ETERNAL VIGILANCE

American Fascism
by Ace

You're all a bunch of Fascists! At least that's what the left keeps calling everyone who attempts to reason from the classical conservative perspective.

But the issue of who is a Fascist can't be addressed by any measure from the modern philosophical left because their fundamental tenet is the lie. For them, that's the first principle of the art of war. They use it, they excuse it, and they in fact worship at its feet. They are the masters of deception, the political prestidigitators of the modern age. War is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength. And one of the truly clever feats of magic the left has perpetrated was convincing John and Jane Q. Public that Fascism is necessarily a product of the popular definition of the "far right."

"Clinton's an unusually good liar. Unusually good. Do you realize that?"

Senator Bob Kerrey, as Chairman of the Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee, Esquire Magazine, January 1996

And of course we can argue definitions from now to eternity and never get anywhere if we reason from the contemporary post-modern perspective. Whether we use the Nolan analysis to determine political positioning, the French memory of left and right chambers of government, or the anarchy-to-dictatorship continuum, we still wallow around in the rhetoric of abstraction. In the real world of non-revisionist history (What does revisionist history have to do with it? -- Ed.), the problem of politics has always been the diametric polarization of the individual and a governing elite. It's been a battle over who has ownership of human rights -- who possesses innate sovereignty -- the individual or the state. And the state has most often won this argument by virtue of either deception or sheer force.

"The use of the word "royalty," as fee to a proprietor for the exploitation of a work or property, derives from the period when the sovereign assumed title to all wealth of the realm. It was the struggle for freedom from these encroachments of the state that chiefly marked the Nineteenth Century, and established everywhere constitutional regimes of limited authority. In the Twentieth Century, however, we have witnessed a gradual and almost unrestricted movement back to state authoritarianism, primarily in the economic sphere, accompanied by the spread of state monopoly and intervention." Elgin Groseclose, Money and Man: A Survey of the Monetary Experience

Groseclose was right. But since he wrote that back in 1961, the advocates of the Collectivist State have significantly expanded their hold on power beyond the economic sphere. Almost daily they claim eminent ownership of some new aspect of our lives. While they're still perfectly willing to license these plundered liberties back to us as a privilege and for a fee, the bipartisan, politically correct, authoritarian American left has finally begun to behave like the Fascists they actually are. But we dare not admit this openly, for the phenomenon of mass denial has become our very own sacred cow. Don't touch it. Don't question it. Just do it. So trudging along through the lowland of cultural mediocrity, most on the Democratic left are no longer even aware of the grand deception, or that others before have made almost the same miscalculation. And also completely buried in the doctrinal deception, a majority of those on the Republican right also have no idea they have long subscribed to the same paradigm. They smugly deny that the illusory quagmire of collectivist quicksand has dragged down the minds of great individuals with an almost blind indifference.

Responding in ignorance and addicted to the fraud of the "free lunch," the public has taken to opposing the only prescription in history that has ever even remotely remedied Fascism, which in fact is the traditional American conservatism of the classical constitutional republic. That is the ideology of the so called "far right," where the individual makes the sovereign claim to all basic human rights, and empowers the collective state only by consent and practical limitation to manage, police, and protect those rights.

Fascism: Any program for setting up and centralizing an autocratic regime with severely authoritarian politics exercising regulation of industry, commerce and finance, rigid censorship, and forcible oppression of opposition. Webster's Unabridged Dictionary

Writing in The New Australian on January 24, 1999, James Henry noted that, "The state of American education being what it is, the vast majority of people are totally incapable of recognizing a fascist economic program, even when it is used to slap them in the face. This is because they have not been taught that fascism means state direction of the economy, cradle to grave 'social security', complete control of education, government intervention in every nook and cranny of the economy -- and the belief that the individual belongs to the state."

And just in case you think you aren't included in that latter chattel, consider that the popular expression used to describe labor these days is human resources. Members of the executive committee of the White House Health Project under Hillary Clinton's failed effort to monopolize medicine were even excited about proposals for the mandatory implantation of livestock identification micro chips in your body. If you didn't submit you wouldn't qualify for any licensed health care. Now admit it. Weren't there any myopic advocates on the left that even momentarily felt like sheep at that proposal?

And in a January 26, 1999 piece for WorldNetDaily, Joseph Farah wrote in "Moving Toward a Police State" that, "President Clinton has declared more 'states of national emergency' than any of his predecessors. And he's done it in an era he boasts about as the freest, most peaceful and most prosperous time in recent American history. President Clinton has issued more executive orders than any of his predecessors. His top aides have even boasted of using them as a political strategy to go over the heads of the legislative branch of government. 'Stroke of the pen, law of the land,' boasted Paul Begala of the plan. 'Pretty cool, huh?'"

Pretty cool all right. If there's any sensible readers from the left still with us, they're probably beginning to squirm uncomfortably by now. So let's step back and broaden our perspective. Where do we get the word Fascism anyway? Isn't it associated with the Roman "fasces," the bundle of wooden rods covering the battleaxe Roman magistrates used as a symbol of their authority? And wasn't Benito Mussolini the man who took as his symbol the "fasces" of classical Rome, and in doing so gave the modern world the term, "Fascism"? And what was the political slant of Mussolini? Was he a republican constitutional conservative, a product of the "far right?" Or was he a socialist like Adolph Hitler?

"At first the claims of the propaganda were so impudent that people thought it insane; later, it got on people's nerves; and in the end, it was believed." Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

Liberal revisionists insist that Mussolini was a product of the political "right wing." In fact, there's strong indication that he was for years an orthodox Marxist, who (like Hitler) came to power through democratic means. His dictum was "Everything for the State, nothing outside the State, nothing above the State." So it's a little unnerving that the symbol of the fasces also appeared on the reverse of the "Winged Head of American Liberty" or "Mercury" dime in 1916. That just about coincides with the period the Marxist tenet of progressive income tax became an American institution and the Federal Reserve Corporation was inserted as a central banking monopoly inside the American banking system. The schizophrenic symbolism of the Liberty Head obverse and the fasces reverse on that design of the American 10-cent coin reflects the very disturbance of opposing forces in American culture that we are discussing.

And what do we really remember of Mussolini and Hitler from today's university history? Do we remember that socialist icon George Bernard Shaw highly praised Mussolini for his collectivist policies, or that the venerable Mahatma Gandhi called him a "superman?" Gandhi's term became the catchword description of Mussolini for the cultural elite of his day. And we've forgotten that the chairman of the U.S. House Foreign Relations Committee told his colleagues in 1926 that Mussolini "is something new and vital . . . It will be a great thing not only for Italy but for all of us if he succeeds." And we for some reason can't remember that in the 1930's prominent banker Otto Kahn said that the world owes Hitler "a debt of gratitude." Or that Arnold Toynbee thought he was a "man of peace," or that the French intellectual Andre Gide said that he "behaves like a genius . . . Soon even those he vanquishes will feel compelled . . . to admire him." Neither can academia recall that in 1934 the president of Hunter College in America declared that Hitler was "destined to go down to history as a cross between Hotspur and Uncle Toby and to be as immortal as either."



Well, Hitler went down to immortal history all right. That much we all agree on.

And yet, in a fit of modern denial, collectivist apologists compulsively and erroneously distance themselves from the age of Neville Chamberlain. They blithely forget the doublespeak of Giovanni Gentile, one of Fascist Italy's leading philosophers stating that, "The maximum of liberty coincides with the maximum of state force." Once again they fail to remember that Mussolini's thesis was: "If historic fact exists it is this, that all of the history of men's civilization, from the caves to civilized or so-called civilized man, is a progressive limitation of liberty." Somehow our educational system fails to remind them that the collectivist advocate Herbert Matthews, a New York Times writer who was instrumental in bringing Castro to power in Cuba, claimed that he was "an enthusiastic admirer of Fascism."

