How many Old Etonians does it take to destroy a country? | Alexei Sayle
Apparently each time an Old Etonian becomes the Prime Minister of Britain every boy at the school gets a day off, as does every coke dealer in Central London. Honestly, given the number of psychopaths they turn out, the place should be placed in special measures. Old Etonian Boris Johnson’s government is moving rapidly ahead with all kinds of evil plans.
According to one of their recent election-winning proposals, the government would like everyone my age to carry on working until they are 85. So as an act of resistance, I have retired immediately and gone on a river cruise for a week up the Rhine, similar to the ones they advertise before “Midsomer Murders”.
We’ve just returned, and when people ask me what it was like, I reply- “Like Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ but with extra Australian racists.” It’s a bizarre experience floating along a giant river eating the strange “internationalist” cuisine they serve that comes from nowhere and often involves either a fish stuffed inside another fish or culinary collisions such as “Beef teriyaki goulash with tempura falafal cous cous.”
Travelling up the Rhine, one thing that struck me was how extensive the evidence of the damage done by the Second World War still is, and that got me thinking about what an utterly mad business war is. We accept it because it has always happened, but I mean what an insane way to settle a trade dispute or to make you feel better about yourself! To invade your neighbour, bomb everybody and destroy everything.
Now one of the many amazing things about Jeremy Corbyn when he comes to power is that he will be the first leader of a major industrial nation in modern history who is personally anti-war and who is not in the pocket of the massively powerful arms industry. To my mind this is one of the major reasons for the ferocious negative response to the prospect of a Socialist Labour Government, all the lies, misinformation and false accusations.
But think what that could mean for our nation? At the moment, thanks to BAE Systems and its subcontractors, Britain is possibly the largest dealer of death in the entire world. But under Jeremy Corbyn, we could make all manner of beautiful things that aid humanity rather than killing it, and how much better we could feel about our nation because of that? I am so passionate about this prospect that if you don’t like the idea I’ll fight you.
Featured image via David Cameron / Facebook – Alexei Sayle / Boris Johnson
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But a fish stuffed into another fish is so European. Socially intense enough to make one burp?
And then there’s “Russian nesting fish”. The tricky part is getting the little dresses and hats on them.
BAe sysrems is registered in Britian but has a US majority shareholding so our company makes more yanks happy than Brits. and Britain gets he bad name and terrorism.
How many BBC journalists were privately educated? Just check. Why? Aren’t there clever boys and girls in comps in Middlesborough and Brixton? Private schools are arrogance factories. Maths and French don’t matter. What does is that you leave believing you have a divine right to an important job, money and influence. That’s why the campaign to integrate the private schools into the public system is crucial. Its opponents say being able to educate your children privately is a fundamental human right. Oh yeah, a human right that costs 15,20,30 grand a year. A human right has to be universal. Education for all, in at the same door, out at the same door.
I have long dreamed of making Harrow into a agricultural college
We could indeed make beautiful things, and hey even practical things. If we stopped selling out our ideas and brains to America (and others), we could also have our own Nation, our own laws, determine our own direction in life and set a proud example to other nations of how peace, co-operation, compassion, understanding, empathy, kindness, fairness, and even …. yup I’m going to say it ….. I just have to …… try to …. damn this is difficult ….. and even L…L….oh bugger it! …. even LOVE, brings MORE profit than disaster Capitalism could ever achieve (btw LOVE is not sex).
It is such a shame that so few realize the truth, that there is literally more profit to be made from kindness and Love, than hatred and cruelty. So many corporate and political entities have convinced the masses that the bottom line is best served by being cruel and tough towards people, and that force is the only true master (you have to be cruel to be kind), that it is hard to talk about Love without people feeling uncomfortable (or pretending they are comfortable with it).
If we as a nation embraced the good traits of humanity, really enshrined it within laws and our hearts and minds, I am certain that the profits we made individually and as a Nation would make the excesses of disaster capitalism pale in comparison, and yet we’d do all of that without threatening each other, our nations, or The Planet.
It’s not that we are too scared to really give peace a go, it is that there is a whole system dedicated towards keeping things exactly as they are, exactly as they have always been, and it is that which perniciously drives us against each other. Instead of focusing on ourselves to such an extent that we push others away, we should focus on that which draws us together, that which respects our uniqueness, but also embraces and encourages our unity.
The idea that this is all a fancy-full, Utopian dream, that we’d all have to go around singing and dancing like we were in some Disney movie, is just pure anti-peace propaganda. Warfare does not advance our species, it protects nothing but evil things, and is a guarantee of our destruction at The Planet’s, and Life’s expense.
So many have claimed falsely that warfare has rapidly increased our progress, but that is always said whilst deliberately, and ignorantly, ignoring the sheer damage we leave behind. Somehow the cost of warfare on Nature, and our planet, is rarely taken into account, yet we are all forced to carry on in the same way, and live with the damage without ever counting the true costs. We are all the descendants of the survivors of war, and that is because warfare has been enshrined as if it is the most holy and divine right, into our collective psyche.
Cars, buses, trains, planes etc., are targeted (and we the public get the blame) as the major causes of planetary degradation, but the military damage to Earth is systematically ignored. It is ignored when making plans for war, it is ignored when reporting on war, it is ignored in all the decisions and actions relating to war.
