Wonderful post, John...thank you! We need more reminders like this of the human and economic devastation of communism. Many today seem to have forgotten...
"History has demonstrated time and again that command economies (in which all property is owned by the state ) DO NOT WORK. "
Are you referring to Cuba, or to Venezuelifornia? Maybe the People's Socialist Hellhole of New York? Perhaps Zimbabwillinois? How about Trudeau's Canada? No? The probably the WEF command economy by all those self-congratulatory idiot savants there, right?
Unfortunately the abysmally ignorant and the woke far outnumber those of us who are aware and courageous. My hopes of living my years in a democratic and just society is dwindling by the day. I never thought I would consider leaving my home country.
I’m currently living in Communist Canada, in beautiful BC. Our provincial government is just as corrupt as the federal. They are passing bills with no debate, no public consultation and no media coverage. Unions and professional associations are all remaining silent, meaning they are corrupt too. Thankfully, I’m not in Vancouver which is comparable to San Francisco at this point, but their municipal politics have a huge impact on the rest of the province. They introduced the corrupt voting machines in our most recent municipal elections last year, so we know that was a big facade.
The last response letter I received from my local Member of Parliament (part of Trudeau’s liberal fascist cabinet) literally stated that he doesn’t care what his constituents want, he’s doing what he (Trudeau) thinks is best. He clearly admits corruption and incompetence and isn’t fearful of doing so. I don’t even know how to reply.
I used to live in Kits, Point Grey and Nanaimo. My wife's cousin was Trudeau's nanny, and we used to be friends with his health minister, Jane Philpott, who went over to the dark side after we left (lived in Ottawa then)
We are now in the US, but if I couldn't get out of Canada, I would be in AB. in a heartbeat. I am a dual citizen as I was born in San Fran. All these places are communist hellholes now.
I had a friend who continually reminded friends and others that as long as there is one honest, kind and aware person, there is always a chance for humanism to grow and spread. Anyone know where that thought, or belief is from?
Why the distinction between state-owned and private ownership when both are still centrally controlled by government? Is the author asserting that Fascism is good but Communism is bad because of the arm's length private ownership provides authoritarian control where government isn't allowed direct control? Like Twitter Files and the pandemic protocols revealed is the current construct of the US governing model.
Mussolini, Hitler and a whole lot of US leaders, bankers and industrialists were big fans of Fascism, you know. Including Prescott Bush, father and grandfather to two US presidents, one who declared a New World Order was here. Kind of like a UN Agenda 2030/WEF Great Reset.
Another big fan of Fascism was the father of allopathic medicine, John D. Rockefeller, who's petrochemicals became what we know as Big Pharma. The author's choice of words is very curious in this light.
How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power
Thanks for reading, and thanks for sharing your valuable commentary and information. I was merely observing that the ONLY visible objects in Havana that are NOT falling apart are those that have been restored and maintained by SOME element (however partial and imperfect) of private investment. It has long seemed to me that Fascism and Communism are variations of state-sponsored gangsterism, with fascist regimes more inclined to harness private industry instead of seizing it. Regards, John Leake
Thank you for your reply. It was an interesting read. That distinction stood out, though. It describes how a fusion of Fascism and Communism is not only possible, but happening around the globe today. Cuba. China. The United States. The European Union. State-sponsored gangsters really do hate individual liberty and western liberal capitalism more than they hate other state gangsters. Hitler and Stalin even signed a Pact for that very reason. If not for personal egos and ambitions it would've prevailed. To the detriment of global freedom. The pandemic has helped expose a vast network of state-sponsored gangsters, fascist and communist regimes that abhor and detest individual liberty and freedom. But love the shakedowns...errr...taxes on profits that private property ownership provide them.
The Hitler-Stalin pact : discussion of the Non-Aggression Treaty and the secret protocols
Let's not forget Lenin's gold filled sealed train to Moscow.
"I could not at that time know, as I did later, how men of wealth use the communist movement to bend workers to their will. So I quite willingly adopted the clichés about secrecy being necessary because of the brutality and savagery of the working-class enemies. I soon learned that the members exposed to the public were not the important Communists."
Absolutely. The situation in Cuba saddens me deeply. I lived many years in Miami and have many dear Cuban friends. They are wonderful, warm hearted, cultured and colorful people. I can only hope the 'awakening' happens for them as well. Two of my favorite movies that depict the Cuban spirit are The Buena Vista Social Club and Before Night Falls which is based on a true story during the Marielito Boat lift which I witnessed from Miami. Thank you for this post.
I grew up in Miami and remember the Marielito's, the tent cities of refugees under I-95 overpasses.
I also remember tuning in to Radio Moscow beamed in from Havana at night long before the boat lift. Not because I was an aspiring Communist. But because I wanted to learn what the had to say about the US, why they were our enemy, what their beef was. That was when I learned what propaganda sounded like. I was able to compare their description of the US with what I saw with my own eyes. And knew they were taking small truths and constructing large lies on top of them.
Inspired me to learn more about propaganda and how to recognize it. Recognition that has served to safely and effectively inoculate me to a lot of the propaganda we're subjected to by our own government. FYI - Radio Moscow's Cold War broadcasts showcasing failures they described our nation suffered from are virtually indistinguishable from Democrat and progressive talking points about the ills of the US today. Propaganda.
When Batista was ousted, he took the country's Treasury with him (protected by our Mafia, probably). Castro had little to work with. It's surprising his countrymen/women accomplished so much: enhanced literacy and good medical coverage (despite our despotic sanctions of Western medicine not reaching them). I would have liked to see Cuba revive, renovate and become a thriving tropical destination spot! We have only great things to gain from such a relationship.
And western medicine isn't all it's cracked up to be. The alternative healers like homeopaths, naturopaths, holistic practitioners, herbalists, ayurvedics, TCM, etc are much more trustworthy and better healers than allopaths. Sure, I'll take western medicine to mend my broken bones or patch up holes inside me. That's about all I trust them for. Western medicine does genital mutilations on children and can't discern between male and female. Western medicine tells patients with respiratory illness to obstruct their breathing, tells everyone including children to put a wet, warm petri dish across their mouths to repeatedly inhale through - for their health. Western medicine pumps dangerous experimental biotech that has no demonstrated long-term record of safety and efficacy into the bodies of people with near zero risk of illness. Western medicine calls natural immunity a "new age belief system." Western medicine pumps Big Pharma pills into patients so that doctors can go to Hawaiian resorts for writing the most prescriptions any given year. Just sayin'.
The allopathic medical profession has long been the preferred means of controlling populations. Fascists have a track record with allopathy. And not a particularly proud one.
How trusted medical professionals enabled the genocide, betraying all medical ethics and trust of the patients and families they were supposed to be treating. Heart-wrenching presentation of historical truth. And many of the same patterns of cowardice and complicity in the medical practices repeat in the Covid era, with genital mutilations of children, whatever the state-sponsored gangster regime directs medical boards, hospitals, schools and associations to do. Arm's length private entities controlled by government. Fascism.
[Point of order for the following article about how the disabled were treated in Fascist Nazi Germany by society with the complicity of the medical professions: Disobedience, opposition was diagnosed as a disability. Dissociation from "evidence-based reality" and anti-social behavior = disability = sterilization and extermination.]
