Blog 49 Nelson Raises the Flag - Fight Feudalism

 Blog 49  Nelson Raises the Flag - 
           Fight Feudalism

 POWER

MONEY

Elbow note (That's something between a foot-note and a head-note, with little relevance to either.)

Just heard a policy statement on NAFTA from the President. Not clear, of course, but as we predicted in Blog 48, what he is after is to strengthen the investor protection powers of that treaty.

But on to Blog 49

Breathes there a man, with soul so dead,

Who never to himself hath said,

  "This is my own, my native land!

Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned, 

As home his footsteps he hath turned.

  From wandering on a foreign strand!

If such there be, go, mark him well...

The wretch, concentred all in self,

Living, shall forfeit fair renown,

And doubly dying, shall go down

To the vile dust from which he sprung,

Unwept, unhonoured and unsung!

                   

(Thank you, Sir Walter Scott, 1805)

How do you feel about that two centuries-old sentiment about your country/nation/state/city? If it touches you, you might be interested to read Joyce Nelson's latest book,, Beyond Banksters. Resisting the New Feudalism. It is a small, 146-page book of well-researched content and - professors, please note - very readable style.

I will, however, give you two or three blogs-worth of comment on Nelson's revelations on the global feudalism project.

First, the objective: is to reduce the whole global population to two classes: Rulers (very few and very rich), and Peasants (multitudes, as long as they last, and poor). The Lords will own everything - total privatiztion - and employ only as many peasants as they need. (Cogs Blog comment: I take this view from the term "feudalism" in Nelson's title. You may review Blog 44, if you need to.)  With technological changes, like robotics and the "universe of things", not many peasants will be needed.

Secondly,  How is it to be done? Well, the "Banksters" will do it.

First, by taking from the national states their power to create money. That stage is close to completion. Most of the money with which the world's population now transacts their business is not government money, but money created by private banks, and created as debt.

The second operation  is the crippling of the national states with perpetually unpayable debt. That is achieved by infiltrating national governments and buying, bullying or bamboozling them into turning their "democratic" election promises into neo-feudalist policies, such as selling off state assets cheap to happy investors and replacing public services with profitable private ones. I also predict a large upswing in interest rates, as in the late 1980's. (Review Blog 25 on Nation X)

Finally,the abolition of all public services which are not profit-making - such as free public schools, free healthcare, public pensions, railways and highways with too little traffic, public broadcasting. And social spending generally.  Then abolishing the regulations that protect public assets, such as water, forests, mineral deposits, postal delivery to remote settlements, post office banks, and so on, and, finally, prohibiting any reversion of these to public ownership. (That's what these so-called "trade" treaties are really about. Nelson lays it all out in panoramic simplicity.)

She supports this overview with examples of government policies, names and dates of individuals involved in the transition, and by connecting the dots on lots of illustrative events, from aborting public interest lawsuits to shutting down the "Occupy Wall Street" movement. Ever wonder how that well informed, well-targeted movement disappeared so suddenly and completely? She names the banksters who managed the crackdown.

Enough. More details coming up in Blog 50

Blog 48 What Will Trump NAFTA ?

The new President has vilified NAFTA and threatened to scrap the treaty. He can do that easily by giving just six months' notice to the other two signatories.

But he won't. For all he says, the United States, through its corporations, has profited handsomely from twenty years of NAFTA. For one thing, in the first five years of the treaty, Canada alone had hundreds of  Canadian companies bought up by American investors. They weren't naive. The expected return in repatriated profits in those days was 15%!

Some one must have explained that to the Presidential candidate during the election, because partway along he switched from "scrap" to "renegotiate". 

Let me tell you what part of the treaty he will be advised, pressed, or commanded to renegotiate. It will not be about trade in goods of any kind.

It will be the duration of the treaty. He will press to increase the locked-in term from six months to, say, twenty or thirty years, like former Canadian Prime Minister Harper's China treaty (31 years!) The aim will be to secure those investor protection clauses. for as long as possible 

These so-called "trade" treaties over time always benefit the larger country, not the smaller one. And benefit corporations rather than workers. No matter what "trade" rhetoric is bandied about, the main objective will be to seal in those Chapter 11 investor protection rights. Want to bet I'm wrong?

Here's a cartoon from the early days of NAFTA. (Can't credit it. Just found it loose in a file). Today is seems even more relevant than it did then.

Blog 47 Here's to an Enlightening Year

Hello, 2017! May you be an enlightening year.

We sure need enlightenment in a world of commercial advertising, political spin-doctoring, and economic bafflegab. So here are two quotations from two impressive thinkers, that are worth repeating.

No.1    "The ideas of economists and political philosophers when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back...  It is ideas, not vested interest, which are dangerous for good or evil." John Maynard Keynes

Cogs Blog comments/highlights/translations

  -  Experts (past and present) can be right or wrong.

  -  Current self-styled "practical" men (and women, Mrs. Thatcher), without knowing they are doing it, mindlessly spout beliefs derived from some past expert or thinker who might or might not have been right. Or I would add, may have been right then but are wrong, now.

  -  So we need to be alert to ideas,and to call out the propaganda with which the current rulers (Keynes's "vested interests") try to bamboozle us.

  -  Ideas, however may be either good or evil (Example of an evil one: what we need is one world government. Wrong, because the best and most inclusive and compassionate form of government is democracy, which, I would argue, works best in small human communities, and is next to impossible in large ones. (Think Russia, China, the United States. So, ask, who are the "we" who are pushing that evil idea? And why?

No. 2   "Competing in the world marketplace: the strategic view that countries are in competition with each other in the same way that companies are; the long stagnation of middle-class standards of living is attributed to a failure to compete effectively.

What's wrong with this? Like the claim that globalization changes everything, it seems to economists to combine a conceptual confusion with an apparent lack of knowledge about the data.

At a conceptual level, the most basic point about trade is that it is a process of exchange. Any country is both a seller and a buyer on world markets, and market forces will guarantee that over the long run, sales (exports) and purchases (imports) are roughly equal. And the purpose of international trade, the reason why it is useful, is to import, not to export.That is, what a country gains from trade is the ability to import what it wants. Exports are not an objective in and of themselves. The need to export is a burden that a country must bear because its import suppliers are crass enough to demand payment. So the whole idea that "competitiveness" is crucial, or even that it means anything, is usually rejected by economists."

Paul Krugman: Peddling Prosperity: Economic Sense and Nonsense...

Cogs Blog comments/highlights/translations

 -  Exports are not the essential aim of trade. The only reason exports are useful to trade is to pay for imports. 

 -  Competitiveness, however is part of American DNA. It has been educated into the American consciousness and highlighted in American history. And, though perhaps a bad idea, it has been exported all over the world. Maybe it was a good idea in 1800, but in the world of 2017 we should clearly be thinking more about its opposite: - cooperation.

Well, that's a not-so-little introduction to a recent book I have just read: Beyond Banksters: Resisting the New Feudalism* Joyce Nelson, It's a dynamite book, to be mined at next posting.

*Feudalism. You might want to re-visit Blog 44.

Hello, 2017. Are you there?