h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I will cheat a bit, but based on recent news items I predict that free trade between the US and Cuba will be re-established in 2015.

I will buy a few cigars.

F S

Fidel Castro will die in 2015.

It will be disclosed that Castro died in 2013 and has been frozen all this time.

If Castro doesn't have a Facebook page, maybe he never existed.

The Old Farmer's Almanac predicts that next summer will be hotter than usual. I predict that they will turn out to have been right, and I can put away my snow shovel for a few months.

Here's one: it's been bubbling under for a while. And it might bubble under for a while longer, so what I'm about to say may take until 2016 to really hit.

The extent to which those in power - political, judicial and military - in the UK in the 1970s and 80s were able to use their position to sexually abuse and murder children with impunity will be revealed.

So far it's been mainly television personalities. But if Jimmy Savile could get away with it for so long because of his perceived "power", how much more could be got away with by those in actual power?

Five years ago if I'd read what I've just written, I'd probably have regarded it as paranoid conspiracy theory. But post-Yewtree, can anyone keep a straight face and say they don't think there was a conspiracy to keep under wraps the abuse (and maybe murder) of children by powerful paedophiles?

It will come out in 2015 (or maybe 2016), and it will be dynamite.

John Mann MP was on the radio last night saying that he has handed a dossier to police alleging at least 5 child abuse rings at Westminster involving MPs were operating in the 70's and 80's.

He expects the police to arrest 'several living politicians'.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/child-abuse-inquiry-mps-and-peers-named-in-paedophile-dossier-handed-to-scotland-yard-9938374.html

PP.

The sooner they get to the bottom of it, the better for all, especially the children.

Even though I lived through the 60s and 70s I just can't understand how people - powerful highly respected people - could think they could get away with some of the things which are starting to be suggested. I can only imagine it must have gone to the very top.

Power corrupts...

And corrupt people always seek power so they can corrupt the system to protect themselves.

That assumes that they were corrupt to begin with. Maybe some of them are. From what I've observed, I gather that many start out in public life with good intentions, but their consciences weaken along the way. Through a trio of witches at me proclaiming me the next Thane of Cawdor, and my head might be turned a bit too.

Every man has his price.

Most of us never get the opportunity to find out what our particular price is.

PP.

The Italics will stop moving conversations around.

Even though I lived through the 60s and 70s I just can't understand how people - powerful highly respected people - could think they could get away with some of the things which are starting to be suggested."

Because they could, and did, get away with it. They weren't wrong.

P. T. Barnum:

"There's a sucker born every minute."

Shakespeare:

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

Lord Acton:

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men"

Power corrupts...

And corrupt people always seek power so they can corrupt the system to protect themselves."


Power doesn´t corrupt, it´s the way it is used.

Many politicians get into politics to make money or/and help others of their ilk, family, sect... make money.
Those politicians know they are going to get all that because the system will allow them to do it.

Corruption is the system that governs us, just consider what the Troika ( IMF, BCE and EC) does.
The Luxleaks, recently on the news, has Junker as the main actor. Why is he not accountable for that?

We need people in power with policies to dismantle as much as possible the tiranny of the financial mafia. It´s not impossible.

"Financial mafia" is a well-constructed phrase. The almost-Depression of 2008-2012 was staved off only by massive infusions of taxpayer money from governments around the world. And did the financial mafia learn any lessons? Not so anyone would notice.

The lessons should be learnt by voters.
Why to vote parties that don´t protest against making public a debt that originates in a private gambling activity?

why there has not been a proper audit of the debt?

why those who were gambling receive public money instead of eating their mistakes and assuming the inherent risks of speculation?

why they are getting bonuses while ordinary people see their lives getting more and more miserable and hard each day?
I could go on.

"[...] Great men are almost always bad men"

But not always though.

Re. post 56
@ paulh

The only lesson to be learned from the depressive episode is this: it will happen again and again because the financial mafia has learned that they can and will get away with it. Financial gains will continue to be privatized, financiall losses will continue to be socialized. Crises will continue to be created because it they will make those who create them ever richer.

Y.

O, Yelbakk! how dark! no hope?

Howard Zinn says some memorable words in his book of essays An Optimistic Historian. He reminds who made the Bill of Rights become true, it weren´t the politicians, it was the people, ordinary people getting together and fighting for those rights. The vote of women, the abolishment of slavery, the working conditions...etc. depended on grassroots movements.

We seem to have forgotten all that. Are we too lazy? too full of worries that makes us stiff and resignated to these circunstances, too shocked to react?

There are people moving around and some of them showing how democracy gets to life. I´m thinking of what´s going on in Spain with Podemos, a political party just made and with a transparent working. Ordinary people vote through internet the programme, vote the people, discuss and vote, it´s a fully democratic process.

Now, in Greece, the IMF (International Mafia Force known as INternational MOnetary Found) is telling greeks not to vote Syriza. They are afraid because they know the end of looting will stop.

My prediction for this 2015 is that Europeans will wake up when they see the rise and the working of social policies of Syriza and Podemos, when they see that when people get together, the fear move towards those who have been fekin us so far.