Dear cj, 1998 has been an important year for me, and the `new years message' was a goad that got to me -- it seemed to be as much for myself as anyone. I wanted to repost that, along with a few other `defining documents' of 1998, as a lead-in to thinking about 1999. At the bottom of this posting is "rkm's model of the world", which was originally included in the same posting with yesterday's new-years message. The closing paragraph of this "rkm's model" is: > >BTW> The model can be invalidated by a massive democratic (unarmed) >revolution, averting this possible future, but _only_ based on accurate >understanding of the overall situation and power dynamics. while the closing paragraph of the new-years message was: >The journey of a thousand miles >begins with the first step, but that first step is not made by the feet: >it's made by the mind and it's called _intention_. These two together pretty much defined my 1998. My `intention' became to do whatever I could to promote a `massive democratic revolution'... a revolution that-must-be, that perhaps is-happening-already, but that won't-happen-unless we each make our bold-unique-creative-effective-difficult contribution. During the first half of 98, `with a little help from my friends', I became demonically devoted to trying to stir up activism directly, culminating in `Citizens for a Democratic Renaissance', our Bear River Retreat, and the rn-list, which Jan Slakov is putting to such good use. For myself, it has been the book which has survived as my `one thing worth doing', as the sufis put it. Below are some responses to the new-years message, and then the `model'. all the best, rkm ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1998 To: •••@••.••• From: Howard Scott <•••@••.•••> Subject: Re: cj#884> resend: 1998 New Years Greetings Richard The practical problem is often that people have no money - which prohibis them starting down the freedom path Cheers Howard ------ How true! Now that I'm running out of money, the pain of this truth is becoming all to evident. Nonetheless, if we consider all the time and money most of us spend on things that aren't really satisfying or necessary, and add that up society-wide, there's a hell of lot of resources available for us to do something useful with. rkm ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 27 Dec 1998 From: Pam Shorey <•••@••.•••> To: •••@••.••• Subject: Re: cj#884> resend: 1998 New Years Greetings Richard: That's a powerful message. I forwarded it to my kids and some friends. Thanks for your journal, I get a lot out of it. ------ Dear Pam, So glad it was useful. I'd like to mention that the list is invaluable to me. There's always the challenge to try to post something that will be worth your attention... and that forces me to think, and often to write, and that's really been the wellspring of my work. And then there are all the wonderful messages people send in, either as contributions the list, or to the book, or just offering comraderie. I'm becoming a bit of a vagabond, travelling between different communities. This month it's the San Francisco Bay Area, next week it's a folk-club community, then the north shore of Kauai, then back to Wexford, where I'll always just be a `blow in'. Cyberjournal is as important as any of the others, and it's the only one that accompanies me everywhere. rkm ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1998 To: •••@••.••• From: Peter Doran <•••@••.•••> Thanks for the timely New Year manifesto.... All the best with the publication, Peter Doran, Derry ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ~-===================================================================-~ "rkm's model of world" - from 2 Jan 98: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ (1) There is (today) an elite who benefit from and ultimately control the overall direction of global events and who determine the basic framework of public propaganda: it is (surprise) the capitalist elite, and the megacorp (TNC) is the fundamental tool of capitalist operations: the ship-of-the-line of the elite fleet, so to speak. (2) This elite, even though it collectively benefits from basic global policies, is by no means a monolith; it has its own complex hierarchical structures and winners and losers -- but as a whole it functions with collaborative strategic coherence, sort of like Mafia gangs. (3) Part of what unifies the elite is a common philosophy, and that philosophy is a simple one: the sovereignty of capital, the primacy of the investor, the sacrifice of all other values to the facilitation of global capital growth and the efficiency of investor transactions. (4) What this philosophy leads to is the dominance of the global economy by the international banking and brokerage industry, out of all proportion to the relative wealth of that industry compared to others (such as oil). This industry has been invested, via deregulation, with immense power over the global economy, on behalf of capitalism generally, due to the alignment of the industry's interests with the elite philosophy. (5) The coherence of elite strategy and policy comes from a network of think tanks and other institutions; the Council On Foreign Relations, for example, more or less embodies elite consciousness on geopolitical matters, and its publications, properly interpreted, reveal in advance with surprising candor the global plans being made by the elite, and the basic propaganda lines by which those plans are to be sold. (6) Globalization is a two-level political revolution: a centralized world government is being set up, while simultaneously nation states are being aggressively undermined by a whole range of assaults from privatization to engineered currency crises to massive anti-government