Insanity

It may seem superfluous to some if I here report something which has recently already been published in Hbl, but I think there are pieces of news which simply cannot be repeated / mentioned / discussed too often.

Thus: In Hbl of Sö 9.11., p.25, Peter Buchert was publishing a ”Post Scriptum” titled ”Klimatbibeln mot Moseboken”. The reason for his piece was that the Republican party of the USA, which recently won big in the midterm elections, seems to be on the way to make a certain James Inhofe the chairman of the US senate’s environmental committee. James Imhofe has been coming out with a book titled ”The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future”, in which he is reasoning that it is God, not man, who is controlling the globe, by which it is impossible that humans could change the climate.

It is of course interesting that all of a sudden it seems to be allowed again to come out with conspiracy theories (which was after 9/11 usually treated as a sign of something like mental disease by the media), but more important it may be to consider what this (probable) move of the Republican party might mean for our future and, in consequence, concerning the political steps to be taken:

It is fairly obvious that the Republicans consider this step in order to keep their financial supporters on their side: people who try to fight the climate change should not expect money from the fossil fuel industry … . The consequences for the globe seem to be some smaller concern – people with money will always have the possibility to buy a beautiful island and also pay the armed guards who keep unwanted outsiders away, i.e. it is not them who are going to suffer any serious consequences. And this line is already being followed by all Anglo-Saxon, conservative governments (such as Australia, Canada, UK). Instead, it is the poor ones in the developing world, and in the long run even us a little bit, who will do the suffering.

Now the states of Western Europe claim to be democracies (while the USA are to quite some extent already a financial oligarchy), with governments who are supposed to look after the interests of the electorate. And what should the electorate now demand from their governments? Well, (a) they should demand that governments should give up their idiotic belief in the preachings of neoliberal economists (preachings which have been ripped apart in midair by Ha-Joon Chang and others) and instead begin to develop some own initiative (as the Chinese government is doing all the time), and (b) they should put a quarantine on the ideas of the US Republican party and its followers in other countries, e.g. not take ANY risks about letting representatives of those ideas impose conditions what democratic governments should be allowed to do and what not (e.g. in matters of trade). In practice this would mean the end of trade agreements like TTIP and similar. This may have to be accepted (although the trade is running very smoothly already now, the need for a TTIP obviously less than urgent).

And what can WE, readers of Hbl and writers in this blog, now do to hinder our government from doing idiotic and dangerous things? Well, at least we can try our best to spread ideas which are critical of neoliberalism in general (pointing at the same to according books, Ha-Joon Changs books VERY fitting for the purpose, Li Andersson’s and Susanna Koski’s ”Punavihreä – Sinivalkoinen” to be considered), e.g. by giving fitting books as presents, writing letters to our newspapers (I anyway am frequently writing emails to journalists), speaking up in public discussions. And while doing so we can try to USE CLEAR LANGUAGE: the neoliberal ideas are largely PROVEN WRONG, and somebody like James Inhofe is at the very least NEUROTIC, IF NOT WORSE. And to make agreements with such people (especially agreements which include small print) is CRIMINALLY CARELESS.