Useless Eaters: Disability as Genocidal Marker in Nazi Germany
The field of Bioethics was supposedly conceived of to prevent what happened within the medical community in Fascist Germany from happening again. But...Anthony Fauci's hands are in that field too - his wife heads up Bioethics at the National Institute of Health
Bioethics. About important issues like eugenics. And Newgenics. Designer babies, CRISPR, mRNA genetic modification of the human genome. Useless eaters reproducing...or not...three generations of imbeciles being enough and all. A case that has new found relevance in the biotechnology of today. Like vaccines that lower birthrates and result in stillborns, aka sterilization. Fascists love them some Newgenics:
Buck v. Bell, American Eugenics, and the Bad Man Test: Putting
Limits on Newgenics in the 21st Century
Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality, January 2020
"It has long seemed to me that Fascism and Communism are variations of state-sponsored gangsterism, with fascist regimes more inclined to harness private industry instead of seizing it."
You're getting warmer. It helps to realize that all large corporations are state sponsored.
They all get special protection and special favors courtesy of "the law." Where do they get protection from liability, for instance? Who funds them big time with grants and contracts and bails them out? No entity getting such special treatment shold be considered a private business.
Wonderful post. I now refer to western “medicine” as “the cult of the medics”. I guarantee further study would show there is a direct correlation between petrochemicals (in our food and pharmaceuticals) and cancer. Funny how the “food” on our grocery store shelves first creates the disease, then the “medicine” our doctors prescribe mask symptoms temporarily, only to succumb to the disease eventually anyway. It’s beyond evil.
We are giving the elites (should be referred to as the predators) all our hard earned money every step of the way. If people truly understood that every dollar they spend is a chance to vote, we could turn this around.
Good post. People need to realize that 20th century communism was nothing more than a variation of fascism. Basically, all that fascism means is that there is a partnership between big business and government and it's easy to see that no large government has ever been anything but fascist at the core.
The Reds are famous for hypocrisy and shouting invectives at their competitors while doing the same thing themselves. Leninism and Stalinism were fascist as were, and still are, the countries that supported them. One of the key supporters was the USA. The old Russian empire was weakened and the USSR built up with US dollars and more. Trotsky wasn’t a guest in New York only for the tea parties.
Even today, the CCP was built up with a little help from their “enemy” across the Pacific. Who helped fund the Wuhan GoF research?
For those who still believe that there is a communist-capitalist dichotomy, Dodd's book is a must read.
"Famous names, Vanderbilt, Lamont, Whitney, Morgan, mingled with those of communist leaders. The Russian Institute was so respectable that it was allowed to give in-service courses to New York City schoolteachers for credit."
-Bella Dodd, School of Darkness, Chap 11
"The populace is heated up with inflammatory talk about foreign tyrants who plan to come over the border with illimitable hordes and reduce the whole Russian proletariat to slavery, and under cover of the fears thus aroused they rivet that proletariat in ever tighter chains."
The Reds and Civil Rights by H.L. Mencken The American Mercury , July 1936, pp. 284-289 - PDF
And Karl Marx himself didn't spend years in London writing articles for the New-York Daily Tribune which were often reprinted in other papers becasue he was a pal of the proles.
I don’t think that he is saying that at all. He’s stating what happened. In general, investments are made for payback. On this decaying island the two times private enterprise joined with the government to help, the restorations were fruitful. He is not making the distinction to which you alluded rather he is stating that the economic decay of communism relies on using the genius of entrepreneurs to generate profit for them. Entrepreneurial spirit is the force driving capitalism which seeks profit making.
That both the Fascist and Communist sides of the same state-sponsored gangster authoritarian coin desire the shakedowns...errr... profits from. He writes that the Communist government in Cuba takes their cut. The CCP is a 51% majority owner of every single private business in China. The remaining 49% is privately owned. But the business is controlled by the majority owner, state-sponsored gangsters. Who take their cut. Yes, entrepreneurial spirit IS the force driving capitalism which seeks profit making. Which is what Fascism attempts to capture. And Communist gangsters realize is true. And want their cut.
I would be surprised if the properties the author writes of are owned under a different construct in Communist Cuba. Private ownership under government control is technically Fascism. And I stand by my observation that a fusion of Fascism and Communism is the global trend we see happening.
They write their own laws - lobbyists, regulatory agency capture is real, it's why the Rockefeller's and Bush's have lauded and longed for Fascism in the US and globally for a century. It's a really profitable governing model for the gangsters. Harvesting the fruits of the entrepreneurial spirit for the enrichment of the top mob bosses.
The story goes that Leonid Brezhnev (if you don't know who he is, you just might be one of those doomed, as Santayana wrote, to repeat history) had his 100 yr old grandmother visit him in Moscow in the 1960s.
He proudly took her around his offices as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. showing her his Italian marble private bathroom with solid gold sink handles and the like, showed her his multiple well appointed dachas, all outfitted with the latest in Parisian fashion, the 10 Zil limousines he had waiting for him at all times; showed her the giant mahongany desk with solid gold handles, the chandeliers which incorporated real diamonds, and proudly boasted about the 20 attendants he had at his beck and call for every and any whim.
Finally, the end of the day came, and he dismissed his servants.
His ancient granny, born before the Bolshevik Revolution, frantically and furtively looked around to make sure absolutely NO ONE was around. She then, very, very carefully, sidled up to Leonid and, in sotto voce, whispers so no one else could hear:
"This is all very well Leonid. But... WHAT IF THE COMMUNISTS COME??"
Or maybe this story is really about Gov. "Hairdo" Newsome, Nancy Pelosi, the Obamas on their zillion dollar property on all white Martha's Vineyard at 79 Turkeyland Dr., Edgartown, MA (which whatsmyelevation.com shows is 3 FEET above, sea level, or a thousand and one other assorted Hollywood Learjet leftists.
There might surely be a lot of criticizing that is valid onto Cuban regime, but discarding the evil that the US empire has inflicted upon that country, and Latin America as a whole, completely misses the point.
Of all people who could do this criticizing, someone who has seen and felt the power of the empire upon himself (think twitter files and beyond) and then failing to consider its effects upon some other entity is just a typical US-european viewpoint: "the government went full communist China-like all covid relayed issues" and then, thinking that Mexico 1913, Guatemala 1954, Chile 1973, Lybia 2011, et cetera are mere Banana Republic failures.
This very crisis should, at least, highlight the fact that all the oppression the US regime has done upon their non-compliant citizens covid-wise is a mild version of what they can and do to a lot of countries with non-compliant governments.
Might it be you have a miscalibrated protactor? If you keep the head of a short person under water and dies, you don't get to say "he/she died because he/she was short"... Now, I understand that being a citizen of the State that keeps the short person underwater numbs your ability to receive other information than "capitalism will save us all, let's kill the ones who are living in the error" (without paying attention to the "living" other persons have).
Yes, the US Government has been wicked all over the world to establish its world dominance. Now we, the citizens, are paying the price of their unfettered capitalism. Under the cover of its world power, our government has committed atrocities all over the planet, subjugating many small and not so small sovereign states into chaos and long term suffering. The US government is fundamentally a bully and manipulator of foreign powers.
Those who keep yielding to government hoaxes and chicanery will shorten their lifespans……… (and ours). They will boost themselves right into their own graves. but won’t even notice because they have lived their lives asleep at the wheel. They have willingly sacrificed their health by putting the government in charge of it. We reap what we sow. Each of us has responsibility for our own bodies and health. To transfer that responsibility to an evil, manipulative power without doing due diligence is a dereliction of our survival skills in favor of yielding to what they believe is a protective, trusted, beneficent State, which as the enlightened know is an ignorant, ill informed, lethal mistake. May they rest in peace for their grave errors in discernment.
