Londres flambe, Londres flambe,
Quelle affaire, quelle affaire,
Au feu ! Au feu !
Pas d'eau, rien à faire.
First, there were the riots in France. Then the riots spread to other countries, Spain, Greece, and now Britain. As I sit and watch the various news reports, I am amazed to see to what degree they are all missing/misleading.... the point and misreading the nature of what is going on.
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| London's burning! |
When I was living in Europe, I was a military analyst doing strategic intelligence analysis for a European country. Among other things, I had access to a lot of the brainstorming about potential social unrest which might happen not only in such country, but also in the rest of Europe (we were primarily interested in that because of potential refugee movements). I can tell you that all of what is going on today has long been foreseen by the security services. The problem, the dilemma, really, is that there is nothing which they could really do about it. Let me explain.
There are several distinct factors which are acting together in a positive feedback loop, helping to create this "perfect storm" of social unrest. And even though the media did correctly identify many of them, it failed to understand their nature. Let's take them one by one.
Immigration:
Yes, absolutely, beyond any shade of a doubt, immigration plays a role in these riots.... But it's not a simple, straightforward "there are too many immigrants" kind of thing. First, there are many different types of immigrations, not just one immigration. It is one thing to have a large percentage of Italian or Portuguese immigrants in your neighborhood, and a totally different one when the immigrants are Albanians or Pakistanis. I will not go into a long discussion of why Albanian immigrants are so different from, say, Moroccans or Senegalese immigrants, suffice to say here that anybody who has had any experience in the security forces will tell you, off the record, of course, that the worst immigrants to deal with are first generation Albanians (2nd generation are just fine) and second generation Algerians (1st generation are just fine). Weird, but true, and largely off-topic for this article...
Second, it is important to stress here that even in the worst types of immigrants, it's only a rather small minority, say 10%, which causes all the troubles. The vast majority only want a peaceful and decent life. The problem here is simple: how do you deal with the former without alienating the latter (nevermind grievously violating the civil and human right!)
Third, some immigrants have kept close ties to their country of origin and in some cases, that can make them ideal agents for all sorts of illegal activities (funding through narcotics trade is a big favorite ...especially with Morocco...). In the past, Kurdish immigrants used to be deeply infiltrated by the PKK, more recently we saw the Albanian immigrants providing a powerful lobby and source of support for the KLA.
The main problem with immigrants is that there is no government branch which can adequately deal with them. Think about it. Security services cannot simply single out or target a group solely based upon its ethnicity or religion. Not only would that be wrong, it would also be illegal, and eventually counter-productive. Keep in mind that many, if not most, immigrants are, or have a legal status, and often even citizenship. They are entitled to being protected by the security services, not harassed or otherwise singled out. Besides, most security services are too small, and they are really trained to deal with gangsters, terrorists and spies, not 10-20% of any one country's population. The police is no better. First, let's be frank here, they are rarely the smartest folks around, lazy, and they have to deal mostly with much more mundane issues such as common crime or traffic. In these times of economic crisis, the cops are also pretty much maxed out - they don't have the resources to allocate to such a big and complex phenomenon as immigration-linked problems. The military? Sure, it's big, but it simply does not have the mandate to deal with internal threats, in particular not threats coming from its own legal residents and citizens.
So while the cops and even the military can make all sorts of shows of force, they are really useless. And they know that. Let me just give you one example.
Say that in one country, Albanian immigrants control 90% of the hard drugs market. They have no problems shooting cops or any competitors. They make huge amounts of money and they put at risk entire neighborhoods. What do you do about it?
You can't just arrest all Albanians. You need to find the bad ones fast.... How? Well, monitor them, infiltrate them, and arrest all the bad guys in one big operation. Sounds good, no? Except. Except that what judge is going to allow tapping somebody's phone, just because he is an Albanian and owns a bar? And where are you going to find enough language specialists capable of translating and transcribing Albanian? And how do you propose to infiltrate Albanian gangs when their social structure is quasi tribal and everybody knows everybody? Hence, FBI, NSA and ALL Western intelligence creeps are doing mountains of ILLEGAL wire-tapping on ALL their citizenry daily for years.....
