Angelo: 'Multinational business and the legislatures' of the north are responsible for creating the issues in Southern Europe, black Africa and among the Arab nations. Disparities of the north and south are all about the control of the MIC by 'multinational business' and Banksters. Tribalism is merely a resultant self preservation technique of the beleaguered. John has a different take...
By John Ward: An
unintentionally funny EU document is doing the rounds at the moment. It
concerns corruption in everyday European life, going into a great deal
of detail country by country, and spewing out sanctimony from a pulpit
which is, itself, unbelievably corrupt. The Brussels folks suffer from
that rare condition, self-promoting modesty.
But it does make one very important point: that there is a cultural milieu of corruption in ClubMed that is more marked than that of northern Europe. While this isn’t news to anyone who ever got further south than Poitiers, it is by far the biggest reason why an E that is also a U will never work.
There is with corruption (as with almost everything else in life) the perversion of an idea that was once entirely sound: ‘better to do business with someone you trust than a stranger’. Greece once worked entirely on this basis, and a good 60% of the time among ordinary people it is still a highly efficient system based on reputation. But over time the original reason simply turns into tribal bigotry, and then of course, the munnneeee.
The bribe, the backhander, and the sum in cash are everyday realities in southern Europe, but almost absent (outside multinational business and the legislatures that these days serve it) in the north.
We’re back to the subject of tribalism. And as with corruption, tribalism had good origins that were entirely healthy (community mutuality and survival of the best genes) but at the bottom line it comes down to my tribe right, your tribe wrong. This syndrome has come to devastate every debate in our lives globally now: from climate change via Obamacare to political correctness, drugs, paedophilia, the BBC, and of course the EU.
But it isn’t just that nobody seems able to hold a balanced view based on the data any more: today, the problem is the censorship of that data, and the rise and rise of the defence of the indefensible. A corrupt culture eventually uses corruption, excusing itself by saying “The ends justify the means”. Very Brechtian, and totally disastrous for civilisation.
In the West (especially in Britain I think) this has led to governance being superceded by political dogma. It has happened at the hands of both main Parties, but is undoubtedly being perfected by the current Government, which does now seem determined to demolish, brick by brick, the right of the citizenry to say no. Ironically, political and media tribalism are acting as a catalyst accelerating the progress of that creeping commercial fascism, but it is in the virulence of attacks and the blindness of defence involved in contemporary tribalism that we now see a Britain (and a West increasingly) at war with itself.
The immediate issues of the last 48 hours offer endless examples of it. Vox Political has just written a Mike Sivier piece about the Government’s hypocrisy on the A&E issue, and its general cluelessness about NHS ‘reform’. It’s a strong and valuable piece, but it blames A&E’s traffic chaos problems on the social effects of Tory Government, which is complete tosh. Nearly two thirds of all A&E entries after 4 pm are alcohol abuse related, a situation worsened by Tessa Jowell and her daft 24/7 drink laws. Sivier doesn’t mention that (of course he doesn’t) but he does shower ill-deserved praise on Andy Burnham – the man who approved Stafford’s NHS Trust status knowing full well it was a war zone of uncaring hysteria and incompetence.
The piece surpasses itself by referring to how, in A&E, ‘the old Victorian ailments of rickets and scurvy are back, due to increased malnutrition’. Sorry, but that’s brainless agitprop of the worst kind: these things are back, but they have more to do with Underclass IQ and diet than Tory policies. Sivier’s credibility is destroyed by his manic distaste for anything not quite as Hard Left as his tribe.
But the virulence of the piece is more than matched by Cristina Odone in the Telegraph, whose post yesterday about Sally Bercow confirmed Odone’s position as quite the nastiest and most vindictive columnist in Fleet Street. I am no Sally B fan (nice legs, no brain) but the bias in the column depicts the old scoundrel McAlpine as an innocent abroad, and blames Sally for his death - a truly ludicrous idea, but no sillier than her contention two months ago that the BBC “is a den of filth”. Doubtless Odone is lapping up the ritual trial by history of the Beeb’s DJs each day: but she turns a blind eye to the psychopathy of Rupert Murdoch, the two defendants at the Old Bailey, the cover-up at Elm House, and the uneasy proximity of all that filth to Ten Downing Street.
A profoundly unpleasant Jew has just died, the incomparably degenerate Marc Rich. Rich – who was pardoned by President Bill Clinton over tax evasion, racketeering and busting sanctions with Iran – died yesterday in Switzerland aged 78. He was the ultimate white-collar criminal: a serial sanctions breaker, accused of building a fortune trading with revolutionary Iran, Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya, apartheid-era South Africa, Nicolae Ceausescu’s Romania, Fidel Castro’s Cuba and Augusto Pinochet’s Chile. In interviews with journalist Daniel Ammann for his biography, Rich admitted to bribing officials in countries such as Nigeria and to assisting the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad. Well, now he’s on his way back to Tel Aviv for a hero’s burial…no doubt alongside the appalling Robert Maxwell. And one suspects, somehow, the reason is that he’s a Jew.
