Subcomandante Marcos has announced the formation of a broad group of peasants, workers and social movements to create a mass movement with a common program. Rather than having this movement run candidates in the forthcoming election in Mexico it will work from outside to press for change. This is very wise, as it will allow the movement to keep its nose clean and thus minimize the danger of selling out. We have seen the various left wing parties come and go. They are founded with the best intentions and after some years in the parliamentary arena they sell out. We have seen the same with the Green Party. This is inevitable with electoral politics which, by its very nature, is based on lowest common denomenatorism, representation, not delegation and of course endless compromise. (Except when right wingers are in power. THEY don’t compromise.) Furthermore, when a left wing party takes power, they tend to demobilize their supporters, at a time when I think they ought to be out in the street as never before to keep the bastards honest. The only hope is for a non-electoral mass movement to hold their feet to the fire, thus forcing them to act. Let’s hope this libertarian populist concept of the Zapatistas spreads across the world.
See Subcomandante Marcos
Sunday, August 14, 2005
Tuesday, August 9, 2005
THE TRUTH BEHIND THE TRUE STORY
I just read Micheal Finkel’s book, TRUE STORY, about Chris Longo, who murdered his wife and three small children in 2001. The author based his book on hundreds of pages of letters and jail interviews that he collected over the course of two years. Longo now faces the death penalty. The big question in the book is why he murdered, as he seemed to be so normal. Psychiatrists who examined him claimed he was a narcissist.
However, Longo's crime cannot be reduced to his personality disorder. Millions of people - in the US especially, are afflicted with narcissism, yet they do not commit violent crimes, let alone murder their families. Indeed, narcissism is seen by some as a virtual requirement for success in business. In order to turn a personality disorder in a criminal direction, the proper environment must be provided.
In Longo's case, there were two-inter-related conditions which led him to kill his family. One of these was the conservative consumer-obsessed culture. The other was authoritarian religion. One can easily imagine a different, yet still narcissistic Longo arising in a different cultural-environmental context. A Longo who cares nothing for bourgeois convention, fantasies himself as an artiste and sponges off everyone. A pain in the ass, but not a criminal.
The Longos wanted a yuppie lifestyle, but they couldn't afford it. This need led Chris Longo to engage in fraud and theft, in a kind of vicious circle that led to murder. What initially sparked his criminal activity involves a political context. His youngest daughter had severe health problems which drained his limited income and drove him into bankruptcy. In any civilized country health insurance would have covered these costs. Not so in the USA. Could it be that for want of a decent health care system a family was murdered?
Why did the Longo's have to have a middle class living standard? Because it was the thing to do. They were highly conservative, never questioning anything, always seemingly obedient to every convention, which included being overly polite, not drinking alcohol or swearing. For such people, the outward display of wealth is a compensation for their insecurity and their shallow, boring lives. Indeed, the latter aspect was to encourage Longo in his crime sprees. He got a thrill from stealing a car or writing a bum cheque.
But why couldn't the Longos afford their yuppie lifestyle? Both were highly intelligent and capable individuals. The cult they belonged to considered higher education to be a sin. Longo had only a Grade Nine education. With the destruction of US trade unions - another political context - the poorly educated can only get minimum wages. Yet they wanted to be middle class. Their cult however, didn't see anything wrong with materialist aspirations. Had Longo been a Quaker, Buddhist or Amish - no murders.
The cult also demanded subservience from women. The wife was not to question her husband's actions. A normal woman would have demanded to know where all the expensive automobiles and gifts were coming from on a $7.00 an hour job. A normal woman would have left Longo when his behavior became increasingly bizarre.
At the most crucial period in their lives - when Longo was finally revealed as a thief, fraud-artist, liar and cheat, the cult failed them. The family was ostracized, driving them into complete isolation, furthering the mad spiral that led to death.
Yes, Longo must die, yet not a word is said about the crazy system that produced him.
