A threshold has been crossed.
New Horizons.
In Manchester, we should have been anticipating this weekend more than any other - the newly crowned richest club in the world versus the second richest club in the world AND Red Scouse against Red Manc.
But IT didn't happen.
During the Anfield game, we had the sound turned down while we concentrated on analysis of other markets in other countries.
As for the 'keenly anticipated' Eastlands Extravaganza, a cycle round the deserted streets of the city was infinitely preferable.
Barcelona v Santander? Even though we were trading on it, a rewatching of the movie "What The Fuck Do We Know" was far more tempting.
I did watch the First Half of the Stoke match because I felt like I should pay some attention to their long-throw strategy as it impacts upon player evaluations in our Holistic Sabermetrics Model. As soon as the Half Time whistle sounded, Shimano shoes and another couple of hours on the bike.
Even the events that could be described as a spectacle - Real Madrid's 4-3 win over Numancia and Dortmund's pull back from 0-3 down in one of the bitterest derbies, for example - just did not have any impact.
So what?
Who cares?
You do your work.
You trade your markets.
You send out information to clients.
You issue instructions to colleagues for the in-running trading.
You work on near-future profits.
You switch off.
It has finally reached the stage where none of this matters anymore.
And not just to myself and my Trading Team.
This is a global effect.
The demise of football is irrelevant.
The collapse of Lehman Brothers and the dramatic last-minute saving of Merrill Lynch - there are now only two independent investment banks (are monopolies an issue when the said monopoly is caused by the deconstruction of the entire capitalist edifice?) - is also irrelevant. It is simply the next step on the road to the Recession/Depression that awaits.
The fact that the Evil Empire has 730 military bases around the world and the further fact that fully 42% of the tax base in the US is spent by the Pentagon - its the cost of all those guns donated to the Georgians prior to the invasion of Ossetia, plus the additional expense of utilising US private security firms to lead the invasion, that sort of thing - is also sadly irrelevant.
On a personal level, my work life has never been so rewarding or exciting. This is equally irrelevant.
In the September 6th issue of The Economist, the Science and Technology section was entirely given over to climate change and geo-engineering.
Five years ago, The Economist claimed that any climatic change was not caused by mankind.
They have moved their position considerably.
A full U-turn, in fact.
"...human produced climate change is very real indeed" we are now informed.
There are two points to this dire situation.
By far the most important is the issue of climate change and geo-engineering, but, secondarily, I have a strong personal anger about the laissez faire attitudes that have led to the probable termination of the Planet Earth in its current equilibrium state.
That would be the one which is sustainable for the lives of ours and others species.
I'll start with the latter because it allows a chronological perspective to be given to today's little blog story.
30 years ago, myself and a whole bunch of people like me were doing naughty things.
'We' broke into vivisection laboratories, destroyed equipment, found homes for the animals.
'We' infiltrated hunts and mass-released the hounds to homes away from bloodsports.
'We' sank sealing and whaling boats.
'We' broke into intensive farming units with the same game plan as we used for the vivi labs.
'We' were highly motivated and trained.
'We' focused specifically on one area of the broad spectrum of negative impacts on the climate - the meat industry.
'We' could see then that the growing population, the need for more land to produce more meat, the refusal to switch to non-meat diets that allow a more efficient use of the land, the resultant deforestation for yet more cattle, the human health issues relating to the intensive farming techniques learnt at Auschwitz.
'We' could see then that climate change was real - in 1978, Sweden was the first country to ban aerosols in response to the depletion of the ozone layer.
And, what was our reward for our altruism and prescience?
Well, the least annoying aspect was the criminal records for our various 'misdemeanours'.
Like we hadn't thought of the personal impact of our actions...!
Only in my darkest moments have I felt twinges of regret at being unable to train in law or accountancy due to the theft of, for example, some battery hens :)
Our reward at the time was pretty much non-existent.
Apart from the feeling that comes from knowing that you are doing the right thing.
Many people judged us as criminals.
I lost friendships and jobs.
Some of my former colleagues lost much more than that.
The very last time that I was nabbed by the powers-that-be, there were eight of us in our cell.
Of the others, one served 14 years in prison for totally destroying a laboratory using the medium of fire.
One experienced a dreadful breakdown brought about by the extreme stresses of being in a Class 'A' 'terrorist' organisation - the nutty English government thought that we were as dangerous as the IRA.
Two others live on a commune entertaining a heroin addiction.
Another two also had breakdowns.
