tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34493238764852911632024-03-13T11:57:48.045-07:00The Sixth EstateThe Sixth Estate is an observer, critic and counterweight to The Fourth Estate ("Mainstream" News Media) and The Fifth Estate ("Acceptable" Critics of The Fourth Estate). We try to bring solid stories, with solid evidence, contending and diverse perspectives, on the vital issues of our times anywhere on the planet.Omahkohkiaayo i'poyihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16061952911212543042noreply@blogger.comBlogger198125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449323876485291163.post-60760524752030601052010-08-22T13:10:00.000-07:002010-08-22T13:42:50.231-07:00A Note of Appreciation from the Rich<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/THGJQPUydKI/AAAAAAAAA8Q/ZxzwOaadsyQ/s1600/capitalism.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 259px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5508334731335464098" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/THGJQPUydKI/AAAAAAAAA8Q/ZxzwOaadsyQ/s400/capitalism.jpg" /></a><br /><div><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/THGJPqok1fI/AAAAAAAAA8I/OCHsljZ5yRQ/s1600/wage-slave-small.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 176px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 108px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5508334721486345714" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/THGJPqok1fI/AAAAAAAAA8I/OCHsljZ5yRQ/s400/wage-slave-small.jpg" /></a><br /><div align="center"><em><strong>A Note of Appreciation from the Rich</strong></em> </div><div align="justify"><br />Let’s be honest: you’ll never win the lottery. On the other hand, the chances are pretty good that you’ll slave away at some miserable job the rest of your life. That’s because you were in all likelihood born into the wrong social class. Let’s face it—you’re a member of the working caste. Sorry!<br /><br />As a result, you don’t have the education, upbringing, connections, manners, appearance, and good taste to ever become one of us. In fact, you’d probably need a book the size of the yellow pages of New York City to list all the unfair advantages we have over you. That’s why we’re so relieved to know that you still continue to believe all those silly fairy tales about “justice” and “equal opportunity” in America.<br /><br />Of course, in a hierarchical social system like ours, there’s never been much room at the top to begin with. Besides, it is already occupied by us—and we like it up here too much that we intend to keep it that way. But at least there’s usually someone lower in the social hierarchy that you can feel superior to and kick in the teeth once in a while. Even a lowly dishwasher can easily find some poor slob further down in the pecking order to sneer and spit at. So be thankful for migrant workers, prostitutes, and homeless street people.<br /><br />Always remember that if everyone like you were economically secure and socially privileged like us, there would be no one left to fill all those boring, dangerous, low-paid jobs in our economy. And no one to fight our wars for us, or blindly follow orders in our “authoritarian” corporate institutions. And certainly no one to meekly go to their grave without having lived a full and creative life. So please, keep up the good work!<br /><br />You also probably don’t have the same greedy, compulsive drive to possess wealth, power, and prestige that we have. And even though you may sincerely want to change the way you live, you’re also afraid of the very change you desire, thus keeping you and others like you in a nervous state of limbo. So you go through life mechanically playing your assigned social role, terrified what others would think should you ever dare to “break out of the mold.”<br /><br />Naturally we try to play you off against each other whenever it suits our purposes: high-waged workers against low-waged; unionized against non-unionized; Black against White; male against female; American workers against Japanese against Mexican against…; We continually push your wages down by invoking “foreign competition”, “the laws of supply and demand”, “national security”, or “the bloated federal deficit”. We throw you on the unemployed scrap heap if you step out of line or jeopardize our profits. And to give you an occasional break from the monotony of our daily economic blackmail, we allow you to participate in our stage-managed electoral shell games, better known to you ordinary folks as “elections”. And we note that happily for us, you haven’t a clue as to what’s really happening—instead, we get you to blame “Aliens”,“Tree-hugging Environmentalists”, “N*ggers”, “Jews”, “Welfare Queens” and countless others for your troubled situation. </div><div align="justify"><br />We’re also very pleased that many of you still embrace the “work ethic”, even though most jobs in our economy degrade the environment, undermine your physical and emotional health, and basically suck your one and only life right out of you. We obviously don’t know much about work; but of course we’re sure glad you do.<br /><br />Of course, life could be different. Society could be intelligently organized to meet the real needs of the general population. You and others like you could collectively fight to free yourselves from our domination. But you don’t know that. In fact, you can’t even imagine that another way of life is possible. And that’s probably the greatest, most significant achievement of our system—robbing you of your imagination, your creativity, your ability to think and act for yourself.<br /><br />So we’d truly like to thank you from the bottom of our heartless hearts. Your loyal sacrifice makes possible our corrupt luxury; your work makes our system work. Thanks so much for “knowing your place”—even without knowing it.<br /></div><div align="center"><br /><em><strong>Rich $cum of America<br /><br />He who hath the gold makes the rules.<br /></div></strong></em></div>Omahkohkiaayo i'poyihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16061952911212543042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449323876485291163.post-39356390987364657562010-07-04T12:41:00.001-07:002010-07-04T12:46:27.516-07:00Some Older Papers: Open Letter to the Government of China and Genocide and U.S. Indigenous Peoples<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TDDk9gC_9rI/AAAAAAAAA74/Nzj2lEGOze0/s1600/scan0218.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 291px; height: 400px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TDDk9gC_9rI/AAAAAAAAA74/Nzj2lEGOze0/s400/scan0218.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5490139690990302898" /></a><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TDDk8_88SjI/AAAAAAAAA7w/uP7SGFO9Wmk/s1600/scan0219.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 291px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TDDk8_88SjI/AAAAAAAAA7w/uP7SGFO9Wmk/s400/scan0219.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5490139682374961714" /></a>Omahkohkiaayo i'poyihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16061952911212543042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449323876485291163.post-17933759602598439872010-06-23T08:31:00.000-07:002010-06-23T08:36:31.170-07:00"You've Come a Long Way Baby": But From What to What?<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TCIp5pWhNjI/AAAAAAAAA7Y/JeQ1sfEakLE/s1600/scan0212.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 291px; height: 400px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TCIp5pWhNjI/AAAAAAAAA7Y/JeQ1sfEakLE/s400/scan0212.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5485993366420272690" /></a><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TCIp5F5xOOI/AAAAAAAAA7Q/S-1NR5y7lnM/s1600/scan0213.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 291px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TCIp5F5xOOI/AAAAAAAAA7Q/S-1NR5y7lnM/s400/scan0213.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5485993356904446178" /></a><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TCIp4lsaIrI/AAAAAAAAA7I/XBw-ioWhEaY/s1600/scan0214.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 291px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TCIp4lsaIrI/AAAAAAAAA7I/XBw-ioWhEaY/s400/scan0214.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5485993348258472626" /></a><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TCIp3_76pFI/AAAAAAAAA7A/40wQplQT468/s1600/scan0215.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 291px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TCIp3_76pFI/AAAAAAAAA7A/40wQplQT468/s400/scan0215.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5485993338122970194" /></a><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TCIp3b9s42I/AAAAAAAAA64/ojbinnREYao/s1600/scan0216.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 291px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TCIp3b9s42I/AAAAAAAAA64/ojbinnREYao/s400/scan0216.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5485993328466781026" /></a>Omahkohkiaayo i'poyihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16061952911212543042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449323876485291163.post-74286678566463110842010-06-16T17:12:00.000-07:002010-06-16T17:14:07.634-07:00Marxism and Indigenous Struggles: Speech To Sacramento Marxist School, November 21, 2002Omahkohkiaayo i'poyihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16061952911212543042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449323876485291163.post-46958237309816734622010-06-16T16:55:00.001-07:002010-06-16T16:58:27.437-07:00Residential Schools and Aboriginal Law (1)<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBllDP_DbHI/AAAAAAAAA6I/TOLsQ3-MO4g/s1600/scan0210.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 291px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBllDP_DbHI/AAAAAAAAA6I/TOLsQ3-MO4g/s400/scan0210.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483525127805299826" /></a><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBllCppdAOI/AAAAAAAAA6A/BI-v3dsAEr0/s1600/scan0211.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 291px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBllCppdAOI/AAAAAAAAA6A/BI-v3dsAEr0/s400/scan0211.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483525117514154210" /></a><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBllCOmJcII/AAAAAAAAA54/lTSlAcK7AYs/s1600/scan0199.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 291px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBllCOmJcII/AAAAAAAAA54/lTSlAcK7AYs/s400/scan0199.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483525110252531842" /></a>Omahkohkiaayo i'poyihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16061952911212543042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449323876485291163.post-62053951487947199122010-06-16T16:49:00.000-07:002010-06-16T16:55:13.082-07:00Residential Schools and Aboriginal Law (2)<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBlkCrpTtSI/AAAAAAAAA5w/eJSnua8GOwI/s1600/scan0200.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 291px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBlkCrpTtSI/AAAAAAAAA5w/eJSnua8GOwI/s400/scan0200.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483524018538788130" /></a><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBlkB_tmmeI/AAAAAAAAA5o/T8ZawGLCrLs/s1600/scan0201.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 291px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBlkB_tmmeI/AAAAAAAAA5o/T8ZawGLCrLs/s400/scan0201.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483524006745643490" /></a><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBlkBYjIaHI/AAAAAAAAA5g/rath6pTgC6k/s1600/scan0202.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 291px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBlkBYjIaHI/AAAAAAAAA5g/rath6pTgC6k/s400/scan0202.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483523996232738930" /></a><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBlkA4oNFLI/AAAAAAAAA5Y/0yBrNHpHfTA/s1600/scan0203.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 291px; height: 400px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBlkA4oNFLI/AAAAAAAAA5Y/0yBrNHpHfTA/s400/scan0203.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483523987664082098" /></a><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBlkAJo_KCI/AAAAAAAAA5Q/eIgelAcHL9s/s1600/scan0204.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 291px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBlkAJo_KCI/AAAAAAAAA5Q/eIgelAcHL9s/s400/scan0204.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483523975050897442" /></a>Omahkohkiaayo i'poyihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16061952911212543042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449323876485291163.post-31746801157224036062010-06-16T16:36:00.001-07:002010-06-16T16:59:28.313-07:00Residential Schools and Aboriginal Justice (3)<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBlipwh5TII/AAAAAAAAA5I/oxe0o4UDlM0/s1600/scan0205.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 291px; height: 400px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBlipwh5TII/AAAAAAAAA5I/oxe0o4UDlM0/s400/scan0205.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483522490841517186" /></a><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBlipQIw20I/AAAAAAAAA5A/5HElrHSPE4Q/s1600/scan0206.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 291px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBlipQIw20I/AAAAAAAAA5A/5HElrHSPE4Q/s400/scan0206.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483522482146171714" /></a><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBlio8nh0-I/AAAAAAAAA44/puOwwnb1p4Y/s1600/scan0207.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 291px; height: 400px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBlio8nh0-I/AAAAAAAAA44/puOwwnb1p4Y/s400/scan0207.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483522476906501090" /></a><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBlioSS8Y6I/AAAAAAAAA4w/vRxK02hpBHA/s1600/scan0208.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 291px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBlioSS8Y6I/AAAAAAAAA4w/vRxK02hpBHA/s400/scan0208.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483522465545872290" /></a><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBlintsgL1I/AAAAAAAAA4o/Y3nLLBbRBik/s1600/scan0209.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 291px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBlintsgL1I/AAAAAAAAA4o/Y3nLLBbRBik/s400/scan0209.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483522455720963922" /></a>Omahkohkiaayo i'poyihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16061952911212543042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449323876485291163.post-57446095866752375052010-06-11T16:36:00.000-07:002010-06-11T18:51:09.204-07:00The Theoretical System and Predictions of Karl Marx: Compendium of Assumptions and Predictions<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBLd2CXVI2I/AAAAAAAAA34/X_5keaZ9kIE/s1600/200px-Karl_Marx_001.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 200px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 282px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5481687616880714594" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBLd2CXVI2I/AAAAAAAAA34/X_5keaZ9kIE/s400/200px-Karl_Marx_001.jpg" /></a><br /><div><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBLd1gDWztI/AAAAAAAAA3w/35W0mcMgApw/s1600/capital-290.gif"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 290px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 350px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5481687607670132434" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBLd1gDWztI/AAAAAAAAA3w/35W0mcMgApw/s400/capital-290.gif" /></a><br /><div><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBLd1Yg_BzI/AAAAAAAAA3o/wO6_7L03kBQ/s1600/capitalism.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 259px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5481687605646919474" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TBLd1Yg_BzI/AAAAAAAAA3o/wO6_7L03kBQ/s400/capitalism.jpg" /></a><br /><div align="justify">The Theoretical System and Predictions of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels:<br />-</div><div align="justify">A Compendium of Assumptions, Postulates and Predictions<br />-</div><div align="justify">By James M. Craven/Omahkohkiaaiipooyii<br />-<br /></div><div align="justify">The theories and predictions of Karl Marx, constitute, although unfinished due to his death, a whole theoretical system. They form a system in the sense that: a) the core general postulates, from which specific conclusions and hypotheses are deductively and derived (both Episteme and Techne bases and levels of knowledge involved<a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1">[1]</a>), that are asserted to be self-evident truths or “axiomatic”, are all mutually supporting and generally not contradictory; b) The first-order or primary, second-order or secondary, and specific, predictions and conclusions of Marx, follow deductively and specifically (as tight logical derivatives<a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2">[2]</a>) from the core (or “primary”) and second-order (or “secondary”) and specific postulates of the theoretical system<a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3">[3]</a>; c) The primary and secondary predictions and conclusions are all interdependent, mutually supporting and not contradictory (with proper caveats about tendencies under assumed conditions rather than asserted iron laws and inexorable outcomes); d) The arrangements and publications of Volumes II, III and IV of Das Capital were made after Marx’s death and without his guidance and input except in the notes he left; these considerations must be noted as one of the limiting caveats in points a to c above.</div><div align="justify">-<br />Marx and Engels’ Assumptions and Postulates (Value and Price</div><div align="justify">-<br />1. The world of commodities is a world of exchange, and exchanges of commodities involve social relations between humans and only superficially (fetishized) relations between the commodities produced by those humans. (Capital, I. p. 83</div><div align="justify">-<br />2. All commodities have two aspects or dimensions: use-value and exchange-value; use- values have no independent existence and serve only as ‘material depositories of exchange-value’ (Capital, I, p. 43) which, appears as a quantitative relationship between use-values of one sort exchanged for others of another sort (Capital, I p. 43) and is the essence of the commodity or the “fundamental law” of modern political economy (Contribution to Critique of Political Economy, CPE, p 62); </div><div align="justify">-<br />3. If a given commodity, say one-quarter of wheat can be exchanged for x blacking, y silk or z gold, etc, then wheat has not one but many exchange values and since x blacking, y silk and z gold are all exchangeable with one quarter of wheat, they must therefore logically, arithmetically and by definition be replaceable with each other or equal to each other (Capital, I. p. 43);</div><div align="justify">-<br />4. If one quarter of corn = x cwt of iron, then their equivalence means there must be something common to both of them such that they can be equated in some way. That “common substance” or “denominator” is that they are both products of labor. (Capital, I. p. 44);</div><div align="justify">-<br />5. All labor, no matter its nature, form or level—unskilled, semi-skilled or skilled—Involves, to varying degrees, the expenditure of human capabilities and energy—brain, nerves, muscles—(Capital, I. p. 82)</div><div align="justify">-<br />6. The exchange value of any commodity is but a material expression or manifestation of a specific form of social labor that produced it; and thus, by definition, and tautologically (Marx’s term), matter in a natural state has no exchange value since, or as, it has not been touched or altered by human labor (CPE, pp. 31-32)</div><div align="justify">-<br />7. Labor, embodied in all commodities, can be reduced to a common denominator of human labor in the abstract which can be measured in units of time, with value created only by socially necessary labor time (otherwise the more unproductive the labor the more value created) with varieties of labor (skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled) cardinally measurable in units of unskilled labor(skilled labor counts as compound unskilled labor) and which labor must satisfy some definite social want (Capital, I pp 45, 51-52, 54; CPE, p 25) The scales for conversion of various forms of skilled labor into compound unskilled labor are set by competition (Poverty of Philosophy, PP, p. 58);</div><div align="justify">-<br />8. When the amount of socially necessary abstract labor expended on a commodity changes, then also so does its absolute and relative exchange values (in relation to other commodities and in their exchange relations to it)change; thus exchange-value varies directly with the quantity, and inversely with the productiveness, of labor; and thus also, those factors affecting the productiveness of labor (efficiency of labor, state and effectiveness of use of technology, social organization of production) also affect value relations. (Capital, I, pp 46-47) These postulates, according to Marx, resolve Adam Smith’s water-diamond paradox if perceived utility is asserted as basis of value: water and air have high use value but low exchange value because of wide availability and thus no socially necessary labor time needed to extract and use them whereas the reverse is true for diamonds (low use value but high exchange value); </div><div align="justify">-<br />9. Purpose of all exchange is the realization of use-values (Capital, I, p. 117) The metamorphosis of the commodity is expressed in C—M—C1 where C and C1 represent different commodities with equal amounts of labor content. (Capital, I, p. 97) Producers produce use-values for others (nonuse-values for themselves) in order to accumulate the means (Money) to acquire via exchange, use-values for themselves. Production for exchange instead of for immediate consumption creates only potential use-values which may or may not be realized, but can only be realized, with the complete metamorphosis of the commodities (C—M or sale of one commodity by its producer; Capital, I, p. 119; and M—C1 purchase of another commodity that has use value for the producer of C; Capital, I. p. 123) Only transfer of commodity ownership is involved and no effect on exchange-value—all exchanges are of equivalents in labor content (Capital, I, p. 175); </div><div align="justify">-<br />10. The purpose of all sales is simply the monetization of exchange-value. The purpose of all purchases is the realization of use-value. In the process of circulation, each commodity maintains its exchange value while becoming a use-value;</div><div align="justify">-<br />11. Labor-power (capacity to work), not labor (the use of the capacity to work in production and distribution) is sold as a commodity. The “value” of labor-power, represented in the wage rate, is the amount of socially necessary labor it takes to produce the means of subsistence and for expanded reproduction of that labor-power on a consistent basis under given historically determined and varying (indifferent systems) conditions and levels of “civilization”. (Capital, I, pp. 174, 186, 189, 190);</div><div align="justify">-<br />12. Labor-power is unique as a commodity in that its use-value possesses the unique property of being a source of value and whose consumption (the consumption—use—of labor-power is the embodiment and definition of “labor”) is the creator of value (Capital, I, p. 186); this uniqueness is understood only by the purchaser of labor-power the capitalist;<br />-<br />13. So far as the advance of capital (payment of wages) is concerned, labor-power counts as a value; in the processes of production, labor-power is turned into labor creating value beyond what was paid for the labor-power utilized to create it. (Capital, III, p. 41);</div><div align="justify">-<br />14. The purchase of labor-power is only for the purpose of utilizing the labor-power in production to control the laborers, their labor, and the products and value created by their labor (Capital, I, p. 206);</div><div align="justify">-<br />15. When the product of the labor-power re-enters the process of circulation, which it must for the whole purpose of paying for labor-power to create value in excess of it to be realized, the total metamorphosis of the commodity produced by labor can be symbolized in the ‘inverted form of exchange’: M—C—M’ where M = wages paid for labor-power, C = commodity