I gather he is talking about our government’s role in creating Banana Republics. The rest is unintelligible. I shouldn’t have to read a book to understand someone’s poorly crafted comment, but thanks anyway.
I was a language major in college and lived abroad to learn languages. I fully recognize that the obscurity in the message you are obliquely referring to is due to the fact that the writer is not a native speaker. When commenting on public forums, it is appreciated if comments can be understood. I stand by that notion.
I think most readers like to get someone’s point. I get yours.
I honestly have not heard anything about Cuba's handling of Covid. Other than the despicable Castro regime, the worst our country did to Cuba IMO was what JFK inherited w Allen Dulles CIA and all the insane attempts to start wars there. It's a tough call how to help them when the people get no help as it all goes to the criminal govt. Sounds familiar.
"History has demonstrated time and again that command economies (in which all property is owned by the state ) DO NOT WORK. Under such regimes, competence and expertise evaporate."
And yet the USSR, despite staggering losses suffered in WWII, and facing a hostile post-war alliance that threatens them even to this day, still managed to counter the US ICBM threat, launch a fleet of nuclear submarines, develop superior military aircraft and put the first satellite and the first man in orbit.
THEN, after being subjected to a decade of rapacious western bank sponsored so-called free enterprise, they managed to regroup under a reformation of state controlled enterprise to become the most technically advanced military power on the planet - that is unless you think capitalism pulled that off and the ultimate owner of the defence industry isn't the Russian state.
Speaking of competence and expertise, Russia recently announced their intention to abandon the Bologna system and return to the Soviet system of education with its heavy emphasis on STEM and notable lack of women's and trans-gender studies.
I'm not arguing the case for state enterprise so much as pointing out that the precept of command economy vs. ... what? capitalism? free enterprise? ... is a false dichotomy. Both at their root are command structures, it's simply a question of who is in command. The people via their constituted government, or the owners of private capital? Corruption can exist in either of course, but it's much harder for private capital to corrupt a government when there isn't any private capital, or where it at least can't accumulate to a threatening degree.
I think the real difference has more to do with how socially cohesive one's culture is vs. what form of production is in effect. Obviously some ratio of the two will prevail, depending on historic and material conditions, provided of course the people are in control and are able to hold their position. If not, you get what you see today. A small entitled elite running roughshod over everyone else.
" The people via their constituted government, or the owners of private capital?"
The masses are never in control. Never.
Constitution? I got news for ya. The current scam should have blown the lid off that one, big time.
Those who control the sources of money are in charge, all feel good pretexts (constitutions, etc) notwithstanding. Woody and Frankie made that crystal clear a centruy ago. In fact Frankie's cousin and wife, Eleanor, was as flagrantly Red as a whipped ar$_. That should tell us something.
In fact, Teddy's "trust busting" broke up many trusts but somehow the money trust emerged bigger than ever. Coincidence? Yeah, you betcha.
Subscribed. Lots to take in before I add my 2 cents, but for the moment I'll throw this out for your consideration. You identify 2 distinct elements of human activity, goods and services. I would argue for a third category: information. Information can be subsumed under 'services' of course, but that assumes that the information in question actually provides a service and is not just leading us astray. I think the expression 'those who controls the language control the culture' (or dialogue in some versions) captures the essence of why this should be a separate category.
More broadly, I would expand the definition to include not only the means of communication, such as language, music, poetry and art, but also the physical methods, such as radio, TV, internet, etc. which not only convey information but by their nature, shape and modify it in unseen ways.
This is obviously a vast subject, so rather than start a sub-substack on Peter's site I'll drop in to yours shortly and expand on the idea. For now I'll just point to some authors who've had the greatest influence on my view of this and other matters of interest.
Alfred Korzybski (General Semantics; Science and Sanity)
Marshall McLuhan (anything by him, but starting with Gutenberg Galaxy)
Thanks for this. Information is for sure in some ways a special category. There's quite a bit I'd like to say regarding a focus on who controls information and how - above how it is categorised. And also how that control question relates to a third set of insitutions in addition to those of government and corporate production of goods - namely a 'cultural sphere'. (Some similarities to the civic society of the late 19th and early 20th century, but very much more extensive). Such approach might even help to make it truly a 'service' rather than a 'disservice'. But I'll wait until you come over to World in Tranistion to continue developing your thoughts.
I will certainly remain very interested and open to the continued development of your argumements - it is dialogue above all that we need - the greater intelligence of open and thoughful sharing.
I'm also adding your recommendations to my very long list of reading. (There's so much good stuff out there!). McLuhan is the only one you mentioned that I'm vaguely familiar with - which is to say I'm aware of his still burningly relevant warning that that medium is the message. So Gutenberg Galaxy I'll promote from 'on the list' to 'purchase'.
I'll also add a recommendation back – 'The Shallows – how the internet is changing the way with think, read and rember' by Nicholas Carr. (He refers to Mcluhan a fair bit too).
Regards, and I look forward to continuing the dialogue!
“Corruption can exist in either of course, but it's much harder for private capital to corrupt a government when there isn't any private capital, or where it at least can't accumulate to a threatening degree.”
No, of course not. But consider the difference between our system, which is controlled by a handful of powerful banking interests, and the USSR where corruption took the form of petty bribes at the low end, and nepotism or cronyism at the high end. Soviet leaders had better apartments, cars and dachas, but they didn't accumulate wealth to anywhere near the degree of a Bill Gates, George Soros, or for that matter, half the members of Congress. That didn't prevent them from making bad decisions of course, but that's not corruption so much as it is incompetence.
Neither form of government addresses the basic problem, which is that human nature tends to put personal interest ahead of any other consideration. Communism at least directs personal ambition towards some form of collective good if only because it limits the opportunity to accumulate private wealth. In the absence of similar restraints, western style capitalism has the tendency to concentrate wealth in fewer and fewer hands until all but a few become debt slaves to a handful of private banks whose owners control the political system to their own advantage.
I'm not advocating communism so much as some form of restraint on private wealth accumulation while retaining the best features of capitalism, where individual incentive is rewarded as long as it doesn't reach the point of impoverishing everyone else. I think that's what the founders were aiming for when they set up their system of checks and balances, but if you read what some of them thought about it, there was never any guarantee of success. It would always be a struggle between the owners of capital and the common man who had to toil for his wages. It worked well enough until the greed of the wealth class corrupted the monetary system (1913) and finance capital pushed aside industrial capital, at which point rent seeking replaced actual production as the driving economic force. The result is what you see today: a deindustrialized state dependent on a communist state for much of its critical imports! How ironic is that?
Wow. Thank you for taking the time to explain that to me. It’s obvious that you have a considerable amount of knowledge and historical analysis. I learned from you. Thank you.
No problem, although I consider myself more of a student than a teacher. I posed a question for which I really have no answer - the issue of individual priorities vs collective needs and how we reconcile the two without infringing on the sovereignty of the individual, which I believe is the basic building block of national sovereignty. You can't have one without the other, but neither system fully protects the individual from the impositions of the State. That for me is at the center of all political discourse. How do we build a social system that maximizes individual freedom while protecting the individual from the impositions of those who feel they know better than we do what's good for us.
I'll also be interested in taking up with you some time 'some kind of restraint on personal wealth accumulation' at some time! (not by legislation, but by the nature of the system operated).
If possible, please visit and/or take photos/video of actual Cuban hospitals. Not the tourist ones that the likes of Michael Moore visit. But the ones the actual citizens have access to. Where you need to bring your own medicine, bed sheets, etc. Where people wait months for simple procedures unless their relatives in Miami can send them money and medicine, etc.