The quasi-intellectuals of the left boldly proclaimed that the 1996 Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole was a "Fascist" for criticizing violent, sexist rap music. But don't ever point out that Mussolini was fundamentally a socialist, or make any reference to Hitler at all. For if you do, they insist that you lose the argument by default. Then they either smugly pick up their toys and march home, or arrogantly shout you down.

Sorry, kids, but Fascism is historically associated with National Socialism, and National Socialism was a centralized, collectivist federal authority. Fascism is an institution of statism, and unbridled statism is antithetical to the true conservative thought of those on the "right." And as much as tight-eyed crypto-Marxist intellectuals on the collectivist American left many try to deny it, Marxism is unbridled statism.

"Basically National Socialism and Marxism are the same." Nobel laureate Friedrich A. Hayek

F. A. Voigt, after years of close observation as a foreign correspondent prior to and during WW2, wrote that, "Marxism has led to Fascism and National Socialism, because, in all essentials, it is Fascism and National Socialism." After spending twelve years in Russia as an American correspondent only to have his own socialist ideals shattered, W. H. Chamberlin concluded "socialism is certainly to prove . . . the road not to freedom, but to dictatorship and counter-dictatorships, to civil war of the fiercest kind." According to author John Toland, Hitler himself said, "We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic . . . system." But the children of the lie, those on the modern left, know that perfectly well. The idolaters of the collectivist icons Emperor Clinton and Empress Hildabeast just want the next collectivist dictatorship to end up under their control. Their god is power, not truth.

"We are the priests of power-do not forget this, Winston-always there will be the intoxication of power . . . If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- “forever." O'Brien, Inner Party member of the collectivist oligarchy and brain washing specialist in the final scene of Orwell's 1984

Can't you hear them barking, "Oh, but get real! We're not National Socialists. We're International Socialists!" Well -- excuse me. But if we rub the sleep from our pretty little eyes, what do we remember of International Socialism? Besides Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and Kim Ill Sung of course. I know, I know. It's bad enough to have brought Mussolini and Hitler into the argument, but completely unfair to bring the litany of International Socialists into the picture as well. For years, if you dared to point out liberal inconsistencies by analogy to certain historic personalities, your own argument was painted an ad hominem, illogical appeal to passion. But the times are a-changing.

Even ultra-liberal Jewish Harvard law professor and O.J. Simpson defender, Alan Dershowitz, publicly stated before an assembly at Yale that he'd defend Adolph Hitler. Furthermore, he insisted, he'd win. So relax and consider concert pianist Balint Bazsony, author of America's 30 Year War. He survived not only National Socialism under the Germans, but International Socialism under the Stalinists as well. And here's what he tells us about his years in America after escaping collectivist Hungary.

"During the late 1960s, I watched in despair as my brilliantly gifted [American] piano students suddenly began to speak as if someone had replaced their brains with prerecorded tapes. They spoke in phrases -- repeated mechanically -- which were neither the product of, nor accessible to, intelligent consideration. At first, these tapes seemed to contain only a few slogans about "love and peace." Fruitful conversation became impossible, but that was merely regrettable. The situation became alarming when the "tapes" began to include words and phrases that had become familiar to me in Hungary during the Nazi and Soviet occupations, and which contributed to the reasons for my decision to escape. Worse yet, the words and phrases were soon followed by practices of similar pedigree.

"Reactionary," "exploitation," "oppressor and oppressed," and "redistribution" were some of the words taken straight from the Marxist repertoire. The term "politically correct" first came to my attention through the writings of Anton Semionovich Makarenko, Lenin's expert on education. Adolf Hitler preferred the version "socially correct." Then came the affirmative action forms which classified people by ancestry -- first signed into law in Nazi Germany -- and the preferential treatment of specific categories, introduced by the Stalinist government in 1950."

That's all very well and good, but Bazsony's students were just children of the sixties. So be serious. What could America under Liberal Democracy possibly have in common with the Fascist, dictatorial policies of National or International Socialism? Well not much, I suppose. Unless you include centrally monopolized banking, militantly enforced progressive income tax, the involuntary military draft, affirmative action for special cultural, racial, or political groups, oppressive regulation of the environment, oppressive regulation of business, oppressive regulation of commerce, a call to national service, a call for a national identity system, a call for nationally monopolized health care, a progressively intense call for a ban on private ownership of firearms, a call for state assisted euthanasia, a call for legalizing post-partum infanticide (can you imagine people dragging their toddlers down to the "State Euthanasia Center for Baal Worshipers," complaining that "this brat's got a bad attitude?"), a call for a national police force with Pentagon assistance, the creation of statutes by centralized executive order, nationalized public education emphasizing radical collectivist and politically correct propaganda, a centralized and progressively unaccountable central government, personal and real asset forfeiture for all manner of infraction, interest bearing State-monopolized fiat money, a two-tiered legal system (one emphasizing an apologetic waiver for cultural icons and bureaucrats on the left, and quite another for "conservatives" on the right and the common man), a phalanx of central ministry "alphabet soup" agencies attacking everyone from licensed physicians to health food store proprietors, political assassination, government cover-ups, Gramscian destruction of dissenting traditional culture, disregard for the constitutional rule of law by the appeal of popular propaganda or "democratic" expediency, a shouting down of dissenters and objectors, redefinition of political terms to suit the power elite, a call for the popular globalization of these "progressive" institutions, and ... well I don't know. As I said, not much. Except that every one of these proposals appears to be fact.

"For government consists in nothing else but so controlling subjects that they shall neither be able to, nor have cause to do it harm." Nicolo Machiavelli

Joseph Farah recently reminded us that, "America is not slouching toward totalitarianism, it is rushing headlong toward it." And if so, are there any apologists that can sincerely argue that a people rushing toward a totalitarian police state aren't seriously flirting with that harlot we call Fascism? And if we are, then denial herself is the brutal, silent, black leather-clad dominatrix of the entire affair. History would suggest she is an indifferent whore, much to the tragic sadness of those throughout the ages who insist on getting involved with her. She's just as likely to strike down her most powerful despots and ideological advocates as she is the powerless and innocent.

Still, no matter how much you try, you can never backtrack after considering these notions. There's a legitimate contention for reasonable limitations to the possible abuse of central power. That goes for the most justifiable causes, including nationally or internationally homogenized education, health care, or militant police protection. There's a popular line of reasoning circulating these days arguing that governments are basically in the business of selling protection. Protection from poverty, foreign invaders, thieves and other common criminals, "class injustice," our "inability" to provide for ourselves, those who would insult us, environmental degradation, our propensity to drive without fastening our seat belts or ride without our helmets, anything and everything they can think of. So when they come to sell you this protection you may ask them what happens if you decline their monopolized services. What happens if you should like to shop elsewhere for these "necessities," in a more competitive market? What happens if even from a reasonable posture, you refuse to unilaterally allow the federal, state, or local authorities to take your money in exchange for limiting your freedom to negotiate with them?

Well, there's a strong possibility that they'll read you your "rights" and flat out tell you that then you'll need protection from them. That this fact so reminds any reasonable thinker of the protection rackets of organized crime should cause any rational person to look at the entire matter from a different perspective.

"In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant." Charles de Gaulle

While to a certain degree the views presented here may be considered an over-simplification, or hyperbole for the benefit of illustration, they still color every further thought we might have about government. The worst thing about seeing our aging collectivist king without his clothes is that you can never get his fat, hairy, greasy image out of your mind again.



from The Laissez Faire City Times, Vol 3, No 6, Feb. 8, 1999

TAKE MY SON

A wealthy man and his son loved to collect rare works of art.
They had everything in their collection, from Picasso to Raphael.
They would often sit together and admire the great works of art.

