Pre-Qognizant

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Aceh Versus The Civil War

I entered into a Twitter argument the other day that highlighted a number of issues due to the lack of critical thinking and gross generalizations.

The fellow posted a video showing an Indonesia woman and man being flogged.  Not only did he not know the story behind the video, he extrapolated this behavior to an entire nation without any comprehension of the social and political currents behind it.  Indeed, my correspondent didn't even know why the folks in the video were being flogged.

He lamented that all of Indonesia condoned such behavior.  I pointed out that the incident took place in Aceh, which is a small region at the far northwestern tip of Sumatera, which is semi-autonomous and ruled by Islamic fundamentalists.  I said that public flogging is not condoned or practiced anywhere else in the country, and that if the government attempted to force the region to stop shari'a practices, it would likely cause riots and secession, which would spread through the rest of the country.

The fellow's response was, suppose the Northern states had not stopped slavery in the South.

In the space of a couple of brief text messages, this individual had displayed a profound ignorance of history, politics and human behavior.

To begin with, Indonesia and the US share many traits.  Indonesia is about the same size as the continental US, with roughly the same population and both have religious majorities that spend an inordinate amount of time trying to force everyone else to adopt their values.

Indonesia is composed of more than 300 tribes, each with unique cultures and histories, bound into a loose confederation.  Indonesia's motto, "Bhinneka tunggal ika," is the Sanskrit equivalent of "E pluribus unum," or "one out of many" in English.  Both countries adopt the eagle as their national symbols, and both are republics that constantly promote democracy (they are mutually exclusive terms and ideologies).

On scale, Aceh is roughly equal to the Seattle-Tacoma metroplex, though wildly different in context.  After the 2004 quake and tsunami, Aceh has virtually returned to a medieval state, with all the attendant theocratic allusions that come with that statement.

Of all the regions in the vast sprawling archipelago known as Indonesia, Aceh is the closest to an absolute theocracy under shari'a, or religious law, and like most theocracies, it chooses some of the worst aspects of shari'a to enforce.

The primary issue is that if the central government attempted to stop Aceh from its practices, it would risk having the Islamic majority in the country rally around Aceh, and likely spark national riots and possibly secession movements across the country, especially in Papua where the Christian majority has long sought to extract itself from the rest of the nation, taking its vast mineral wealth with it.

When my Twitter correspondent casually waved the US Civil War comment at the situation, I was triggered.  The two situations were/are not remotely equivalent, and to so blithely conflate the two was more than I could bear.

The US Civil War had almost zero to do with ending slavery.  It was all about northern bankers and industry trying to keep the costs of raw materials from the south as low as possible.  The southern states, wanting to increase profits, were competing in open markets and getting higher prices in Europe.  The morthern interests blockaded southern ports to shut down the South's markets, and levied exorbitant tariffs on exports to effectively steal profits from the south, while leaving the finished goods from the north untouched.

The Confederacy, after secession, was de jure and de facto a separate and independent nation and blockades against it were in fact acts of war by the same reasoning and international law used by the colonists in their fight for independence from England.  Only in the tiniest of factions in the Civil War was ending slavery and issue, and folks on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line wanted the practice ended.

The US Civil War was about economics and the right of people to throw off tyrannical government in favor of something more to their liking.

In Aceh, the situation is only vaguely analogous to the US Civil War, in that a dictatorial effort by the central government to change the local regime would be disastrous and likely lead to mass death and destruction.

The fact is that the people of Aceh submit to the theocracy of their own choice.  They can easily walk or take the bus south to other regions of Sumatera, or even leave the island altogether for greener pastures elsewhere.  That the young man and woman in the video allowed themselves to be flogged was their own choice.

Unlike the US Civil War, there is no economic component.  No outside force is trying to starve out competition and effectively enslave an entire nation.  The people of Aceh willingly choose to live under such conditions because they have convinced themselves that this is a viable and virtuous way to live.

In other words, what my Twitter correspondent was proposing is tyranny by a central power over a group of people who voluntarily choose to live as they see fit.  From the outside, we can abhor and condemn the practice of flogging.  We can offer aid and shelter to anyone escaping such practices.  But we cannot mandate our values on those folks by force.  That would effectively be as immoral as the practices we condemn.

In a republic, as Indonesia and the US nominally are, the fundamental rights of the minority are protected against the tyranny of the majority.  Among those fundamental rights in both countries is religious freedom.  It would be no more moral and ethical for Indonesia to force Aceh to adopt a different culture, than it would be for Aceh to force the rest of the nation to adopt shari'a (or at least its interpretation of it).