As for the European xenophobes, daydreaming about some "Christian West" and about how they would "expel all these foreigners", they are simply out of touch with reality. Their theories are utter nonsense as usual.... These folks make good speeches about how they would solve the problem if they were in power, without even realizing that the state simply does not have a tool which could be used to implement their empty promises. Finally, the xenophobes will not be voted into power, simply because most Europeans are educated enough to realize that immigration is simply a function of disparity and that if the West exploits and terrorizes the rest of the planet, immigrants will always try to flee to a safer, better place....LOL
The economic crisis:
Of course it plays a BIG role here.... Somebody with a psychologically and financially rewarding job is highly unlikely to spend his free time going on a rampage or looting. I am not saying that poverty is the cause of these riots, there are few really poor and destitute people in Europe/USA....and elsewhere and they don't riot at all. It's the pointlessness of being unemployed or having a disgusting job which makes people angry enough to go out and fight the visible instruments of the "order": the xenophobic cops/Police.... So these riots are not hunger riots, they are hate riots, and that is very different.
The so-called "victory" of the West in the Cold War has resulted in a wave of unrestrained turbo-capitalism run amok and we now see the inevitable conclusion of the previously exported exploitation (in the form of imperialism - thanks Lenin, you were right here!) coming back home and doing what Marx had long predicted: a nasty class war.
As an aside, allow me this little digression here. I was one in the hall of a UN conference where the representatives of the West were congratulating each other on "winning the Cold War". And then, the Representative of Pakistan took the floor and with his unique Paki accent said: "has anybody here ever considered that the West did not win the Cold War, but that the internal contradictions of Communism did catch up with the Communist system before the internal contradictions of Capitalism will catch up with Capitalist nations?". His statement was greeted in total silence, and then rapidly forgotten, of course.... by the ARROGANT ZIOCONNED Creeps. But he was right, this is exactly what we are seeing today. Class warfare not so much between the haves and have-nots, as between the rulers and their alienated subjects.
Political factors:
Let's put it bluntly. Europe is a US colony. Just as in the Middle-East or Latin America, the US Empire relies on a class of CIA collaborators which it rewards with wealth and power for its subservience to the US Empire and its infamous White House Murder INC,.... Everybody knows that Europeans did not want to go to war in Iraq or Afghanistan. Everybody knows that Europeans did not want to start a war in Libya. Heck, most Europeans did not even want the kind of EU which the elites did impose upon them. The vast majority of Europeans are opposed to the IMF/WB "austerity measures" and the vast majority of Europeans know that the international bankers have screwed one European country after another, and the rest of the World. Everybody also knows that there is no real "Left" in Europe (Tony Blair or Cohn-Bendit are not more leftists than a tiger is a vegetarian...they are mere Zioconned CIA tools from inception...) and that the only non-co-opted political parties don't stand a chance in any real election. And here is where the immigration factor also comes into place.
Most immigrants know all too well what role the West has played into turning their countries of origin into such a hell-hole that they had to emigrate to the very same West, not because they love or admire it, but in spite of the fact that they hate it viscerally....
Another digression, if I may. I often hear Americans saying that "if our society is so bad, why do people from all over the world emigrate to the USA". Guys, let me break you the bad news: these immigrants *hate* you and *hate* your society. And this is why they are so willing to rob you, whether at gunpoint or otherwise: they are robbing the robber. I personally lived in Florida and I am fluent in Spanish and I can assure you that most Hispanics *despise* the Anglos and will say so quite openly to any Spanish speaker. I have heard that many times. First, I approach some Hispanic and ask him - in English - for something and he basically tells me to get lost. I switch into Spanish. The guy immediately makes a 180 and not only helps me, but goes out of his way to accommodate me. Once I was even told that "we need to help each other against these assholes" (meaning the Anglos). Its exactly the same in Europe, I have seen that many times there too. And, please, don't simply get offended at that - if you are European or Anglo-American - but understand this is only a case of karma, of chicken coming home to roost, of "he who sows the winds, reaps the tempest" as the French expression goes.
