Sortition

In response to the deepening crisis of representation, direct democracy today comes up as an alternative proposal, put forward by the social movements arising worldwide. On the one hand, populists and party functionaries, in an attempt to attract the votes of the vast majority of people who are dissatisfied with the current state of affairs, have declared the semi-direct democracy approach of the referendum as their solution to the current crisis. The social movements themselves, on the other, through their own practices, have highlighted the direct democracy approach of networks of face-to-face assemblies. Discussions in political debates about reforming representative democracy in order to allow for broader citizen participation are becoming more frequent, while activists on the streets discuss and attempt to create autonomous structures beyond the state and Capital, which can potentially serve as groundwork for a fairer and more direct-democratic society.

Unfortunately, activists from different movements and the supporters of the aforementioned ideas often miss or even consciously neglect one practice in particular – choosing by lot (or Sortition), originating in the Athenian politia, where the very concept of democracy is rooted. According to Aristotle choosing by lot is a sign of democracy while elections are a sign of oligarchy. In the Athenian Democracy, sortition, together with the institution of the general assembly, allowed the citizens “to rule and to be ruled.” The logic behind the sortition process originates from the idea, also arrived at by Lord Acton many centuries later, that simply “power corrupts.” Most empirical evidence from their time to ours, points to this conclusion. For that reason, when the time came to choose individuals to be assigned to empowering positions, the ancient Athenians often resorted to choosing by lot.

The supporters of direct democracy often have a complete and detailed vision of what a society managed by local assemblies and coordinated by federative councils on a regional level would look like. But when it comes to the question of how the members of these federative structures should be elected, often no satisfactory answer is presented. No matter how decentralized the structure of a society becomes, the danger of emergence of formal and informal hierarchies, undermining the democratic processes, is always present and the search for mechanisms for their prevention should be a concern of everyone, as long as people want to keep direct democracy functioning. According to Michel Foucault “power is everywhere and comes from everywhere.” In this line of thought, power is not limited only to one central structure (the state for example) or to the concentration of material goods in the hands of an elite. It is everywhere, reproducing itself in our relationships, language, culture, etc.

If we view this logic from an antiauthoritarian perspective we can conclude that the danger in a society based on direct citizen participation, for example, elected delegates to become “professional politicians” (in the bad sense of the word) is very real. In many groups today, even in ones that are part of the anti-authoritarian specter, unofficial hierarchies keep emerging and participants often do not have the means to confront these problems, which slowly corrodes the relationships between the activists or even leads to the group’s breakup. Choosing by lot is a mechanism precisely suited for dealing with that problem, preventing the establishment of strict “political” roles.

Another key aspect of sortition is that it promotes an active citizenry. In order to function properly, a direct democracy needs autonomous individuals, capable of critical thinking and interested in public affairs, or in other words: active citizens. Institutions, utilizing the mechanism of sortition, serve as universities on citizenship, where people immerse themselves deeply in the political life of the society for a certain period of time and acquire a sense of responsibility, and depending on the size of the community, all of them, or a large percentage of the population, passes through that process. Also, by knowing that they can be chosen at any moment, the people are thus stimulated to act responsibly and to care about the common affairs of the society on daily basis.

Sortition can also potentially help with the emancipation of women. While in a representative democracy (with elections as its main mechanism) governments are dominated primarily by men, in an institution where members are chosen by lot, a society may decide for the configuration between men and women to be equal. This also applies for marginalized communities. In general, during the electoral processes they almost always remain unrepresented, while in the case of sortition this can be regulated by the society itself.

Of course, thinking that sortition alone can prevent the emergence of demagogues and “professional politicians” is naïve. But if it's implemented together with short periods for holding the position, revocability and rotation, similar to the model that emerged in Ancient Athens, we get a comprehensive package of mechanisms that serves to prevent the occurrence of oligarchy.

It is important to note that while sortition can be a principal method for appointing most administrative roles in a direct-democratic society, some of them will still have to keep the electoral element. Some tasks demand expertise that most people lack, and because of that it is necessary that the citizens be able to choose between the experts they have. For example in Ancient Athens, naval admirals, architects, etc. were chosen through elections, while sortition was the dominant way of choosing members of the Boule [1], magistrates etc.

Today the process of sortition is not a widespread practice in governance. The most famous example is the Citizens' Assembly in British Columbia. It offers empirical evidence on what the choosing by lot can look like in practice, though in a non-direct democracy.

