Tuesday, July 31, 2007

give me the child...


The Virus of Faith, by Richard Dawkins
video

"Give me the child for its first seven years, and I will give you the man" is a saying attributed to the Jesuit order, formed by Ignatius Loyola to be the army of christ and enforcer for the imperial catholic church. Loyola schools have a reputation for excellent academic records, and for nurturing future leaders.

The old testament is the common foundation of judaism, christainity and mohammedalism/islam. These religions are very strong on rituals of faith, and the need to indoctrinate the young.
The testament-ial religions propose a God creating the world and all its occupants in 6 days. After resting on the 7th day, the God gives laws to the world and sits in judgement. In despair of man's foolish ways, God sends messanger(s) to die for sins on the world,

Richard Dawkins, an atheist from the University of Oxford in Britain, counter-proposes with the anti-thesis of Darwinian evolution. Lifeforms gradually developed from the simple cell to the elite organisation of complex organisms known as humans. In an earlier century, Darwin's half cousin, Francis Galton, went one further to propose a specious hierarchy of human races and intelligence based on genetic pre-dominance.

From Oxford, the ideology of racialist supremacy, malthusian competition, and eugenics became packaged as Social Darwinism and spread worldwide by Europeans, and flamed inevitably into ethic stereotyping, apartheid and genocide. Rather than to Charles Darwin, modern evolutionists appear to owe more intellectual heritage to Francis Galton, who once suggested that Chinese colonization be encouraged in east Afrika "to supplant... the inferior negroes... and the success of such an enterprise would be of equally great value to all nations commercially interested in those parts". [Africa for the Chinese, letter to The Times of London, 05 June, 1873; galton.org]

Some things are obvious. So far, in recorded history, no organism has been observed evolving into any other. Yet the god of testament religions is - it seems to evolutionists at least - incapable of coherent organisation or impartial judgement. Neither the thesis nor the anti-thesis clears up the questions of how life began or persists. No God has made any organism any more special than the other. Rather, all die in natural disasters if unprotected. No godly law is required before animal communities, including humans, organise their sense of society or enforcement of morality. Scientific work on archeology indicate that Afrikans are the pre-eminent humans on Earth, and hence were (according to logic of creationist testament) the original people made in God's image. Scientific work on genetics, verified by the Human Genome Project, verifies that Afrikan genes are dominant over European genes, which are recessive. To dismay of Galton-ian evolutionists, their own eugenicist experiments confirm that Afrikans are the genetic superior of all human races and all other evolved lifeforms. Perhaps this scientific evidence underlies the rabid fear against "inter-racial" relationships: one could be bred out of existence. Hence the propaganda to potray the "black" as the demonic sex machine. But what if women yet find him so sexually fulfilling, once they bite the "apple"?

Dawkins says, given the mathematical odds, we are lucky to be alive. Our concern with life is how to order its living so to best suit our interests and aspirations while minimising danger to ourselves and inconvenience to others. Faith can help, when belief is hopeful and testament is honest. It is unfortunate that testamntal religions make so much hate out of faith. Science can help, if it is objective and its reports are honest. It is unfortunate that scientific efforts are often so blighted with scientists' subjective observations. When parents give their children up for schooling devised by collusion of hateful testament and false science, what education are they getting? It may explain why the "London School of experimental psychology" makes such active efforts in the global education policy advocated by the UNESCO.

I will be back in 5 or 10 years...


Coolies - How Britain Reinvented Slavery
video
Everywhere across the globe that the European travelled to, he discovered Afrikans had come before him. Everywhere Europeans settled, he displaced the native population, and brought in migrants as suppliers of slave-wage labour.

This video shows how Afrikan-Asians from India came to be migrated to the "New World". Britain continued direct slavery for 100 years after 1807, the year it was supposed to have outlawed the human trade that it had perfected under the Royal African Company. The new slaves were "indentured servants" pimped by royalist and former slave-trader John Gladstone, father of the supremacist British prime minister, William Gladstone, with complicity of Asia's own aryan-hindu people.

As coolies, Indians laboured under similar terms of slavery as an earlier caste of European serfs who, as punishment for vagrancy and poverty, had been kidnapped, sold as slaves and transported to penal colonies by their own English people.

Today, rather than transport slaves to work on New World plantations, Europe invests in the exports of slave labour in plantations located within its former colonies.

