speculum: reflections on life's difficult bits
TRANSCRIPT
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7/31/2019 Speculum: Reflections on life's difficult bits
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SPECULUM
Elias Chn
Reflections on lifes difficult bits
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FIRSTCHAPTER
We all knowwhat a
speculum is,
right?
Er, no
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WHAT IS IT to be alive in the
present moment? Our world
seems to be dazzled by form
and heedless of content; experiences once
lived directly are now lived by proxythrough television, films, magazines,
computer games
We are, for example,
invited to intrude on
others private grief as
the media stick their
microphones and
cameras into the faces
of those newly
bereaved or subject of
some horrendous
accident, as if this,
somehow, fulfils our
quota of feelings for
the moment. And thatis the news. Later we
are bidden to witness
the agonies of
overweight teens,
overweight adults,
people horribly
disfigured by
cosmetic surgery that went awry, and so
on, as entertainment. This, apparently,
assuages our guilt, reinforces our
smugness, and allows us to draw moral
lessons from the palpable idiocy, not to say
culpability, of others, as we let our own
grief and agony fade into the background
as noise, something we can, and should,suppress, for the greater good of a society
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that requires acquiescence and, preferably,
indifference to the everyday monstrosities
that exist in our own lives. Society? In
reality nothing more nor less than an
artificially created reality foisted upon
civilisation by a triumphalist and out of
control capitalism supported by ever moreirrelevant national governments who
increasingly lack the the power the stop it,
and in any case lack the will to do so. It is
panem et circenses, bread and circuses,
designed to keep everyone quiescent and
therefore safe. We are therefore inveigled
into putting our anger, our pain and our
distress into places where they will do no
harm, where they will pose no threat to a
status quo that can only survive in the face
of a widespread alienation from what is
happening to us every day. Indeed, are we
capable any more of feeling our own grief?
Our consolation for this major sacrifice of a
lived life is sublimation in the world of thecommodity, things replacing feeling and
experience, gadgets replacing curiosity
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with momentary novelty, and various
kinds of narcotics, from booze, to dope, to
the telly, to the manufactured lives of all
those Z-list celebrities cluttering up the
world with vacuity but softening theexperience of the agony of existence in a
world without meaning, a world in which
any meaning there was (and there was
precious little of it in the first place) has
been stripped away and replaced with a
consumer identity. Want to feel sad? Go to
a weepy movie. Want to feel heroic? Go to
an action movie. Want to feel angry? Go
and see a socially meaningful movie, or
better yet an anodyne documentary
carefully constructed so we cant identify
the real villains. We can feel anything we
want to, vicariously, so long as we pay for
it, and so long as it doesnt leak out onto
the streets, where it will quickly belabelled as a problem.
THESE DAYS we are no longer what
we are (whatever that may mean),
nor are we any longer what we do
or what we believe. We are, irrevocably,
what we own.
Admittedlythis is not
much of an
original
insight; many
have seen it
coming, or have noted its establishment in
the social psyche. But it marks a massiveshift in what we understand to be the
nature of what it is to be human. Those
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who own, those who are capable of
owning, and those who seek to own, are
the currently manufactured heroes of the
market. Conversely, those who do not
own, or are incapable of owning, arescroungers and parasites. Worst of all,
those who do not wish to own, or who are
actively seeking identities beyond
commodity relations, are the most
dangerous enemies of all, undermining
civilisation as global capitalism wishes it
to be understood. Authenticity, however
defined, and the seeking of meaning
beyond the ownership of stuff, especially
transitory tat with built-in obsolescence,
are to be shunned, execrated and vilified,
or lampooned as unrealistically idiotic,
because that way lies no profit. Unless,
that is, capitalism can find a way to render
them safe and profitable, in which casethey will be co-opted. Consider, for
example, the liberating effects of buying
new tatty furniture with a Scandinavian
design ethic. Or the liberation of driving
an over-powered car that has an
impossible top speed for safe driving on
any conceivable public road and a price
tag that only the highest paid parasites can
even hope to meet. This is liberation as
capitalism wants it; this is liberation as
lifestyle aspiration. And aspiration is only
legitimate when it turns a profit. The
aspiration for world peace, for equality,
and plenty, and simplicity away from the
rat race, are hopelessly idealistic,troublesome, and dangerous, unless, of
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course, one can buy them,
contrive to make a profit
from them, or find a safe
outlet valve for them
such as a pop concert.