created by labor-power (as inventory a form of capital or commodity capital) and M’ = the money equivalent of the exchange value of the product of labor power. (Capital, I, p. 186; Capital III, p. 402);</div><div align="justify">-<br />16. The extended process can be written combining the metamorphosis of the commodity that is the product of labor-power with the metamorphosis of the commodity labor- power: C—M—C’ + M—C—M’ = M—C…C’—M’ Where M = money advanced for labor-power, C = commodity labor-power, C’ = commodity produced by labor (utilized labor-power) and C…C’ = the process of production and C in the production process Marx calls “commodity capital” and M’ = money equivalent of the exchange value of the product of labor and finally M’ – M or delta M = Surplus value. (Gottheil p. 14);</div><div align="justify">-<br />17. “It is a commodity—capital, as distinguished from a simpler commodity, 1) because it is pregnant with surplus value, so that the realization of its value is simultaneously a realization of surplus value…2) It is a commodity-capital, because its function as a commodity is a process in its process of reproduction as capital (Capital, III, p. 402 cited in Gottheil p. 14);</div><div align="justify">-<br />18. Surplus-value is a product only of the process of production and not circulation. Surplus- value does not violate the so-called “Laws of Exchange” (of equivalents) and laborer not defrauded in sale of labor-power; Marx further postulates that: a) no relationship between sellers and buyers; b) seller is sole owner of capacity to labor (labor-power); c) the sale of labor-power is for a definite period of time; d) labor-power is considered by both parties as a commodity (Capital, I. p. 186);</div><div align="justify">-<br />19. The seller of labor-power, like the seller of any commodity, parts with its use-value in order to realize its exchange-value. One cannot be taken without the other. The use-value of labor-power, labor, belongs just as little to the seller as the use-vale of oil;<br />-<br />20. belongs to the dealer who has sold it. The laborer receives the exchange-value equivalent of his or her means of subsistence, and the capitalist, after selling the product of labor C’—M’, realizes the exchange-value of a use-value that included both paid and unpaid labor time. (Capital, I, p. 216);</div><div align="justify">-<br />21. Commodity exchange-value, as a first or primary approximation and division of exchange-value, may be divided into paid and unpaid labor, labor and surplus labor, value and surplus-value. But, this is only a first approximation, Since a commodity is created via the application and utilization of labor-power (labor) being coupled with productive contexts and “means of production” (Capital, I p. 201), thus exchange-value involves living labor-power or variable capital (v) as well as past or dead labor embodied in the means of production or constant capital (c) (Capital, I, p. 232);</div><div align="justify">-<br />22. The only form of labor capable of creating value is from living labor power (v) being utilized (labor). The conversion of the means of production into the commodity transfers its own exchange value and no more and thus is called constant capital; the exchange value of the means of production is not determined by the process into which it enters but rather by the process out of which it came as a commodity itself and its exchange-value is only realized, like all commodities, and a means of production has use only, when it is employed in the production process as a use-value in conjunction with living labor (Capital, I, pp. 203-4, 229);<br />-</div><div align="justify">23. C = c + v + s where: C = composition of value; c = constant capital used up; v = labor-power costs; s = absolute quantity of surplus-value or value created by utilized labor-power or labor; this represents not only the value structure of a commodity, but also structures of processes of production on macro and micro scales; while the value of a commodity may remain constant, the ratios of c : v : s may well change. These changing ratios may be very revealing about the nature and dynamics of the economy but are hidden in the general value C or exchange value of the commodity or when labor is generally measured without regard to form (living v non-living, paid and unpaid, etc)</div><div align="justify">-<br />24. s= f (v); value produced = v + s; s/v = rate of surplus-value (Capital, I, p 239);</div><div align="justify">-<br />25. Necessary labor or necessary labor time = portion of a whole working day spent producing value to cover wages or costs of labor-power or costs of subsistence of the laborer; surplus labor or surplus labor time = rest of the working day spent producing value above wages or producing surplus-value. (Capital, I, p. 256);</div><div align="justify">-<br />26. s/v = surplus labor/necessary labor = rate (degree) of exploitation of labor (Capital, I, p. 241)</div><div align="justify">-<br />27. The division of the working day between necessary or paid and surplus or unpaid labor is depends significantly upon labor productivity, and is manifested in the organic composition of capital ( c /c + v ) measuring the relationship between value of capital and that of total capital outlay. The productiveness of labor varies directly with the organic composition of capital and inversely to the value of the commodity. (Capital, III, p. 248.) “The degree of the productivity of labor, in a given society, is expressed in the relative extent of the means of production that one laborer, during a given time, with the same tension of labor-power, turns into products.” (Capital, I, pp 681-82; quoted in Gottheil p 17); </div><div align="justify">-<br />28. Comparing prices of labor-intensive (handicrafts) versus capital-intensive products, Marx found empirically that the more the capital-intensive the production, the share represented by c or instruments of production, increases relatively but declines absolutely (Capital, I, p. 426);</div><div align="justify">-<br />29. Relation between surplus and total capital outlay is the rate of profit ( s/c + v ) (Capital, III, p. 55) note rate of profit is calculated on advance of capital not expenditure in production only when turnover rate is unitary do expenditures = advances;</div><div align="justify">-<br />30. In producing commodity C1 with a capital structure of 80c + 20v and a rate of surplus- value of 100%, then the exchange-value (if price = value) would be: 80c + 20v + 20s = 120. And the organic composition of capital would be c/ c + v or 80/80 + 20 = 80% and the rate of profit would be s/c + v or 20/80 + 20 = 20%;</div><div align="justify">-<br />31. Marx’s Simple Commodity Exchange Model: (C—M—C1 ) a) exchange of commodities with equal amounts of labor; b) commodity prices = exchange-values therefore relative prices = relative exchange-values = relative amounts of labor time in commodities; c) equal rates of surplus-value in all industries—s1/v1 = s2/v2 = s3/v3…sn/vn; ; d) and equal rates of profit due to competition: s1/c1 + v1 = s2/c2 + v2 +… sn/cn + vn; d) These assumptions of equal s/v and s/c + v in all industries also imply equal organic compositions of capital or equal c/ c + v. This is as a matter of internal consistency of the Marxist theory of price (that purports to relate commodity prices to their labor contents and if equal rates of surplus value and profit are assumed) and not empirical fact as Marx concedes different organic compositions of capital in different industries;</div><div align="justify">-<br />32. The identity between price and value in Marx’s simple commodity exchange model (via supposed or assumed competition-driven equalizations of rates of surplus-value (he was fully aware of different rates of surplus-value and the reasons for them in the real world), rates of profit, coupled with assumed equalizations of organic compositions of capital for internal consistency of the theory, is suspended as only an “approximation” in Marx’s more developed theory of price determination (Gottheil, p. 18);</div><div align="justify">-<br />33. Marx’s theory of price, as with his other theories, was presented in Capital via a series of “successive approximations”. Starting at the most abstract, first approximation level, under conditions of simplifying assumptions, and then, by progressively removing simplifying assumptions, getting closer to the reality being modeled; examining if this model had to be modified with the “noise” and “friction” of the real world. This classical method of successive approximations in his presentation, and that of Engels who edited the second and third volumes, was exactly the opposite of how he actually developed his theories via very serious research on totalities, not simply a-priori speculation, and then, via progressive adduction or induction, he was lead to and developed the abstractions, generalizations, principles, assumptions and postulates employed in his models and deductive reasoning;</div><div align="justify">-<br />34. Marx’s more developed theory of price determination is based upon: 1) his notions of ‘the scientific laws of value creation’; 2) how value and surplus-value creation appears to the typical capitalist. Where Marx saw commodity value as C = c + (v + s) with only v creating s, the capitalist sees C = (c + v) + s with surplus value a function of both c and s; (c + v) represents “total capital outlay” necessary to realize surplus-value to the capitalist and Marx calls profit that surplus-value resulting from total capital outlay (Capital, III, p. 49) which he does not distinguish between v and c (Capital, III, p. 47-48) and the capital advanced to produce that profit cost-price (k) (Capital, III, p. 39);</div><div align="justify">-<br />35. Thus for the capitalist, the value of the commodity is made up of the sum of cost-price (k) plus profit (p) and the relation between cost-price and profit (p/k) Marx calls the rate of profit (s/c + v) and thus s/ c + v = p/k;</div><div align="justify">-<br />36. Marx is fully aware of differing organic compositions of capital in different industries (what Marx calls “spheres of production”) and not only concedes them in reality, but differing organic compositions of capital are said to be the primary basis for deviations of prices from values (labor contents) or fundamental exchange values which act as centers of gravity around which deviations occur;</div><div align="justify">-<br />37. Marx assumes that under given conditions, the compositions of v and c in total capital are functions of technical and value considerations. Technical refers to a supposed requirement that: “a given quantity of labor-power, represented by a definite number of laborers, is required for the purpose of producing a definite quantity of products, for instance in one day, and thereby to consume productively, by setting in motion, a definite quantity of the means of production, machinery, raw materials, etc. A definite number of laborers corresponds to a definite quantity of means of production, so that a definite quantity of living labor corresponds to a definite quantity of materialized labor in means of production.” (Capital, III, p 181);</div><div align="justify">-<br />38. In development of price theory from first to second approximations, Marx assumed that in all spheres of production: equal rates of surplus-value; constant and equal working days; equality of wages; perfect mobility in all product and factor markets; competitive markets; unitary rates of capital turnover (Capital III, p. 181);</div><div align="justify">-<br />39. On the basis of the assumptions of point 37, rates of profit resulting from equal investments of capital in spheres of production A and B depend upon their respective organic compositions. If say in sphere A the rate of surplus value is 100%, C = 90c + 10v + 10s = 110; but if in sphere B the organic composition is C = 10c + 90v + 90s = 190, then the rate of profit in one case would be 10% and in another case 90%. Marx rejects that such sustained deviations from an average rate of profit could be sustained under capitalism as capitalists are only concerned with ROIs and not organic compositions as the cost-price makes no distinctions between c and v and thus competition will drive any deviations around and towards equalization and/or a long-run average rate of profit (Capital, III, p. 182-86);</div><div align="justify">-<br />40. The contradiction between equalization of rates of profit on the one hand, and differing organic compositions of capital on the other hand, is resolved via transforming actual rate of profit to average (or general) rate of profit (Capital, I. p. 671 and III, p. 185) and value to price of production and assumption of an average of varying organic compositions of capital. Total capital outlay only equals cost-price if total constant capital were completely used up in production and, if not, then the resulting cost-price (k) would be less than the capital advanced (this has no bearing according to Marx on determination of the general rate of profit); </div><div align="justify">-<br />41. Prices or (P) “arise by drawing the average of the various rates of profit in the various spheres of production and adding this average to the cost-prices of the different spheres of production.” (Capital III, p. 185);</div><div align="justify">-<br />42. Now Marx distinguishes between s/c + v or a special rate of profit in a given sphere versus a general or average rate of profit that is a sort of center of gravity for equalization of various specific rates of profit;</div><div align="justify">-<br />43. While capitalists recover their total capital outlays in sales of their commodities: “they do not secure the surplus-value and consequently the profit created in their own sphere by the production of these commodities, but only as much surplus-value and profit as falls to the share of every aliquot part of the total social capital out of the total surplus value, or social profit produced by the total capital of society in all the spheres of production.” (Capital, III, p. 186-87);</div><div align="justify">-<br />44. The value-price transformation at second approximation:<br />Commodity Value C = c+ v + s = (c + v) + s and: Prices of production = k + p = k + p’k<br />When the specific organic composition of capital = the social composition of capital then:<br />s= p; p’ = s/ c + v; C = P<br />-<br />45. Note on transformation problem. Marx’s value to price conversions affects later development of capital reproduction. The simple reproduction equilibrium scheme in Volume II of Capital, deals with intra-class exchanges on the basis of values and not prices. In this context, had values been converted to prices, then the simple reproduction equilibrium solutions could not have been achieved. Attempts to reconcile the value-price transformation within the simple-reproduction model are referred to as the “Transformation Problem”;</div><div align="justify">-<br />46. When the specific > social composition of capital then: s <> s/ c + v; C <> p; p’ <> P;</div><div align="justify">-<br />47. Marx’s theory of value is not a theory of price. Only in the impossible case of only one organic composition of capital in the whole economy would C = P Marx explicitly mentions that there are other factors that cause prices to deviate and oscillate around values which are seen as centers of gravity around and to which prices are pushed and pulled via forces of competition ( Capital, III, pp 206-210);</div><div align="justify">-<br />48. Prices of production is called “market-values” that hold only where no shortages or surpluses (equilibrium) are present; otherwise, actual or “market prices” may be greater or less than market-values (Capital, III, p. 210);</div><div align="justify">-<br />49. Marx’s concept of ordinary, weak and strong demand refer to social or market not individual demand compared with market supply of a commodity that satisfies individual use-value. (Capital, III, p. 218); connection or equation of social demand with supply said by Marx to only be accidental so ordinary demand is where Qd = Qs or equilibrium price or where market value = market price; with strong demand, market price > market value and when weak demand, market price < price =" market"> market value à > average s = surplus profits à new entries; when market price < s =" <"> </div><div align="justify">-<br />50. Deviations of market prices from market values take place not only as a result of supply and demand conditions and shifts, but also due to changes in market-values themselves as market-values falling trigger more social demand, and, when rising, trigger falling social demand (Capital, III, p. 213);<br />-<br />51. Where supply and demand oscillations regulate deviations of market price from the centers of gravity of market-values, then market-values constitute the centers of gravity for the supply and demand oscillations (Capital, III, p26);</div><div align="justify">-<br />53. The social demand to which Marx refers which regulates the principle of demand, is conditioned on the mutual relations of the different economic classes and their relative economic positions. (Capital III, p. 214); Effective demand contrasted with social need by Marx. (Capital, III, pp. 222-23);<br />-<br />Marx and Engels’ Assumptions and Postulates (Profit, Surplus Value and Innovation)<br />-<br />1. Two forms, as a result of two sources, of surplus-vale: Relative and Absolute;</div><div align="justify">-<br />2. Society has developed to a level of technological sophistication in which a given laborer can, produce output of value greater than his means of subsistence and the costs of the means of production used up in production (capital, I, p. 232, III, p 741);</div><div align="justify">-<br />3. Circulation, or exchange of commodities, as opposed to production, begets no value as what one might gain with higher prices as a seller loses as a buyer; (Capital, I, pp. 180-82) This also applies to profit or surplus-value as a return on Merchant’s capital employed to finance the sale of the commodities (Capital I, pp 182-83); Merchant claims a share of profit but not a source of it; If surplus-value is realized in the sale of the commodities it is only because that surplus-value already existed within them. (Capital, III, p. 329);</div><div align="justify">-<br />4. Surplus-value formation is independent of property or class relations as if instead of working for the capitalist the laborer worked independently, he would still be required to work the same number of hours to produce the value of his labor power (Capital, I, p. 240) The existence of profit or surplus value depends upon purely technical rather than political considerations; surplus value must be seen as congealed surplus labor time or nothing but materialized labor (Capital, I, p. 241);</div><div align="justify">-<br />5. That profit takes the form of an unearned increment in the distribution of income is a function of certain property and class relations; but if the means of production were owned by the workers, the element of profit would still appear (Capital, III, p. 733);</div><div align="justify">-<br />6. In all societies, surplus labor (above that required to produce means of subsistence of the workers) is required to replenish the means of production used up no matter who owns them. Systems differ only in the modes in which those surpluses are extracted; ( Capital, I, p. 241); </div><div align="justify">-<br />7. The imperative for surplus labor producing surplus product (production in excess of subsistence and reproduction requirements of labor-power for reproduction of means of production used up in production) is not unique to capitalism; it is an imperative under all modes of production that differ in this respect only in terms of modes of extraction of that surplus labor from the producers. (Capital, I, 241, 259-60,)<br />-<br />8. The genesis of “profit” as a specific category of capitalism and particular capitalist production-private-property relations originates with certain historical processes (Capital, II, p. 40) The institution of private property (not the same thing as private personal possessions) originated with the separation—violent expropriations—of means of production from the independent owner-producers that owned them along with other processes of “Primitive Accumulation of Capital” (Capital, I, pp 628, 785-86, 796, 835-36);</div><div align="justify">-<br />9. The capitalist claim to profit does not occur because of abstinence, sacrifice or even paying workers less (unfair exchange in wages for labor-power Capital I, pp, 186, 218) than the costs of their subsistence or to reproduce their labor power, the capitalist claim to profit rests on private property rights because the capitalist owns the means of production, thus claims to own the production from their use in combination with labor-power—labor<a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4">[4]</a>). Note here there are some implications here with increasing separation of ownership and control of capital and Marx makes the distinction between ownership of the physical capital versus ownership of the money capital that is materialized in the processes of production. Thus the investing capital claims profits to enterprise and thus the profits of the enterprise itself, not from the ownership of inert capital but from its uses and functions in production (Capital, III, p. 446);</div><div align="justify">-<br />10. Profit thus is a residual component of exchange value, the distributions of which depend upon property relations. Surplus product results not from the abstinence neither of the capitalists, nor from the supposed supervisory and management “expertise”/roles of the capitalist (Capital, I, p. 215), but from the employment of the laborer. (Capital, I. pp. 214, 651, 655; Capital, III, p. 597);</div><div align="justify">-<br />11. Capitalist consumption can and does grow with capital accumulation without the need for abstinence or without one restricting the other (Capital, I, p. 655);</div><div align="justify">-<br />12. In his analysis of the origins and nature of interest, Marx distinguishes between the industrial capitalist and the financial or money capitalist. He notes that because of the role of the industrial capitalist in the production process, he can claim that his profit is not the in opposition to wage-labor, or unpaid and exploited labor, but rather represents also the “wages of labor”—his. He forgets that his role is in the facilitating, the generation, expropriation and uses of surplus-value a portion of which goes to the money capitalist in the form of interest; that surplus value is divided into profit and interest at this level, does not change the real nature and origin of surplus-value itself. (Capital, III, p. 447);</div><div align="justify">-<br />13. Marx notes that it is not the industrial capitalist but the industrial managers that are the souls of the industrial system. (Capital, III, p. 454);</div><div align="justify">-<br />14. If: A) M---C……C’---M’ where M’ – M = Surplus-value (s); and B) M---(c + v)…..