Well Said Mungo

Mungo MacCallum 

"if the Jihadists refuse to play by Queensberry rules, why should we? Bomb them back to the stone age. Tear the place apart brick by brick, raze it and sow salt in the earth.

Invade in vast numbers - Americans, Russians, Iranians, French, Australians, New Zealanders, Heard Islanders - anyone we can find. Shoot first and ask questions later - in fact, don't ask questions at all. Degrade, destroy, demolish. Let's finish the bastards forever.

Of course, there will be a few unfortunate consequences, such as massive collateral damage, but hey, them's the breaks. If IS doesn't worry about civilian deaths, why should we? Fair's fair. It's just a kind of moral equivalence."

With tongue firmly planted in cheek Mungo unleashes the acid wit and implements the black humour in the interests of rhetoric.

Unfortunately these are the sorts of simplistic solutions that are actually, really and truly - let's go over there and do this right now - being suggested on the right. I've heard people say things like: 'they're all so miserable fighting amongst themselves for all eternity let's just nuke them all, start from scratch again, and hopefully do a better job this time.'

I prefer carpet-bombing myself as it will leave a godawful mess, but at least the mess won't be radioactive and uninhabitable. In fact, the soil will be intensely fertilized by all that mashed up human blood and bone, and could build a new bread basket for the rest of us.

But seriously:

'boots on the ground' is what got us into this mess in the first place; the unjust and unjustifiable invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan directly caused one tine of the terrorists' rationalisation for their actions (the anti-west-christian-colonialial argument) - the roots of this going back almost a century to Sykes-Picot and Balfour, followed by the more recent invasions in support of those terrible mistakes of history. If you go back a bit further you come to the Ottoman empire where the ungovernable people of the middle East could only be controlled for the common good by extreme repression. Further still and you come to what I think would be a non-carpet-bombing solution to the present conundrum - a final reformation of Islam, that is, a reconciliation between Shia and Sunni. 

Various comments and notes of the commentariat and intelligentsia (even Mr. Silvertail himself) suggest this final root cause and therefore solution to this problem. The Sunnis outnumber the Shia, though not by a lot, but are, none-the-less dominated and oppressed by ruling elites dominated by Shia. Historically each sect is opposed to the death to one another and condones revenge in a blood for blood manner. As has been shone in the development of democracy in Iraq, they practice blood feud and revenge as state policy.

You can not undo the mistakes of the past if these mistakes are taught to succeeding generations as deliberate actions which must be avenged in a violent manner. The hatred then spans the generations and the blood feud becomes self fulfilling till the end of time.

If you then don't have the time or the patience to achieve a peaceful outcome then wiping the slate clean can be an attractive solution.

We can understand the fascist side but never agree with it.     







 

Here We Go Again

Ian Verrender

This just keeps going on, but then what would you expect? I commented on tax 'reform' back in October 2014, noting that reform in the guise of an increase in a regressive tax is a reform backwards. Ian Verrender makes similar points here, and reference to George Orwell is extremely apropos. Not enough people read Mr. Verrender and I to get these clowns out of office and prevent further regression of our society and economy. If everyone did, they would understand the urgency of this eventuality.

Elites in society have been gaming the political system in their own interests since the beginning of society. It was easier when a single member of the elite controlled all the levers of power, so the gaming was overt and you could more easily call a spade a spade and people would believe you without too much explanation because everything was self-evident and obvious. So, Louis XIV, The Sun King, having drained the coffers in the pursuit of futile foreign wars, not to mention the maintenance of an extravagantly profligate court, needed more money badly and cast around for new sources of revenue.

I hope this sounds familiar in reference to what is happening now. This all happened around the turn of the eighteenth century, about 300 years ago and the similarities are striking.

Louis had no constraints because he was an absolute monarch, having spent much time and effort ensuring the precision of this label. He simply increased the taxes on the poorest people in society grinding them further into destitution, while continuing to misspend the revenue, wasting vast sums on unnecessary military adventures and bribes. Taxes which have this effect on the poor are termed regressive

No one recognises the present regime for what it is: very similar to Le Roi de Solei 300 odd years ago. History is not studied. Thought is not studied. Conservative governments deliberately take funding away from education, driving its quality down. All in the pursuit of maintaining the status quo. to a state in which the electorate is not capable of seeing these things.

The progressive income tax, haled as such since its inception, is called progressive because the rates progress from low to high as the taxpayers' level of poverty declines. The poor pay little or no tax on their income, while the higher income earners pay progressively more.

Can you get blood from a stone? Is it possible for those who have no money to magically give money to the government?

These are the injustices and absurdities encapsulated in the LNP policy to raise the GST and broaden its base.

They must be stopped.

        

Never Use the words

Ben Saul

"The terrorist attack on Paris raises some hard legal questions. Is it an international crime? Is it an armed attack giving France a right of military self-defence in Syria? Is it lawful for France to declare a state of emergency that suspends basic rights? Are new laws needed to counter terrorism?"