When the Vietnam conflict broke out, the son went to war.
He was very courageous and died in battlewhile rescuing another soldier.

The father was notified and grieved deeply for his only son.
About a month later, just before Christmas, there was a knock at the door.
A young man stood at the door with a large package in his hands.

He said, "Sir, you don't know me,but I am the soldier for whom your son gave his life.
He saved many lives that day, and he was carrying me to safety when a bullet struck him in the heart
and he died instantly. He often talked about you, and your love for art."

The young man held out this package.
"I know this isn't much.I'm not really a great artist,
but I think your son would have wanted you to have this."

The father opened the package.
It was a portrait of his son, painted by the young man.

He stared in awe at the way the soldier had captured the personality of his son
in the painting. The father was so drawn to the eyesthat his own eyes welled up with tears.
He thanked the young man and offered to pay him for the picture.

"Oh, no sir, I could never repay what your son did for me. It's a gift."

The father hung the portrait over his mantle.
Every time visitors came to his home he took them to see the
portrait of his son before he showed them any of the other
great works he had collected.

The man died a few months later.

There was to be a great auction of his paintings.
Many influential people gathered, excited over seeing the great paintings
and having an opportunity to purchase one for their collection.
On the platform sat the painting of the son.

The auctioneer pounded his gavel.
"We will start the bidding with this picture of the son.
Who will bid for this picture?"

There was silence.
Then a voice in the back of the room shouted,
"We want to see the famous paintings.
Skip this one."

But the auctioneer persisted.
"Will someone bid for this painting?
Who will start the bidding?
$100?
$200?"

Another voice shouted angrily.
"We didn't come to see this painting.
We came to see the Van Gogh's, the Rembrandts.
Get on with the real bids!"

But still the auctioneer continued.
"The son! The son!
Who'll take the son?"

Finally, a voice came from the very back of the room.
It was the longtime gardener of the man and his son.
"I'll give $10 for the painting."
Being a poor man, it was all he could afford.

"We have $10, who will bid $20?" announced the auctioneer.

Give it to him for $10.
Let's see the masters."
$10 is the bid,
won't someone bid $20?"

The crowd was becoming angry.
They didn't want the picture of the son.
They wanted the more worthy investments for their collections.

The auctioneer pounded the gavel.
"Going once, twice, Sold for $10.00.

A man sitting on the second row shouted, "Now let's get on
with the collection!"

The auctioneer laid down his gavel.
"I'm sorry, the auction is over."

"What about the paintings?"

"I am sorry. When I was called to conduct this auction,
I was told of a secret stipulation in the will.
I was not allowed to reveal that stipulation until this time.

Only the painting of the son would be auctioned.
Whoever bought that painting would inherit the entire estate,
including the paintings.

The man who took the son gets everything!"

God gave His son 2,000 years ago to die on a cruel cross.
Much like the auctioneer, His message today is:
"The son, the son, who'll take the son?"

Because, you see, whoever takes the Son gets everything.

How we came to live under fascism


Friends,

Someone sent me a paper which included the following paragraph. As so often happens, in responding to someone else's comments, I found myself led to expressing some ideas in a clearer way. I hope you find the outcome useful.

regards, rkm

http://cyberjournal.org
-------------------------------------------------------------------- K.> If Marx showed us how the social relations of production act as so many fetters on the development of the productive forces, those social relations today take the form of territorial states seeking to maintain established privilege by constraining the movement of people, goods, money and information in a world society that is both more integrated and divided at the same time. Transnational capitalism, complemented by grassroots democratic movements of all kinds, today leads the way in challenging old national and regional structures, in much the same way that national capitalism underpinned liberal revolutions in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Dear K.,

What you say here is largely 'true', in a literal sense, but from my perspective it seriously mis-characterizes the various relationships and forces in question. I believe that your 'social relations today' characterization applied 'fully' up to 1945, and 'mostly' until about 1980. Since then we've been in the throes of a full-fledged takeover by transnational capitalism by means of the neoliberal revolution, now in its final globalization phase.

You say these changes have been 'complemented by grassroots democratic movements', which has been sometimes true at a surface level. I'd say rather that the neoliberal revolutionary propaganda has been aimed at those with progressive sentiments, deceiving them into believing that globalization will move things in a direction they would favor. Your characterization becomes even less applicable post-Seattle. Grassroots democratic movements the world over have now rejected the neoliberal party line and have become largely counter-revolutionary in that regard. Not that they are effective, but they no longer complement'.

As you say, the situation is parallel to that of the earlier national liberal revolutions. And in those liberal revolutions as well, any complementarianism was based less on mutual interest than on deceit of the masses. In both cases, the main event was a shift in power among elites, with the people being pulled along from an old prison to a newer one. The liberal revolutions shifted power from monarchic hierarchies to networks of commercial-baron /financier cliques. It also replaced divine right, as a justification for governmental authority, with 'popular sovereignty', presumably expressed in our pseudo-democratic institutions. Over the subsequent two hundred years the natural forces of capitalism led to a concentration of global wealth and power into the hands of an elite Western clique. The neoliberal revolution leaves that same clique in power, but it brings a cataclysmic shift in power relationships nonetheless, and an equally cataclysmic transformation of societies.

The power shift can be compared to a corporate reorganization. Think of a conglomerate which is made up of a number of semi-autonomous companies. Then one day the CEO announces that he's installing a centralized administration to micro-manage each operation, disempowering local managements. Pre-neoliberal Western nations were like the semi-autonomous companies; globalization strips them of their autonomy and relegates governments to the status of Mandarin functionaries - subservient to the WTO / IMF administrative regime and to the whims of corporate operators, banks, and financial traders.

As regards the substance of democracy, this reorganization brings no change - those at the bottom are still controlled by those at the top. The administrative machinery has been altered, but the democracy-quotient was zero before and remains zero afterwards. The false rhetoric of democracy continues mostly unchanged, but becomes each day less credible - the emperor's clothes become increasingly transparent. The anti-globalization movement arises from those who have seen through the veils.

But the era of the 'great liberal democracies' (1798-1980) was stabilized less by the rhetoric of democracy than by the reality of middle-class prosperity. The empowerment that really mattered was that which could be carried in wallets - together with a faith by the middle classes in the future continuance of that empowerment for themselves and their children. Neoliberal globalization became a necessity precisely when capitalism could no longer afford to support the middle classes in the fashion to which they had grown long accustomed. The elite perception of this necessity crystallized around 1973, as memorialized in Huntington's 'Crisis of Democracy' paper.

Elites were waking up to the fact that the continuation of capitalism was not compatible with then existing democratic institutions. As long as middle-class prosperity could be continued, elites had little problem manipulating the political process to get precisely the policies they wanted. But if the middle classes were to be abandoned, then the democratic institutions would become a potential threat to elite power. There was too great a risk that an effective independent political party might arise and turn the rhetoric of democracy into a reality. When the middle classes find common cause with workers and ethnic minorities, et al - and if sovereign governmental institutions are available - then elites could have a real revolution from below on their hands.

The decade of the 1980s was used to lay the foundations for the new neoliberal world order, aimed at eliminating the risk of an outbreak of democracy. While corporate operators were looting public assets, they generated enough economic activity to provide a bubble of pyramid-scheme prosperity to the middle classes. This masked the shift of power that was happening behind the scenes, while simultaneously providing accelerated elite wealth accumulation during the decade.