In 2003 the Local Government of British Columbia, Canada created a Civil Assembly chosen by lot and aimed at formulating a referendum proposal for a new electoral system for the local parliament. Until then the electoral system in British Columbia was standard, based on elections, whereby the winner formed the local government. Many residents, however, were unhappy with this model, feeling that their voice was not being heard. This led to the creation of the Citizens' Assembly for Electoral Reform, comprised of 160 delegates chosen by lot among all the inhabitants of the province – one man and one woman from each of the 79 electoral districts of British Colombia, plus two delegates from the indigenous communities.

The work of the Citizens' Assembly passed through three stages. From January to March 2004 delegates gathered every weekend in Vancouver to explore alternative electoral systems through an intensive series of lectures, seminars and discussions. Each delegate received a fee of $ 150 for each weekend of work. In the second stage, the summer of 2004, delegates took part in a series of public hearings across the province to discuss alternative electoral models and to hear reactions and feedback. In the third stage, the autumn of 2004, the Civil Assembly met again every weekend for intensive discussions at the end of which delegates prepared a referendum proposal for a new electoral law. To the surprise of many they did not choose a straightforward system of proportional representation, but rather what is known as the Single Transferable Vote system [2].

In May 2005, the Assembly’s proposal was submitted for voting. However, the referendum did not pass, because electoral activity was 57.3%, slightly below the required 60%. One reason is that this referendum was confined to the framework of representation, which in the past decade has been in a serious crisis that deepens with time. But this experiment gives us valuable empirical evidence that we can use in the construction of other types of systems beyond representative democracy.

From all we have said until now it becomes clear that sortition is an organic part of direct democracy. It plays a dual role – it helps facilitate the daily administration of larger areas, while preventing the emergence of hierarchies. In itself, sortition is not enough, as demonstrated by the experience gained from the experiment in British Columbia. But in combination with the institution of the general assembly, like the politia of Ancient Athens, it helps build sustainable, democratic processes and active citizenship.

Sortition can be used in different contexts, as was shown in the aforementioned examples. Neglecting it at the expense of other institutions is a mistake, as it is a mistake to restrict direct democracy only to the so-called ''political'' area, as populists with pro-capitalist views are trying to convince us today. It is difficult to imagine how a group, a society or movement will operate in a truly democratic way if it does not use all the mechanisms of direct democracy, and instead chooses only some of them, replacing the rest with undemocratic ones. The fact that some direct-democratic institutions and mechanisms may produce negative side effects, which is a principal concern, does not mean that we should abandon them. Precisely through the implementation and experimentation with these types of institutions, structures and mechanisms, we will be able to find their weaknesses and correct them.

From new-compass

Why we need to beat Russia

We may see Syria as a testing ground for Imperial Power. Russia has tested our influence and shown the World it’s wanting, so it’s crucial to appreciate why and of what consequence.

Our Imperial weapons give definite form to our Empire. And nothing has shaped our Empire more than the FIAT. The deformation began in 1971, when the US imposed her Power to re-define the rules of the monetary system for her sole benefit. The ability to print IOU’s in exchange for real value is more clever than theft as we borrow and do not pay back in kind due to inflation. Our enemies, adversaries and vassals must found their financial systems upon the printed dollar which they must purchase with hard earned money. That seizure has financed a vast network of military bases, bribery, assassinations, coup d´états and perpetual war.

What’s not to like? All that Power without taxing the produce of the American people. So why have we lost in Syria?

Let’s begin by appreciating that the global “FIAT system” is responsible for our moral crisis and departure from virtue. As we embrace further the gods of greed – listen to the masses cheer for Clinton and Trump – we must recall that virtue is knowledge of what is good. We are getting weak because we have forgotten what is good for us.

The root of this evil is our love of easy money, or FIAT money, defined by those with power as “wealth by decree” which places an arbitrary value upon “wealth issued by men” such that buying power has no natural governor, as it did when gold was freely traded along currencies in truly free markets. But whom, may we ask, has the power to decree wealth? And with such great power to do so, who can be trusted with such great responsibility?

No one. That is who.

But nonetheless, governments and monarchies throughout the ages have been entrusted to issue wealth by decree. All have failed, because power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

So in every FIAT timeline we see the more powerful become wealthier and the wealthy become more powerful, because it is they who control the issuance and distribution of wealth. Inequality of Wealth, therefore, always reaches its peak at the end of the FIAT timeline. As social position offers more favours than purpose and production. What has happened is what always happens – you have a system politicized to such an extent that political access – and not profits from innovative new solutions – Become the core of the incentive structure.