So the combination of thoroughly alienated European youths with angry and resentful immigrants makes for an explosive mix. I would even say that many European youths who oppose the imperialist and capitalist systems identify themselves far more with the brown-skinned immigrants and their hatred of the "system" than with their parents, teachers or utterly corrupt and ZIOCONNED politicians.
Of course, not all immigrants hate their host-country. But enough do. That is the point.
Secularism/atheism/agnosticism:
Now a lot of you will get really mad at this.... Fine. I will tell you what I know and what I think, and you can shoot or dismiss the messenger. I don't care really.
The sentence "If God does not exist, everything is permitted" (often attributed to Dostoevsky) might anger secularists/atheists/agnostics (further called "SAAs") but, guys, its indisputable. The very concepts of "right" and "wrong" have absolutely no basis in logic, even if most SAAs don't realize it, or choose not to act on it. But that is more of a philosophical point and, thus, off-topic again. More relevant to my topic is this: religious communities are never involved in the type of riots and civil disturbances we see in Europe. I lived right next to a mosque and I can tell you that when most "proper and law abiding citizens" were informed that a large mosque would be built in our neighborhood, they were horrified. They thought that this would result in an influx of rapists, muggers or even terrorists. Within one year of the opening of the mosque the "proper and law abiding citizens" realized that the kind of immigrants who show up for prayers at the mosque were far more "proper and law abiding" then the locals! This is also why a vice-cop once told me in Toulon "we never have any problems with first-generation Algerian emigrants, they are all Muslims and have a traditional education; it's the second generation Algerians (who often become SAAs) which are the cause of all our problems".
And no, I am not dismissing religious riots in India, China or Egypt, and no, I am not saying that Muslims or Christians are "better" than SAAs. In fact I will even admit that a 'negative' religion, like the atheistic Communism or the pagan National-Socialism can yield an ethos, if not quite a real morality. But Europe is a post-Christian society in which the very concepts or right and wrong have been ridiculed beyond any hope of redemption and in which the majority of the ignorant, alienated and angered youth, believes in absolutely nothing....
Consider this: there is an entire generation (several, I would argue) that has been raised in a society in which lies and hypocrisy are the norm, in which violence, in particular, but not only, against dark-skinned people is an integral part of the social order, in which the rich get richer, the poor poorer and in which democracy is an empty word meaning little more than submission to authority. How could anybody seriously expect that kind of generation not to explode, sooner or later?
Not only do most European youth believe that Christianity, Islam and all other religions are a lie, they also believe that Socialism, Communism, Democracy or free-market Capitalism and globalization are also lies. And, frankly, they are right: the kinds of Christianity, Islam, Communism, Democracy, free-market Capitalism or globalization which they have been exposed to are, really, all utter lies.....
And this is why to simply call them "thugs" and "criminals" not false, but also not quite correct. Yes, their actions are criminal, and their excuses about "racism" and "poverty" are just that - excuses, cop-outs. But on a deeper level, what these riots show are the signs of the agony of a system built on one and only "value": Greed and Utter Corruption. Because this is what capitalism, the putative victor of the Cold War, truly is. It is an ideology whose fundamental dogma is that the ideal society is the product of the sums of everybody's greeds. As a direct by-product of this is the truism that "growth is always and by definition, good" (the mere fact that infinite growth in a finite environment is exactly the reason why tumors kill their hosts is simply not considered)....LOL
So this is what, I believe, these riots are really about: a comprehensive failure of the Capitalist system. An economic failure of course, but also a political and moral failure. Capitalism is a fundamentally anti-human system which cannot be sustained without killing its host. The riots in Europe are only one - amongst many other - symptom of the fact....
Day of Reckoning for the Zioconned Western world....
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
The trigger that apparently caused the market meltdown was the ever-so-slight suggestion from Standard & Poor’s that the US government’s fiscal health might not be all that it is cracked up to be.
