In my last blog, Open Letter to Dan Rather: Markets Ripe for Collapse, with Ostriches-n-Toads, Sitting Fat-n-Happy in the Swamp!, I demonstrate to what extent the lackadaisical work and negligence of investigative journalists in Washington, on top of staffers in Congress (as well as State Department and White House) created the “Perfect Storm” in which a bankruptcy-building businessman (bbb), ended up President-elect of the USA. Unfortunately, the forces at work which created such a ludicrous, and dangerous situation, in the USA, are at work in Europe, and if permitted to continue, will destroy the planet economically, ecologically, and socially.
The narcissistic, grappling up the ladder, corporate, urban luxury-living (with charity-giving to ease consciences as to the increasing inequalities produced) lifestyle which Trump, and his supporters wish to promote, will divide the country, and send it into civil war. Trump and his Administration with their Industrial Feudalism ideologies will assure that the USA is transformed into a “Third World” dictatorship, with a small elite living in opulence and luxury, at the expense of a large, poor, working class; with violence and armed conflict the consequence. One of the most important lessons I learned in attending the IMF/WB Spring Meetings, was to what extent high-income, middle-income, and low-income countries globally, parallel the socio-economic, and geo-political forces, and challenges, the USA faces nationally. The “terrorist” attacks in the USA are no different than “terrorist” attacks elsewhere in the world. At times these acts of violence are rationalized with religious extremism rhetoric, and at times with political extremism rhetoric.
Contrary to what President Obama contended in his last speech as President, the USA is not the “land of milk and honey, with justice and liberty for all.” The ostrich-playing of President Obama and his Administration parallels the ostrich-playing of former President Bill Clinton and his Administration. It is also why the “ostrich-playing, party-hardy, ‘just-say-no’ to illegal drugs, and ‘just-say-yes’ to pharmaceutical drugs” ideologies instilled by Nancy Reagan during the Reagan Administration still reigns in Washington today—and why Trump won on a promise to “Drain the Swamp,” which he is populating with crocodiles, alligators, sharks, and pirahnas under his Administration.
Emerging economies around the world would do well to heed not only the dysfunctional path the ‘American Fractured Fairytale Dream’ is sending American societies, as well as economies, down. But, also, how by injecting resources into the top-tier, elite, who in turn show their “generosity” and “concerns” for the world, with “charity,” to low-income people or countries, that they, and middle-income countries, are exploiting—is contributing to the total dysfunctional “melting-pot.” The consequence for middle-income countries is the same as for the middle class in the USA, they will become disempowered, and marginalized in the long-run, submerging the world into further decay. It is essential citizens, as well as world leaders of middle income countries, take Trump, and his trade restrictions, and warmongering ways, VERY SERIOUSLY. Just as the American middle-class has, and is, being destroyed by corporate greed, and forgotten by the political elite, middle-income countries will be destroyed and forgotten by those in power. While most politicians are liars, because they say all the BS they are fed by those around them, Donald Trump is a pathological liar, and will build a dictatorship equal to that of Hitler. And, this time around, ALL of the major, and some minor, players ALREADY have atomic bombs!! If the planet is not destroyed in a nuclear world war, it will be destroyed by ecological disasters. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by over 2 million, because mainstream media is more adept at covering FAKE NEWS than at covering the FACTS and REALITIES of the world. If the American press had covered the ISSUES instead of DRIBBLE during the US Elections, Clinton would have won by a landslide.
Please see my blogs on Linkedin for the past year, which explain ALL the problems the USA and the world are facing, with ALL of the solutions EVERYONE in The Swamp SHOULD be DEVELOPING and IMPLEMENTING, as well as my activism website www.warondomesticterrorism.com. These are the issues the press SHOULD HAVE, and SHOULD BE COVERING.
What the USA (and Europe) need to focus on is a complete transformation of its allocation of resources, away from manufacturing, and towards service industries that fulfill the needs of working class citizens, and families; as opposed to luxury products for a small, parasitic elite. America needs to produce MORE JOBS IN THE SERVICE INDUSTRY, and get out of SO MUCH MANUFACTURING! Governments and employers need to retrain work-forces, instead of trying to protect their jobs; and raise the minimum wage so service industry jobs are more attractive!