However, Longo's crime cannot be reduced to his personality disorder. Millions of people - in the US especially, are afflicted with narcissism, yet they do not commit violent crimes, let alone murder their families. Indeed, narcissism is seen by some as a virtual requirement for success in business. In order to turn a personality disorder in a criminal direction, the proper environment must be provided.
In Longo's case, there were two-inter-related conditions which led him to kill his family. One of these was the conservative consumer-obsessed culture. The other was authoritarian religion. One can easily imagine a different, yet still narcissistic Longo arising in a different cultural-environmental context. A Longo who cares nothing for bourgeois convention, fantasies himself as an artiste and sponges off everyone. A pain in the ass, but not a criminal.
The Longos wanted a yuppie lifestyle, but they couldn't afford it. This need led Chris Longo to engage in fraud and theft, in a kind of vicious circle that led to murder. What initially sparked his criminal activity involves a political context. His youngest daughter had severe health problems which drained his limited income and drove him into bankruptcy. In any civilized country health insurance would have covered these costs. Not so in the USA. Could it be that for want of a decent health care system a family was murdered?
Why did the Longo's have to have a middle class living standard? Because it was the thing to do. They were highly conservative, never questioning anything, always seemingly obedient to every convention, which included being overly polite, not drinking alcohol or swearing. For such people, the outward display of wealth is a compensation for their insecurity and their shallow, boring lives. Indeed, the latter aspect was to encourage Longo in his crime sprees. He got a thrill from stealing a car or writing a bum cheque.
But why couldn't the Longos afford their yuppie lifestyle? Both were highly intelligent and capable individuals. The cult they belonged to considered higher education to be a sin. Longo had only a Grade Nine education. With the destruction of US trade unions - another political context - the poorly educated can only get minimum wages. Yet they wanted to be middle class. Their cult however, didn't see anything wrong with materialist aspirations. Had Longo been a Quaker, Buddhist or Amish - no murders.
The cult also demanded subservience from women. The wife was not to question her husband's actions. A normal woman would have demanded to know where all the expensive automobiles and gifts were coming from on a $7.00 an hour job. A normal woman would have left Longo when his behavior became increasingly bizarre.
At the most crucial period in their lives - when Longo was finally revealed as a thief, fraud-artist, liar and cheat, the cult failed them. The family was ostracized, driving them into complete isolation, furthering the mad spiral that led to death.
Yes, Longo must die, yet not a word is said about the crazy system that produced him.
Saturday, August 6, 2005
Scam Part 3 - The Corporate Law Fraud
The business corporation is actually a holdover from the 17th Century period of political absolutism and mercantilist economics. Corporations were set up by the state to give monopoly privileges to certain favored individuals - surprise, surprise, connected with the government and members of the so-called nobility. Genuine liberals such as Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith disliked corporations, fearing their ability to distort free exchange. However, other than banking and trading, few corporations existed in the early 19th Century. Most businesses were owned by individuals or partners and thus, were by todays standards very small. The Era of the Corporation really begins after the American Civil War.
A legal "innovation" was created which allowed for the rapid development of corporate business. This innovation, actually a form of legal fraud, was "limited liability". Up till then, and today as well if you are an ordinary person, each person is responsible for his or her debts. If you default on a loan the financial institution will come and take your house, your car and your furniture, leaving you in the street. What limited liability does is shift the burden of debt away from the officers of a corporation to the corporation itself. If a corporation with limited liability goes belly-up, legally, you can't grab the CEO's personal bank account, mansion and Rolls Royce. Thousands of small shareholders might lose everything, and the workers their jobs and pension funds, but not the bosses.
Having limited liability is like a gambling addict with a rich parent who funds the addiction. When the gambler loses, the parent pays, when the gambler wins, he keeps his winnings. Corporate officers have a free hand to speculate with other people's money. Such speculation can lose, but it can also win big. Such "big wins" inflate the market share and size of a corporation, furthering the process of concentration and centralization. Put another way, without limited liability, corporate officers would be very conservative with other people's money and high-risk speculation would not exist. Corporations would tend to be a lot smaller and many would not exist at all.