Warfare in our World is made to be FAR FAR more important than any other consideration. When have we heard anyone in the main-stream-media ask how much NATURE is lost during war? No, it is cars etc., which are far easier things to blame as being the most polluting, but nothing is as damaging to us and the planet than war.
That said, I am not anti our Nation (or others) having a Military to protect the Nation, but I do think the whole lot needs to be put into the right framework and perspective. Military assets should be to defend the homeland, not used to ‘project power’ or bully other Nations, or militarily enforcing theft.
We should aspire to have Warriors who are extremely well trained, but who also have the hearts of Angels, and a code of conduct that is above reproach, so much so, that they would be genuinely considered peacemakers and a worthy example for others to emulate. I do think that not having Military protection is a very dangerous concept, but that it all needs to change, and be comprehensively restructured from the ground up. The Military should be answerable to, and have their allegiance to ‘The People’, not a select few individuals, and would never be used against their own people as many nations have done, and continue to do.
I hate warfare, but I recognize that every nation needs a military because we can never guarantee no-one will ever try to invade or steal from us with mass force, even if we were certain of our own World, the fact that we still don’t know exactly what may be ‘out there’ means we need to be prudent.
Nations do not go to war over this or that trade dispute, it is always because one or both, or all involved, have ulterior, usually theft-related motives. Disputes in general are things that start verbally, and should be resolved verbally, if they can’t it is because someone involved wants to steal or murder, it IS that simple.
The World of Mankind should have already learned its lessons in this regard, and we all should be in a position that ANY nation threatening or bullying any other nation would lead to every other nation on Earth standing united against the aggressor nation/s until they have backed down. That kind of response should be the default so that no nation would dare to threaten another or by-pass verbal resolution attempts (it’s what the UN should have had the ability to call from the start).
Most if not all wars are fought/have been fought because of greed and attempted theft. No one has the right to take that which does not belong to them, no one has the right to set the price of that which does not belong to them, and no one has the right to threaten others into accepting a theft or setting an unfair price. Civilized behaviour is about negotiating (not bullying, not threatening) and sticking to fairness.
Wars do not start over insults, only threats and making good on those threats does. It may not appear to be so, but look closely and you will find it has always been about taking things which do not belong to us, and that particularly includes life.
Each life lost in WW2 cost £3300. That is not paid to us or to the governments it is money paid to arms manufacturers and dealers.
Most of the arms manufacturers continued production after the war including Krupp and other German manufacturers.
Just guess what Kawazaki made in WW2. – Aircraft.
Warriors certainly take away the right to live, and who makes this judgement call is the question. Who’s call is it now.
I think kindness does create a prosperity, and can’t help but do so. All the work which is needed to make the weapons is simply blown up. How counter productive is that???
Stalement forever.
What about the creative souls who have created our modern world as no one pays attention to the influence they have. What about the engineers designing the trains, the software of our social internet, just about anything we use as a tool. One musn’t forget that rhe World Wide Web was created so scientists could communicate with each other.
These people are not warmongers.
The social nature of these brains has been utterly ignored, as having an influence upon our lives during a period of peace.
These warmongering politicians/press who simply want to provoke anger ought to be in the Tower of Doom to undertake some serious social lessons on the facts of life.
They are dumb bunnies, and who will choose to go extinct following earnestly the moves of these bunnies on how we ought to live. As in no gun laws as it preserves our freedom etc. More incarceration will solve our problems. Arresting dissenters achieves a social harmony.
Treat people like they are stupid, and they will come around to thinking it’s true.
Really?
I think we all know what we want.
The problem is that they won’t let us have it.
“They” have never given us anything. all of the rights tha twe have were taken from them.
If we want a good and peaceful world we have to overcoemthe rich and powerful and build it.
Ear waxing lyrical again Alexei?
These far right psychopaths are doing their best to come up with their failing undergrad attempts at a “thesis” of policy for trade, governance, and international relations: that the “$500 billion” the US talks about as China having “gouged” the head of the ANglo nations, amounts to ~2% of US GDP. 2%!
Every country has one or two percent up or down on their accounts as a ROUTINE MATTER OF TRANSACTING. PUblicly listed Companies ROUTINELY have “accounts receivables, or payables” FAR in EXCESS of 2%. Routinely!
The $500 billion is an accounting error in US stock flow accounts, ROUTINELY. (check for yourself the bottom row of first column titled “sector discrepancies” at the bottom of column titled “Households and Non Profit organizations”; ie. THE FIRST COLUMN! at this site: https://www.federalreserve.gov/apps/fof/DisplayMatrix.aspx?t=Flows_matrix)
Of this much touted $500 billion, nearly 75% of that value added is accruing to Apple Computer, Cisco, Nike, Walmart and friends. These are NOT chinese entities!
It is how the trade system works. The numbers are all lies and misleading. US economists KNEW this from the start, said nothing. Because it’s NOT a democracy. IT’s fake governance by the Etonian undergrad psychopaths.
….before some “genius” says US pols don’t go to “Eton”, let me remind you of the same thing here: the Ivy League, the bleaching ground of the rich and powerful.