When I returned to Washington in 2009, right after Obama’s Inauguration, Obama was advising American citizens to “consume, consume, consume,” and I thought “Is he crazy? Americans (and the rest of the world) needs to stop ‘Consuming, Consuming, Consuming’ a bunch of crap they don’t need, and which is making them crazy and stupid!” The world has enough natural and human resources at its disposition to provide for the basic needs of all citizens, with enough ‘luxury goods’ to provide the motivation for socio-economic mobility between the classes. This is the only way to effectively eradicate discrimination against any one group. As long as everyone keeps playing the same old Games, but just changing the nationality, gender or skin color of the players, economies will continue to crash-n-burn, time and time again. This is not rocket-science!!
The only thing the western feminist movement of the past 5 decades has accomplished is to change the targeted groups, which at present are poor young black men (15-25), veterans, and deposed ‘trophy-wives.’ The UN report Indepth Study on All Forms of Violence Against Women (VAW) clearly states that while women are not the perpetrator of VAW, they are the ones responsible for maintaining that violence through traditions and customs. As any victim of domestic abuse, or legal abuse will tell you—the women lawyers and judges are FAR WORSE than the MEN. Additionally, in the past decade, not only have I been tracking the bullying, criminal negligence, and abuses of power of women in Spain, and the USA, but I have been tracking its elevated level amongst black and Middle Eastern women from Hindu countries. This is why Trump’s ‘token’ women appointments in his Administration should be of concern to people and governments everywhere. Two of his appointments are women from India, see The three women of color Trump has appointed, so far. Time and time again, whether it be at the highest level of power, or the lowest levels, in the workplace, or housing market in Washington, EVERYONE is playing power Games in order to grapple-up the ladder, or stuff their pockets, that NO ONE cares, or even is aware of their constituency, and their needs—and why Clinton lost out to Trump.
Laura Nadar in The Life of the Law, explains how the mediation process within the courts is responsible for the break down in the rule of law—and why banker and politicians are getting away with ‘murder.’ My case in the DC Landlord/tenant court, and refusal of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton to investigate the rampant corruption, while supporting ‘smoke-screen,’ and ‘window-dressing’ legislation in response to the Center of Public Integrity’s report from 2014; is a perfect example of the stupidity that reigns in DC. It should be noted that the Center of Public Integrity, and several of its top journalists were sent copies of all my Family Courts in Crisisnewsletter in 2013-14, but never contacted me; nor I believe even read the information. I am doing the job all the journalists, economists, politicians, and lawyers in Washington, who are cashing in billions of dollars each year, SHOULD BE DOING, but ARE NOT; yet NO ONE will hire me because they are too afraid I will end up with their jobs—that they are NOT DOING! The UN report Good Practices in Combating and Eliminating Violence Against Women, clearly explains that,
Law reform processes should involve civil society, especially victims/survivors and womens non-governmental organizations in dialogue with practitioners who will have to enforce and implement the laws.
as well as,
the fact that violence against women occurs in cross-border contexts also invites the development of cross-border cooperation.
However, as seen in my case in the past decade, and knocking at doors of ALL of the NGOs in the USA and Europe which have ANYTHING to do with women’s rights, domestic violence, and human and civil rights, requesting assistance for me, and my constituency (hundreds of millions of migratory women and children); to no avail. All of the PhDs and MBAs within the NGOs which claim that “their hands are tied,” is FALSE. At first all of the PhDs and MBAs contended that they lacked the rhetoric and political platform to provide solutions. But, none of the PhD or MBAs, or Esqs. are interested in producing solutions, or even jurisprudences. I produced the rhetoric, platform, and even cases for the jurisprudence needed—and handed it to all the “experts” on a golden-platter, but everyone is to busy partying and schmoozing-n-cruising with the “important” people to care. NGOs such as UN Women claiming that it is a lack of “government prioritization” which is preventing effective “change.” However, it is a lack of “prioritization” of the PhDs and MBAs in the NGOs, like the UN, as much as government policy-makers and civil servants, who are preventing effective “change.” As Susan Faludi points out in Backlash: Undeclared War on Women, whoever controls the rhetoric, controls the “Game.” And, as I am repeatedly demonstrating in the past year with my blogs, NO ONE in Washington, particularly the PhDs and MBAs with the six-figure salaries, want to change the RULES of the GAME. They are living “fat-n-rich” off the “sweat-n-brow” of taxpayers everywhere, so have no incentive to create change.