Notice how productivity declined after Bretton Woods and later when Bretton Woods was abandoned. One of the problems of easy money, not the only one mind you, is the financialization of the economy. Financialization drains key human capital and generates malinvestment. Nuclear engineers are doing MBA’s so that they can work as investment bankers! Trillions of dollars have been invested in real estate developments that provide no productivity gains. Easy money kept fracking companies alive –producing an endless glut of gas that had nowhere to go but heat tar sands in Canada – what waste!

This is the real economic evil of our current monetary system – malinvestment – with two insidious effects:

1. A halt in fundamental scientific breakthroughs and
2. The West, apart from Germany and Norway, has run at a loss for decades

If the common man had a say in all this, he would declare his modest holdings to be the pinnacle of wealth, by his decree. He will offer you his apartment for your mansion, his hot dog for your lobster, his bike for your car and so forth. If this sounds ridiculous, then think how absurd it is to offer stacks of paper for these same items, which (based upon the numbers and signatures printed upon them) you would gladly accept, by decree.

We know that paper is just as intrinsically worthless as the electronic digits they represent in a bank account. The issue here is who holds the power of decree. The little people never will. The monied men hold this power – like a parasite feeding upon any who deign to offer value at the marketplace.

And that is the cut of the second edge my friends. That is the death blow. The Fiat produced a parasite – the financial sector – that in its greed is killing the real economy. So when we read about absence of opportunity with such empathy, know that the parasite suffers too, as the problem of debt reaches higher toward senior capital.

When we see debt piled on debt just to prolong the dying system, take note that a few monied men enjoy the fruits of this easy money for a time before defaulting … and with no collateral to make lenders whole, many walk away with nothing more than an impaired credit rating – into a waiting system where debt is harshly devalued.

Monsanto can darken the sunflower harvest in the Ukraine, and Allianz can steal a few tranquil Greek islands, but the ambience is never quite the same as when hard working people had their just rewards, and goodness and charity and kind souls rejoiced – with compassion and cooperation – while loving the narrative of a life written while desiring only the product of their work.

The world this Global Reserve Fiat creates is one of misery and strife where evil and greed feeds upon the spirit, and the world becomes an immoral wasteland of modernity. The worker is discriminated against as all pressure and stress is heaped upon his future, as the law discriminates between debts held as an asset vs. debt held as a liability.

You see, reader, while we all hold “deposits” at banks, which is an euphemism for bank debt, only the lending class (and I use this term in the broadest sense) get to hold debt on their balance sheets as a wealth asset, whereas the little people hold debt as an obligatory liability. If there is a default, all the better as the law allows them to seize the “secured” assets as collateral. Is there a flaw in my thinking? Let us see…

You may say that banks are able to hold debt as an asset because they have the capital to cover that debt – to which I would say, “Really ??!!” As we understand the nature of debt in this modern era of aging debt, and the derivatives that attempt to hedge those obligations, this is simply not the case, as the lessons of Enron, AIG, Lehman, MF Global – ad nauseam – clearly prove. The empire of debt is hallmarked by misery for the masses though this is no accident, for a system cannot discriminate in and of itself. Financial laws are written by and for the hidden agenda of monied men, how can we conclude otherwise? A few of which see war or systemic crisis as an opportunity to rewrite the social contract e.g. the tax payer takes over bank debt, see Ireland, Britain and soon Australia and the Eurozone.

Look at the workers as they make their way home on the subway, standing tightly together, neither wanting nor caring to utter a word to one another, their grey features melted by the stress of their “wealth as debt”. Their one shot at consciousness ground away while vampire and zombie stories speak to their existence. Look at the once prosperous cities around you, like Detroit, or Camden, crumbling into 3rd world ghettos. Not exactly a world that the 1% wants to live in, but one they deserve – one of their making.

They can insulate themselves in the Hamptons for only so long until the sirens sound. It has always been this way, and it will always be this way, until man changes his nature by recognizing what is good for him.

Now, the East – China / Russia / India – challenge the Global Reserve Fiat. And when the dollar fails, and it will: For debt is the essence of fiat, and when it defaults, the system defaults with it.

