Greek election consequences and the shape of the developed world’s future
will be more years of austerity, people winding up on the street, suicides and outright starvation. In this fertile ground, the neo-nazi right will rise. The left will most likely not compete, because they will refuse to create an enforcer class to protect their own people. The police in Greece voted about 50% for the Golden Dawn, they will not protect the left, either, but will enable the rise of the Golden Dawn.
Under these circumstances a coup of some variety, whether military or otherwise (remember, Hitler never won a majority) is very likely to occur. By blocking the rise of the left so that Greece can be looted, the oligarchs have created their own doom.
In general terms, we are in a pre-revolutionary period. The supreme court coup in Egypt, the outright refusal to obey even the letter of the law let alone the spirit in the case of Wikileaks and Assange, the reign of Obama, are teaching an entire generation that you cannot fix the system from within, through the mechanisms of the old system or through even semi-peaceful protest. The Pacific free trade deal will enshrine even more draconian IP laws and will extend NAFTA style takings regulations which give multinational companies sovereignty over governments.
This will not stand. There will be global war, and there will be global revolution. We are on track for it. The question is when and how. I would guess in less than 20 years the world will fully convulse. Many of the current generation of oligarchs will be dead by then and will win the death bet, but their heirs will reap the whirlwind. As for the population, I expect a billion deaths or so over the next 25 years from famine, disease, war and environmental issues.
Both populations and the oligarchs have refused, over and over again, to do what is necessary to peacefully restructure the world economy, but instead have opted to kick the can down the road. Each kicking of the can has led to more corrupt and sclerotic economics and politics.
In the period between now and the revolution, some nations will take control of their own destinies. Offered a choice between austerity in the international system and nationalism, they will choose nationalism. It will not be as comfortable as being a member of the old international order from before the financial collapse, but that is not being offered. A few nations will be able to work wedges to stay in the system and not suffer too much (Germany, France). But most developed world nations will continue to suffer real declines in their standard of living, driven by inequality and the resource trap which we refuse to restructure out of. The electrical economy wants to happen, but it will not happen on a wide scale until after war and revolution. Such is the choice both our elites and the regular population continue to make.
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@groo
Stirling writes here: http://symbalitics.blogspot.ca/
Sporadically, but it’s good stuff.
@Julien,
thanks!
@Ian,
…
Countries are full of natives who have bad judgment about their own countries. Sometimes it’s easier to understand basic issues from the outside, sometimes it is much much harder.
…
True.
This is a very difficult issue.
It shows as a contrast, or difference, because our cognitive apparatus mainly is constructed
to recognize that, not ‘truth’, to which we have no good access to, m,,aybe a bit of logic and a bit of science.
Plus some inborn preferences like ‘big’ = ‘better’.
Which eg the cuckoo exploits, by laying his ‘big’ eggs into smaller bird’s nests.
Which again has a lock-in lock-out aspect, like in a phase-locked loop.
Lock-out happens if the egg is just too big to be recognized as a legitimate egg.
(This is a natural association for me, having worked for some 7 years in behavioral physiology and sensory physiology, but maybe surprising to some without that background.)
Translated to our current (human) condition: there is a pull-effect within a locking range, where ‘we’ can accept changes –physiologically and mentally.
If this range is left, something new happens, which the mathematically inclined term a ‘chaotic phase’. After that, something new happens.
-> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory
In the behavioral domain the german term is ‘Umstimmung’, which eg describes the transition between fear and agression in dogs, which has been extensively studied in the Konrad Lorenz school between 1950 to, say, 1980.
I do’nt know if that sounds plausible for the tribe here.
For me it is just -ahem- natural, to interpret affairs that way.
It’s difficult for me to associate an “anarchist” party with anti-immigrant activity. Not even right-wing anarcho-capitalists are in favour (if they’re anarchists worth their salt) of immigration restrictions. Is angie suggesting that Golden Dawn isn’t anti-immigrant? That’s really big news to me.
That’s the weakest argument against Golden Dawn being Anarchists. I’m probably more anarchical than most people here, and yet I am anti-immigration as it exists in its current form. Not anti-immigrant, but anti-immigration, and my reasons for being so are, I’m sure, vastly different than Golden Dawn’s reasons for being anti-immigrant. Fascist bullies need to find scapegoats to use as the building blocks for their seizure of power. They also use anarchical methods that attempt to sow chaos and discord in order to bring about their own sadistic form of order.
Immigration, as it exists currently, emanates from purely exploitative means, and the results of immigration serve to further that exploitative environment. The only reason the Democratic Party is pro-immigration and pro-immigrant is because of the votes, and because it brings in a host of potential new recruits for the Unions, which are so thoroughly intertwined with the Democratic Party, they are practically one and the same. If the Democrats truly cared about immigrants, in particular, poor, desperate Mexicans, they never would have resoundingly pushed for and passed NAFTA as part of their Neoliberal agenda.
But that’s the key, right? Golden Dawn wants to use the power of the state to delineate a line enforced by violence against people who cannot be referred to as powerful authorities. They don’t have a problem with the authority as such. They are also known to be involved in anti-immigrant activity—not anti-immigration, though they may be that, but anti-immigrant.
There’s no state without border enforcement.
If you define immigration as an activity of the state to cause movement of populations, I won’t necessarily think that’s non-anarchist to be opposed to immigration. That’s not at all what’s at stake here. I don’t know of any form of anarchism that would endorse the use of force to prevent a resident of Chiapas from becoming a resident of Austin TX and vice versa. Or Kabul vs. Athens.
Mandos, you are correct, a true Anarchist wouldn’t approve of supporting force imposed by a tyrannical and oppressive entity. In the case of immigration in its current state, I believe it is also force that brings it about……albeit, indirect force, and in a sense, it’s called immigration, but it’s not really immigration….it’s a migration of refugees…something we’re going to see a lot more of in the years ahead….and not just in the second and third world countries, but in the first world countries, as well. Soon enough, there will be no distinctions such as first, second and third world….there will be one world, and most likely, it will be starkly dystopian.