empire of Chaos in the early 1960’s, when Russia planned to establish military bases in Cuba.

While the world has shown itself to be ever more uncontrollable, President Barack Obama’s stated goal is not to get involved more than necessary. After the retreat from Afghanistan a continued military presence is still necessary and the taliban attacks increase in intensity. USA left Irak, but is now being sucked back.

President Obama is becoming more and more aware that the Empire of Chaos is teetering on the brink of internal chaos to match the chaos it creates and orchestrates elsewhere, wherever states do not pay sufficient lip-service to its whims. One false move could bring the whole house of cards down around the president’s head, and besides, he needs the army at home to be sure of keeping the ever more unruly citizens under control now that they are beginning to see that the emperor is naked.

Obama’s doctrine is to take part militarily if American interests are directly threatened, otherwise only in partnership with others and for a limited time. Syria displays the internal conflicts of politics. No-one has forgotten the gigantic problems created by the invasion of Irak. But the US appears instead to be lost. The absence of a primary enemy, such as the USSR during the cold war, make the superpower’s role complicated and questioned even at home. The midterm election, a debacle for Obama’s democratic party, did not strengthen the president’s position.

Obama’s doctrine does at least ensure that someone else foots the bill, or at least part of the bill. There is no absence of a primary enemy. The enemies are legion, or maybe, like the hydra, they are many heads on what is essentially one body, a body of anger and frustration. At least three compete in US eyes for the epithet ‘primary': 1) Russia, and in particular its leadership duo of Putin and Lavrov; 2) IS; and 3) the rise of China and especially the BRICS countries. If Obama can take down Russia, he has effectively destroyed BRICS, which is why Xi Jinping is doing what he can to support Putin.

Europe remembered that 100 years had passed since the start of the first world war, and 25 years since the fall of the Berlin wall. But notwithstanding that the financial crisis appeared to be over, both growth and inflation have sunk worryingly near to zero. France and Italy are having confusing difficulty implementing the necessary reforms, at the same time as Germany has lifted caution to a religion.

Europe displayed how dismally it has not remembered the first world war, its causes and results. Only the extremely naive could imagine that the financial crisis was or is over. With interest rates at the same level as growth and inflation, it is far from over, and still only those outside of the mainstream media have suggested that more debt is perhaps not the most intelligent approach to curing problems caused by excess debt.

Centrifugal forces appeared disappointingly often at the top of the news. Great Britain managed to keep Scotland after an uncertain referendum, whilst Catalonia continued to do all it could to divorce itself from Spain. And the British have spent the better part of the year stumbling nearer a departure from the EU.

Great Britain played on the insecurity of the old, especially the pensioners and made political promises, that is promises they had no intention of keeping, to win the referendum. But there are those who forecast that this will bounce back on them in the general election of 2015.  And the only thing stopping the UK from leaving the EU is that the Empire of Chaos has not yet decided which will be the more damaging to the EU: the UK staying and contesting every decision, or the UK leaving and causing loss of face.

The state of the world is not much to cheer over. So far the European unity is maintained at least over sanctions against Putin. That is a small mercy for which to be grateful.

The European unity over sanctions against Putin exists only at the level of the leaders of the vassal states of the Empire of Chaos. Leaders of industry in, in particular, Germany are already telling their government in no uncertain terms that sanctions are a form of self-immolation. I look forward to seeing who gets hurt most by the sanctions. 2015 is going to be an interesting year. Perhaps DN’s leader writer will return from the parallel universe he inhabits and comment objectively on the one you and I live in. And let us only hope that the Empire of Chaos can be kept from taking us all into the third and possibly final world war. President Putin, Foreign Minister Lavrov, Chairman Xi Jinping. That must be your target for the year.

There is crippling unemployment in most western countries and of course it is worst amongst the younger generation. In many countries the unemployment rate for the 16-25s lies between 25 and 50%. In Sweden one party leader has said that employment for immigrants is the key to their integration, and calls for more jobs for immigrants.

