Two Faced Franky

Ran across this marble today. It turns out Frank de Grave, a politician belonging to the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD - Conservative Liberalism), said some outlandish things during a session of the Senate of the Netherlands last summer. He said the following;

"There's one situation where it's ok for ministers or politicians to lie, even in this parliament. And that is when it concerns the coin (Euro). When we had the Guilder, a politician was allowed to say A, while the next day B was to happen. In emergency situations this must be possible."

In other words, when it comes to financial matters that are utmost important a politician is allowed to lie and to hell with Freedom and Democracy. Perhaps it's not surprising that Frank de Grave not only spend many years in politics but also worked in the financial sector. What you often see in the United States also applies to this character. He was minister of Defense and after that stint he rolled into the position of Chief Financial Officer at the DSB Bank. Smooth transitions between positions in government and corporations. What's even more interesting is that De Grave didn't spend that much time at the DSB Bank. After just 2 months he left citing "incompatible working relationships." Not long after the DSB Bank went bankrupt. Did Franky knew about the poor situation at the bank? He did have a private talk with the Dutch Central Bank but no information was released.

Why am I not surprised about Frank de Grave? Well, if you watch the first half hour of Zeitgeist Addendum you would know that money is created out of thin air by banks and also immediately becomes debt that can only be paid back by new loans which creates even more debt. It's economic slavery. Banks are the enslavers. Franky here probably knows this. In order for this pyramid scheme to work people have to remain oblivious yet keep the economic faith. That's why he thinks it's a good thing when politicians lie in front of the public in order to keep them confident in money and the financial institutions that provide it. Otherwise that whole house of cards collapses.

Zeitgeist vs. Austrians - Intro

A sociological phenomenon has transpired ever since the movie Zeitgeist Addendum came out in late 2008. The movie sparked a movement which took the name Zeitgeist to identify itself. The movement offers solutions as to how we can improve our society and in essence create a stable, peaceful society where no one has to endure unemployment, poverty, hunger and war. This would mean you have to declare all the worlds resources as the common heritage of all people and use the scientific method for social concern. It means you have to share. It's called a "Resource Based Economy."

That was a message that seemingly struck a (nervous) chord with some people. A certain group of people. On YouTube, a popular video and movie watching website, many videos were uploaded directing critique against the message of the Zeitgeist Movement. After the release of Zeitgeist Moving Forward these monodies not only continued but intensified as well. I was quite flabbergasted to see that these people belonging to this group, all basically parroted the same thing. I am talking about supporters of an "Austrian Economy."

Austrian economists are an unusual bunch. While they label themselves as libertarians upon further examination their views are quite extreme and potentially dangerous. (I'll elaborate in future posts.) Basically they want to let the free market reign over society in its purest form. They want to abolish the State so that only 'actors in a free market remain.' 'Austrians' are generally speaking advocates of laissez-faire policies. Most importantly, the whole rationale of human thought lies within the market place in this doctrine.

After some internal deliberation it became quite clear to me why these people confronted the Zeitgeist Movement (of which I'm a member) and the Venus Project so vehemently. A resource based economy and an austrian economy are diametrically opposed. It's like holding a positive and a negative charged magnet close to each other. And seeing how many Austrians came running over to Zeitgeist videos on YouTube more or less like economic versions of Jehovah's Witnesses and telling us how mistaken we were (to put it diplomatically), I wonder who's negatively charged.

"You're a Statist!" "Central planning can not or has ever worked!" "It's the State's fault, they give power to monopolies!" "What about the economic calculation problem?" "This is NOT the free market." All "mantras" from the Austrian School of Economics. Of course Austrians oppose Zeitgeist because the latter wants to do away with the free market. That's something that gives them instant headaches. Maybe even more fascinating is the psychological, sociological and cultural factors that lie beneath this clash of ideologies.