Just like most contemporary economic migrants, many coolies left home with dreams of a better life abroad, and a promise to loved ones "I will be back in 5 years, or 10 years..."

Racism / tribalism as elite control of sociey through supremacist caste priviledge

"Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present, controls the past."
G. Orwell, 1984 [a must-read book for any home library]

blog review
Homo Sapiens Americanus
America really started around 1600. Not with the Pilgrims, although they were there, but with the mid Atlantic white slave plantations. ... this is where the American culture was first forged. Up until about 1750, white slaves or quasi slaves provided most of the farm labor. Blacks were then brought into starting in small numbers in the 1600s and becoming dominant later in the 1700s.

America was not formed as an independent nation until 1792. That was about 190 years AFTER the first white slave plantations were created in Virginia, etc. We are only 213 years away from 1792. But what about those years from 1600 to 1800? Those years are lost to the Ameican consciousness. Why? Because examination of them would make Americans realize more of the real relationship between us and the elite.

And neither will they allow Americans to know about how the plantation elite created a color caste system to seperate the poor white and blacks in the 1600 and 1700s.



book research
CLASS STRUGGLE AND THE ORIGIN OF RACIAL SLAVERY : The Invention of the White Race
by THEODORE WILLIAM ALLEN Edited with an Introduction by Jeffrey B. Perry
Second Edition 2006 (First Edition 1975, Second Printing 1976)

Throughout much of the seventeenth century conditions in Virginia were quite similar for Afro-American and Euro-American laboring people and the "white race" did not exist. (n. 63)

There were many significant instances of labor unrest and solidarity in Virginia, especially during the 1660s and 1670s, and it is of transcendent importance that "foure hundred English and Negroes in Arms" fought together demanding freedom from bondage in the latter stages of Bacon's Rebellion. (sections 1 and 2)

The "white race" was invented as a ruling class social control formation in response to the labor unrest in the latter (civil war) stages of Bacon's Rebellion of 1676-77. (sections 4 and 8 and n. 63)

The "white race" was developed and maintained through the systematic extension of "a privileged status" by the ruling class to European-American laboring people (sections 4 and 8 and n. 63) who were not promoted out of the working class, but came to participate in this new multi-class "white" formation.

The non-enslavement of European-American laborers was the necessary pre-condition for the development of racial slavery [the particular form of racial oppression that developed in the continental plantation colonies]. (section 4)

The "white race" social control formation, racial slavery, the system of white supremacy, and white racial privileges were ruinous to the class interests of working people and workers' "own position, vis-à-vis the rich and powerful . . . was not improved, but weakened, by the white-skin-privilege system." (sections 9 and 10 and n. 63)

Slavery in the continental colonies was capitalism (n. 13), the slaveholders were capitalists, and the chattel bond servants (including those enslaved), were proletarians.
"



links
White Slavery In Colonial America
a video of USA history that partly explains EuroAmerican objections to the argument of African-Americans for payment of reparations

Slavery and the origins of racism
how EuroAmerican slaves became enforcers of racism in order to protect priviledges. These priviledges continue to enforce poverty and powerlessness on all non-suppliers of capital.

Ideological Hegemony: Thought Control in American Society
how thought control helps convince 'reasonable' people that feudal-oligacies are meritocratic democracies

Surviving the Political Economics of “Akotileta” Governance

It will be beneficial to the general population of an oil-producing country, if the oil revenues are applied to improve the socio-economic lives of the people.

Many citizens of oil-producing countries expect responsible governments to ensure that this IS what actually happens. Responsible governments use the monies received to create a domestic enterprise-enabling community. The empowered community raises domestic productivity, creates employment, and pays tax revenues back to the government.

Popular economics is based on the theory that demand for produce and supply of produce determines the equilibrium market price of produce. This theory is falsifying because it is incomplete. It ignores the effect of demand for money and supply of money on the prices of goods.

Money is a commodity, just like bread, suya, palmwine, rice or crude oil. Like any commodiy, money is used as a medium of exchange as well as a store of value. What makes money unique is the fact that it can be created by "fiat", an order enabling the creation of money, nowadays executed in most countries by a central bank.

Most central bank actions are conducted as part of a government's monetary policy (decisions to control the demand of and/or supply of money). Responsible governments attempt to regulate the productivity of their economies via monetary policy and fiscal policy (decisions to control the production of and consumption of goods).

