Privatized QT

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”
― Elie Wiesel

“The robb'd that smiles, steals something from the thief; He robs himself that spends a bootless grief.”
― William Shakespeare, Othello

“If taxation without consent is not robbery, then any band of robbers have only to declare themselves a government, and all their robberies are legalized.”
― Lysander Spooner

The biter is bitten

As more and more individuals and nations recognize that the issuance of FIAT CREDIT by or under the aegis of western central banks [ie. the G7 and its emerging military wing of NATO] is a crime of international counterfeiting and robbery committed against the rest of the world [human and natural], the victims are taking judgment into their own hands by simply repudiating the indebtedness and leaving the purveyors of fiat and those who buy/fence/launder their stolen goods with worthless claims. The thieves et. al. are being justly punished by their victims.

"Who is in a position to lead a genuinely Just Transition?

"What if, instead of endless calls for odious, extractive debts to be cancelled, there were countries who were willing to face the consequences of refusing to pay these debts? And what if we were ready to defend our siblings in this stance? These kinds of moves would be of historic and economic significance. Especially when they involve the creation of sovereign money as a liberation from extractive currencies, as described by Senegalese Economist Ndongo Samba Sylla. Jason Hickel suggests this is an effective path to not only decolonising the Global South but to spurring necessary degrowth in the Global North.

"So a just transition could be led by Global South countries rising up and throwing off the yokes of neo-colonialism, controlling their own resources and refusing to pay debts.  Well that moment is happening –  and it is time we paid attention. The peoples of West Afrika are rising up with the help of military leaders. Niger aims to charge a fair market price for their uranium resources (France has been paying peanuts). Burkina Faso repudiates colonial debt. Civil society in Mali is calling for Debt audits and non-payment. Niger has defaulted on $519m of debt payments. The Alliance of Sahel States is also discussing starting its own currency- this is a hugely significant moment.

"They have the potential to pull the lever that will help hospice the existing system, making space for the just transition to viable systems we all know are necessary."
— Real allyship in an age of collapse – supporting anti-imperialism

The buyer of stolen goods

"Whoever receives in commerce ... any thing used ... in counterfeiting any security ... knowing that the same has been used in forging any security ... [shall be guilty of and punishable for a crime] ... This section shall not apply to any forged ... security ... which is intended by law or usage to circulate as money." — 18 U.S. Code § 2315 - Sale or receipt of stolen goods

Of course, the problem with repudiating fiat debt, returning stolen goods or emancipating slaves is that the asset's current owner usually claims to have acted in "good faith" with "good money" and that punishing them for the underlying theft perpetrated by another is unjust. However, this defense fails in the face of mounting evidence that the buyer was "habitual" and "should have known" the prices paid for the stolen assets were heavily discounted from the "fair/real price/value" resulting in undue profits on/from resale/use or other evidence of persistent wealth accumulation without any commensurate expenditure of other assets including labor. [Micah 6:10]

The 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement was an attempt to prevent the continuation of international theft, colonial enslavement and wars of aggression and retribution that arose in the world due to decades of the gradual establishment of international fiat credit climaxing with the establishment of the US Federal Reserve in 1913 followed by The Great War and WWII. There was hope that the world had learned its lessons.

 

But the 1971 unilateral repudiation of Bretton Woods by the United States was nothing less than an act of piracy or the reinstitution of slave-trading which has resulted in 50 years during which the accumulating crimes of the fathers are being visited on the sons creating vast, confusing and destabilizing gulfs of wealth and injustice that seem to simultaneously defy widespread explanation, violent collapse and non-violent transition back to law and order. But wasn't that to be expected?

"Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." — Keynes

The end in sight

History teaches us that the end of evil is seldom visible except retrospectively.  And then it is SO OBVIOUS that posterity wonders how those caught up in it failed to see it beforehand and mitigate the damages that accompany its unavoidable arrival ... by making a just transition.

It is no longer reasonable to expect justice to arise from the west. The west has led the world in the perpetration of and collaboration with injustice. It seems justice must arise either

• from the victims who wake up, look around and begin to resist [James 4-5] or
• from outside humanity through the rebellion of nature herself [Rev 11:18].
  

More:
To win, we need to take back education.