As the nineties began, the groundwork had been laid, and events began to reveal the realities of the new world order, so dubbed by Daddy Bush. The new order brought intensified imperialist interventionism, of both the military and IMF variety, (Iraq, Yugoslavia, Macedonia, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Brazil, Korea, etc. ad infinitum). Particularly significant were the machinations around 'internationalizing' these interventions, and creating an aura of legitimization for them - quite outside the bounds of established international law and of sound economic policy.

By '93, we had the Uruguay Round, transforming GATT (a treaty initiative) into the WTO (an administrative body). During the decade the global administration laid down its policy structures and began to exercise its power in a scattering of precedent-setting test cases (hormone beef, bananas, Ethyl additives, ...).

Also during the eighties and nineties, another program was afoot. That was the intentional development of international terrorist networks and the encouragement of Islamic fundamentalism. From the installation of the Ayatollah, to the encouragement of Israeli excesses, to the creation by the CIA of the Taliban and its predecessors and competitors in Afghanistan - the USA did everything it could to create an 'extremist terrorist threat' to replace the Cold War's demon communism.

As the new millennium dawned, the new world order was fully established and ready to start playing hardball. At the same time, the global economy was moving into serious doldrums, requiring that such play begin. All that was needed was an appropriate trigger event, an appropriate agent to throw the ritual first pitch. For this purpose, as I read the evidence, some secret inner CIA team began nurturing a particular group of terrorists who had a vision of using airliners to destroy major buildings. The group was so clumsy that it came to the attention of the FBI, who had to be shooed off the case by orders from Washington. Whether the group actually controlled the planes on 9/11 is doubtful, but the evidence they left behind them made it easy to lay blame where intended, and was adequate (barely) to cover up the fact that the event was primarily an inside job.

This elite-arranged trigger-event strategy is of course nothing new, having been used frequently by the USA (Battleship Maine, Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, etc.). by Nazi Germany (faked invasion by Polish troops, Reichstag fire), and many other times in history.

So now we are in the era of hardball global capitalism. In order for capitalism to continue, i.e. for GDP-measured 'economic growth' to continue, the scale and nature of exploitation (of people and resources) must be greatly expanded. Alaskan and Caspian fossil fuels must be tapped; cloning and other biotech must be harnessed; unproductive populations must be eliminated through genocide. In the third world, imperialism needs a heavier fist; the second world needs to be pushed down to third-world status; in the first world, there must be a severe decline in the quality of life and political / economic activism must be brought under tight control.

The so-called War on Terrorism, while doing little to thwart dedicated terrorists, serves very well to enable this new scale of mega exploitation. First-world expectation levels have moved down a notch or two on the Maslow scale, descending to concerns with bare survival and security. This has created a climate (in the 'land of the free') where the Constitution can be abandoned, and Gestapo-style arrests and arbitrary executions can be carried out. The cleansing of the Internet has begun, with precedent-setting shutdowns of a few progressive websites. The anti-globalization movement had already experienced fascist-style repression in Genoa, even before 9/11. With expanded definitions of 'terrorism', and with the ubiquitous presence of Black Bloc provocateurs, it is clear that the anti-globalization movement cannot continue in the form whose momentum had been growing since Seattle.

One cannot describe this fascist emergence as being 'complemented by grassroots democratic movements of all kinds'.

yours, rkm

Richard K Moore
Wexford, Ireland
Citizens for a Democratic Renaissance
email: cdr@cyberjournal.org
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Doublespeak and the
New World Order

By Richard Moore

The New World Order (you know what the NWO is - the corporate-sponsored "free-trade" globalization steamroller) exploits language in precisely the way Orwell predicted. Words are used to mislead and conceal - not clarify - and are twisted to designate the opposite of their true meanings. Concepts are tagged as being either "good guys" or "bad guys" by dressing them up in "white hat" words (like "reform" or "free") or "black hat" words (like "bureaucracy" or "politics").

This use of language is a form of propaganda - and this vocabulary propaganda is much more subtle and effective than content propaganda. Content propaganda misinforms about issues, but vocabulary propaganda interferes with the ability to think or talk about issues in a way that can lead to understanding or enable effective political organizing.

As Orwell predicted, this kind of propaganda makes language volatile. In his scenario, one might read in the morning paper about an action against an enemy, with no mention that the same folks were faithful allies as recently as yesterday's edition. In actuality, the shifts in today's doublespeak are more subtle and evolutionary. As you watch new language being created, you can map out the NWO agenda: the white-hat items are to be promoted, the black-hat items to be suppressed.

A classic example was the Oliver North hearings. Words like "good soldier", "patriotic", "freedom fighter", and "legality" - not to mention "constitutional balance of powers" - took quite a beating. By labeling state-armed mercenary terrorists (ie., the Contras) as "freedom fighters", the whole linguistic ground of the hearings was warped beyond hope. Those who should have been indicting the pathetic little desk colonel and impeaching his boss were instead prefacing their remarks with kowtows toward the "freedom fighters" (if there was time remaining after the prayer service). There was no ability to discuss the affair from a meaningful moral or constitutional perspective, and the hearings dissolved into circus rhetoric/coverup, as was intended by the NWO language masters.

If we want to discuss the world situation with any kind of useful understanding, we need to explicitly decode the NWO doublespeak, and learn how to translate it into straight language. This is not an easy task, because the doublespeak process has, over time, warped political language to the point where it is nearly useless. Words like "socialism" or "tariffs", being so heavily tarred with the black brush, can't be used meaningfully without an explanatory preface. Even the word "government" is tricky to use - the echoes of "bureaucrat", "inefficient", and "corrupt" reverberate unconsciously.

Meanwhile, words like "market" and "competitive" have been promoted with the white brush to Unquestioned Axioms of The Universe. Easier would it be to hold back the tides with a horse and lance, than to resist "market forces", or so it would seem.

Following is my attempt to associate accurate meanings with some of the NWO's most topical phrases. Perhaps these definitions will ring true to you, and help you better understand what the NWO is about. With the doublespeak unraveled, the media becomes a source of accurate information after all - NWO statements, though coded, are actually fairly descriptive of the sinister NWO agenda.

"COMPETITIVENESS": the attractiveness of a venue to multinational investors, particularly: laxity of regulation and taxation; the degree to which a developed country regresses to Third-World status.

The phrase "Britain must be made more competitive for today's markets" decodes as "Britain must have lower wages and lower corporate tax rates so that it can compete with low-income parts of the world in attracting generic corporate investments".

Genuine competitiveness, as demonstrated by Japan, involves marshalling the nation's skills & resources toward adding value in focused markets - achieved by promoting synergy and making coordinated investments. NWO-peddled "competitiveness" is like prostitution - it values a nation's human and societal resources at scrap street value.

"CONSERVATISM": a policy of radically restructuring politics and economics in order to produce investment opportunities and undermine democracy; contrast with actual conservatism: a policy of preserving existing institutions in the interest social and economic stability.

Ronald Reagan was the clearest exemplar of this particular line of doublespeak. His rhetoric emphasized "returning to traditional values" while he was in fact dismantling long-evolved institutions and pursuing policies of unprecedented and untried social and economic transformation.

Genuine conservatism acts as a societal gyroscope, resisting nearly every kind of change, regardless of its direction. Conservatism's catch prase might be "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." A very important point to notice is that the assault by the NWO on existing democratic institutions has reversed the field in the game of Radical vs. Conservative: for most of the twentieth century, it has been the democracy-minded progressives who sought radical change, and the capitalist right wing who were the conservatives. But since Reagan & Thatcher, the right-wing has taken the initiative for radical change (in the wrong directions), and it is now the progressives who have a vital interest in maintaining the political status quo (ie., constitutional democracy and national sovereignty).