It is obvious that limited liability allows many opportunities for corruption, many more than would exist without this evil law.
In the 1880’s came the notion of the "corporation as fictitious individual", in fact limited liability implies this. Business corporations are a form of collective capitalism, they may have thousands of shareholders. The problem for the corporation bosses is that the Bill of Rights and the Rights of Man (sic) did not recognize the notion of collective right, only individual rights. The liberal revolutionaries of the 18th and early 19th Centuries saw collective right as a hang-over from feudalism. Such basic rights as freedom of speech and of the press, were freedoms of the individual, and of course, at that time presses and bookshops were owned by individuals and not corporations. (1)
Through the legal fraud which converted a collective structure into a fictitious individual, the corporation acquired the rights of a human individual. That a collective, often comprising thousands of individuals, is not an individual is obvious to anyone with any degree of sanity. But this only goes to show what a blatant and vicious fraud this law is. Thanks to the "fictitious individual" genuine, living, breathing individuals have great difficulty combating corporations, and especially corporate media or advertising, since such actions would be deemed an attack upon “individual rights." This has had very negative effects upon the media and has deeply undermined democracy. When newspapers were taken over by giant corporations, freedom of the press now applied to those corporations. Hundreds of newspapers which once spoke with hundreds of different voices, now spoke with two or three voices, those of their corporate masters. (For further reading on the history of the corporation as fictitious individual here is a good article by Thom Hartman)
(1) The technology was so simple that literally any printer could cast his own type, build his own press and start publishing a newspaper, the largest of which sold 10,000 copies.
A legal "innovation" was created which allowed for the rapid development of corporate business. This innovation, actually a form of legal fraud, was "limited liability". Up till then, and today as well if you are an ordinary person, each person is responsible for his or her debts. If you default on a loan the financial institution will come and take your house, your car and your furniture, leaving you in the street. What limited liability does is shift the burden of debt away from the officers of a corporation to the corporation itself. If a corporation with limited liability goes belly-up, legally, you can't grab the CEO's personal bank account, mansion and Rolls Royce. Thousands of small shareholders might lose everything, and the workers their jobs and pension funds, but not the bosses.
Having limited liability is like a gambling addict with a rich parent who funds the addiction. When the gambler loses, the parent pays, when the gambler wins, he keeps his winnings. Corporate officers have a free hand to speculate with other people's money. Such speculation can lose, but it can also win big. Such "big wins" inflate the market share and size of a corporation, furthering the process of concentration and centralization. Put another way, without limited liability, corporate officers would be very conservative with other people's money and high-risk speculation would not exist. Corporations would tend to be a lot smaller and many would not exist at all.
It is obvious that limited liability allows many opportunities for corruption, many more than would exist without this evil law.
In the 1880’s came the notion of the "corporation as fictitious individual", in fact limited liability implies this. Business corporations are a form of collective capitalism, they may have thousands of shareholders. The problem for the corporation bosses is that the Bill of Rights and the Rights of Man (sic) did not recognize the notion of collective right, only individual rights. The liberal revolutionaries of the 18th and early 19th Centuries saw collective right as a hang-over from feudalism. Such basic rights as freedom of speech and of the press, were freedoms of the individual, and of course, at that time presses and bookshops were owned by individuals and not corporations. (1)
Through the legal fraud which converted a collective structure into a fictitious individual, the corporation acquired the rights of a human individual. That a collective, often comprising thousands of individuals, is not an individual is obvious to anyone with any degree of sanity. But this only goes to show what a blatant and vicious fraud this law is. Thanks to the "fictitious individual" genuine, living, breathing individuals have great difficulty combating corporations, and especially corporate media or advertising, since such actions would be deemed an attack upon “individual rights." This has had very negative effects upon the media and has deeply undermined democracy. When newspapers were taken over by giant corporations, freedom of the press now applied to those corporations. Hundreds of newspapers which once spoke with hundreds of different voices, now spoke with two or three voices, those of their corporate masters. (For further reading on the history of the corporation as fictitious individual here is a good article by Thom Hartman)
(1) The technology was so simple that literally any printer could cast his own type, build his own press and start publishing a newspaper, the largest of which sold 10,000 copies.