Michael Moore provides a perfect explanation of why Clinton lost in his interview with Van Jones.
There are many in my family (all Republicans) who would contend that I am a “socialist” (maybe even a communist). However, most who make speculations about my “politics” do not even know what socialism, or communism is. I observed what happened in Cuba and the USSR under “communism,” as well as what happened in Europe under “socialism”—both of which promote laziness and unethical behavior, as does the American “feudal industrialism” disguised as “capitalism.” The communist ideology produced by Marx was warped and manipulated by governments to justify dictatorships, just as religious movements over the centuries were ‘warped’ by religious leaders to justify their abuses of power. The 1st 2000 of mankind’s “civilization” were spent creating increasingly oppressive regimes and warmongering governments, while the 2nd 2000 were spent creating ideologies that challenged oppressive regimes, and warmongering governments.
For example, Christianity, first saw the Catholic Church, challenged by the Protestants, Puritan, Quakers, etc. with these religious movements also becoming ‘warped,’ as seen, for example, in the Salem Witch Trials under Quaker leaders. The bullying tactics used in that case dramatically exposes how religious leaders can, and do use, bullying, incarceration and commit genocide to control and oppress their victims. The same tactics are exposed in my report on workplace bullying; the tactics used by colleagues and employers, as well as room-mates and landlords. It makes no difference what the nationality, skin-color or religious affiliation the tactics used by bullies, and passive aggressive people in general are ALL the SAME—and I see their Games and manipulations coming a “mile-away,” and am astounded that all the “experts” are so completely BLIND, and “out-to-lunch.”
Decades of affirmative action in Washington has done much damage to “democracy” at a national level, as well as international level by placing minority women in power, who are at total liberty to seek “revenge” for previous “injustices” of the newly targeted minorities. All the “minority” social-climbing, back-stabbing women I have encountered in the past decade are just playing the same old game as their oppressors, and committing serial criminal offenses in the process.
It is IMPERATIVE that middle-income countries, as well as the middle-class, denounce the industrial feudalism that the USA has been promoting, and which under Trump will escalate, sending economies and societies around the world further into decay. After WWII the USA took the lead in economic expansionism as well as political expansionism, creating the ‘American Dream’ of a large middle-class based on consumerism. Since then, the ‘consumerism’ model has spiraled out of control, and even been exported to societies around the world—creating global-warming. What ‘America’ needs are not protectionist trade policies designed to protect manufacturing jobs in the USA, but rather retrain workers to provide the many service related jobs that economies and societies NEED. One of the greatest areas that needs reform is in education with a concentration in early childhood education as opposed to the present flooding of markets with PhDs and MBAs who never went to kindergarten, and why industries across the board are consistently seeing 70-90% failure rates. The current educational system is like giving a chain-saw to a serial killer, and why the “terrorists” in our midst are increasing successful in creating “terror.”
Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (where former Chief Economist of the IMF, Joseph Stiglitz is on the Advisory Board) provides an excellent analysis of the problems and issues for Latin American with a future Trump Administration, in his recent article Fidel Castro Turned Out to Be Right About the US Role in Latin America,
Reactions to the death of Fidel Castro Ruz have highlighted some of the differences in the way the Cuban revolutionary and long-time head of state is perceived throughout the world. Most of the world admires Castro and Cuba as having accomplished something heroic by standing up to a bullying empire of immense power, defending the country's national sovereignty, and living to tell about it. Not to mention the millions of people aided by Cuban doctors and health care workers and other acts of international solidarity that are perhaps unrivaled in modern history, especially for a nation of Cuba’s size and income level.
In the belly of the bully, things look different. And we are not just talking about Donald Trump’s impolite rant upon Castro’s death, true to form and pandering to the waning but still influential Republican base of right-wing Florida Cuban-Americans. From the New York Times subhead of its obituary for Fidel:
“Mr. Castro brought the Cold War to the Western Hemisphere, bedeviled 11 American presidents and briefly pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war.”
