Propaganda

As i drove into to work listening to Nick Ferrari on L.B.C. i felt compelled to research the current media furore surrounding North Korea and the impending Nuclear holocaust. The narrative created by Nick and from what i can see most of the main stream media is a myopic, simplistic and short time line of events that betrays the history and players of the situation we find ourselves in today. There is no doubt that Kim Jong Un   the current and hereditary supreme leader of North Korea is a despot, a ruthless dictator that subjugates his people, A dictator that uses the constant fear of a foreign enemy to justify the diversion of the countries funds from essential public necessities like, food, education, housing, health etc into military armament massively over weighed against its countries actual means and population included in this arsenal is of course the nuclear threat. The great western enemy of course is America, the case for the propaganda is so easily put together when you look at the long term historical relationship between America and North Korea, Between 1910 and 1945 Korea was occupied by Japan after the  2nd world war and the defeat of Japan by the allied forces the soviet Union and America divided Korea along the 38th parallel  The North being occupied by the soviet Union and the South by America, the first leader of North Korea was Kim II- Sung, the communist guerrilla leader of the fight against Japanese occupation. The first leader of South Korea was Syngman Rhee, the U.S.-installed ultra-right wing South Korean dictator who massacred tens of thousands of South Koreans. North Korea invaded south Korea in 1950 under the false impression that America was uninterested in their little corner of the world, at first there was no outside involvement and North Korea quickly secured most of the country, at the last minute America intervened and and via bombings and napalm killed 20% of the North Korean population, this equated to 3 million people, 75% of the country was flattened. 

Dean Rusk, a supporter of the war and later secretary of state, said the United States bombed “everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another.” Obviously with that onslaught and that number of deaths civilians took a heavy toll. As North Korea was on the verge of obliteration China stepped in (mainly because America was nearing its border) and an armistice was called, the war never officially ended and North and South Korea are officially still at war. As you can see North Korea has every reason to see America as the bad guy and because of the past history its an easy sell to the people. But even if you ignore history and look at the two countries in isolation its not too hard to cast the Americans as the imperial enemy. Look at the stats, America has been in near perpetual conflict since its inception as a country, it spends more on its defence budget than the next eight countries combined, yes that includes Russia, China and the UK.

It has military bases in more countries outside its own borders than any other country it has 800 bases in 70 different countries.

Of the 1900 nuclear tests carried out since the invention of the nuclear bomb America has carried out more than any other country by a long shot something in the region of 1200. America has also had the opportunity to nip the problem in the bud, in 1994 North Korea agreed to a non nuclear proliferation agreement, a change of political party from democrat to republican put paid to that in 2002. And of course there is Gadaffi who America convinced to give up his nuclear proliferation and look where that got him.

There is an obvious similarity that can be drawn between North Korea and America, two countries who have to constantly justify their exorbitant military spending by constantly ratcheting up the fear of an enemy, the fear is created using propaganda, in North Korea it is obvious, in America and the west it is more nuanced but none the less persuasive, the propaganda machine in the west and the east are two sides of the same coin but in the west we are apathetic, ambivalent or unwilling to look on the other side

We have released the hounds

I have held off being negative about the brexit vote, partly because i was a very tentative remainer and partly because i truly hope this all works out, it is after all too soon to tell, there are however some worrying warning signs of what is to come. I for one was under no illusion that an exit vote would be a free pass for the Tories to plough through their ideological policies under the guise of shoring up the economy post brexit, George Osborne announces corperation tax will be cut to 15%, this is the lowest of any G7 nation, it is being implemented under the guise of attracting business to the UK, in theory this will then create jobs and wealth which will trickle down and permeate all levels of society, it is however a well documented fact with evidence over decades that the trickle down economy theory does not work, it will simply make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Mark Carney of the bank of England announces that the amount banks have to keep as surplus will be reduced, Although it was the biggest financial crisis.......ever and the deficit has tripled since it occurred and we are still being faced with austerity measure because of it, people seem to have forgotten (or coaxed into a memory lapse by the main stream media) that the whole mess was caused by the banking system, as a result stricter banking practices (far more lenient than imposed by America) were enacted in England to prevent another crash, one of the main problems was that the banks didn't carry enough surplus funds to ride out the economic crash, ergo the British public had to foot the bill ergo the massive austerity we face today, so in light of the economic turmoil we face due to the brexit vote what would be a sound economic policy...........to allow the banks to put themselves back into a position that they are too big too fail and potentially come back with their begging bowl for another bail out? Everything is on the table everything is fair game, they will tell you they are cutting bureaucratic red tape, that is double speak for removing rights that are a hindrance to profits 

We have released the hounds

I have held off being negative about the brexit vote, partly because i was a very tentative remainer and partly because i truly hope this all works out, it is after all too soon to tell, there are however some worrying warning signs of what is to come. I for one was under no illusion that an exit vote would be a free pass for the Tories to plough through their ideological policies under the guise of shoring up the economy post brexit, George Osborne announces corperation tax will be cut to 15%, this is the lowest of any G7 nation, it is being implemented under the guise of attracting business to the UK, in theory this will then create jobs and wealth which will trickle down and permeate all levels of society, it is however a well documented fact with evidence over decades that the trickle down economy theory does not work, it will simply make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Mark Carney of the bank of England announces that the amount banks have to keep as surplus will be reduced, Although it was the biggest financial crisis.......ever and the deficit has tripled since it occurred and we are still being faced with austerity measure because of it, people seem to have forgotten (or coaxed into a memory lapse by the main stream media) that the whole mess was caused by the banking system, as a result stricter banking practices (far more lenient than imposed by America) were enacted in England to prevent another crash, one of the main problems was that the banks didn't carry enough surplus funds to ride out the economic crash, ergo the British public had to foot the bill ergo the massive austerity we face today, so in light of the economic turmoil we face due to the brexit vote what would be a sound economic policy...........to allow the banks to put themselves back into a position that they are too big too fail and potentially come back with their begging bowl for another bail out? Everything is on the table everything is fair game, they will tell you they are cutting bureaucratic red tape, that is double speak for removing rights that are a hindrance to profits 