Democrat Duck or Republican Rabbit

 “How can you be yourself when you are being blown in a million different directions you can’t control?” ― Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
 

“Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.” ― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value
 

“Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves.” ― Richard Feynman

 

 

Why we do not know the state of the union in March 2024

The SOTU is not an ontological problem, for, as any high school kid can tell you, "It is what it is." The problem is an epistemological problem — "How can we know what it is?" ... and an ethical problem — "Do we want to know what it is?" ... and we must understand both

• the methods we use in pursuit of truth and
• the motives we harbor, openly or secretly, that influence our pursuit.
  
  

Methods: Expecting Coherence without Comprehension

By definition, the "uni-verse" is not conflicted. It is only when we childishly erect boundaries around parts of its organic reality to formulate theories that appear to promise us the power of coherence [cause and effect] that we set ourselves up for disappointment. In the Engligtenment, John Locke explained how we might tap into the promise of power ... then his successor David Hume exposed it as thoughtless delusion. [More on Locke and Hume is helpful].

 

What Americans inevitably [but forever unknowingly] witness in the quadrannual SOTU addresses is Democrats and Republicans, in Lockean step, offering divergent promises of power based on the same facts. And, like slobbering dogs at the sound of the whistle, Americans launch themselves into the fray on one side or the other with the loyal ferocity that is only possible by anticipating the taste of half truths fermenting in the left brain.

However, the rare recalcitrant who can exercise the right Humean half of the brain can easily disabuse these dithering delusions on both sides with what AN Whitehead called "negative judgment [which] is the peak of mentality":

“When the method of [comparing] differences fails [to lead towards truth], factors which are constantly present may yet be observed under the influence of imaginative thought. Such thought supplies the differences which the direct observation lacks … [by] play[ing] with persistent elements in experience [and] with what in imagination is inconsistent with them.”

One “persistent element in experience” in both blue and red 2024 SOTU rhetoric is FIAT CREDIT and the DEBT TSUNAMI and PRICE INFLATION it culturally demands. Neither SOTU speaker last night mentioned this, because both accepted FIAT CREDIT as “constantly present”. And yet, with a little imagination, even a school child can understand the irreconcilable and destructive forces unleashed in an economy by “counterfeiting its common currency” which is what the US [via fiat credit] has done to the entire world since WWII. Is it any wonder the world is at war generating tsunamis of social unrest and suffering evidenced by floods of fleeing and drowning families?

Of course, much more than partisan duck-rabbit rhetoric is needed [and possible], including a proper diagnosis and a real solution, but a negative judgment of the SOTU addresses could begin with three simple statements that form the basis for a nonpartisan proposition.

1. “The truth itself is nothing else than how the … organic actualities of the world obtain adequate representation in the divine nature.” — AN Whitehead 1926
2. “There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.” — JM Keynes 1920
3. “[Due to] the constantly increasing amount of American money, in the form of both currency and credit, … the American dollar has lost … its availability to function as a store of value … [and] its previous acceptability as a uniform means of international exchange. … My thesis is that our legal system is undergoing changes similar to those that led to the devaluation of our money and for much the same reason.” — [Wichita’s own] GH Wormhoudt, c.1975

Motives: the sin of self-deception

However, a path to truth is not sufficient if the pilgrim does not travel it and this is neither an ontological nor an epistemological problem ... it is an ethical problem. I recently got this question from a friend grappling with 3 different responses to sound teaching about cultural failure.

"What do you think is worse?

• People who don’t pay attention, or dismiss a problem, because they haven’t got the time or skills to investigate, and find it reassuring to listen to experts who claim it’s not a problem, or that it is fixable, or that another problem is more urgent.
• People who work on a problem, and selfishly use rising concern to advance or embellish their careers, income, status, identity, worldview, or even votes by obscuring or denying it is anything other than a predicted and manageable situation using the latest technology which they can provide.
  
• People who work on a problem and realise technology won’t fix it but are willing to resort to authoritarianism as the way to do something significant about it (or, at least, to shift their anxiety and despair a bit by becoming aggressive)."

With knowledge comes responsibility. Indeed, merely the availability of knowledge brings responsibility:

"Where attainable knowledge could have changed the issue, ignorance has the guilt of vice." — AN Whitehead

What's your excuse for not knowing the state of the union ... in your family ... in your neighborhood ... in your country ... on your planet?