Years ago the most senior - by length of service, if not by age or statute - head of state, Queen Elizabeth II, called the outgoing year annus horribilis. With God's blessing, the ensuing years have brought up plenty of reasons for her and her large family to feel happy, joyful and optimistic - including this one, with the birth of her great-grandson George. But for many hundreds of millions of people 2013 has been one of continuous decline of fortunes, and the prospects for 2014 are pointing further downwards.
The establishment will have it that this is just one of those regular crises that are due to the cyclical nature of the markets driven by supply/demand mechanisms; well, a bit longer than the regular, yet soon to diffuse out (almost by itself). We beg to differ: the ongoing crisis exposed the underlaying faults of the current political system and the structural damage it wreaks onto its respective national economy and - as these are more and more interdependent - internationally as well. The culprit: the very existence of Nomenklatura.
Nomenclatura mundipotens miseria permanens facit
We have already pointed out on several occasions1-4 that decline in the long run is inherent to Nomenklaturocracy. In brief, the damage Nomenklatura causes to the society it "serves" affects two main areas*:
1) Moral value system. The trigger is the supplanting of the traditional moral code with the simplistic "new-world" one starting with the primacy of "making money, as fast as possible; the more you make the more successful you are, regardless of method." The consequence: degradation of the societal structure (by destroying its fabric) and undermining of the national psyche (by downgrading nationhood and its importance as binding force);
2) Economy. The decline is due to: a) direct contribution as a drain, given Nomenklatura's added value is a huge - and growing - negative; b) incompetence, neglect, hurting national interests - due to corruption or/and "political correctness."
In the long run the damage wrought by the Nomenklatura will inevitably bring its nation to a point when a reform (revolution) is needed, in order to correct the disastrous situation, which is typically due to overgrown superstructure, compared to its economic base. This has happened in all the former Soviet Block member states, in the period 1989-1992, even though the component "moral degradation" as described above was not at all present - the (traditional Christian disguised as ) "Communist" moral code was revered, almost intact, just viewed differently, by the people vs the officialdom. Instead, the moral component (that was obviously needed, in such a clearly bifactorial societal reaction) had a different dimension: national psyche focused on
hatred of Nomenklatura and its "Communism" for the criminal way of ascendance to power and the repressive manner of enforcing and perpetuating its rule. And then the "revolutions" - "colored" and "velvet" alike - did not amount to much of reform to the better: changing from single- to multi-party Nomenklaturocracy doesn't help the nation in the long run; much less does the plundering of the nation's assets by a few individuals, typically its scum (out of which the new "elite" is formed). Hence now Phase 2 of those reforms is on the cards in these countries - and this time these should be real revolutions!
In the rest of the world the spirit of revolution is awake and agitated already for years. Even before the economic troubles have hit hard, the Europeans have been irritated by the steady decline of morality exemplified by local and EU bureaucrats alike, the latter by far excelling in that field. It is clear that a supranational Nomenklatura, presiding on top of all national ones and demanding total obedience (i.e. political correctness), is not to the liking of anybody but itself. When the fact is added that it is not an electable body yet it dictates the laws to a rubberstamp - but ellcted - EU Parliament, the undemocratic character of this super-Nomenklaturocracy is obvious.
Hence with the component of severe moral degradation being present even on the highest, supranational level, we expect the national revolutions to be just a direct function of each particular country's economic decline. Clearly, the Southern and Eastern European nations are much closer to that point than those in Northern Europe.
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* I have sufficient evidence to believe in a bifactorial failure mode: a mechanism of failure that postulates two major factors affecting it negatively to act in synchron to suffice, in order to switch in.
The global Revolutionary fireball: where do we stand today?
In our view the Revolution had a lift-off in Iceland, as a direct reaction to the financial/banking crisis. It did not go all the way as the Icelanders have decided they are satisfied by getting into Hybrid Democracy (mixing elements of Direct and Representative one). Only time will tell if they would opt for going to the next stage or - like the Swiss - will stick with the current arrangement: it's a matter of country - and nation - specifics. And then again: vox populi, vox dei!
The second country we have a start in is Bulgaria1-4. Nothing tangible has been achieved, beyond the message that an EU member state is extremely unhappy with itself; of course, that message has not at all been conveyed, given the mainstream media worldwide play the Commissars' favorite song, "Political Correctness," strictly within the score provided by Brussels. Hence what we can predict is more waves of massive public protest, gradually growing, until the target of "Change" is reached.
The place where the fully blown revolution would have erupted before any other country was it not for German taxpayers' money, is Greece, obviously, where the damage caused by the lack of accountability by any given national Nomenklatura is the most brazen example. So we can expect that to start the moment the Germans decide to close the tap. Where will it lead to? I don't think we need to teach the Greek demos on Democracy - at least I do not volunteer to insult them.