It has now been a week since all this happened. The above is only one of the commentators and little more needs to be said. Of course it is only a strange coincidence that French municipal elections are imminent and the ruling socialists are on the nose - or rather were on the nose until this happened.  I would not imply otherwise and every one and their dog is jumping in with comment, as one would, so I guess I must also, although outrage and publicity plays straight into the hands of terror. As Waleed Aly said this week: 'this is what they want. they have told us this'

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxNJLkIkYQM

How does such a staunchly progressive, left of centre, highly intelligent commentator reconcile his ideological stripes with his main gig with the same people who think it is OK to spread such drivel as the Bolt Report around, thus lending the hue of legitimacy to such absurdity? It allows the Ten Network to at least pretend to be unbiased and well balanced I suppose. His video should be compulsory viewing for everyone.

Now let us all take a deep breath and approach all this calmly, before we fall into the hole prepared for us by these sniveling little wimps. Waleed is correct. The Paris attack is the weak response of a mob of childish bullies throwing a tantrum on an adult scale, with grown-up weapons. They are being hammered on their own soil, losing ground and dying, so they lash out in the only way they know - with ignorant, childish violence, against unsuspecting innocents. The media serves them by creating a mythical image of scary terror but beneath the surface they have every characteristic of a deranged child: weak, sniveling, unable to communicate except by jumping up and down screaming. The media is all about image. Always seek the essence of the image. Use your innate sense of perception to look below the superficial expression of this image.

So let's talk about image and reality and perception and the incorrect use of language to create perception, hence image, hence reality. This all reminds me of the truth reflected in Robin Williams' rhetorical question: "'Reality??' 'What's that??'"

Every time we use a word we build a reality by creating an image in someone else's mind. Each word has a precise definition. One way of defining a word is by describing the characteristics of the thing it is representing. When the words take on characteristics different from those exhibited by the things they represent, a new reality is being created, and when this is done deliberately, everyone should be on guard. But I don't expect you to take this verbiage at face value, so let us now apply it to the topic at hand.

In particular we must apply this to the terms Islamic and State, as used by this barbaric mob of childish lunatics in reference to themselves: Islamic meaning descriptive of nouns exhibiting precisely the defining beliefs of Islam as defined in their Holy Book; and State meaning "a ​country or ​its ​government"

Nowhere in the Koran does it say that it is OK to murder innocents. These subhumans do this and therefore cannot be labeled Islamic. The fact that they call themselves Islamic is incorrect usage. By doing so they are attempting to legitimise themselves and justify their actions. There is nothing Islamic about them and the media, by allowing them to use it, aids them in their evil.

The term state would give them the the aura of a government which makes and enforces laws modifying the behaviour of those they control. They have never made any law. By their own admission their laws are already written in their Holy Book, so by their own logic they cannot be legitimately called a state either. By attempting to apply this to themselves they are pretending to be a state. In truth they are not.

The Islamophobic clashes occurring at this very moment are proof of the efficacy of the process described above.

So would everyone please follow my lead and never use the terms Islamic and State to describe these criminals and their behaviour.       

   

          

Oxymoronism

Jeff Sparrow

"Since the nineties," says British Pakistani writer Tariq Ali, "democracy has, in the West, taken the form of an extreme center, in which center-left and center-right collude to preserve the status quo; a dictatorship of capital that has reduced political parties to the status of the living dead."

The "extreme centre" grew, he contends, out of the Thatcherite notion of TINA: the conviction that there is no alternative to the market. In a capitalist democracy, capitalism means serving the market, whose implacable dictates cannot be bucked.

Hence the inexorable rise of the technocrat: the slick professional charged with interpreting and placating the demands of the economy. Leaders of the extreme centre (whether conservative or social democratic) govern by wooing voters with empty rhetoric at election time - and then keep them out of the way as much as possible, so the professionals can get on with running the country."

_________________________________________________________

As usual Jeff Sparrow is profoundly cogent.

Extremism, even of the centre, is undesirable. Wisdom is everywhere, yet look at the state of the world - drowned out by the white noise of the media; occluded by the superficial oxymoronism of ideology.

By technocrat do we mean ideologue or better yet apparatchik, that now taboo term of the cold war era which somehow sort of rings true? What of the ivory tower syndrome; the plethora of fence-sitting, analysing, commentating, criticising people who possess the the depth of perception and intelligence to see through the white noise and oxymoronism exuded by the elites, yet do nothing about it?

It's all too hard. We're all too comfortable. And we didn't do it so why should we have to fix it.

Welcome back

Six months after my last post, after defeating the black dog once again - this time a particularly vicious struggle - climbing out of the winter hibernation, becoming a card-carrying member of the Rockingham branch of the ALP (aka 'BoganVillea' WA) , dusting myself off, and climbing back on top of things in my usual pose of futile defiance, I offer an olive branch of springtime greetings to my long list of fellow progressives. Abandoning my usual template I shall forego quotes from the MSM to refute or compliment, and wax lyrical ad liberato on the topics of the day. Read on and you may even hear from those masters of meaningless verbiage, the 'Talking Heads', who I am in the habit of ignoring. And. So. What have we here.