In this case, doublespeak succeeds in separating the progressives from their natural constituency. Progressive activists should be reaching out to the silent majority - arousing stick-in-the-mud conservatives to join the cause against reckless NWO-induced changes. By pre-empting the term "conservatism", the right-wing radicals have tricked most of the conservative-tending masses into following the wrong parade.

Progressives must reclaim their natural ground. To have any hope of assembling a significant constituency, they must find a way to break through the doublespeak jargon and help the general population to see that its interests are not being served by the new "conservatism", and that reckless changes are its true agenda.

We see a bizarre distortion of this desirable conservative reaction in the Militia mentality in America. Militia "conspiracy theories" are actually quite close to the mark: the U.S. government is being sold out to international interests; the U.N. is beginning to establish a sovereignty-threatening military force; the Constitution is being trashed; the establishment in Washington is effectively a bunch of traitors. But it's not the progressives who are bringing this message to these hard-core backwoods conservatives - instead the message is getting to them with a doublespeak reverse spin that manages to label the sellout of America as a "liberal" conspiracy! Since a Democrat happens to be in the White House, the NWO myth spinners have been able to transform anti-establishment sentiment into anti-liberal sentiment. Instead of addressing the real enemies of the Constitution (the corporate elite), the Militia tilts its lance toward the liberals and progressives who should be instead its natural allies in defending democracy. Divide and Conquer shows up once again as the most potent tool of autocratic control.

Language is a field of battle, the media is the artillery, and vocabulary is the ammunition. The NWO has taken the field by storm, and is proceeding with coordinated attacks on several fronts, using all the latest hi-tech vocabulary ammunition. They've laid a bed of land mines that cripple us when we try to stand on them: "liberalism", "conservatism", "prosperity", "democracy".

Progressives must wake up to the attack, and somehow find a way to fight back. The achilles heal of the NWO lies in its runaway successes: its high-handed treatment of nearly everyone has created an awesome potential counter-reaction - if people can be made to see who the real perpetrators are, those who are engineering the decline of democratic civilization. Even its doublespeak successes can be turned against it, if people can learn to read the NWO agenda by learning to decode the propaganda it dishes out. The NWO crowd actually reveals all in their propaganda, so arrogantly confident are they that their doublespeak enigma device won't be seen through by the people.

"DEMOCRACY": a government with a competitive party electoral system, in which multinationals are able to exert effective influence; Note: unrelated to whether the government represents the people or supports their welfare.

If multinational interests are served, then no amount of popular unrest, nor vote rigging - not even civil war - will serve as credible evidence that a "democracy" is a sham. If corporate interests aren't served, no amount of civil accord, prosperity, and popular support qualifies the government as "democratic".

Doublespeak audacity reached an outrageous climax when CCN broadcast live coverage of Yeltsin shelling his own Assembly, and billed it as a victory for "democracy"! (Did they realize they were televising an exact repeat of Lenin's shelling of an earlier Constituent Assembly? Would that have altered their assessment?) What Yeltsin's bloody power grab was a victory for was the corporate-sponsored dismantlement of the Russian economy, a program the Western-backed Yeltsin has played his part in flawlessly. With a subtle doublespeak twist within a twist, the media refers to Yeltsin as a "liberal element" - in fact he is a "neo- liberal" element, which translates as "NWO stooge".

Genuine democracy must be judged by its responsiveness to the informed desires of the people, its success in promoting their welfare, and their satisfaction with its performance. The mechanisms used to attain a functional democracy can have many forms. The media says only competitive political parties can deliver democracy, but don't believe it.

The record is clear that multi-party elections are no guarantee whatever of democratic process. Not only can parties be limited to those representing elite minority (or foreign) interests, but the autonomous authority of the military (typically subsidized by major NWO powers) often overshadows governmental policy.

To understand what democracy is really about, we need to re-examine our most cherished assumptions. Is the U.S. a democracy? Is Cuba a democracy? Do you think you can tell?

Cuba doesn't have competitive parties or elections. But policies are worked out by representatives from different segments of society, are explained forthrightly (at length!) on the media, and feedback is listened to. Literacy, health care, and nutrition levels (until recently) have been the envy of comparable economies. And Castro has been overwhelmingly popular for most of his tenure.

The U.S. has parties and elections. But policies are worked out by corporate interests, sold through misleading media rhetoric, and popular opposition is dismissed as emotional reaction. Literacy, health care, and nutrition levels - in fact human welfare by any measure - are on a steady decline. The esteem of government and elected officials looms ever lower on the horizon, nearly ready to set into a sea of total disgust.

The elections themselves are circuses where certain topics are selected as being "the issues" and the crowd is entertained with an orchestrated wrestling match where Hulk Republican and Pretty Boy Democrat dance around the limited ring of issues. When the match is over, the establishment gets back to its un-discussed agendas. Because there are no substantive issues raised during the campaign, the rhetoric fades into memory. There's no platform, and no distinct "change of government", as there used to be in Britain, before Tony Blair infiltrated the Labour Party.

Such elections are more like a shuffling of board members in a corporation - the faces change, the policies continue to be set as before - outside any democratic process.

Pink Floyd asked "Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?". I ask you: Can you tell a self-governing people from a stone parliament building?

"DEVELOPMENT": the restructuring of an economy to facilitate extraction of wealth by multinationals; transforming an economy so as to become more dependent on trade with multinationals; the theft of national assets by multinationals.

"Development" is usually pursued where the potential profit is greatest. This means that the investment is as little as possible and the exportation of eventual revenues is as great as possible. The result is a net drain on the "developing" economy. Fair play, you might say, if the "developing" country is able to take advantage of the situation to bootstrap its way into general economic prosperity (South Korea?), or if an infrastructure is created which benefits the general economy.

But these collateral benefits are not the purpose of "development", and the consequences are usually otherwise. Brazil is an example where "development" was heralded as a great success (at least for a period), due to the large flow of money through the country. But the local benefits were concentrated in relatively small, elite management and land-owner classes, and the consequence for the general population was the destruction of their food supply and agricultural economy to the benefit of agri-export operators. Meanwhile the rainforests burn to make room for displaced farmers or new agri-business "developments".

In other cases, a country might be left with an infrastructure to support export operations, such as a selectively deployed highway system, which may not be appropriate for the general development needs of the country, and which increases its dependence on oil imports.

In many cases, "development" involves the granting of mineral rights, land leases, tax discounts, or exemptions from regulations, as enticements to attract corporate "investment". In rare cases, such grants are valued appropriately, but all too frequently a cash-strapped Third-World country is compelled to give away long-term rights to valuable national assets while getting very little in return, usually some low-paying jobs and under-valued royalties. Whether the asset be copper, oil, or agricultural land, the multinational investor extracts billions in profits while the host country gets a relatively minor pittance of the actual value of the arm-twist stolen asset.

"FREE TRADE": the systematic destabilization of national and regional economic arrangements, by means of treaties such as GATT and NAFTA, in order to take economic decision making as far as possible from any democratic process, and centralize global economic control into the hands of the corporate elite.

"Free trade", it would seem from the corporate media's propaganda, is universally accepted by all reputable economists as the One True Path to prosperity and progress. Such a belief, which does not in fact enjoy a consensus among economists, is historical nonsense. The Great Economies, such as those of the U.S., Imperial Britain, and modern Japan, were developed under nurturing protectionist policies. Only when they achieved considerable economic strength did these countries begin to adopt "free trade" policies, as a way to prevent other nations from catching up.

An economy (see also: "Reform") is an ecosystem. A strong economy is one that has diversity and synergy. When "free trade" is imposed on an underdeveloped economy, it develops in a distorted way, and is over- dependent on external market fluctuations. Such weakness increases the bargaining leverage of the multinationals, which is the obvious objective of "free trade" in the first place.