Fiat Debt is unstable for two reasons:

1. Because no natural ecosystem is able to sustain unlimited, continuous exponential growth – as all 100% fiat (debt-based) valuation systems require. More debt is required to repay existing debt plus interest. The basic operational problem: you can inflate a system easily by issuing new “secured” debt against collateral and thereby increasing collateral value (think about mortgages as buying power to buy houses, pushing house prices up, collateral looks fine even if debtors cannot pay interest or principal – as long they can easily refinance or banks can sell recovered properties in a real estate market spiked by easy credit and demographics (like in the US from 2001-2005, or London and Sidney now). Easy credit can paper over affordability and to some extent demographics. Now this definitely does not work in reverse; you cannot even stop because once credit stops flowing, prices start to tatter; and in the latter stages even an decrease in the rate of increase might be enough to crash the system.
2. Because it is entered into and created so lightly, and it is based on the assumption of a fixed future performance by an entity or individual. And when the 98% – their future burdened by intolerable debt, unemployment and declining wages – decide to walk away? The fear of that decision has been driving interest rates down for decades, to make it bearable not for the good of mankind but to prolong the system. This brings into relief an internal contradiction: wages decline in sync with interest rates because the bargaining power of workers evaporates as Central Bankers reduce the cost of capital, contributing to the substitution of labour and labour wages by that of the machines and AI software. Until the workers walk away from more debt for less income, we watch this balancing act between debt pretending to be wealth, and wealth being treated as a “bad investment”. All performed for the benefit of gradually changing our definitions, as we evolve into a new equilibrium determined by the East – Their collective gold reserves will be large enough to re-price the currencies and free the markets.

As we look at the precarious nature of our faith-based money, we must acknowledge the moral implications of “dishonest money”. Seizure by decree, whether judged just by Constituted Power, is immoral. But the fact that dishonest money is so easy to create, control and redistribute helps one understand the wave of immorality that has swept over our world.

Paying tribute with labor and exchange rates is not enough for the empire of debt. Rather, its vassals must accept and embrace the ideology of the empire as well – “Wealth as Debt” and Globalism. It’s their separation in language which causes the confusion – Globalism and Absolutism – for they are one and the same thing.

When Russia and China stockpile honest money, they attack our most potent weapon and father of our decline. Our Imperial weapon will die by both edges of its own sword, one being the contempt with which it is so easily created to bend the will of the world to its bidding, and the other sharp edge which the wicked are blind to recognize: The evil that sound money prohibits.

Will Russia and China attack the fiat dollar using overt enemy action? Possible, but not probable: as they can simply undermine “confidence” in the FIAT and wait upon the 2% to bury the blade. The Dynasties of Wealth - Have you ever wondered how we hedge our holdings through turmoil?The top 85 patricians of which own more wealth than the bottom 3.5 billion humans – will move first. The 1%, then 2% and whoever else left standing will be forced to follow through.

Only Gold has the history, depth, unique qualities, loyalty of the elite and transitional power to challenge any man, any nation, any system on earth, past, present and future. The Dynasties understand this, because they have both witnessed and authored this axiom across generations of asset accumulation.

When they vote, they vote with their ability to make markets, and then reap the profit from the market they make, offering favor to those who protect their interests. They easily control men through greed and are beholden to Gold alone. Gold transitions their wealth recycling system through change.

As the sand peters past the last curve of the hour glass the Dynastic hand is clear to see. So the Neo-cons need to beat Russia, and soon, as only Globalism can keep the markets enchained. 

From The Saker

parasite economics #1

IT IS a running joke among my friends that none of us does anything useful for society. Lawyers, bankers, chartered surveyors; all of them exist to advise other people who have created wealth. One of my friends was an engineer (he actually designed a railway bridge) but joined the useless brigade by becoming a consultant. Your blogger is the lowest of the low; a parasite on parasites. Financial journalists exist to comment on the habits of other people who simply shuffle pieces of paper (or rather rearrange digits on a computer screen) for a living.

But when you start to think along these lines, it becomes very hard to decide who is actually creating all the wealth. Farmers used to claim a kind of economic virtue; they produce the food that prevents all those factory workers from starving. And that virtue has been transfomed, in modern economic parlance, to the manufacturing sector which produces realstuff and not all those ephemeral service activities.

This virtue has always seemed overstated. Are all manufactured goods intrinsically superior to services? Would you rather have a wig or a haircut? Just as there is only so much food we can healthily consume, there is only so much physical stuff we need. We have service-dominated economies because people like to consume services from TV programmes through video games to leisure activities like eating out. When General Motors sells a car, the chances are that it is selling it to someone who works in the services sector; so who is the parasite in this situation?