There are plenty of other countries in the EU that are on the same path: Cyprus, Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, Belgium... They are all famous with two macroeconomic features: large foreign debt and high unemployment rate. However, while above is well known and widely discussed, no official analysis will point to two other characteristics they all have in common that we believe are even more important to monitor. First, the persistent large foreign-debt-to-GDP ratio indicates one simple thing - prosperity achieved on credit; i.e. whatever good life is on display today is built merely on the promise that the future generations will pay for it. Second, very key point is to assess the hidden unemployment rate - and all these countries are champions in that regard as well. Every national Nomenklatura invents its own tools to massage the numbers, which implies creating categories that would not show up as "unemployed" while nominally these should belong there. Inevitably, a substantial portion constitutes newer and newer extensions of the Nomenklatura itself (a feature that has prompted me to compare its growth to that of carcinoma).
While true revolutions in these countries may not yet be at the point of boiling over there are plenty of signs that the starting points are near. Italian President Giorgio Napolitano has just issued a warning in that regard, predicting "social upheaval" in 2014. Earlier, Beppe Grillo, the leader of the newest major Italian party, was already campaigning for the introduction of Direct Democracy during the last electoral session.
In Belgium the public discontent took recently astonishing direction. Commencing about a year back, a dissident MP, Laurent Louis, independent, exposed in explicit terms the hypocrisy of the establishment and called for a prompt overhaul of the system. His idea is similar to that implemented in Iceland: filling half of the seats in the Parliament with rotating 6-months-termed temporary Deputies, through random selection from the citizenry. We consider young Mr. Louis (33) a Belgian national hero: he is definitively an idealist, one of the tiny minority - no more than 1-2%, in our view - of politicians who ever enter and stay within the Nomenklatura solely out of ideological motivation. This is why we believe it is important to follow his uphill struggle. As expected, he is being completely ignored by the official media, hence YouTube and his Internet site5 are the only sources to see his regular pleas in the Federal Parliament (besides the protocols, which nobody in the public at large would get to read). Moreover, in an official interview another MP flagrantly stated that all political parties have agreed to place a "cordon sanitaire"* around him. The Nomenklatura is not at all ashamed of its Medieval methods!
As far as our sources go, in France6 and Germany7 there are schools considering reform in the direction of "enhancing democracy." Some call it "delegated" others "liquid" democracy yet it is a variant of, shall we say, the Icelandic/Belgian school. The projects in Germany are as advanced as to run academic simulations to predict the rate of enhancement of the "democratic outcome" (or alternatively the "democratic participation") as a result of certain percentage of "dilution" of the Parliament with "delegates", i.e. non-professional politicians. While to us it seems obvious that to play with what clearly is a compromise is a somewhat childish occupation, the fact of placing so much attention to it is itself a plain recognition of the core of the huge problem here: the business of politics. Partial reforms - in order to avoid a more radical approach - will only put off the final resolution of the problem thus buying some time. Or rather losing some time as the problem source will remain.
Interestingly, the revolution has been proclaimed in UK as well. Because it has started at least on the level of conscience, or so at least has Russell Brand announced, in an article8 and a subsequent TV interview9. We do concur with that10 insofar (i) the two events have been followed by record amounts of people, and (ii) the comments on those are overwhelmingly in support of that notion. In addition, my personal comment here would be "As a babyboomer, I can tell you: the legacy of John Lennon is still being underestimated - the idea of People Power is back with a vengeance and 'Working class hero' will be its anthem!"
Elsewhere in Europe there are places where the establishment catches fire as well. In the Czech Republic for instance, a new kid in the block, a young Japanese-Czech tycoon, entered successfully in politics (well, money buys, doesn't it) with declarations including "direct democracy." While we are accustomed to politicians' jargon, and taking into account that this here too may amount to empty populist talk, this act is different in that it does open the bottle and the genie is out: surely someone else - if not this fellow himself - will start peddling the idea further on...
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* cordon sanitaire - sanitary belt, French political slang. In Belgium it is applied for denoting the building of united front of all but one party thus isolating it from access to power; i.e. a true containment vehicle. The enemy within, which the rest of the Nomenklatura conspired - and eventually succeeded - to fight off, was a Flemish nationalist party that was coming close to 25% of the vote in Flanders. It was viewed as a threat, much like Jörg Heider's party in Austria and Jean-Marie Le Pen's in France, and it was being portrayed as "xenophobic," "extremist" and what have you. Hence the "liberal" wing of the Nomenklatura prevailed, served by the media, and enjoying the support of the Eurocrats in Brussels: the reward for being "politically correct" all the way. That this is not a behaviour worthy of the term "democratic" nobody cared to mention. So now the trick is back in use, again.
US vs Continental philosophy: what is to expect next?