[ (c + v) + s ]---M’ (and s = M’ – M)’ and C) C = c + v + s = c + L (length of working day); then: s = L – v (surplus-value per laborer or part of working day not for value of labor-power) D. Marx’s schema for determination of magnitude of profit; </div><div align="justify">-<br />15. What is the duration of the portion of the working day where the value of labor-power is consumed by capital; Marx poses the question of how long can the working day be extended beyond the time required to reproduce the value of the labor-power itself (Capital, I. p. 290); Minimum working day is subsistence (time also includes rest and revitalization) time plus minimum surplus-value (Capital, I, p. 256);</div><div align="justify">-<br />16. Out of maximum 24 hours theoretically but not actually possible, actual working day may vary 8 to 18 hours depending upon time, space, supply of labor-power, political influences (Communist Manifesto, pp, 21-22); </div><div align="justify">-<br />17. Absolute Surplus-value is increased by adding (sometimes a few calculated minutes of overtime without pay) to the duration of the working day (Capital, I, pp. 259-265);</div><div align="justify">-<br />18. The “normal” working day is that duration that produces the greatest surplus-value in the long-run based on establishing average laborer’s working life span (30 years assumed by Marx in Capital, I, p. 258) which makes the value of labor-power per day at 1/(365 x 30) = 1/ 10950 of total labor power. Attempts to extend the labor day beyond certain limits result in decreases in long-run supply of labor; Unlike under slavery where there are “teeming” numbers of slaves available and no institutional restrictions on the levels of exploiting them (Capital, I pp. 258, 260, 292-93 and Value Price and Profit, p. 108) setting a normal duration of the working day under capitalism is the best strategy for maximizing surplus-value; capitalists, however, have a tendency to transgress their long-run interests with short-run attempts to extend the working day in practice beyond its limits in law; </div><div align="justify">-<br />19. Constant capital (c) not a source of value but does augment the productivity of labor (Capital, I, p. 426-27) and thus influences not only the division of the working day into labor-power and surplus, but affects values of commodities (inversely related to productiveness of labor) but also the value of labor-power (v) which depends upon values of commodities necessary for its reproduction; (Capital, I. p. 350)<br />-<br />20. Whereas values are inversely related to the productiveness of labor which is directly related to use of v with c, relative surplus value is directly proportional to the productiveness of labor; (Capital, I. p 350);</div><div align="justify">-<br />21. If productiveness of labor reduces values of commodities necessary for laborers and thus the values necessary for the reproduction of labor-power, this then also reduces the portion of the total working day necessary to reproduce the labor-power utilized and thus increases the portion of the working day that is surplus labor and the surplus value produced by it (Capital, III, pp 26-27);</div><div align="justify">-<br />22. Maximum relative surplus value with use of constant capital is where labor expenses incurred in the production of the constant capital are equal to the relative surplus value forthcoming from the machine’s employment (Capital I, pp 426-27);</div><div align="justify">-<br />23. As more constant capital is used, this affects the quality of labor-power employed as it reduces the need for human muscle power and allows employment of children, women etc. the value of labor-power depreciates because although it may cost more to feed four family members than one, four day’s labor takes the place of one (head of the family) and thus unit labor-power costs (v) fall in proportion to excess of surplus labor of four over that of one, in order that now four people must live, they not only labor but expend surplus-labor for the capitalist; Thus, machinery, while augmenting the human material that forms the principal object of capital’s exploiting power, at the same time, raises the degree of exploitation. (Capital, I, pp 431-32);</div><div align="justify">-<br />24. Changes in the physical composition or in prices of the commodities that form the subsistence of the laborer, directly affect v or the value of the labor-power (Capital, III, p. 98) which, although not directly intended perhaps (lowering the values of shirts that are also part of the subsistence of the laborers) aids in raising the general rate of surplus-value (Capital, I, pp. 346-47); See Marx on Capital urging Labor to support repeal of the Corn Laws in return for Capital’s support of the 10-hour working day as the reduction in the values of staples of the diet of the workers would thus reduce variable capital costs and thus increase relative surplus value which rises as v or the value of labor-power falls (Capital I, p. 308); </div><div align="justify">-<br />25. Machinery also allows changes in social organizations of production and divisions of labor (degrees and structures of cooperation in productive processes) that allow, with increased workers, increases in specialization that also increase relative surplus-value; s = f (v[n] );</div><div align="justify">-<br />26. Marx argued that several factors serve to enhance the “powers of cooperation” or productivity of labor resulting from enhanced social organizations of production and divisions of labor: a) Increases in mechanical forces of labor (Capital, I, p.361); b)<br />-<br />27. Extension of “sphere of action” over greater space (Capital, I p. 360); c) Contraction of field of production relative to the scale of production (Capital, I, p. 360); d) The setting, at critical moments, of large masses of laborers to work (Capital, I, p. 360); e) The excitement of individuals, which raises their ‘animal spirits’ (Capital, I, p. 358); f) The impression of continuity on all operations (Capital, I p. 361); g) The simultaneous performance of different operations (Capital, I, p. 359); h) The economization of means of production by use in common ( Capital, I, p. 356); i) The development of the character of average social labor from individual labor (Capital, I, p. 355); j) Reconversion of waste elements of production into new elements of production (Capital, III, p. 95)<a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5">[5]</a> ;</div><div align="justify">-<br />28. The extent of operation or influence of these factors listed in 27 depend upon: the individual sphere of work, the social environment and the efficiency of management (Capital, III, p. 100) Shifts from handicrafts to specialization tend to reduce occupational skills to that of a class of unskilled laborers; Costs of apprenticeship are inversely related to degree of specialization which also lowers value of labor-power which extends then the domain of surplus-labor (Capital, I, p. 384-85); </div><div align="justify">-<br />29. The prolongation of the working day also reduces lower managerial labor costs and therefore greater relative surplus-value (Capital, III, p 94);</div><div align="justify">-<br />30. On the roles of money and prices relative to values of labor-power and the commodities that make up the necessities that to into reproducing labor-power, Marx notes that: Monetary values are ‘reflectors’ of the real world and cannot contribute directly to surplus-vale, but, monetary changes do affect the divisions of the working day into value of labor-power and surplus-value and if prices of subsistence commodities rise due to increased gold supply or legal depreciations of currency, then if nominal wages to not rise proportionately to price increases, then real wages fall, or the price of labor-power sinks below the value of labor-power (Value, Price and Profit, pp. 102, 105);</div><div align="justify">-<br />31. Prolongation of the working day increases de facto rate of utilization of constant capital thus reducing capital depreciation costs, thus affecting the magnitude of surplus-vale. Capital depreciation takes three forms: 1) circulatory or direct physical consumption of capital in production; 2) nonuse or ‘idleness’ of capital; 3) ‘moral’ depreciation or loss of exchange-value due to same type of capital produced more cheaply or more expensive and productive machines into competition with existing capital (Capital, I, p. 442 and Gottheil, op. cit, p. 40); “penalties” of moral depreciation ( dm )= costs of operating less efficient machines when available.<br />-<br />32. dm = c1 – c2; where c1 = value of machine at beginning of the production process and c2 = value of machine introduced during production period. To reduce dm relays of alternate labor shifts to provide continuous production are introduced. (Capital, I, p. 282); moral depreciation is the Marxian terminology for technological obsolescence;</div><div align="justify">-<br />33. Since the exchange-value is determined by the amount of socially necessary labor time in its production and not absolute amount of labor time (in which case unproductive labor would add to value) then this exchange-value Marx calls real or social exchange value (Capital, I, p. 348) and thus any capitalist operating under ‘normal’ or average conditions of outlays of constant and variable capital, can produce normal surplus value or s (normal rate of ‘profit’ ( Capital, III, p. 398); Under these normal conditions the individual commodity produced Ci equals the social value or exchange rate of the commodity or Cs or Ci = Cs; In conditions with less than normal efficiency then Ci > Cs, and thus the capitalist’s profit would be less than normal or S = Cs – (ci + vi) (Capital, III, p. 210) ;</div><div align="justify">-<br />34. Stability of market exchange-value = f (Market Supply and Demand conditions and movements.) If Demand falls then the effect is the same on surplus value as if the individual capitalist had expended more labor time than socially necessary. (Capital, I, p. 120); Where capitalists produce under favorable conditions and/or if demand increases, then profit produced would be greater than normal which Marx calls extra surplus-vale or extra-profit or Se and thus since Cs > Ci, then Se = Cs – Ci and total profit or surplus value under such favorable conditions would be S = Sn + Se;</div><div align="justify">-<br />35. Innovations (Marx uses the terms ‘change in technique’, ‘new method’, invention’ and technological applications of science’ interchangeably<a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6">[6]</a>) are of three forms: 1) labor-saving with increasing organic compositions of capital; 2) capital-saving<a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn7" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7">[7]</a>, with decreasing organic compositions of capital; 3) neutral with no effects on organic compositions of capital; The labor-saving and thus displacing innovations are central in the Marxist dynamic model and all have the result of reducing the labor-time required to produce a given volume of commodities (Capital, III, p. 751-52);</div><div align="justify">-<br />36. In Capital III, p. 752, Marx assumes that commodity exchange value is equal to the price of production (c1 = p1 ) and that all innovations, whether labor or capital-saving or neutral, reduce the labor-time necessary to produce commodities or Cs > Ci ;<br />-<br />37. Assuming: S = Sn + Se; C1 = P1; P1 = k1 + p’k; k1 = 100 and p’ = 15% thus P1 = 115; Assuming conditions more favorable than normal k2 = 90 and therefore: P2 = k2 + p’k2 or 103 1/2 = 90 + 15% (90) since S = Sn + Se, therefore S = 15%(90) + (115 – 103 1/2) = 13.5 + 11.5 = 25 and thus: Se = Cs – Ci (but only under conditions of less than perfect competition; in cases of perfect completion, the real or social commodity value (Cs) is lowered to the individual commodity value (Ci) thus eliminating any extra surplus-value;</div><div align="justify">-<br />38. Exceptional profits or surplus-value occur when machinery is first introduced and a ‘sort of monopoly’ sets up a form of “innovating profit” which depends upon the initial advantages of the monopoly-type market structures (Capital I, p. 444); Market- price movements from Cs to Ci depend upon: 1) effects of innovator’s increased supply on existing market supply and demand conditions; 2) how rapidly the innovation may be imitated by competitors (Wage-labor and Capital, pp. 44-45 and Capital, III, p. 755) who are compelled to match and introduce the innovations that reduce the ratios of variable to constant capital (Capital, III, p. 311);</div><div align="justify">-<br />39. Innovators are not only capitalists; in fact the most significant innovators come from the best minds drafted out of the ranks of the ruled classes into service of the ruling classes and the more the ruling class is able to draft and utilize the best and brightest minds of the ruled classes, the more dangerous its rule (Capital, III, pp. 705-06);</div><div align="justify">-<br />40. Effects of innovations are cumulative to the internal and external conditions of an industry as well as on the quality of internal parts and overall integration of those parts to form the overall quality of the overall machines invented and innovated (Capital, I, p. 442); Marx implies the distinction between invention (first prototypes) and innovation (improved, refined, and applied from prototypes into actual operational uses) notes that costs of machinery fall steadily from first innovations and that the most ruthless and useless capitalists use and benefit from the real innovators and inventors and “universal labor” of the human mind (Capital, III, p. 124);<br />-<br />Marx and Engels’ Assumptions and Postulates (Interest and Rent)<br />-<br />1. Interest is that portion of ‘profit’ or surplus value paid by industrial capitalist to money capitalist for use of money in the productive process (Capital, III, p. 398);</div><div align="justify">-<br />2. Interest arises from the separation of ownership of the means of production from ownership of the loanable funds required for financing the development of those means of production and if no such separation existed, forming distinctions and strata between industrial and money capital, no interest or rate of interest would exist (Capital, III, pp. 412, 443); </div><div align="justify">-<br />3. Only money capital has the unique property of possessing dual use-values: universal equivalence in commodity exchange and serviceability in the production process (Capital, III, p. 399) and thus when capitalist advance funds, they do not advance money per se but capital (Capital, III, p. 410);</div><div align="justify">-<br />4. Interest is NOT the price of money capital (an irrational expression, Capital, III, p. 417); Money capital is essentially a sum of money (distinguished by its ultimate use not as a means of exchange and measure of price and value) so any value of money capital is, by definition its own price. (Capital, III, p. 413);</div><div align="justify">-<br />5. Interest payments do express the self-expansion of money capital and thus appear as a price received by the lender (Capital, III, p 413); there is no implication of any productiveness of money capital but simply the outcome of a legal agreement between buyer and seller (Capital, p. 410); The money capitalist could not exist without the industrial capitalist and the money capitalist is impelled by the imperatives of competition and accumulation, and opportunity costs, to lend either to interest-bearing property or in industrial capital; (Capital, III, p. 443); The person with money capital either invests directly and becomes an industrial capitalist and earns profit as his return, or, finds industrial capitalists willing to borrow and then commands interest, and remains a money capitalist but in either case, interest comes only from surplus-value which originates in production. (Capital, III, p. 443-44);</div><div align="justify">-<br />6. Ma – Mb — C ….. C — M’b — M’a Where: M’a – Ma = Property of the money capitalist and magnitude of interest; M’b—Mb = Property of the industrial capitalist; The contract between borrower and lender is represented by Ma—Mb and M’b—M’a; while industrial profit or net return to the industrial capitalist is reduced by that value of (M’—Mb) to [ ( M’b—M’a )—Mb ] Here, according to Gottheil (p. 49), Marx quotes from The Economist that ‘The relation between the amount paid for the use of capital to this capital itself expresses the rate of interest, measured in money’ (Capital, III, p. 421) so the rate of interest I’ can be expressed as: i’ = M’a – Ma/ Ma; </div><div align="justify">-<br />7. Magnitudes of interest depend upon: prevailing rate of profit in the economy and supply and demand conditions for loanable funds (Capital, III, p. 419); The maximum limit on interest would be the total surplus value produced from the use of the money capital in which case interest would coincide with surplus value or profit (Capital, III, p. 437)<a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn8" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftn8" name="_ftnref8">[8]</a> and the minimum limit is indeterminable in the abstract and may be zero. S greater or equal to I greater or equal to 0;</div><div align="justify">-<br />8. Relationships between industrial and financial capitalists are antagonistic as more interest means less net profit and vice versa; where surplus-vale determined by general laws in the production process, interest determined by bargaining powers and supply-demand market conditions of the lenders and borrowers and similar to determination of commodity prices around exchange values; Supply of loanable funds = f (size of money capitalist class, level of development of credit and banking systems, community savings, international flow of precious metals, traditions/customs—institutions and risk) (Capital, III, pp. 425, 511, 573, 674-75, 707-09, 733, ); heavy focus by Marx on supply sides of loanable funds and commodities in determining actual interest rates and prices; liquidity of bills of exchange also influence interest rates;</div><div align="justify">-<br />9. Creation versus conversion of capital funds from one form to another; discounting of bills of exchange only conversions of forms of capital (Capital III, p 503); Creation occurs through the discounting process when the banking system extends credit on the basis of non-existent commodity capital or fraudulent bills of exchange called “fictitious capital” (Capital, III, pp. 481-88) and “capitalizing” (Capital, III, p. 548); Certificates of indebtedness, Government debt, which command an annual fixed income for indefinite periods of time, have market values which are determined by the market rate of interest and the fixed income per period.<a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn9" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftn9" name="_ftnref9">[9]</a> And thus: CV = y/I’ where CV = capitalized value and I’ = interest rate and y = fixed income per period of time;</div><div align="justify">-<br />10. Interest-bearing certificates (government securities, bonds, treasury notes etc) compose an element of banking capital; (Capital, III, pp. 489, 545);<br />-<br />11. To a large extent, government securities and the national debt they finance compose a large element of this “fictitious capital” (Capital, III, p. 546);</div><div align="justify">-<br />12. Landed property based on monopolization of use of land in limited supply (Capital, III, p. 722) and capitalist production in agriculture like that in industry and based on separation of original owners of means of production from their ownership, control and use of property originally theirs (Capital, III, p. 721);</div><div align="justify">-<br />13. Agricultural production based on three classes: 1) tillers of the soil or wage-earning workers; 2) capitalist-farmers; and 3) landowners of soil worked by tillers and exploited by capitalist farmers;</div><div align="justify">-<br />14. Ground rent is return to landowner for use of property no matter for agriculture, mining, fishing grounds, forests, building lots etc. (Capital, II, p. 725); there are three forms of ground rent: 1) Differential Rent I (from extensive land cultivation); 2) Differential Rent II (from intensive land cultivation); 3) Absolute Rent (from monopoly of land); </div><div align="justify">-<br />15. What appear to be qualitative gradations in soils (land material) may well be merely manifestations of qualitative differences of fixed capital (land capital) applied to the land by the capitalist farmer or land owner due to: 1) transient such as chemical applications of fertilizer; 2) permanent, such as drainage canals, irrigation works, leveling and farming buildings; these returns on these types of investments “appear” as rent and landlords claim returns from these investments due to land tenure and contracts with capitalist farmers;</div><div align="justify">-<br />16. Marx notes that during the time periods of the contracts between landlords and capitalist farmers, the returns from enhanced soil due to transient and permanent investments by the farmers belong to them but when the contracts expire, the returns from soil improvements that have become embodied in the soils, now belong to the landlords as returns from improvements that have become inseparable parts of the land (Capital, III, p. 726); in subsequent contracts, with the same or new capitalist farmers, the landowner leases improved soil (material soil plus land capital) which commands a higher ground rent (former ground rent plus interest on the land capital incorporated in the soil with the absorption of interest on the land capital by the landlord most obvious in the case of permanent types of investments in buildings to be leased to capitalist farmers and these differences explain the desire for landowners for short-term leases and for capitalist farmers for long-term leases Capital, III, pp. 728, 789); Marx calls these types of additions to ground rent “foreign ingredients” in ground rent (Capital, III, p. 732);<br />-<br />17. Aside from the return on land capital, deductions from the capitalist-farmer’s profit and the tiller’s wages constitute additional forms of foreign ingredients;</div><div align="justify">-<br />18. Marx shows the strong parallels between manufacturing-capitalists and farmer- capitalists but they also differ in levels of risk and social position with the lower returns on investment of the capitalist farmer compensated for with lower risk and higher social standing as part of the landed classes; Small capitalists earn less than average profit due to tradition, education, training and competition (Capital, III, p. 734);</div><div align="justify">-<br />19. “The determination of ground rent, like the determination of innovating profits, depends upon the difference between social and individual value (or price) in a particular sphere of production. This difference we have seen, depends upon the introduction of a new technique into a production process which reduces the cost of production below that considered socially necessary.”