This was not a case of the little boy noting the emperor has no clothes. It is more like the little boy suggested that the emperor’s clothes, while beautiful, might have been more carefully tailored to suit the imperial dignity. Hysteria followed, and the entire Obama cult called for the kid to be stoned.
Finally the emperor himself spoke in defense of his rainment. That’s when the market crashed.
But the downgrading of a government’s debt from AAA to AA+ can only have triggered a market avalanche if the truth is in fact much worse, and most everyone knows it.
S&P doesn’t have clean hands, of course. It holds a government monopoly, wants higher taxes, and rated crazed housing bonds AAA. But imagine, for just a moment, that US government debt were rated in the same way that municipal bonds or regular corporate debt are. Imagine that government bonds, like normal bonds, carried a default premium. Imagine, in other words, that the Federal Reserve were not in a position to pay everyone from welfare recipients to banksters with newly created money.
Under such actual market conditions, federal debt would not be rated as AA+. It would be worth even less than junk bonds. In fact, it wouldn’t even qualify for a market rating at all, because it would be utterly worthless and the institution that issued it would be in default and the whole rotten apparatus of the state would be seen to be bankrupt at its very core, in every sense.
We know this for one simple reason: There is no way that the government can fund its debt on taxes alone. There would be a revolution in this country in a heartbeat, and, probably, the entire American empire, domestic and foreign, would come crashing down, along with its banking and monetary systems.
If this actually happened, there would be no more “ongoing negotiations” about the budget and the debt. The cuts would be swift, extreme, gigantic. The federal government would have to behave like state governments, balancing the budget year to year. There would be no more plans for fake cuts in the planned increases, gradually phased in over ten years. The federal government would face actual market discipline. The S&P downgrade is only a slight taste of what would follow.
And let’s not just look at the downside. Hundreds of billions in resources would be freed from government control. The private sector would experience a huge infusion of energy. Interest rates would probably go through the roof, which means that people would actually be rewarded for saving, and saving is exactly what people would do as hundreds of banks went belly-up, large portions of the business sector had their credit lines cut, and merchants of death had to close their bloody doors.
There would be wailing and gnashing of teeth, but there would be no turning back. Within a few months, we would start seeing massive resource shifts and pockets of growth would return. New jobs would be available. New businesses would spring up. New financial firms would displace the old ones. Within a year or 18 months, we would be on a growth path, and this time it would be real and sustainable.
Of course this is not going to happen. Instead, the powers-that-be will continue their long game of “let’s pretend” as the economy sinks deeper and deeper, incomes fall, and the US gradually heads toward 3rd-world basket case status.
It’s not only the government that is bankrupt, of course. It’s the entire ideological apparatus that backs the state and its eternal expansion. TheNew York Times struggled for something to say about the obvious failure of the second stimulus. All they could come up with was: “shift every available resource toward jobs,” “increased investment in infrastructure,” more relief for homeowners, and another extension of unemployment benefits.
The only thing that this asinine editorial left out was the need to lower interest rates. And that’s because interest rates are already 0%, which has killed saving, terminated growth, and denied the public the fundamental freedom to sock away money in time deposits and let it earn something in exchange. The Federal Reserve is completely out of policy options, unless it is ready to embrace the Zimbabwe-Weimar solution.
Of course, the whole theory that the government can stimulate through control and robbery is wrong and counterproductive. It only ends up rewarding government and its friends while the rest of us suffer. If we ever get out of this depression, it will be because government is forced to stop this nonsense, and the economy really stimulated by taking a meat axe to the planning-spending-inflating apparatus.
This is the underlying reality that informed traders understand. The whole system is being propped up by the power to print, and that power alone. No matter how many miracles some people think that paper money can accomplish, there is an underlying realization that the whole system is a hoax.
But don’t take my word for it. Let S&P and many more competitive rating agencies go to town on US bonds and rate them as they would any bond in the private sector or even the public sector not backed by a printing press. Let reality speak, and let us listen....
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