Friday, July 29, 2005
More Banking Scam Info
A very interesting - and much more developed article on the banking scam at
Vive Le Canada
Vive Le Canada
Thursday, July 28, 2005
SCAM - PART 2 THE BANKING FRAUD
When you go to a bank and borrow money you probably think the bank loans you the money out of its deposits. This may have been the situation originally, but this is certainly not the case today. Banks are allowed, by governments, to loan 15- 17 times the amount they hold as deposits. "Credit that can be accessed by credit card, overdraft cheque or bank loan represents nothing more than a bank's promise to pay. Credit money exists only as numbers in bank computers…When someone borrows from a bank, perhaps taking out a housing loan, the bank records in the borrower's account the debt that must be repaid with interest, and in return provides a bank cheque to the borrower or direct to whoever he is purchasing the house from. The bank cheque is bank created credit, not backed up by the bank's own money nor anyone else's” (1) Deposits consist not just of coins and bills, as you might think, but also the credit of previous loans. Thus “ banks are able to build a mountain of credit based on earlier credit until it amounts to 95% of all money” (2)
As bizarre as it may seem, banks thus “ increase the money supply by creating money out of nothing” (3)
Of course, we, both as individuals and tax-payers, are forced to pay interest to the banks for our personal loans and government debt. Aside from the costs of processing a loan, which would include some kind of insurance to cover the minority who cannot pay up, the banks receive high interest payments for essentially doing nothing. Governments, or mutual aid systems, could simply loan out the money at cost, and the extra payments to the banks could be completely avoided.
More than 150 years ago, Proudhon realized that workers and farmers had their own in-built collateral. For workers, it was the amount of labor over a given time period, for farmers, the crop or harvest. Hence, there was no need to have collateral in gold, bills or property, nor was there any reason, other than government preventing it from occurring, for farmers and workers to create money and loan it out to each other thru a mutual banking system. For the longest time banks ignored the workers and poor farmers, but with the rise of consumer society came a realization that a bundle could be made loaning money to these here-to-fore ignored customers. Our collateral is our labor, but the banks reap the benefit.
Government debt, and remember the right-wingers howling about it as you read on, need not occur at all. Remember, credit is created out of nothing. Governments go to the banks, borrow the money, then print the money that has been credited to them by the banks. The tower of debt grows thru interest payments to the banks. Governments could simply cut out the middleman-banks and loan themselves the money at cost, i.e., the cost of printing those dollar bills. “when the State found itself short of money raised from taxes then -- instead of printing Treasury Bonds, selling them to the banking and non-banking sector in order to raise money, and then having to pay them back when they become due, and with interest attached, and with money that has been raised from taxpayers and the sale of even more Bonds -- it could simply create the money required "out of nothing", in the way that banks create money today, and spend it into society as public revenue.” (4)
The fact that governments don’t do this and instead run up huge debts thru interest make me highly suspicious. I am drawn to the conclusion that government debt is a fraud, that it has been deliberately created by the financial institutions and corrupt politicians as a means of milking the public. Now recall those right-wingers yelling about the need to pay off the debt and cutting social services in the process. If they were sincere about the debt, they would try to get rid of the middleman, and since they don’t, they must be part of the racket.
1, 2. 3. From http://dkd.net/davekidd/politics/money.html
4. http://www.prosperityuk.com/prosperity/articles/moneymake.html
As bizarre as it may seem, banks thus “ increase the money supply by creating money out of nothing” (3)
Of course, we, both as individuals and tax-payers, are forced to pay interest to the banks for our personal loans and government debt. Aside from the costs of processing a loan, which would include some kind of insurance to cover the minority who cannot pay up, the banks receive high interest payments for essentially doing nothing. Governments, or mutual aid systems, could simply loan out the money at cost, and the extra payments to the banks could be completely avoided.
