Western Individualism

luka

Well-known member

"There is an abrupt time-shift in canto 46 from ‘how it was under Duke Leopold’ to how it is now, in the present moment. Moreover, the poet shifts his identity. He is no longer a searcher of archives, nor the preacher against usury. Now he is a contemporary investigator and prosecutor of crime. He has been on the case for seventeen years and longer, ever since he grasped what Douglas was going on about in the New Age office in 1918, that is, that the government can create credit and distribute purchasing power to its people. He can see the crime, has the evidence and a confession, but can he get a conviction?


The criminal he wants to put away is the banking system which has usurped the power to create credit and which exercises it for private profit and against the public interest. The confession was made by William Paterson, one of the speculators who set up the Bank of England in 1694, in its prospectus and charter. The Bank, he wrote, “Hath benefit of interest on all the moneys which it, the bank, creates out of nothing.”


David Moody. Ezra Pound Poet. Volume II: The Epic Years 1921-1939, 218.
 

luka

Well-known member

"
It need hardly be said that for the last century or more, the practice of governments has been to neglect internal economy; to commit every conceivable villainy, devilry and idiocy and to employ foreign affairs, conquests, dumpings, exploitations as a means of distracting attention from conditions at home, or to use the spoils of savages as palliatives to domestic sores or in producing an eyewash of ‘prosperity’. In the sense that such prosperity is useful as ‘bait’; as spectacular fortunes; as the chance of getting rich.


Ezra Pound. ABC of Economics (1933). Selected Prose 245.





AN INTELLIGENT SALESMAN’S GUIDE TO THE ARMAMENTS INDUSTRY


[…]


The purchasers of armaments are Governments. The success of the business, therefore, depends upon persuading Governments to buy.


No Government wishes to spend money. Taxation is unpopular. But every Government will spend money on armaments if convinced that the expenditure is necessary for national defence.


Therefore the first things an armament firm must do is to convince Governments that its articles are indispensable for this purpose.


An armament firm produces a new type of death-dealing instrument and submits it to a Government. The instrument is costly. The Government knows that no rival Power possesses it, and turns it down.


The armament firm is not discouraged. It knows that it has only to get one Government to buy the new type of death-dealer and immediately all governments will buy. Any War Minister who neglected to order the latest weapons in use would betray the sacred cause of national defence.


So the armament firm seeks out some Government which is nervous about the arms of some rival nation. “Take this new invention,” says the firm, “and you need fear your rival no longer.”


Or the firm seeks out some small nation just launching out in armaments expenditure, with a Government or ruler who will take pride in possessing the first of a new type of armament.


It does not matter how insignificant the Government is: once get the new invention on the market and no Government will dare to be without it.


But sometimes there is a difficulty. The Governments of small nations cannot afford to buy. So comes the second principle of armament selling: Governments must be lent money if necessary. That involves a close relationship with the banks.


It will be convenient, therefore, if armament directors happen to be bank directors; perhaps the armament firm will run a bank itself to facilitate the loan. The loan will be made on conditions that orders are placed with the firm.


The next necessity in the technique of armament salesmanship is the use of Press influence. The heavy sale of armaments depends upon the state of tension in international relations. Therefore public psychology must be kept nervous. This not only involves making the Press of your own country suspicious of other countries: the Press of other countries must be nervous of the intentions of your country.


Armament salesmanship therefore requires close connection with the Press. Own newspapers if you can. Some of your directors should certainly also be directors of newspapers. Don’t be too squeamish about the truth of your stories. Publicity knows no morals. Good business depends upon war scares. Foment them!


Fenner Brockway. The Bloody Traffic. London: Victor Gollancz, 1933
 

Leo

Well-known member
yeah, remember seeing that earlier this year. Sinclair also used to have 2016 trump campaign spokesperson Boris Epshteyn do a weekly "political commentary" and forced all local affiliates to air it.

the left never get this organized, for better or worse.
 

luka

Well-known member
The intensity of mass-control and exploitation is increased by the multiplication of superficial differences: “Thus, if a man can be made to feel himself acutely (a) an American; (b) a young American; (c) a middle-west young American; (d) a “radical and enlightened” middle-west young American; (e) a “college-educated” etc etc; (f) a “college-educated” dentist who is an etc etc; (g) college-educated’ dentist of such-and-such a school of dentistry, etc, etc, — the more inflexible each of these links is, the more powerful, naturally, is the chain. Or he can be locked into any of these compartments as though by magic by anyone understanding the wires.”3 (The Art of Being Ruled)
 
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