At the national level, we can say that most countries cannot produce all the things they need (or at least desire). Britain, for example, needs food from abroad. So it needs industries that can export stuff in order to generate the earnings that pay for imports. Here the bankers start to look a lot more valuable; Britain's invisible earnings from financial services are highly valuable. Even your blogger looks less parasitical; The Economist makes most of its sales overseas, so makes a modest contribution to Britain's upkeep.

At the global level, however, the national accounts cancel each other out. The debate evokes the old saw about the island that prospers because everyone takes in each other's washing. Or as Burt Bacharach and Hal David put it more memorably in Lost Horizon "The world is a circle without a beginning and nobody knows where it really ends". One man's income is another man's expenditure.

All this explains why the current economic debate is so hard to resolve since as Messrs Bacharach and David added in the same song "everything depends on where you are in the circle that never begins." Take the public sector versus private sector trade-off. Some say that the public sector is a parasite that depends on the wealth generated by the private sector. And we can probably all agree that there is a point at which the public sector can overwhelm and crowd out the private sphere. But look at the problem from a different point in the circle. Who educates the private sector workers? Who keeps them healthy (in Europe at least)? Who provides the roads and public transport? Who provides the legal system that guarantees property rights or the police that patrol the streets? All functions provided by the public sector.

Every dollar borrowed to pay for stimulus is a dollar that must be repaid from future private sector taxes, say those on the right. The government has no money save that it confiscates from the voters. True enough. But every dollar cut from benefits or from the public sector wage bill is a dollar that will not be spent buying goods and services from the private sector. Those who want a balanced budget* immediately might not like the results.

Indeed, the huge public sector deficits seen in the western world are, in large part, the result of decisions made by the private sector to stop spending. At the aggregate global level, the deficits and surpluses of the private and public sectors must add up to zero (since the balances of individual countries cancel each other out). The public sector has acted as a giant backstop.

All this suggests that some humility is needed from both sides in the economic debate. We cannot run huge public sector deficits forever but that is not the same as saying that we should never run a deficit, nor that we should balance it now. We do not want "too much" government interference in the economy but there are plenty of vital services that the government provides. We are all of us economic parasites in a way, since we are dependent on the decisions and the well-being of others.

* Some people want an amendment that balances the budget only over several years. It is very hard to see how this would work. In Britain, Gordon Brown had a rule that balanced the budget "over the cycle"; when things got tough, he simply redefined the cycle.

farming fairytales

The way that meat, eggs and milk are produced is surrounded by one of our great silences, in which most people collaborate. We don’t want to know, because knowing would force anyone with a capacity for empathy to change their diet.

You break this silence at your peril. After I published an article on chicken farming last week, I had to re-read it to check that I hadn’t actually proposed the slaughter of the firstborn by terrorist devil worshippers – so outraged and vicious were some of the responses. And that was just the consumers.

The producers didn’t like it much either, though their trade associations responded in more measured tones. In letters to the Guardian on Saturday, the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) and the British Poultry Council (BPC) angrily defended the industry. The NFU wrote:

In the UK 90% of all chicken is produced to Red Tractor standards and this demonstrates that the chicken has met production standards developed by experts on animal welfare, safety, hygiene and the environment. Farmers take the welfare of their birds extremely seriously, and therefore to accuse the sector of cruelty is absolutely unfounded.

The BPC maintained that chicken “provides a wholesome, nutritious, sustainable and affordable source of protein, produced by an industry unsubsidised by government.”

Let’s spend a moment examining these claims, before raising the issue of how they get away with it.

Take the key welfare issue, stocking density. Here’s what the government recommendations say:

The maximum stocking density for chickens kept to produce meat for the table should be 34 kg/m2, which should not be exceeded at any time during the growing period.

But the standard for broiler chickens set by the Red Tractor scheme is actually worse:

Planned stocking densities must not exceed 38kg/m2 for broilers

Incidentally, this stocking density – 38kg/m2 – gives each bird an area the size of a piece of A4 paper.

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This meets the legal requirement only because the UK uses a cruel derogation from European law, permitting a maximum stocking density of 39kg/m2. So much for the NFU’s statement about taking the welfare of chickens extremely seriously.