I've had some discussions with 'Austrians' and I think it's time I put it here on my blog and display my thoughts on this matter. There are many matters to discuss and expand on. This here is just an introduction. More to follow.

Zeitgeist Movies

Ordered the 3 Zeitgeist flicks a couple of weeks ago and found them in my mailbox last week. Paid around $30 for all of them, including packaging and posting. That's just over €20 so for European buyers it's even relatively cheaper. The DVD's themselves are of good quality and I had no problems running them in my player. When ordering them (as a European) you do need the international NTSC version, keep that in mind. Now buy the dvd. :-)

Hidden Interests

Couple of days ago I did a blog on G. Edward Griffin and his commentary on the movie Zeitgeist Addendum. I've seen Griffin comment in a number of video documentaries so I already knew who he was as an author and from what angle of the political scale he was coming from, generally speaking. His entry on Wikipedia is also quite extensive, which I read but at the same time I didn't follow up on every link in the article. Yesterday I came across a remark on YouTube by someone who praised Griffin but who was also very skeptical of his involvement with the John Birch Society. I went back to the Wikipedia article on Griffin and his membership to J.B.S. is plainly visible and it opens up a whole different can of worms as far as I'm concerned.

The John Birch Society itself is listed as "an American radical right-wing political advocacy group that supports anti-communism, limited government, a Constitutional Republic and personal freedom." Griffin's comments on Zeitgeist Addendum can be directly traced back to what this society advocates. Not unusual in itself and neither is the political advocacy of the John Birch Society. Yet the latter fears that the nation will be sold out to the U.N. by a "cabal of internationalists, greedy bankers, and corrupt politicians" which will eventually result in a 'one world socialist government.' This is of course the same rhetoric you hear on the Alex Jones show, the machinations of the New World Order. Accusing others of collectivism is the main offensive tool. But something else came to my attention which I want to focus on more.

The organization itself was founded in 1958 by a group of 12 people which consisted mostly of businessmen as far as I can tell. Businessman Robert Welch headed the society for many years and helped with its creation but another name that stands out even more and who was also involved from the very beginning is Fred Koch. Who is he? Well, he founded Koch Industries, the second largest privately held company in the United States. Starting to smell fishy already? Read the Wikipedia article, Koch Industries made a 100 billion dollar revenue in 2009, they also have a list of violations and subsequent fines the size of my arm. They lobby to support the oil industry and donated to groups who oppose the current consensus on climate change. They have also been rumored to sponsor the Tea Party movement. The Koch family are major players and the John Birch Society isn't the only group they have helped to create or support financially.

Many of these groups oppose collectivism, including wealth redistribution, economic interventionism, socialism, communism, and fascism. Yet they also advocate limited government. When you really think about it, who gains the most from such a political approach? Yes of course, it's the (already wealthy) businessmen themselves.

And that's the whole ball of wax. They advocate this approach because in the final analysis they benefit the most from small government and little to no interference in the free market system. These clowns simply want to make more for themselves. They play into sentiments of the public who are against taxation and "big government" because should these political tactics be adopted they are the ones who profit the most. The trick is that they need a large portion of American society to implement their plans and that's why they sponsor those segments of society most likely to support them and their philosophy. To a large degree they have been successful already but the system isn't going to last. Greed will be its own undoing as usual.

G. Edward Griffin, who has been a member and officer of the conservative John Birch Society is also a contributing editor to its magazine, The New American. Complete misnomer if you ask me. The Old American is far more appropriate. Griffin himself fits right into a Western movie and that kind of cultural baggage is what I perceive here. A bunch of cowboys heading into the open range, ready to claim any riches they may encounter and feeling completely entitled to do so. Founding their own towns in the Wild West, securing a railroad connection so that anybody can visit and even live there. But they remain the patrons, the landowners, the bosses. Nobody tells them what to do.