"History has demonstrated time and again that command economies (in which all property is owned by the state ) DO NOT WORK. "
Are you referring to Cuba, or to Venezuelifornia? Maybe the People's Socialist Hellhole of New York? Perhaps Zimbabwillinois? No? The probably the WEF command economy by all those self-congratulatory idiot savants there, right?
Agree. And if we look around the United States is headed rapidly in the same direction. When we allow disturbed humans to become our leaders we eventually reap what we sow.
We’re concerning ourselves with discussions of freedom, not cars. The cars will die, just like the repressed citizens in a stagnant economy. Which is more on topic?
I Love Cuba. But I thoroughly despise the War-Bankers who’ve bought our elections, policymakers and war policies for the past two hundred years. Wars are such Bloody Frauds--all of them.
Does business with "Red" China too! Remember Nixon and Kissinger's visit to China back in the '70s? Highly celebrated here as I recall. It confused me then because I had been raised to believe that the US was anti-Commie.
"The initial funds for the setting up of the Marxist schools [in New York] were, ironically enough, contributed by wealthy business people who were personally invited to attend dinners at the homes of other men of wealth. They came to hear Earl Browder analyze current events and predict the future with emphasis on the role the Party would play.
The men who paid their hundred-dollar admissions and contributed thus to the school funds became part of the group which Earl Browder was to call the “progressive businessmen,” meaning those who were willing to go along on an international program of communism. The lure was attractive: expanded profits from trade with the Soviets. The price to be paid was unimportant to these well-fed, well-heeled men, who felt the world was their…"
A great example of the consequences of the kind of top-down directivie control which certain powers now seek to impose on a global scale. Import to have this historical perspective!
I offer a another perspective on getting beyond both this communist approach to controlling everything, and the destructiveness of unbridled captialism here:
Yes, that is exactly what we must be doing. I will definitely look at Genki Sudo some more. I tend to approach all this through the lens of philsophy, science, historical evolution, psychology - which seen in the right way are also on our side. But this kind of imagery-based approach is also very powerful. I love it!
Can you tell me anything more about Genki Sudo? I have been watching some of his videos, which are brilliant but also maybe a little ambiguous (and meant to be that way, I'm sure).
It seems clear that he is depicting the consequences of a mechanistic attitude to life and society, and sometimes it seems maybe he also wants to show the more alive world which continues to develop behind that - like one scene where the robotic 'suits' are interacting in a restaurant some spontaneous and sensitive young women.
I did some searching on his name and found, as you already mentioned, that he a is a former martial arts master turned peace activist. I also found many references to what seems to be his motto 'We are all one'. That for me is ambiguous again. I subscribe to the view that all humanity is in a sense a single organism (that is not just having shared interests and characteristics, but by virtue of, for example, the 'collective unconscious', literallly a single organism). We can't create a decent society with becoming much more aware of that. But at the same time, there is the mysterious fact that we are all utterly unique in our gifts and capacities and unless individuality is appropriately supported we cannot give our best to society. (A principle consistent with complexity theory). So I'm curious, beyond his beautiful and thought-provoking videos, and his evident concern for humanity, to understand a little more about what his philosophy really is. Anything more you can tell me?
I can't tell you much more about the guy than you'll find on the web. He's a practising Buddhist, whatever that means. He's been interviewed a number of times, but as usual they asks the wrong questions, and as a practising Buddhist, he's too polite to point that out. The ambiguity is not so much intentional as it is cultural I would say. In Japan, when you do something brilliant, you're automatically humble about it. Anything else would be in poor taste. So he's not self-promoting in the sense of western celebrities. If I had to guess what he'd really like to say to questions about himself, it would be: listen to the message. Which is of course 'we are all one.' Annoying, right? What the hell does he mean?
In one of those strange coincidences, the answer to that question came just yesterday from an interview with one of the artists I'll be featuring. When asked about the meaning of a song, she replied "whatever you want it to mean." She meant it too!
We should drag this over to your site. It's a bit off-topic here.
Agreed. Drop me a line over there when you can, and I'll respond further, including to the Asian vagueness, or appropriate poetic ambiguity, of Genki Sudo!
Yes, when the state owns everything, it all goes to Hell. Because most significantly, it owns YOU, body, mind and soul. There is no such thing as Individual Rights in collectivist societies, because the Individual is subjugated to society and obliterated for all intents and purposes.
To the degree you personally are guaranteed the fruits of your labor, you will be motivated from within, to work hard. Why should you put your efforts into creating a business, if it, or the money you earn from it, or your freedom to run it as you think it should be run, are all stolen from you? (Isn't that slavery, with invisible chains??)
Unless your mind is free from force, you will not be able to create. That is just the nature of "man, as rational being." Thoughts, the creation of new ideas, reasoning things through--these must be done first by individuals. And THIS is the foundational reason as to why tyrannies of every flavor, create only misery for their citizens.
Wonderful post, John...thank you! We need more reminders like this of the human and economic devastation of communism. Many today seem to have forgotten...
"History has demonstrated time and again that command economies (in which all property is owned by the state ) DO NOT WORK. "
Are you referring to Cuba, or to Venezuelifornia? Maybe the People's Socialist Hellhole of New York? Perhaps Zimbabwillinois? How about Trudeau's Canada? No? The probably the WEF command economy by all those self-congratulatory idiot savants there, right?
Unfortunately the abysmally ignorant and the woke far outnumber those of us who are aware and courageous. My hopes of living my years in a democratic and just society is dwindling by the day. I never thought I would consider leaving my home country.
I’m currently living in Communist Canada, in beautiful BC. Our provincial government is just as corrupt as the federal. They are passing bills with no debate, no public consultation and no media coverage. Unions and professional associations are all remaining silent, meaning they are corrupt too. Thankfully, I’m not in Vancouver which is comparable to San Francisco at this point, but their municipal politics have a huge impact on the rest of the province. They introduced the corrupt voting machines in our most recent municipal elections last year, so we know that was a big facade.
The last response letter I received from my local Member of Parliament (part of Trudeau’s liberal fascist cabinet) literally stated that he doesn’t care what his constituents want, he’s doing what he (Trudeau) thinks is best. He clearly admits corruption and incompetence and isn’t fearful of doing so. I don’t even know how to reply.
I used to live in Kits, Point Grey and Nanaimo. My wife's cousin was Trudeau's nanny, and we used to be friends with his health minister, Jane Philpott, who went over to the dark side after we left (lived in Ottawa then)
We are now in the US, but if I couldn't get out of Canada, I would be in AB. in a heartbeat. I am a dual citizen as I was born in San Fran. All these places are communist hellholes now.
Alberta is looking like our only option, if we stay in Canada. I’m not wanting to move to a colder climate so out of country is looking better lol
I had a friend who continually reminded friends and others that as long as there is one honest, kind and aware person, there is always a chance for humanism to grow and spread. Anyone know where that thought, or belief is from?
Please change that term, "intellectuals" to ideologues, maybe. This assumes those who are perceptive are not intellectual. Thanks.
Wow. You cover so such important territory, both explicitly and implicitly, in this tight & compelling essay. Thank you.
I feel the same way, I am always blown away by the depths and insights in John’s posts. Thank you, John, much appreciated!
Why the distinction between state-owned and private ownership when both are still centrally controlled by government? Is the author asserting that Fascism is good but Communism is bad because of the arm's length private ownership provides authoritarian control where government isn't allowed direct control? Like Twitter Files and the pandemic protocols revealed is the current construct of the US governing model.