FOR MANY,
perhaps most
people who are
in work, each day
comprises a series of
dispiriting encounters
with what passes for aproductive or legitimate
occupation. But producing
what, exactly? And how
legitimate? The answer to the first
seems simply to be producing whatever
will make money, regardless of whether it
is necessary or even desirable. This seemsalso to be the criterion for the second,
legitimacy, although the state, which
presides over spectacular society, is very
careful to exclude certain activities from the
class of legitimate occupation, such as drugs
peddling and organised crime. These
activities are solely the province ofthe state
(and its chums in business) which doesntwant any uppity freelance entrepreneurs
muscling in on its territory, unless they pay
the right people for the privilege. What is,
after all, a legal license to sell, say, drugs,
except a form of protection money paid to
the state, which then legitimises any
outrages perpetrated on the powerlesspublic, i.e. those who dont have a pass card
to the sanctums of the oligarchy?
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Nevertheless, those with lots of money are
still treated with respect irrespective of how
that money was made in the first place. A
self identified Mafia Don, for example, is
unlikely to be turned away from even theposhest of places just because he made his
money by dodgy methods. Nor
will he be turned
away from the
m o s t
respectable of
cabals within
the government
or big
business, just
so long as he
is discreet about it and doesnt bring
too much embarrassing publicity with him.
It just might be related to the extensive range
of extreme responses he might have at hisdisposal for retaliation if upset, but this is
true of all wealthy people, whether or not
they have a penchant for the direct methods
of the concrete welly or the more indirect,
and therefore more sinister methods of
litigation. As to organised crime, that really
depends on how the crime is committed and
whether it gets noticed. For example the
crimes of Enron were only regarded as such
once they were found out and couldnt be
hushed up any more. Similarly with the
banks and bankers who precipitated the
worldwide financial crisis that the poor
people of the world are now
expected to pay for. The plain fact isthat their crime was getting caught out. Had
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they not been
rumbled, had
Bernie Madoff not
made off with
everyones money,had Lehmann
Brothers managed
to keep their greedy
secrets secret a
while longer, had
RBS been more
careful with its
avarice, had
Goldbrick Sucks not
been caught out with
their all too
clever schemes
for defrauding
the public, and
had all thebarrow boys
working in the
City kept their
gobs shut, then
their crimes
would have
passed unnoticed,
suspected but
unnoticed. As it is
the cats out of the
bag and everyone
knows about it. All
this was presaged
by Nick Leeson,
r e m e m b e rhim? He
For
the
record
,fl
yzipsop
en
an
dclo
se
,
jus
tincaseyouwe
rewon
dering
fnordwas the creative
entrepreneur who
destroyed Barings Bank.
At the time he was
regarded, or at leastbilled as an aberration,
someone who was
simply out of control,
and not at all like the
more respectable bankers
elsewhere. But it turns
out he was in reality a
herald of what was to
come, a kind of John the
Baptist figure announcing
the good news that
we were all going to
get royally screwed
by all those
respectable bankers,in fact that we
already were being
royally screwed but
hadnt noticed yet.
