I can not for the moment find the link but to paraphrase from the Climate Gate e-mail leak scandal.
“”The internet has provided all people with the means to exchange information with each other , and to ask each other for confirmation of various events or facts, Unfortunately, they do””
(Note, This site also speaks to federated Blogs and getting noticed, I found it in an earlier linked in post. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/grub-street-journal-roger-lewis/ )
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/grub-street-journal-roger-lewis/
Re-branding Dissent
I am one of those who thinks that democracy is being destroyed. I know its fashionable to play cynical one-upmanship and say – ‘we’ve never had democracy’, or, ‘it was destroyed long ago’, but that game aside, I think its worth actually thinking about how, many forms of democratic expression, effective dissent and peaceful self-determination are being buried.
In “The Next Crisis” I argued that the Global Over-Class have decided that Democracy is a threat to their wealth and power and have more than likely given some thought to how best to neuter it while appearing to do no such thing. I suggested they would wish to keep the outward form of democracy, so as to keep us reassured and entertained, but remove any substance from it, leaving us with an empty but colourful stage show.
In part two of the series, I offered a list of the various ways this could be done (a sort of manifesto for the Over Class or, as I have called them elsewhere, The Disloyal and noted how many of those things were clearly already underway.
For example item three of the manifesto said,
3) professionalized Governance. Democracy can be and must be neutered, and an effective way of doing this is to insist that amateur, elected officials MUST take the advice of professional (read corporate) advisors. Expand current law to enforce this.
If this seems monstrous now, their argument, I suspect, will be that in an increasingly crowded, interconnected and globalised world we can no longer leave critically important decisions in the hands of the uneducated, in-expert and amateur. We must, of course, still be free to choose but must, from now on, be helped to choose ‘wisely’. And how can we choose wisely if we aren’t given wise choices to choose from? Oh, the Orwellian beauty of it! No prizes for guessing who will decide what is and what is not wise.
There are
797 Responses !! to Re-branding Dissent
One of many prescient articles written by David Malone on the Golem XIV Blog.
http://www.golemxiv.co.uk/2016/01/re-branding-dissent/
-
Happy New Year Roger.
Thank you for your article. As always with you a fountain of erudition and wonderful links to your sources.
Yes, I am, as always, merely reinventing the wheel for myself. All I can say is that is how I learn.
What I hope I am contributing is saying lookout for the new terms and the shape of the new narrative that might be used to further erode the only and the vital thing we have left – faith in our own thoughts.
Wonderful to hear from you.
-
Great to see you writing again I have missed your insights. Your blog here is a timely reminder and perhaps some of the terms can be placed in a new Liars Lexicon for democracy and not just the Financial sophistry of the great unravelling. I watched the film the Big Short the other day, well worth watching, very entertaining and a good introduction to the artifice of Wall street et al. I have been going deeper and deeper into the BlockChain Rabbit hole, take a look at Nu Bits, for instance, an evolution out of Peercoin. BitCoin Fascism is truly with us and this Vijay Gupta Clip from I am Satoshi is not irrelevant to your wider discourse on suppression of debate in the theatre of political discourse. Internet Censorship is coming brush up on your GNU skills if discussions such as this one are to survive.
-
On Bitcoin Fascism, if you have time listen to the cheerleading on property Rights and Freedom as an expensive commodity for the rich to buy in this discussion.
One wonders if Neo-Liberalism and Anarcho-Capitalism are the same things? Henry George and Progress and Poverty does hold a lot of forgotten insights that were well known to Frank Harris but also to Ezra Pound when he wrote ABC of Economics, On my re-reading of Ur-Fascism the other day the reference to Pound stood out as it had escaped my recollection. Donald Trump does remind me of Mussolini funnily enough. What is interesting in this current Fascist Era is the state of technology and communication? is it harder to suppress or easier in the information age, its not such an easy question if you think about it.