While in 2014 Europe is poised to witness the beginning of serious reforms - or at least initiatives for such - coming from below, in USA the changes - some even more fundamental, but all reactionary in nature - are likely to come from above, designed as preemptive measures. Here most activists and thinkers - beyond the "politically correct" writers that are sponsored by the Nomenklatura and populate the entire space of the main stream media (MSM), whom we completely ignore - are still to realize their deficiencies and limitations in terms of accounting for the overall socio-political picture of the globe. Absent that, they will remain pathetically local and self-insulated. The following primary obstacles still persist:
1) US philosophic - and pragmatic - thought puts the emphasis on the individual while in Europe the attention is still focused on the collective (which is the reason to talk about a social state, of which interpretations vary widely - sometimes a whole Universe apart);
2) US authors' limited (one-sided) view - due to the belief that US Constitution and Bill of Rights provide unquestionably solid legal base for their Democracy (Republican governance) - constitutes a serious barrier for unbiased thinking;
3) The embedded in most minds - including some amongst the finest in the US - concept of American "exceptionalism," is another barrier;
4) The exclusively inward focused approach, with all limitations that it entails, which to a great extent is a consequence of most points listed above. The prevailing belief is that no parallel can be drawn up, no comparison can be made to - let alone similarity seen with - any other country in the world, no lessons can be drawn from other states' experience, which inevitably obfuscates any attempt that is being made, to comprehend the outside world. The result is American thinking vis-à-vis humanity's worldwide societal advancement is behind that of the rest of the world - yet, ironically, its reps believe they are ahead of the pack.
The issue about the Constitution has been feeding the average American with the intuitive feeling of their "exceptionalism." So much so that in the last decennia anything and everyting American was presumed to take precedence. And since US taxpayers money has been traditionally used to underwrite a dispropotional part (typically a quarter or more) of the budgets of any and all major international organizations, American presidents did face no questions - even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the single potent adversary acknowledged as threat for America and the West - when declaring exceptionalism and citing national interests as reasons for aggressive wars, invasions and occupations, more often than not in violation of the very "international law" that has been a product of their own collaborative effort.
That road has brought America to something of a dead end, figuratively spoken. The main consequences, related to the topic here, are (i) dissipating faith in the US model of "Democracy" (per those of us who appreciate Alexis De Tocqueville's effort; "Republic" for the zealous Americanites) or "Capitalism" - whichever is your favorite; (ii) antagonizing and alienating the world at large; (iii) accelerating the exposure of the damaging effect on their compatriots by all its subjugated (sorry, officially that is "allied") Nomenklatura, the fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner EU-related in particular. And the true precursor of the total disaster is the loss of spiritual leadership - you've got a former defector from Communism declaring it here on behalf of uncounted millions who were in love with the American feel for freedom and justice, which I fear I have to proclaim herein dead and buried. Amen!
In fact the triumph of "Capitalism" was prematurely announced - nationalization of banks and companies ("too big to fail") in the US was an act of acknowledgement of just that. The Government's move to bail all of those out is the equivalent of one-time additional tax on the American people, levied under emergency conditions, in order to avoid the imminent acute financial and economic crisis, and likely collapse. While that measure worked and a presumed catastrophe was avoided - and the Treasury has actually made some money in the process of repayment - the long term consequences of 25 years of aggressive, unjustified, illegal and very expensive wars have been compounded by adding excessive internal debt (through Fed's QE program, the TARP, etc.) on top of the gargantuan external debt. These too could be regarded as added tax to the people, for most part to the future generations.
The behavior of US Nomenklatura indicates - so it does seem to us at least - that it might have decided not to repay its debt. The obvious solution being a major war, which adds the "benefit" of circumventing the constitutional problem of rising the debt ceiling. The engagement in war - say first in Syria, then Iran, and so on - seemed so attractive to the Administration that it was determined to get on with it, and would have proceeded was it not for the blunder by the Secretary of State and the immediate diplomatic intervention by the Russians. However, the delay might be just a temporary one. All indications suggest that this campaign has been so long and so methodical in terms of preparation that the alliance US-Israel-Sunni Muslim States is unlikely to forgo on its setting in motion. The behavior of Israel and Saudi Arabia seems to be revealing just that. The fact that even a "major terrorist act" was staged* (on July 18th 2012, at the airport of Burgas, Bulgaria) to implicate the Hezbollah and thus justify "retaliation" by NATO, Israel and US's EU allies as soon as it gets engaged in the conflict - which is more than certain to happen - points to the same direction.
At least three other international developments seem to indicate concurrence with our line of thought: (i) the move by the German Government to repatriate its gold reserves from custody at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, (ii) the reported** suggestions by Chinese officials to swap their share of US debt (roughly US $ 1.3 trillion) against leasing/purchase of US land, and (iii) the announcement by China that it stops with purchasing dollars as part of its reserves build-up while positioning the Renminbi for float (in preparation to aspire for the new worldwide reserve currency ?).
Hence the pessimistic scenario is that - barring major activism within US, as a consequence of the growing economic hardship of the average American - the famous Nobel Peace Prize laureate seems poised soon to embark on a major new war. And the only way to prevent him from such move is a strong domestic anti-Nomenklatura revolt - not necessarily by violent means. In fact, the US Nomenklatura itself has already forecast upheaval, and presumably violent, which is seen by the preparations - legislative and military logistics wise - that have been carried out during the last 13 years, including some that are in clear violation of the Constitution. So, will the American people manage to save the world from entering into another major war? The rest of us can only hope for it, and watch on the sidelines...
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* I have no proof of that except for the logic of events and the facts of the investigation as they have been officially reported and explained: to me, this one here is the conclusion with the highest probability.