What the bankers did
to us, and are still
doing, is by any
decent moral code,
criminal, in terms of
natural justice if not in
terms of the current
body of laws that are
meant to protect us all
(so we are told) but
which in point offact do a much
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better job of protecting the very rich, often the s a m e
p e o p l e who are happily ripping us all off and from
whom we need protection in the first place. C ur io us l y ,
h ow ev er , the great crimes perpetrated by the financial
s e r v i c e s sector have been scurrilously rebranded asnot - cr i mes . We have been told that the great majority of
bankers are really awfully nice chaps and chappesses
(mainly chaps) who are terribly sorry for what
happened, and that it was all the fault of a few bad eggs
rather than being endemic to the whole of the modern
banking system, indeed an essential aspect of
what modern banking is, which is to say corrupt
and avaricious. But the public had to be
appeased, which is to say, lulled back into a
stupefied torpor, so sacrificial goats had to be
found. And, joy of joys, they were. Now we the public are
being told by the powers that be that the demand for
justice (revenge?) has been satisfied and that
therefore we should all shut up and let
bygones be bygones. Somehowthey believe (or pretend to believe)
that by sacrificing ole Bernie to the
judicial system, and forcing Fred
Goodwin (Fred the Shred to his mates,
but Freddie the Shreddie sounds
better) to take a cut in pension, justice and
fairness have been restored and we should
all be satisfied with that. Bob Diamond, big
cheese at Barclays, meanwhile avers that
the banks have done enough grovelling and
that everyone should leave them alone. It
almost sounds plaintive when put that
way, but really the banks have done
nowhere near enough grovelling for the
damage they have caused. One sacrificialgoat, a few tut tuttings around the
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wine bars and a rich bastard being
forced to relinquish a piddling
amount from an obscenely large
pension pot is not nearly enough to
cut it, especially when it is now clear
just how much pain is going to be
suffered by the not-great (that is, notfilthy rich) to sort out the mess. As
a footnote to this, the
aforementioned Mr. Diamond was
recently awarded a bonus of 6.5m
(March 2011), which together with
his 2.5m salary and other perks
means he was given over 20m for
his work in 2010, and this just as
the rest of the UK population was
beginning to wonder whether luxuries such as
food might still be worth spending their money
on. Compare that 20m with the mere 4m that
Worcester County Council just announced it
had available to spend on community
projects. No wonder old Diamond Knickerswants everyone to avert their angry gaze
parasite par st, n. a hanger-on
or sycophant who frequents
anothers table: one who lives
at the expense of society or of
others and contributes nothing:
an organism that lives in or on
another organism and derives
subsistence from it without
rendering it any service in
return:
Chambers English Dictionary
Its all a matter of energy
exchange really. When anorganism simply takes energy
away from another without any
reciprocity, then that organism
is a parasite. The modern
entrepreneur likes to think of
himself or herself as a predator,
because that is a noble image.
But predators at least have thegood manners to ensure that
some of the prey species is alive
for the future, whereas
parasites have no such noble
intentions. Short sighted? Yes,
but thats the parasite mentality
for you.
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away from the banks. One wonders
what he did to deserve such
largesse, especially since Barclays
shares are worth only about one
third of what they should be, andare roughly at only half their
value of a year ago. Not that its
easy to sympathise with
Barclays shareholders, but if
this is a criterion of success then
one wonders what failure
looks like.
It beggars belief just how
arrogant these people
really are. Not content
with fleecing people of their
money whenever possible,
they crawl cap-in-hand to
their mates in government tobale them out when things get a bit sticky,
using, it must be said, money extracted without any choice from all the
citizens who actually have to pay all their taxes because they cant afford
clever creative accountants to help them avoid or evade tax liabilities, unlike
the banks who prefer to fiddle their tax liabilities whenever possible. They
then pretend that everything is hunky dory at their end and award
themselves huge bonuses again as if nothing were awry. Even RBS, which
on the latest estimation is technically still in debt to the country to the tune ofgrillions of quid, has just announced bonuses for its top people! And they
still want us to like them and trust them!
Handsomelookingdevil,inee?Butonlyifyouliketheaestheticsofthecorpse.
The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the
most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented. Banking was
conceived in inequity and born in sin But if you want to continue to be the
slaves of the bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let the bankerscontinue to create money and control credit.