The supplier of produce has a demand for money. The buyer of produce is a supplier of money. In any market transaction, these negotiations attempt to attain two equilibrum prices: one for produce and one for money. Two commodities are exchanged - produce and money - at the equating equilibrum price level.

= Suppliers of money and produce are not created equal =
Usually the supplier of produce sets the desired asking price that a buyer must meet. For example, Mr. Agbee may want Money1000 for his 1000kg of corn. If Mrs. Bureedi only has supply of Money600, some negotiations must begin or she walks, empty handed.

However the total quantity he can offer for sale remains 1000kg: this reality represents the tangible bounds of physical commodities. Economists will say that if Mrs. Bureedi has higher wages, she may be able to afford money supply of Money800 or Money900.

Economists will say the increase in Mrs. Bureedi's wages will usually cause Mr.Agbee to increase his prices (lead to inflation in market prices), and that inflation is a bad thing. If he expects market prices will go up, Mr Agbee will aim to supply more grain to the market next time. In an enterprise-enabling community, he goes to a bank to obtain the funds necessary to increase production. However, if Mr Agbee expects market prices to go down, he must still sell his product or watch it waste into rot. So, if the market is about to close for the day, Mr Agbee may despairingly drop the asking price to within Mrs. Bureedi's money supply.

quantity
^ of produce
|.......\..../ supply of produce (Sp)
|........\../
|.........\/ * Equilibrium market price at intersection *
|........./\
|......../..\
|......./....\ demand of produce (Dp)
|_______________ > prices of produce (market prices)

Money is different from other commodities =
There are no physical bounds restricting the suppliers of money, previously identified as the central bank acting, presumably, on behalf of a responsible government. Banks will happlily make new loans (supply more quantities of money) if they expect higher interest rates. Making such loans is a matter only of entering records in a computerised ledger in this days of fiat currency. In the very olden days when physical commodities were used as money, "merchant-bankers" were at greater pains to "under-write" a loan.

A responsible government can strongly regulate money supply in a local currency market. However, governments lose control of money supply in a "free" market with minimum capital controls. When uncontrolled money combines with weak domestic productivity, money supply then depends largely on the manipulations of the banks.
Severe capital value devaluation in a highly consumptive political economy that has low physical productivity; high external debts denominated in foreign currency; and money markets with little capital controls. The government's own demand for foreign currency with which to repay the foreign-denominated external debt is matched by increased government supply of the local currency into the money markets. This will cause the value of local currency to fall with respect to foreign currency, resulting in a weaker exchange rate.

Falling local currency values also mean lower interest rates. Borrowing is more affordable at lower interest rates for producers like Mr Agbee or consumers like Mrs Bureedi. Their demand for demand for money increases.

Unfortunately, responsible banks will want to supply less money at the lower interest rates. Fiat currency money cannot rot and with weak capital controls in place, banks have no reality check that forces them to supply their money commodity even at low interest rates. So they try not to. Governments occasionally force banks to release money by conducting "mopping up" operations at the central banks.


quantity
^ of money
|.......\..../ supply of money (Sm)
|........\../
|.........\/ * Equilibrium interest rate at intersection *
|........./\
|......../..\
|......./....\ demand of money Dm)
|_______________>
prices of money (interest rates)

= The role of a responsible government =
A responsible government can do a number of things to stimulate DOMESTIC ENTERPRISES and to boost DOMESTIC PRODUCTIVITY.
# Domestic businesses are stimulated, jobs are created, and longer term productivity is attained if government increases demand for domestically produced goods and services e.g by using domestic producers in construction of roads, housing, stadia, furniture, etc. Purchasing locally made goods and services by governments will cause the demand of produce (Dp line) to shift rightwards (along the Sp line) and cause market prices to rise.

Eventually, increased domestic production (shift up the Sp line) and a higher equilibrum market price is achieved. Responsible government intervention MAY result in higher costs of living.

# Likewise, domestic productivity is stimulated if a responsible government uses its fiat to make borrowing AFFORDABLE for domestic businesses. Two actions are possible:
## A naive government may demand more money from banks (e.g increased reserve levels), consumers (e.g increased minimum fuel prices), or businesses (e.g. as taxes or licenses). Interest rates will fall. But such an action will eventually bankrupt the community. This is because consumers, businesses and banks (!) must supply such money from earnings on sale of commodities, and neither have infinite source of those commodities.
## On the other hand, a responsible government may inject more money into the community e.g by lowering reserve levels for banks, lowering fuel prices, or lowering business taxes and other statutory costs. Interest rates will rise EVEN IF the increased government spending (shift up along the Sm line) IS NOT MATCHED by a increased DOMESTIC DEMAND (rightwards shift of the Dm line) to yield a higher equilibrum interest rate.