** These could be just journalists' speculations: I've seen no formal reports (and for obvious reasons, either way).
The principles of People Power governance
Since we can not influence the US Government - or any other one, for that matter - we do focus on preparing for the next stage of the Revolution. Preparation entails just one item: enlightening the independent-minded and organizing dissident movements. The charter of such dissident movement is to assist society in the transition from Representative to Direct Democracy by peaceful, democratic means thus avoiding the violent, messy and bloody path that it could otherwise get on.
People Power - or the true Direct Democracy - has to be based on the following pillars, as a bare minimum (sine qua non):
1) Eliminating the profession "politician" (with savings to the budget!);
2) Eliminating the need of Parliament (with savings to the budget!);
3) Eliminating the need of elections (with savings to the budget!);
4) Eliminating the need of singular Head of State (with savings to the budget and with annihilation of the chance for a national disaster that a distorted - or badly influenced; blackmailed; corrupted - mind could produce!);
5) Eliminating the practice of politicians occupying Governmental and other key Administrative positions - amounting to straightforward amputation of the gangrene;
6) Self-eliminating the lobbying activities (the legalized/officialized levers of corruption);
7) Implementing: (i) electoral and (ii) legislative activity by linking all qualified* voters to a central computer and conducting obligatory voting on a regular base, after discussing any and all legislative proposals, initiated by anyone among them; and (iii) issuing of periodic appraisals of the performance by acting officials and of the credentials of aspiring functionaries;
8) Hiring the Management of the State** upon the principles of hiring Managers in the industry;
9) Creating a State Council,*** a collective body (of, say, 12 most respected citizens, elected through the national electronic network, as per point 7 above), which: (i) sanctions the voting, throughout its mandate; (ii) has the function and authority to hire, superwise, appraise the performance, and fire the Government, the Attorney General and the Central Bank Governor; (iii) on a rotating principle performs the function of Head of State,**** say one member for 6 months at a time; (iv) does not have any executive power; (v) does that without remuneration, as a honorary service to its people;
10) Postulating a formal nation-wide attitude towards the State of "shareholders of equal status, possessing one share each, of the Corporation" (as modus operandi of all citizens, eventually enshrined in a modified Constitution);
11) Formulating explicitly the moral code of the nation, deemphasizing the "money making" fixture and its ugly brainchild, Greed;
12) Ensuring truly independent judiciary system, with functionaries electable through the national electronic network, as per point 7 above;
13) Readjusting the penal code (and due process, wherever pertinent) as per reassessed and upgraded moral code;
14) Ensuring stability of the financial system by, e.g.: (i) instating (wherever it does not yet exist) a public-owned Central Bank that should (ii) have an extension to operate discretionary accounts, which should (iii) be the only bank with fully guaranteed deposits due to (iv) enforced high liquidity (say 90%, implying minimal crediting activity with a preset low risk ceiling), while (v) no other bank should have any coverage at all (no taxpayer money committed to warrant high risk gambling); (vi) all legal entities with state participation should be mandated to keep their liquid assets in there and (vii) for taxation purposes only transactions that have been cleared there should be recognized.
Clearly, each nation will have to implement other, specific for its people's needs rules as well: above is just the minimum basis to start building on. The construction above (the "skeleton" of People Power) is sufficiently instructive, we believe, so that a judgement can be made as to why we believe Hybrid Democracy is only half way through, to the just and fair society we all yearn for.
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* fulfilling certain criteria
** executive branch, Government
*** Council of the Elders/Wise Men, collectively the Supreme Moral Authority of the nation
**** a ceremonial, symbolic position, with no remuneration and no power whatsoever, beyond the Moral Authority
Management of Government
As already indicated above, Corporations and their management provide the best model to base the practical arrangement - organization and governance - of People Power on. This message might be a tough one to sell to the masses: we are all witnesses of common folks and serious writers alike vilifying all kinds of abstract creatures, such as Communism, Capitalism, Socialism, Monopolies, Corporations, Globalization... all of which have no means to defend themselves thus easily becoming convenient targets to shoot at, to outpour the accumulated anger and frustration, and to place the full blame on for most major problems. However, I am not interested in marketing - this is the idea, take it or leave it (the alternative being more of what you had till now)!*
The more perfect a corporate organization is, the better it performs. Primary concern of corporate management should be the identification and hiring of the brightest managers, and their grooming to take up the best fitting positions in the organization. The sole reason for some companies to consistently outperform their peers is that they operate as the perfect clockwork mechanism. Any time this principle is foresaken, troubles loom. We have plenty of examples whereby even the best, long admired companies have been infected with the bugs of nepotism and internal politics, and inevitably the result is steady decline. Unless intervention comes in time to throw out the old guard upon whose watch this internal plague has grown, and to restore the organization - typically by cutting off fat and meat alike, and bringing in fresh blood from outside - even previous "jewels" of the respective industrial segment either go under or get acquired by healthier companies, and then revitalized as per above. The single motivation of a professional manager is to excel in performance and to build a career through his proven ability to achieve the targets set in front; the remuneration is a consequence to that and in a typical good Corporation it will reflect the effort - if not, the capable manager would leave. This is exactly the attitude that has to replace the Nomenklaturchiks' approach, which is the total opposite. This is exactly the profile of your Ministers, in the state arrangement that we call People Power.