"Free trade", which is part of the "globalization" agenda, brings a shift economic sovereignty from nation states, where there is hope of democratic participation, to corporate-approved international commissions, where only the corporate voice holds sway.

"GLOBALIZATION": the undermining of the nation state as a focus of economic organization; the reduction to commodity status of worldwide raw-goods suppliers; the monopolization of distribution channels by transnational trading companies; the reduction of health & quality standards to least-common- denominator levels; the most honest self-characterization of the NWO agenda.

Capturing more broadly the scope of the "free trade" campaign, "globalization" expresses the intent to homogenize the world economy - to make national borders transparent to the transfer of capital and goods, and enable a higher-order of centralized global management. The claim is frequently made that this will lead to a leveling of prosperity levels on a global basis, but with some exceptions, the evidence is all to the contrary. What we see instead, and as we should expect from how "development" is structured and "free trade" is implemented, is that "globalization" leads to a greater prosperity disparity between the "developed" and "developing" nations, as measured by the disposable income and living standards of the general populations. The greatest real prosperity gains have been achieved by those countries which created domestic synergy in their economies through selective protectionism (eg., Japan).

The availability of low-cost worldwide transport and the multinational scope of corporate operations - together with deregulation of trade barriers - leads to a situation where every producer is competing with every other producer throughout the world. Distributors can thus shop for the best deal globally, and continue to sell at whatever price they can get in their markets. As the distribution channels are increasingly concentrated into fewer hands (mega-store chains, conglomerate food importers, etc.), a classic cartel/robber-baron scenario is developing, and will become more pronounced as globalization progresses.

The "robber-baron" scenario looks like this: On one side you have separated, unorganized producers, all competing with one another to supply the distributors. On the other side, you have the consumers of the world, also separated and unorganized, buying what they can afford from what is offered in their local outlets. In the middle you have the distributors, who like robber barons of old, have (increasingly) monopoly control over the the flow of goods from producer to market. Not only can producer prices be driven down in one-sided bargaining, but producers can be selectively driven out of business, and in general the distributors have the power to dictate whether and how the producers do business.

The classic example of a robber baron regime was California in the heydey of the Southern Pacific Railroad. SP would audit the books of firms which shipped goods on their lines, and adjust each firm's shipping rates so that profits on sales were shared "fairly" with SP. We see this kind of thing today when the same drugs from the same distributors are sold at radically different prices in different countries - those who can afford more, pay more. It's the corporate version of a graduated income tax - but for the people, it's taxation without representation all over again.

As for non-price consumer concerns - environmental protection, content labelling, pesticide levels, other health issues - we can expect to see a rapid reversal of the "green" gains which have occurred since the sixties. Initially we see some localized improvements in standards, as the EU, for example, levels its regulatory playing field. But the long-term decision-making role for these policies is being shifted to corporate-dominated entities (WTO, GATT, Brussels). This means that as the distributors tighten their noose of control, and after local regulatory power has been disabled, the distributors will wield their awesome influence to reduce "anti-competitive" environmentalist "shackles" on "free markets" and "consumer savings". This is of course already happening. We have the EU telling the Germans that UK beef is safe, when the UK can't even get its story straight about whether adequate controls are being implemented. The EU, and even more so the WTO, have every motivation to go out of their way to decide in favor of more trade, and minimize appraisal of any negative consequences. Their business is to increase business, and they are a level removed from the influence of citizen's concerns. That's why "globalization" amounts to a partial sovereignty shift from democracy (where it exists) to corporate feudalism.

"Globalization", among the terms in the NWO phrase book, comes closest to being an honest use of language. The NWO does indeed, as "globalization" suggests, want to systematize commerce on a global scale, to homogenize the world in who-knows-how-many aspects - to bring forth a new world order. The deception comes in the implication that "globalization" will bring increased prosperity, that "free markets" will get goods to those who need them, and that the abundance of the earth will become available to humanity on a more equitable basis. As the song goes, "It ain't necessarily so".

"PRIVATIZATION": (1) the theft of citizen assets by corporate interests, achieved through discounted sell-offs of intentionally under-valued public properties; (2) the creation of new investment opportunities by means of dismantling successfully operating public services.

Media discussion of privatization is generally limited to the narrow issues of consumer benefits and operating efficiency. Even on these grounds, the arguments presented are usually far from convincing. They are frequently simply a recitation of the axioms "public is inefficient", "private is efficient" - often in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Privatization is not just a change of managers, it is a change of ownership. It removes equity from citizens, and removes or minimizes public control over asset development and pricing. In many cases following privatization, employment is reduced as an immediate step in reducing costs and enhancing the profit picture - without the social costs of the unemployment being considered in the overall accounting for the transaction.

The aim of a privatized operation shifts from providing a public service, to making a profit. Short-term profit pressures may reduce investment in long-term maintenance and upgrades, since their payback period may be beyond the horizon of the investor's plans for cashing out.

Despite inflated claims to the contrary, consumer benefits tend to be minimal - any reduction in rates would be a direct loss from the bottom line, and token reduction are usually enough for PR purposes and to satisfy regulatory constraints. The obvious fact that the operator needs to take out a profit is seldom mentioned when the benefits of privatization are proclaimed, as if efficiency benefits (if any) would accrue fully to the consumer.

In their personal finances, citizens appreciate the value of asset ownership. Owning a car or home offers significant cost savings over the lifetime of the investments, and greatly benefits the citizen in the face of inflation and fluctuating rental rates. With privatization, citizens are transformed from owners to renters, and suffer a long-term equity loss that may be many times greater than the discounted sale price of the asset. A privatized rail system may offer cheaper rates the first few years, but in the long run it will charge whatever the traffic will bear - in tomorrow's inflated economy.

"REFORM": the modification or replacement of an existing economic or political system, so as to create new corporate investment opportunities - it is not required that the new system perform effectively, only that it deliver corporate profits.

A system is in need of "reform" whenever corporate investors think of a new angle to make new profits. Obvious failures of the "reform" process, such as unemployment and poverty, are never the fault of "reform", but of incomplete implementation. Belief in "reform" is like religious faith: no amount of counter-evidence can phase the True Believer.

"Reform" is like clear-cutting. A forest is an ecosystem, with wildlife, streams, underbrush, etc. Careful forestry can harvest timber without destroying the ecosystem - but clear-cutting destroys all at once. An existing political/economic arrangement is also an eco-system: it is the subtle fabric that weaves the society together and enables its functioning. "Reform" - as we see in the Soviet breakup/selloff/ripoff - can destroy the existing framework all at once, and replace it with one that doesn't fit, that would take years or decades to take root and begin producing, and will be owned by someone else at the end of the day.

Genuine reform would take into account the existing conditions, and if a change is needed, would make incremental changes over time, evolving a working system toward sounder functioning. Most significant, it would reflect local customs and preferences - it would not seek to impose a cookie-cutter standard paradigm upon all cultures and traditions.

"THIRD-WORLD ASSISTANCE": (1) the subsidization of non- competitive First-World industries by means of channeling earmarked funds through Third-World hands; (2) carrot-money to entice "development" in preferred NWO directions; (3) hush- money to fund domestic suppression in host countries.

In order to encourage acquiescence by the taxpayers who foot the bill for it, "assistance" or "aid" almost always comes wrapped in the rhetoric of humanitarianism. Recently in Germany a more honest sales- pitch has been launched, announcing that for every mark that was spent as development aid, 1.15 marks came back as orders for German business. This is no surprise to anyone who's followed the numbers, but perhaps the publicity will invite the German people to ask why German business doesn't pay more of the "aid" bill.