It is also wildly fallacious to draw parallels between they US Civil War and the situation in Aceh, other than to say that if the central government forced Aceh to change, then it would be the moral equivalent of what the Union did to the Confederacy.  In both cases, internal forces will eventually overcome habit and tradition, and reform will come of its own accord.

It is important to note that Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was not aimed at the Union, where slavery persisted quite some time after that war, nor was it legally binding on the Confederacy, which was a wholly different jurisdiction and not subject to US law.  It was nothing more than a propaganda tool to undermine the Confederate economy at its weakest point.

The people of Aceh have a choice to stay or move to other parts of the same country with widely varying social and political customs and laws.  They are not prevented by the nation's laws from moving elsewhere, with lawful employment and residency throughout the country.  Those who stay and submit to public floggings for being alone with their paramours without supervision do so of their own accord.

This Twitter-vation also highlights the dire need of folks to educate themselves on real history, and not the propagandistic efforts to justify immoral acts foisted on them by vested interests.

White Is Black, Left Is Right

UPDATE: I no sooner get my rant posted than Lew Rockwell pops up with nearly the same argument, though with a more serious tone.

I have to say it has been very entertaining watching the antics of the American GeezerMedia for the past year.  They are in complete meltdown and don't understand why no one is listening.  Even Hollywood is feeling the pinch as folks just plain get tired of all the mind-control crap being pumped at them.

I predicted years ago, somewhere around the time I started this blog, that this would happen.  Eventually, the lock-step group-think would lose its grasp on society and the swing back to the other side would begin in earnest.

The socialist goose-stepping reached a peak under Obama.  A kind of semi-religious hush fell over the populace, where no one could criticize the first black president.  The Democrats tried desperately to keep the magic going with the first female president (I purposely won't use "woman" to describe Hillary Clinton), but it failed miserably.  Now all the Puppet Masters and their mind-controlled clowns are panicked as their perceived perch atop the world's Mind is lost.

The most interesting part of this whole charade is the intense battle to define Fascism as a right-wing phenomenon, and the desperate attempt to define the common terms used in everyday life, so that the Puppet Masters can control how and what people think.

The right wing are called "alt" and "extreme," while the left wing are "fighting" and "reacting."  No media outlet will mention that the right-wingers have all taken permits for their marches, while the left-wingers show up uninvited and start all the fights.  Wild attempts are underway to silence anyone that doesn't sync with the Proscribed Narrative.  Corporations, NGOs and all sorts of quasi-official "authorities" have been mobilized to plug the drain.

What no one, and I mean NO ONE is saying is that Fascism is defined by the marriage of corporate and governmental power.  That is its raison d'etre..  That is what differentiates it from other forms of "authority."  It is not a left-right paradigm, it is up-down, which doesn't fit in the carefully crafted narrative we are all supposed to consume and spew back.

The other thing that is being VERY CAREFULLY hidden is the fact that the term "Nazi" is short for Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei.  If you don't read German, that's the National SOCIALIST Workers' Party.  It's a left-wing movement.  Damn fools think most people won't look it up on Giggle or are completely ignorant of history.  Well...I guess they're right in that regard.

As they pull down statues right and left, they are also banking (used advisedly) on the fact that no one knows the Civil War was started by Democrats, that racist Dredd Scott laws were instituted by Democrats, and that Democrats have caused just about every major collapse of civilization in the past 2,500 years, starting with the Greeks.

Furthermore, NO ONE will mention that the entire premise of Democracy rests on an educated and erudite populace, which judging by the campuses in the US don't exist anymore, if ever.

In every single instance in current events, it is the left-wingnuts who are censoring, destroying and injuring.  It is the left-wingnuts who fling urine and feces at peaceful protesters.  It is the left-wingnuts who ambush police, burn down businesses and demand the silencing of even the slightest opposition.  And it is the left-wingnuts who control the GeezerMedia narrative and make it positively unpalatable.

Some may point to the Neo-Cons, but they are left-wingnuts in disguise.  There is no difference philosophically between the transition from LBJ to Nixon, than from Obama to Trump, except that there are exactly ZERO conservatives in the US Federal gummint.  There are only Democrats, and Democrats who called themselves Republicans to get elected, with the possible (though tentative) exception of Rand Paul.

The public narrative is oh-so-careful not to point out that Nazis were left-wingnuts and that all this collusion between corporations and government is the very definition of Fascism.  In a real and organic system of government, it is supposed to protect people from the corporations and the use of financial power to seduce and coerce the masses.

It is an absolutely bizarre spectacle going on the US these days.  It is the insane leading the deluded.  It is normal people being overrun by nitwits whose idealism comes from a bottle of Xanax.  And in the end, puerhaps that's the root of it.

Perhaps Big Pharma has so doped the populace that people are incapable of reacting to stupidity, or conversely, folks too drugged to comprehend reality.  Perhaps all 300 million Americans are in a pharmaceutical cloud, incapable of clear thinking on anyone's part.  Nothing else adequately explains the sheer disconnect from anything sane.

It is a medical Matrix

And The Truth Shall Set You Free

Since the Confederacy has been so horribly maligned in recent events, what with the wholesale destruction of monuments, the defiling of the Confederate flag and the entrenched belief that the Civil War was about slavery, it seemed an apropos time to review real, actual history.

For our foreign readers, one must keep in mind that most Americans are hopelessly ill- or maleducated.  The government schools only allow carefully controlled information into the classroom and more time is spent on wrapping bananas in condoms than on important subjects like history.

Couple the poor state of US education with the wholesale take-over of schools by Progressive left-wing fanatics and you have a potent weapon against the human intellect.  While we can't hold hapless victims responsible for maleducation, we can fault them for not seeking the truth on their own, and worse, for their parents' lack of interest in what their children's heads are being filled with.

The Civil War had nothing to do with slavery.

Let that sink in a bit.  For many people this statement will seem false, even repulsive.  One's emotional reaction, however, does not affect the truth of it.

In the North, Abraham Lincoln was a confirmed racist, who abhorred the very idea of whites and blacks living together as equals, and especially the thought of the races intermarrying.  He rather lent his support to an effort to ship slaves and free blacks back to Africa, where the country of Liberia was founded for the express purpose of receiving the deported individuals.

Slavery did not end in the North after the Civil War.  In fact, slave markets could still be found in New York City, Baltimore and other cities long after the South was crushed.  The Emancipation Proclamation only applied to the Confederacy, and so the Yankees enjoyed their slaves for some time following the hostilities.

The Civil War was, in fact, caused by the Democratic Party.  Big surprise there, since they seem hell-bent on repeating their great achievement again.  That wonderful party of slavery, income taxes and other horrors gave the country institutional slavery, commonly called Dred Scott.  It took its name from a black slave who sued in US courts (not Confederate) for his freedom, only to have the US Supreme Court deny his freedom.  The Court declared that blacks could never be free citizens of the United States (long before the Confederacy).

It should be noted that the president at that time was Franklin Pierce, a Democrat who strongly against the abolition of slavery.  In fact, Pierce is widely credited for causing the Civil War, since that is what Democrats do best - destroy things.

In any event, the northern states kept raising taxes on agricultural goods, which were the specialty of the southern states.  Since representation in Washington, D.C. is based on population, and blacks only counted as 3/5ths of a man at that time (thanks entirely to Democrat laws), the South was sorely underrepresented and was basically far out-voted in Congress.  Thus, the North was able to do pretty much as they pleased, and it pleased them to put most of the financial burden of the federal government on the South.

Furthermore, northern industrialists lobbied for price controls on agricultural products they needed as raw materials.  This placed a further and egregious economic burden on the South.  This led to fist fights in Congress and a lot of very hard feelings amongst the States, with the South rightly claiming the North was enjoying great economic times at the expense of the South.

Ultimately, the South set up a boycott, refusing to send vital raw materials to the northern Robber Barons.  The northern Democrat Yankees naturally couldn't believe anyone would stand up to them, and decided if the South wouldn't sell, they would take by force.

A group of US Navy ships challenged the blockade at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, in a raid to steal shipments of agricultural goods.  Being attacked by US forces led the southern states to secede from the US and form their own union, called the Confederacy.  This in turn led to three years of horrific war in which half a million men died, the US Army committed mind-numbing atrocities, and an entire culture was laid to waste.

Abraham Lincoln, racists and evil tyrant, signed the Emancipation Proclamation ending slavery - only in the South - not because he thought slavery was bad, but he wanted to undermine the southern economy and make it impossible for them to fight.

To put a finer point on it, it should be noted that not one single slave was brought from Africa to either the US or the Caribbean by the Confederacy.  That was done entirely by British and American vessels, and to a lesser extent by Spanish and Portuguese vessels, as well.  It should also be noted that the genocide of the American Indians was carried out entirely by American troops.  Many of the tribes sided with the Confederacy, believing freedom would benefit their causes against the US, as well.

