A Thought on Capitalism

From a Talking Trumpet and the Wildest Slides

33 Minutes of the Blues

With the talents of

Mississippi Fred McDowell
Maggie Jones
Victoria Spivey
Clyde McCoy
Billie Holiday
Dave Hole
Fiona Boyes

Armenian Genocide – Australian Genocide

An interesting article which, although it does not mention Australia, applies to Australia.

Especially in our current discussion of the ‘Voice’. –

I make no other comment. I shall leave that to the reader.

https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/armenian-genocide/

Thoughts on Our Local God’s Birth

I wrote this back in 2006. Perhaps it needs a republication.

I am currently reading E.O. James “The Ancient Gods” (First published 1960). I set out hoping to find some information for my essay on the Flood. There is very little in this volume which will assist me. Just two mentions of the Biblical Flood and two more of the Mesopotamian Flood. He sets all of these in the 3^rd millennium BCE. Sorry, Professor James, your chronology is more influenced by Bishop Usher than by the facts on the ground.

Still, there is always something to be learned in any book. I actually learned a lot about life from Alice in Wonderland. And Physics. I learned, from one of the illustrations in my edition of Alice, that girls can fall great distances safely. Their dress acts as a parachute. Even now, I believe in fallen girls – – –

But I digress!

James raises an interesting fact about early Mesopotamian and Egyptian Gods and Goddesses. He quotes Langdon (Tammuz and Ishtar, 1914) on the importance of male Gods depending on the importance of the cities where their chief cult was based. Yet behind all the citied Gods was a prehistoric belief in the female.

The birth cult was brought into step with the seasonal cycle and its vegetative sequence in agricultural societies in Mesopotamia, Egypt, possibly the Indus region and as far afield as North Eastern China. Here the Goddess was often found, not with a consort, but with a son. So that, according to Langdon, in prehistoric times there was a divinity in which the female predominated.

This Earth Goddess was conceived as the generative power in nature and so she became responsible for the Spring renewal of life after the death of the year in a Winter. She was multi-formed in her being, both mother and bride. She became known by many names and epithets ranging from Inanna, Ishtar, Aruru, to Gaia and Rhea. One key to her effect in a society was the co-existence of her son, the major God of the region.

The cultus of the “Goddess and Son” was widespread in ancient times and only came to an end with the spread of Christianity with its Trinity of male God(s). I find it passing strange that James does not mention that one member of that Trinity had a mother. Or that that mother has become known as “The Mother of God”.

Is the biblical Mary simply the continuance of an ancient religious tradition which dates back to the beginnings of agriculture and possible even further? Is there an unconscious matriarchal tradition which has been hidden by the patriarchal religions of Rome, Greece and Jerusalem. Yet the need to acknowledge the generative and regenerative forces within the nature of which we are a part, ensures that it appears in all societies through a form of racial or species memory.

Perhaps the primal and unconscious urge to worship is not the urge to worship the male, but urge to worship the female.

Rhyming History

As Mark Twain once wrote; “History never repeats itself, but it often rhymes”

84 years ago the world watched trustingly while the then growing bully power swallowed up its smaller neighbour.

In that case it led to a meeting between leaders and a conservative Prime Minister waving a piece of paper declaring ‘peace in our time’.

Our Grandparents tell us what happened next.

In this case our leaders are waving the wet lettuce leaf of ‘Sanctions’ at the bully.

Sanctions the Bully knows will only last until the plutocrats begin to lose money.

Vale Ukraine.

And whichever is the Bully’s next target!

Thoughts on Ukraine

No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe;

every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine;

if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse,

as well as if a Promontorie were,

as well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine owne were;

any mans death diminishes me because I am involved in Mankinde;

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.

John Donne

Happy Birthday, Sydney

Thomas Jefferson on the USA

The Trumps and Synchronicity

Frederick Trump

(born Friedrich Trumpf; 14 March 1869 – 30 May 1918)

Ran away from Bavaria to avoid conscription. (They didn’t have bone spurs back then.)

Made his fortune in Alaska owning brothels.

Died in 1918 of Spanish Flu in the pandemic – – –

Donald J Trump

Developed bonespurs to avoid conscription.

Made (and lost) several fortunes running hotels of ill-repute in New York.

We are now in a COVID-19 pandemic

I wonder if synchronicity will continue – – –

 

Sorry, Returned Services League.

Today the RSL in WA announced that Welcome to Country was no longer welcome at Anzac Day or Remembrance Day ceremonies.

More of the ‘Crouching Racism, Hidden Privilege’ syndrome we are seeing rearing its very ugly head again.

It is so convenient to again forget that indigenous people helped defend this country and, on their return from the fighting, were reduced, again, to ‘fauna’.

It is so much fun marching backwards!

 

Our Free Market; Maggots and Tapeworms

As is my wont, I have been reading of some interesting developments in the field of archaeology. Especially those in the area of the development of civilisation. The transition from Hunter-Gatherers to Agriculturalists and Pastoralists.

I am also subject, on a daily basis to media commentary on the ‘Free Market.’

It led me to think seriously about humanity’s march from there to the modern Nation State. How has society changed and are there any lessons hidden in history? More specifically, how and where did this ‘Free Market’ thing evolve?

And, do I support it?

In the dim distant past, our ancestors cooperated with each other. Had they not, then sabre toothed tigers would have sent us extinct before our ladies had a chance to learn about agriculture.

Then, without a need to hunt for food, we blokes muscled in on the agricultural scene and found a way to regulate it, to help it grow and to control it. Women could now be locked up inside the cave, for their own safety of course. This great new way of life also led to other human tribes invading and killing us which wasn’t the best thing for the cropping cycle.