Let’s look for a moment at one piece of this unintentional humor: just who brought the Cold War to this hemisphere? A few years before the Cuban revolution, Washington overthrew the democratically elected government of Guatemala under the false pretext that it was a beachhead of Soviet Communism in the hemisphere. This ushered in nearly four decades of dictatorship and horrific state violence, which the UN later determined was genocide. In 1999, President Bill Clinton would apologize for the US role in this genocide.
But what vindicates Castro’s view ― and most of the world’s interpretation ― of the US-Cuban conflict, even more than the first four decades of the US embargo and other interventions against Cuba, is what has happened in Latin America in the 21st century. In this era, left governments came to power through democratic elections on a scale that had never happened before. First Venezuela, then Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Honduras, Chile, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Paraguay, and El Salvador elected, and in some countries re-elected, left governments. A number of the new presidents had been persecuted, jailed, or tortured under US-supported dictatorships. And all of them had the same view as Fidel Castro of the United States’ role in Latin America.
Although the Soviet Union was more than a decade in the past, the “Cold War” that Cuba confronted turned out to be alive and thriving in the 21st century. Washington was hostile to most of these governments and seemed to be looking for opportunities to get rid of them by any means necessary. Of course this was not 1960; they couldn’t declare embargoes and organize an invasion force as in Cuba. But they were involved in the 2002 military coup in Venezuela and supported other extralegal attempts to get rid of the government there. Washington also did everything it could to help consolidate the 2009 military coup in Honduras, and Hillary Clinton admitted in her 2014 book that she worked successfully to prevent the democratically elected president, Manuel Zelaya, from returning to office. The US government also helped consolidate the parliamentary coup in Paraguay in 2012.
The US has also aided the recent right-wing resurgence in Latin America. When Mauricio Macri assumed office as president of Argentina last December, the Obama administration lifted its block on loans from the Inter-American Development Bank and other multilateral lenders that it had implemented against the prior left government. The New York judge who had taken more than 90 percent of Argentina’s creditors hostage on behalf of US vulture funds also quickly lifted his injunction, in what clearly seemed a political act. And the Obama administration also demonstrated its support for the recent parliamentary coup in Brazil.
Fidel Castro, it turns out, was right all along about US policy in Latin America. The continuity of this policy, from the height of the Cold War right up to the present moment is amazing, given how much the world has changed. It should make anyone question how much the former Soviet Union or any of the other pretexts that we have been given for US intervention in the hemisphere over the past six decades ― e.g., “human rights” ― had to do with anything.
This shameful reality could possibly get some more attention now that we have a president-elect who talks and acts like the bully that the US has been for so long in Latin America. Optics matter. The Obama administration was at least as bad as the George W. Bush administration in this hemisphere. (The opening of relations with Cuba was a historic change, and a recognition that 55 years of embargo had failed to bring about regime change. But it was not so much a change in policy as a shift to what was seen as a potentially more effective way to accomplish the same goal.) But George W. Bush got much worse press than President Obama did, and that made a difference.
For the first time in years, the US now has important allies in South America that see Washington’s regional interests as their own: in the new right-wing governments of Brazil, Argentina, and Peru. This had already set Washington on the offensive under the current administration. Trump has made noises about being more belligerent against Cuba, although it is not clear that he would want to get in the way of US business interests that have wanted to open up Cuba for many years. But he is going to be a much less publicly palatable ally for the new right-wing governments of the region.
The ostrich-playing of EVERYONE in Power must cease and desist. One of the greatest problems within government and pseudo-government agencies is the parasitic nature of middle management in collusion with the administrative staff whose job description includes ‘seat-warming’ at the top of the list. All the pseudo-government agencies, like the IMF, World Bank, UN, IFC, etc. whose mission is to assure that governments are implementing progressive democratic laws and norms into their “governing” are as infested with the same human resource management problems as the countries they are supposedly “assisting” and “overseeing. The large bureaucratic organizations (American and international) which have grown in size and power in the past 50 years, must be down-sized, and filled with civil servants who understand the law under human rights standards, as well as how to IMPLEMENT the rhetoric of the “experts” into REALITY for their constituency. Capacity building efforts MUST focus on “constituency” driven efforts rather than “donor” driven efforts. PEOPLE must become the center and focus of government agencies, rather than bowing-n-scraping to corporate greed, and slothfulness of play-the-game, ‘career’ bureaucrats.