So, as we survey the death and destruction being caused by the Progressive Left and the Democratic Party today, we should remember that it is nothing new.  These same ideologues have behaved much the same throughout the history of the US.  Hate and violence have been their signature for nearly 200 years.

One reason why knowing history is so important is the power it gives us to discern who is telling the truth when it comes to events such as Charlottesville.  Given that the GeezerMedia and the violent protesters are supportive of or supported by the Democratic Party, and given the vile history of that party in the past, we can place a greater burden of proof on them to convince us that "white supremacists" and "neo-Nazis" instigated the violence.  After all, it is the political left in the US which has caused so much grief for so many people for so long.

And no, I don't like the Republicans either.

The Blue, The Gray And The Dead

There is so much going on around the world right now that it is very difficult to narrow down just what to write about.  So much of it is interlinked just under the surface, and so much gets covered in local or regional news, but doesn't make it to the global "fake news" mill.  In fact, it is rather interesting to note which seemingly important stories don't surface in the Corporate Media outlets.

Take the murder of Kim Jong-nam, for instance.  The half-brother of the Beloved Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, was assassinated under rather curious circumstances in Malaysia.  Two women from Indonesia and Vietnam, and one man from Malaysia have been arrested in Malaysia for the murder.

What grabs my attention is that the two women pulled off the attack, Kim was traveling under an alias (Kim Chol), and he was killed presumably by something sprayed in his face.  The spray sounds suspiciously like ricin, though no autopsy results are as of yet unavailable, but just a few micrograms inhaled or injected can kill an adult rather quickly.  Death is caused by more or less a lethal allergic reaction, and considering Kim died on the way to the hospital, that would likely be the scenario in ricin poisoning.  It is not hard to make ricin, though it would take some expensive toys to purify it to a weaponized form.

Whatever the toxin was, the method was so unusual - why not just shoot, stab or otherwise physically assault the victim - as to draw attention to itself.  This is one of those spy-game scenarios that used to occur during the Cold War, when defectors were hit with tiny pellets of ricin, slowly killing the victim over 4 or 5 days.  In other words, this sounds like an organized and professional hit, rather than some homegrown political activists, and is obviously intended to send a message to Kim Jong-un.

The other curious story that is receiving quite a bit more attention is the increasingly obvious civil war being played out in the United States.  The various factions within the federal government are increasingly open about their animosities and efforts to oust each other.

I tend to reduce this war to the Capitalists versus the Financiers.  One could tack a lot of other names on to the two sides, but I view it as the Means of Production against the Financial Interests, or more simply Industrialists versus Bankers.

For those who are not yet aware, the United States is a corporation set up in 1871, under "An Act to Provide a Government for the District of Columbia."  As the rest of the States were dragged into the corporation as assets, along with the population under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, this effectively placed the country under Administrative Law and negated the Common Law and Constitution.  The latter is maintained as a showpiece, though is hardly worth the paper it is written on in US courts.

Like most corporations today, there is a constant battle between those who do the work, and those who play the odds.  One side produces actual products and employs people, while the other shuffles assets, liabilities and revenues around for profit.  If you've been keeping score, the Financiers have been winning the battle since more or less the time of the US Robber Barons.

The Financiers, a.k.a. Mercantilists, use equity and debt as weapons, harvesting the productivity of real work and products for their own profit, laying waste to everything in pursuit of the bottom line.  Note that Mercantilism is often mistakenly called Capitalism, but it not, as the latter produces real, tangible products, while the former produces nothing and only leeches off the real economy.

The Financiers have run the US for well over a century now, sucking up vast sums of money while doing nothing and producing nothing.  They simply lend money and buy equity, then profit from interest rates and playing high-low.  Great job if you can get it.

Trump, on the other hand, represents the Capitalists.  These folks have an adversarial relationship with Financiers, since they actually work and produce things while having to bow to the money folks who control the game with purse strings.

At least since Kennedy, the Financiers have enjoyed an endless stream of compliant occupants in the White House, who have simply enforced whatever regulations made the Financiers richer at the expense of the productive economy.  Thus, the national debt has spiralled out of control, the Bankers have held the country to ransom - as in 2008 - to extort vast sums of unearned money, and created wars that required endless borrowing to maintain.

Trump has threatened the Financier hegemony over the nation by focusing on infrastructure, business climate, reduced taxes, and ending wars - all things the Financiers really hate to hear, as these efforts do not profit them.

