Actioni contrariam semper et æqualem esse reactionem: sive corporum duorum actiones in se mutuo semper esse æquales et in partes contrarias dirigi.
(To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction: or the forces of two bodies on each other are always equal and are directed in opposite directions)
Isaac Newton, Third Law of Motion
Recent rioting involving strong presence of looting in London, which given the austerity to be will in all probability mean eventual spread to other British Cities, and as have been described as the actions of ‘mindless thugs’ have been met by a promise by the Prime Minister of Britain, David Cameron, that the ‘full force of the Law’ will be applied. Mr Cameron had to cut short his holiday in Tuscany to chair an emergency meeting of COBRA, the civil contingencies meeting which leads responses to national crises in Britain.
The focus of this small article is analysis of the types and causes of the rioting and looting in Britain, and to propose the concept of an ‘equilibrium of looting’ given a differentiated typology of looting dependent upon which polarised ‘end’ of Economy the looting originates, with acknowledgement to Newton’s Third Law as above.
It is notable that the communities in Britain within which the riots and looting occurred and those as are categorized as being at high risk of future occurrence are all losing jobs, facing cuts in services, have high unemployment particularly amongst youths, and have low levels of social mobility and social integration, in sense of economic marginalisation and alienation being prevalent. These often multicultural communities are in the ‘front line’ of austerity measures in Britain, sense of those living on the least having to face subsisting on even less, and having further reduced access to community services.
The cause of these austerity measures as exert pressure on such areas as Tottenham and Hackney in London, to relate the macroeconomic to the microeconomic, is an Economic Warfare waged by Transnational Banking and Financial Institutions which are ‘too big to fail’ and which are looting Countries and their Economies through a combination of the transfer of resources from State to private, Corporate interests in form of ‘bailout’ as a form of ‘socialism for the wealthy’, and tax avoidance through the establishment of a shadow economy incorporating ‘tax havens’. Measures such as quantitative easing ensure there is plenty of money in circulation – the problem is that it is circulating from Banking Institution to Banking Institution and thereby failing to support ‘real Finance’ in sense of supporting National Industries and Business development, it is also supporting a control and manipulation of financial markets which results in an artificial inflation or deflation of value to the ends of generating quick and easy ‘book profits’ with little relationship to economic reality and job creation. Quantified ease money is circulating through tax havens and supporting an inflation of ‘shadow economy’ through the variant of looting which is represented by tax avoidance as other than through ‘capture’ of regulatory bodies would be recognised, and punished, as tax evasion. The tactical objective of this Economic Warfare is control through Debt; the overarching strategic objective is the destruction of local currency and the establishment of a ‘Global Currency’ which would consolidate and unify the ability to inflate and deflate as a mechanism of taxation as expropriation – see concluding quote by POTUS 3 below.
In non euphemistic terminology such Economic Warfare is no more than a form of mere looting which has ‘primacy’ at the level of the hegemonic, and the unavoidable price of such criminal expropriation by a small and incredibly wealthy minority is to be greater austerity for an increasing majority. Global organisations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) exist as agents of such structural adjustment designed to effectively under ‘Program’ destroy Nations as individual fiscal authorities of diverse and variant nature, and to thereby impose a ‘harmony’ of unification under singular authority governing Fiscal Policy. The objective of Globalization as an Economic Warfare is to make a small minority even more incredibly wealthy at the inevitable expense of a growing majority rendered poor and immiserated under ‘austerity’, it is to translate Economic Power into Political Power through the degeneration of Democracy to Corporatism by the corruption of political representation across a broader geographic area become as a geopolitical power bloc subject to standardised, homogenised resource exploitation.
Riots are but ‘collateral damage’ to such Structural Adjustment at the level of the tactical considered subservient to Strategic pathway through Theatre of Economic Warfare; riots prototypically exemplified given historical precedent by responses in Countries such as Chile to IMF programs.
It is tragic that the response of David Cameron as Prime Minister of Little Britain to the ‘looting’ represented by Transnational Global Banking and Financial Institutions concerning Britain did not in any way match his response or resolve to deal with the ‘looting’ by the dispossessed subsisting in the ghettoes of a British Metropolis; tragic – but hardly surprising given consideration of ‘polarisation’.