Criticising ‘my tribe right or wrong’ by the way, does not an anti-semite make. When Rommel stood victorious in North Africa, the Arabs flocked to pay tribute to Hitler, telling SS officers of their admiration for the Nazi oppression of the Jews. Islamics need a great deal of arm-twisting before they will publicly condemn Islamist violence (as Iqbal Sacran demonstrated admirably after the 2005 London bombings).
The commonality across the piece is tribalist bigotry. It is the element of contemporary behaviour and “debate” that I most understand and most deplore, because it reflects all the worst aspects of humanity: fear, mental stagnation, logical blindness, denial of reality and, perhaps most of all, our capacity for hatred that is then manipulated in the form of mob violence.
It is everywhere today, such that ‘argument’ as a noun has come to mean almost entirely ‘emotionally charged row’, as opposed to its original sense, ‘constructive opinion’. It is driving the BBC trials, the rise of the Conservative Party’s rabid Right, the demise of the Guardian, and the cerebrally petrified neoliberal v socialism standoff. It has ensured a second term for Obama, German intransigence, global financial disaster, and now the rise of UKip, Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders, and Golden Dawn.
I don’t choose those examples carelessly: it is in the nature of perverted tribalism not to understand the culture and faults of a different tribe. UKip and Golden Dawn are on the rise because the Brussels tribe learn nothing. Obama got a second term because liberals followed him blindly, and the GOP chose a neoliberal idiot. And the Guardian is going down the tubes because the Rabid tribe is taking over the middle ground, while Rusbridger and his hacks are away with the fairies.
Tribalism is failure’s best friend, and the implacable enemy of progress. The proof? Black Africa.
Source
Angelo: The opposite of tribalism in the above example would seem to be capitulation. Apathy is the self preservation technique of the beleaguered sheeple of the north.
I propose a velvet revolution and open direct government by the people. We have the technology. Discard the political class completely. Reset the civil services. Work in real democratic groups of no more than 150 people with ultimate authority on local issues and network on regional, national or global issues. Discard all the laws and reinstate only two. Protect the individual and protect the individuals fair property.
We like John and are just continuing the human social discussion. Criticism or better ideas always welcome.
By John Ward: An
unintentionally funny EU document is doing the rounds at the moment. It
concerns corruption in everyday European life, going into a great deal
of detail country by country, and spewing out sanctimony from a pulpit
which is, itself, unbelievably corrupt. The Brussels folks suffer from
that rare condition, self-promoting modesty.But it does make one very important point: that there is a cultural milieu of corruption in ClubMed that is more marked than that of northern Europe. While this isn’t news to anyone who ever got further south than Poitiers, it is by far the biggest reason why an E that is also a U will never work.
There is with corruption (as with almost everything else in life) the perversion of an idea that was once entirely sound: ‘better to do business with someone you trust than a stranger’. Greece once worked entirely on this basis, and a good 60% of the time among ordinary people it is still a highly efficient system based on reputation. But over time the original reason simply turns into tribal bigotry, and then of course, the munnneeee.
The bribe, the backhander, and the sum in cash are everyday realities in southern Europe, but almost absent (outside multinational business and the legislatures that these days serve it) in the north.
We’re back to the subject of tribalism. And as with corruption, tribalism had good origins that were entirely healthy (community mutuality and survival of the best genes) but at the bottom line it comes down to my tribe right, your tribe wrong. This syndrome has come to devastate every debate in our lives globally now: from climate change via Obamacare to political correctness, drugs, paedophilia, the BBC, and of course the EU.
But it isn’t just that nobody seems able to hold a balanced view based on the data any more: today, the problem is the censorship of that data, and the rise and rise of the defence of the indefensible. A corrupt culture eventually uses corruption, excusing itself by saying “The ends justify the means”. Very Brechtian, and totally disastrous for civilisation.
In the West (especially in Britain I think) this has led to governance being superceded by political dogma. It has happened at the hands of both main Parties, but is undoubtedly being perfected by the current Government, which does now seem determined to demolish, brick by brick, the right of the citizenry to say no. Ironically, political and media tribalism are acting as a catalyst accelerating the progress of that creeping commercial fascism, but it is in the virulence of attacks and the blindness of defence involved in contemporary tribalism that we now see a Britain (and a West increasingly) at war with itself.