Consequently, the Financiers (a la George Soros, et al.) have declared open war against the Capitalists, who somehow managed to subvert the system they have carefully built up over the past century.  It is already a nasty war, and will get a lot worse.  Trillions of unearned dollars are at stake, and if things get really nasty, then history tells us a lot of Bankers will be hanging from lampposts - at least metaphorically if not literally - in the near future.

This war also explains the animosity against Russia, who has spearheaded the effort to create an alternative to the Dollar-Dominated Global Financial System, by way of the BRICSA alliance (Shanghai Accord).

The war has only just begun, and it will get very ugly before it is over.  The apparent tactic at the moment seems to be to keep the Trump Administration so busy with infighting and suspicions that it is rendered ineffective.  Any effort left over must be focused on things like the Oroville dam and other emergency situations.  In other words, keep starting fires to distract the enemy and tie up their time and resources.

Stand by...this is going to be a hell of a ride.  As Bill Hicks would say, "The world is just a ride...it has ups and downs, thrills and chills, and is very brightly colored."  Might want to buckle up before the first big drop.

A Game Of Souls

I'm sure you are familiar with the classic, if not trite - horror movie trope where the hero lands a brutal blow on the bad guy and turns to walk away, thinking he's done his job.  Then suddenly, a figure rises up in the dark and looms behind the hero and strikes a mighty blow from behind.

This is precisely what has happened to 60-someodd Americans who voted for Trump.  They figured getting their guy in office and defeating the wily Clinto-Beast put an end to 50 years of New World Order take-over.  Then, as everyone signed in relief and went back about their business, the monster rose up and began a full-scale onslaught from behind.

Regular readers here may recall me saying many times that the only way to defeat the existential threat to liberty represented by the Global Cabal is to completely dismantle the Beast, burn them and scatter the ashes to the wind.

A few Executive Orders and removing all references to Global Warming are not going to reverse decades of stacking the deck.  The US government is owned and operated from the highest offices to the lowest lackeys.  One good smack to the solar plexus is not going to bring the Beast to heal.

I am reminded of the closing scene from the great Terry Gilliam flick Time Bandits.  The late Sir Ralph Richardson has just barbecued Evil and dramatically exploded the charcoaled figure into a hundred pieces.  He commands the Bandits to clean up the mess, saying, "Do be careful! Don't lose any of that stuff. That's concentrated evil. One drop of that could turn you all into hermit crabs."

Of course, a single piece is left behind and sets up the resurrection of Evil in the closing shot, though it looks an awful lot like the smoking remains of the family's Sunday joint.  It is an apt metaphor, though.

It is in the nature of good guys to not be ruthless and merciless.  They always stop just short of complete annihilation because they always hold hope that the bad guy can be reformed.  Good guys don't want to believe that pure Evil exists and believe that a sound defeat will cause Evil to suddenly realize the error of its ways.  The real world never works that way.

Donald Trump sold himself as a Marvel superhero, able to resist even the strongest enemies by dint of his virtue and vision.  He was emboldened by a massive outpouring of support that was able to defeat a seemingly invincible foe.  But even superheroes have their limits, and Trump has been bashed and lashed for nearly two years now.

With his support going back to sleep, Trump is increasingly surrounded by less-than-supportive characters.  Furthermore, Trump supporters, weaned on generations of Hollywood fantasy, are little prepared for a real fight.  They believe in a world where things like elections really make a difference, and Mr. Smith can go to Washington and change things before the final credits roll.

Trump's enemies learned from his ability to double down and call the bluff.  They have turned from political activism to outright revolt, with damage and destruction becoming their modus operandi.  Trump will inevitably be forced to do the same or admit defeat - and he doesn't strike me as the type to do that.  Trump has a rather Machiavellian/Sun Tsu nature about him.  He will answer by escalation.

This is a true war and the other side has already proved that it will go as far as needed to get their way.  The question is do Trump and his supporters have the necessary fortitude to bring the fight back to the Globalists?

This is not a gentelman's slap-fight, this is the real thing and the prize is the future and the world itself.

The Globalists got right up to the finish line before the goal posts were moved quite a bit further away.  One does not get that close to the taste of victory after centuries of effort to just give up and admit defeat.  They will answer with all-out war, leaving nothing untouched to get their prize.

Two pressing questions linger: 1) will Trump match the Globalists blow for blow, and 2) and do the majority of Americans have the stomach for a scorched-earth battle?

In every sense of the term, the US is facing another Civil War, and both sides will need to decide how brutal they are willng to be in order to achieve their goals.  The Globalists have shown their hand.  It is up to the opposition to decide whether to double down or fold.

Which will it be?