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.

Uber Alles

In order to make today's point, we need to clarify a couple of definitions.

Socialism is when a small number of elite control government (oligarchs), which in turn controls the corporations and the means of production.

Fascism is when a small number of elite control the corporations (oligarchs), which in turns controls government and the means of production.

A Republic is a limited government whose sole purpose is to protect the individual from overzealous government and corporate power by protecting a core set of rights for every human being.

A Democracy is little more than formalized anarchy, where rights are really privileges that can be voted away, and even the right to vote depends on the will of the majority.

These are the primary forms of government in use today, and even though the words are used interchangeably to obfuscate their real meanings and hide inconvenient truths about the nature of individual governments, the definitions are basically what you will find with a bit of research.

This leads us to an article about Uber's recent loss in UK courts, requiring it to treat drivers as employees rather than contractors, and thus Uber must pay minimum wage and offer the standard set of benefits.

Many people will cheer this decision, as it seems to protect the drivers and make their lives better, but there's a problem here.  The right to contract is a foundational concept of free societies.  If I sign a contract with another entity agreeing to certain benefits and responsibilities, the government's job in a republican society is to protect my contract, regardless of what anyone else thinks about the terms.  After all, I was free to negotiate those terms and to accept or refuse to contract based on my perception of the costs and benefits to me.

In a free republic, government's sole purpose is to adjudicate disputes between contracting parties when one side believes the other has not lived up to the terms and conditions set forth in the contract.  Otherwise, government has no interest in the contract and cannot intervene or change the conditions agreed to by the parties.

In fascist and socialist states, the government retains the right to amend or cancel contracts that do not protect the government's interests.  The main difference between the two is whether the corporate interests or the State benefit from this arrangement.  In other words, the State is an assumed third party in every contract.  Obviously, this is an assault, no matter how subtle, on the rights and liberties of the individual.

A hallmark of fascist states is the ability to corporate interests to use government power to tilt the playing field in favor of their interests.  Regulations and enforcement are heavily biased to protect the oligarchs from competition.  A socialist state is basically the same, except the State itself is the beneficiary of the control.

Putting it "country simple," if your country has a lot of state-owned corporations, you live in a socialist state.  If your country has a lot of public-private partnerships, you live in a fascist state.

The Uber article sums up the situation thusly:

• Uber claims drivers are self-employed - but courts do not agree with them
• Drivers brought legal action against private hire firm in row over their pay
• They claimed they should get the minimum wage, holiday pay and breaks
• Uber said they were self-employed and should manage their own finances
• But Central London Employment Tribunal ruled in favour of Uber drivers

You can cheer the drivers' victory if you choose, but what this makes quite clear is that the UK is likely a socialist/fascist state.

First of all, the courts should have adjudicated the terms of the contract.  The drivers read and agreed to perform certain services in exchange for certain compensation.  One assumes these terms were clearly spelled out in the contracts and that the drivers knowingly entered into contract knowing these terms.  If they were not happy with the terms, they were free to renegotiate the terms, or to set up competing businesses that offered more equitable terms.  If the drivers did not have the financial means to set up a competing business by themselves, they could have banded together to pool resources, and thus become owners of the new entity.

Alas, this was not to be.  Instead of pursuing the capitalist route, the drivers banded together to sue Uber, and the courts upheld their complaint and forcefully broke the private contract in a way that favored existing, State-licensed corporations.  Assuming those existing corporations are private entities and not State-owned, then we are looking at pure fascism.

Uber, whose business model followed the right of individuals to freely contract, was forced to accept regulations that act as a barrier to competition from upstart companies.  The oligarchs of the establishment had set up a system that placed additional cost barriers on new competitors to prevent a loss of market share to better operations and ideas.  Since the oligarchs likely control both the corporations and the financial resources, they effectively tilt the playing field in their favor.  By controlling government regulations, they add a layer of backup protection by making government restrictions a firewall of burden to new competitors.

This adds one more definition to our list: the so-called Third Way, which completes the evil Trinity of State-Corporate-Finance control over markets and competition.  This marriage made in Hell effectively eliminates private initiatives and entrepreneurship, in favor of a protectionist racket surrounding the core of elite oligarchs.

The Third Way is precisely what we see in place in countries such as the US and UK, and which scandals like the Clinton Email are revealing in rather dramatic fashion.  Also known as Mercantilism, the bond of finance, production and regulation creates the perfect barrier to outsiders, the right of the individual to contract, and the ability of new competitors to enter the market.  Control of finance prevents upstarts from getting funding.  If they pass that barrier, then onerous regulations and biased courts favor the establishment over the new guy.  No matter which way you turn, if you aren't part of the club, you ain't gonna play.

I am a big fan of Uber, AirBnB and other similar new-tech companies that use the internet to circumvent the Big Boys and State Regulatory barriers to produce truly capitalistic enterprises.