The ensuring LEVEL OF INFLATION (rate of increase in interest rates) depends (in simplified terms, adjusting for complexities of elasticity in demand and supply) on the origin of rhe additional money supply and the purpose to which it is utilised.

Inflation is MORE manageable IF the increased money supply originates from domestic consumers and enables domestic producers to produce more goods and services. Inflation is extremely damaging IF the increased money supply originates from consumption of foreign produce (which is what foreign direct investment is) or does not increase domestic productivity in goods and services.

What then is the NET effect on domestic productivity and enterprise-capacity in a community when a government that does the following:
# Increases the supply of domestic money through a combination of devaluation e.g selling domestic currency to purchase of foreign currency (= rightward shift along Sm line and increase in local interest rates)
# Places high demands for money on domestic consumers, businesses and banks (= shifting the Dm line rigtwards and increase in interest rates).
# Increases demand for foreign produce that are cheaper than equivalent local goods. This reduces demand for and supply of domestic produced goods. Lack of sufficient foreign produced goods or domestic prodced goods results in persistent high market prices.

This situation is exacerbated by actions that impede market activity: persistent consumption of foreign produce by governments or the people; produce hoarding by businesses; and money hoarding by banks.
The observed effect is a definate strangulation of domestic production (especially manufacturing) capacity, rampant unemployment, intense economic emigration, and a market concentration of domestic businesses into "non-tradable services" such as hotels, restaurants, schools, transportation, haircuts, unfulfilled contracs etc.


= Surviving an irresponsible government =
All governments have three core responsibilities to the general population they govern:
# Create an enabling environment for domestic enterprises to grow and prosper;
# Provide community services that to assist the needy;
# Vigorously defend the property, territory and well being of the general population they govern.

Only a bad government fails in ANY of these three responsibilities. Bad governments do not deserve to govern and should not be in office. By these measures, most modern governments do not deserve the people they govern. Yet, a general population deserves its government, whether strong or weak; good or bad. This is because no government exists in a vacumn. All are drawn from the general population. By implication, a weak government reflects the weakness of its people. A corrupt government arises from a corrupt mandate.

A responsible government facilitates the enfranchisement of its people by performing its core responsibilities diligently. To enfranchise is to take control of the rule of law and of the markets in which one operates. The rule of law underlines the political system, which includes and defines the economic system of markets and payments. A bad government fails in these responsibilities. An akotileta government is not only bad, it goes further to actively impoverise, impede or attack the people it effects to govern. A government that disenfranchises its people can continue in governance only if the people have no self-conviction. The "values" of the population under bad government need to be restructured. Only when revalued, can the population restructures the government.

The only way to survive a akotileta government is to recreate the failed responsibilities at the community level. This has the added benefit of decentralising and localising both the rule of law and economic markets.
Observation indicates that people derive maximum socio-economic benefit from community-based policies and markets.

Working examples range from large countries such as China and Germany (prior to the unifications), to the Scandivanian nation-states, to self-referencing tribal-states confined withing in larger country borders. The keys to these communities are strong domestic production efficiency and an effectively local currency.
# Small, homogenous, and productive communities may have increased access to an export-oriented strategy but they often lack the population mass to sustain an effective local currency.
# Larger countries can sustain a strong internal market for both local currencies and import-subsititution goods, provided they are not handicapped by foreign debt repayment obligations.
# Those with large foreign currency repayment obligations need to implement strategies that protect the internal market, convert foreign debt obligations into the local currency, and induce the opening of foreign markets for domestically produced goods and services. Interestingly, these "beggar-thy-neighbour" policies are most often associated with contries that manifest a robust military strength.

When enduring an irresponsible government, communities need also to protect themselves against attempts by such government to impoverise its own communities!
An "akotileta" government has the particulary nasty property of focusing so much on meeting demands of foreign producers that it ends up suffocating domestic producers.

=Self-help enterprises are essential=
Communities need to be resourceful in order to control bad fiscal or monetary policy imposed by akotileta governments that are bent on destroying local productivity. These policies have historically included bans on organised labour, decentralised provision of infrastructure services, operation of local currencies or exhorbitant minimum prices in essential commodities.