Kings and Emperors and petty Princelings began to rule over us. Gods were invented and had to be fed, just as the other Rulers were. Of course there was a warrior caste whose job was not to farm but to protect the farms. They had to be fed as well. “Tax” was invented so the leaders, the soldiers and those who talked to God were able to do their thing without having to actually produce anything. The farmers were a bit of a problem but they bred freely so were always replaceable.

There was a lot of confusion about just how society should be ordered so a very wise King named Hammurabi wrote everything down in the world’s first set of Laws. Now everyone was happy so the status quo lasted for thousands of years.

OK. We are up to the Middle Ages

Still no sign of a “Free Market”

Then the peasants in France got upset and cut off the heads of everyone who had bullied them in the past. Suddenly there was the French Revolution and the American War of Independence. In an orgy of Democracy, and in a two hundred year blink of humanity’s eyelid, Rulers and their class lost their heads and were swept away.

In that tidal wave of Democracy, everyone was free. Well, almost everyone. Slaves were not really human so they could not be free and women were definitely inferior to humans so they didn’t get a say in anything. But everyone else was free!

Democracy is in a museum.
Is it extinct?

No! Of course the Orientals couldn’t be free. They weren’t proper humans either. If they were they would have invented Democracy.

So everything became free. And everyone had a vote. And of course the Market had to be free as well. Please don’t ask me why, it just had to be. Everyone still had to pay taxes. To themselves, of course since it was all democratic. Even your business had to pay taxes. That was something sacrosanct. It had been so since time immemorial when Pharaohs had to finance wars against Hittites.

Just as it had become a human tradition to attempt to reduce the amount of tax they owed to God, the King or to themselves. Even at the risk of losing their head or their liberty.

One problem with all this Democracy and Free Thinking was that the rate of invention went up and there were suddenly lots of new stuff around. Some of it was quite big new stuff and needed lots of cooperation to create. Sort of a throwback to the cooperation of the distant past when it was needed to create a dead mammoth. Lots of bloodthirsty savages temporarily working together.

So big ships, big telephone systems, big railways all got built by these cooperating savages. And everything got faster. And spread further. So the biggest of the bloodthirsty savages from all over the world finally got to cooperate with each other. But that is only a difference in scale. Not something new.

Perhaps there was something I missed. Something very early on I hadn’t seen.

Uh Oh.

I just spotted an example of the Law of Unintended Consequences. Hammurabi’s Laws needed someone to explain them. Throughout this Body of Law, some maggots began spreading. And they became known as “Lawyers”!

Through ages of interpreting, re-interpreting and, when all else failed, by rewriting the Law, Lawyers became the only ones who could understand it.

For much of civilised time, we ordinary mortals just shook our heads and got on with life. Male mortals, of course because women, slaves and Orientals could not hope to understand important stuff like that.

Lawyers noticed that Democracy had made everyone “free” and so some of them set their mind to determine the ramifications. If people were free, and we have a free market, then obviously the inhabitants of “The Market” had to be free as well. And so Lawyers determined that the Companies within the Free Market were as free as people. In fact that determination led to the conclusion that Companies are People as well.

Now, finally, we have found something new.

The Gods had been sort of people, incorporeal but existent, for millennia, yet they only lasted for a while before being replaced. Now we have Companies which are an incorporeal construct yet being treated as though they have a mind and a soul of their own. They must be people for they grow and grow and now cover the world.

Now is not the time to go into the 127 real born of woman, human people who control those Companies.

Instead we should look at the consequences of these Companies being People. These Companies are the Free Market. The Free Market, which, according to the Free (umm – no it isn’t) Media, I should be supporting. Supporting totally because I am free as well.

• Just as people in a Democracy have a vote, the Free Market Members have a vo –

NO THEY DON’T! But they can lobby and bribe and corrupt.

• Just as people in any Governmental system pay taxes, the Free Market Members pay taxe

NO THEY DON’T! Well, yes they do, within the limits that they allow the Government to tax them.

• Just as people in in any jurisdiction who break the law go to jail, the Free Market Members go to ja

NO THEY DON’T! They do not go to Jail, except for an occasional “human person” scapegoat. They become too big to fail. They are certainly never executed for all the deaths they cause.

If Lawyers are the maggots in our body politic, then these Free Market Members have become the parasitic tapeworms within that body!

And so, supporters of the magnificently Free Media, my response to you is, “No! I do not support the Free Market.”

My question to you is, “Do you support the right of tapeworms to suck the life out of you?”

Slightly rewritten from a blog post on this blog in 2012

I See A Time

I see a time when governance has reverted to the bullying of the weak by the strong.

I see a time when politics is once again naked warfare between warlords.

I see a time when taxation is redundant for the wages of the poor will be wholly consumed by the inflated prices they pay for the products they make.

I see a time when the poor are the slaves and villeins and serfs and property of the warlords.

I see a time when the very thought of revolution will be bred out of the slaves.

I see a time when thinking of change will be punishable by death.

I see a time when the truth of the day varies with the warlord of the day.

I see a time when history and the past are malleable.

I see a time when the future is the next lash from an overseer.

I see a time when I will not be allowed to write this.

I see a time when democracy is no more.

Those Ancient Greeks!

Those ancient Greeks were a wild bunch.

Always fighting, fornicating and fermenting stuff.

Drunken revels were a major part of their evening but one writer person was quite obnoxious.

As it happened he finally got up someone’s nose so badly that he received a punch on HIS nose.

It was the first time anyone hit a Homer – – –

Check the Eyes

Happy Birthday, New South Wales