Turn down your cringe meters but don't throw them in the bin yet. Our Friar Tuck Moment has transmogrified into a Silvertail moment

Tax reform will be a big topic in the approaching election and rightly so. It is, and has been since the great depression, a creation myth of the welfare state, the great Waggle Serpent of Western Civilisation if you like, which has defined the dichotomy between progress and regress since that time. The ALP is waging a media blitz to make certain of this. Its focus is on a proposed increase in the GST, and the 'fairness', or lack thereof, of such a proposal, tabled by the Silvertails under the seemingly innocuous smokescreen of rigorousness - 'not excluding anything from the discussion'.

Firstly, allow me to point out the utter hypocrisy of commissioning a highly expensive tax white paper - conveniently composed by a fellow silvertail and therefore adding more smoke to the fire - while at the same time spouting off about the profligacy and wastage of the other side, not to mention the great albatross of our Friar Tuck moment just passed - yes I speak of the mythical debt-deficit-disaster, of which much argument and evidence has been revealed to clearly demonstrate the illusory nature of its efficacy. The conflict has now been defined by the Silvertails, unless it is taken back, as between increasing the GST to fix the d's or not, thus distracting the electorate from the main game. The big discussion needs to be about optimising the present system, then - if and only if further funds are needed - limiting middle class welfare (tax perks in superannuation and negative gearing) then - again if and only if further funds are required - redesigning the progressive income tax (allowing those who won't notice the difference to contribute one or five percent of their overvalued remuneration, as opposed to grinding those to whom such an impost means the difference between food-on-the-table and paying-the-rent further into the dust, to give their fair share back to society) then, in the unlikely event that even more money is needed, examine the GST. If you got lost in that last sentence in reading it, just imagine what I went through in writing it.

The logical common-sense progression outlined above to deal with this problem is in fact ALP policy. Our fearless leader implied as much when I confronted him about it at the North Perth Town Hall last Saturday. But let's delve further into the relationship between this important issue and  the ALP campaign for there is a huge difference between a Friar-Tuck-Moment and a Silvertail moment which is ignored at one's peril.

A quick scan of the twitterverse clearly demonstrates the depth of ignorance or what we might call egocenticity out there, characterised by the 'I make over a hundred grand a year so go ahead and raise the GST - it won't affect me', crowd. Sorry guys but, in the extreme extension of the concept, it will drive up the cost of building barbed-wire enclosed enclaves to live in and protect your wealth and that of hiring body guards and security staff. Furthermore, do you and your ilk truly wish to live in a society - oh, I'm sorry; your neo-liberal-thatcherite ideology prevents you from recognising the existence of such a thing as a society - where you are in constant fear for the security of your wealth, let alone your existence.

But all that, while important, is beside the point - well one of them anyway. The ALP campaign focuses on fairness, and how the GST just isn't fair, as if the electorate is populated by small children spitting the dummy. My first question would then be "what do you mean? why is, or what makes, the GST 'regressive' and therefore unfair?"

The terms progressive and regressive  are used in a littoral rather than political sense here. Income tax is progressive in that the tax brackets are designed to focus the effect of the tax on those who are best able to pay it, so that the brackets 'progress' from lowest to highest. Regressive is simply the opposite meaning, implying a tax which impacts the poor but is barely noticed by the rich, and only noticed a bit by the middling rich.

So, instead of treating the electorate like small children, by enunciating the umbrella descriptor 'unfair', why not treat people like adults and explain them as I have done here. Friar Tuck started this by sloganising the political discourse and look what happened to him. Mr. Silvertail is a different kettle of fish and it will take something intelligent and outside the box to defeat him. There are many compelling reasons not to increase the GST and to group all these under the umbrella descriptor 'unfair' treats voters as to stupid or time poor to understand or perceive the detail. It's not that hard.

A logical progression from the above is that the poor characteristically spend their entire income on living expenses, thereby creating demand, hence jobs - ie stimulating economic activity. This is of course contrary to the myth that the Silvertails would have you believe (that rich people always and only spend their excess income on philanthropic pursuits which then 'trickle down' into benefits for the poor - the opposite being closer to reality). So increasing the GST is deflationary and contractionary by definition and would lead, in the extreme, to recession.

That deals with the term regressive as applied to taxes. Not really too difficult to understand. Now to throw a spanner in the works.

The GST has the effect of increasing the price of the item it is applied to by the rate of the tax applied and is therefore inflationary. We've just shown that its effect is actually the reverse of this.

The reason behind this seeming oxymoron is that, unlike the progressive income tax, it is applied to the means of production in such a way that its effect is passed on from the stage above to the stage below until it reaches the consumer who has no one to pass it on to and so must absorb it. Hence the cost of the GST can be both inflationary and deflationary at the same time.

Interest rates rise with inflation. This is an outright observation and needs no explanation. The inflationary aspect of the GST will therefore lead to higher interest rates than would otherwise be the case. Anyone with a mortgage should be worried. This statement also conveniently dispels two more urban myths: that 'interest rates will always be lower under an LNP government' and 'that LNP governments are better at managing the economy than ALP governments'.

That deals with two things. There are many more but time and energy constraints preclude me from addressing them now. It will have to wait for another post and another day. Catch you then.