More than 150 years ago, Proudhon realized that workers and farmers had their own in-built collateral. For workers, it was the amount of labor over a given time period, for farmers, the crop or harvest. Hence, there was no need to have collateral in gold, bills or property, nor was there any reason, other than government preventing it from occurring, for farmers and workers to create money and loan it out to each other thru a mutual banking system. For the longest time banks ignored the workers and poor farmers, but with the rise of consumer society came a realization that a bundle could be made loaning money to these here-to-fore ignored customers. Our collateral is our labor, but the banks reap the benefit.
Government debt, and remember the right-wingers howling about it as you read on, need not occur at all. Remember, credit is created out of nothing. Governments go to the banks, borrow the money, then print the money that has been credited to them by the banks. The tower of debt grows thru interest payments to the banks. Governments could simply cut out the middleman-banks and loan themselves the money at cost, i.e., the cost of printing those dollar bills. “when the State found itself short of money raised from taxes then -- instead of printing Treasury Bonds, selling them to the banking and non-banking sector in order to raise money, and then having to pay them back when they become due, and with interest attached, and with money that has been raised from taxpayers and the sale of even more Bonds -- it could simply create the money required "out of nothing", in the way that banks create money today, and spend it into society as public revenue.” (4)
The fact that governments don’t do this and instead run up huge debts thru interest make me highly suspicious. I am drawn to the conclusion that government debt is a fraud, that it has been deliberately created by the financial institutions and corrupt politicians as a means of milking the public. Now recall those right-wingers yelling about the need to pay off the debt and cutting social services in the process. If they were sincere about the debt, they would try to get rid of the middleman, and since they don’t, they must be part of the racket.
1, 2. 3. From http://dkd.net/davekidd/politics/money.html
4. http://www.prosperityuk.com/prosperity/articles/moneymake.html
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
THE SYSTEM IS A SCAM PART 1
This is a manufactured economy. No, not a manufacturing economy, but a manufactured economy. In the same way that Noam Chomsky talks of "manufacturing consent", much, if not most of the corporate economy, is artificial, serves no real human need and is simply created to feed itself.
THE WAR SCAM
About one trillion dollars is spent on war and the preparation for it, worldwide. (I refuse to use the Orwellian "defense spending") All of this is artificial, especially now that no superpower exists to militarily challenge the USA. Lets take, for the sake of argument, that Russia under Stalin was a threat for a few years after WW2. Governments genuinely concerned with world peace would have welcomed and supported the reformers who took power after him. But, on the contrary, the Cold War was advanced and everything done to undermine the possibility of reform in the USSR. (Even as late as 1990, sections of the US far right - presumably with military contracts in mind, claimed that the Gorbachov reforms were also a ploy.) Without question, the Cold War and its massive expense (and therefore massive corporate welfare) after the death of Stalin, if not before, was a fraud.
With no superpower to challenge the USA, a new threat had to be invented. Thus the "War on Terror", a "war" against an invisible foe, and one that can never be won, for nothing can stop a determined individual who is not afraid of dying. This new war is the ideal war for the scammers.
THE "ILLEGAL" DRUGS FRAUD
Then there is the so-called War On Drugs, or the War FOR Drugs as I prefer to call it. This is a complete and utter fraud. According to a former LA narcotics squad officer Mike Ruppert, who should know, at least HALF A TRILLION dollars of drug money washes in and out of the US financial apparatus. You can be assured that this money is not from the famed Colombian Drug Lords, Mafias, Hells Angels or ghetto gangs, but from the Big Boys who ultimately profit from these groups. (The criminal gangs are mere street corner juvenile delinquents along side the government officials and bankers who are really in charge.) As a pleasant offshoot of the War For Drugs, the police-prison-industrial complex, a happy $135 billion a year industry in the US, (all ripped off from taxes, natch.) not one half of which would exist without the criminalization of drugs. (1)
One other aspect of this crime are the links with the Nazis. Klaus Barbie, protected by the US government, was instrumental in setting up the massive cocaine trade in Bolivia, which then laid the basis for the Colombian coke barons and the importation of cocaine into the US ghettos as part of theIran-Contra scandal.