The immediate issues of the last 48 hours offer endless examples of it. Vox Political has just written a Mike Sivier piece about the Government’s hypocrisy on the A&E issue, and its general cluelessness about NHS ‘reform’. It’s a strong and valuable piece, but it blames A&E’s traffic chaos problems on the social effects of Tory Government, which is complete tosh. Nearly two thirds of all A&E entries after 4 pm are alcohol abuse related, a situation worsened by Tessa Jowell and her daft 24/7 drink laws. Sivier doesn’t mention that (of course he doesn’t) but he does shower ill-deserved praise on Andy Burnham – the man who approved Stafford’s NHS Trust status knowing full well it was a war zone of uncaring hysteria and incompetence.
The piece surpasses itself by referring to how, in A&E, ‘the old Victorian ailments of rickets and scurvy are back, due to increased malnutrition’. Sorry, but that’s brainless agitprop of the worst kind: these things are back, but they have more to do with Underclass IQ and diet than Tory policies. Sivier’s credibility is destroyed by his manic distaste for anything not quite as Hard Left as his tribe.
But the virulence of the piece is more than matched by Cristina Odone in the Telegraph, whose post yesterday about Sally Bercow confirmed Odone’s position as quite the nastiest and most vindictive columnist in Fleet Street. I am no Sally B fan (nice legs, no brain) but the bias in the column depicts the old scoundrel McAlpine as an innocent abroad, and blames Sally for his death - a truly ludicrous idea, but no sillier than her contention two months ago that the BBC “is a den of filth”. Doubtless Odone is lapping up the ritual trial by history of the Beeb’s DJs each day: but she turns a blind eye to the psychopathy of Rupert Murdoch, the two defendants at the Old Bailey, the cover-up at Elm House, and the uneasy proximity of all that filth to Ten Downing Street.
A profoundly unpleasant Jew has just died, the incomparably degenerate Marc Rich. Rich – who was pardoned by President Bill Clinton over tax evasion, racketeering and busting sanctions with Iran – died yesterday in Switzerland aged 78. He was the ultimate white-collar criminal: a serial sanctions breaker, accused of building a fortune trading with revolutionary Iran, Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya, apartheid-era South Africa, Nicolae Ceausescu’s Romania, Fidel Castro’s Cuba and Augusto Pinochet’s Chile. In interviews with journalist Daniel Ammann for his biography, Rich admitted to bribing officials in countries such as Nigeria and to assisting the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad. Well, now he’s on his way back to Tel Aviv for a hero’s burial…no doubt alongside the appalling Robert Maxwell. And one suspects, somehow, the reason is that he’s a Jew.
Criticising ‘my tribe right or wrong’ by the way, does not an anti-semite make. When Rommel stood victorious in North Africa, the Arabs flocked to pay tribute to Hitler, telling SS officers of their admiration for the Nazi oppression of the Jews. Islamics need a great deal of arm-twisting before they will publicly condemn Islamist violence (as Iqbal Sacran demonstrated admirably after the 2005 London bombings).
The commonality across the piece is tribalist bigotry. It is the element of contemporary behaviour and “debate” that I most understand and most deplore, because it reflects all the worst aspects of humanity: fear, mental stagnation, logical blindness, denial of reality and, perhaps most of all, our capacity for hatred that is then manipulated in the form of mob violence.
It is everywhere today, such that ‘argument’ as a noun has come to mean almost entirely ‘emotionally charged row’, as opposed to its original sense, ‘constructive opinion’. It is driving the BBC trials, the rise of the Conservative Party’s rabid Right, the demise of the Guardian, and the cerebrally petrified neoliberal v socialism standoff. It has ensured a second term for Obama, German intransigence, global financial disaster, and now the rise of UKip, Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders, and Golden Dawn.
I don’t choose those examples carelessly: it is in the nature of perverted tribalism not to understand the culture and faults of a different tribe. UKip and Golden Dawn are on the rise because the Brussels tribe learn nothing. Obama got a second term because liberals followed him blindly, and the GOP chose a neoliberal idiot. And the Guardian is going down the tubes because the Rabid tribe is taking over the middle ground, while Rusbridger and his hacks are away with the fairies.
Tribalism is failure’s best friend, and the implacable enemy of progress. The proof? Black Africa.
Source
Angelo: The opposite of tribalism in the above example would seem to be capitulation. Apathy is the self preservation technique of the beleaguered sheeple of the north.
I propose a velvet revolution and open direct government by the people. We have the technology. Discard the political class completely. Reset the civil services. Work in real democratic groups of no more than 150 people with ultimate authority on local issues and network on regional, national or global issues. Discard all the laws and reinstate only two. Protect the individual and protect the individuals fair property.
We like John and are just continuing the human social discussion. Criticism or better ideas always welcome.
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