The movie Zeitgeist Addendum opted to do away with the monetary system and let technology itself solve problems. Griffin saw this as a mega dose of the disease itself namely collectivism. But is it that simple? Aren't many of the problems we see today in our world caused by the lack of money? Poverty in the world basically means a lack of funds to acquire the necessities of life. It has nothing to do with collectivism. If you ask me that has more to do with individualism, the uneven distribution of wealth and plain old-fashioned greed.

The disease here isn't collectivism, it's money itself which everyone wants but there never seems to be enough of. The world is addicted to money, like a drug addict everyone needs a shot on a daily basis. We all need the dealer banks to give us our shot and when we don't get it, we start to feel sick. Governments are hooked as well, they need their fix through taxation. Hopeless addicts, like Griffin and his compadres at billionaire sponsored disingenuous "think tanks" like the John Birch Society want more and more for themselves and blame everything but the drug itself. Addicts are often if not always in denial. The movie Zeitgeist Addendum offers a solution to this disease. Go cold turkey...

Zeitgeisting Griffin

Ran across this article on Infowars.com and it's about the movie Zeitgeist Addendum. Most Zeitgeist supporters probably know what Alex Jones had to say about the second Zeitgeist movie but I found Edward Griffin's comments particularly interesting. Griffin has done remarkable work exposing the Federal Reserve System but to be honest I find his analysis of Addendum rather disappointing. It's strange that Griffin's analysis on the Fed and that of Addendum lie so close together yet could be in different galaxies for that matter. It's almost like there is a dimensional reality barrier. Lets bring out some of the commentary Griffin made.

"1. The information about the Federal Reserve is, for the most part, right on target. However, I practically fell out of my chair when the program repeated that old, silly argument about the Fed not creating enough money to cover the cost of interest on debt; and, therefore, the world must forever be in debt. I knew right there that the writer did not read The Creature from Jekyll Island or, if he did, he forgot my analysis of this common myth. For those who are interested in that topic, it is fund on pages 191-192 of The Creature."

While I don't mind self-promotion and advertising ones book it would have been nice if Mr. Griffin thoroughly explained the matter and busted the myth with solid arguments instead of hinting that people should buy the book. No real information is shared in this paragraph. Furthermore, Addendum doesn't state that there isn't enough money to cover the cost of interest on debt. The movie implicitly states that new money is continuously created, all be it through the Fed or fractional reserve banking. If I'm not mistaken this is the engine that drives inflation and looking back at economic history this seems to be a constant. I'm not sure where Mr. Griffin is getting at and from my perspective he missed the opportunity to clarify the matter.

"2. The next jolt came when the program praised Civil War Greenbacks, calling them debt-free. Actually, Greenbacks were contrary to the U.S. Constitution and, although they were not fiat money issued by the banks, they were fiat money issued by the government. That was better than paying interest on nothing to bankers, but they still wiped out the purchasing power of American money through massive inflation. They can not correctly be called debt-free, either, because they represented debt on the shoulders of the government, which means, of course, on the shoulders of the taxpayers. It never ceases to amaze me how people think that the solution to money created out of nothing by those big, bad bankers is to have money created out of nothing by those nice, trustworthy politicians. Yet, that is what this program supports."

My interpretation of this segment of Addendum is that the director, Peter Joseph, made a suggestion to look at alternative usury (like that with the Greenbacks) in order to get away from debt based currency. I don't recall Joseph giving the Greenback a firm approval - in fact 22 minutes into the film when the Greenback section comes up, there's nothing of the sort! To be frank, I'm somewhat amazed already at how Mr. Griffin viewed the movie Addendum because the bottom line is that all currency leads to a form of economic slavery and should therefore be abandoned. The Greenback is a minor side-issue in the grander scheme of the movie, so why get hung up on it in the first place? I'm not even sure that a debt-free currency is possible in the first place and judging Mr. Griffin's comments he leans to that conclusion likewise. Both banks and government issuing money will inevitably lead to inflation and the quest for even more money, something the movie points out on more than one occasion and what Mr. Griffin himself points out in his commentary. Realizing that there are highly similar notions, I have to wonder what Mr. Griffin's core disagreement with Addendum actually is since so far it's just window dressing.

