Reinventing Democracy - Progressive Dialogue Series

This topic and its discussion are important, BUT, unless we kill the myth of "the deficit" --the supreme cudgel used by Stevie Harper and the Harpettes to beat us and all our arguments into the ground-- we waste our time and resources.  The deficit was deliberately created by the failure of the Central Bank of Canada to perform the task it is meant to do: create and manage the currency of Canada.  The neocons in government have for decades quietly dismissed the not-for-profit role of the Bank of Canada in favour of the bankster extension of debt --not credit!-- to the helpless public. What currency we have aside from coins is really an infinite expansion of debt, not even true credit!

Very few people understand the concept or roles of "money" and "currency", although they are basically quite simple, once the imposed mysteries are removed.  Just as "number" is the concept and "numeral" is its expression, so "money" is the concept, expressed in a variety of currencies.  Money is NOT gold and silver, although these can be currencies.  First in Holland, then in England, then in the new American colonies, and finally in Canada, governments were persuaded to create central banks. 

The evil begins when these are privately owned and controlled. The most egregious example is the so-called "Federal Reserve Bank" of the USofA, which is not Federal, has no reserves, and is not a bank.  The "Fed", as it is usually termed, is a privately-owned and operated system of eight European banks and two US banks which collaborate to create and sell the currency of the United States to its citizens, not only charging them for this but also deliberately manipulating interest rates for its further enrichment.  No part of it serves the best interests of the US people, only those of a very small number of its operators.  While the Bank of Canada is not yet subourned as the Fed, its neglect to do what it was charged to effectively allows our banks to create our currency and and manipulate interest rates to their ends, not public ones.

Dr John Hotson, Professor of Economics at the University of Waterloo, has written on this, it was once discussed in many higher schools and public forums in the past, but somehow the last twenty years has seen this discussion virtually silenced.  Why?  For "the deficit" is a lie: it a fictive monstrosity that allows the banksters to charge usury, then wring their hands, saying "the government made me do it!" 

I recently was the victim of a former business associate who deliberately misused a credit card I'd loaned him.  He was only to make purchases up to $2,500.00.  By the time I learned of his misuse, he'd run it up to its limit of $11,000.00.  When I went to my bank to get a loan to pay this down [as it was their cc],  I was told that I'd get the very best rate possible: 3% prime plus 12.5, for a total of 15.5%.  When I said I didn't think this was very reasonable, my officer said that at least it was lower than the VISA loan rate, which was 25%!!  She's factually correct, of course, but it's still usury.  Interest rates should be capped for all time at 5% simple fee, non-compounding, if we are serious about reducing our national exposure to the banksters!

Combat "Economic Control?"

Economists should "weight in" as well as,  Universities like Carleton "as to media control."

Control the media,  you control the people?

Unclefred wrote: wrote:

]The greatest asset to the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed, and the value of money is only in our minds,

Tommy reveals a key factor in identify subversion through recognition of media processes and the ways in which the left is standing up for resistance to such subversion in media, that we recognize the tools used as signs of "oppression trademarks with regard too, media use?"

For instance in BC HST election process used by government to manipulate the media as designed advertising use of the vote "for and against the HST?" The Government purposely introduce "confusion as to what "yes and no may mean" in terms of getting rid of the HST. Yes means no, no means yes? You see this is a trademark recognition of using media to confuse the voter. That is a trademark recognition of using media to confuse the voter?

Integration and use of media conglomerate controls are sign of media control.....and thus signs of opportunities toward influencing large parts of the population through techniques of subversion advertising through "monopolistic control of the resources?" Resulting resistance toward such control by advancing Openmedia? A grassroots resistance toward such controls....is to recognize manipulation and advances of corporation reaches into drafting takeovers in monopolistic controls  and assigning gatekeepers.

Think about OiL and Gas here, as commodity pricing pointing toward rate of inflation leading toward indicators have you believe in competition when there is no desire on Governments part on this indicator actually complicit toward stifling growth in the economy? That's a question for the economists.

Unclefred wrote:

  We need to learn how to build a stable economy and that means doing away with scarce money.

You know what scares me is the idea "of scarce money" how eventually Paulson and Bernanke were lead too, corralled too,  thinking that to make money available was to give banks money in order to inject the viability of creating scarce money too? "More credit?" Bernanke was well aware of the results leading o the depression of the thirties as he well expresses himself,  so why did he take this stance?