And one other is, remarkably, fairly sorted in a public-sector-keep-your-head-down-and-concentrate-on-the-mortgage sort of way.
'We' may not have done anything like enough, but at least we did something...
These are serious personal costs.
And it is now, 30 years later, when 'We' find that geo-engineering is probably the only chance left to save the planet, that these sacrifices deserve to be remembered with some belated respect.
Okay so, 'We' crazily thought of ourselves as Anarchists and we had idealist Utopian goals once the world had been saved from a man-made self-harming spiral that 'We' could see was leading to planetary suicide.
'We' even looked odd - 1977 and all that...
But, while the rest of you were focusing on generating your fake cash towards your fake security for your fake realities in your fake system, 'We' were fucking demolishing ourselves on your behalf.
And, even now, the vast majority of people are simply paying lip service to the approaching armageddon, there are even those delusionals who fondly anticipate such an event as a release from their earthly reality (if that is what such an existence may be called).
You put out your plastic into little plastic bags, while placing all The Guardian newspapers, aptly, in another rubbish bag, the bottles and tins have their own segments. You've even decided not to purchase an SUV. Free range and organic options may even be considered from time to time.
You feel good. You get that warm glow that comes with the feeling of knowing that you are doing your bit.
It is all totally fucking irrelevant.
You drive your cars, you take your flights, you work in a system that is the cause of the crisis, you breed, you exploit, you consume the products, you contribute nothing of consequence to anything.
But, at least you are feeling good.
I'm pleased.
As the section below demonstrates, geo-engineering is the probable final stage of the journey of homo sapiens.
It is far too late to do anything about it.
Governments will not take the necessary strategies as such changes would lead to a massive global Depression. They have trusted in innovation. They are idiotic. Innovation is trumped by Malthusian Limits.
So, what should we do about it?
The current favourites in the office are revolutionary partying and mass mockery.
Until stated otherwise, the primary reason for the Football Is Fixed blog will now be this - revolutionary partying and mass mockery.
And, finally, before I truly depress you, when the Realisation dawns that Man (sic) Is Fucked, remember people like JP, RY, GD, DJ, DD, KD, WH, NS, DC who actually did something, at considerable personal cost, so that you might at least be able to view the end of the world from the comfort of the security conferred on you by fake wealth of the housing bubble.
Fucking disgraceful...
It was obvious to any schoolkid that the Earth could easily quantum into Venus - our nearest neighbour with its greenhouse gasses and sulphuric acid rainfall. When each of these factors started becoming an issue on our planet (remember Acid Rain?), a rational global leadership would have reacted.
Well, they did react. They introduced a no-holds-barred version of capitalism that encourages all participants to sink as low as possible to gain competitive advantage.
Inevitably resources were depleted and regulations by-passed.
Meanwhile the death spiral of chain reactions and feedback loops continued to cause-and-effect onwards.
The Economist: "... what is more worrying - and more real - is the idea that such planetary engineering [geo-engineering] may be needed to make the Earth itself habitable by humanity, and that it may be needed in the near future."
Geo-engineering (GE) is massive science regarding the world's oceans and atmosphere.
The scale of such projects result in very high systemic risk (ie end of the world) and these projects are "extraordinarily complex".
The Economist goes on: "... getting the world's population to give up fossil fuels, is proving exceedingly hard. GE... may be a way of buying time for the transition to a low-carbon economy to take place in an orderly manner."
Fuck off.
They will still be worrying about their ledgers and their price-earnings ratios and their exotics portfolio when the waters are lapping around their ankles.
The only chance is for a global acceptance of immediate negative growth with all the economic pain that will ensue.
To make the other choice is high risk lunacy.
How is it that the world position is one of carbon trading and emissions schemes and other such market nonsenses?
Stop running your industries and stop propelling your machines.
Otherwise, we are all fucked.
What sort of 'rational' mind makes the decision that it is better to risk immediate oblivion via the high risks associated with GE mega-projects, a risk taken on in order that an abusive world order MIGHT have the chance to continue, than it is to deconstruct the system and start again in a more sustainable manner and with a less psychopathic and self-destructive template?
Power is so key to the Power Psycho's that they would rather have THE END rather than risk losing control - "We Run It Or You Are Fucked, That Is Your Choice, This Is Your Democracy".
The research and the resultant papers on GE have been undertaken by the Royal Society, Britain's oldest scientific academy.
GE has two core objects - removing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and reducing the amount of sunlight that reaches the ground.
I don't have the time to go into the different GE options in detail but I've broadly itemised the options below.