On almost every welfare indicator, and across all the main farm animals, including chickens, Red Tractor scored worse than any other certification scheme evaluated by the charity Compassion in World Farming. Amazingly, the Red Tractor label imposes no restrictions on the growth rates of chickens: it allows the most overbred varieties to be stuffed with high-protein feed, with the result that the birds often suffer from painful and crippling health problems, as their hearts, lungs and legs are overloaded.

As for the BPC’s sustainability claims, if chickens fed on soya – as the great majority in this country are – are sustainable, what does unsustainable look like? Soya production is one of the major agents of the destruction of rainforests, theCerrado and other threatened habitats in South America. The environmental impacts of chickenfeed are, well, anything but chickenfeed. The mass production of chickens has major consequences at the other end of the bird too: the mountains of excrement cause both water and air pollution.

Nor is the claim that this industry is unsubsidised correct. Many chicken growers barely break even on the sale of birds, and survive only as a result of the government’s renewable heat incentive (RHI). This is a remarkably generous scheme whose ostensible purpose is to reduce carbon emissions, but which functions as another subsidy for businesses, especially farms. Most new chicken units use biomass boilers subsidised by the RHI, and it is immensely profitable.

So now to the real question: how do they get away with it? How is it that we, who regard ourselves as a nation of animal lovers, accept such terrible standards of meat production? If dogs and cats were treated as pigs and chickens are, there would be a deafening outcry: in fact there are plenty of people in Britain who campaign against the raising of dogs and cats for food in Asia. But what’s the difference? Why is it acceptable to treat some animals – even creatures as intelligent and capable of suffering as pigs – so brutally, but not others?

In part, this reflects the deep disavowal in which we tend to engage when we eat meat. But I also believe that a major part of the problem is the fairytale view of farming implanted in our minds from the very onset of consciousness.

Many of the books produced for very young children are about farms; and most tell broadly the same story. The animals – generally just one or two of each species – live in perfect harmony with the rosy-cheeked farmer, roaming around freely and talking to each other, almost as if they were members of the farmer’s family. Understandably enough, none of the uncomfortable issues – slaughter, butchery, castration, tusking, separation, battery production, farrowing crates – ever feature.

So deeply embedded is this image that I believe many people go through life unable to dismiss it from their minds. It is not easy to unlearn what we are taught when we’re very young, and even the grim realities of industrial farming cannot displace the storybook images from our minds. At a deep, subconscious level, the farm remains a place of harmony and kindness – and this suits us very well if we want to keep eating meat.

Perhaps the starkest example of this myth-making I’ve come across is a children’s book distributed with Saturday’s Guardian called The Tale of City Sue. It tells the story of a herd of cows on an Irish farm.

“This friendly, Friesian family
were free to roam and browse
and eat the freshest, greenest grass
which made them happy cows.
“They belonged to farmer Finn
Who called them by their names
And when it was their birthday
He brought party hats and games.
“He played his violin for them
inside the milking shed,
and sung them soothing lullabies
when it was time for bed.”

Only after I had unthinkingly read it to my three-year-old then turned the back cover, did I discover that it wasn’t a book at all, but an extended advertisement for Kerrygold butter.

It wasn’t billed as such. The Guardian’s website marketed this publication as “A tale from the meadow of imagination: children’s author Jeanne Willis’s latest book captures the idyllic atmosphere of rural Ireland.” Following my questions to the Guardian, this has now been changed to make its provenance clearer.

I find disguised marketing of any kind objectionable, and disguised marketing to children even worse. I feel that this book misleads children about the nature of farming and milk production and sanitises the relationship between farmers and their animals, on behalf of a large corporation (Kerrygold’s parent company, Adams Foods). It exploits children’s credulity and natural sympathy with animals for corporate profits.

When I challenged the Guardian about this, its spokesperson told me:

All branded content should be clearly labelled for the benefit of our readers in line with our guidelines. On this occasion the insert was not correctly labelled and we apologise for this error.

I also wrote to the author, Jeanne Willis, who replied as follows: “I was commissioned by Kerrygold so it’s best they answer your questions. Xxxx Xxxx from Brazen PR will be in touch soon.”

Brazen PR. Hmmm.

I wrote back, asking her:

Do children’s authors not have a responsibility towards those they write for? Is there not an issue of conscience here for you? After all, if a children’s author is misleading children on behalf of a corporation, that’s a serious matter, surely? It has been done in your name, and promoted as your “latest book”, so simply shrugging off responsibility like this feels wrong to me. You must have a view about whether or not accepting this commission was the right thing to do, and whether you were justified in discharging it as you did.