</strong><a title="View user profile." href="users/joseph-e-fasciani">Joseph E Fasciani</a><strong> wrote:

Dr John Hotson, Professor of Economics at the University of Waterloo, has written on this, it was once discussed in many higher schools and public forums in the past, but somehow the last twenty years has seen this discussion virtually silenced.  Why?  For "the deficit" is a lie: it a fictive monstrosity that allows the banksters to charge usury, then wring their hands, saying "the government made me do it!"

I really don't have the answers either,  although there are many trademarks  appearing to me over what I see "as signs of the times" and the need to combat "the switch" to commodity based pricing determined by the market? This is part of what is mentioned as the destruction of democracy through manipulation by business governments to shift power from the people toward market demands?

Somehow this secures up corporate functionality toward those same market demands and in the end are really monopolistic takeovers to centralize that power?

Governments who sign onto this are part of being responsible for the slow down in the economy in my view as to taxation hidden in carbons credits, the whole HST issue itself, and the buying and selling of those credit. This is one persons hand in transferring money not to the environment but into the pockets of greedy.

Yes I am looking for some kind of resolve and the openness toward which methods a economy can be fair to all that work through it? Are not dogged by monopolies who are further advancing on the money that is left to the seniors and poor, as well as the extent on burdens eating away middle class in order to live.

Yes I would say the economy is stalled and Governments have a big part to play on this. There is direct taxation on Gas, and if this was a leaidng indicator of inflation....guess why th governement hasn't sought to fix that while leaving it to the Bank of Canada to determine the interes rate hike so the bankds can follow suit?

While I sight the Internet article above all you have to do is look for these trademarks where governments if they do not have their way will fractionate the public company so it is not even recognizable anymore because of the contracting out pushed through tendering of it's services supplied.

From a "public company" to a "energy company" like Fortis perhaps?

It took awhile but eventually Fortis was successful in BC and who was complicit with selling off of BC GAS to consider now perhaps BC Hydro that still exists in name? Contracts to Run of the River owners who knew well of the governments plans? After all in BC, the agenda was written as a energy policy by the BC LIEberals now to have them try to distance themselves after the fact once contracts were signed now become obligation of the people/consumer of British Columbia.

Don't worry we are on track with commodity pricing so as to ensure that when Fortis  steps up here in BC  the energy landscape has been shifted to complete market control?

Enough of the rant......the virtual expression of money seems to me to be on par with the idea of the way debt is written with interest?

Yes in BC they have been the two step privatization model for a long time.  So our provincial telephone infrastructure morphs into BC Tel and then into Telus.  The price for the basic services people need go up and the business model then caters to the needs of Telus's corporate customers whoa re given breaks for volume. In effect the people subsidizing business by paying more for their services so businesses p[ay less.

The BC Liberals went half way with the Ferries by turning it into a corporation with an appointed board of directors.  The Coastal Ferry Act also said that profitable routes could not subsidize smaller routes that are in effect the highway system for the outer islands. As the prices go up and up we will soon be seeing demands to let the private sector take over the unprofitable routes. 

Our health care regions and their MBA guided boards resemble the American HMO model and could be sold off easily.  

All of these are examples of necessary goods and services that the public requires and therefore they should be under democratic control and oversight not under the control of appointees whose expertise is always in business and finance not the actual services that need delivering.

Here is another site that talks about "How bankers and the Federal Reserve are Bankrupting the Planet"

Web of Debt

by Ellen Hodson Brown [whoever she is...?] > http://www.webofdebt.com/

Quoting the introduction:

     "Our money system is not what we have been led to believe. The creation of money has been "privatized," or taken over by private money lenders. Thomas Jefferson called them "bold and bankrupt adventurers just pretending to have money." Except for coins, all of our money is now created as loans advanced by private banking institutions - including the privately-owned Federal Reserve. Banks create the principal but not the interest to service their loans. To find the interest, new loans must continually be taken out, expanding the money supply, inflating prices - and robbing you of the value of your money.

    Not only is virtually the entire money supply created privately by banks, but a mere handful of very big banks is responsible for a massive investment scheme known as "derivatives," which now tallies in at hundreds of trillions of dollars. The banking system has been contrived so that these big banks always get bailed out by the taxpayers from their risky ventures, but the scheme has reached its mathematical limits. There isn't enough money in the entire global economy to bail out the banks from a massive derivatives default today.

     Web of Debt unravels the deceptions in our money scheme and presents a crystal clear picture of the financial abyss towards which we are heading."