To paraphrase a witticism of American origin:
‘David Cameron knows the meaning of ‘poverty’ – he looked it up in the Dictionary’
The manifest absurdity of a group of ex Bullingdon Club Members as represented by David Cameron as Prime Minister, George ‘Gideon’ Osborne as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Boris Johnson as mayor of London; individuals born with silver spoons in their mouths as ‘fortunate sons’ being able to face up in a constructive manner to the hard edge of austerity enforced in the ghettoes of London, likely seen by such quarters as ‘another planet’, does not bode well for Little Britain. Membership of the Bullingdon Club as an exclusive body entails an acceptance of ‘upper class thuggery’ evidenced in ‘very own’ form of riotous behaviour, as so too does the question remain as to how such ‘Weltanschuung’ or ‘World View’ engendered by being a ‘fortunate son’ acceptable under exclusivity defined by a club have implications for the absence of understanding for ‘lower class thuggery’ in context of polarisation and the laws of motion Political.
If a picture paints a thousand words see here.
None more so absurd an expression of economic polarisation than the political concept of ‘Big Society’ as would be propagated by the Conservative Party in Britain of which David Cameron is the Leader, which would have it that cuts to public services necessitated by Austerity and the need to pay interest on debt to mere moneylenders as a transfer of resources from the poor to the rich will, rather than causing riots, be met by the efforts of unpaid volunteers of the Community as veritable ‘ragged trousered philanthropists’ who shall make bricks from mere straw, who shall step up as good subjects to the mark and through their sacrifice shall subsidise the rich and further their ongoing expropriation of resources as form of primary looting.
The ‘Big Society’ of Little Britain is no more than a hark back to Feudalism, when everyone had a place and everyone knew their place; when there was a harshly enforced deference of the peasantry and a rigid, ossified social order; when education and opportunity was limited to a fortunate few, and the behaviour of the Upper Class as Aristocrats constituted riotous behaviour which is mimicked contemporaneous in the notoriety of ‘Bullingdon Club Blind’ – yet as once was without even the need for recompense to mere Peasant, such the superior Rights of the Nobility arrogated as once incorporated in the Laws of the Land, and as accordingly represent ‘halcyon days’ to the barren and stark bias born of economic polarisation as realized in ‘fortunate son’.
The Big Society as a political concept in Little Britain is Economic regression rationalized; little more than an arrogant and expropriative reiteration of thuggery by an Aristocracy condemned to impose Austerity in calling for more sacrifice from the underclass, while posing as being Politically representative of a Democracy; it is a lie born when Aristocrat as ‘Ubermensch’ poses as being of the People, of the ‘Demos’, as having their interests at heart, it is as big a lie as the ‘trickle down’ theory of Economics which has it that tax cuts for the wealthy benefit the poor – but in which reality mean ‘flood up’ as a transfer of resources from the poor to the wealthy.
The problem with such ‘thinking’; that the People can be conned into ever further sacrifice and subsistence; that there will be no equal and opposite reaction, is that it is wishful, given that the ‘Gini’ has been let out of the bottle – and that there does indeed exist ‘secondary looting’ as equal and opposite reaction.
There is no excuse for looting; all looting is wrong. But this is not to say that looting is beyond comprehension – sense that pathological behaviour can be ‘understood’. The tragedy for Little Britain is the probability current that only one side of the looting is to be ‘understood’, only one side is to be punished, only one side is to be met with the ‘full force of the Law’. There are, amongst the acknowledged ‘Technology’ of Political Control as ever developing, water cannons, rubber bullets, curfews and ‘shoot on sight’ imposed by Armed Services in the contingency planning for the looters in the ghettoes of Little Britain – and while the ghettoes of Globalization remain sacrosanct, the biggest, ‘primary’ looters are to remain unpunished but rather further rewarded, free to continue their ‘best laid scheme’ of Economic Warfare.
This can surely spell only ‘disequilibrium’ – as in a Polarisation which attempts to deny the premise of equal and opposite reaction, and as such can only lead to the further degeneration of Democracy under imperative of Globalization in which ‘Little Britain’ may ‘lead’ the way ‘exemplary’ – sense of as one lemming plunging over a cliff shows the way for other lemmings.
It is to be remembered that Orwell’s great work ‘1984’ was set in Britain as ‘Airstrip One’.
Concerning prescience apropos of ‘looting’, and given the Geographic origins of this publication the following words demand acknowledgement and consideration concerning the solution to the engineered Polarisation as root cause of what amounts to a Global problem:
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.
Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of US
‘Should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs’. – How do these words echo a third motion as would be indeed be a fitting reaction to the despicable aim of any people being deprived of all property and their children waking up homeless?
Not a motion as would appear is about to happen in ‘Little Britain’, mores the pity as the polarisation continues to develop; as the Big Society really starts to burn; as the Third Law of Motion in Political context would be denied – under illusion of the ‘power of mind over mind’ as Panopticon defined, and as would not have such solutions as expressed by Thomas Jefferson considered, let alone acknowledged; such the war as continues to rage.
-‘Coming soon to a Theatre near you’, so it goes.
Stephen Martin can be reached at: stephenmarti@yahoo.com