<a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn10" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftn10" name="_ftnref10">[10]</a>;</div><div align="justify">-<br />20. In the formation of ground rent the “technique” is explicitly defined as the “natural force” or a ‘natural power’ (like water with no cost or exchange value and thus no need to be paid an equivalent) to be used with a labor-consuming factor of production, resulting in the individual cost of a commodity falling below its socially necessary labor time cost (Capital, III, p. 753); Marx uses example of water wheel (no constant capital required for construction or variable capital to attend it), versus a steam power that does require c and v ) in producing water power: Since the commodity produced by water wheel with no c and v sells at the market price (social value) it realizes extra surplus value Se = Cs – Ci and the stability of such extra surplus-value depends upon the extent to which production techniques using natural cost-free power become incorporated widespread to all producers and if so, then extra surplus-value disappears rapidly as social values of commodities fall rapidly to individual values of commodities; (Capital, III, p. 755); in this case the increased productiveness of labor is due to monopolized natural power and not to v or c and extra surplus value only exists when the natural power cannot be imitated and when its source is monopolized (Capital, III, pp. 755-57); </div><div align="justify">-<br />21. If all capitals had access to the sources of natural power and were able to effectively use them, then Cs and Ci values would fall along with any extra surplus-value (Capital, III, p 754); Private ownership of land holding this natural power does not create that portion of value transformed into surplus-profit but merely enables the landowner to coax surplus-profit away from industrial capital;<br />-<br />22. Thus: Se = GR (Ground Rent) = Differential Rent (a differential between market price and individual cost in production) or GR = p1 – p2 or GR = f (p1 – p2) where p1 and p2 are prices fixed by technical factors. THUS GR IS NOT PART OF THE PRICE BUT DETERMINED BY IT (Capital, III, p. 757);</div><div align="justify">-<br />23. Differential Rent Type I: With equal quantities of land cultivated and land capital employed, occurs as a function of production inequalities that themselves are functions of 1) natural soil fertility (a function of climatic conditions, chemical composition of top soil, and transient and permanent land-capital improvements in soils Capital, III, p763) and 2) soil location (a function of state of development of the economy’s communication and transportation systems; Capital, III, p 762)</div><div align="justify">-<br />24. Where lands are equal distances from market, most fertile lands bought and used first but where unequal distances of lands from market then less fertile lands will be bought and used first if lower transport costs offset cost differentials as a function of fertility differentials (least total cost solutions);</div><div align="justify">-<br />25. In contrast to West, Malthus and Ricardo , who saw differential rents occurring as lands were developed and utilized in descending order of fertility (from best to worst with ever decreasing productivity in agriculture) Marx assumed that the succession of land cultivation that gives rise to Differential Rent I may descend from most to least fertile lands or ascend from least to most fertile lands (Capital, III, p 772); And, assuming that demand for agricultural commodities steadily increases as more areas brought into cultivation, commodity prices remain constant with inferior lands and increase with superior lands as demand increases for commodities;</div><div align="justify">-<br />26. Magnitude of Differential Rent I = f ( production and demand functions in the economy: number of soils under cultivation, productivity differentials between soils, general demand conditions) and GR = f (productivity differentials) (Capital, III, p. 768) assuming market prices constant;</div><div align="justify">-<br />27. Improvements in total and individual soils impact on GRs = f ( distributions of improvements—differentials—among the soils): a) with proportional increases in productivities of/among soils total and individual GRs will increase; b) greater increases in productivities of more fertile soils then differential rents particularly on the superior soils would increase; c) greater productive increases on less fertile soils then GRs on superior soils would fall as differentials between fertility levels among soils fell (Capital, III, p. 769);<br />-<br />28. This also applies to the extension of lands under cultivation where the effect of expansion depends upon the role played by each particular soil type in the expansion scheme: a) proportional expansion of all soils then differential rents increase in same ratio as lands cultivated increase (doubling of lands cultivated doubles differential rents); b) where expansion of cultivated lands is concentrated on the less fertile soils, differential rents per acre decline; c) where expansion of cultivated lands is concentrated on more fertile soils, differential rents per acre increase (see tables in Capital, III, p. 775); </div><div align="justify">-<br />29. Differential Rent II (intensive) occurs not only as a function of land-capital investments on lands with unequally productive soils, but with investments in land-capital concentrated (intensive) on one specific soil type or level of fertility (Capital, III, p. 790); “…It is evident…that differential rent No. II is but a different expression of differential rent I, but that it coincides with it in substance” ( Capital, III, p. 792 quoted in Gottheil, op cit. p. 65); Marx assumes also price flexibility up and down; </div><div align="justify">-<br />30. Money Rent (MR) = GR x P (price of grain) As land-capital investment increases, overall labor productivity increases putting downward pressure on market prices which impact upon MRs depending if increases in agricultural demand keep pace with increases in supply: Assume investment in a specific area without affecting magnitudes of MRs then: MR1 = GR1 x P1 = MR2 = GR2 x P2 or P1/P2 = GR2/GR1; but if P1/P2 > GR2/GR1 then MR declines and if P1/P2 <><br />-<br />31. Variants on the discussion on differential rents include fluctuating prices (falling, constant and rising) and productivities (falling, constant and rising per “capital investment” on cultivated areas with varying soil fertilities); e.g. Variant II (falling prices and falling productivity of the additional investment of capital) became the rule for Europe that led to the ruin of landlords (Capital, III, p. 842); </div><div align="justify"><div align="justify">-<br />32. Distinctions between DR I and II are purely analytical as they both result from differentials in prices and productivities of areas under cultivation and the least fertile land-capital investment, however, where intensive cultivation occurs, GR per acre is higher than in the extensive case; Marx illustrates with how the capital investment took place (successive outlays on a limited area (intensive) commands higher rent per acre and land price than if more coordinated outlays upon a wider area (extensive) of land Capital, III, p 809);</div><div align="justify">-<br />33. While differential rent (DR) is determined by price and not a determinant of it, Absolute Rent (AR) is the reverse: a determinant of price not a derivative;<br />-<br />34. Pb –Pa = d; Where: Pb = Price of commodity produced on least productive soil; Pa = cost of production of commodity produced on more productive soil and d = resulting differential rent; The modification of the agricultural price determination to include a constant or absolute rent r does not affect the magnitude of differential rent d (Capital, III, p. 868); (Pb + r) – ( Pa + r) = d and thus the emergence and imposition of absolute rent is dependent upon the institution of private property (Capital, III, p. 871); and r is passed on to consumer in higher market prices; P + r;</div><div align="justify">-<br />35. The determination of r depends upon: a) lower-than-social organic composition of capital ; b) cultivated lands held in hands of landlords; c) market rigidities; </div><div align="justify">-<br />36. Commodity prices versus values were result of difference between individual surplus-value and average profit where commodities sold at market prices—cost plus average profit—because of assumed competitive product and factor market structures; Absolute rent emerges with the absence of a competitive factor market structure and the private ownership of land; Inter-sphere competition between capitals is limited and migrations of capital into agriculture (where surplus value is greater than average throughout the whole economy) is limited by private ownership of land (Capital, III, pp. 882-888); landlord and the private ownership of land that supports him is like a “foreign power” to the capitalist (Capital, III, pp. 884-85);</div><div align="justify">-<br />37. The maximum limit to r = difference between surplus-value received by investment in the agricultural sphere versus average surplus-value received by an equal investment in the nonagricultural sphere: r = s – P (Capital, III, p. 888);</div><div align="justify">-<br />38. Marx defines price of agricultural products as a monopoly price (Capital, III, pp 885, 887), the maximum limit of r as surplus-value(agriculture) vs. average surplus value “profit”(non-agriculture) with the prevailing r conditioned by: a) the quantity of additional land-capital investment on OLD lands which will increase differential rent at the expense of r and b) extent of competition between landlords (Capital, III, pp. 789-90) and c) the wants and effective demand of consumers (Capital, III, pp 80-87);</div><div align="justify">-<br />39. Because the value of a commodity depends upon its socially-necessary labor content, the value or price of land is theoretically zero (Gottheil, p. 69); While the notion of the “price of land” is irrational in Marxist terms, it nevertheless represents a real economic relation (Capital, III, p 720); Like interest on capital bonds, ground rent can be capitalized and the capitalized value of such rent gives the appearance of being the “price of land”: CV = y/I’ where CV = computed value of land, i’ = interest rate and y = GR or fixed annual return; so if a capitalist buys land yielding rent of 200 pounds on 4,000 pounds paid for the land, then he draws an average interest of 5% on capital as if he had invested in interest-bearing papers or loaned it out at 5%. Thus the “price of land” appears to rise and fall inversely with the rise and fall of the interest rate if we assume GR as a constant magnitude; If the ordinary rate of interest should fall from 5% to 4%, then the annual ground rent of 200 pounds would represent the self-expansion of a capital of 5,000 pounds instead of 4,000 pounds (Capital, III, p. 730-31);</div><div align="justify">-<br />40. Rents in the Marxian system are both price-determined and price-determining; Differential rents result from inequalities in land fertilities and distances to market while absolute rent is derived from differences in social composition of capital and capital compositions in agriculture; in both cases the rents are the property of the landowner; Cost of production on the least fertile soil determines market price which may appear as an inconsistency with labor theory of value until it is resolved with the notion of land monopoly which allows any surplus earned over average profit in the non-agricultural spheres to be taken by the landowners and not the capitalists and thus the averaging-out of total agricultural surplus among capitalists is effectively eliminated; </div><div align="justify">-<br />41. Marx’s analysis of absolute rent also requires an additional assumption that all uncultivated lands cannot yield a surplus as large as average profit as it would pay the landowner to lease the land as rent would be greater than zero. This assumption is implied in the assumption that the least fertile soil determines price, assumption employed in the analysis of differential rent. In Marx’s treatment of differential rent and showing its origin even if moving from least fertile to most fertile soils (A to B to C to D) if demand for agricultural commodities continues but Marx did not explain why the least fertile soil would be used when more fertile soils were available.<a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn11" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftn11" name="_ftnref11">[11]</a><br />-<br />Marx and Engels’ Assumptions & Postulates (Circulation/Accumulation of Capital)<br />-</div><div align="justify">1. Theory of capital circulation forms an essential part of Marx’s general theory of commodity valuation, determination of aggregate surplus-value and theory of economic dynamics; time variable introduced to distinguish capital advanced for production versus capital actually employed;</div><div align="justify">-<br />2. M—C….C’—M’ and: Ma—Mb—C….C’—M’b—M’a;</div><div align="justify">-<br />3. Capital circulation refers to repeated movements of capital through the spheres of production and circulation (also used by Marx interchangeably are the terms capital rotation, movement and flow); Four forms of capital in circulation are: a) Money Capital (M and M + m) Capital in possession of the industrial capitalist before and after actual production; b) Commodity Capital (Clpm and C + c) productive factors and finished products; c) Productive Capital (P) or Capital in process of transformation from factor to product form; d) Industrial Capital: the generalized form of money capital, productive capital and commodity capital as distinct from money capital in the hands of the money capitalists<a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn12" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftn12" name="_ftnref12">[12]</a>;</div><div align="justify">-<br />4. M—Clpm...............P…………….(C + c) + (M + m) Where: a) P = Productive Capital; b) Clpm…….(C + c) = Commodity capital; c) M……….(M + m) = Money Capital; d) Whole exchange chain M……m = industrial capital;</div><div align="justify">-<br />5. Exchange structure divided into two processes: a) period of production covering production processes P; and b) periods of circulation, [ M—Clpm] and [ (C + c)—(M + m) ] which compose four distinct markets: 1. M—Cl the labor-power market; 2. M—Cpm the capital-goods market; 3. C—M the commodity market for the original commodity value; 4. c—m the commodity market for surplus production; Only in the periods of circulation is the relationship between industrial and merchant capital expressed; production on a large scale is for other industrial and merchant capital;<br />-<br />6. Continuous production depends upon continuous scale; Capital rotation depends upon coincidences of market capacities and productive capacities. When factor shortages arise in the M—Cpm markets, money capital stays idle (a “hoard” Capital, II, p. 60); Where the consumption capacity of the market cannot absorb total amount of commodities produced, commodity capital (inventories) accumulates producing a “glut” (Capital, II, p. 60) either hoards or gluts obstruct the normal rotation of capital;</div><div align="justify">-<br />7. Simple rotation or reproduction occurs when surplus money capital m is removed from the industrial sphere as money spent by capitalist for consumption and in simple reproduction, the magnitude of industrial capital in circulation remains constant (Capital, II, p. 76); </div><div align="justify">-<br />8. Accumulation of progressive reproduction or expanded reproduction, occurs when a portion of the surplus, m, is turned into more industrial capital regulated by a minimum capital requirement for production which is determined by the existing state of technology (Capital, II, p. 89);</div><div align="justify">-<br />9. Marxian system assumes discontinuous production functions which form the basis of “latent capital” with its magnitude determined by the difference between surplus accumulated and minimum requirements for its incorporation into production (Capital, II, p. 89);</div><div align="justify">-<br />10. Commodity value depends upon embodied labor time or what Marx calls “time of production” (t) which includes not only time of production (tp) but also time of circulation (tc); Thus t = tp + tc (Capital, II, p. 147);</div><div align="justify">-<br />11. Industrial capital during the phase of circulation results in no surplus-value but as circulation is time-consuming, the surplus value that industrial capital can cause to be produced depends upon the allocation of t between tp and tc or, s = f ( tp/tc) (Capital, II, p. 142)</div><div align="justify">-<br />12. Kc = costs of circulation which, although part of the total costs of creating surplus-value do not create value or add to surplus-value: “any more than the work done in a civil process increases the value of the object of contention.” (Capital, II, p. 142 cited in Gottheil, op. cit, p. 74); Cost-price includes both production and circulation costs: k = kp + kc and P = p’(kp + kc);</div><div align="justify">-<br />13. Not all of circulation costs can be added to price: out of costs such as a) ‘genuine’ costs of buying, selling and bookkeeping, b) storage and inventory, and c) and transportation to market, only storage and transportation are added to price (Capital, II, pp 147-51); Costs of a) assumed as relatively fixed;<br />-<br />14. Both marketing and bookkeeping costs assumed relatively fixed and vary as a percentage of total costs inversely with the organic composition of capital; to provide for continuous commodity production, storage and inventory costs (using both c and v) of factors of production and some finished goods (commodity capital greater than average sale or demand for normal rotation of industrial capital; Capital, II, p. 168) are necessary (inventory stock, buildings, warehouses, protection against perishability (Capital, II, p. 157); costs of storage of factors of production and commodity inventory vary directly with the development of capitalist production and inversely to the number and size of suppliers and the level of development of transport systems (Capital, II, p. 162); transport costs not value-creating but add to price except when they are part of the total production process that requires transport processes as part of total production processes and not part of circulation in which case v or labor-power used in transport adds to value; (Capital, II, p. 170-71);</div><div align="justify">-<br />15. Time of production = working period versus working day; working period = number of working days to finish a product; product of each working day only a portion of the total work product and period (Capital, II, p 262); includes advancement of wages, sufficient stocks of raw materials, necessary capital equipment (Capital, II, p. 264) and extension of the working period reduces capital turnovers per year as does the time of circulation; time of production of a specific capital outlay = f(employment of machinery in production, levels and forms of cooperation, level of development of a credit system, level of development of markets and transport systems);</div><div align="justify">-<br />16. When working period is shortened, this increases amount of capital advanced in shortened time so that amount of capital/time increases as time decreases (Capital, II, p 268); Thus tp = f(1/Ko); advanced capital becomes a substitute for time with time in circulation spent in marketing and varies with changing market conditions (Capital, II, p 385, 364); Improvements in transport systems may cut time in established markets yet prolong circulation time overall with introducing new and more distant markets (Capital, II, p. 287);</div><div align="justify">-<br />17. Total period of production (t) or time of turnover (Capital, II, p. 176) = complete rotation or cycle of a given quantity of industrial capital;<br />-<br />18. Total period of production = time of circulation + time of production which Marx assumes is one year time period; number of turnovers of capital per year = n = 1/t where n= number of turnovers of a particular capital and t = turnover time measured as fraction of a year of the given industrial capital;</div><div align="justify">-<br />19. Industrial capital for Marx = cKo (circulating capital transferred from factor to product or capital used up in production) + fKo (fixed capital or the amount of capital remaining in the factor state during the time of turnover or the production and sale of the commodity (Capital, II, pp. 178-80); while in the long-run all capital is circulating, the distinction between circulating and fixed capital is relevant during a given capital turnover period (Capital, II, p. 190); </div><div align="justify">-<br />20. The relationship between the amount of capital advanced per year in producing, Ko, and the amount of capital employed per year in production Ke, depends upon the capital advance is in the form of fixed or circulating capital: Ke/Ko = f ( cKo/fKo) so that capital employed in production varies with number of capital turnovers per year: Ke = n(cKo); and if the total capital advanced produced a set of commodities which were sold at the end of a year’s production then: Ke = cKo = Ko and Marx notes, according to Gottheil, that capitalist production is not characterized by this coincidence (Capital, II, p. 209);</div><div align="justify">-<br />21. Annual production of both commodity value and surplus-value is calculated by the employment (not advanced) of variable capital (Capital, II, p. 346) Where Ke = n(cKo), thus the employment of capital and the annual mass of surplus-value S vary directly with the capital turnover rate (number of times capital rotates per year); the proportion of total surplus-value produced in one year to the value of advanced variable capital and the number of capital turnovers; Marx calls the annual rate of surplus-value (S’) (Capital, II, p. 350) so that the annual surplus value is measured by the rate of surplus value, the variable capital advanced and the number of capital turnovers so that S = sn and then S’ = s’n (Capital, II, p. 338);</div><div align="justify">-<br />22. With development of capitalist mode of production and associated transportation systems, circulation and production times are reduced, annual turnover or capital reproduction rates increase and annual surplus-value increases; merchant capital an unproductive agent in the economy;<br />-<br />23. Rate of economic growth = f ( magnitude and use of economic surplus); </div><div align="justify">-<br />24. Conversion of economic surplus (property of capitalist) into capital is defined as accumulation (Capital, I, p. 634); complete conversion of surplus into consumption is defined as simple reproduction (Capital, I, p. 621) and analysis of simple reproduction is used by Marx a as first approximation in treatment of capital accumulation;</div><div align="justify">-<br />25. Department I = production of capital goods; Department II = production of consumer goods (Capital, II, p. 457); in each department it is composed of varying proportions of variable and constant capital; Social capital (K) is defined as sum of capital outlays of the two departments: K = (K)1 + (K)2 = (c + v)1 + (c + v)2 and thus total production in the economy (C) = commodities produced during a given period by both departments: C = C1 + C2 = (c1 + v1 + s1) + (c2 + v2+ s2); and the difference between total annual product and total cost of production is defined as total annual surplus (S) = C – K = (s1 + s2);</div><div align="justify">-<br />26. Marx’s Simple-reproduction Model of Input-output Matrix:<br />Output<br />Dept. I Dept. II Total<br />Dept I c1 (v1 + s1) c1 + v1 + s1<br />Dept II c2 (v2 + s2) c2 + v2 + s2<br />Total (c 1 + c2) (v1 + s1) + (v2 + s2) C<br /><br />Assuming: a) constant relative prices; b) constant organic compositions of capital in both departments; c) equality in rates of profit; d) capitalist surpluses in both departments spent on commodities of Department II; e) constant size of the working class and wages > subsistence; f) gross investment or (c1 + c2) = real depreciation so that the capital stock is maintained. Total value of capital goods produced by Department I = (c1 + c2); Total value of consumption goods produced by Dept II = (v1 + s1) + (v2 + s2); Interdepartmental transactions include: 1) purchases of capital goods (c2) from Dept. I by capitalists of Dept. II; 2) purchases of consumer goods from Dept. II by capitalists and laborers of Dept I; and intradepartmental transfers include: 1) purchases of consumer goods by laborers and capitalists of Dept. II (Capital, II, pp 460-64); stability of simple reproduction = c2 = v1 + s1<br />-<br />27. If : Dept. I 4000c + 1000v + 1000s = 6000C<br /> Dept, II 2000c + 500v + 500s = 3000C<br /> Total Annual Product = 9000C<br />Then subsistence of capitalists and laborers of Dept I financed with sales of capital goods to Dept II to meet capital requirements of 2000c in exchange for which Dept. II exchanges 2000 units of consumer goods for 2000 units of capital goods, and the 4000 units of capital goods remaining in Dept. I are then used to maintain its capital stock of 4000c and the 1000 units of the 3000 units of consumer goods of Department II are used for subsistence requirements of laborers and capitalists of Dept. II. And at the end of the period the capital requirements of both departments are maintained and the stability of the system defined in the equation c2 = v1 + s1 would not only be totally coincidental depending upon utility functions of the social classes (Capital, II, p. 578) but that this scheme ( simple reproduction is when I (v + s) = IIc) is totally at odds with how capitalism operates and its core imperatives for accumulation at least on par with population growth although in an odd year or over a 10-year what appears to be simple reproduction or less than simple reproduction may accidently occur (Capital, II, p. 608); Marx noted that with population growth, simple reproduction could only take place with an increasing number of unproductive servants would partake of the 1500s or aggregate surplus-product (Capital, II, p. 608);</div><div align="justify">-<br />28. Marx introduced into simple-reproduction a qualitative differentiation between necessary consumer goods and luxury goods (consumed only by capitalists and composing a definite percentage of their total consumption ) produced in Dept. II but it had no effect on this basic model (Capital, II, p 467 and Gottheil p. 83); </div><div align="justify">-<br />29. Accumulation (a) emerges with surpluses allocated for capital formation or a = g(s); “Capitalist is merely personified capital” (Capital, I, p. 648) The motive for capitalist production not conspicuous consumption but incessant gain of surplus-value and its capitalization (accumulation) (Capital, II, p 588);</div><div align="justify">-<br />30. Marxian growth model assumes: a) relative prices constant; b) profit rates in each department constant; c) All surpluses held by capitalists; d) a given percentage of surplus in Dept. I converted to capital or a = gs1 (g = constant %); e) adequate labor-power supply to match accumulation rates; f) technology is constant; g) form of the surplus comprises elements of new capital; h) net investment to expand scale of production over replacement;<br />-<br />31. Given the value of g, ‘accumulation resolves itself into the reproduction of capital on a progressively increasing scale. The circle in which simple reproduction moves, alters its form, and, to use Sismondi’s expression, changes into a spiral.’ (Capital, I, pp 636-37);</div><div align="justify">-<br />32. Expansion of capital can be expressed: Kt = K ( 1 + p’g)t where Kt = amount of capital in time period t; Ko = original capital; p’ = rate of profit; g = % of surplus-value converted into net investment; capital accumulation in this two-department model traces intra and inter=departmental transactions to show spiral increases of capital accumulation; Note: K1 = Ko + p’Kog = Ko(1 + p’g) and K2 = K1 + pK1g = K1(1 + p’g) = Ko (1+ p’g)2 ; Kt = Ko(1 + p’g)t </div><div align="justify">-<br />33. Transaction between [v1 + s1 – a (= gs1)] and c2 where v1 + s1 – a = total consumption of capitalists and laborers in Dept. I; a is decomposed into elements of capital for Dept. I , e.g. (ac1 + av1); to provide for av1, transaction occurs between av1 (capital goods) and s2 (consumer goods) where s2 = av1; c2 in the course of these interdepartmental flows, increased to [c2 + dc2 ( = av1)] and in order to maintain capital composition in Dept. II, v2 is necessary to offset the increased c2 and is provided from s2;</div><div align="justify">-<br />34. Following the accumulation process with constant g and s1 > 0, system becomes explosive with rate of accumulation an independent variable (Capital, I, p. 679); material means of accumulation are drawn from surpluses of Depts. I and II with the former in Dept. I determined by g and in Dept II by the consumer goods necessary to complement increase in constant-capital formation; Since net investment is provided by surplus, then the surplus consumed by the capitalists [s(c)1 + s(c)2] must be less than the surplus produced by the process (s1 + s2); After several periods of accumulation, capitalist consumption surpasses that under simple reproduction with all surplus consumed because of compounding;</div><div align="justify">-<br />35. The magnitude of surplus consumed in any period of time, depends upon the rate of accumulation and organic composition of capital in both I and II;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">36. Since accumulation or capital formation in any time period is the conversion of surplus into capital during that time period, the magnitude of capital investment or capital accumulation may be expressed as: Kt = ( [v1 + s1(1-g)-c2] + [av1/c1 + v1] + [v2/c2] [v1 + s1(1-g) – c2] + [v2/c2(av1/c1 + v1)] + s1[1-g] )t; in the simplified case we have: Kt = [ (1 + v2/c2)(av1/c1 + v1) + s1(1-g) ] t</div><div align="justify">-<br />37. Capital concentration (related but not the same as Economic concentration in neoclassical theory) is defined by Marx as growing accumulation of capital in the hands of individual capitalists (Capita, I, p. 685); this process compounds individual holdings as well as adds new capitals through divisions of family inheritances ; the division of social capital into individual holdings (concentration) is counteracted by centralization, a process driven by competition and availability of credit, where larger capitals swallow the smaller via economies of scale and price competition and credit discrimination (Capital, I, pp. 650, 687); Bigger capitals get bigger and small get weeded out; </div><div align="justify">-<br />38. Capital accumulation is linked with increasing organic compositions of capital; Accumulation à Capitalism à Accumulation… (Capital, I, pp. 684-85); This is an assumption of the model;</div><div align="justify">-<br />39. Under Kt = Ko(1+ p’g)t the expansion of capital assumed a constant state of technology but this assumption is contradicted when concentration and centralization of capital are introduced into the analysis; centralization implies increasing organic compositions of capital, but the rate of profit is inversely related to the organic composition of capital and therefore when technology develops, the rate of profit (p’) in the expansion of capital equation above falls and the value of Kt becomes indeterminate; Marx, however refers to increasing organic compositions of capital as increasing productivity (Capital, I, p. 684). To assume that s = f (c/c + v) is, inconsistent with the assumption of a constant rate of exploitation;</div><div align="justify">-<br />40. Marxian models of accumulation: a) assume constant state of technology and constant rate of accumulation in which case the model is explosive; b) accumulation under conditions of changing technology and rates of accumulation in which case the rate of economic growth depends upon relative rates of technology and accumulation;</div><div align="justify">-<br />41. All models on simple reproduction and capital accumulation based on values and not prices. Had values been converted to prices, the simple-reproduction model could no longer develop the equilibrium he assumed to develop from the model and its assumptions; the selection of value instead of price also damages the capital accumulation model. In Marx’s model on economic growth with Departments I (capital goods) and II (consumer goods) Marx assumes different organic compositions of capital and thus rates of profit in the two departments must differ; yet Marx, in his second approximation to price theory, assumes that in the capitalist system the rate of profit in all industries is equal. Although Marx assumes that the accumulation of capital occurs at an increasing rate, no conclusions about the growth rate of capital can be made from the model if the rate of profit is permitted to fall; the incorporation of increasing technology into the model by definition implies a fall in the rate of profit.<a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn13" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftn13" name="_ftnref13">[13]</a>;</div><div align="justify">-<br />42. Marx’s theory of economic growth is also a theory of economic decay.<a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn14" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftn14" name="_ftnref14">[14]</a> </div><div align="justify">-<br />43. The capitalist system contains within it the seeds (contradictions) of its own demise;</div><div align="justify">-<br />44. Super-profits, generated by innovation are wiped out by competitors imitating the innovations thus causing more innovation; innovations under socialism and communism exceed those under capitalism thus the critical determinant of innovation is the general environment’s favorability to science;</div><div align="justify">-<br />45. Primary determinants of the rate of profit (p’ or s/c + v) are the rate of surplus value (s/v) and the organic composition of capital (c/c + v) and capitalist’s pursuit of higher rates of profit compel increases in organic composition of capital which, if rate of surplus-value is assumed constant, then rate of profit will fall; but Marx did understand that the rate of surplus value is also dependent upon the organic composition of capital, but Marx’s assumption of constant s/v in Volumes I and part of II was to underscore the organic composition of capital as a principle determinant of the rate of profit. And thus his assumption of constant s/v was part of his overall method of successive approximations and Marx predicted that the rate of profit would decline no matter what the rate of surplus-value; Marx does note however that although constant capital does not create value, it does affect laborer productivity and that portion of the working day for the laborer’s subsistence and thus affects the amount of absolute surplus and thus the rate of surplus-value; organic composition of capital à productivity of the laborer à amount of surplus à rate of surplus-value (Capital, I, p. 422; Capital, III, pp. 111, 178, 257, 261, 269, 290); There are limits to the extent to labor-displacing nature of capital formation and technology;<br />-<br />A Compendium of the Predictions of Marx and Engels</div><div align="justify">-<br />Primary Predictions (Falling Rate of Profit)</div><div align="justify">-<br />1. Capitalists and capitalism cannot exist without continually revolutionizing technology, the instruments and relations of production and thus the whole relations of society (Communist Manifesto, p. 13, Capital, I, p. 491, Capital, III, p. 311,);</div><div align="justify">-<br />2. The general rate of profit will tend to decline (Capital III, p. 255, 274, 275-77, 297)<a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn15" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftn15" name="_ftnref15">[15]</a>;<br />-</div><div align="justify">Secondary Predictions Derived From Falling Rate of Profit</div><div align="justify">-<br />1. The productivity of labor will expand in a geometrical progression (Capital, III, p. 308)<a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn16" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftn16" name="_ftnref16">[16]</a>;</div><div align="justify">-<br />2. The value of labor-power (per individual family member) will decline (Capital, I, pp 431-32, 534);</div><div align="justify">-<br />3. Labor will be equalized and reduced to the most basic or common skills(Communist Manifesto, p. 18, Capital, I, p. 459, 461-63);</div><div align="justify">-<br />4. Labor mobility and the imperative for mobility will increase (Capital, I, p. 459);</div><div align="justify">-<br />5. The labor of men will be superseded by that of women and children (Capital, I, pp. 431-32);<br />-</div><div align="justify">6. Modern industry will destroy the individual economy and with the traditional institution of the family and reduce the family to a mere money relation (Capital, I, p. 513, Communist Manifesto, p. 32, German Ideology, pp. 17-18, Letters to Americans, p. 24 );<br />-<br />7. Modern industry revolutionizes educational institutions forcing the predominance of technical and vocational training (Capital, I, p. 534);</div><div align="justify">-<br />8. The value of moral capital depreciation (dm) or capital obsolescence will increase ( Capital, I, pp. 282, 442);</div><div align="justify">-<br />9. The working day will be prolonged (de facto even when not de jure) (Capital, I, pp 290, 445);</div><div align="justify">-<br />10. The prices of raw materials will decline (Capital, I, p. 682, Capital, III, pp 126-27);</div><div align="justify">-<br />11. The average rate of capital turnover will increase (Marx-Engels Correspondence p. 242; Capital, II, pp. 210, 267-68, 291);</div><div align="justify">-<br />12. Market-driven population migrations, globalization and redistributions of laboring populations geographically will result in mega urban agglomerations in space and time ( Communist Manifesto, p. 15; On Britain, p. 375; Capital, II, p 288; Capital, I, p 387);</div><div align="justify">-<br />13. Marketing functions will increasingly separate and specialize from production processes (Capital, III, pp. 330, 343);</div><div align="justify">-<br />14. Distributions or divisions of surplus-value among classes earning property incomes (profit, interest, rents, dividends) will continually change (Capital, III, pp 424-45, 731; Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, p. 127);</div><div align="justify">-<br />15. The general rate of interest will decline (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, p. 127; Capital, III, pp. 424-25, 731);<br />-</div><div align="justify">16. The rates of return to landowners will decline (Capital, III, pp. 252, 882, 897);</div><div align="justify">-<br />17. Gaps between organic compositions of capital between agriculture and non-agriculture will narrow (Capital, III, pp. 842-43, 897; Capital, I, pp. 553-54);</div><div align="justify">-<br />18. The production and value of production of luxury items as a percentage of total production will increase (Capital, III, p. 297);</div><div align="justify">-<br />19. The rentier class will increase initially, and eventually decline and disappear with the growing wealth of the nation (Capital, III, pp. 252, 882, 897);</div><div align="justify">-<br />20. As large capitals acquire/absorb smaller capitals, large landed estates will acquire and absorb smaller landed estates (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 p. 58);</div><div align="justify">-<br />21. The landowning class will ultimately disappear completely (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts p. 60);</div><div align="justify">-<br />22. There is enough uncultivated land in the underdeveloped regions to ruin the large and small landowners of Europe (Specific Prediction; Capital, III, pp 842-43);</div><div align="justify">-<br />23. With the development of steam power, trans-oceanic steamboats and the railway, the distance between England and India will be reduced to eight days and Indian will be annexed to the Western world (Specific prediction, On Britain, p. 387; Capital, II, p. 288);<br />-<br />Primary Predictions (Globalization and Capitalism)<br />-<br />1. The development of capitalism among various national economies creates integrated global markets and capitalism (Communist Manifesto, pp. 14-15; Capital, III, pp. 140, 230, 392; Marx-Engels Correspondence, p. 117; Wage Labor and Capital, pp. 44-47);</div><div align="justify">-<br />2. All national economies under threats of competition and extinction will eventually adopt the capitalist mode of production as the dominant mode of production within their social formations (Communist Manifesto, pp. 14-15; Capital, III, p. 392; Ibid);</div><div align="justify">-<br />3. A global division of labor among nations will develop with different geographic areas and nations playing different roles within it ( Capital, III, pp. 140, 230, 270, 278, 392);<br />-<br />Secondary Predictions (From Primary Prediction No. 1)<br />-<br />4. Falling rates of profit in the industrialized economies will force capital migrations from relatively low to relatively high average profit rates (Capital, III, pp. 140, 279);</div><div align="justify">-<br />5. The falling rate of profit in industrial economies will cause the development of specialized export industries and international commodity exchanges ( Capital, III, p. 278)<a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn17" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftn17" name="_ftnref17">[17]</a>;</div><div align="justify">-<br />6. The globalization of capitalism, capital migration and commodity exchange will be driven and facilitated by the development of credit institutions (Capital, I, p 688; Capital, II, p 287);<br />-</div><div align="justify">7. Transportation and Communications systems must be continually globalized and revolutionized to increase overall profitability of international trade (Capital, I, pp 493, 688; Capital, II, p. 287);</div><div align="justify">-<br />8. As consumption levels of capitalists increase, luxuries command larger portions of their budgets and shares of total social production (Capital, I, pp. 651-52);</div><div align="justify">-<br />9. New technologies cause production > consumption à new markets (Capital, III, 302);<br />-<br />Secondary Predictions from Primary Prediction Number 3<br />-<br />10. The development of the capitalist mode of production as dominant within the social formations of the colonial nations will cause changes in relations of production and overall changes in politico-legal, social, cultural and economic institutions (Capital, I, pp. 158, 493, 792; On Britain, pp. 386-87));</div><div align="justify">-<br />11. The incessant demand for relatively secure and cheap raw materials coupled with continually revolutionized technology will drive capitalists to develop the colonial economies overall and as appendages to the metropolitan economies (Capital, I, pp. 483, 493, 782; Wage, Labor and Capital, p 16; Marx on China, pp. 3, 35, 59; Marx-Engels Correspondence, pp. 10, 229);</div><div align="justify">-<br />12. The labor-skills needed to complement advanced technology will be met from labor-power surpluses of migrating unemployed in the metropolitan economies and through the development of strata of native skilled workers and professionals through education controlled and structured by the metropolitan powers ( Capital, I, p. 493; On Britain, pp. 386-90);<br />-<br />Specific Predictions<br />-<br />13. Global market expansion will end with the colonization of California and Australia, and the opening-up of Japan and China (Specific prediction, related to Primary prediction No. 1; Marx-Engels Correspondence, pp. 117-18; Marx on China, p. 4);</div><div align="justify">-<br />14. Russia and England will always be antagonists in the East (from Primary prediction No. 2; Wage, Labor and Capital, p. 16; Marx-Engels Correspondence, p. 10);<br />-</div><div align="justify">15. Russia will break the monopoly on Britain on China products with the completion of the Russian railway (specific prediction, related to Primary No. 2; Marx on China, p. 35; Revolution and Counter-revolution, p 5;)<br />-</div><div align="justify">16. The U.S. would soon break the monopoly of Western Europe and England (Specific prediction related to Primary No. 2; Capital, I, p 158; Civil War in the United States, pp. 25, 66-67, 150, 225, 237; Marx-Engels Correspondence, p 14);<br />-</div><div align="justify">17. England will successfully destroy Asiatic society and regenerate India on the foundations of Western society (Specific prediction related to No. 2; Capital, I, pp. 492-93, 782; Marx-Engels Correspondence, p. 226; Communist Manifesto, p 103; On Britain, p. 386);<br />-</div><div align="justify">18. The railway system will lead industrial development in India (Specific prediction related to Primary No. 2; On Britain, pp. 386, 389-90)<br />-<br />19. Modern industry and capitalism will destroy all hereditary divisions of labor like the caste system of India and thus destroy the impediments to progress of India (Specific prediction related to Primary No. 2; On Britain, pp. 389-90);</div><div align="justify">-<br />20. Without the acquisition of Louisiana, Missouri, and Arkansas by the U.S. slavery would have been wiped out in Virginia and elsewhere (Specific prediction related to Primary no. 2; Civil War in the United States, p. 67);</div><div align="justify">-<br />21. The expansions and inevitable conflicts of the northern and southern regional economies of the U.S. will lead to civil war in the U.S. and The North will ultimately win ( Specific prediction related to Primary No. 2; Civil War in the United States, pp. 66-67, 81, 225-26, Selected Essays, “Moralizing Criticism” p. 145);</div><div align="justify">-<br />22. Without slavery in America, America would be transformed into a patriarchal land (Specific prediction related to Primary No. 2; Marx-Engels Correspondence, p. 14);</div><div align="justify">-<br />23. If foreign trade with Japan leads to money rents, then Japanese agriculture will be radically transformed (Specific prediction related to Primary No. 2; Capital, I, p. 158);</div><div align="justify">-<br />24. The separation and independence of Ireland from England is inevitable (Specific prediction related to Primary No. 2; Marx-Engels Correspondence, pp. 224, 230);</div><div align="justify">-<br />25. The English landed feudal aristocracy will be destroyed by international competition in agricultural markets (Specific prediction related to Primary No. 3; Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, pp. 58, 60) </div><div align="justify">-<br />26. The destiny of Ireland is to become “that of an English sheep walk and cattle pasture” (Specific prediction related to Primary No. 3; Capital, I, p. 782);</div><div align="justify">-<br />27. Once independent, Ireland will resort to protectionism (Marx-Engels Correspondence, pp. 228, 230);<br />-<br />Primary Predictions (Increasing Volatility, Concentration and Centralization of Production and Finance)<br />-<br />1. The capitalist economy generates industrial cycles [ ‘a series of periods of moderate activity, prosperity, overproduction, crisis and stagnation] are, and will be, the exclusive feature of the capitalist system (Capital, IV, p. 380 and Capital, I, p. 495) Note: Marx puts focus on overproduction and crisis with all cycles they are: multi-determined; essentially endogenous; recurring; of increasing intensity;<br />-<br />2. Concentration and centralization of wealth are inexorably both causes and effects of the development of capitalist production and competitive markets lead to their self-negation and non/anti-competitive nature;<br />-<br />Secondary Predictions Related to Primary Prediction No. 1<br />-<br />1. Sources of overall crisis are, and will be, various sometimes interrelated and sometimes relatively independent sub-crises: Department I (capital goods) and II (consumer goods) imbalances; credit crisis; falling-rate-of-profit crises; innovation crises; replacement crises; underconsumption crises; crises of ‘disproportions’ of capitalists and their consumption on the one hand, versus accumulation of their capitals in various branches (individual production processes aggregated into capital and consumer goods departments) on the other hand (Capital, III, p. 568); </div><div align="justify">-<br />2. Increases in market capacity (levels and structures of consumption) cannot<br />keep pace with increases in production capacity (Capital, III, p 286-87; </div><div align="justify">-<br />3. Generation and expansion of credit makes crises more volatile and violent than in non-credit economies; (Capital, III, p. 565, 574);</div><div align="justify">-<br />4. Credit must grow as a share of the total value of production and with increasing distances of markets; the development of processes of production extend credit and vice-versa, extension of credit leads to extensions of commercial and industrial operations (Capital, III, p. 565);</div><div align="justify">-<br />5. Increasing separation of commodity production and circulation is both temporal and functional; intermediary merchants increasingly separate production from ultimate consumption and consumers, leading to periodic overproduction and excess inventories, leading to crises caused by intermediaries forced into discounting fraudulent bills of exchange, etc to clear inventories and merchants repaying their suppliers (Capital, III, p 359-60, 478-80, 569, 674);<br />-</div><div align="justify">6. Business is always appears sound before crises set in and become evident (Capital, III, p. 569);</div><div align="justify">-<br />7. Effects of mistaken banking legislation may well intensify monetary crises, but no legislation will ever abolish them (Capital, III, pp. 575, 607);</div><div align="justify">-<br />8. Even with prolonged accidental coincidences between aggregate production and consumption, crises may still occur due to falling rates of profit below target minimum acceptable rates of profit (Capital, III, p. 283);<br />-<br />9. Crises may occur due to too rapid and too aggregated (bunched-up) innovations, leading to declining commodity values and prices, leading to falling rates of profit; the more rapid the new innovations, the more competition forces introduction of new machinery before the old is worn out, and, the more increasing the organic compositions of capital, the more difficult for capitalists to adjust to new sets of falling capital values and thus the more likely the crises (Capital, IV, p. 388; Capital, II, p. 194));</div><div align="justify">-<br />10. For a crisis to become generalized, it is sufficient that the principal articles of trade be gripped. (Capital, IV, 393);</div><div align="justify">-<br />11. Credit aids the expansion of production [and the expansion and intensity of crises when contracted or withdrawn] by: reducing time necessary to acquire start-up capital; reducing time of circulation (time to convert commodity capital into money capital; promotion of entirely new production processes; As capitalism develops the percentage of new capital formation financed by credit increases as do the processes wholly dependent upon credit advancement (Capital, III, p. 574); </div><div align="justify">-<br />12. Credit must grow in volume with the increasing volume of value in production, and it must grow in the matter of time with increasing distance of markets [reproduction necessitates immediate exchange, or the transformation of commodity capital into money capital, banking institutions intercede by discounting bills of exchange and extending credit to finance continuous production. (Capital, III, p. 565); development of production à credit à expansion of commercial and industrial operations (Capital, III, p. 565);</div><div align="justify">-<br />13. Reproduction of fixed capital takes place only after full depreciation (Capital, II, p. 209) turnover of fixed capital is a function of the organic composition of capital, and for a large part of the production processes, values produced exceed values demanded on the market (only at time of replacement of fixed capital does market demand exceed supply; the moments of prosperity are to periods of crisis and stagnation in the ‘true proportion’ of 3 to 10 (Poverty of Philosophy, p. 113) and the duration of at least one aspect of the industrial cycle is determined by the timing of replacement capital (approx every 10 years or longer with increased organic composition of capital; Capital, I, p. 695; Capital, II, p. 211);<br />-<br />14. Real crises occur when production capacities exceed market capacities (Capital, III, p. 568); But simply increasing worker shares of product not the answer as crises generally are preceded by a period in which wages rise generally and the working class actually get a larger share