Businesses in such communities should consider associative or cooperative operating or organisational strategies. Rather than rules of law formulated by such governments, trading may organised by informal code of conduct which is enforced at community level. Rather than bank-based money transfers, market transactions are conducted via barter exchange or by interest-free local currencies.

The essential glue of community-level businesses is communal trust. Crime and corruption are less likely when the family of potential culpits face the option of becoming ostracized from the community and subsequent difficulty in joining another. Even thefts are not so damaging in local currency economies as the stolen money must be spent within the same community.

Best of all, community-level enterprises result in bottom-up prosperity and in enhancement of living standards at the local level. As the communities grow and prosper, businesses can expand to link across regions and nations. Such networks of businesseses retain loyalty to their roots and are more likely to engage in complementing (or conducting) the normal responsibilities of responsible governments.

------------------------------------------------------------
This article appeared at the NigeriaVillageSquare.com website on Monday, 08-11-2004
Remi-Niyi Alaran writes on enterprise and society.
All rights reserved. (c) Alaran 2007

Poverty and the rule of law

Uttar Pradesh is the largest and most populous state in India. This year, this very poor corner of this most racially bigotted country in the world has been given USD360million by USAid , an aid agency, to implement a population control policy that calls for the sterilisation of 930,000 people. The poverty has been a high level of crimes against humanity and a strong siege mentality among the rich. The government of Uttar has some interesting ideas on how to meet its target of sterilising the poor while parlaying the insecurty of the rich: Anybody who wants a handgun should submit 3 people for sterilisation; 5 people for a shotgun.

So one rich farmer invited 5 of his workers for a meal. Thereafter, they felt dizzy and fell asleep, only to wake in great pain and distress. Sterile. The five returned to the farm, glad that they still have a job to do because they have families to feed. One of the men is unmarried and without child. He will never father any of his own. Cradling his shotgun, the farmer says "There has been an investigation. The case is now closed".

Few social critics, economic analysts, and policy wonks consider the reinforcing effect that the rule of law has on the prevalence of poverty, disease and ignorance around the world. In India, forcibly castrated people cannot get justice from the state because their castrator is powerful enough to rise above the rule of law. The rule of law can oppress nations just as severely as persons. Next door to India, countries are invaded because the invading set of countries are powerful enough to tell everybody what international law is, and then to rise above same law.

Perhaps, it is high time that poverty, disease and ignorance are classified as weapons of mass destruction. They certainly destroy the masses of the people even more effectively than even the bullets and bombs of the countless wars. It is estimated there are some 30,000 poverty-related infant deaths daily in Africa. Many children and women die yearly Africa from preventable diseases. Many women and children will live their lives in painful ignorance of basic hygiene, energy production or food preparation techniques. Yet, even as they scratch out such as squalid living within the constraints of the law, the poor must wonder how the hell of their lives can exist alongside the heavenly plenty of their compatriots.

"Surely it is one law for us and another for them" goes the muttering. Disenfranchised people and deficient countries express this same feeling, the basis of which lies in the structure in which their daily affairs are governed. Had the rich Indian not been protected by the governing law in Uttar Predash, he would been properly "dealt with" by the retributive justice of his victims. Their poverty and ignorance prevented their ability to marshal the rule of law to their cause. Totalitarianism, feudalism, unrepresentative democracy and communism are forms of top-down government that accentuate the ability of the powerful to place suppressive binds on their people. The binds are drafted as the rules of law. Not to be disobeyed by the people. At pain of punishment by the ruler of law. In this manner, it becomes a crime to steal even if working your fingers to the bone does not yield sufficient income to feed your family. It becomes treason if you criticise an incompetent, corrupt and akotileta government.

The shotgun quells mutinious ideas in farms across Northern India, just as the bullwhip silenced dissent in slave fields across the New World centuries ago, and structural adjustment policies dampen queries in many struggling households across the "developing" world. The rule of law made it lawful to use the shotgun, the bullwhip and the poverty-policies, and thereby permitted rulers to kill or cripple the prospects of those whose actions produce the wealth of their tormentors. In Africa, people are now becoming immune to destructive laws: it may be time for a severe dose of civil disobedience.


------------------------------------------------------------
This article appeared at the NigeriaVillageSquare.com website on 11-2004
Remi-Niyi Alaran writes on enterprise and society.
All rights reserved. (c) Alaran 2007