Rant about Greece and politics in the so called techno scene

[msl]

Speak for yourself mate, my ancestors were the ones who put the GREAT in to Great Britain, albeit that they were packed on ships from Africa and endured 100's of years of slavery.

I'm Irish, Great Britain was only 'great' for the english.



.

[jordanneke]

Oh I have no hope for the human race, one of the many reasons I don't have kids. Because when they come in to their 30's they will be in a world of declining oil, an exponentially worsening climate, massively depleted fish stocks and poisoned oceans, an unbelievable gap between rich and poor.
The world is not going to be nice in 30 years.

It's a shame, the change to move forward is so possible it is within our grasp, but we have simply turned away from the future, distracted completely by materialism, our souls, collectively, are empty.
If we had a population of thinking humans, things would be different, but it all comes down to education. We are taught, from our early years in education, not to think, but to be productive workers essentially, to service the system and nothing more.
We are not reaching to the stars but scrabbling in the dirt in the vague hope that "technology" will save us.

And the attitude that prevails is

"Well, I can't slay the dragon, I might as well ride it".

We don't need to burn down the system in reality, we must to move forwards.

I agree on all of this, (aside from the education bit - I teach, or try to teach my students how to think),

But it all comes down to power. Those who have it want to keep it.

Whatever system is in place, the dude(s) who runs the show will eventually end up serving their own interests. That's a fear of mine.

[jordanneke]

Speak for yourself mate, my ancestors were the ones who put the GREAT in to Great Britain, albeit that they were packed on ships from Africa and endured 100's of years of slavery.

I'm Irish, Great Britain was only 'great' for the english.



.

Ah, so you're hated in the UK as well....

[DixieWhiskey]

Been enjoying reading this thread just wanted to say it's comforting to read the ideas from people with their feet on the ground and their head in reality who were brought together by an otherwise unrelated topic, as opposed to the usual short sighted, frustratingly (though understandably) veiled way of thinking one is usually surrounded by day in and day out. Gives me a warm feeling inside. (Cue hades' anal joke). But seriously living in the ""third world"" it can be especially frustrating to hear people, and loved ones express their own vision of "progression", which is almost always a curtailed, isolationist (is that a word?) view that fails to consider the real reasons and history behind what brought us to where we are now.

[Lost to the Void]

Oh I have no hope for the human race, one of the many reasons I don't have kids. Because when they come in to their 30's they will be in a world of declining oil, an exponentially worsening climate, massively depleted fish stocks and poisoned oceans, an unbelievable gap between rich and poor.
The world is not going to be nice in 30 years.

It's a shame, the change to move forward is so possible it is within our grasp, but we have simply turned away from the future, distracted completely by materialism, our souls, collectively, are empty.
If we had a population of thinking humans, things would be different, but it all comes down to education. We are taught, from our early years in education, not to think, but to be productive workers essentially, to service the system and nothing more.
We are not reaching to the stars but scrabbling in the dirt in the vague hope that "technology" will save us.

And the attitude that prevails is

"Well, I can't slay the dragon, I might as well ride it".

We don't need to burn down the system in reality, we must to move forwards.

I agree on all of this, (aside from the education bit - I teach, or try to teach my students how to think),

But it all comes down to power. Those who have it want to keep it.

Whatever system is in place, the dude(s) who runs the show will eventually end up serving their own interests. That's a fear of mine.

The point is you don't have anyone "in charge", you don't need to.
One solution, proposed by some political philosophers, is to make government office a duty, like conscription.
The most relevant/best qualified people are chosen from relevant fields, then voted for and then serve in office much like jury service, for a fixed period, open to review based on performance factors.
Education would be run by educators, medical care would be run by medical, professionals etc.

no government, no governance, merely service to society to improve society.

Things like usery could be more controlled, interest possibly erradicated, money could be entirely crypto based, and slowly be made to run equally with skill trading and so on.
There are so many options being put forward to evolve democracy to a new level, but not one single thing is being even discussed by any democratic governments. They all operate on the assumption that the current system is a zenith point.

The end of capitalism does not in any way mean the end of commerce.

[msl]

Ah, so you're hated in the UK as well....

I don't hate the english, but I certainly hate empire. Countries like to get their people thinking patriotically and nationalistically. There is nothing great about British history, its full of some of the worst crimes imaginable, multiple genocides, slavery, the invention of the modern concentration camp. I think it was Churchill who said "History shall be kind to me cause I intend to write it myself".



.

[jordanneke]

Oh I have no hope for the human race, one of the many reasons I don't have kids. Because when they come in to their 30's they will be in a world of declining oil, an exponentially worsening climate, massively depleted fish stocks and poisoned oceans, an unbelievable gap between rich and poor.
The world is not going to be nice in 30 years.