Heaven knows the Third World needs real financial aid - not interest-bearing loans and not funds earmarked for externally-defined purposes. When strapped for development funds, it is difficult for a country to turn down offers, even when strings are attached. But money which leaves crippling debt in its wake, or which encourages the development of a dependent economy, would be better refused - it's like buying things you don't need using a credit card you know you can never pay off.

In fact, the bulk of "assistance" has been channeled directly to military and "security" forces, in the form of weapons, training, and cash. In some cases this results in lucrative contracts for First World arms manufacturers, but the main objective is to create a political climate subservient to NWO designs. The military muscle enables unpopular and NWO-submissive regimes to retain power and drain their country's resources by participating recklessly in the "aid/development" game - running up their country's credit cards at the NWO bank.

Viewed from the broadest perspective, the definition of "Third-World assistance" is "the NWO version of imperialism". It succeeds - in too many cases - in accomplishing the following imperialist objectives:

- controls the development priorities of the subject states
- manages the ruling class in the subject states
- puts the subject states into a condition of eternal debt
- extracts profits and resources with minimal taxation and labor costs
- provides markets for First-World goods, enhanced by absence of development in directions of self-sufficiency

Like all highly-leveraged NWO enterprises, this is all accomplished with minimal occupation forces, no colonial administrations, and no public understanding of what's going on - and the bill is being paid by those who benefit the least. If the NWO strategists weren't so sinister, you'd have to respect them.

Richard Moore is currently in temporary retirement in Ireland, pursuing writing projects. He has published several political essays via various "cyber channels", on cyber rights, the rise of fascism, and democracy.

They Just Don't Want to Know; Of Dissidents and Dissonance

By Ben Tripp opednews.com

Like a full-scale papier-mache model of the Earth, the truth is so enormous that it is hard to even comprehend. And once you figure it out, the question becomes where to put it? Because it won't fit on the shelf in the living room. I refer of course to the true reason why Americans are not more concerned at the patent absence of 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' in Iraq. I spent, I confess, several weeks waiting for the thunderous uproar that would inevitably follow the equally inevitable discovery that Iraq had no biological agents, no foul chemicals, no missiles capable of circling the papier-mache globe and blowing up Daytona Beach, Florida (or similar). The discovery has been made. You want mustard gas in Iraq, you'd better start eating pastrami. Yet the American public doesn't care. There will be no consequences to the Bush Administration for the naked, baseless savagery it perpetrated upon Iraq's people. Why not? The answer hit me like a full-scale papier-mache model of the Earth: Americans aren't upset about the Big Lie because they never believed it in the first place. They just didn't want to know.

Wow, that's such a cynical idea it makes your skin all crinkly. Can it be that the average American so very much doesn't give a s**t what its government does? Can it possibly have gotten this bad? We were until recently known as a generous and friendly people, if loud. Are we in fact the heartless maggots that such a concept would require? It boggles the mind. Where is the public outcry? Why isn't everybody in America going apes**t as the Bush Administration slips into the same "what, me worry?" mode they employed after the failure to snare Osama bin Laden? (Osama, as you probably don't remember was Saddam Hussein's tennis partner. And we remember Saddam Hussein, right?) Why, he asks, restating the question yet again because he can't believe it's even necessary to ask, why is the American public not in an uproar at the administration's slow admission that they lied about the justification for this assault on another nation? The answer, sad to say, is cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance is when you find out the woman you just took back to your hotel is really a man_and you didn't get the corporate discount on the room. Another example of cognitive dissonance is when an entire nation, with world peace in the balance, throws its support behind a bunch of guys who turn out to be lying. In other words, cognitive dissonance is the agony of learning something new that contradicts what you already know. But that's not all: cognitive dissonance is also when you learn something new that contradicts what you already know, so you discount the entire subject as unimportant. "Yeah, he cheats on me when he travels," she pules. "Who cares, as long as I get the frequent flier miles?" America is suffering from a bad case of cognitive dissonance, and it explains a lot- unfortunately, not to Americans.

We are a country in denial of certain ugly facts. For example: we are an empire, and we're in it for the money. Our leaders lie just as much as the rest of us do, and often about much more important subjects. American Democracy does not equal American Capitalism. We're not really free, and we're not really brave- no more than anybody else, at least. We're just the same turbulent mess of conflicting agendas that everybody else is_the only real difference is American government was originally designed to overcome these very agendas. But that government has fundamentally changed in our lifetimes, which makes our actions very important for future generations at a time when we're worried more about the next fortnight than the next generation. Help, help, the dissonance is killing me.

America is a nation divided: on one side, there are those who take the "my country, right or wrong" approach. On the other side (the outside) are the Americans who believe that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. Adherents to this outsider's viewpoint don't have cognitive dissonance, because they have adjusted their concept of reality to reflect the evidence of reality with which they are confronted. They're just depressed and afraid. The Powers That Be call this mindset "moral relativism", which is another way of saying "who are you going to believe- me, or your own eyes?" The correct answer, for all you relativists out there, is A) God said it, I believe it, that settles it. This is the absolutist position, not only with respect to religion but also nationalism, brand loyalty, and musical tastes: hence the expression "alls I need is Jesus, Jersey, Jack and a Jukebox." The problem with the absolutist approach to American affairs is that it does not allow for human nature- quite aside from being impossible, stupid, backwards, and rotten.

Human nature is the key here. In a perfect society, governed by the rules of law and behavior currently honored and avoided by most Americans, our leaders would be honest, straightforward, and diligent. They would care nothing for their own pelf (another word for wealth, Scrabble fans; see also "scratch", "wampum", and "mammon") and little for the ephemeral attractions of power and privilege. This is preposterous, of course. Anybody running for anything is in it for something, and anybody who's made it to the post of Chief Executive of this great nation is in it for as much as he can get. That's just how it works. It's human nature, and I don't fault anyone for it. Neither did the Founding Fathers (now Foundling Fathers, sorry guys) who established a series of checks and balances to ensure that human weakness didn't get in the way of human affairs. We've done away with said checks and balances, mostly, and so the brilliant system of setting three separate branches of narrow self-interested shysters against each other, thus to ensure the common good will be served in the resulting scrum, has broken down. It's pretty much the same shysters on two of the teams, and the third team refuses to play. Human nature is running rampant. How does this cause cognitive dissonance? Because people don't want to believe it, at any cost. They are desperate to believe it's all going to work out fine.

We Americans are brought up with the idea that America is a better place, a nobler and more enlightened nation that sprang up because people here were determined they would be freer, and equaler, and everyone would have the opportunity to pursue a better life unfettered by systemic oppression. This is a ridiculous fantasy, like selfless politicians. If you believe it, you might as well believe in a rabbi that did miracles, got executed for it, and came back as an immortal superhero. Oh, wait. What I'm trying to say is that there is a myth -and it's always been a myth- about Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness at work here, and it's one most Americans aspire to fulfill. I'm not just being cynical. Well, yes I am, but not as cynical as you think, thou apostatic baboon. Because it's the American belief in an American Way that has made us (within living memory) not quite as bad as a lot of other countries, and way better than a goodish number- in fact, pretty much as good as it gets, unless you want to live among auks and penguins and have your own country on an Antarctic island somewhere. This idealism is cherished with fervid fervor by many Americans. Unfortunately it's antithetical to such companion American notions as Corporate Personhood and the Military Industrial Complex, so things are getting kind of dissonant in the pinched patriotic craniums of so many of our brothers, sisters, and similar. We've turned into a collective special-interest bad guy: who can handle that kind of a downer?