Mussolini, Hitler and a whole lot of US leaders, bankers and industrialists were big fans of Fascism, you know. Including Prescott Bush, father and grandfather to two US presidents, one who declared a New World Order was here. Kind of like a UN Agenda 2030/WEF Great Reset.
Another big fan of Fascism was the father of allopathic medicine, John D. Rockefeller, who's petrochemicals became what we know as Big Pharma. The author's choice of words is very curious in this light.
How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power
UK Guardian, September 25, 2004
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar
American Supporters of European Fascists
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/war/american_supporters_of_the_europ.htm
George HW Bush 1991 Speech to the UN
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4509283/user-clip-george-bush-1991-our-quest-world-order
How Rockefeller Created the Business of Western Medicine
https://meridianhealthclinic.com/how-rockefeller-created-the-business-of-western-medicine/
Thanks for reading, and thanks for sharing your valuable commentary and information. I was merely observing that the ONLY visible objects in Havana that are NOT falling apart are those that have been restored and maintained by SOME element (however partial and imperfect) of private investment. It has long seemed to me that Fascism and Communism are variations of state-sponsored gangsterism, with fascist regimes more inclined to harness private industry instead of seizing it. Regards, John Leake
Thank you for your reply. It was an interesting read. That distinction stood out, though. It describes how a fusion of Fascism and Communism is not only possible, but happening around the globe today. Cuba. China. The United States. The European Union. State-sponsored gangsters really do hate individual liberty and western liberal capitalism more than they hate other state gangsters. Hitler and Stalin even signed a Pact for that very reason. If not for personal egos and ambitions it would've prevailed. To the detriment of global freedom. The pandemic has helped expose a vast network of state-sponsored gangsters, fascist and communist regimes that abhor and detest individual liberty and freedom. But love the shakedowns...errr...taxes on profits that private property ownership provide them.
The Hitler-Stalin pact : discussion of the Non-Aggression Treaty and the secret protocols
McGiIl University, Montreal, 1992
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234008336_The_Hitler-Stalin_pact_discussion_of_the_Non-Aggression_Treaty_and_the_secret_protocols (.pdf available for free download)
Let's not forget Lenin's gold filled sealed train to Moscow.
"I could not at that time know, as I did later, how men of wealth use the communist movement to bend workers to their will. So I quite willingly adopted the clichés about secrecy being necessary because of the brutality and savagery of the working-class enemies. I soon learned that the members exposed to the public were not the important Communists."
-Bella Dodd, School of Darkness, Ch 6
Absolutely. The situation in Cuba saddens me deeply. I lived many years in Miami and have many dear Cuban friends. They are wonderful, warm hearted, cultured and colorful people. I can only hope the 'awakening' happens for them as well. Two of my favorite movies that depict the Cuban spirit are The Buena Vista Social Club and Before Night Falls which is based on a true story during the Marielito Boat lift which I witnessed from Miami. Thank you for this post.
I grew up in Miami and remember the Marielito's, the tent cities of refugees under I-95 overpasses.
I also remember tuning in to Radio Moscow beamed in from Havana at night long before the boat lift. Not because I was an aspiring Communist. But because I wanted to learn what the had to say about the US, why they were our enemy, what their beef was. That was when I learned what propaganda sounded like. I was able to compare their description of the US with what I saw with my own eyes. And knew they were taking small truths and constructing large lies on top of them.
Inspired me to learn more about propaganda and how to recognize it. Recognition that has served to safely and effectively inoculate me to a lot of the propaganda we're subjected to by our own government. FYI - Radio Moscow's Cold War broadcasts showcasing failures they described our nation suffered from are virtually indistinguishable from Democrat and progressive talking points about the ills of the US today. Propaganda.
When Batista was ousted, he took the country's Treasury with him (protected by our Mafia, probably). Castro had little to work with. It's surprising his countrymen/women accomplished so much: enhanced literacy and good medical coverage (despite our despotic sanctions of Western medicine not reaching them). I would have liked to see Cuba revive, renovate and become a thriving tropical destination spot! We have only great things to gain from such a relationship.
And western medicine isn't all it's cracked up to be. The alternative healers like homeopaths, naturopaths, holistic practitioners, herbalists, ayurvedics, TCM, etc are much more trustworthy and better healers than allopaths. Sure, I'll take western medicine to mend my broken bones or patch up holes inside me. That's about all I trust them for. Western medicine does genital mutilations on children and can't discern between male and female. Western medicine tells patients with respiratory illness to obstruct their breathing, tells everyone including children to put a wet, warm petri dish across their mouths to repeatedly inhale through - for their health. Western medicine pumps dangerous experimental biotech that has no demonstrated long-term record of safety and efficacy into the bodies of people with near zero risk of illness. Western medicine calls natural immunity a "new age belief system." Western medicine pumps Big Pharma pills into patients so that doctors can go to Hawaiian resorts for writing the most prescriptions any given year. Just sayin'.
IATROGENICALLY caused disease is 3rd largest killer of Allopathic patients. They have been the cause of almost all my serious health issues. 😠
Castro was a useful agitprop for our government mafia. A boogeyman on our doorstep. Beware the Red Scare ninety miles from our shore!
A distraction from the Nazis perhaps? Same diff.
B.I.N.G.O.
👍 I did not know that about Batista, I thought they killed him, where did he go?
Detroit is falling apart. What's up with that? How about Baltimore, Chicago, Atlanta, Portland, San Francisco, need I go on?
It's one of the things that happens when a country gets bled dry by the globalist banking mafia.
The allopathic medical profession has long been the preferred means of controlling populations. Fascists have a track record with allopathy. And not a particularly proud one.
How trusted medical professionals enabled the genocide, betraying all medical ethics and trust of the patients and families they were supposed to be treating. Heart-wrenching presentation of historical truth. And many of the same patterns of cowardice and complicity in the medical practices repeat in the Covid era, with genital mutilations of children, whatever the state-sponsored gangster regime directs medical boards, hospitals, schools and associations to do. Arm's length private entities controlled by government. Fascism.
[Point of order for the following article about how the disabled were treated in Fascist Nazi Germany by society with the complicity of the medical professions: Disobedience, opposition was diagnosed as a disability. Dissociation from "evidence-based reality" and anti-social behavior = disability = sterilization and extermination.]
Useless Eaters: Disability as Genocidal Marker in Nazi Germany
Catholic Culture, 2002
https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=7019
Euthanasia and Voluntariness
Marker 1: Darwinism and the Biology of Determination
Marker 2: Eugenics
Marker 4: Disability Propagandized as Life Unworthy of Living
Marker 5: Disability as Justification for Individual and State-Sanctioned Murder
Marker 6: Disability as State-Sanctioned Homicidal Health Policy
The Role of Science
Complicity of the Medical Professions
Propaganda
The field of Bioethics was supposedly conceived of to prevent what happened within the medical community in Fascist Germany from happening again. But...Anthony Fauci's hands are in that field too - his wife heads up Bioethics at the National Institute of Health
Bioethics. About important issues like eugenics. And Newgenics. Designer babies, CRISPR, mRNA genetic modification of the human genome. Useless eaters reproducing...or not...three generations of imbeciles being enough and all. A case that has new found relevance in the biotechnology of today. Like vaccines that lower birthrates and result in stillborns, aka sterilization. Fascists love them some Newgenics:
Buck v. Bell, American Eugenics, and the Bad Man Test: Putting
Limits on Newgenics in the 21st Century
Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality, January 2020
https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1622&context=lawineq
https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/05/18/fauci-wife-authors-paper-supporting-vaccine-pressure-campaigns/
I just want to "personally" thank you for your postings this morning. Lots of information to add to my existing data set, summarized (long read) here: https://outsidein51.substack.com/p/pro-vaccine-safety-in-2023-where
I have to get my son with "profound autism", so I am printing them out. Genuine thanks.
