Deregulated, Private, For-Profit Capital(ism) - Spain's Robin Hood Mayor and Landless Peasants Battle The Tyranny Of Europe’s Private, For-Profit Banking, Corporate And Political Criminals
“You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything he's no longer in your power, he's free again.” -- Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
How true is that? Is it really any surprise that Solzhenitsyn chaffed against state tyranny his whole life? And, had everything taken away from him? One of the most profound statements that are applicable to this time in human history. The elites, politicians and our corporate masters have pushed too far and they will eventually be unseated because of it.
I wrote this post many months ago and never put it up. But, since secessionist elements won seats in Spain’s most recent election, it reminded me to post this. I thought I would put it up as a holiday post. Because around the globe this is a holiday season when billions of people celebrate, in some way, elements of timeless human values of compassion, empathy, equality, dignity, acceptance and worthiness. This most certainly isn’t a post highlighting the actions of people exalting these values. To the contrary, it is a post highlighting how evil and tyrannical the world has become. And, how, seemingly everywhere around the world, human decency has been obliterated by deregulated capital, politicians and corporate bureaucrats. How Godless these people truly are. Onto the post…..
I’m amazed at the number of people who still believe this is a financial crisis. Or that this is some type of recession. Or, that with underemployment and unemployment cumulatively at 40-60% in some democratic nations, that somehow capitalism will magically create 200 million+ new living-wage jobs globally if only we smash democratic programs and take from the repressed & exploited and give more money and power to corporate, banking and political criminals.
Who cares about factory utilization, the purchasing manager’s index, lending surveys, inflation or monetary policy? Seriously? These metrics don’t matter any more beyond giving us an indication of the severity of the moment. What we know for certain is that we are in the early phases of transitioning out of the monetary, banking and economic structures as they have been defined by capitalism since its inception. If you are looking to the past or to politicians or to private, for-profit capital to divine the future, you are going to be wildly wrong in your assessment and the solutions required to create a new and better world.
What amazes me even more are the number of people who can sit back and deliver some faceless, inhumane, abstract argument about economic statistics and numbers when millions of people around the world have lost everything, and millions more will. The John Boehners, Paul Ryans, Angela Merkels and Barack Obamas of the world are consummate examples of the status quo. These people are truly consumed by the self and its perceptions of importance. They show no ability to rise above the self and to actually become selfless; to become leaders. When was the last time anyone in any political office actually proposed a real solution that would create a massive, sustainable employment boom? None of them. None. Jobs or restructuring our economy aren’t even topics of discussion in the U.S. No where regardless of country or political affiliation. The reality is politicians have made clear they don’t care about the world’s citizens. They care about maintaining control and serving their corporate masters or deregulated capital.
What we are witnessing today is the result of the deregulation of capital. In other words, a lack of rule of law applied to the capital in capital(ism). Deregulated, private, for-profit capital, a tenant of Reagan’s Supply-Side Economics has gone global thanks primarily to Bill Clinton and Al Gore. It went global because that was the only means of keeping this rigged system from collapsing. Once the U.S. was completely looted, capital needed new markets to loot. Globalization provided just what trickle down economics needed. And Bill Clinton and Al Gore delivered in spades. Now almost every society in the world, maybe sans Iceland, is at the mercy of the financial rule of man. Private, for-profit rule of man. The deregulated capital in capitalism means we live in a lawless economic system that has its jack boot on the neck of democracy and those without a voice. Private, for-profit capital without regulation and law will always exploit those perceived as weak. Perceived as weak because they have no voice with the megalomaniacs who control private, for-profit capital(ism). They are denied democracy’s capital and resources by predatory capitalism. By Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George Bush and Barack Obama’s corporate and elite masters.
The reality is those who are truly weak are those who exploit and prey upon others. That would be the banking criminals, corporate bureaucrats and their dimwitted political marionettes.