She responded as follows:

... to the best of my knowledge, Kerrygold seem to be particularly strong on animal welfare so there wasn’t a question that what I created was going to be misleading. The brief was very simple: Kerrygold cows spend a lot of time outside feeding on grassy meadows so let’s tell some fun stories about our cows. I don’t feel it’s exploiting kids because the only take out is that it’s better to feed cows on grass and ensure they spend as much time outside as possible.

I’m very careful which brands I work with to avoid this exact situation – I wouldn’t have done this if I thought it was morally wrong. It’s a storybook for families to enjoy. There is no overt message to buy butter. It’s just about the cows. That said, it clearly says Kerrygold on the inside cover and on the back.

It seems to me that subliminal persuasion of this kind (“the cows are happy”) can be more insidious than overt marketing (“buy our butter”). To my mind, Kerrygold is seeking to persuade people of the inherent goodness of its products at a deeper level than merely flashing up the products.

As for the issue of animal welfare, Kerrygold’s website states “We work with small co-operative farms where small herds are free to graze on lush Irish meadows.” But it does not say “We work only with small co-operative farms ...”.

The parent website run by Adams puts it slightly differently: “Kerrygold is ... owned by Irish dairy farmers, many of their farms are small and family run”. Which could also mean that many of them are not. So I asked the company, “What is your milk buying policy? In other words, what specifications – on scale, feed, the treatment of animals, process etc – do you put in place that your suppliers have to adhere to?” I have not had a response.

From what I can glean, Kerrygold’s marketing seems to rely on the public perception that Irish dairy farms are small and mostly grass-fed. But they are changing fast.

Last summer, 3,000 dairy farmers visited the biggest dairy operation in the country (which has 820 milking animals) to discover how to increase the scale of their operations. This farm has made a major investment in indoor facilities, and supplements the grass they are fed with maize, barley and soya.

According to the former chair of the Irish Farmers’ Association, “scale must go up. ... The dairy farm of the future is going to have to be bigger.”

Could the current Kerrygold marketing blitz be an attempt to embed in our minds a bucolic, superannuated image of an industry that is now changing beyond recognition? If so, it might be an effective way of pre-empting criticism about the changing nature of its suppliers.

Dairy cows, like chickens and pigs, also get a rough deal, while the effluent from dairy farms creates major environmental problems. Imagine the response if children were exposed to such blatant sanitisation of a harsh and polluting industry in any other sector. But so prevalent is this mythologised view of farming, and so wilfully unaware do we remain of the realities of industrial agriculture, that it passes almost without challenge. My guess is that the Guardian made this error – a serious one in my view – partly because the themes Jeanne Willis and Kerrygold exploited are so familiar that they are almost background noise.

Isn’t it time that children’s authors showed a little more imagination and stopped repeatedly churning out the same basic story, even when they are not doing it on behalf of a large corporation?

Is it not time that adults weaned themselves off the fairytale version of farming and began to judge it by the same standards as we would judge other industries?

And is it not time for all of us to become a little more curious about where meat, milk and eggs come from, and how they are produced?

Written by George Monbiot - guardian

Poverty

 Poverty is not caused by men and women getting married; it's not caused by machinery; it's not caused by "over-production"; it's not caused by drink or laziness; and it's not caused by "over-population". It's caused by Private Monopoly. That is the present system. They have monopolized everything that it is possible to monopolize; they have got the whole earth, the minerals in the earth and the streams that water the earth. The only reason they have not monopolized the daylight and the air is that it is not possible to do it. If it were possible to construct huge gasometers and to draw together and compress within them the whole of the atmosphere, it would have been done long ago, and we should have been compelled to work for them in order to get money to buy air to breathe. And if that seemingly impossible thing were accomplished tomorrow, you would see thousands of people dying for want of air - or of the money to buy it - even as now thousands are dying for want of the other necessities of life. You would see people going about gasping for breath, and telling each other that the likes of them could not expect to have air to breathe unless the had the money to pay for it. Most of you here, for instance, would think and say so. Even as you think at present that it's right for so few people to own the Earth, the Minerals and the Water, which are all just as necessary as is the air. In exactly the same spirit as you now say: "It's Their Land," "It's Their Water," "It's Their Coal," "It's Their Iron," so you would say "It's Their Air," "These are their gasometers, and what right have the likes of us to expect them to allow us to breathe for nothing?" And even while he is doing this the air monopolist will be preaching sermons on the Brotherhood of Man; he will be dispensing advice on "Christian Duty" in the Sunday magazines; he will give utterance to numerous more or less moral maxims for the guidance of the young. And meantime, all around, people will be dying for want of some of the air that he will have bottled up in his gasometers. And when you are all dragging out a miserable existence, gasping for breath or dying for want of air, if one of your number suggests smashing a hole in the side of one of th gasometers, you will all fall upon him in the name of law and order, and after doing your best to tear him limb from limb, you'll drag him, covered with blood, in triumph to the nearest Police Station and deliver him up to "justice" in the hope of being given a few half-pounds of air for your trouble.” 
― Robert Tressell, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