FF is definitely on a roll and all of it good stuff.
"It has long seemed to me that Fascism and Communism are variations of state-sponsored gangsterism, with fascist regimes more inclined to harness private industry instead of seizing it."
You're getting warmer. It helps to realize that all large corporations are state sponsored.
They all get special protection and special favors courtesy of "the law." Where do they get protection from liability, for instance? Who funds them big time with grants and contracts and bails them out? No entity getting such special treatment shold be considered a private business.
Fascism. It's been in our faces forever.
Wonderful post. I now refer to western “medicine” as “the cult of the medics”. I guarantee further study would show there is a direct correlation between petrochemicals (in our food and pharmaceuticals) and cancer. Funny how the “food” on our grocery store shelves first creates the disease, then the “medicine” our doctors prescribe mask symptoms temporarily, only to succumb to the disease eventually anyway. It’s beyond evil.
We are giving the elites (should be referred to as the predators) all our hard earned money every step of the way. If people truly understood that every dollar they spend is a chance to vote, we could turn this around.
Good post. People need to realize that 20th century communism was nothing more than a variation of fascism. Basically, all that fascism means is that there is a partnership between big business and government and it's easy to see that no large government has ever been anything but fascist at the core.
The Reds are famous for hypocrisy and shouting invectives at their competitors while doing the same thing themselves. Leninism and Stalinism were fascist as were, and still are, the countries that supported them. One of the key supporters was the USA. The old Russian empire was weakened and the USSR built up with US dollars and more. Trotsky wasn’t a guest in New York only for the tea parties.
Even today, the CCP was built up with a little help from their “enemy” across the Pacific. Who helped fund the Wuhan GoF research?
For those who still believe that there is a communist-capitalist dichotomy, Dodd's book is a must read.
"Famous names, Vanderbilt, Lamont, Whitney, Morgan, mingled with those of communist leaders. The Russian Institute was so respectable that it was allowed to give in-service courses to New York City schoolteachers for credit."
-Bella Dodd, School of Darkness, Chap 11
"The populace is heated up with inflammatory talk about foreign tyrants who plan to come over the border with illimitable hordes and reduce the whole Russian proletariat to slavery, and under cover of the fears thus aroused they rivet that proletariat in ever tighter chains."
The Reds and Civil Rights by H.L. Mencken The American Mercury , July 1936, pp. 284-289 - PDF
http://www.unz.org/Pub/AmMercury-1936jul-00284
Does any of that sound familiar? Now the hordes are bugs and we all "need" the WHO. FOr our protection, of course.
And Karl Marx himself didn't spend years in London writing articles for the New-York Daily Tribune which were often reprinted in other papers becasue he was a pal of the proles.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/newspapers/new-york-tribune.htm
I suspect we've been duped for decades.
I don’t think that he is saying that at all. He’s stating what happened. In general, investments are made for payback. On this decaying island the two times private enterprise joined with the government to help, the restorations were fruitful. He is not making the distinction to which you alluded rather he is stating that the economic decay of communism relies on using the genius of entrepreneurs to generate profit for them. Entrepreneurial spirit is the force driving capitalism which seeks profit making.
That both the Fascist and Communist sides of the same state-sponsored gangster authoritarian coin desire the shakedowns...errr... profits from. He writes that the Communist government in Cuba takes their cut. The CCP is a 51% majority owner of every single private business in China. The remaining 49% is privately owned. But the business is controlled by the majority owner, state-sponsored gangsters. Who take their cut. Yes, entrepreneurial spirit IS the force driving capitalism which seeks profit making. Which is what Fascism attempts to capture. And Communist gangsters realize is true. And want their cut.
I would be surprised if the properties the author writes of are owned under a different construct in Communist Cuba. Private ownership under government control is technically Fascism. And I stand by my observation that a fusion of Fascism and Communism is the global trend we see happening.
You are correct. Political Communism is just a varitety of fascism. It's a variation on a theme.
All variations are merely tools in the hands of the globalist mafia.
Technocracy is real.
Technocracy = Public-Private Partnerships = Fascism
They write their own laws - lobbyists, regulatory agency capture is real, it's why the Rockefeller's and Bush's have lauded and longed for Fascism in the US and globally for a century. It's a really profitable governing model for the gangsters. Harvesting the fruits of the entrepreneurial spirit for the enrichment of the top mob bosses.
The story goes that Leonid Brezhnev (if you don't know who he is, you just might be one of those doomed, as Santayana wrote, to repeat history) had his 100 yr old grandmother visit him in Moscow in the 1960s.
He proudly took her around his offices as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. showing her his Italian marble private bathroom with solid gold sink handles and the like, showed her his multiple well appointed dachas, all outfitted with the latest in Parisian fashion, the 10 Zil limousines he had waiting for him at all times; showed her the giant mahongany desk with solid gold handles, the chandeliers which incorporated real diamonds, and proudly boasted about the 20 attendants he had at his beck and call for every and any whim.
Finally, the end of the day came, and he dismissed his servants.
His ancient granny, born before the Bolshevik Revolution, frantically and furtively looked around to make sure absolutely NO ONE was around. She then, very, very carefully, sidled up to Leonid and, in sotto voce, whispers so no one else could hear:
"This is all very well Leonid. But... WHAT IF THE COMMUNISTS COME??"
Or maybe this story is really about Gov. "Hairdo" Newsome, Nancy Pelosi, the Obamas on their zillion dollar property on all white Martha's Vineyard at 79 Turkeyland Dr., Edgartown, MA (which whatsmyelevation.com shows is 3 FEET above, sea level, or a thousand and one other assorted Hollywood Learjet leftists.
There might surely be a lot of criticizing that is valid onto Cuban regime, but discarding the evil that the US empire has inflicted upon that country, and Latin America as a whole, completely misses the point.
Of all people who could do this criticizing, someone who has seen and felt the power of the empire upon himself (think twitter files and beyond) and then failing to consider its effects upon some other entity is just a typical US-european viewpoint: "the government went full communist China-like all covid relayed issues" and then, thinking that Mexico 1913, Guatemala 1954, Chile 1973, Lybia 2011, et cetera are mere Banana Republic failures.
This very crisis should, at least, highlight the fact that all the oppression the US regime has done upon their non-compliant citizens covid-wise is a mild version of what they can and do to a lot of countries with non-compliant governments.
Your comments are obtuse. What is your point? It’s hardly discernible.
Might it be you have a miscalibrated protactor? If you keep the head of a short person under water and dies, you don't get to say "he/she died because he/she was short"... Now, I understand that being a citizen of the State that keeps the short person underwater numbs your ability to receive other information than "capitalism will save us all, let's kill the ones who are living in the error" (without paying attention to the "living" other persons have).
Yes, the US Government has been wicked all over the world to establish its world dominance. Now we, the citizens, are paying the price of their unfettered capitalism. Under the cover of its world power, our government has committed atrocities all over the planet, subjugating many small and not so small sovereign states into chaos and long term suffering. The US government is fundamentally a bully and manipulator of foreign powers.
I could not say it better! Thanks.
Food for thought: there is people saying that they have caught covid for the third time and thank the fourth booster for not dying.
Thank you for being kind.