A public, democratic banking system with democratic money would ensure that society’s capital and economy are placed under democracy’s rule of law. Forever. It would ensure that both money and banking were chartered to first serve human development, democracy and democratic economics. Not a lawless form of private, for-profit fundamentalism courtesy of Reagan, Clinton, Bush and Obama’s legacies. With democratic banking and democratic money, democracy would never be denied access to its own capital by private, for-profit banking criminals or their political toadies. The foremost tenants of democratic institutions are human development, freedom from tyranny of capitalism or any other ism, morality, justice, needs of the community, dignity and equality. Our Constitution and Declaration of Independence would finally start to align with our political, economic, social, capital and educational structures under democratic banking and democratic money.
People who advocate public money and private banking are completely erroneous in their ideology. They don’t understand that democratic economics can never be realized under private, for-profit banking. People who advocate private, for-profit control of both banking and money as is the case around the world today are even worse. They are criminals and predators. I think many can finally start to appreciate that globalization is dead and what will arise in its place will be localization which, by the way, is true democracy. Self-rule is not some abstract group of power-mad bureaucrats in a far off castle playing chess with your life and economic freedom. It is local rule. It is self-rule. Quite frankly, the only people in politics I have heard cogently express an appreciation of this and how national capital should serve local communities are Dennis Kucinich, Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein, the Green Party Candidate. That’s not an endorsement. It’s just an observation. It’s an observation because I have been writing for many years that this is where we are going. That it has now entered the public forum, even if it is a thinly followed public forum, is an indication that truth to reality is starting to be recognized by people willing to open their minds.
About two in three Americans don’t have a pot to piss in and the figure in Spain is just as high. In other words, most people are living paycheck to paycheck or are just barely alive. Literally. Paycheck to paycheck under a very different democratic economic and financial model may be fine. In fact, I could easily show you a world where savings are unnecessary. They become obsolete. Not communism or any other kind of ism but a merit-based economic structure that incents entrepreneurialism, responsibility, ownership, human dignity, living wages, competition and many of the working components of capitalism. But, today, in a system of predation and unregulated capital, the fear and stress of living paycheck to paycheck is incredible.
The region of Andalucía highlighted in these two videos below has an unemployment rate of about 35%. (As noted in one of the videos, the unemployment rate for those under 25 across the entire country is 50%) So, to get some type of comparative for those living in the Untied States, this region would be stricken to a level of unemployment similar to Detroit and thousands of other communities in the U.S. manufacturing belt, as an example. And, Spain’s youth has a similar employment profile as those all across America.
So, how again did the people in these videos live beyond their means? And, what type of austerity do these people have to accept? Austerity that Obama is getting ready to drop on Americans. Do they have to give up shelter and food? Live in caves? Literally, all many of these people have is their lives but the banking, corporate and political criminals keep telling us that these people have lived beyond their means and must accept austerity. This while freeloaders and state-dependents like Europe’s banksters, politicians and corporate welfare recipients mint trillions of dollars/euros in personal gains by living off the backs of democracy’s labor. Is this democracy? What did a banker or corporate bureaucrat or politician ever make or create? Banks and monopoly corporations, as they are structured today, only exist through predatory usury, taxing society, slave labor or essentially destroying productive work, creativity, human expression and wealth. Banksters run extortion rackets and they pay themselves a king’s ransom for doing so. They do so because politicians want them to. That’s right.
Let’s be clear. Politicians in every nation determined the rules to the the economic game to ensure winners and losers. Democracy lost. Deregulated corporate (capital)ism won. It won the battle… not the war. Democracy can just as easily rewrite those rules so that all people have an opportunity for a living wage and human dignity - I could show you a system that would be primarily based on a market-oriented, merit-based economy where ever single American is guaranteed employment with a living wage. Guaranteed employment. Guaranteed living wage. Guaranteed. And, it would work. The world as you see it is not the way it has to be. Pittance slavery handouts for unemployment and welfare would be unnecessary. They would become obsolete. This isn’t rocket science. It’s simply that the looters and politicians reject ideas for transforming our society, economy, financial system and our democracy exclusively for benefit of the self. If politicians and corporate bureaucrats wanted everyone to have a living wage, we would all have one. The reality is they don’t. And for those still unwilling to see Obama for who he is, has he ever fought for a living wage or employment for anyone willing to work or contribute to society?