In brief, above is the rationale to organize the administration of the new state on. Hiring the best in class professional managers to run the respective segment of society's economic and cultural life is the optimum since no other motives - partisan, ideological or else - can play a role. It suffices to have the control mechanism that we propose through the supervisory role by the State Council. This is filling the gap that is present today in all Nomenklaturocracies, the lack of accountability, which causes them to drift towards totalitarianism or authoritarianism - a sort of dictatorship each. Government control, or managing the government is a feat singled out as a deficiency of the system of modern (representative) democracy - because of its absence, that is - by some scholars11. With the arrangement proposed here the government ministers will function as true servants to the people: the highest positioned ones in the societal ladder yet strictly performing the highly demanding service and nothing else - what they are as well supposed to be today, but are not.
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* I've been labeled all kinds of things: Communist, Marxist, Leninist..., so one more wouldn't harm much more - if I cared, that is; which I do not. So, Corporatist will only contribute to completing my collection, thanks!
Hierarchy vs Anarchy, within Democracy
For those who tremble by the very mentioning of the word "revolution" I can offer a somewhat appeasing line of thought. If we look at human history, from ancient times till this day it could be described as periods of hierarchical and anarchistic societal orders alternating in replacing each other. Hence we could substitute Representative with Hierarchical and Direct with Anarchistic and then talk of just reforming the former by replacing it with the latter. So, Revolution can be avoided by reforming Nomenklaturocracy to become Anarchy, and then call it People Power, to please those who might dislike the A-word*.
The Nomenklaturocracy thesis
In order to devise an optimal solution to the current malaise in the modern socio-political arrangement, it is a must to have in view the total picture. Clearly, that one is obscured, which we believe is the primary reason for not having real new ideas for such a long time, given the abundance of bright minds - in academia and elsewhere. The anti-democratic and clearly inhumane New World Order (NWO) agenda devised by several US and international organizations12, 13 and peddled by a gargantuan propaganda machine through its subservient MSM has first won what we'd call "the Cold War of the minds" and then kept feeding in the neocon, neolib and libcon poison. The result: no objective, unbiased assessment has ever been made of the full spectrum of aspects that the giant experiment called "entirely state-owned economy" which mankind lived through during most of the 20th century represents. Likewise, as already alluded to earlier, our own work excepted14, 15, no fair in-depth review has ever been made of a typical single party Nomenklaturocracy. Well, then, how else could we expect the confusion to dissipate? Especially when it is clear that it is exactly ignorance, disarray and confusion that the anti-humanist NWO protagonists aim for.
Hence our goal with this paragraph is to put everything into perspective, after leveling the field.**
The world-wide aspect of Nomenklaturocracy claimed here would not be comprehended, let alone accepted, unless key myths are dispelled, be they propaganda fiction, made ups, concoctions... or just the products of insufficiently informed theoreticians. We have clarified enough - for the purpose of this writing - with regard to the moral aspects15; however, more is needed in the field of economy, i.e. the parameters concerning citizens' everyday life. Without visiting the considerations below the picture of "Communism" (one-party Nomenklaturocracy with fully state-owned economy, per our definition) will remain skewed, at best, and most likely totally obscured. Proof of that is the statement "XXX (land) and XXX (people) have been impoverished due to YYY years under Communism," which has been spoken out and written endless amount of times, in the last 24 years. Well, this is totally incorrect - a blunt lie by a malicious mind or otherwise a plain nonsense in the mouth of an irresponible ignoramus - as I have already written.16, 3, 4 See for yourselves:
1) The calculations of PPP, per current definitions, are not suited for a fair comparison. For that, the standard PPP has to be upgraded to E(ffective)PPP, in order to account for key provisions of the true welfare state (socialist, communist or whatever else you'd like to call it) that are affecting the real disposable income, i.e. have major effect on the real purchasing power of the individual but are not reflected in the standard formula for PPP as these features are mostly absent from the realm of any free market economy. Ingredients of EPPP to be added: A) free medical care; B) free education; C) almost free vacation accommodations; D) extended maternity leave; etc.; etc;
2) The Collective/National assets. The profit from the activities of all economic entities that is not redistributed as salaries, wages or benefits in kind, can be regarded as accumulated in the national assets that have been created per given year. Hence the wealth of the nation has incrementally increased by amount that can be regarded as per capita shares' annual appreciation. That is not accounted for, in the formula for EPPP above, because it is not free for disposition individually, given that state's collective way of composition and functionality arrangements. Yet it represents an annual appraisal of the individual income. It can be regarded as a sort of a tax that - unlike the ordinary one - is not being consumed in the formation of the next year's state budget but is - involuntarily - accrued and placed in a long term deposit account under the auspices of the state, which is supposed to supervise, invest and build up on that much more efficiently and wisely than each and every individual alone. That has been the case, and many examples demonstrate it. One parameter that can be mentioned in clear support of this statement is the percentage of home ownership - by the time of the collapse of "Communism" about 85% of the citizenry in Bulgaria owned their dwelling, which was about twice the number in the "developed" nations; moreover, about 70% of these owned a second dwelling: a country house, villa or similar.***