It's a shame, the change to move forward is so possible it is within our grasp, but we have simply turned away from the future, distracted completely by materialism, our souls, collectively, are empty.
If we had a population of thinking humans, things would be different, but it all comes down to education. We are taught, from our early years in education, not to think, but to be productive workers essentially, to service the system and nothing more.
We are not reaching to the stars but scrabbling in the dirt in the vague hope that "technology" will save us.

And the attitude that prevails is

"Well, I can't slay the dragon, I might as well ride it".

We don't need to burn down the system in reality, we must to move forwards.

I agree on all of this, (aside from the education bit - I teach, or try to teach my students how to think),

But it all comes down to power. Those who have it want to keep it.

Whatever system is in place, the dude(s) who runs the show will eventually end up serving their own interests. That's a fear of mine.

The point is you don't have anyone "in charge", you don't need to.
One solution, proposed by some political philosophers, is to make government office a duty, like conscription.
The most relevant/best qualified people are chosen from relevant fields, then voted for and then serve in office much like jury service, for a fixed period, open to review based on performance factors.
Education would be run by educators, medical care would be run by medical, professionals etc.

no government, no governance, merely service to society to improve society.

Things like usery could be more controlled, interest possibly erradicated, money could be entirely crypto based, and slowly be made to run equally with skill trading and so on.
There are so many options being put forward to evolve democracy to a new level, but not one single thing is being even discussed by any democratic governments. They all operate on the assumption that the current system is a zenith point.

The end of capitalism does not in any way mean the end of commerce.

That all sounds sensible, fair and just.

This new way would require those who have been served extremely well by the system that is in place, which is to say the rich, the powerful, the bankers, the hedge fund managers, the dictators, the juntas, the generals.......... all to relinquish their power.

I think one of the reasons as well, despite the inequality in the world, that the proles don't rise up, is because generally humans have never had it so 'good' (medicines.....etc). 'good' being a relative term.

Before I get painted as standing to the right of Thatcher and Reagan, I agree on what's been said. The pragmatist is me can't see the global ruling class giving up any power at all.

On a more personal note, having lived in the UK, USA, poor countries, and Sunny Belgium/ Netherlands.... I really like Belgium. The taxes are VERY high, but society here is way more equal than a lot of places. The poor are taken care of here better than any country I've lived in, and hence all the markers of a quality life are higher here than in other developed nations, although not quite like Sweden.

We have much less of the rampant inequality than the UK and the USA, and that's something I'm happy to give up 45% of my salary for.

[Lost to the Void]

things only have the power you give them.
All their power structures are based on consent.
Money only has the value we give it, as it is no longer connected to actual value.
It all could change, but of course it won't, people are stupid, and easily settle for the crumbs thrown down to them, without realising the power rests in the masses, ambition of societal progress has been flipped long ago, the only ambition now is money and fame, and power, all empty. What we are seeing right now is literally a shift back to fifedoms, lords and serfs.

[msl]

I think one of the reasons as well, despite the inequality in the world, that the proles don't rise up, is because generally humans have never had it so 'good' (medicines.....etc). 'good' being a relative term.

Sure I agree I guess its pretty 'good' for us, but at what cost does it come at? The Roman's called it 'bread & entertainment'...

Before I get painted as standing to the right of Thatcher and Reagan, I agree on what's been said. The pragmatist is me can't see the global ruling class giving up any power at all.

Of course they won't its human nature, but this whole Greek tragedy has shown how they have totally taken over the EU apparatus. And thats a good thing that the masks have fallen.

Considering the challenges that face the planet esp environmental ones a change is going to have to come...


.

[msl]

It seems Iceland has managed to change its system and bring things under democratic control again, though the excuse given always is thats its such a small country the same changes couldn't be done elsewhere! They called them "viking capitalists" hahaha

Sadly in Ireland we haven't jailed a single banker or politician responsible...

youtu.be/C59tkKIBAmA

[surface]

[Lost to the Void]

Unfortunately the reality of what happened in iceland is far from the folktale that goes around internet memes.

Most of the rest followed in the coming months but was, contrary to the folklore outside Iceland, bailed out by the Government. SpKef and Byr, two savings banks, are cases in point. There, the Icelandic bankers’ gluttony was not lesser than in the case of the big banks. Nevertheless, the government gave them some cash, casting a terrible shadow on Iceland’s image as a country which does not bail out banks. Good thing nobody noticed. SpKef was later assimilated into New Landsbanki (a state owned bank) but Byr ended up in Islandsbanki (New Glitnir).

