In Tottenham and New York: are the chickens coming home?

But is the system finally crumbling? Have the greed merchants gone too far for their own good, following their own absurd religious dogmas of endless wealth and expansion?

"The financial sector ", as they call it, seems to have hit a brick wall after decades of inventing more and more creative ways of making money out of nothing. "Futures trading", and "derivatives" are merely strange economic terms to most of us. But more people began to understand the idea of "sub prime mortgage brokering" when the house of cards fell a few years ago. The magic fish finally said, "No!, you can't keep endlessly making money out of nothing." Unfortunately the poor are the first to suffer once again. In the US, millions have lost their homes and jobs. In the third world food prices have skyrocketed. In Australia we have been buffered by a mining boom, but still poverty has risen dramatically for many. But, so far at least, many of the rich have still never had it so good. Their looting and plundering goes on unabated.

In the midst of this, one of the great ironies of the modern age was the response of the US (and other) governments to the so called global financial crisis, (the GFC). The US government created $700 billion dollars from thin air and gave it to the bankers and other corporations who arguably had created the crisis. Those who for 30 years had demanded worship of the market, deregulation of business, and no "socialist" government interference from the state, with straight faces plundered the State for Billions in a" bailout" to save them and, supposedly, their country. A few years later, the crisis is growing and the billions are gone. It would all be so laughable if it were not so serious.

What has this to do with the Tottanham riots? I would suggest that the chickens of greed and plunder, we have promoted for so long in the corporate world have come home to roost in the poor suburbs of London. If those who run the world can become fabulously wealthy with little work and little concern for their communities or the planet, why can't the poor copy them?

Let's compare a couple of corporate and small scale "rioters". Actually both were not really rioters themselves, just advocators of riot.

Soon after the London riots, two young men were each given four years jail for inciting people to riot via their internet bloggs. It appears that the riots they were promoting did not even happen, but it was enough that they were encouraging the rioting and looting.

Meanwhile on a much grander scale, media baron Rupert Murdoch has relentlessly promoted war and greed for decades. His "punishment" has been to be feted and wooed, and feared by those in power. (His prestige, if not his power, is unravelling now of course, with the phone tapping scandal).

The Murdoch press has unashamedly supported all US and British wars.

The destruction and looting of these wars make Tottanham look rather minor indeed!

In an interview with the Guardian in 2003, just before the US attack on Iraq, Murdoch stated his personal support for the war.

(See http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2003/feb/11/iraqandthemedia.news?INTCMP=SRCH)

His reason? To stop WMD's? To get rid of an evil dictator? To avenge September11? No, none of the above. The Guardian quotes Murdoch as saying, "The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be $20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in any country." Yes, forget the death and destruction of an entire nation, Rupert declared the war would be good for the world economy as the price of oil would go down to $20 a barrel. A stupid prediction re the price of oil, of course, but that the war was good for his corporate media empire is indisputable. War not only sold papers and TV time, but more importantly Murdoch called in numerous favours from fawning and often fearful governments in the US, Britain and Australia. And, for advocating death and destruction on a massive scale, unlike the small time bloggers in London, Murdoch only received ever more power, wealth and glory from the State.