3) It is very important to bear in mind the point about the Collective/National assets when revisiting the process of "transformation from 'Communism' to 'Democracy,'" in the former Communist countries. We maintain that there has been no real transformation since these countries retained the same Nomenklaturocracy-type status, except that the ruling Nomenklatura swapped the reason for entitlement to power: from ideological it became financial. The same gangs as before had their hands on the power wheels all throughout these countries; the only landscape in which change occurred was that of party names. And the source of their economic and financial power became those national assets and resources that had before been evenly owned by all citizens. Within two decades or so these have been misappropriated by the Nomenklatura ("redistributed" according to the rules the newly popped up "democrats" invented, typically in their own favor, or otherwise put, according to the laws of the jungle that some call "Capitalism"). The majority thus having been heavily taxed (including - de facto - retrospectively during the "Communist" period, as explained above) promptly fell into the category of newly impoverished. With the current, "post-Communist" PPP being deprived from its components that upgrade it to EPPP, it should not be a surprise that the average citizen's everyday life situation can be compared to a free fall from heaven to hell.**** No wonder a growing proportion - and a clear majority - of the older population (that can still make the comparison based on its real life experience) keeps declaring it had lived better during "Communism." I, too, do concur: the vast majority did live better then, in purely economical terms, i.e. if we discount the ideology and its consequences other than the economics-related ones. And I am one of your proven best witnesses: a defector from "Communism" to "Capitalism!"
One way to account for the missing parts of PPP discussed here is to look at the contribution to the added national assets per given year as (compulsory) long-term investment (of which the benefits are later fairly distributed amongst the citizenry, as it is supposed to, in a democratic, welfare state). Hence an amount corresponding to the individual share of the average citizen should be added to the PPP to augment it to EPPP, as his salary does not account for it. Bearing this in mind it becomes clearer, I hope, how come during the mid-1980s Romania and Bulgaria have been in the upper part - the first 30 or so countries - of the listing of UN's human development index (HDI), and then after becoming "free democracies" within 20 years they each have dropped down the list by about 50 points! Deterioration was recorded for all former Soviet Block members, to a different degree. And the explanation as to why these two would be the champions is very simple: the accrued investments by the public were almost entirely "absorbed" by the newly spawned "elite" composing the Nomenklatura and the Mafiotic criminals behind it while in the rest of the "Communist" countries the plundering was only partial. I would even venture to suggest that the degree of HDI degradation would be roughly proportional to the rate of looting. In any case the degradation is undeniable and this here is the primary reason for it.
In order to bring this point closer to the Western mind I would suggest the following parallel.
In the Soviet Union the top Nomenklaturchiks have decided to use part of this long term investment of the Soviet people into space exploration. Success for science, success for humanity, great publicity! Enter top US Nomenklaturchiks and decide to do the same thing, by tapping the revenue from taxes, i.e. essentially the same mechanism. Great success, great competition, great pride, happy upbeat taxpayers. Next, the USSR top men decide to use that same source for funding wars, political parties, "liberation movements," a whole bunch of Communist-countries-to-be - a dozen or more, of which Cuba, Ethiopia and Angola come to mind. A couple of decades later the tap is dry: game over! And for a very simple reason: there's no place to borrow money from! Then, after claiming "victory" for "Capitalism" the US top men more than quadruple their investment in "export of Ideology" as the game has become known (well, I've substituted "Ideology" for Democracy here, in as much as for the Russians that would have spelled Communism). And since the available cheque-book has been quickly used up, they've switched to the cheque-book of the future: today, just a few wars later each American owes to foreign investors in excess of US $ 50 000, and is promising to the world more wars to come, as the world seems to permanently step on his blue Swede shoes... sorry, to hurt his national interests.
So, now someone has to try and convince me Nomenklaturchiks are not the same. Now someone has to explain to me why should I not use a formula for EPPP, whereby (i) for the Americans to the number of PPP to add with negative sign the added annual per capita debt, and (ii) for the Soviets (at the time) to add with a positive sign the annual per capita added assets (whatever per capita amount was wasted through Nomenklatura's investments in "export of Ideology" is the average citizen's annual fine for tolerating the establishment, money dusted in the wind). But I do not want to advise what the Americans or the Russians should do with their respective contemporary Nomenklatura: the former for the burden with evenly distributed debt (which has generated quite some profit in the pockets of selected few*) and the latter for the unfairly redistributed - just between themselves and whoever sits behind them - formerly national assets. And I hate to use terms like "oligarchs" and "nouveaux riches." I only claim to know what exactly needs to be done with their Bulgarian counterpart: it is already keyed in the Program of the national dissident movement, and it simply awaits a mandate from Its Majesty the People.