-
Thanks, Roger, for your looking for me leading me to this. It is good to see so many like minds. The odd-ball John G is as sad as certain bloggers on RWER. I have a wife who I love dearly but has the same personality trait: her memories and thus what she perceives are fixed by what she heard them called (Shane’s categorising?). Thus if I say anything different she reacts as if I’m calling her a liar, and the uncertainty that generates leaves her unable to stand being wrong. The point John G made right back on January 3, 2016 at 2:49 am,, “Money is credit. Always has been and always will be”, is quite true, but that has fixed his mind on its and so him being true, so (as my wife would) he projects his own truthfulness onto whatever anyone other than the immediate dissenter is telling him: uncritically critically accepting lies, not seeing through all those Schopenhauer evasions and perpetuating the damage made by acting as if they rather than his interest-free credit card understanding of money were true. Wishful thinking to avoid seeing himself as wrong? Of course we need to revise economic teaching, but in my view adult teaching ought to start with the old advice, “Know Thyself”, starting from the Jungian personality anaqlysis in e.g. Isobel Briggs Myers’ “Gifts Differing”, and the Freudian transactional analysis of error states in T D Harris’s “I’m OK, You’re OK”. It is not a bad idea to read brain guru Dr Edward de Bono on “Lateral Thinking”, “Parallel Thinking”, on perception in “I am Right, You are Wrong”, and reading the riot act in “New Thinking for the New Millenium”. Perhaps there is hope in the chaos theory story of the flapping of a butterfly’s wings seeding a hurricane?
-
-
The Big Apple Plan. Wesley Freeburg. Why Abstract Currencies Fail
The Natural Order of Money and Why Abstract Currencies Fail — A critical review
Introduction
An article published by Roy Sebag (“RS”) this past March with the above captioned title was recently brought to my attention in the course of an interesting “conversation” on Twitter, which actually included a well-known anthropologist, some crypto people, and some “gold-bugs” inter alia. In this essay, my first on Medium, I shall argue RS fails to properly describe “the Natural Order of Money” with an undisguised attempt to perpetuate a long-ago discredited “intrinsic” value theory.
-
And ultimately even the state accepts bank credit money as payment for taxes, fines and other debts to the state.
Let’s just keep that gem of Wesley’s disinformation on record.
This is a false statement. AKA a lie.
The Crack Pipe produced the following, culminating in the Grub Street Journal.
USURY HELL´S FUEL MANS OPPRESSOR
BOURGOISE RESOLUTION AND
GLOBALISATION UN ENTANGLED.
A reading of The First Draft of Chapter 5 Conquest of Dough. Chapters 1 – 4 will be found on the Web Site at this link. http://theconquestofdough.weebly.com/
This Motley Fool, From 2009 via 2011 Freinds gained and innocence lost.
RogerGLewis May 18, 2011 at 5:16 am #
Hi Golem and hello to all the other excellent contributors of comments to this blog, there is a lot of reading to do here with the links which are also posted and I will get through it “one grain of sand at a time”.
I was directed here by a comment posted in Sturdy Blog http://sturdyblog.wordpress.com/2011/04/08/to-whom-do-we-owe-this-money-exactly/#comment-610
There are more and more people seeking answers to unasked let alone unanswered questions my comment is directed more to those who like me agree that there absolutely is a very bad problem and it is what Roy Madron calls the Global Monetocracy its a coporate Oligarchy that has hijaked the Agenda in pursuit of its own narrow interests.
Elite theory is a fairly well-defined area with both Michelle’s Iron Law of Oligarchy from 1911 and C Wright Mills Power Elite from 1954. There is a good body of work examining both Political and Democratic theory and the phenomena are noting new going back to Plato.s Republic or if you follow Lyndon Larouche Aristotles Politics. What we are seeing is not new its just another spin on the age-old plot. Closer to 1914-1918 and the preceding 20 years than to 1929-1945 but both were prefixed with a large crisis in Capitalism.
I wrote this blog on The Iron Law of Oligarchy which references both Michels and Wright Mills and also has very good presentations from Andreas Popp and Webster Tarpley, Popp proposes Danistry for the Overclass but it isn´t any more complicated than the Power elite or Oligarchy.
https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/iron-law-oligarchy-roger-lewis?trk=prof-post .
Orwell is very relevant and his essay re assessing Mr Burnham is thought to be the inspiration behind 1984,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Thoughts_on_James_Burnham
In 1984 the book which Winston is given by O’Brien is
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_and_Practice_of_Oligarchical_Collectivism .
One book which I have read recently is Frank Harriss Germany or England from 1915it re-examines Bismarks Germany from the late 1800´s and the English Oligarchy/Aristocracy vis the German Nobility it is a fascinating take on the tensions between two competing Oligarchic systems, not dissimilar to now and the ideas of if you are not with us you are against us.
https://archive.org/details/englandorgerman01harrgoog