Sure you hear a lot of criticism and fear-mongoring about these types of operations and how they run circles around the Old Guard and their rules.  What you are really hearing, though, are the established interests complaining that they are losing money because they didn't think of it first.  However, this is an essential part of true capitalism: new ideas and entrepreneurs bring fresh and more efficient operations to market, and the Old Guard (oligarchs) must evolve or die.

When you hear folks pushing internet controls, what you are really hearing are the oligarchs screaming that their territory is being eaten away by faster, leaner operations that they can't control.

In the end, the Uber court case here is an example of the oligarchs using government power to protect their profits.  Pure and simple.  It is a naked example of Socio-Fascism in action.  Uber made it past the financial and regulatory barriers, so the last line of defense was simply to negate private contracts in favor of the ruling paradigm.

Viewed in this way, suddenly all the headlines make sense and can be boiled down into some aspect of this model.  The Clinton-Trump election represents two sides of the Unholy Triad (government and industry) vying for control of the Federal Reserves (finance).  The Uber case, and others like it, represent the battle of entrepreneurs to break into the Inner Circle's protected playground.  The court decisions are the last line of defense for the oligarchs, since there are no higher authorities to whom one can appeal.

And while the Big Picture allows us to see the machinations of the oligarchs at work, it doesn't give us any surcease of anxiety.  Fundamentally, the entire system is rigged from top to bottom, no matter which route your local government has gone.  It is incredibly hard to find any extant example of true capitalism at work in the world, except in the virtual realm of the internet, and what we see there is a slow but panicked attempt by the Unholy Triad to take over control of that outlet, as well.

This is the battleground on which GlobalRev is being played out.  From this point of view, we can see the various sides lobbing grenades and skirmishing over front lines.  The Old Guard have pulled out all the stops to maintain their hammerlock on markets, and ultimately your labor and wealth, that they have had since at least the Middle Ages.  East (BRICSA) battles West (EU/UK/US).  Old Economy battles New Economy.  Establishment battles Entrepreneur.

Bottom line?

Only the individual asserting his/her right to contract and taking responsibility for his/her choices and decisions will ultimately destroy the Old World Order.

Triumph Of Chaos

Do you live in a nation?  A state?  A nation-state?

If you are not sure, then you can be forgiven, since the terms are rarely defined or even discussed these days.  And frankly, most of the political turmoil in the world today can be traced directly to efforts to dissolve the nation-state in favor of a kind of war-lord system governed by the UN (or whatever succeeds it).

To get to the heart of what is driving global madness, we need to first define some terms.  A 'nation' is an organic entity defined by language, culture, names, and other aspects of people's lives.  A 'state' is a political entity defined by lines on a map, taxation, legal systems, and so forth.  'Mercantilism' is an economic system that seeks to protect a nation's trading interests through the use of legal, military and regulatory means.  How they all fit together will become clear in a moment.

On the island of Java, where I live, there used to be a number of nations broadly defined as Javanese and Sundanese.  The Javanese primarily inhabited the lowlands, while the Sunda stayed mostly in the mountains, with a fuzzy dividing line between the east and west of the island.  These nations were distinguished by language, culture and cuisine.  Javanese and Sundanese are distinct dialects with many sub-dialects.  Culturally, one of the most obvious is the patterns of batik (printed cloth) that distinguished one region from another, but there are also physical and architectural differences.  On the plate, the Javanese prefer spice to the Sundanese preference for bitter flavors.

Over the top of these nations is a political entity called the Republic of Indonesia, which is a modern state, with all the bureaucratic trappings of other republics.  This political entity uses the Indonesian language, which is wholly distinct from both Javanese and Sundanese, and the state identifies itself with a flag, anthem and other symbols of the modern state.

The driving force that unified the two nations under the state was mercantilism, the mutual interest of both groups to protect their business interests and promote those interests through the use of common regulations, a legal system for disputes and a military to project force on outside challengers.

The modern nation-state arose in the 1400s in Europe, primarily in Venice, Genoa and other Italian city-states.  The distinct cultures formed naturally through familial ties and language/culture.  In order to reduce friction between the powerful trading families and focus on expanding business, they created a system of laws and regulations to level the home playing field.  They then built, for the time, mighty militaries to protect their ships and caravans from raiders and ensure safe delivery of goods and the more important return of money.

Over time, nations, states and mercantilism combined with cartography and the ability to define boundaries and borders and record them on maps and negotiate them with other entities to create the modern nation-state.  A fine example of a nation-state is Switzerland.  It is actually three nations - Italy, Germany and France - combined under a political system defined by boundaries to protect its business interests through mercantilism.  The inhabitants speak different languages and enjoy different native cultures (nation), but share a single government and military (state) symbolized by a common flag, anthem and other such things.

For the better part of 600 years, the nation-state has grown to cover most of the globe and has defined how we humans interact with each other.  Legal system compete to offer the most fair and secure environments for business, while the militaries go to war to protect and expand markets.  It is something we are all used to and hardly ever think about any more.  In fact, maps have hardly changed for decades now and we are generally shocked when extreme events rewrite boundaries, such as the fall of the Soviet Union.