* Fertilise the oceans with iron. The risk here is that the carbon might not fall to the ocean floor, hence worsening the problem, and then some. Also, the feedback loops are unknown. Messing around with the bottom of the food chain is not generally a sensible course of action.
* Plant more trees. No risk, unless they choose the inevitable GM varieties that are faster growing. Some people never learn...
* Recycling carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into fuel. Not energy efficient.
* Ejection of carbon dioxide from the poles using our planet's magnetic field. One scheme sees lasers utilised to ionise molecules of CO2, while radio waves get them to spin at the correct rate to spin away from the Earth. Yeah right - remember myxomatosis?
* Increasing the amount of pollution in the air to reduce the Earth's albedo. So, having spent 50 years trying to get Sulphur out of the atmosphere, the great and the good are now thinking of reintroducing it on a massive scale, just on the off chance that it might decelerate climate change long enough for Wall St to continue to exist.
They propose adding the Sulphur to aviation fuel and making 1 million extra flights per year to pollute the atmosphere in the middle of the stratosphere. These flights alone would use up half as much fuel as civil aviation now consumes. Rational thought?
* Messing around with cloud cover. Spraying clouds with seawater makes them more reflective and hence increases the Earth's albedo. The minor problem with this project is that it will require 1.4 billion tonnes of seawater to be converted into spray each year. The one benefit of this scheme is that it offers an instant switch off.
For each of these other crisis management schemes are irreversible, once the mass-projects have been initiated the planetary ecosystem takes over and determines its favoured equilibrium state.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has described GE as "largely speculative and unproven, and with the risk of unknown side-effects".
How apt.
Just like shareholder capitalism then...
As The Economist states: "... modifying the climate will have both physical and biological consequences. Some of these will be predictable and some of them may be worse than the harm they were intended to treat."
Another major concern is moral hazard. We are currently in recession because moral hazard prevented capitalists from assessing where the real risks lay. On a GE level, a misguided belief in mega-projects will simply provide an excuse for the polluters to carry on polluting.
They'll no doubt even develop a nascent market on the trading schemes so that they can make money out of each other as they bet away the future of our species.
King of Doublespeak, Psycho Branson, with his nice knitted sweaters and his Noel-Edmonds-beardie-weirdie shit, is offering a $25 million reward for anybody who comes up with a workable way of removing billions of tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere every year.
I claim my prize!
Firstly, fuck-face, you ground your fuckin' airplanes. Comprendez?
Then, you stop messing around with consumer spaceflight.
These personal advancements will need to be paralleled by a complete grounding of the entire global aircraft industry, the end of warfare, a vegan diet for all, planting more non-GM trees, promoting biodiversity, the destruction of all cars, the implementation of proper public transport systems, compulsory cycling, the end of the shareholder capitalist system, the end of financial speculation and the establishment of a bottom-up democracy.
Don't Trust Power, Trust People.
Right, now gimme me cash :)
Unfortunately, even now, the Pentagon are probably gaming the innovation to see how it might be utilised for geo-political advantage. It will be inevitable that any regulatory oversight of GE will be Swiss-cheesed with the necessary loopholes to ensure tilted markets for the benefit of a host of insiders. So, the GE brigades will have a carte blanche to experiment with whatever they wish to experiment with.
The US could significantly harm Russia by implementing schemes to cool the climate, for example. There are also plans for geo-specific implementation, whereby one specially chosen region would bear the brunt of the GE risk in much the same way as the natives of numerous islands were frazzled by the nuclear experiments of yesteryear.
New Crisis. Same Tactics.
Short Term Strategy, preferably with Victims, resulting in Profit.
The Economist concludes with a paragraph that, I think, describes the current state of affairs that the vast majority of the planet are carefully ignoring: "Global warming is such a threat that all the options deserve to be explored. It would be a big experiment, but it would at least be a planned one - unlike the equally big, but unplanned experiment that is now being conducted by motor cars, power stations, cement factories and logging companies all across the planet."
All of which puts Mike Ashley into perspective.
Welcome to the new Football Is Fixed.
Are we now nihilists?
No. We believe in revolutionary partying and mass mockery.
But...
"If being a nihilist is carrying, to the unbearable limit of hegemonic systems, this radical trait of derision and of violence, this challenge that the system is summoned to answer through its own death, then I am a nihilist and terrorist in theory as others are with their weapons. Theoretical violence and not truth, is the only resource left open to us" - Jean Baudrillard.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