Nobody seems to have realised that this isn’t going to happen. Jobs are emigrating to low-pay countries in eastern Europe, in Asia, particularly China, and many of the jobs that remain are turning into so-called zero-hour jobs, which hold a person tied and unable to take an alternative, but guarantee no pay at all unless the person is called in for an hour, or two, or twenty.

Forget the creation of new jobs in industry. Factories are automating. The mass job market is for robots. There may, of course, be short-term swings, but one can say that the days are over when the big manufacturing companies would keep countries in employment.

So, what to do about it? Well, the unemployment office is not going to solve anything. I don’t know about other countries, but the number of people finding long-term, worthwhile employment via the employment office in Sweden is vanishingly small, and in inverse proportion to the sums of money being allocated.

Allow me to suggest an alternative view of employment. To begin with, I’d like to refer to a video usually available on YouTube, which you will be able to find by searching for ‘all retch and no vomit’. It’s a short article by Alan Watts, a British philosopher who died in 1973, but whose lectures are still popular today – recordings of them, of course. The quotation I used as a search key is from the recording of a lecture called ‘What if Money Was no Object’, released in 2013, some forty years after Watts’ death.

In it he suggests doing what you enjoy, rather than something you hate which you do in order to survive and hopefully have some free time to do what you enjoy. Now, when this lecture was originally given, obviously enough before his death in 1973, it was still possible to get a job, not necessarily the job you really wanted to do, but a job, but even then Watts suggested that you take a decision to do what you enjoy. If you do that, he hypothesises, you will become something of an expert at it, and people less expert than yourself may be willing to pay you for it – as a trainer, as a producer of whatever it is, or as a documenter – books, articles, lectures. Or companies working in the same field may find it worthwhile to employ you. It will become a source of income.

But now, when jobs are for the lucky, Watts’ approach suggests a way out for the unlucky: do what you enjoy, become good at it, and possibly you will begin to make an income from it.

This approach to unemployment does, however, require a paradigm shift in our way of looking at what we do – work, if you like – and how we are rewarded for our work. It will not do to treat the out-of-work as pariahs and punish them by expecting them to live on alms so low that they allow of no luxuries, not even, say, going out for a pizza once a month.

Perhaps we need to revive the idea of a citizen’s salary, which was originally proposed so that housewives, and particularly mothers could have an independent income. I don’t think that a citizen’s salary needs to be so impossibly high. Someone with the drive of doing something they love can get by on much less than someone who screws bolt A into hole B eight hours a day for forty years or more.

Instead of all the useless courses in how to write a cv on a computer, and all the make-work idiocies which the employment exchange comes up with and requires their victims to undergo if they are to receive their weekly or monthly alms, the exchanges might be expected to maintain something resembling a company hotel, that is a facility for providing the people they serve with office facilities and equipment, and a place to do whatever it is they want to do. There could be one for those whose big aim in life is to paint, where those who are on their way to becoming experts can provide guidance to new starters. Another could be for those interested in writing or film-making or learning a language. There would need to be a different type of facility for those who would like to work with animals or plants. Imagine using some wasteland to grow vegetables, which would find a ready market amongst passers by or at a farmers’ market.

And how would one control that the citizen’s salary was not misused. Misused how? You’re a citizen, you’re entitled to your salary. But even if one in the beginning wished only to use the ‘salary’ to give the entrepreneur something to live off whilst (s)he is getting to the level of being able to earn a living, in our age of government surveillance some possible good could come from the government’s unforgivable penchant for examining our doings in minute detail by recording the income generated by doing what you love, and reducing the amount of the citizen’s salary by a similar amount.

Of course I have not done the sums of how much this would cost, but the bulk of it would be paid for from the present payments to unemployed in the form of the dole. And a good bit of the rest would be generated by scratching all the waste of cv courses and other time-wasting activities which are organised by the employment office.