The good news is that We The People own this country, not the politicians. You, as a citizen of any democratic nation, you, we, all of us, hold the highest level of human authority that exists. We are the sovereign. We simply need to spread our wings and take flight to restore dignity, decency and democracy. To return political office to public service and retake our sovereignty and authority over corporate, banking and political criminals.
It’s hard to watch these videos in Spain and not feel a great empathy for those who have been totally forsaken by their own politicians and corporate authority. Totally forsaken. To see a grown man brought to tears because of compassion for his fellow countrymen is indeed a stirring but far too unnecessary sight. It doesn’t need to be like this. This crisis is manufactured by financial looters, political marionettes and corporate criminals. Just as the U.S. did with the Nazis after gaining control of German territory, the criminals who perpetuate this suffering should be made to watch what they have done. To force them not to avert their gaze from the inhumanity and suffering they have created. To take responsibility for their behavior, to make it right and to live with the consequences. That is, politicians, bankers and corporate looters who define irresponsibility as all emotionally-dysfunctional, power-mad people do.
The global economic system as it is constructed destabilizes human dignity. What did the people in these videos do to deserve such malicious indignity and outright contempt from their own government while banks and corporations are given massive handouts taken by political force from these same people who are exploited; corporate-dictated, state-enforced austerity for average working people and the poor? Did these people live beyond their means? Hahaha. Rrrright. That’s one of the great moral injustices and crimes against humanity of our time. Injustices as great as any genocide at the hands of third world dictators. Injustices perpetrated by banksters, corporations and the stooge politicians who do their corporate master’s will of evil and injustice. Truly evil. And, I am not mincing words. This is truly evil.
Those who lived beyond their means were banks, corporations, politicians and elites whose dependency on corporate welfare and special state privilege, preyed upon society and then went on looting binges with our money. Democracy got the bill. How again did the average person live beyond their means? The Big Lie. Adolph would be proud. (By the way, this is exactly how the economist Marx predicted 150 years ago that capitalism would ultimately die. That elites would resort to class warfare and prey upon those who had no voice. On that note, in the ideological world of “isms”, the only thing worse than deregulated, free market, lawless capital(ism) may be communism. But, then they both look eerily similar for the same reason. Looters, the power-mad, predators and psychopaths always find a way to gain illegitimate authority over their fellow man. To subvert the rule of law in favor of the rule of man.)
While I’m sure some people who have stolen so much are afraid people like Gordillo (in the videos below) are going to come take what they have stolen, and will most certainly label people like him as criminals or socialists or communists or whatever other ad hominem attacks they can dream up, in any attempt to marginalize dissent and keep their stolen gains, Gordillo is a leader. Although he refuses a title, he clearly has an ability to actualize his humanity to empower community, dignity, social justice and a sense of connectedness in the name of what is good and right and true. Gordillo’s voice has helped give people, people who have spent their lives being exploited, a sense of hope, connectedness and human dignity. A sense of a world where they can lead a life of responsibility and worthiness. But more importantly, this may be a sign of what is yet to come. That people who have been pushed to the edge, who have nothing to lose, and who are abandoned by society, their fellow man and the status quo must do whatever they need to do to simply survive. To take personal responsibility from those who have forsaken their responsibility as leaders and public servants. Jean Valjean’s struggle with the law and label of criminal given to him by the status quo was over stealing a piece of bread. Because the status quo lacked any human dignity and morality. The same dynamic Gordillo and others are fighting two hundred years later. Two hundred years later, Les Misérables or the wretched and poor are still being exploited and persecuted by predatory elites. And two hundred years later, the outcomes are exactly the same.
Barack Obama and Democratic & Republican politicians should take notes since none seem to have the first idea of how to truly be a leader.
There is no doubt in my mind, as Gordillo remarks, that if they could, the status quo would certainly murder or imprison him. It is no coincidence these types of stories, either in this country or around the world, are either manipulated to make protestors or dissenters appear as violent, lawless, uninformed, communists, fanatics, lazy, ignorant or worse or they aren’t reported at all in the suppressing and repressing corporate-controlled mainstream media.