"3. There is a lengthy segment in which the author of I Was an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins, tells the story of how propagandists in the U.S. manipulated public opinion to support military action against several Latin American countries. Then Perkins says that these propagandists scared Americans by telling them that the leaders of these countries were Marxists who were aligned with the Soviets. This, of course, is a half truth that is just as dangerous as a total lie. It is true about the propagandists and their strategy to scare the public into supporting military intervention in those countries, but it is false to portray those dictators as great humanitarians who cared only for the well being of their people. That is total bunk. They WERE aligned with the Soviet Union and they WERE part of a Marxist/Leninist strategy to dominate Latin America; a strategy that continues to this day."

Now we're getting somewhere. In Addendum John Perkins comments on a number of political figures, however, it is not as simple as Mr. Griffin here portrays it to be because not all of the people involved were communists allied to the Soviet Union and not all of them were dictators. Perkins starts with the C.I.A. sponsored ousting of Iranian prime-minister Mohammed Mossadegh who was in fact a social-democrat. Next is Jacob Arbenz Guzman of Guatemala who was in fact a communist! Jaime Roldos Aguilera of Ecuador, a human rights activist belonged to a populist political party who only leaned to the left when it was pressured by the U.S. Omar Torrijos of Panama was a leftist dictator who didn't answer to Moscow and opposed communism at the same time, and had the support of the United States. Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is a socialist, but he came to power in 1992 after the Soviet Union ceased to exist.

There are many nuances here. With the exception of (true dictator) Omar Torrijos, all of them political figures above were democratically elected. Something Mr. Griffin also fails to mention. Instead there's the sweeping generalization that all of them were "commies" and nasty dictators which is simply not true. Mr. Griffin is right when he says that half a truth is just as dangerous as a total lie and obviously he's guilty of the same act. The Monroe Doctrine is seemingly still alive and kicking, seeing how interference in Latin America and the protection of U.S. national interests is more or less justified in Griffin's critique. That is something that continues to amaze because I was taught in school that the U.S. is the land of the free, home of the brave and a beacon of democracy. But it turns out the U.S. interferes in other countries, even toppling over democratically elected regimes, when it suits there own selfish national and business interests. And that's not spreading democracy, that's pure fascism.

"4. Perhaps the biggest insult to our intelligence is the main theme of the program. It is that profits are the root of all our problems today. That being the case, we must change mankind to reject profit and we must work together on some other basis. It is never quite clear what that basis is, but, whatever it is, it will be administered and directed by an elite group, at least in the beginning. I was stunned by the fact that this is pure Marxism. Marx theorized that people had to be re-educated (in labor camps, if necessary) to cleanse their minds of the profit motive. He and his disciples, such as Lenin and Stalin and Khruschev, said that, eventually, the character of man would be purged of greed, and then the state would wither away because it no longer would be needed. Sure! We saw that in the Soviet Union and China, right? Yet this Marxist nonsense is exactly what is offered in this video program. It is Communism without using the name."

Above is a fine display of fear projection by an apparent right-wing fanatic. I thought the movie was altruistic in nature but seemingly Mr. Griffin sees Marxism in everything remotely free of charge. Bringing up the examples of the Soviet Union and China is also somewhat simplistic and I sincerely doubt anyone watching the movie with an open mind wants to repeat that part of socioeconomic history. When you look at China right now, is it really communist? Or are they very much involved with capitalism? It's the latter I'm afraid. While there's still a lot of state interference in China, business reigns. They caught on to that and right now they are the second largest economy of the world. The Soviet Union was a brutal regime, nobody disputes that but does that automatically imply anything remotely like it will follow the same path? I don't think so, and to do so would be a classic example of fear mongering in my book.