Those who keep yielding to government hoaxes and chicanery will shorten their lifespans……… (and ours). They will boost themselves right into their own graves. but won’t even notice because they have lived their lives asleep at the wheel. They have willingly sacrificed their health by putting the government in charge of it. We reap what we sow. Each of us has responsibility for our own bodies and health. To transfer that responsibility to an evil, manipulative power without doing due diligence is a dereliction of our survival skills in favor of yielding to what they believe is a protective, trusted, beneficent State, which as the enlightened know is an ignorant, ill informed, lethal mistake. May they rest in peace for their grave errors in discernment.
If you read Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine then they would not seem ‘obtuse’.
I gather he is talking about our government’s role in creating Banana Republics. The rest is unintelligible. I shouldn’t have to read a book to understand someone’s poorly crafted comment, but thanks anyway.
Out of curiosity, how many languages do you speak?
I was a language major in college and lived abroad to learn languages. I fully recognize that the obscurity in the message you are obliquely referring to is due to the fact that the writer is not a native speaker. When commenting on public forums, it is appreciated if comments can be understood. I stand by that notion.
I think most readers like to get someone’s point. I get yours.
Thanks for the kind response. Funny thing though, I only speak one language and I understood what he *meant* perfectly.
Go figure ? :-)
I honestly have not heard anything about Cuba's handling of Covid. Other than the despicable Castro regime, the worst our country did to Cuba IMO was what JFK inherited w Allen Dulles CIA and all the insane attempts to start wars there. It's a tough call how to help them when the people get no help as it all goes to the criminal govt. Sounds familiar.
Getting rid of Allende was a win for most Chileans.
"History has demonstrated time and again that command economies (in which all property is owned by the state ) DO NOT WORK. Under such regimes, competence and expertise evaporate."
And yet the USSR, despite staggering losses suffered in WWII, and facing a hostile post-war alliance that threatens them even to this day, still managed to counter the US ICBM threat, launch a fleet of nuclear submarines, develop superior military aircraft and put the first satellite and the first man in orbit.
THEN, after being subjected to a decade of rapacious western bank sponsored so-called free enterprise, they managed to regroup under a reformation of state controlled enterprise to become the most technically advanced military power on the planet - that is unless you think capitalism pulled that off and the ultimate owner of the defence industry isn't the Russian state.
Speaking of competence and expertise, Russia recently announced their intention to abandon the Bologna system and return to the Soviet system of education with its heavy emphasis on STEM and notable lack of women's and trans-gender studies.
I'm not arguing the case for state enterprise so much as pointing out that the precept of command economy vs. ... what? capitalism? free enterprise? ... is a false dichotomy. Both at their root are command structures, it's simply a question of who is in command. The people via their constituted government, or the owners of private capital? Corruption can exist in either of course, but it's much harder for private capital to corrupt a government when there isn't any private capital, or where it at least can't accumulate to a threatening degree.
I think the real difference has more to do with how socially cohesive one's culture is vs. what form of production is in effect. Obviously some ratio of the two will prevail, depending on historic and material conditions, provided of course the people are in control and are able to hold their position. If not, you get what you see today. A small entitled elite running roughshod over everyone else.
" The people via their constituted government, or the owners of private capital?"
The masses are never in control. Never.
Constitution? I got news for ya. The current scam should have blown the lid off that one, big time.
Those who control the sources of money are in charge, all feel good pretexts (constitutions, etc) notwithstanding. Woody and Frankie made that crystal clear a centruy ago. In fact Frankie's cousin and wife, Eleanor, was as flagrantly Red as a whipped ar$_. That should tell us something.
In fact, Teddy's "trust busting" broke up many trusts but somehow the money trust emerged bigger than ever. Coincidence? Yeah, you betcha.
See what you think of these?
michaelwarden.substack.com/p/the-economist-is-wearing-no-clothes
michaelwarden.substack.com/p/the-circular-economy
Subscribed. Lots to take in before I add my 2 cents, but for the moment I'll throw this out for your consideration. You identify 2 distinct elements of human activity, goods and services. I would argue for a third category: information. Information can be subsumed under 'services' of course, but that assumes that the information in question actually provides a service and is not just leading us astray. I think the expression 'those who controls the language control the culture' (or dialogue in some versions) captures the essence of why this should be a separate category.
More broadly, I would expand the definition to include not only the means of communication, such as language, music, poetry and art, but also the physical methods, such as radio, TV, internet, etc. which not only convey information but by their nature, shape and modify it in unseen ways.
This is obviously a vast subject, so rather than start a sub-substack on Peter's site I'll drop in to yours shortly and expand on the idea. For now I'll just point to some authors who've had the greatest influence on my view of this and other matters of interest.
Alfred Korzybski (General Semantics; Science and Sanity)
Marshall McLuhan (anything by him, but starting with Gutenberg Galaxy)
Marvin Harris (Cultural Materialism)
Douglas Hofstadter (Gödel, Escher, Bach)
Thanks for this. Information is for sure in some ways a special category. There's quite a bit I'd like to say regarding a focus on who controls information and how - above how it is categorised. And also how that control question relates to a third set of insitutions in addition to those of government and corporate production of goods - namely a 'cultural sphere'. (Some similarities to the civic society of the late 19th and early 20th century, but very much more extensive). Such approach might even help to make it truly a 'service' rather than a 'disservice'. But I'll wait until you come over to World in Tranistion to continue developing your thoughts.
I will certainly remain very interested and open to the continued development of your argumements - it is dialogue above all that we need - the greater intelligence of open and thoughful sharing.
I'm also adding your recommendations to my very long list of reading. (There's so much good stuff out there!). McLuhan is the only one you mentioned that I'm vaguely familiar with - which is to say I'm aware of his still burningly relevant warning that that medium is the message. So Gutenberg Galaxy I'll promote from 'on the list' to 'purchase'.
I'll also add a recommendation back – 'The Shallows – how the internet is changing the way with think, read and rember' by Nicholas Carr. (He refers to Mcluhan a fair bit too).
Regards, and I look forward to continuing the dialogue!
“Corruption can exist in either of course, but it's much harder for private capital to corrupt a government when there isn't any private capital, or where it at least can't accumulate to a threatening degree.”
Say what?
Could you be more specific please? What part of my statement do you disagree with?
Does the lack of private capital insure that a government will not be corrupt?
No, of course not. But consider the difference between our system, which is controlled by a handful of powerful banking interests, and the USSR where corruption took the form of petty bribes at the low end, and nepotism or cronyism at the high end. Soviet leaders had better apartments, cars and dachas, but they didn't accumulate wealth to anywhere near the degree of a Bill Gates, George Soros, or for that matter, half the members of Congress. That didn't prevent them from making bad decisions of course, but that's not corruption so much as it is incompetence.
Neither form of government addresses the basic problem, which is that human nature tends to put personal interest ahead of any other consideration. Communism at least directs personal ambition towards some form of collective good if only because it limits the opportunity to accumulate private wealth. In the absence of similar restraints, western style capitalism has the tendency to concentrate wealth in fewer and fewer hands until all but a few become debt slaves to a handful of private banks whose owners control the political system to their own advantage.
I'm not advocating communism so much as some form of restraint on private wealth accumulation while retaining the best features of capitalism, where individual incentive is rewarded as long as it doesn't reach the point of impoverishing everyone else. I think that's what the founders were aiming for when they set up their system of checks and balances, but if you read what some of them thought about it, there was never any guarantee of success. It would always be a struggle between the owners of capital and the common man who had to toil for his wages. It worked well enough until the greed of the wealth class corrupted the monetary system (1913) and finance capital pushed aside industrial capital, at which point rent seeking replaced actual production as the driving economic force. The result is what you see today: a deindustrialized state dependent on a communist state for much of its critical imports! How ironic is that?