It is very important to realise one thing: the governments, both the “conservative” one prior, during and after the October crash, and the “left wing” one, which took over after the 2009 general elections, did everything they could – absolutely everything – to try and keep the banks afloat. And of course, the banks themselves tried what they could to save their faces by buying up their own stocks and thereby maintain their price (which, in their case, was quite close to being a market abuse). The savings banks that went off the cliff after the Big Three had closed down their shops were small enough to be rescued by the government but the Big Three in October 2008 were simply too large to be saved. That did not stop the government from trying everything it could do to throw out the safety net, including practically emptying the foreign reserves of the Central Bank when it tried to keep Glitnir afloat.


The jails in Iceland are not full of “banksters”
So the first lore on Iceland – that it intentionally let the banks to bankrupt – is not according to reality. The reality is that the government tried to save them but could not. The one about all the jailed banksters is, well, not entirely true either.

Let’s take two examples:

The Al Thani Plot
Kaupthing famously got the brother of the emir of Qatar, Sheik Al Thani, to buy stock in the bank. Later, The Special Prosecutor (specially founded to deal with white collar crimes) charged the CEO of Kaupthing, Hreidar Mar Sigurdsson, and the chairman of the board of directors of Kaupthing, Sigurdur Einarsson for fraud (Einarsson is the son of late Einar Agustsson, ex Minister of Foreign Affairs and MP of The Progressive Party, the political party which had hands in the sales of Bunadarbanki which was later to become Kaupthing-Bunadarbanki and, in the end, Kaupthing... just an example of how close business and politics were and are in Iceland).

Why the charges of fraud? Well, apparently, the Sheik didn’t pay a dime for the 5% share in Kaupthing Bank, he simply lent his name to the fraudulent act and got 50 million USD for it! The Al Thani case is still in the courthouse but the charge against Olafur Olafsson, the CEO/chairman of the board of directors of Samskip and the third biggest owner in Kaupthing and a member of the team which bought Bunadarbankinn in the beginning, has been dismissed. The charge against Magnus Gudmundsson, the ex CEO of Kaupthing Luxembourg, was also dismissed. But the charges against Sigurdsson and Einarsson stand.

The fundamental factor is that neither the Icelandic justice system nor the laws themselves are ready or meant for white collar crimes of the magnitude that took place before, during and after the collapse. And we certainly do not have an army of lawyers specialised in fighting white collar crimes, contrary to many other countries where experience and knowledge are abound. Combine all this together and the most likely, sometimes unfortunately and sometimes correctly, outcome of the “banksters’ cases” in Iceland is that they walk either entirely free or with only a firm slap on the buttocks. This is so not because they are all innocent but because the justice system is unprepared. This is, somewhat, a learning-by-doing process.

http://icelandicecon.blogspot.co.uk/201 ... eland.html

[Wiu]

Any kind of major change won't come until we've more or less destroyed ourselves and our planet along with us. It will literally be the outbreak of WW3 and the near extinction of the human race that might give us a fresh start at things. Like someone above said, anyone with huge wealth and/or power, will never willingly give that up. They will take us to the brink of extinction. It's as simple as that. The cunts have won. And they won a long time ago.

[surface]

That's the other side of it...In Ireland, the efforts to examine what went wrong and who was/is responsible meant setting up the "banking enquiry" where nobody will be charged with anything and the law firms still make a packet from it with what I assume is ultimately taxpayers money. From one circus to another...
The ultimate example of the fallout here is the setting up of both NAMA and Irish Water.
The biggest, blatant rackets going and still nobody bats an eyelid...

[msl]

Well afaik at least in Iceland they did put some bankers in jail, in Ireland as in the US no one has gone to jail (except Bernie Madoff). IN the US some of the big banks were fined for Libor etc, but the fines are much less than the profits they made...

The Four Horsemen is good documentary if you haven't seen it...

youtu.be/5fbvquHSPJU

[msl]

And another great documentary about the whole greek bailout mess.

youtu.be/BLB3uu1IXM0

[Hades]

Gives me a warm feeling inside. (Cue hades' anal joke).

Been enjoying reading this thread just wanted to say it's comforting to read the ideas from people with their feet on the ground and their head in reality who were brought together by an otherwise unrelated topic, as opposed to the usual short sighted, frustratingly (though understandably) veiled way of thinking one is usually surrounded by day in and day out. Gives me a warm feeling inside. (Cue hades' anal joke). But seriously living in the ""third world"" it can be especially frustrating to hear people, and loved ones express their own vision of "progression", which is almost always a curtailed, isolationist (is that a word?) view that fails to consider the real reasons and history behind what brought us to where we are now.

nice post.

god damn it,
here I am, in Crète, trying to analyze some of the practical consequences of the Greek crisis while hoping not to see it too much (impossible for an observant mind like mine, but I presume far too easy for most of the common tourists),
and trying to come clean with a far too big subsekt addiction the last few weeks,
and then I read all this intelligent shit from you guys again...

gentlemen, I truely enjoy your words in this nice free port hidden corner of the internet...
I honestly salute you !