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ALL OF THIS could have been simply ironic, but it is alas entirelyinevitable that institutions who do everything in their power toavoid paying their fair whack into the exchequer, that is to say,avoid making a fair contribution to the commonweal at large, and indeed
seem to avoid making any genuinely positive contributions to society atall (as opposed to the private bits of society inhabited by the megarich),
then beg for assistance from that same exchequer when they find
themselves short of brass. The narrative is very simple. To the banks
everyones money is theirs by right, and they will get it by hook or by crook. To
add insult to injury they then hike all their fees to their customers as well,
as if its all our fault that the mess happened in the first place. Sadly, the
truth is that it probably is our fault, because we always let them get away
with it. Of course they have armies of rich lawyers and accountants on
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their side to help them stave off any attempt to make them play fair, plus
all their chums in high political office, but they have been ripping us off
for so long now that most of us have become convinced, in a lazy
complacent unreflective way, that this is normal. But it isnt. This is
capitalism showing itself for what it really is: misanthropic; anti-social;dangerous; amoral; parasitical and self regarding. The rest of us? Just
fodder for the bottom line, and nothing more. And this is just the start. It is
going to get much, much worse as globalisation takes hold, because
globalisation is nothing less than letting capital off the leash of what few
restraints remain to hold back its avarice thus leaving it free to roam the
planet looking for plunder wherever and whenever it pleases.
Globalisation will render capitalism completely untrammelled by the ties
of community, country or territory, or even nature itself. This is the best of
all possible worlds for the capitalist mentality: capitalism as a metanational
phenomenon, rather than a merely multinational one. In such a scenario
people will no longer matter in the
slightest except in their capacity to be
exploited. At the time of writing this,
HSBC has just issued a bare threat to
the UK: stop trying to tax us or we willrelocate to somewhere else which is
nothing if not a scurrilous
invitation to allow capitalists, in
this case bankers, to do whatever they
please, outside the common law,
outside general morality, and certainly
beyond ordinary human decency. More
companies will undoubtedly follow
because at the moment no-one can stop
them, and they know it. Government
is becoming increasingly irrelevant
to the process as it becomes plain
that large metanational
corporations can (and invariably
do) hold whole countries toransom if they dont get their way.
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The overriding (false) metaphysic is that of competitive edge in their
wholly made-up sacralised market in which everything is monetised
and simple (social) values are either derided or trodden underfoot.
MEANWHILE BACK in the world of real bona fide people, as
opposed to life sapping parasites, life seems increasingly to be
more a matter of smoke and mirrors than actual living. Or
perhaps a better characterisation might be through the looking glass
because nothing is as it seems; image and appearance are everything,
substance nothing. Public life seems more than ever to be devoid of
integrity, and appears to be based on no discernible values except a crude
pragmatism that has abandoned all pretence of morality and ethics. This
presents no real surprise, however, since capitalism is essentially amoral,although often straying into the outright immoral. Life for most people
has no honour to it, not even as a struggle against the elements, each day
sapping vitality rather than replenishing it. Work, for the bulk of the
population, remains little more than drudgery, with little of joy to it, and
that despite the great promises of technological
advancement. Nothing, it
seems, has any genuineintrinsic value any more
except in terms of its market
value, not even people
themselves. In the world of
the image, only the image
matters; substance, reality are
mere chimera of a past world,
or of a world that never was.Like the prestidigitators that
they are, which is to sayfaux
magicians, the curators of the
image can slip and change
reality to their whims,
leaving nothing with even
momentary solidity.Everything is in flux, but at
the deliberate behest of those
Itisneithersafenorsensibletocarryawireg
arrotteinyourbra
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who control the magic lantern show that we all
now inhabit.
THERE ARE, of course, several venerable
philosophical traditions asserting that
everything is, quite naturally, in flux. The
Taoists, for example, and Heraclitus of Ephesus,
he of the river into which no-one steps twice,
spring immediately to mind. Their original
insight became in time a truism, because most
people find it relatively easy to assent to a
proposition such as even the mountainschange. But the whole idea has been hijacked by
the spectacle for its own advantage. It is yet
another appropriation made by the forces of
avarice. What was a relatively benign
observation on the state of nature has been
turned into an attack on people, especially those
who need to work to keep themselves housedand fed. In its current interpretation it is held to
mean, for example, that the idea of a job for life,
or a professional specialism, or the idea of
personal pride in ones work, have now become
moribund on account of natural changes in the
world of work, not that most jobs were ever
worth much in the first place except as a means
of buying food to keep barely alive. It is alsoused as an excuse for a constant changing of
order, leaving nothing to stabilise, even
momentarily, because stability has become
inconvenient to the spectacle, much as tradition
has. The deliberate and regular destabilisation of
life is intended to keep people in a state of
permanent uncertainty, always off balance, andtherefore permanently frightened and on the
defensive. This is a preemptive strike against the
BL
AN
K
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Verwirrung
Season of Chaos1st January - 14th March
Thesis (Tricylce)
Yin
The point from which all societies
begin and to which they return. The
natural state of humanity. Eris, Isis,
Ishtar, Kuan Yin, Kali.