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* And I guess I've just got yet another name to be called, Anarchist. In school and University we were indoctrinated to despise Anarchy: there was this strong negative connotation of chaos, disorder and implicitly crime, associated with it, that I have sensed till not so long ago. I guess this was a residual of the official explanation as to why Lenin has annihilated the Anarchists after winning the Russian Civil War (and only much later did I discover that he made an alliance with them without which the Red Army would probably have lost; after the victory they simply became competition). But in fact that term means "no one above; no chief; no first" implying a society of absolute equals, the ideal democracy - better than that of Athens where citizens still possesed slaves.
** Beyond the clarification in the philosophical aspect, the miscalculations in the sphere of economy must be exposed. We believe that our doctrine helps in revealing the error sources most clearly.
*** Per first hand testimony this has been a surprise to the team of US economists led by Dr R. Rahn and Dr R. Utt to advise the Bulgarian Government on the transformation to "Capitalism" (Free Market Economy) in the early 1990s. Yet R. Rahn writes17 that "the real level of well-being in the nine countries at the end of the Soviet period was greatly overstated." He did not respond to my challenging his conclusions and pointing out his erroneous base4. In any case, the elapsed time has proven my point without the need of his acknowledgement: the "success" he was predicting is nowhere to be seen; the disaster I claimed it to be has gotten even worse since.
**** Here's a red flag for you: today Bulgaria's GDP is about the size it was in the early 1980's. The implication is, the country has lost 30 years of development!
Engineering and optimization of societal organization and structure
Hopefully the clarifications provided here can help in explaining the much protracted search for a way to cure the limping system of modern Democracy. In our opinion, the skewed view the political scientists, sociologists, philosophers, etc. on each side of the divide had about the opposite arrangement - whether it be regarding the sphere of economy, morale, psychology or culture - can explain why the field is so devoid of workable concepts. Otherwise the serious flaws of the system have been discussed by many a scolar for already more than half a century. In our observation two are the fundamental deficiencies on which said stumbling is predicated: (i) the lack of an insider's in-depth view revealing all-important subtleties as those reported here concerning the two fundamental areas, economy and morale, for the respective counterpart, and (ii) for most part, equating Democracy with Representative Democracy.18-24 Rarely is Direct Democracy given consideration and, when it has, the Swiss model is put forward, which - per our ranking - is only half way through the real (seemingly too radical, for the academia, and presumably therefore not at all considered) solution. However, such automatism was for many years typical for your reporter too, even though I have been resident and taxpayer in Switzerland, as well as Belgium, USA and Bulgaria: only of very recently the term "Hybrid" stuck appropriately where it did belong, in our concept, and so the Nomenklaturocracy doctrine was completed.
In our view this piece of engineering is ready for implementation, admittedly rather easier in a small nation, than in a large one. The dilemma being, can the Intelligentsia construct it through the peaceful path (convincing the Nomenklatura to step down?) or should it wait until a bloody revolt breaks up the status quo and then use the blueprint. The direction that actual events will take will depend solely on how fast the dissident movement can rally nation-wide support for the project. Because the clock is ticking...
Internet and the decline of mainstream media
Some time in the 1960s-1970s the dissident-minded younger generation in the Communist countries (the baby boomers of the East), to which I did belong, figured that it was being brainwashed and misinformed by the official media, and stopped looking at it as a credible source. From certain point on I could predict exactly what the newspapers would write about any event going on hence it made no sense to read them nor to listen to the news on radio/TV. Instead, we turned our attention entirely to the Western broadcasts, which were interfered with, on the local languages in each particular East Block country but were readily accessible in English or German. Of late, the same phenomenon has occurred, but now world-wide: no trust whatsoever, on a massive scale, in the MSM. Alternative media sprang up due to Internet and it is today the main source of truthful and unbiased information (after careful scrutiny, though).