You know, this movement for social or economic justice aka democracy against the three-headed monster of banksters, corporations and politicians reminds me a little bit of a similar movement against the status quo that happened many, many years ago. A movement against the status quo that is celebrated this holiday season – blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice’ sake. Kindness, compassion, equality, dignity, mercy, justice, grace and community are no more a part of the social, political or religious fabric of the status quo today than was the case when apostates also dominated society, religion and the state then. Not only are the poor and wretched still being exploited and persecuted as they were two hundred years ago but they are being exploited and persecuted as they were two thousand years ago.
These videos in Spain are representative of so much of what we see around the world today. The entire world is on fire. Those who say these revolutions or movements are being orchestrated by the CIA or other conspiratorial remarks are nothing more than nonsense. This is the cycle of volatility as has been the theme on here for the last seven years. The status quo may be trying to influence outcomes but they are not creating this massive global movement. This massive global movement is against the status quo.
In closing I want to make a remark that is very timely to these dynamics. For sixty years we have heard of the great communist threat around the world. And, how the U.S. polity has fought the good fight against the threat of communism. Today, we hear that same argument extended to include “enemies” in the Muslim community, socialism and the like. In other words, any convenient boogeyman.
If the American form of social and economic justice was the beacon on the hill that we are told it is, then people suffering injustices and tyranny around the world would have been overthrowing tyranny not for communism but for capitalism and democracy. And our economic and political system would not create blowback or hatred were it a system of social and economic justice without equal. But, the reality is most of the destabilizations of tyranny for the past fifty years were people rising up against American-backed police states and dictators benefiting from American-style deregulated, private, for-profit capital. And, in those corrupt systems of control, American corporations, Americans weapons manufacturers and American private, for-profit capital were highly complicit of the exploitation and tyranny by the ruling elite.
The volatility and blowback we see around the world today is against tyranny and corruption, often supported in some way by the empire of the American war state and its military-industrial complex or others seeking their own empire – that once again includes Germany. The Soviet Union police-war state and the U.S. police-war state and their military-industrial complexes played the world like a chess board and exploited-used anyone and everyone they could bribe, cajole, intimidate or manipulate. Today, the U.S. police-war state has no counterweight to this hegemony but our policies are working overtime to manufacture one.
Communism is/was never a threat to democracy but to the hegemony of the Godless corporate state and private, for-profit capital. Democracy would have/would today rally around people rising up against tyranny rather than trying to defeat or manipulate grassroots uprisings against the brutality of the rule of man. Against the brutality of exploitation and persecution. And, democracy, were our policies driven by such, would allow those people the determinism and responsibility of creating their own society without constant meddling, manipulation, interventionism and war. And, if corporate capitalism and private, for-profit capital was a better model than communism or any other ism, the American polity would feel no threat to people around the globe rising against tyranny. It would, in fact, embrace such movements with unequivocal, peaceful, moral authority. Our polity would have known that without engaging itself in violence or war that our nation’s moral authority and social justice system, were it as pristine as we are told it is, would eventually lead all uprisings against tyranny and communism to our way of life. And, that regardless of any experimentation or threats to the contrary, everyone would eventually choose what is self-evident - our system of social and economic justice. But, the reality is social and economic justice has ever existed for most citizens anywhere unless they took what was rightfully theirs from the pathocracy, looters and neofeudal lords. That includes the hard-fought gains, paid for in blood and the loss of life, that Americans have made against capitalism under the auspices of private for-profit capital. That includes the Civil War. All “ism’s” are nothing more than ideology. Free market fundamentalism, capitalism, communism and the like. That means they offer no form of universal truth, including social and economic justice. And, thus all will eventually be relegated as failures to history books.
There are snowflakes dropping everywhere around the world. But, when taken in their entirety, as they should be because this is a global social movement for justice shared by people everywhere, one starts to gain an appreciation that this is the beginning of a massive storm. As noted on here countless times, global finance and globalization are dead. What we see now is simply violence and exploitation trying to maintain its illegitimate authority. That too shall pass.
Rather than experiencing peace, justice and dignity for all people on earth this holiday season, the cycle of volatility continues in full force.
Spain’s Robin Hood Mayor and Landless Peasants Battle Bankers
<< Home