Zweitracht
Season of Discord15th March - 26th May
Antithesis (Tricycle)
YangAppearance of a ruling class. Leads
directly to discord.
Osiris, Yehovah, Zeus, Odin and all
other male deities. The all-seeing
eye.
Unordnung
Season of Confusion27th May - 7th August
Synthesis (Tricycle)Attempt to restore balance by
unnatural means, leading to
confusion. Loki, the Devil, Mercury,
Thoth, Raven, Coyote. Annihilation
of the biogram by the logogram.
Beamtenherrschaft
Season of Bureaucracy8th August - 19th October
Parenthesis (Bicycle)
The void. Deterioration. Great souls
held in restraint by inferior people.
Grummet
Season of Aftermath20th October - 31st December
Paralysis (Bicycle)
Transition back to chaos.
Bureaucracy chokes on its ownpaperwork and lack of integrity.
Many begin to deny the logoram
and embrace the biogram.
Hermaphrodite, union of male and
female.
possibility of opposition, preventing any
serious organisation of a counter movement
by forcing people into an isolated
individualism that undermines any vestiges of
solidarity, or even simple sympathy for others
struggling to keep some semblance of order in
a deliberately created chaos of everyday life.
This is a deliberately created image, however,
based on a wilfully false reading of Darwinian
Evolution and riding roughshod over all the
evidence, social, historical, anthropological
and biological, that human beings are social
animals who require sociality or conviviality,
as Illich puts it, in order to survive. Thespectacle has replaced sociality with a war of
each against all which will eventually see the
demise of humanity, perhaps even the planet,
if it is not challenged, and soon.
THE ATTACK on the basic social nature
of people all stems from the work of
various arch sorcerers of the spectacle,
mainly economists and their fellow travellers,
who claim that keeping people in a state of
uncertainty motivates them to work harder
(for capital, not necessarily for their own
wellbeing). That this is a self serving myth
based on no genuine idea of what actually
motivates real people is besides the point, forthem. They invoke the spirit of the fictitious
rational actor from the dark realms of
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sucking out of human
dignity, worth and enthusiasm for life.They make life miserable and therefore not
worth living.
IRONICALLY serial
killers, by virtue of the
fact that they actually kill
people as their adopted modus
operandi, are more honest abouttheir misanthropy than
serial reorganisers (albeit
with an understandable
desire to be relatively discreet about it). In
general they make little pretence of doing
good, except, perhaps, when they are
commanded by the inner voices to clean the worldup a bit. Serial reorganisers, in
contrast, trumpet their
activities as a moral good,
presenting themselves as the doers
of good works for the future
welfare of all, whilst never
failing to fall back on the vast
array of traditionally indirecttools of democratic tyranny
and injustice when
challenged. This is the
standard ploy of the
cowardly when faced
with their own perfidy. Whilst
claiming to be on the side ofprogress, when they are
thwarted or opposed, their
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invariable standard response is to
make immediate recourse to thecriminal law, or the threat of it, to force
through their decisions. Negotiation,
the approach favoured by civilised
well adjusted people, is seldom
considered, no matter how well
reasoned any opposition might be,
unless it is on the terms set by thespectacle itself, those which guarantee
success for power from the outset.
There is no authenticity or integrity in
any of this; the truth is that such
people serve only the progress of
capitals ability to exploit more
efficiently and effectively (a favourite
phrase of this species and its allies).