This is what the movie also pointed out on this matter. Communism, socialism, fascism and capitalism are subservient to something else and that is monetary-ism. Even though the Soviet Union was a communist state, they had to deal with a global monetary system. They used money and banks themselves and had to trade with other countries. Hypothetically, what would have happened if they didn't spend a dime on defense but all their efforts went to transportation, housing and feeding everyone using the latest technology? Regardless of the Soviet Union not being a democracy, at no point in time did it ever truly care about the wellbeing of its citizens.
How free are you really in a highly capitalistic society like the U.S? I'm not arguing that the Soviet Union was a better society in any way, but looking at the political system in the states I don't see that much diversity either. Basically there are 2 parties, Republicans and Democrats, and both primarily serve financial/business interests and secondary the needs of the people. While you can walk freely around, you're only as free as your purchasing power will allow. Seeing how corporations can have so much influence on the political process (by lobbying) I would postulate that the U.S. is not a true democracy either. For over a century there has been a tremendous influence of the most dominant institutions (banks and other large corporations) in that country. How free are you really?

"Zeitgeist Addendum ignores this reality. At one point the narrator even says that the greatest evil in the world today is "the free enterprise system." That’s an incredible statement, especially inasmuch as the free enterprise system has been dead for several decades. It lives in name only. The whole world now is in the grips of non-competitive monopolies and cartels that have forged partnerships with governments. All of the evils to which this program alludes are the result, not of the free enterprise system, but of the abandonment of free enterprise and the adoption of collectivism. This program creates a mythological boogeyman and then advocates more of the very thing that has brought us to the mess we are in today."

Now we are getting to the bottom line. The profit motive is a good thing according to Griffin provided it is implemented in a free system where government does not intervene in the market place. The age old marketing phrase; 'the best quality products and services for the lowest possible prices,' is thrown in for good measure. To top it off Griffin seems to think that present day free enterprise has fallen victim to collectivism. The underlying belief here is that a free market system, without the interference of any type of government, will produce a stable economy and thus society.
I'm sorry Mr. Griffin, I couldn't disagree with you more. No matter how you twist and turn it, the free market system is a type of economic survival of the fittest. In essence it is social darwinism. The competition itself weeds out the weak and lets the strong and dominate prevail. Small local businesses will compete, some will fail and go bankrupt while others will simply transform into big businesses. Those big businesses will have tremendous influence and what do you know? That's precisely what you have right now in American society. That didn't happen by mistake, it's a direct consequence of the free market system.

Often I see American people protest on television, they want lower taxes and smaller government but they do want to make money. These people want to protect their own interests. Well, guess what? Those big corporations are basically made up of people with the same mindset and just like a blue-collar worker they will protect their interests as well. The difference is that they are wealthy and probably millionaires. This is not collectivism, this is selfism on multiple capitalistic levels. That's why you'll hear the Republican Party advocate "we wont distribute the wealth." That kind of selfism appeals to people and that's why they get many votes but people are ignorant to how far this goes on the social ladder.
It is clear to me that Edward Griffin is locked in this paradigm. He loves the American Dream yet is unhappy with the result that some are more successful and have influence over the rest. If I can make an analogy here, people like Mr. Griffin love the game of poker (capitalism) but when they are dealt a hand that wont secure the game they insist on a reshuffle so that they can have another shot.

For me, Zeitgeist Addendum was an eye-opener and a confirmation of what I already experienced and learned in the world. It offers a viable alternative to the economic turmoil that's going on right now. It's the quest of acquiring money itself, the need to survive that brings out the worst in people. Edward Griffin, like many Americans, is seemingly oblivious to this notion and will blame everything else as a "disease" before looking at himself and the root causes of problems in our society. When the bottom line is that every single person on the planet will do whatever it takes to survive, do you really advocate a system that's based on selfism and competition? Or do you advocate a system that brings out the best in people?