"Unbiased" is the key word here, in order to understand a phenomenon of extreme importance. You might equate it with a propaganda-related handicap as it is to a great part a self-inflicted condition. Please judge for yourselves: The collapse of moral support to "Communism" - insofar to some extent such has previously existed - towards the early 1980s, was mainly due to the build up of an image of the West-European and US democracies as the "normal states" (the societies which prosper because and the moral is high, and justice prevails, and freedom of conscience and expression is beloved, and human rights are upheld, and the most rewarded are those with integrity, ingenuity, knowledge, experience, etc., etc. - dream features of some of which the Eastern Block countries were deficient). Now, thirty years later, the majority of the population is even more disgusted with its own "Democracy" but blames it on zillions of reasons - including Communism, Monopolies, Corporations, Globalization... - and still dreams of non-existing entities. You would hear overall the phrase "in a normal state that can not happen" or "yes, but ours is not a law-and-order state" and the like. Nobody realizes these are creatures of his or her mind - and most people wouldn't even listen to the simple argument that one can not truly comprehend the essential details of a foreign nation's system unless satisfying a sizeable set of criteria: to have lived at least for a decade there, to have been a taxpayer there, to have full command on the local language, etc., etc... This confused, bewildered, edging on panicking collective state of mind will take a long time before being corrected - and it has to be recognized as the single most important victory of the Cold War, the counterbrainwashing battle that the Propaganda machine of the West has won. Its success is so great that after preparing the minds for the moment when the economic conditions became ripe, the switch-over was done as smooth as nobody could have predicted it, and then quarter of a century later it still maintains its grip on them. True, we need to add here the ongoing effort by the "NGOs" and "foundations" and "brain trusts" and "think tanks" funded by the pundits of the "liberal democracy" thinking - thinly veiled disguise of neocons, neolibs and the like - whose devilish choir keeps peddling the antinational propaganda. As a result too many are still blind for the reality in which they live; too many would assure you "in the normal state..." while explaining to you, the foreigner, what a wonderful state you're a national of. Perplexed, you would wonder should you tell them that you, a graduate Portuguese teacher, are already 25 years Gastarbeiter in Switzerland, and there's no prospect you'd go back home since there are no jobs there, let alone such with comparable pay, so that you should quit doing the janitor's job; or that you, a freshman from Spain are emigrating to Brazil hoping to start a life there as there's no prospect whatsoever for a decent life in your beloved Andalucia; or that you, a Belgian retiree and former executive, plan to take up residence in Argentina, together with a bunch of friends - 6 families altogether - to form an enclave in a small community and live off the pensions that are insufficient to sustain you if you'd stay back; or that you, an American professional lucky enough to still have a job, join others to fight off the gradual assault on your Constitutional rights that the establishment is driving... The blinded (not by signs but by the Propaganda) Bulgarian will not have noticed that several hundreds of British retirees have elected to live in his country as their pensions would not sustain them back in the UK. The blinded Bulgarian would think - if he thinks, in this deeply troubled current state of mind of his - that the British retirees do not comprehend what "a normal state" means...
So, what does Internet have to do with Revolution? Internet itself is a revolution in information dissemination, both in terms of speed and access - revolution in technology that could enable societal revolution. No wonder the Nomenklatura is trying to put it under control so that 1) to limit the access while 2) spying on the People. Which deed was the final straw in exposing itself as THE Archenemy of the People... Internet is the tool that helped generate the current universal contempt towards the Nomenklatura, pitting the People against it. Internet is the enabler for you to get this message: unless we eliminate the Nomenklatura it will enslave us, so let's scrap it!
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* Meanwhile the value of the dollar has been diluted with an amount that is equivalent to the aggregated added value to be created until all debt is repaid. That it keeps being traded as if nothing happened in the last decades hinges on the promise that such added value can and will be created, one day. For how long still will that premise hold is the current centennial question.
Conclusion
The Revolution within Democracy is on, in the mind of countless many. We, the dissidents who oppose Nomenklaturocracy, have taken up the task to help open the eyes of the confused, misinformed and brainwashed, and to assist a peaceful, democratic change to People Power. Because we can, and - united - we shall overcome!
References
1. I. Daraktchiev, "Bulgaria, terra europeansis incognita," ISBN 978-954-91584-3-4
2. I. Daraktchiev, Nomenklaturocracy or what exactly was Orwell right about
3. I. Daraktchiev, On reading the signs of Vox Populi
4. I. Daraktchiev, Open letter to Richard Rahn
5. Laurent Louis, Pleas at the Federal Parliament of Belgium
6. Etienne Chouard
7. Andrea Cangialosi, Delegative democracy: is the PiratenPartei liquid democracy proposal fit for Germany?
8. Russel Brand, Russell Brand on revolution: "We no longer have the luxury of tradition", New Statesman, 24.10.2013
9. Jeremy Paxman, Interview of Russel Brand, Newsnight
10. I. Daraktchiev, Open letter to Russel Brand and Jeremy Paxman, http://zaedno.mobi/Zaedno/Foreign_Reports_on_Nomenklaturocracy_files/OPEN%20LETTER%20to%20Russell%20Brand%20and%20Jeremy%20Paxman.pdf
11. Henry Mintzberg, Managing Government, Governing Management, Harvard Business Review, May-June 1996
12. Jon Rappoport, Who really runs things in America?
13. Tony Cartalucci, Brookings' "Which Path to Persia?", Part I: The war has already begun, total war is a possibility, Part II: "Which Path to Persia?: Redux"
14. I. Daraktchiev, The Basic economic considerations underpinning the upcoming revolution in Bulgaria, Appendix I in Ref. 1
15. I. Daraktchiev, Analysis of the pluses and minuses of communism & democracy, Chapter 31 in Ref. 1
16. I. Daraktchiev, The revolution in Bulgaria: status update, August 4th, 2013
17. R. Rahn, The success of Eastern Europe, The Brussels Journal, 2012.09.06
18. Jürgen Habermas, (1962 trans 1989) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a category of Bourgeois Society, Polity, Cambridge. ISBN 0-7456-0274-6
19. Harrie Salman, Die Heilung Europas, Schafhausen, Switzerland, 1999
20. Johannes Heinrichs, Revolution der Demokratie. Eine Realutopie. Maas, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-929010-92-5
21. Ronald G Young, A draft guide for the perplexed
22. John Michael Greer, Consuming Democracy
23. Jon Rappoport, The Covert Op Called Democracy: Perverse Poetry and Sentimental Music, July 24, 2013
24. Paul Craig Roberts, How America Was Lost
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