They are nothing more than bullies
using a very old ploy to camouflage
Thought you were one of the farmers, eh?
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their misanthropy, that of claiming
that what they are about is
perfectly legal, whilst brushing
questions of the morality of their
behaviour under any convenientfloor covering. They make
extensive use of the law and of
contracts which are supposed to be
sacrosanct, until, that is, their
masters find them inconvenient;
they make expansive promises,
which are ignored just as soon as
they get in the way; they fall back
cynically on the rhetoric of a
future in which all will be well
for everyone, whilst caring nothing
about the people they destroy, the
values they destroy, the cultures
they destroy, and the communities
they destroy. Capitalism has formfor this kind of behaviour. If you
want a stark historical precedent
have a look at the treatment of the
North American Native Indians
who, in the nineteenth century,
finally found their way of life, land
and their dignity stolen from them
in just this sort of way. And it
continues even now.
The crowning cynicism of the
serial reorganiser is,
however, that such
creatures dont even seem to care
very much about what they aredoing; it is merely a job not a
vocation. From experience they
It is good to study history, if only to
appreciate how Power does not change
its spots, nor indeed its tactics very
much. Time and progress may bring
forth slight variations, but essentially
the way Power deals with the powerless
remains pretty much the same as it
always has. Lies, trickery and deceit are
the main weapons, supplemented by a
monopoly on the framing and
enforcement of the laws that are
supposed to work for the protection of
the commonweal, but only ever work
for the protection of property and the
welfare of the rich. Tricksy lawyers have
always been culpable in the process, ashave avaricious bankers.
Dee Brown (1970)Bury My Heart
at Wounded Knee. London: Vintage.
ISBN: 0-09-952640-9
Ifthisbo
okdoesntmakeyouangry,
nothingwill
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seem not to care if the outcome of their actions is positive or negative, just
so long as they win the plaudits and monetary rewards for being good pet
hounds for their masters, slavering at their feet awaiting scraps of bounty
from the masters table. It is a vast exercise in inauthenticity. Alas they areto be found everywhere, spreading their moral vacuity through the whole
fabric of culture and life itself. Its as if there is some mysterious spawning
ground in which they procreate well away from the anxious gaze of real
people. Their modus operandi is to
destabilise absolutely everything, and
then get out of the way before the
waste matter has an interface scenariowith the rotating air
displacement
apparatus, thus to
escape the
repercussions
of their
behaviour.
They are
amongst the
current street
fighters of the spectacle, the
heroes of the capitalist fantasy, but,
like all street fighters, once they
have reached the end of their
usefulness (and thus becomeinconvenient), they will be sacrificed,
just like their own
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victims, by those who currently
employ and applaud them. Perhaps
they should study some history and
look closely at what happens to
thugs who lose their usefulness topower by reading what happened,
for example, to Ernst Roehm and
the Sturm Abteilung, or to the old
revolutionaries who got in the way
of Stalin.
At the time of writing this (8th July 2012) BobDiamond has resigned from his position as CEO ofBarclays following a scandal in which Barclays was
implicated in fixing the LIBOR rate for personalprofit. What a shock. Apologists for capitalism havebeen heard on the radio (Radio 4 to be precise)declaiming This is not capitalism! One is forced to
ask, If not, then what is? The fact is that fixing theFree Market for personal gain is perfectlyconsistent with free market economics which, inessence, is about grabbing what you can and fuckthose who cant keep up. The current hand wringingabout loss of morality also misses the point;
capitalism is, as noted before, essentially amoral,perfectly happy to manipulate democracy andfascism equally, indeed it will thrive in almost any
kind of socio-political environment so long as the profits are available, and so long as people are open totemptation. But there is no point in being angry about this, least of all angry at Bob Diamond. This situation
was inevitable once Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Raygun endorsed personal greed as a good thing. As itis, Bob Diamond is little more than another scapegoat, along with Fred the Shred, for the perfidy of an entire
system, besides which he will hardly be left destitute. No doubt all the honest people stillin the higher levels of banking will be hoping that now Mr. D has gone they will beleft alone to carry on feathering their nests with other peoples money.