America invaded another nation, unscrewed its head and took a giant dump down its neck--unprovoked. Confronted with the singularly un-American nature of this exploit, our leaders responded by claiming we had to do it-- because this enemy nation was aiming a vast artillery of deadly weapons designed especially to kill blonde people at us. I don't think all that many people really believed it, not really really. But they went along with it, because to confront the real reasons for such aimless aggression would be too horrible for their fragile worldviews and patriotic self-images to bear. When the 'WMD' bit turned out not to be true, the rationale switched to exporting American Democracy by force. Which is an oxymoron, a common symptom of cognitive dissonance. You cannot force someone to be free, any more than you can teach them a lesson by killing them (note to self). I don't think many Americans cared at that point; Bush said it, I believe it, that settles it. Easier to just agree than actually question the whole mess. Bush and his buddies were counting on this. Long before the American people had any idea why we were supposed to attack Iraq, it was clear to the cabal at the top that we would agree to the adventure under any damn pretext-- because there were so many Americans deep in the throes of denial about what was happening already (the erosion of rights, theft of elections, evaporation of opportunity, and suchlike fiddle-faddle). Too bad it's true.

The beauty part of cognitive dissonance is the worse it gets, the more people throw up [their hands] and say "who cares?" In this way such public works projects as genocide and empire-building can be accomplished, because people refuse to care. It's too damn demanding, too scary, and too damaging to that ever-threatened bird called Self Esteem. But this is the time to take a good long look at your mindset, before things get so awful you find yourself goose-stepping down the Reichsparteitag rather than face the facts. Are you in a state of cognitive dissonance? Does the evidence of your senses not jibe with what you've been told is The Way Things Are? Do you find yourself redefining what is important to exclude what you don't want to believe? Are you angry at people who demand you think about issues you consider closed? Do you often find yourself wondering why everybody but real Americans are wrong? Do you believe there is one set of rules for America and a different set of rules for the rest of the world, and that America should enforce both of them? Are you a red-faced witless baboon?

These are symptoms of cognitive dissonance, and while denial hurts less than facing the truth up to a point, it's worth noting that while grappling with a changed world can be painful, succumbing to the urge to tell it to f**k off can be fatal. If not to you, then to other innocent people in that area outside America collectively called 'the world'. Cognitive dissonance is unpleasant. Nobody likes it. It signals a period of painful transformation has arrived. But like a life-sized papier-mache model of the Earth, it's something you just can't ignore.

SOLARI -- VOTING WITH OUR MONEY FOR REVERSE GLOBALIZATION

by Jason Eaton, President, Middlebury Solari

Transcript of Speech at the WBAI 99.5 Pacifica Radio Public Forum Reframing 911: Alternatives to Endless War Given on 9/13/03 at the Riverside Church in New York City

"I am here today to fight for freedom, your freedom and my freedom. I wish to remind you that you already possess all the money and power necessary to determine the future of your community. While your vote for President of the United States may not be counted fairly, I remind you that you have, on average 37,000 votes per household that will be counted.

While I am here I will also tell you that you can multiply those votes 2.5 times to yield 92,000 votes in your community. Furthermore, you can cast your votes not just every four years, not just every two years, but rather everyday you cast a portion of your annual allotment of votes. Everyday you choose who gets the money and power that passes through your hands. I am speaking about voting with your money. I am talking about simple choices you make each day, which have a huge cumulative impact on your community. I want you to become fully aware that what you do with your money will determine whether the world is owned and controlled by an elite group of global investors, or by the people who live in each particular place. I suggest you begin to vote for yourself, your family, friends and neighbors. I suggest you optimize your financial transactions for your own benefit.

The idea of a Solari is both simple and complex. At the most simple level, that which the consumer must understand, there are only two basic steps: Buy Local and Invest Local. These two actions create a positive feedback system that will increase local wealth. What it does is align the incentives of the members of a community in such a way that when the local businesses do well, we all do well.

Allow me to illustrate with an example. In my hometown of Middlebury, VT there is a Tavern called Two Brothers. It is owned by two brothers whom I went to high school with. In my town there is also a brewery called Otter Creek Brewery after the river that runs through town. Both of these companies are closely held by the founding owners.

Imagine for a moment that the Solari in Middlebury were to arrange the sale of shares in both these companies to the community, and that I have purchased some of each. I now have an arrangement whereby that act of walking into Two Brothers and ordering a pint of Otter Creek Ale is not only in my own best interest " but also benefits my friends and neighbors. My purchase has filled a demand, and in doing so, has brought a portion of the profits back to me as dividends and/or capital gains. It has benefited the other shareholders " including the founders. It has created jobs in my community: the bartender, the doorman, the realtor who leased the building, the brewers, the delivery drivers, the farmers who grew the hops and barley, and the recyclers who will collect the empty bottles. Not only can I own shares of Two Brothers, but of every local company that has a hand in making it possible for me to go downtown after work and have a beer with my friends. Through the act of owning shares in these local companies, I have created profits for myself, and jobs, income, and growth for my community. Perhaps I'll be greedy and order a second pint.

Let us consider the alternative: I could have saved some money by going to the Mobil Station on the way home, picking up a six-pack of Budweiser, and going home to veg-out in front of the TV. Who would that benefit? Anhuser-Busch, Exxon-Mobil, the media giants, and the global investors who own them. My act would have had the effect of making the rich richer, and the poor, poorer.

By making a market for place-based investment, we can create the structures and incentive systems to redirect global capital to serve communities. It is okay for people to be greedy and self-serving in this system. Under the Solari Model the relentless pursuit of wealth and power is embraced and redirected.

It is like the martial arts practice of Aikido. Rather than oppose your enemy head on; step off center, blend with the attacker's energy, and redirect it in such a way as to do no harm. It is the application of the principal of loving your enemy.

Solari is an idea about using the current system to implement change. Solari does not require any help from Washington D.C. We don't have to pass any laws, topple any governments, or move any mountains. We need simply to begin to act in our own best interest.

Rich and powerful global investors get a hold of our money in many ways. We feed the very system we oppose through our purchases, bank deposits, debts, investments, and taxes. What we must do to take back the power is to take back our money. I suggest to you that it is possible to have a peaceful revolution through direct action. I suggest we ought to:

- Move our purchases to locally owned businesses.

- Move our bank deposits into small locally owned banks or credit unions.

- Move our debts to be held locally, and, as much as possible, eliminate debt by swapping it for equity.

- And move our investments into local assets.


The task of moving investments into local assets is the business of Solari. In moving sums of capital into place-based investments, we must take care that local control is not lost to big players. We achieve this by using an A/B share model. That is to say: the Solari would issue shares in two classes:

- A shares have voting rights and a nominal value.

- B shares carry the economic values: dividends and capital gains, but have no voting rights.


While anyone can own B shares, only those people living with in the Solari area may own voting A shares. In this way, the Solari is able to access global capital while maintaining permanent local control. It is this aspect of local control that makes Solari different from other corporations. By maintaining the Solari as a community controlled entity, it is possible to bring much needed transparency and accountability to our financial systems.

We all know of Enron, WorldCom, and their book cookers Author-Andersen. Yet, we are personally powerless to hold them accountable. With place-based investing, you are transacting business with your neighbor. These are the people in you neighborhood. If they engage in fraud….you know where they live. It would be painful indeed to suffer the repercussions from stealing from your neighbors. Not only does this offer new means of redress, such as economic sanctions, but a strong social deterrent.

In summary, let me remind you that this idea of place-based investing " the Solari idea " is about taking back the money and power that we have ceded to multi-national corporations. Not only is it the right thing to do, it the more profitable thing to do. Solari is the most significant capital gains opportunity in America. Solari is a solution to what is fundamentally wrong with the system. It is a solution freely offered to each of the 72,000 communities in the U.S. Solari uses existing financial systems to transform an overly centralized system of money and power to a decentralized " place-based system in which communities take back the money and power " for the people."