[Hades]

Unfortunately the reality of what happened in iceland is far from the folktale that goes around internet memes.

Most of the rest followed in the coming months but was, contrary to the folklore outside Iceland, bailed out by the Government. SpKef and Byr, two savings banks, are cases in point. There, the Icelandic bankers’ gluttony was not lesser than in the case of the big banks. Nevertheless, the government gave them some cash, casting a terrible shadow on Iceland’s image as a country which does not bail out banks. Good thing nobody noticed. SpKef was later assimilated into New Landsbanki (a state owned bank) but Byr ended up in Islandsbanki (New Glitnir).

It is very important to realise one thing: the governments, both the “conservative” one prior, during and after the October crash, and the “left wing” one, which took over after the 2009 general elections, did everything they could – absolutely everything – to try and keep the banks afloat. And of course, the banks themselves tried what they could to save their faces by buying up their own stocks and thereby maintain their price (which, in their case, was quite close to being a market abuse). The savings banks that went off the cliff after the Big Three had closed down their shops were small enough to be rescued by the government but the Big Three in October 2008 were simply too large to be saved. That did not stop the government from trying everything it could do to throw out the safety net, including practically emptying the foreign reserves of the Central Bank when it tried to keep Glitnir afloat.


The jails in Iceland are not full of “banksters”
So the first lore on Iceland – that it intentionally let the banks to bankrupt – is not according to reality. The reality is that the government tried to save them but could not. The one about all the jailed banksters is, well, not entirely true either.

Let’s take two examples:

The Al Thani Plot
Kaupthing famously got the brother of the emir of Qatar, Sheik Al Thani, to buy stock in the bank. Later, The Special Prosecutor (specially founded to deal with white collar crimes) charged the CEO of Kaupthing, Hreidar Mar Sigurdsson, and the chairman of the board of directors of Kaupthing, Sigurdur Einarsson for fraud (Einarsson is the son of late Einar Agustsson, ex Minister of Foreign Affairs and MP of The Progressive Party, the political party which had hands in the sales of Bunadarbanki which was later to become Kaupthing-Bunadarbanki and, in the end, Kaupthing... just an example of how close business and politics were and are in Iceland).

Why the charges of fraud? Well, apparently, the Sheik didn’t pay a dime for the 5% share in Kaupthing Bank, he simply lent his name to the fraudulent act and got 50 million USD for it! The Al Thani case is still in the courthouse but the charge against Olafur Olafsson, the CEO/chairman of the board of directors of Samskip and the third biggest owner in Kaupthing and a member of the team which bought Bunadarbankinn in the beginning, has been dismissed. The charge against Magnus Gudmundsson, the ex CEO of Kaupthing Luxembourg, was also dismissed. But the charges against Sigurdsson and Einarsson stand.

The fundamental factor is that neither the Icelandic justice system nor the laws themselves are ready or meant for white collar crimes of the magnitude that took place before, during and after the collapse. And we certainly do not have an army of lawyers specialised in fighting white collar crimes, contrary to many other countries where experience and knowledge are abound. Combine all this together and the most likely, sometimes unfortunately and sometimes correctly, outcome of the “banksters’ cases” in Iceland is that they walk either entirely free or with only a firm slap on the buttocks. This is so not because they are all innocent but because the justice system is unprepared. This is, somewhat, a learning-by-doing process.

http://icelandicecon.blogspot.co.uk/201 ... eland.html

well, I was just gonna go all berzerk with typing endless rants about the current Icelandic situation,
posting a link to that one great icelandic blog I found,
but then I saw Steve posted that link already.
That's a good thing, that's an excellent thing as a matter of fact,
cause it means I can retire to Mythos, and sniffing my 4 year old daughter who's asleep right next to me,
finally understanding why my mrs always claims I smell like cookies and vanilla...

bread 'n games, right ?

Just finished reading "confessions of an economic hit-man" yesterday.
great book !
all of you cuntswho haven't, please, by all means, do read it !!
it's time to wake up now !

[Hades]

Like someone above said, anyone with huge wealth and/or power, will never willingly give that up. They will take us to the brink of extinction. It's as simple as that. .

agreed, but tell me something no sensible human being hasn't figured out by now.

The cunts have won. And they won a long time ago.

they have untill now...
but if you truely believe that they have won for good,
you might as well throw in the blanket, and buy another 30 drum machines and enjoy our planet while it still lasts
cause some day the electricity bill for those machines will go completely out of the roof...

[msl]

Fuck it. Was looking for something else... accidentally came across this dead thread.

It's 7 years later and... we're heading into another one of the same bullshit economic crisis yet again. Only its probably worse and the pain more widespread this time. And without Chomsky to help as he's "almost" no longer compos mentis.

At least the queen is dead.