propaganda. National sovereignty and democracy are being replaced by global bureaucracies under direct elite control, thus officially and permanently institutionalizing absolute elite hegemony. (7) Nation states will devolve downward, both in size and function: the Soviet breakup is a foretaste of more widespread physical devolutions to come, with Scotland and Wales indicating a gradualist path, and the Northern-Italy movement indicating a more radical path; the Third-World indicates the basic functionality that will be expected of national governments: primarily keeping the population under control and commerce functioning. (8) The EU -- although justified by all sorts of rhetoric, from a "stronger Europe" to fear of Japan to fear of the neo-fascism -- has really only one function: lubricating the transition of Europe, the home of the world's most robust democracies, into the globalist trap. It's a setup, a ruse, a trojan horse -- the EU has no special standing at the WTO, anymore than any other nation or group of nations, and its existence will be meaningless when the globalist regime is fully established. (9) There are three geopolitical problems to be solved by globalization: (a) the safe completion of the destruction of the former USSR, reducing it to total chaos, so that it can be "properly" rebuilt from the ground up, (b) the taming of China, by _whatever_ means necessary including nuclear, and (c) the establishment of a new global ordering principle, given the demise of sovereign nation states. (10) The new global order will be based on a high-tech mobile elite corps, to maintain strategic global order, and regional client strong-man regimes (eg, Turkey), with second-string weapons, to maintain tactical order within designated "cultural regions", more or less as outlined by (elite spokesman) Samuel P. Huntington in "Clash of Civilizations". "Managed conflict", rather than "pax globalism" will be the mode of control: this is the preferred control method that has evolved in the postwar era, particularly in the Middle East, and it has proven to be both flexible and reliable in servicing elite objectives, and the conflicts provide investment opportunities and arms sales: yet another capitalist industry. Iraq was flooded by sales from the very nations which then destroyed the goods purchased: Western investments in China are no guarantee of long-term tolerance. (11) The role of the elite corps is currently being played on a de facto basis by the Pentagon and NATO, legitimized by one-at-a-time authorizations from the UN: how this prototype arrangement will be regularized is not yet clear, but one possibility is that a new international agency will be created (the "World Peace Organization"?) that will have control over the elite corps, removing it from the vagaries of the deteriorating political processes in the US and Europe as globalization proceeds; funding will be spread among the global population, perhaps leading to the first globally administrated taxation. (12) The radical instability in today's international financial markets is not a situation the elite intend to permit forever; it puts everyone's investments at unnecessary risk. The instability is being tolerated because of the pressure it puts on national governments to conform to the globalist agenda, and thus cooperate in their own destruction. When the final nail is pounded into the coffin of the sovereign nation state, then the WTO will "discover" that the international financial system is in need of regulation, and will regulate the hell out of it, to the benefit of elite interests, and without any democratic inputs. (13) Marxist predictions of capitalist collapse, based on such considerations as finite investment realms and excess production capacity will not come to pass; these self-cannibalizing trends will be allowed to proceed only until a global shakeout leaves a handful of mega-operators dominating all of global commerce (as we have long had in the petroleum industry): at that point a regime of collaboratively regulated production and distribution will ensue, as with the oil majors today, and a paradigm shift in elite philosophy will occur, replacing the primacy of capital growth with something more like the wealth-management ethic of feudal aristocracies; this will most likely be accompanied by some kind of return to a general medieval mentality in the population. To proceed further I would need a crystal ball, and I don't want to go out on any limbs with predictions. (:>) Yours, Richard BTW> The model can be invalidated by a massive democratic (unarmed) revolution, averting this possible future, but _only_ based on accurate understanding of the overall situation and power dynamics. ~-===================================================================-~ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ a political discussion forum - •••@••.••• To subscribe, send any message to •••@••.••• A public service of Citizens for a Democratic Renaissance (mailto:•••@••.••• http://cyberjournal.org) ---------------------------------------------------------- Non-commercial reposting is hereby approved, but please include the sig up through this paragraph and retain any internal credits and copyright notices. .--------------------------------------------------------- To see the index of the cj archives, send any message to: •••@••.••• To subscribe to our activists list, send any message to: •••@••.••• Help create the Movement for a Democratic Rensaissance ---------------------------------------------- crafted in Ireland by rkm ----------------------------------- A community will evolve only when the people control their means of communication. -- Frantz Fanon
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