Wow. Thank you for taking the time to explain that to me. It’s obvious that you have a considerable amount of knowledge and historical analysis. I learned from you. Thank you.
No problem, although I consider myself more of a student than a teacher. I posed a question for which I really have no answer - the issue of individual priorities vs collective needs and how we reconcile the two without infringing on the sovereignty of the individual, which I believe is the basic building block of national sovereignty. You can't have one without the other, but neither system fully protects the individual from the impositions of the State. That for me is at the center of all political discourse. How do we build a social system that maximizes individual freedom while protecting the individual from the impositions of those who feel they know better than we do what's good for us.
I'll also be interested in taking up with you some time 'some kind of restraint on personal wealth accumulation' at some time! (not by legislation, but by the nature of the system operated).
"When socialism comes to the Sahara, there will even be a shortage of sand"
- Old Polish proverb under communism
If possible, please visit and/or take photos/video of actual Cuban hospitals. Not the tourist ones that the likes of Michael Moore visit. But the ones the actual citizens have access to. Where you need to bring your own medicine, bed sheets, etc. Where people wait months for simple procedures unless their relatives in Miami can send them money and medicine, etc.
It's pitiful. It takes some mighty strong people to have survived there.
"History has demonstrated time and again that command economies (in which all property is owned by the state ) DO NOT WORK. "
Are you referring to Cuba, or to Venezuelifornia? Maybe the People's Socialist Hellhole of New York? Perhaps Zimbabwillinois? No? The probably the WEF command economy by all those self-congratulatory idiot savants there, right?
Agree. And if we look around the United States is headed rapidly in the same direction. When we allow disturbed humans to become our leaders we eventually reap what we sow.
It will be a sad day, too, when the old, classic cars - a veritable time warp - are replaced forever by modern automotive trash.
I hope they refurbish all of them, they're treasures
Who gives a crap.
Me.
We’re concerning ourselves with discussions of freedom, not cars. The cars will die, just like the repressed citizens in a stagnant economy. Which is more on topic?
A question was posed, I answered it. I can chew gum and walk at the same time. I also appreciate Americana and vintage cars.
Well then, you just keep on rockin’.
Will do.
And the US is headed to a place below Cuba on the good-places-to-live list thanks to the current regime of numbskull leftists.
I Love Cuba. But I thoroughly despise the War-Bankers who’ve bought our elections, policymakers and war policies for the past two hundred years. Wars are such Bloody Frauds--all of them.
Stop the embargo
Exactly. I notice the USA does business with Vietnam. Has done for some time now.
Does business with "Red" China too! Remember Nixon and Kissinger's visit to China back in the '70s? Highly celebrated here as I recall. It confused me then because I had been raised to believe that the US was anti-Commie.
"The initial funds for the setting up of the Marxist schools [in New York] were, ironically enough, contributed by wealthy business people who were personally invited to attend dinners at the homes of other men of wealth. They came to hear Earl Browder analyze current events and predict the future with emphasis on the role the Party would play.
The men who paid their hundred-dollar admissions and contributed thus to the school funds became part of the group which Earl Browder was to call the “progressive businessmen,” meaning those who were willing to go along on an international program of communism. The lure was attractive: expanded profits from trade with the Soviets. The price to be paid was unimportant to these well-fed, well-heeled men, who felt the world was their…"
-Bella Dodd, School of Darkness Chap 11
A great example of the consequences of the kind of top-down directivie control which certain powers now seek to impose on a global scale. Import to have this historical perspective!
I offer a another perspective on getting beyond both this communist approach to controlling everything, and the destructiveness of unbridled captialism here:
michaelwarden.substack.com/p/the-failed-mantra-of-the-french-revolution.
And a view on the emerging 'new paradigm' which will lead beyond both descructive polarities here:
michaelwarden.substack.com/p/a-cure-for-21st-century-madness
Yes. Multipolarity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vXbK3g7cM8
Thanks - that's a great video!
Genki Sudo is one of the unsung geniuses of our time. A martial arts master turned world peace maker, I recommend all his work, found here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI4fJYWKcGa8MvnvLw0qysQ
We need to take the language back from those who would use it against us. We are in fact building a New World Order. Our World Order, not theirs.
Yes, that is exactly what we must be doing. I will definitely look at Genki Sudo some more. I tend to approach all this through the lens of philsophy, science, historical evolution, psychology - which seen in the right way are also on our side. But this kind of imagery-based approach is also very powerful. I love it!
Hi again ebear,
Can you tell me anything more about Genki Sudo? I have been watching some of his videos, which are brilliant but also maybe a little ambiguous (and meant to be that way, I'm sure).
It seems clear that he is depicting the consequences of a mechanistic attitude to life and society, and sometimes it seems maybe he also wants to show the more alive world which continues to develop behind that - like one scene where the robotic 'suits' are interacting in a restaurant some spontaneous and sensitive young women.
I did some searching on his name and found, as you already mentioned, that he a is a former martial arts master turned peace activist. I also found many references to what seems to be his motto 'We are all one'. That for me is ambiguous again. I subscribe to the view that all humanity is in a sense a single organism (that is not just having shared interests and characteristics, but by virtue of, for example, the 'collective unconscious', literallly a single organism). We can't create a decent society with becoming much more aware of that. But at the same time, there is the mysterious fact that we are all utterly unique in our gifts and capacities and unless individuality is appropriately supported we cannot give our best to society. (A principle consistent with complexity theory). So I'm curious, beyond his beautiful and thought-provoking videos, and his evident concern for humanity, to understand a little more about what his philosophy really is. Anything more you can tell me?
Many thanks!
I can't tell you much more about the guy than you'll find on the web. He's a practising Buddhist, whatever that means. He's been interviewed a number of times, but as usual they asks the wrong questions, and as a practising Buddhist, he's too polite to point that out. The ambiguity is not so much intentional as it is cultural I would say. In Japan, when you do something brilliant, you're automatically humble about it. Anything else would be in poor taste. So he's not self-promoting in the sense of western celebrities. If I had to guess what he'd really like to say to questions about himself, it would be: listen to the message. Which is of course 'we are all one.' Annoying, right? What the hell does he mean?
In one of those strange coincidences, the answer to that question came just yesterday from an interview with one of the artists I'll be featuring. When asked about the meaning of a song, she replied "whatever you want it to mean." She meant it too!
We should drag this over to your site. It's a bit off-topic here.
Agreed. Drop me a line over there when you can, and I'll respond further, including to the Asian vagueness, or appropriate poetic ambiguity, of Genki Sudo!
Regards.
* important
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Yes, when the state owns everything, it all goes to Hell. Because most significantly, it owns YOU, body, mind and soul. There is no such thing as Individual Rights in collectivist societies, because the Individual is subjugated to society and obliterated for all intents and purposes.
To the degree you personally are guaranteed the fruits of your labor, you will be motivated from within, to work hard. Why should you put your efforts into creating a business, if it, or the money you earn from it, or your freedom to run it as you think it should be run, are all stolen from you? (Isn't that slavery, with invisible chains??)
Unless your mind is free from force, you will not be able to create. That is just the nature of "man, as rational being." Thoughts, the creation of new ideas, reasoning things through--these must be done first by individuals. And THIS is the foundational reason as to why tyrannies of every flavor, create only misery for their citizens.