Though the whole thing is rather chaotic, it has been relatively stable and allowed complex legal systems to develop that control activities within and between the various nation-states.  However, a major shift has been underway for the better part of the 20th century and into the 21st century.  Powerful interests have been trying to dissolve the nation-state in favor of a global system of laws and regulations, with a global military to protect trade.  The first step was the League of Nations after WW1, with the United Nations springing from its ashes in the wake of WW2.

Multi-national corporations have been a major driving force behind the effort to end the nation-state.  There are obvious advantages to conforming one's business to a single set of rules and regulations, rather than having to manage and maneuver through piles of legal hassle in every country where one does business.  The International Standards Organization (ISO) and HDTV (replacing NTSC, PAL and SECAM) are prime examples of this effort.

Imagine McDonald's, with outlets and franchises in most of the nation-states on Earth.  Employment laws, food and sanitation regulations, environmental laws, taxation schemes, and much more apply in every location and are radically different place to place.  It would be so much easier for them if there were a single set of global rules, a single taxing scheme and other standardization.

It would also be nice if there were a single military that protected business interests in every jurisdiction and on the high seas.

McDonald's is only one of thousands of multi-national corporations, and nearly all of them have a vital interest in conforming global business environments to a single standard.  Thus, the ongoing push to end the nation-state.

All of this is being led, of course, by banking and finance, which is the nucleus around which business orbits and the heart of mercantilism for centuries.  The test grounds for this unified system is the European Union and the United States.  They are both a hodge-podge of nations that are being forced, with varying degrees of success, to synchronize into single states.

The EU is the latest effort and one that is a bit clearer for our purposes than the US.  The EU is dozens of very distinct nations with roughly 20 states overlaying them.  Over the past 30 years or so, there has been a major effort to centralize banking and government, issue a single currency, erase borders, converge militaries.  And if Grexit and Brexit are any sign, it is failing miserably.

In fact, people like Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and Chiang Kai-shek, who are prominent nationists, are often ridiculed and berated by corporate interests because nationalism is anathema to the state and mercantile interests.  They have been vilified, fairly or not, because their efforts undermine the centuries-long effort to champion political systems over natural ones in the interest of commercialism and profit.

To understand the current global chaos and honestly assess whether a particular leader is really wrong, or is just being castigated for being a naturalist/nationalist, one needs to understand the distinction at the root of the problem.

We are facing a massive clash of entrenched interests - a clash of civilizations, if you will.  On the one hand are those promoting nationalism, which is to say the natural and organic organization of human beings.  On the other hand are the statists/mercantilists who promote business interests and profits over the interests of individuals.  Who is right or wrong in this argument is a subjective decision.

My view is that nationalism is a natural function of life.  We are all imprinted with the location and culture of our birth.  There is only one "home," though there may be many "houses."  People, no matter how much we attempt to modify it, will always desire the "home" to which they were born.  Everything else will always be foreign.  This comes from two things: the natural imprinting of the electro-magnitic field of a given location at birth, and the mother tongue, which carries one's culture with it (culture and language are inseparable).

Like homing pigeons, we all have an innate desire to return to the place where we were born.  How strong that desire and how much one is susceptible to it varies, but it is always there.  Part of that most basic motivation is the desire to keep that "home" in some sort of pristine or original condition, a kind of defense mechanism that makes us fight for the sanctity and sovereignty of our birthplaces.

The other part of this equation - language - is even more deeply rooted.  Though I speak a number of languages, and I am fluent in four of them, English is always my default.  It is the language of my thoughts and it molds my worldview.  I can no more change that that I can change my brain.  It is the language that carries culture, and culture that influences language.  One can never be divorced from the other.

Thus, we see globally a fundamental clash between what humans are and what we feel, against what we have created.  Political and economic sciences have been separated from the most fundamental aspects of what it means to be human.  Despite centuries of education and social manipulation, the statist/mercantilist interests cannot remove these most basic impulses from humanity.  Efforts to genetically manipulate the organism may one day succeed, but I am skeptical.

In the real world, though, there are the Donald Trumps on the nationalist side - though I think he runs solely on instinct.  On the other side are the "globalists," whose efforts are, as we saw above, to synchronize a global system of laws, regulations and militaries to protect business and profits.  They are fundamentally opposed ideologies and can no more mix than oil and water.  They are mutually exclusive.

So when you see the Trumps and the Putins vilified in the corporate media, or people railing on about racial, globalist or religious ideals, at the heart of it is a clash of worldviews, a weltanschauungskrieg, or "war of philosophies."

I, for one, believe that the nationalists will win.  Beneath the rhetoric is a deep human truth that cannot be changed.  The statist/mercantilist effort seeks to replace what humans feel with an abstract ideology that must be learned - it is not installed at birth.  It is akin to a computer's BIOS and OS.  They can work together or clash, but when they clash, nothing will work.

I suspect the harder the statists push, the more the nationalists will resist until the whole thing collapses, or one side gives up, and I don't see that happening.  It is the proverbial rock and a hard spot, or in scientific terms, the irresistible force meeting the the unyielding object.

This will not end pretty.