It’s been generations since we’ve viewed the earth as possessing an endless bounty of resources. As the new globalization has expanded corporate markets we continue to draw down more and more on the remaining resources of the planet. Things that we could once depend upon, like job security, can no longer be counted on with certainty. The security of working at a place where my parents and their parents worked are becoming as endangered as multi year ice packs.

Things aren’t as certain as they once were. And with the uncertainties come economic ones. Our environment is changing, and that’s changing us. But we aren’t becoming more responsible because of it. We’re becoming more greedy, voracious and efficient at extraction. The corporations have been forced to become so much more efficient at making the most of their new “opportunities”. The more limited our resources become, and the more streamlined and efficient companies needed to be, the more keen we grown to preserve the mechanisms of our wealth. The more keen the system’s players become about self preservation.

I'm afraid about the coming nanotech revolution. Will it simply enable companies to drill deeper and faster? Will it give companies a mechanism to prolong our pertroleum dependecies. It'll certainly create new markets and provide the market players new tools to become bigger, better, faster. If change is coming it needs to come soon.

Unclefred wrote:

...That makes the system not only more fair, but also more stable.  It seriously democratises the economy...

Just want to suggest that the economic system is a tool of control. The way in which systems of democracy are managed though, they're simply tools of control, just like financial systems and the economy system as a whole. Democracy is about deciding who's in control. And, in terms of that control, too much of it is centralized within our social institutions. A single government is in control of economic, health care, education, military, foreign policy, justice, etcetera. The struggles for control is in the nature of the governance we've created and is the model that that we export to other nations.

Quote:

RECLAIMING THE COMMONS

What is ‘the anti-globalization movement’? [1] I put the phrase in quote-marks because I immediately have two doubts about it. Is it really a movement? If it is a movement, is it anti-globalization? Let me start with the first issue. We can easily convince ourselves it is a movement by talking it into existence at a forum like this—I spend far too much time at them—acting as if we can see it, hold it in our hands. Of course, we have seen it—and we know it’s come back in Quebec, and on the US–Mexican border during the Summit of the Americas and the discussion for a hemispheric Free Trade Area. But then we leave rooms like this, go home, watch some TV, do a little shopping and any sense that it exists disappears, and we feel like maybe we’re going nuts. Seattle—was that a movement or a collective hallucination? To most of us here, Seattle meant a kind of coming-out party for a global resistance movement, or the ‘globalization of hope’, as someone described it during the World Social Forum at Porto Alegre. But to everyone else Seattle still means limitless frothy coffee, Asian-fusion cuisine, e-commerce billionaires and sappy Meg Ryan movies. Or perhaps it is both, and one Seattle bred the other Seattle—and now they awkwardly coexist.

Thanks for the link of post #18 Spectrum. From the Article:

Quote:

On smaller scales, the same struggles for self-determination and sustainability are being waged against World Bank dams, clear-cut logging, cash-crop factory farming, and resource extraction on contested indigenous lands. Most people in these movements are not against trade or industrial development. What they are fighting for is the right of local communities to have a say in how their resources are used, to make sure that the people who live on the land benefit directly from its development. These campaigns are a response not to trade but to a trade-off that is now five hundred years old: the sacrifice of democratic control and self-determination to foreign investment and the panacea of economic growth.

While I believe that such community struggles, including the present day occupy events, are protests against the lack of self-determination in peoples’ lives... from people who have no control over the things that are important to them... I don’t think it’s accurate to suggest there was a consensual “trade-off” that has occurred in the past, or that supposedly functions, with Indigenous communities today. Unless I’m misinterpreting something in the context of the paragraph. Self determination is an important thing in any person’s life. From being able to determine what happens to one’s retirement savings, to deciding on the quality and types of groceries one’s able to buy, to simply having the satisfaction of participating in society. Such things are often too much out of our control. For my part, resource development isn’t about personal benefit, but about “responsible” use and what that means to me. That’s a very good article though and I very much agree with the general gist of what the author is saying. This from the final paragraph:

Quote:

To believe in human diversity and local democracy is anything but wishy-washy. Everything in McGovernment conspires against them. Neoliberal economics is biased at every level towards centralization, consolidation, homogenization. It is a war waged on diversity.

Respecting diversity is an important quality. Honouring people with respect for the obligations and responsibilities that each has in their lives is the most important way of giving to other humans in our relationships. That’s a tough principle to live by given the nature of our social institutions and our colonized attitudes towards each other though. But really, people only want the dignity of being in control of their lives.