What school do you go to?

Land ownership is in fact the very basis of the British class system. It is also the fundamental basis of Andrew Mitchell's "pleb" outburst.

You see the core issue is that in Public Schoolboy parlance, a "pleb" was a pupil who was not a member of the "landed classes" i.e. the titled lot with big estates. If you didn't own a big chunk of the British countryside, then you were a "pleb", a nothing, in Public Schoolboy parlance, no matter how much money your family had.

This theme was continued in the English public schools of the 18th and 19th Centuries, Ian Brookes, consultant editor at Collins Language, said.

He said: "In public school parlance, a pleb was a pupil who was not a member of the landed classes."
line
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30191866

On 26 November I explained on a Hadley Freeman article on the Guardian, why landownership was the fundamental basis of the British Class System. Hadley who is an American who has lived in Britain for a long time, had expressed bafflement at the British obsession with class, and why what school a 60 year old man had been sent to, was so important. I explained it was all about land ownership.
http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/44223585

You will then notice that I was viciously attacked by a Countryside Alliance astroturfer, who has been pursuing me for some time under various pseudonyms for pointing this out.

I had used an unlikely reference to explain this, Country Life magazine.

What we do know, however, is that the aristocracy and the Royal Family still play an important role in the ownership of our country. More than a third of land is still in the hands of aristocrats and traditional landed gentry. Indeed, the 36,000 members of the CLA own about 50% of the rural land in England and Wales.
http://www.countrylife.co.uk/articles/who-really-owns-britain

The CLA is the Country Landowner's Association. They run the annual "Game Fair", the biggest show of its type for the "Huntin, Shootin, Fishin" crowd in the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_Land_and_Business_Association

Whilst the Wikipedia page says not to be confused with the Countryside Alliance, this is misleading and false. Exactly the same major figures are behind both organizations, Britain's wealthiest, and titled landowners. They maybe different organizations, but the same key figures are behind both.

Also the same key figures are behind the British Establishment, and the Conservative Party. Whilst these entities may look different, in fact the same key powerful figures are behind all of them. It is the very basis, the essence of the British Class System - and it is exactly the same clique running all of them. It is like one great big club. Everyone else is just a "Pleb" as far as they are concerned. We are simply a bunch of "plebs" to these people, who don't count, something they wipe of the bottom of their shoes.

All this democracy rubbish and everyone is equal under the law, is just one great big sham. It's just a con to deceive the "plebs", and to stop them revolting against the system, and overthrowing this "secret club" that has run Britain for the last 1000 years. I kid you not.

That is what the Domesday Book was about nearly 1000 years ago, who owns Britain. It was the obsession of William the Conqueror, and it has been the obsession of those that have ruled Britain for the last 1000 years or more.

Land is the fountain of youth. It belongs to your children's children..... not you. A major portion of your life should be dedicated to attaining it for them.

fuck money

six steps to fuck money

Wake up and get wise to your situation. money OWNS you..... and its time to tell it to FUCK OFF!

Find free food - grow or forage, hunt or fish if you must. know what you can eat that grows locally. know where your next meal is coming from.

Draw up your PCP (Personal Capitulation Plan) - disinvestment - no stocks, no shares, no bonds or certificates. 

Liquidate your possessions - second homes, second cars and all your useless leisure toys. turn it all into cash.

Foreclose on your life - cut up your cards, close your accounts and cancel your subscriptions. We don't need money to have a good time.

Spread the message - try to convince your family and friends to fuck money too!

Actions speak louder than money - the rich will buy gold... the wealthy will buy food and fuel.... while the poor go shoplifting.

Remember... politicians, lawyers, priests and bankers are all out to fuck you over