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24 October 2009

Don't worry about the economy, we don't need it

"The writer, when he is also an artist, is someone who admits what others don't dare reveal."
-- Elia Kazan

Don't worry about the economy, we don't need it. A statement that is at once bold, brave and easily dismissed as foolish, but it's a sentence that encapsulates as succinctly as possible something that desperately needs saying.
"Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes her laws."

-- Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744 -1812)
Godfather of the Rothschild Banking Cartel
in 'The Creature from Jekyll Island', p. 218
Most of us, most of the time, have no need or want whatsoever for the financial economy that exists today; that is - a systemic legacy of historical ownership, control and operation. In fact, if anything, the financial economy is a shackle and a hindrance to more people, more of the time, than it is of any tangible benefit. Which is just as it has been intended by that class of people who champion their private property, profit and capital over the interests of the very people that wittingly or unwittingly facilitate their privilege. But still, don't worry about the economy, we don't need it.

What we do need however is a coherent way of understanding the essential nature of the permanent crisis of Capitalism and its economy, complete with an understanding of how the murderous U-SUK alliance Imperialism we see in the Middle-East and elsewhere is Capitalism in its most barbarous form. We need a correct understanding to ensure that this is the last ever crisis of Capitalism that anyone has to endure and, equally as crucially, to collectively plan, organise and establish new ways for how 6 billion-and-counting human beings go about co-existing with each other on the blue-green planet that hosts us.


An accurate and insightful understanding of what the system of Capitalism under which we live is, how it operates, and what the function of the State is inside the system of Capitalist operation, would include an understanding of how the State has established and maintained for itself a monopoly on the 'legitimate' use of violence against everything, which it deploys via bodies of armed men in defence of the minority interests of private property, capital, capitalists and capitalism. Private property is theft from and an affront to the rest of humanity and the capital is a historical, fictional legacy controlled by a handful people who manage the fiction to best suit the needs of themselves and their class; it is these things that the State, for all its pretence otherwise, exists to protect. Which, in the 21st century information age, is a somewhat backward and regressive basis for anything and this is the crux of the issue: the State's role as actor and enforcer in defence of private property and private capital, while keeping empty a million houses from those with no homes or health, and families unable to feed, clothe and educate their children, because 4 million people live under institutionalised and enforced poverty.
"The state, then, has not existed from all eternity. There have been societies that did without it, that had no idea of the state and state power. At a certain stage of economic development, which was necessarily bound up with the split of society into classes, the state became a necessity owing to this split. We are now rapidly approaching a stage in the development of production at which the existence of these classes not only will have ceased to be a necessity, but will become a positive hindrance to production. They will fall as inevitably as they arose at an earlier stage. Along with them the state will inevitably fall. Society, which will reorganise production on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers, will put the whole machinery of state where it will then belong: into the museum of antiquities, by the side of the spinning wheel and the bronze axe."

-- Friedrich Engels
from "The Origin of Family, Private Property and State" (1884)
Thankfully, outside the bounds of the public school theatrics of parliamentary politics and debate and mostly also outside of the bounds of mainstream media debate (with one or two notable exceptions like the discussion on Newsnight by middle-class pundits of impending "class warfare") people are beginning to explore what lies at the core of the system that enforces certain material conditions of existence. Better yet, they are beginning to explore solutions.

Todd Chretien on Lenin's "State and Revolution"


The State and Revolution, by Vladimir Il'ich Lenin


Since the snappily titled credit-crunch and the despotic actions of States around the world to sustain at any cost to workers the banking infrastructure and the workings of the financial markets of Capitalism the statement, "Don't worry about the economy, we don't need it" rings more true now than at any time before in history. And, while it is possible that some might label the statement "Don't worry about the economy, we don't need it" as the wild imaginings and inventions of an idiot, a 'conspiracy theorist', an Anarchist or a Marxist, or any other ad hominem 'insult' du jour -- as undoubtedly some will loudly decry it, and good luck to them all for their time is nearly up - the closing words of this article are given to a man of mental faculty, standing and repute beyond reproach:
Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.


09 October 2009

Bombing the moon for (Nobel) Peace (Prizes)

Not content with bombing to death human beings in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and anywhere else on earth with resources that take their fancy, the United Mistakes of America (ignore for a moment how mythical al Qaeda suicide bombers follow them around everywhere) via those lovely folk at NAZA have taken to bombing the Clangers and the moon, complete with 1960s video technology holed up in a PortaCabin as documentary proof; all in a vain bid to save, among other things, a collapsed economy of invented numbers while apparently looking for water, as discovered by everyone except those who claim to have been there many times, and recently confirmed by India's lunar mission.

All of which means it's probably time for a revival of this little bit of musical, lyrical and video genius from German rockers, Rammstein.



There is no escape. Even on the moon.

Meanwhile, PotUS Barack Obama/Ohbomber, he who authorised the mass murder of Pakistanis (ignore that the U.S. hasn't, technically, declared war on Pakistan) through the use of unmanned drones, receives a Nobel Peace Prize because he said all the right words, which of course means that, according to the collection of Nobel geniuses who decide such things, you can ignore his 'peaceful' actions like, er, murder.

#War IS #Peace; how warmongers win #Nobel 'peace' prizes. Everything is its opposite.

Ignore incongruity; dismiss dissonance; carry on.

03 October 2009

Happy 6th Birthday to Reason....

Anything that defies my sense of reason is, quite incredibly, six years old today.

While postings on the blog have been light of late, for many of the same reasons as outlined in The Sounds of Silence and the Persistence of Time (itself published some two years ago) your humble host has been playing in one or two other places:


Follow on Tumblr: http://antagonise.tumblr.com/


If you're new to Reason...., or if you just want a recap of roughly how it all came to be and what has happened along the way, you might want to read a recent interview with yours truly, courtesy of the Pakistan Spectator.

Blogs and the Internet have evolved rather substantially since this blog was born. The following question and response is taken from the Pakistan Spectator interview:
What do you think is the most exciting or most innovative use of technology in politics right now?
The way in which ordinary people now have the ability to communicate internationally, at the speed of light, with anyone and everyone, almost anywhere in the world is perhaps the most exciting and progressive use of technology. I think this has yet to be harnessed to its fullest and true potential, partly due to language barriers, but, like everything, it’s all process and everyone must learn to walk before they can run.
As this blog turns six, it looks like Google might well have gone some way to addressing the not inconsiderable matter of facilitating the harnessing of the Internet "to its fullest and true potential" by eradicating some of the language barriers with the built-in, real-time, language translation services being rolled out as part of GoogleWave.



If anyone at Google is reading and wants to help celebrate six years of Google/Blogger blogging, do feel free to send through a GoogleWave invite.

Meanwhile, here's to the next six years....

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Seeing as Twitter gets a mention.... If you're a user of the Twitter service and struggling with the web interface, the Adobe Air Twitter client, DestroyTwitter comes very highly recommended. And, if you decide to use DestroyTwitter, there is the added bonus of not one but two Antagonista/Reason inspired DestroyTwitter themes: