What is Wonder-lion doing just now, I wonder? And her unbelievably ignorant “foreign minister”, also unelected. No, I really am curious. Because, whatever they are doing at the moment, Europe is in a sea of trouble – alas, not of the aquatic kind. And I seriously doubt Wonder-lion and her court are paying much attention.
In fact, the entire world is in a sea of trouble.
It also appears to be heading for a dramatic economic crisis ostensibly triggered by the US-Israeli war on Iran. In reality, there has long been the underlying issue of exponential US debt and the looming perspective of the collapse of the US dollar. Since the USD is still the world’s reserve currency, its collapse would cripple most countries’ economies.
I recommend the beautifully illustrated website of the economist Michael Hudson who is old enough not to risk losing his job for explaining, basically, how and why the economy does not work the way mainstream economists claim it does.
I recommend also the young and bright market analyst Sean Foo from Singapore. On his youtube channel he posts brief daily commentaries about the effects of ongoing events on the global economy. See also his conversation of 20 July with Glenn Diesen, during which he sums up the geoeconomic situation in general.
So back to the unelected leaders of Europe: What exactly are they up to now that Spain is burning; now that France is burning?
90 thousand – evacuees in Spain and counting, 35 thousand hectares incinerated.
197 thousand evacuees in France and counting, 98 thousand hectares incinerated this year.
(One hectare= 10,000 square metres, or 2.471 acres.)
Even Norway has just seen the most “devastating fire in modern times” to quote our PM, due to a heat wave and strong winds. Nothing like Spain and France, it is true, but about 100 dwellings were burnt to the ground in a few hours in a densely populated town.
These people are not just numbers, not just statistics. They are live people who live and work somewhere and who may well lose all they own while still paying mortgages. And there will be more, far, far more. Maybe next year it will be my turn, or yours.
Alas, Wonder-lion and her court have other worries. They are waging war on Russia, on behalf of the US, using Ukrainians as expendables. Their main concern these days is how to satisfy the corrupt Ukrainian regime’s insatiable need for moneys that will never be repaid.
In the media, they need to frame the sinking ship that is the Ukrainian regime – “the beacon of Democracy”, to quote an ironic commentator – as a potential heroic winner of the war.
The US/EU war on Russia undoubtedly harms Russia. But it harms the EU states far more. Most of all, it is completely destroying Ukraine.
Time to sit down and talk about what is real. The fires are real. Ukrainian democracy is not.
Why did our ruling class not invest in decarbonising faster to avoid this acceleration in deadly heat waves that scientists warned would come? Because of the capitalist law of value.
Capital invests in what is most profitable to capital, rather than what is most necessary for humanity, so our ruling class keeps ploughing investment into fossil fuels and SUVs, while we get far too little in renewables and public transit, even while the world burns around us.
We have more than enough capacity (labour, factories, technology) to address the climate crisis, but as long as capital controls investment and production we are prevented from doing it.
We are trapped by the capitalist law of value, living in a miserable shadow of the world we could have.
The EU Green Deal is green-washing, i.e. a sham. Chinese carbon emission reduction, however, is real.