1. In 2001, Auditor General Sheila Fraser said the federal government was spending close to $500 million a year fighting the drug trade. Roughly 95 per cent of that goes to enforcement and policing, and two-thirds of the country's 50,000 annual drug arrests are for cannabis offenses. (Macleans 22-11-04) The hostility of the police and the political right to cannabis legalization has to be rooted in fear of a loss of tax money going to the police-prison-industrial complex. They also must fear that decrim of pot might next lead to demands that drug addiction be treated as a medical problem and not a criminal one, which would eventually kill the scam. See also
http://www.illuminati-news.com/marijuana-conspiracy.htm
THE WAR SCAM
About one trillion dollars is spent on war and the preparation for it, worldwide. (I refuse to use the Orwellian "defense spending") All of this is artificial, especially now that no superpower exists to militarily challenge the USA. Lets take, for the sake of argument, that Russia under Stalin was a threat for a few years after WW2. Governments genuinely concerned with world peace would have welcomed and supported the reformers who took power after him. But, on the contrary, the Cold War was advanced and everything done to undermine the possibility of reform in the USSR. (Even as late as 1990, sections of the US far right - presumably with military contracts in mind, claimed that the Gorbachov reforms were also a ploy.) Without question, the Cold War and its massive expense (and therefore massive corporate welfare) after the death of Stalin, if not before, was a fraud.
With no superpower to challenge the USA, a new threat had to be invented. Thus the "War on Terror", a "war" against an invisible foe, and one that can never be won, for nothing can stop a determined individual who is not afraid of dying. This new war is the ideal war for the scammers.
THE "ILLEGAL" DRUGS FRAUD
Then there is the so-called War On Drugs, or the War FOR Drugs as I prefer to call it. This is a complete and utter fraud. According to a former LA narcotics squad officer Mike Ruppert, who should know, at least HALF A TRILLION dollars of drug money washes in and out of the US financial apparatus. You can be assured that this money is not from the famed Colombian Drug Lords, Mafias, Hells Angels or ghetto gangs, but from the Big Boys who ultimately profit from these groups. (The criminal gangs are mere street corner juvenile delinquents along side the government officials and bankers who are really in charge.) As a pleasant offshoot of the War For Drugs, the police-prison-industrial complex, a happy $135 billion a year industry in the US, (all ripped off from taxes, natch.) not one half of which would exist without the criminalization of drugs. (1)
One other aspect of this crime are the links with the Nazis. Klaus Barbie, protected by the US government, was instrumental in setting up the massive cocaine trade in Bolivia, which then laid the basis for the Colombian coke barons and the importation of cocaine into the US ghettos as part of theIran-Contra scandal.
1. In 2001, Auditor General Sheila Fraser said the federal government was spending close to $500 million a year fighting the drug trade. Roughly 95 per cent of that goes to enforcement and policing, and two-thirds of the country's 50,000 annual drug arrests are for cannabis offenses. (Macleans 22-11-04) The hostility of the police and the political right to cannabis legalization has to be rooted in fear of a loss of tax money going to the police-prison-industrial complex. They also must fear that decrim of pot might next lead to demands that drug addiction be treated as a medical problem and not a criminal one, which would eventually kill the scam. See also
http://www.illuminati-news.com/marijuana-conspiracy.htm
Sunday, July 17, 2005
ON THE SUPERIOR EFFICIENCY OF SMALL-SCALE ORGANIZATION
Excellent article on small scale organizations in Kevin Carson’s Blog Includes insights by Eugene Plawiuk, Jane Jacobs and Kirkpatrick Sale.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)