If you bomb it they will come

So the hot topic of the moment is immigration, but what are the hot talking points in the U.K. lets have a look and answer some of the rhetoric because you know we have the internet and its super easy

Here are some statements i often come across on social media

• "WE ARE FULL" ( yes in capitals because if people could shout it they would) people use the argument that we have many homeless people in this country and we should first look after them before we let in refugees.
• In reality we have lots of empty houses in the UK 10 for every homeless family in the UK actually here is the link (housing) see super easy, there is also 1.5 million potential housing availability brown field sites, for people who live near me brown field sites like the abandoned Firbeck colliery that a conglomerate of millionaires are sitting on i assume waiting until the maximum profit can be made (plenty of room) I wonder how passionate people will be about homelessness when the media fad regarding immigration wears off?
• "We cant afford them we are in a massive recession"
• The first question that should be asked is why are we in a massive recession, the second is do we need to be and the third and final, are migrants exasperating the situation? So first why are we in a recession, well as we know those pesky bankers caused it, although when the financial crisis first hit the media and government tried to sell us the narrative that we caused it ourselves by borrowing too much, not having savings and taking irresponsible mortgages when in reality it was the pesky banksters betting on derivatives  (banksters). So now we know who caused it (nope not the immigrants) but surely they are perpetuating it? Lets have a look (immigration a double edged sword) wait what immigrants are a net contributor? yep but here is the divisive fact, usually and as in the case in my area economic migrants are low skilled, looking for low skilled jobs in affordable areas, here in lies the problem, this puts the economic migrants in direct competition with indigenous low skilled people, the migrants are prepared to accept lesser working terms because they see the very fact they are living in the UK as part of the package, this means they are undercutting the indigenous people by being prepared to work on zero hour contracts, short term contracts and minimum wage, people bemoan the immigrants for stealing their jobs when in reality the people causing the problem are the companies and government allowing this to happen, ive never heard of a company complaining about low paid migrant workers and as i said previously immigrants are a net contributors so the governments happy, working class people have every right to be angry, just direct it at the right people.

• "They are just coming here to scrounge our benefits"
• Well yes there will be some migrants coming to take advantage of our generous and hard fought welfare system, people will always take advantage of such a system but lets not forget the displacement of people in the middle east is largely caused by western military action in said countries, it would be nice in an ideal world to be able to kick back safe in the knowledge that the military intervention is some morally enlightened act of releasing subjugated people and giving them freedom, unfortunately when you look into the money to be made by private companies off the back of this perpetual middle east war it is staggering but also shines a light on one of the many economic reasons we are there.

In summary people have every right to be angry but direct it at the right cause, people have every right to defend the indigenous homeless and homeless veterans but lets keep that moral high ground when the media furore over the immigrants/asylum seekers/refugees has died down, lets not forget no man is an island and it will be someone else's turn to be the villain of the moment, sooner or later it will be you.

Keep calm I have a cunning plan

The west seems to be a little unhappy with certain parts of the middle east, one part it certainly isn't unhappy with is Saudi Arabia, Is there any reason why some western governments have a love affair with a country that is well on its way to smashing its own personal best in beheading. The obvious answer is the black viscous umbilical chord that is oil, another reason can be seen by firstly looking at the world banks data on countries military expenditure as a % of their gross domestic product or in leymans terms how much of their total countries wealth production is spent on their military, scrolling down the list you will see one of these is not like the others, in fact Saudi Arabia spends a whopping 9% of its G.D.P. on its military (the U.K. spends 2% as a gauge) when you consider Saudi Arabia's gross domestic product estimate in 2015 will be 805 billion  You can appreciate that is a lot of cap guns. So Saudi Arabia has a lot of oil to sell, some countries in the west would like this oil, coincidentally these very same countries are very good at building weapons of war and as I alluded to earlier Saudi Arabia wants to spend spend spend on weaponry. At this point I imagine someone somewhere in the west muttered the immortal words of balderick "I have a cunning plan, buy the oil from the Saudis and then sell them loads of weapons to recoup some of that cost.......genius" 

Cost of freedom?

Most of the main papers both sides of the pond blindly ran The Sunday Times story  and then laughably backtracked after it was clearly an unfounded claim. Not once has any credible evidence been released to show that anything Edward Snowden  did, has in anyway compromised any serving military personnel. What it did do is highlight how deep and far reaching each governments surveillance policies secretly invade our on-line lives. most of the public is either apathetic or ignorant to this information. So the public don't care and the leaks haven't hurt anyone, everyone's happy right? But in these times of deep austerity how much does this surveillance cost us? In the U.K. it costs us 2 billion for our security and intelligence agencies and GCHQ take the lions share of that. But that is dwarfed in comparison to the U.S.A. mass surveillance via the N.S.A. which comes in at a staggering $52 billion. So the question is if this very expensive and very intrusive mass surveillance isn't fit for purpose, what is its real purpose? ( apart from looking at your naked Facebook pics of course), anyone read a good book lately, 1984 maybe.

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