of the product intended for consumption (Capital, II, p. 475-76);</div><div align="justify">-<br />15. Rates of profit after crises and insolvencies increase (Capital, III, p. 299); In such periods capitalist strive to innovate further with ‘new machines, new and improved working methods, new combinations’ (Capital, III, p. 299); These techniques are introduced to reduce individual values below their social values, thereby creating surplus profits (Capital, III, p 303-04); A crisis is always a starting point for a large amount of new investment (Capital, II, p. 211);<br />-<br />16. More intense exploitation of old markets and conquest of new ones lead to general increased production (Communist Manifesto , p.17); The industrial cycle is of such a character that the same cycle must periodically reproduce itself once the first impulse has been given (Capital, III, p. 299, 574; Capital, I, p 695); Effects become causes and the varying incidents of the whole process, which always reproduces its own conditions, take on the form of periodicity (Capital, I, p 695);</div><div align="justify">-<br />17. Capitalists get over crises by paving the way for more intense and more destructive crises and by diminishing the means by which crises are prevented (Communist Manifesto, p. 17);<br />18. Crises become progressively more frequent and more violent as means of escaping crises become less and less available with contracting and over-exploited work markets and large-scale production exhausts mainsprings of credit (Wage, Labor and Capital, p. 51);</div><div align="justify">-<br />19. All economies export and import too much (Capital, III, p. 577); As the capitalist mode of production expands, industrial cycles must become increasingly globalized and interdependent, and a crash in one country is transmitted to others;</div><div align="justify">-<br />20. Crises and instabilities in the raw-materials-producing economies become more severe and frequent than in the manufacturing economies once the capitalist mode of production is introduced into the underdeveloped countries and swings in demand for raw materials from the manufacturing countries create even more violent swings in derived demand in the raw materials branches of production in the underdeveloped countries that are more violent than swings in commodity markets; (Capital, III, pp. 141, 144);<br />-<br />Secondary Predictions Related to Primary Prediction No. 2<br />-<br />21. Centralization (concentration of capitals already formed, destruction of their individual independence, expropriation of capitalist by capitalist, transformation of many small into a few large capitals; Capital, I, p. 686) will increase with the expansion of the capitalist mode of production, driven primarily by the competitive market structure and the credit system (Wage, Labor and Capital, p. 24; Capital, I, pp 686-87);</div><div align="justify">-<br />22. Forces of competition operate in three distinct spheres: 1) among buyers tending to inflate price; 2) among sellers tending to depress price; 3) among buyers and sellers tending to set price (Wage, Labor and Capital, p., 24); </div><div align="justify">-<br />23. The process centralization is cumulative: Big fish more easily survive and swallow small fish and get bigger; smaller fish live on the margins and easily get swallowed; (Capital, I, p. 688); </div><div align="justify">-<br />24. Competition was originally engendered by feudal monopoly and thus competition was originally the opposite of monopoly not monopoly the opposite of competition, so that modern monopoly is not a simple antithesis; it is, on the contrary, a true synthesis (Poverty of Philosophy, p 169); </div><div align="justify">-<br />25. Centralization is inevitable in all markets, production, finance etc (Capital, III, p. 641); During crises and periods of stagnation, industrial security prices decline, individuals with money can take advantage and acquire assets and securities cheaply, when the storms are over, paper values rise again unless there are failures and swindles, thus depreciation in times of crisis is a potent force in centralizing money (Capital, III, pp. 509, 550-51, 641);</div><div align="justify">-<br />26. Centralization à Joint-stock companies à Centralization…(Capital, III, p. 519); Functions of ownership and control separate with industrial capitalist becoming a mere manager and the owners are mere money capitalists (Capital, III, p. 516-17); “little fish are swallowed by the sharks and the lambs by the wolves (Capital, III, p. 521); The separation of private ownership from control is defined by Marx as the transition from private to social capital (Capital, III, p. 519);</div><div align="justify">-<br />27. Rational agriculture is incompatible with the capitalist mode of production (Capital, III, p. 144);</div><div align="justify">-<br />28. Joint stock companies produce a new aristocracy of finance, the nominal director.<br />-</div><div align="justify">Specific Predictions Related to Primary Prediction No. 1<br />-<br />29. England’s attempt to penetrate China will result in manufacturing capacity outstripping Chinese market capacity (Marx on China, pp. 4, 52, 62, 69);</div><div align="justify">-<br />30. Cyclical fluctuations in England will occur every 10 years (Capital, I, p 695);</div><div align="justify">-<br />31. If China were to legalize Opium planting, trade relations among the U.S. Australia, England, India and China would collapse and an international crisis would follow (Marx on China, p. 81);</div><div align="justify">-<br />32. The crisis on the European continent always originates in England (Class Struggles in France, pp. 134-35);</div><div align="justify">-<br />33. The Chinese rebellion will produce a crisis in England (Marx on China, p. 4);<br />-<br />Primary Predictions (Proletariat and Class struggle)<br />-<br />1. The misery of the proletariat increases with development of the capitalist mode of production; upward and downward movements of wage rates are subject to restraints (upper limit = f (minimum acceptable rate of profit) and lower limit = f ( size of industrial reserve army, state of economy) (Capital, I, pp. 680, 699, 707-09);</div><div align="justify">-<br />2. The class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie will intensify;<br />-<br />Secondary Predictions Related to Primary Prediction No. 1<br />-<br />1. The development of the capitalist production leads to and requires the development of an industrial reserve army; higher forms of technology or increasing organic compositions of capital under conditions of constant capital outlay are labor-displacing: dIRA = K1[(c/K)2 –(c/K)1]/w; Where: K1 = total capital outlay; (c/K)1 and (c/K)2 are organic compositions of capital before and after technological change, w = prevailing wage rate and d IRA = change in IRA; with K1 constant (only first approximation), increases in organic compositions of capital displace workers from production; with accumulation of capital and substitutions of higher for lower organic compositions of capital, additional profits are forthcoming and capital accumulation from this source is: a = g(s2 – s1) where a = accumulation; g = portion of profits not consumed; (s2 – s1) = change profits (from advanced technology); Thus: d = a(v/K)2/w d = additional demand for labor; - (v/K)2 = inverse of the organic composition of capital; w = prevailing wage rate; Marx assumes both changing technology and capital accumulation and thus the industrial reserve army is stable only if K1[(c/K)2 – (c/K)1]/w – a(v/K)2/w = 0 and under this condition the prevailing wage rate remains unchanged; Where > 0, IRA expands and w declines, absolute as well as relative surplus population appears and if <><br /><div align="justify">-<br />2. Entire sections of the ruling class are drawn into the ranks of the proletariat (Communist Manifesto, p. 22);</div><div align="justify">-<br />3. As the interest rate falls with increasing capital accumulation, small investors can no longer live on incomes and are forced into the proletariat; (Wage, Labor and Capital, p. 51; Discourse on Free Trade, pp 17-18);</div><div align="justify">-<br />4. The misery of the agricultural worker increases relatively more than that of the industrial worker (Capital, I, pp 256, 739, 740);<br />-<br />Secondary Predictions Related to Primary Prediction Number 2<br />-<br />1. The proletariat increases its numbers and strength with developing class consciousness (Communist Manifesto, pp. 18-19; Marx-Engels Correspondence, p. 375);</div><div align="justify">-<br />2. What it took capitalists centuries to establish with miserable roads, the proletariat can attain in a few years with railways: class cohesion; (Communist Manifesto, p. 21);<br />-</div><div align="justify">3. The international proletariat emerges with the establishment of the world market; (Communist Manifesto, p. 54);<br />-</div><div align="justify">4. The first attempt of workers to ban together takes the form of combinations; (Poverty of Philosophy, p. 194);<br />-<br />5. At every stage of the development of capitalism, there will develop a corresponding political organization; when the world market is established, the International will supersede all forms of political organization; (Class Struggles in France, p. 43);</div><div align="justify">-<br />6. The international proletariat can only come into existence with the development of an international bourgeoisie; (Communist Manifesto, p. 54);</div><div align="justify">-<br />7. Utopian socialism will pass from the proletariat to the petty bourgeoisie with the development of the world market; (Marx-Engels Correspondence, pp. 189, 315; Class Struggles in France, p. 126; Communist Manifesto, p. 49);<br />-</div><div align="justify">8. As class struggle develops the proletariat substitutes political objectives for economic objectives; (Class Struggles in France, p. 45; Marx-Engels Correspondence, pp 318-19; Poverty of Philosophy p. 195);<br />-</div><div align="justify">9. Unless proletariat train for political activity, they will never succeed (Ibid.);<br />-</div><div align="justify">10. The proletariat will never get anywhere without a really bloody encounter with the ruling powers; (Marx-Engels Correspondence, p. 213);<br />-</div><div align="justify">11. The development of the Industrial Reserve Army has both positive and adverse effects on the development of class consciousness (Communist Manifesto, p. 21);<br />-</div><div align="justify">12. Proletariat grows in numbers, becomes more concentrated in masses, its strength grows and it feels its strength more causing a cumulative effect with feedbacks effects on further growth of the numbers of proletariat ( Communist Manifesto, p. 20);<br />-</div><div align="justify">13. Five-stage blueprint for the evolution of the proletarian class: I) Pre-capitalist era the primary struggle between original owners of means of production and the expropriators is on a personal level between individual owner and worker; II) Factory level of little workshops run by little masters, struggles carried out at factory level; III) Concerted activity on the part of the proletariat mostly protectionism against imports and fights for status; at this level consciousness trade and locale centered; IV) Development of transport, mass communications and capitalist markets brings together workers dispersed in space and time to establish a national proletarian class; V) Globalization and internationalization of the capitalist mode of production and development of international class<br />-<br />14. consciousness a function of complementary modes of production and after proletariat settle matters with its own bourgeoisie (Communist Manifesto, pp. 10, 18-21, 24, 54);<br />-</div><div align="justify">15. The modern subjugation of the worker to capital strips him of every trace of national character; Law, morality and religion are now merely bourgeois prejudices (Communist Manifesto, p. 54);<br />-</div><div align="justify">16. The development of a system of Socialist sects and that of a real worker’s movement are inversely related and in inverse ratio to each other So long as sects are historically justified, the working class is not yet ripe for an independent historic movement. (Communist Manifesto, p. 50; Marx-Engels Correspondence, p. 315);<br />-<br />Specific Prediction Related to Primary Prediction No. 2<br />-<br />17. The English working class will never do anything decisive in England, as a class, until it separates its policy toward Ireland in the most clear-cut way from the policy of the ruling class (Marx-Engels Correspondence, pp. 278, 289-90);<br />-</div><div align="justify">18. Unless French national chauvinism and Bonapartism among the working class is put to rest, there will be no peace between France and Germany and workers in France will not advance (Marx-Engels Correspondence, pp. 245-46);<br />-<br />Primary Predictions (Proletarian Revolution)<br />-<br />1. The proletariat cannot rise without upsetting all existing relations of production. (Communist Manifesto, p. 24; Selected Essays, p. 119);<br />-</div><div align="justify">2. The proletarian revolution evolves from the class struggle. (Revolution and Counter-revolution, pp. 4, 8; Selected Essays, pp. 33-34, 134, 137, 161; Capital, III, p. 309);<br />-</div><div align="justify">3. The proletariat will ultimately defeat the bourgeoisie. (Communist Manifesto, p. 25; Civil War in France, p. 62);<br />-</div><div align="justify">4. After victory, the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat will assume political power only to transfer the means of production from the private to the public domain and to suppress any attempt at reactionary counterrevolution. (Communist Manifesto, pp 36-37; Critique of the Gotha Programme, p. 45);<br />-<br />5. Following the period of dictatorship of the proletariat and abolition of the bourgeoisie, the proletariat will become the only class, and consequently the class structure will disappear and classless society emerges. (Communist Manifesto, p. 37);<br />-</div><div align="justify">6. The State will wither away. (German Ideology, p. 59);<br />-</div><div align="justify">7. Production under communism will be planned (Capital, III, pp 221, 521);<br />-</div><div align="justify">8. Distribution under communism will be according to needs (Capital, II, pp. 361-62);<br />-</div><div align="justify">9. There has never been a serious revolution which had not been preceded by serious financial and commercial crises and private and public credit are the ‘thermometer’ by which the intensity of the revolution can be measured and to the same degree that they fall, the glow and generate force of the revolution rise (Marx on China, pp. 7, 9; Class Struggles In France, pp. 137-38);<br />-<br />Secondary Predictions Related to Primary Prediction No. 2<br />-<br />1. The working class can never achieve independence or anything of lasting importance until the bourgeoisie has consolidated its position in political power; (Marx-Engels Correspondence, pp. 57, 290);<br />-</div><div align="justify">2. No proletarian revolution can take place until the basic material conditions and foundations for revolution have been created with the development of capitalism; (Selected Essays, p. 137);<br />-</div><div align="justify">3. The measures employed by proletariat to overthrow bourgeoisie will vary in different countries; (Marx on China, p 9; Communist Manifesto, pp. 36-37);<br />-</div><div align="justify">4. Social reform will always be utopian until proletarian revolutions occur all over the world on a world-wide scale( Selected Essays, pp. 134 “Moralizing Criticism”, 161; Marx-Engels Correspondence, p. 57)<br />-</div><div align="justify">5. The proletarian revolutions will become progressively larger; (Civil War in France, p. 62);<br />-</div><div align="justify">6. Revolutions will be initiated during periods of industrial crisis (Capital, III, p. 309; Marx on China, p. 9);<br />-</div><div align="justify">7. When most of the population is unemployed, revolution is inevitable; (Capital, III, p. 309);<br />-<br />8. The intensity of the revolution will vary inversely with the magnitude of credit available; (Class Struggles in France, p. 46);<br />-</div><div align="justify">9. During the revolution, part of the bourgeoisie will break away from the ruling class and join the proletariat; (Civil War in France, p. 62);<br />-</div><div align="justify">10. The Lumpenproletariat will join the proletariat but are essentially reactionary; (Communist Manifesto, p. 23; Class Struggles in France, pp. 50, 62);<br />-</div><div align="justify">11. The Lumpenproletariat will be ‘shaken off’ after the revolution (The Civil War in France, p. 50);<br />-</div><div align="justify">12. The salvation of the peasant will occur only after the revolution as they are dispersed over large areas and difficult to concentrate into cohesive political action; (Civil War in France, pp. 50, 71, 120);<br />-</div><div align="justify">Secondary Predictions Related to Primary Prediction No. 4<br />-</div><div align="justify">13. The centralization of credit will be taken over by the state bank; (Communist Manifesto pp. 36-37);<br />-</div><div align="justify">14. Free education will be made available to all children; (Ibid);<br />-</div><div align="justify">15. Children’s factory labor will be abolished; (Ibid);<br />-</div><div align="justify">16. Distinction between town and country will disappear; (Ibid);<br />-</div><div align="justify">17. State industrial armies will be established;(Ibid);<br />-</div><div align="justify">18. A state factory system will emerge; (Ibid);<br />-</div><div align="justify">19. A heavy progressive tax will be imposed;(Ibid);<br />-</div><div align="justify">20. All rights to inheritance will be abolished; (Ibid);<br />-</div><div align="justify">21. Emigrant and rebel property will be confiscated; (Ibid);<br />-</div><div align="justify">22. Landed property will be abolished and rents applied for public purposes; (Ibid);<br />-</div><div align="justify">23. The transition to communism occurs as an act by people all over the world all at once; (German Ideology, p. 25);<br />-<br />Secondary Predictions Related to Primary Prediction No. 5<br />-<br />24. Individualism can only be expressed under communism; (Critique of the Gotha Program, pp. 43-44; German Ideology, p. 78);</div><div align="justify">-<br />25. All religions will disappear; ( Capital, I, pp. 91-92);<br />-</div><div align="justify">26. The bourgeois family will be abolished; (Communist Manifesto, p. 33);<br />-</div><div align="justify">27. Wage labor will be abolished; (Value, Price and Profit, p. 128);<br />-<br />Secondary predictions related to Primary prediction No. 7<br />-<br />28. Society will make the allocation decisions on investment and consumption; (Capital, III, p 521);<br />-</div><div align="justify">29. Production processes under communism will be worker’s cooperatives; (Ibid; Civil War in France, p. 44);<br />-</div><div align="justify">30. Communist society will not be subject to cycles; (Capital, II, p. 361-62);<br />-</div><div align="justify">31. Industrial discipline becomes superfluous; (Communist Manifesto, p 30-31)<br />-</div><div align="justify">32. Market prices for agricultural commodities will be measured by actual social costs of production; (Capital, III, pp. 773-74);<br />-</div><div align="justify">33. There will be a different scope for the employment of machinery; (Capital, I, p. 429);<br />-<br />Secondary Prediction related to primary prediction No. 2<br />-<br />34. Income, except for six necessary deductions for economic stability and growth will be distributed directly to productive labor; (Capital, III, p 987; Critique of the Gotha Programme, pp. 27-28);<br />-<br />Specific predictions related to primary prediction No. 2<br />-<br />35. England will be forced to join the Continental revolution (in 1885); (Marx-Engels Correspondence, p. 118);<br />-</div><div align="justify">36. When English forces with draw from Ireland, an Irish agrarian revolution will displace the English feudal aristocracy now in power in Ireland; (Marx-Engels Correspondence, p. 288);<br />-</div><div align="justify">37. The English revolution will get nowhere until the Irish revolution is accomplished setting the stage for destroying the power of the English landowning class and setting the conditions for proletarian revolution; (Ibid.);<br />-</div><div align="justify">38. If the Russian revolution occurs, this may signal for European revolutions in which case Russia may join in and advance directly from primitive capitalism to communism without the tortuous developments of capitalism; (Communist Manifesto, p. 104);<br />-<br />39. If Russia continues the path she has followed since 1865, she will lose the finest chance ever offered by history to a nation not to undergo all the fatal vicissitudes of the capitalist regime; (Marx-Engels Correspondence, p. 353);<br />-</div><div align="justify">40. The European revolutions (1871) will originate in the East; (Marx-Engels Correspondence, p. 349)<br />-</div><div align="justify">41. The Franco-Prussian War will lead inevitably to a war between Germany and Russia; (Marx-Engels Correspondence, p 301);<br />-</div><div align="justify">42. The Russo-German War will act as a midwife to the inevitable social revolution in Russia; (Marx-Engels Correspondence, p 301); 17 years earlier Marx predicted reverse with Russia lagging behind other nations in revolution (Marx-Engels Correspondence, p. 124);<br />-</div><div align="justify">43. The proletarian revolutions in England, America and Holland may be attained by peaceful means; (Marx to 1872 Congress of the Hague Congress of the International quoted in Gottheil, op cit, p. 177);<br />-</div><div align="justify">44. The next French revolution (after 1871) will smash the bureaucratic-military machine; (Marx-Engels Correspondence, p. 309);<br />-</div><div align="justify">45. The English Established Church will more readily pardon an attack on 38 of its 39 articles than on 1/39 of its income; (Capital, I, p. 15);</div><br /><div align="justify">END NOTES<br />-</div><div align="justify"><a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1">[1]</a> In classical Greek Epistemology there are two forms or bases of knowledge: Episteme or knowledge arrived at deductively via logical deductions of specific conclusions or predictions from general postulates or assumptions said to be self-evident, empirically proved or to be taken as “axiomatic”; Techne or knowledge acquired through and based on praxis, experience or empirical investigations leading addictively or inductively to supportable (but not “proved”) generalizations that may or may not form the postulates or assumptions of the Episteme. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify"><a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2">[2]</a> See Lange, Oskar, “Marxian Economics and Modern Economic Theory” Review of Economic Studies, II, (June, 1935) p 193 quoted in Gottheil, Fred, “Marx’s Economic Predictions”, Northwest University Press, Evanston, Ill. 1966 p. 4; see also Boudin, Louis, “The Theoretical System of Karl Marx”, Monthly Review Press, N.Y. 1967<a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3"></a> </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">[3] According to Gottheil, Primary predictions from primary assumptions or postulates, relate to primary determinants of the economic system; Gottheil notes 17 of such: 12 from Capital, 4 from Books and Essays, 1 from Articles; secondary predictions are those that refer to particular aspects or applications of the primary postulates—determinants—and relate to politico-legal, social, cultural and economic contexts; Gottheil notes 100 of such: 59 in Capital, 32 in Books and Essays, 4 in Articles and 5 in Correspondence; Marx’s specific predictions involved no nexus with any specific generalizations or postulates but involved names, dates, events and contingencies with “If then” types of predictions; Gottheil found 36 of such: 6 in Capital, 3 in Books and Essays, 15 in Articles, and 12 in Correspondence. See Gottheil, Fred, op cit. p. 206-07; Gottheil’s study was based on various pamphlets and books such as: Capital, Vols 1-4; Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy; Critique of the Gotha Programme; The Poverty of Philosophy; The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts 1844; Value, Price and Profit; Wage-labor and Capital; Selected Essays; The German Ideology; Class Struggles in France; The Civil War in France; The Communist Manifesto; articles such as: Revolution and Counter-revolution; Civil War in the United States; Marx on China; Marx and Engels on Britain; The Eastern Question; Revolution in Spain; The Russian Menace to Europe; correspondence was based on: Marx-Engels Selected Correspondence; Letters to Americans; Civil War in the United States; Letters to Kugelmann. In addition to that used by Gottheil, used in this compendium was also: The Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Volumes 1-55, International Publishers, N.Y. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify"><a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4">[4]</a> Marx did note that the supposed independence of the worker, and freedom of contract (fictio juris of contract) and property rights for the worker as well as the capitalist, that appear to exist because of the number of enterprises that workers work in during their lives, and that they are “free” to leave jobs for others, are, in reality illusions (and thus presumably the appearance of exchanges of fair equivalents between workers and capitalists in labor-power markets would also be illusory). (Capital, I, p. 628 and Critique of the Gotha Programme, p. 41 and Marx characterized the system of wage-labor as a form of wage-slavery de facto no matter how it appears de jure. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify"><a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5">[5]</a> See Gottheil, Fred M; op cit. pp 38-39<a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6">[</a></div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">6] Gottheil, Fred M op cit. p. 40<a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn7" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftnref7" name="_ftn7"></a> </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">[7] All innovations are labor-saving and thus those that are capital-saving are those that reduce labor-content embodied in constant capital versus those reducing labor-content embodied in variable capital or v which are said to be labor-saving; if innovations result in labor content in both c and v reduced so that the ratios of c : v remain constant, then innovation said to be neutral; Gottheil, Fred. M. Ibid, p. 40</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify"><a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn8" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftnref8" name="_ftn8">[8]</a> Gottheil (op cit) notes repeatedly that Marx uses surplus value and profit interchangeably yet this is potentially problematic in that Marx also notes that surplus-value originates in production and not exchange and that then surplus-value is further divided, into profit (industrial capitalist), interest (money or financial capitalist) and rent (landed capitalist) according to intra-class balances of power.<a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn9" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftnref9" name="_ftn9"></a> </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">[9] Gottheil, Ibid. p. 54 </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify"><a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn10" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftnref10" name="_ftn10">[10]</a> Gottheil, Fred M op cit p. 58</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify"><a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn11" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftnref11" name="_ftn11">[11]</a> See Gottheil, Fred M. op cit p 70 for a full discussion of this issue.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify"><a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn12" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftnref12" name="_ftn12">[12]</a> In Marx’s notations he uses Cpm with commodity-capital form of capital in circulation, specifically the factor form where the employment of labor is indicated by an “l” (lower-case L) and pm indicates means of production. Gottheil, Fred M op cit, p. 72, footnote 3 (Capital, II, p. 86)</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify"><a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn13" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftnref13" name="_ftn13">[13]</a> In this discussion, as in others, I am indebted to the insights and comments of Gottheil (op cit pp. 89-90)<a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn14" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftnref14" name="_ftn14"></a> </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">[14] See Boudin, Louis B op. cit “…the world [is not] something dead and unchangeable, but…something which is continually changing…nothing is, everything becomes… existence is a constant process of change or growth…to understand things, we must understand their appearance and disappearance, their growth and decline…(p. 25)</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify"><a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn15" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftnref15" name="_ftn15">[15]</a> Marx noted six factors or processes that may counteract, for a time, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall; note Marx did not speak of the “Law of Falling Rate of Profit” but the “Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall”: 1) increased intensity of exploitation of labor-power (via fear, increased utilization of machinery, extension of working day,); 2) depression of wages below value of labor-power; 3) cheapening of the elements of constant capital; 4) Relative overpopulation; 5) Foreign trade (commodity and capital); 6) Increases in stock capital and joint-stock companies (Capital, III, p. 275, 280, 297) Other factors influencing the rate of profit up or down are: a) changing values of variable and constant capital (Capital I, pp 408, 412, 445, 461-63, 682; Capital, III, pp. 126-27 ); b) changing values of capital turnover(Marx-Engels Correspondence, p. 242; Capital, II, pp 267-68, 291, 387); c) changing values/roles of merchant’s capital (Capital, III, pp. 330, 343,) ; d) changing distributions of surplus-value among and relative factor prices commanded by, strata of capital—landowners, merchants, industrialists, money capitalists (Capital, III, pp.252, 424-25,428, 731, 842-43, 882, 897); <a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn16" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftnref16" name="_ftn16"></a></div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">[16] Here actually Marx says that: “:… Its [capitalist mode of production] historical mission is the ruthless development in geometrical progression of the productivity of human labor” (Capital, III, p. 308) Gottheil lists this as a prediction (geometrical progression of productivity of labor) yet Marx never noted that this mission could or would be accomplished at the geometric progression level </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify"><a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn17" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftnref17" name="_ftn17">[17]</a> Gottheil notes that when Marx assumes rates of surplus-value constant, then his capital-migration prediction is sound but the derivation of international commodity exchange may be faulty because the assumed higher productivities in production in the technically-advanced nations implies variability in the rate of surplus-value; If, then to correct this problem the rate of surplus-value is allowed to be variable, then the capital-migration prediction based on rate-of-profit differentials breaks down. The way around this problem, and it was implied by Marx, was to assume that capital exported to colonies was only for producing commodities in which those colonies had a productive and comparative advantage over the “advanced” economies due to climatic, location, raw resource endowments and other such factors; Marx noted that high transportation costs may offset the lower-cost-price-competition advantages of enterprises using superior techniques and thus assumed/predicted continual revolutionizing of the forces of transportation and communications Gottheil, Fred M. op cit pp. 119-20)<br />-<br />Bibliography<br />-<br />1. Gottheil, Fred M. Marx’s Economic Predictions, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Il, 1966;<br />2. Boudin, Louis The Theoretical System of Karl Marx, Monthly Review Press, N.Y. 1967;<br />3. Marx, Karl Capital, A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. I: The Process of Capitalist Production Edited by Engels, Friedrich; Translated from Third German Edition by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling; Revised according to the Fourth German Edition by Ernest Untermann, Chicago, Charles H. Kerr & Co. 1908; (for pagination references);<br />4. Marx, Karl Capital, A Critique of Political Economy Vol. II: The Process of Circulation of Capital; Edited by Engels, Friedrich, Translated from the Second German Edition by Ernest Untermann, Chicago, Charles H. Kerr & Co, 1933; (for pagination references);<br />5. Marx, Karl Capital, A Critique of Political Economy. Vol. III: The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole; Edited by Engels, Friedrich; Chicago, Charles H. Kerr & Co, 1909;<br />6. Marx, Karl Theories of Surplus-Value (Capital, Vol. IV) Translation by Bonner, G.A and Burns, Emile, N.Y. International Publishers Co. 1952 (for pagination references); Theories of Surplus-Value Parts I-III, Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1971;<br />7. Marx, Karl Capital Volumes I – III, Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1978;<br />8. Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich; Selected Works Vols. I – III; Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1970;<br />9. Marx, Karl A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy; Translated from German edition by Stone, N.I., Chicago, Charles H. Kerr & Co. 1940; (pagination for references);<br />10. Marx, Karl The Civil War in France, N.Y. International Publishers Co. 1933; (pagination);<br />11. Marx, Karl The Class Struggles in France, N.Y. International Publishers Co. 1934 (pagination);<br />12. Marx, Karl, Critique of the Gotha Programme, N.Y. International Publishers Co. 1933 (pagination);<br />13. Marx, Karl The Discourse on Free Trade Pocket Library on Socialism, No. 50, Chicago, Charles H. Kerr and Co. 1907 (pagination);<br />14. Marx, Karl Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Translated by Milligan, Martin, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1959 (pagination);<br />15. Marx, Karl Letters to Dr. Kugelmann, N.Y. International Publishers Co. 1934 (pagination);<br />16. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, N.Y. International Publishers Co. 1924 (pagination);<br />17. Marx, Karl Marx on China: Articles From the N.Y. Daily Tribune, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1951. (pagination);<br />18. Marx, Karl The Poverty of Philosophy, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1956 (pagination);<br />19. Marx, Karl Revolution and Counter-Revolution, or Germany in 1848; Edited by Eleanor Marx Aveling, London, George Allen and Unwin, 1937 (pagination);<br />20. Marx, Karl Selected Essays, Translated by Stenning, H.J., N.Y. International Publishers Co. 1926 (pagination);<br />21. Marx, Karl Value, Price and Profit Ed. By Eleanor Marx Aveling, Chicago, Charles H. Kerr & Co. 1913; (pagination);<br />22. Marx, Karl Wage-labor and Capital , Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1947 (pagination);<br />23. Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich On Britain, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1953 (pagination);<br />24. Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich The Civil War in the United States, Ed, by Enmale, Richard, N.Y. International Publishers Co, 1937 (pagination)<br />25. Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich The Communist Manifesto, Translated by Passony, Stefan, Henry Regnery Co. 1954 (pagination);<br />26. Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich Correspondence 1846-95, a Selection with Commentary and Notes. Edited and Translated by Dona Torr. N.Y. International Publishers Co. 1936; (pagination);<br />27. Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich The German Ideology, Parts I and III, Translated by Lough, W and Magill, C.P. Ed. Pascal, R N.Y. International Publishers Co. 1939; (pagination);<br />28. Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, Letters to Americans, Translated by Mins, Leonard, N.Y. International Publishers Co. 1934; (pagination);<br />29. Schumpeter, Joseph Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, N.Y. Harper and Brothers, 1942; and History of Economic Analysis, N.Y. Oxford University Press, 1954;<br />30. Wolff, Richard and Resnick Stephen Economics: Marxian versus Neoclassical, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987;<br />31. Brewer, Anthony, Marxist Theories of Imperialism: A Critical Survey, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987 </div><div align="justify">32. Untermann, Ernest, Marxisan Economics, Chicago, Charles Kerr And Co. 1927</div><div align="justify">33. Boudin, Louis, The Theoretical System of Karl Marx, NY, Monthly Review Press, 1967</div><div align="justify">34. Marx, Karl, Capital, Vols 1-3, London, Penguin Classics, 1976</div></div></div></div></div>Omahkohkiaayo i'poyihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16061952911212543042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449323876485291163.post-45854106291447825232010-06-08T21:07:00.000-07:002010-06-09T20:11:38.610-07:00Blackfoot Aikido: Ongoing Legal Case Against Genocide<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TA8WAdl7YCI/AAAAAAAAA3g/guCTIyL7Q54/s1600/insurgents-290.gif"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 290px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 300px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5480623468732702754" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TA8WAdl7YCI/AAAAAAAAA3g/guCTIyL7Q54/s400/insurgents-290.gif" /></a><br /><div><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TA8V_s3I7BI/AAAAAAAAA3Y/MCngiXrKfss/s1600/Home_security_1492_TS_logo.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 341px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5480623455651556370" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TA8V_s3I7BI/AAAAAAAAA3Y/MCngiXrKfss/s400/Home_security_1492_TS_logo.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TA8V_PFl9ZI/AAAAAAAAA3Q/BNkiUsyx68k/s1600/IndianHolocaust.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 300px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 212px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5480623447659115922" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/TA8V_PFl9ZI/AAAAAAAAA3Q/BNkiUsyx68k/s400/IndianHolocaust.jpg" /></a><br />Ongoing Legal Battles: Proving the Reality of Genocide in the Courts of those Conducting it; Our Only Weapons: The Reality, International Law, Resistance, The Truth and the Courage to Tell it.</div><div></div><div>Friday, January 21, 2005</div><div>-<br /><a name="109270199187099645"></a><a href="http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2005/01/ongoing-legal-case-in-alberta-most.html">Ongoing Legal Case in Alberta (most recent to past) Blackfoot vs Canadian Government: National Sovereignty/Existence vs Genocide</a> </div><div align="justify">-<br />Dear Mr. Sandstrom and Brooks:</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Here are two documents with some arguments and legal authorities that we plan to introduce at trial. As I have noted, most of our arguments, and citations for legal authority/precedent, are embodied in the documents already in your possession: Blackfoot Indictment of U.S. and Canadian Governments For Genocide (already accepted into the Court record); previous submissions of specific arguments to be advanced at trial; endorsement of proposed arguments by the National Lawyer's Guild; facsimiles of newspaper articles on sterilization and medical experimentation on First Nations persons. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">I have asked Bella to make copies of any Tribal documents or personal family documents and get them to Mr. Brooks immediately and I hope that they have been delivered. The bulk of our submissions will be through expert testimonies of the witnesses that we gave notice would be called to testify. Finally, as it is our Way, even when in Courts that operate on principles not consistent with our Ways, we welcome full and open debate of all the relevant issues; we do not believe in using procedure or contrived scopes of direct examination to limit or contrive possible scopes and content of rebuttal and if you do need more time to deal with the Treaty 7 arguments, and ask for further continuance beyond the two days allotted for this phase of the trial, we will accommodate whatever is required to ensure that the Crown has ample time to properly answer any and all submissions and arguments by us to your satisfaction. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">We only ask that you keep in mind the costs for me to travel to Alberta and that Bella is being represented--through no fault of her own or mine and not for financial reasons--by someone who is not a lawyer and not familiar with some of the procedures etc.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Thank you for your consideration.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">James M. Craven</div><div align="justify">Unpaid agent for the pro se defense of Bella Yellow Horn</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">THE HONORABLE JUDGE RONALD A. JACOBSON</div><div align="justify">The Provincial Court of Alberta</div><div align="justify">December 10, 2003</div><div align="justify">Kurt Sandstrom, Barrister and Solicitor</div><div align="justify">Alberta Justice Oboriginal [sic?] Law Team 9th Floor, </div><div align="justify">Peace Hills Trust Tower10011- 109 Street</div><div align="justify">Edmonton, AlbertaT5J 3S8</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">RE: R. v. Bella Yellowhorn-Trial set for January 22nd and 23rd, 2004</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Your letter of December 4, 2003 is acknowledged. Together with this reply it will be attached to the Clerk's file. Mr. Craven's proposed intention to challenge the constitutionality of Treaty 7 creates an entirely new issue. Subject to submissions, it would appear that either a supplementary or entirely revised constitutional notice must be prepared and properly served on all concerned--including the Government of Canada.When that is done, should we even attempt to have the trial proceed on January 22 and 23, 2004?Or should there be another pre-trial conference to determine what adequate time is required in order to properly complete the trial of all issues at a later date? Split trials should be avoided whenever reasonably proper!This matter can be discussed in a telephone conference call. Either Assistant Chief Judge J.A. Wood, or myself, or both, can participate.This matter should not be delayed.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Yours truly,</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">R.A. Jacobson (signed)RAJ/</div><div align="justify">bjscc: James M. Craven, Clark College, Eric Brooks, Crown Prosecutor</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Mr. Craven,</div><div align="justify">This will acknowledge your email of November 16, 2003, which I received on that date. Thank you for providing additional information concerning your case.I was unable to discuss this with Mr. Brooks until today. We will not be contacting your witnesses, but we do appreciate the invitation to do so by conference call. I can also advise that I noticed your potential challenge to Treaty 7 in your email on October 12. As this was the first time I understood you to be challenging Treaty 7, I immediately contacted our expert on treaty documents and was advised by him on October 14, 2003 that he would be unavailable to testify on January 22 and 23. He will be able to testify in April, May or June however. Therefore, I am going to write the Court and advise that if credible evidence concerning the validity of Treaty 7 is advanced at trial, I will need to request an adjournment. I will send you a copy of that correspondence.In the meantime, I renew my request for you to send documents to me which you intend to file in evidence. I understand that you are working on that. It will greatly simplify our task on January 22 and 23.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Thank you.</div><div align="justify">Kurt Sandstrom,Barrister and Solicitor</div><div align="justify">Alberta JusticeConstitutional and Aboriginal Law9 th Floor, Peace Hills Trust Tower,10011-109 StreetEdmonton, Alberta, Canada T5J 3S8Tel: (780) 422-4160Fax: (780) 427-1230</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Dear Mr. Sandstrom,</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">This is to acknowledge receipt of and to respond to your most recent email and letter to Judge Jacobson dated December 4, 2003.This may be the first time you understood that we would be challenging the validity and applicability of Treaty 7, but it is most certainly not the first time we made clear our intent to advance this dimsension of our overall argument. Attached is our whole file on this case from the earliest letter to the Court by me onward. For example, from my letter of Feb. 10, 2003 to the Court and also sent to you and others involved in this case:</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">a)That there is indeed a real and viable Blackfoot Nation still in existence despite past and present attempts at its extermination or elimination and that Bella Yellowhorn is indeed a member of that Nation;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">b)That the existence or non-existence of any nation is not in any way dependent upon recognition or non-recognition by other recognized nations (particularly those such as Canada or the U.S. that have acquired and built material interests in denying the existence and legitimacy-and derivative rights of independence, self-determination and sovereignty-of First Nations and/or other nations); </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">c) the existence, legitimacy-and derivative rights-of all nations are a matter of "facts on the ground" and international law as were it not so, any nation could summarily extinguish another nation (genocide) through simple non-recognition and applied power disparities;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">d)Although some Blackfoot deny that Treaty 7 was actually signed by the principal chiefs of the Blackfoot, the Government of Canada does assert Treaty 7 to be binding and has built a whole system of supposed property rights and material interests upon that and other Treaties. According to the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, recognized by both the U.S. and Canadian Supreme Courts as the "definitive international law on treaties and treaty relations", only sovereign nations can sign treaties and in doing so, each party explicitly and tacitly recognizes the other treating party as a co-equal and legitimate representative of a whole People being bound by that Treaty. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">e) In recognizing the legitimacy of a treating party, each party is also tacitly, if not explicitly, recognizing-or not calling into question-the legitimacy of the mechanisms and institutions through which the representatives and government of the treating parties were selected and the traditional Blackfoot mechanisms and institutions through which the alleged Blackfoot Chiefs and signatories of Treaty 7 were selected remain in force among traditional Blackfoot despite any impositions of alternative political forms (Tribal Councils) under the Indian Act;And from my letter of April 12, 2003 to the Court and sent to you and other parties involved in this case:3) Any purported obligations of Blackfoot under Treaty 7 that serve to denationalize or cause Blackfoot to surrender to all laws and authority of the Crown are contradictory and in violation of international law and those aspects of the Canadian Constitution dealing with genocide. Only sovereign nations may sign treaties and according to the Vienna Convention on Treaties, which the U.S. and Canadian Supreme Courts have recognized as definitive international law on treaties, each treating partner recognizes--or at least does not call into question--the authority, co-equal status and systems for determining government/leadership of the other. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">f) The cited language of Treaty 7, dealing with Blackfoot allegedly agreeing to become loyal subjects of Her Majesty the Queen and all of her laws, if accepted, would mean that Blackfoot, as a sovereign nation, would be signing a treaty whose terms and language served to extinguish the very sovereign nation that had the authority and standing to sign--and continue--such a treaty; no nation, especially Blackfoot, would ever sign such a treaty that would be illegal and non-binding under international law and basic contract law. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">g) These asserted obligations under Treaty 7, along with Treaty 7 itself, are simply not valid under even Canadian Law. Further, Treaty 7 was not fully and finally ratified by the Crown in London as required prior to 1947. Further, according to the notes of Father Constantine Scullen, representative of the Crown to attest to the signatures of the Blackfoot Chiefs on Treaty 7, none of the Chiefs would make a mark with their own hand nor would they even touch the pen used to make the mark and therefore Treaty 7 and any purported allegiances or obligations of Indigenous Peoples under Treaty 7 would not exist, eventhough the Government of Canada has asserted Treaty 7 to be binding and has built a whole system of "private" property, interests and purported property rights under its provisions.and from my letter to Mr. Lambrecht of Sept. 10, 2003 (also forwarded to you):</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">h) Further, we argue that Treaty 7 was never signed and/or never a full and binding Treaty and thus any purported obligations of Blackfoot under Treaty 7 to become "loyal subjects" of the Crown and bound by all Canadian laws do not exist as a matter of international law;Further, we argue that although Canada claims that Treaty 7 was properly signed and valid, although we dispute this claim with historical evidence, Canada has nonetheless built up whole system of material interests and purported property rights based upon the assumption of the validity of Treaty 7; under international law, specifically the Vienna Convention on Treaties, only nations sign, continue and enforce treaties and each treating partner when signing a treaty, recognizes the co-equal status and systems of government (producing the leadership having the standing and authority to sign a treaty and bind a whole population to its terms) of the other treating partner(s) and thus there is ample legal authority for the continued existence of the Blackfoot Nation with its own right to independence, self-determination, sovereignty and traditional government and mechanisms for selecting the composition of that government. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">i) Thus, Bella Yellow Horn, a member of a sovereign Blackfoot Nation, and all members of the Blackfoot Nation, may travel throughout Canadian lands with the same status and obligations (vis-a-vis licensing and insurance) as any other motorist from another sovereign nation.We have made it clear that although we believe that Treaty 7 was never signed by the Blackfoot Chiefs (according to the diary of Fr. Scullen charged with being a witness to the signatures of the Blackfoot Chiefs), was never ratified by the Crown, was put to the Blackfoot Chiefs with coercive and unconscionable force and has been violated over and over by the Canadian Government, our central argument is that Treaty 7 is self-impeaching and internally self-negating as its central terms call for dissolution of one of the sovereign nations that must remain in existence and sovereign to have the standing, authority and capabilities to sign and keep the terms of such a Treaty. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">We have advanced this argument over and over clearly. I am therefore at a loss to understand why any further delays would be necessary.I have asked Bella to quickly put together any documents we may use to advance our case (She is in possession of some family and other documents) to send them to you. And I reiterate that if you choose to depose our potential witnesses, whose names, telephone numbers and likely testimonies and arguments have been given, I would only ask that I be allowed to stand or listen in and participate if necessary.I would also ask that you forward to us the names, telephone numbers, likely testimonies, backgrounds of any potential witnesses along with any documents that you might plan to introduce. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Also, I must ask again that we get the name of the person who filed the complaint with the Lethbridge Police that led to Bella Yellow Horn being stopped and subsequently charged (as was promised) and the chain of custody and present whereabouts of her van that was seized.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Thank you for your assistance and patience. Would you please forward this to Judge Jacobson whose email address I do not have?</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">James Craven(Omahkohkiaayo i'poyi)</div><div align="justify">cc. Judge Jacobson</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Mr. Craven:</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">This will acknowledge your communication below my email of October 12, 2003. By copy of this email, I am forwarding your communication to Eric Brooks and Kirk Lambrecht.I appreciate your advice as to your proposed witnesses. I also understand that you are still working on which documents you wish to produce at the trial of January 22 and 23. Unless you can provide me a clear indication of what the substance of your proposed Elder testimony will be, the best way to deal with this will be to have the Elders proceed with their testimony, and then adjourn in order to have these historical facts, and the documents relied on by you, examined by an expert for the Crown.You should forward to me the documents upon which you will be seeking to file in evidence before the Court. I can then advise you whether the Crown will consent to the filing of these documents, or whether you must prove them in the normal way. This may entail getting certified copies, or producing a witness who has knowledge about these documents. If I know what the document is and know it is authentic, I will in most likelihood consent to its admission and can save you these steps. Even though you may have provided some of these documents to the Crown and the Court, please send me a complete bundle with each document labeled (either under a tab number, or a document number on the first page of the document). I will then review each document and advise you which can go into evidence by consent, and which you will have to prove.I will leave it to Mr. Brooks to determine whether it would be appropriate to communicate any of your comments to the court. You are certainly free to communicate with the Court directly, I would only ask that you send me a copy of that communication.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Yours truly,</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Kurt Sandstrom Barrister and Solicitor,</div><div align="justify">Alberta JusticeConstitutional and Aboriginal Law</div><div align="justify">9th Floor, Peace Hills Trust Tower,10011-109 StreetEdmonton, Alberta, Canada T5J 3S8</div><div align="justify">Tel: (780) 422-4160Fax: (780) 427-1230</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Dear Mr. Sandstrom:</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Thanks for your response and helping with outlining the procedures involved in submissions of documentary evidence and proposed lines of argument. In this regard, below is an example of some of the evidence on the genocidal nature of the Indian Act and the right/survival imperative of First Nations Peoples not to recognize or obey it. For the record, this applies specifically to Bella Yellow Horn in particular as she was slated to be sterilized under the color of the Indian Act and Alberta Sterilization Act and was only saved from sterilization with some last-minute legal intervention. Had she recognized and--complied with--her obligations under these Acts, which were in violation of Article II (d) of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide to which Canada is a signatory, her present children would simply not exist and the Blackfoot Nation would have been deprived of some of its citizens. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Further, Bella and other members of her family were used for medical experimentation in the Indian Residential Schools, again under the color of "law" and supposed "obligations" under--and to comply with--the Indian Act which were in violation of Articles II (a), (b), (c),(d) and (e) of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide (see below).</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">We are attempting to comply with all your discovery and other rights prior to trial. We do not have the resources available to us that the Crown has and therefore our responses might not be all that you are used to. In any case, we have made good-faith attempts to comply with all our pre-trial obligations and ask that our constraints are understood. Those potential witnesses to be called all have specialized and personal knowledge/experiences with the genocidal nature and consequences of the Indian Act and/or Treaty 7 "obligations" past and present and will show that any First Nations person recognizing/obeying the Indian Act would be aiding and abetting their own extermination and that of their own People, and thus would themselves be complicit in genocide, and in violation of several articles of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide; and those who refuse to recognize or comply with the Indian Act are objectively acting as agents of the higher or "supreme law" of Canada.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Thank you for your assistance.</div><div align="justify">James M. Craven(Omahkohkiaayo i' poyi)</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Alberta sterilization victims also used as guinea pigs Revelation comes as 40 victims win $4M settlement</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Marina Jimenez National Post10/28/98</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">As many as 100 of the children at the centre of the Alberta sterilization scandal of the late 1960s and early 1970s were also used as guinea pigs in drug trials, the National Post has learned. The children lived at the Provincial Training School in Red Deer. Some were wards of the province and others were placed in the school by their parents, who did not consent to the sterilization or medical experimentation, which included the administration of powerful steroids and anti-psychotic drugs. Experts say one of the drugs used, the anabolic steroid norbolethone, is illegal today. The anti-psychotic tranquilizer haloperidol was also used. Its effect on children is said to be akin to hitting them over the head with a sledge hammer.Yesterday, 40 people who were sterilized against their will reached a settlement totalling $4-million with the government of Alberta. This brings to 540 the number of people who have settled with the province for being sterilized under the now-defunct Alberta Sterilization Act, which was in effect from 1928 to 1972. The operations were ordered by Alberta's eugenics board to prevent the mentally disabled from passing on their defects to offspring. Lawyers say they want more money from the government for victims who had to endure being tested with powerful drugs in addition to being sterilized. "Invading people's rights in the form of unauthorized research and taking advantage of people who couldn't look after themselves is the kind of thing that courts award punitive damages for," said Jon Faulds, an Edmonton lawyer representing 109 sterilization victims still negotiating settlements.Allan Garber, another Edmonton lawyer acting for the former training school residents, said they were treated like cattle. "The experimental drug treatment only compounds the evil that was done to our clients." Dr. Leonard J. LeVann, medical superintendent from 1949 to 1974 at the Red Deer school, published the results of his drug experiments in scholarly journals, which were recently turned over to lawyers for the victims. The articles show that Dr. LeVann, who is dead, gave 100 undersized children the anabolic steroid norbolethone over a 12-month period in 1971. The drug -- now illegal in Canada -- made the children gain weight. But it also produced some side effects: the genitals of two boys increased in size and one girl's voice deepened."The treatment of retarded growth in children with anabolic agents is controversial," he wrote in the September 1971 edition of the International Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, Therapy and Toxicology. Nonetheless, he called the drug study "entirely satisfactory."Norbolethone is illegal today because of its powerful side effects - damage to the liver and negative psychological symptoms. Anabolic steroids can also increase aggressive sexual behaviour in men and cause secondary sexual characteristics, for example, facial hair in girls. Dr. LeVann also gave 100 children haloperidol, an anti-psychotic tranquilizer, over a period of 40 days in the late 1960s to counter hyperactivity and excitability. Dr. Louis Pagliaro, a professor of educational psychology and the associate director of the substance abusology research unit at the University of Alberta, says haloperidol "would essentially knock(children) out. (It) generally decreases people's ability to learn and adversely affects memory and behaviour." Dr. LeVann's studies are "full of half-truths, assumptions and by today's standards, lack proper research methodology," says Dr. Pagliaro.About 2,800 people were sterilized in Alberta before the Sexual Sterilization Act was finally repealed. Documents now show that many of the people sterilized were not mentally disabled.In 1996, the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench ordered the provincial government to pay Leilani Muirer $740,000 for being wrongfully confined in the Red Deer school and sterilized. Her landmark victory opened a floodgate of litigation. In June, 1998, the government agreed to pay 500 more sterilization claimants up to $100,000. Many continue to live in the Red Deer facility, known today as the Michener Centre. The province has spent $54 million on settlements to date. The compensation deal for the sterilizaiton victims announced yesterday, much the same as those announced last June, gives claimants $75,000 now and another $25,000 after three years, if they are then living outside institutions.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">The Globe and Mail, Wednesday, April 26, 2000 Native children deprived of care Preventive dentistry banned during study By Michael Valpy</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Federal-government doctors withheld specialized dental care for children in eight aboriginal residential schools in the 1940s and 1950s to see what the effect would be on their teeth and overall health. The specialized dental care was withheld as part of a five-year study of aboriginal children's nutrition. The study's director, Dr. L. B. Pett, the retired chief of the nutrition division of the Department of National Health and Welfare, said parental consent was not obtained for the study. Instead, the government obtained permission from the school principals.A letter dated Oct. 3, 1949, from Dr. H. K. Brown, chief of the department's dental health division, said: "It is important that during the period of this study, no specialized, over-all type of dental service should be provided, such as the use of sodium fluoride, dental prophylaxis [professional cleaning] or even urea compounds [used in treatment of decay]."In this study dental caries [decay] and gingivitis [gum disease] are both important factors in assessing nutritional status. The caries index could be upset by such specialized dental measures as those referred to above.The letter -- referring specifically to the United Church school in Port Alberni, B.C. -- also said that preventive dental treatment would make the study of "questionable value" in measuring vitamin C deficiency.Fillings and extractions were to continue.Professor Gary Accursi of the University of Toronto's Faculty of Dentistry said yesterday that a dental-ethics committee would be unlikely to approve such a trial today. He said he did not know whether it would have passed the ethical standards of the time.A Toronto medical expert on clinical trials, who asked not to be identified, said the letter, on its face, implied clearly that the Canadian government was prepared to let aboriginal children suffer the effects of poor nutrition without intervention so long as its study was not adulterated.Dr. Pett, in an interview yesterday, put the study, which he said was conducted at eight schools, in a different context. It was carried out, he said, to improve nutrition for aboriginal children and provide information on good nutrition for their parents.Fluoride treatment, now considered one of history's greatest public-health advances, was then in its infancy. The first fluoride trials in Canada, in Stratford and Brantford, were being carried out at the time of the study. The only thing that bothered Dr. Pett about the study from an ethical point of view, he said, was the absence of parental consent. "Parental consent was always an issue," he said. "It was hard to contact them. So many were in the bush."So the study went ahead, he said, with the consent of the school principals, who were given more-or-less legal status as in loco parentis (in the place of a parent).The records of the nutritional study were found in Ottawa's National Archives by freelance writer David Napier, commissioned by the Anglican Journal, the newspaper of the Anglican Church of Canada, to inquire into aboriginal residential schools. The Journal will publish his article, the result of eight months research, later this month.The schools were operated by churches in a contractual relationship with the federal government for more than a century.Children as young as five were taken away from their families and placed in the schools. They were ordered not to use their mother tongue and to set aside their cultural values and practices.The Roman Catholic, Anglican and United Churches, along with the federal government, face hundreds of millions of dollars in lawsuits from nearly 6,000 former students.Copyright 2000 The Globe and Mail4160Fax: (780) 427-1230</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Mr. Craven,</div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">I understand from the Prosecutors' Office that he continuation date for this trial has been set for January 22 and 23, 2004 in front of Judge Jacobson. I have been asked to ensure you are informed of this date. We have Canada's letter dated September 23, 2003 to you indicating they will not intervene in the trial at this stage. It would help me prepare if you could, by the end of November, or earlier, advise me of the following information: 1. Will you be calling witnesses, or do you intend on just making the arguments you outline in your correspondence to the Court, Canada, or us? 2. If you are calling witnesses, who will they be? 3. What is the brief substance of their testimony? 4. Will you be filing any documents (there are strict rules on how this is done for some documents)? If you want to file documents, it would help me to know which ones you intend to file. I can help you on the proper procedure for filing these documents.If you have any questions, please let me know.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">Kurt Sandstrom Barrister and SolicitorAlberta Justice Constitutional and Aboriginal Law</div><div align="justify">9th Floor, Peace Hills Trust Tower,10011-109 Street Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T5J 3S8</div><div align="justify">Tel: (780) 422-4160Fax: (780) 427-1230</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Dear Mr. Sandstom,</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Thanks for the note and I apologize for the delay in writing back as I am totally swamped with work and did not want to reply in a cursory or superficial way.First of all, I did get notice from Mr. Lambrecht that the Canadian Federal Government would not be intervening at this stage but did want to be notified in the event of an appeal and perhaps would step in at that stage. I do also need to contact Mr. Lambrecht and perhaps this note to you will suffice for his purposes as well so please feel free to share this with him and whomever else is concerned with this matter including Judge Jacobson, Mr. Falconer, Mr. Brooks and any others.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">As you know our defense involves several dimensions. I do apologize for any delays caused by our not having had full documentation available, but, as our resources are meager relative to those of the Canadian Federal and Alberta Governments, and as I am forced to rely on others to take care of some matters inside Alberta, and as I am assisting a pro se defense without legal assistance in Alberta, such problems are likely and unintended. For the record, we Blackfoot do not have or practice any of the concepts and practices so typical of the adversarial eurocentric court systems that have been routinely used to facilitate and give legal cover to genocide and genocide cover-up in Canada: excessive ritual and protocol; jury/judge/venue shopping; contrived and shaped scopes/content of direct examinations in order to limit and shape possible scopes/content of redirect examinations; not asking questions to which we do not already have an answer; attempting to magnify the exculpatory and minimize the inculpatory in our own case while attempting to minimize the exculpatory and maximize the inculpatory of the opponent's case; obstruction of discovery and use of discovery to cause prohibitive legal costs and obstruct justice; paid--dueling--"expert witnesses" whose formal credentials give their opinions "probative value" and the status of "evidence"; etc.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">As you probably noted, not only did we give notice of intent to raise Constitutional issues (I am still exploring getting documentation that notice was indeed sent from the Peigan Band Reserch Department on April 22 as was represented to me to have been done) but we gave notice of the specific content of those arguments. These are indeed the arguments we will be raising. Further, we provided a letter of endorsement from the National Lawyer's Guild, composed of Canadian as well as U.S. lawyers and many of them considered experts in international law, that was intended to show that the arguments that we proposed to advance were not frivolous or a frivolous use of the Court's time--in terms of available supporting evidence, reasoning and international law. We asked the NLG only to support our contention that our arguments were not frivolous without necessarily adopting or endorsing them, but the NLG came back, to our surprise, actually endorsing and adopting those arguments.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">First, I will be calling Bella Yellow Horn back to the stand to clear up some issues from the previous phase and to set up the next phase of the trial. Specifically, we will be exploring her state of mind at the time she was stopped in Lethbridge and her reasons for asserting the existence and sovereignty of the Blackfoot Nation and not being bound by the Indian Act or any asserted obligations under Treaty 7. We will also explore how she was supposed to document what papers she did or didn't have in her possession at the time of being stopped, and what insurance she did or did not have (as a matter of personal choice), when her van was taken to a place she was not made aware of and summarily sold without her knowledge and before her even being convicted, to a party still unknown to her.Next, we will call the following witnesses: Mr. John Chief Moon (Thunder Pipe Carrier and principal spiritual leader of the Kainai Blackfoot); Mr. George Yellow Horn (one of the Hereditary Chiefs of the Apatohsipiikani Blackfoot); Elizabeth Yellow horn (principle Beaver Bundle Holder and spiritual leader of the Apatohsipiikani Blackfoot) and Mr. Floyd Many Fingers (respected Elder of the Kainai Blackfoot). These witnesses, in addition to being descendants some of the Chiefs who allegedly signed Treaty 7 and recognized carriers of the oral histories of the events surrounding the alleged signing of Treaty 7, are also very "expert" on the conditions of life on the Blackfoot Reserves. We believe that their testimonies will materially add to our arguments that: </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">a) the scope and content of the Indian Act and alleged obligations under Treaty 7 are genocidal per se and, in addition, have produced conditions of life that amount to genocide as defined in Article II of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide ratified by Canada in 1953 and thus part of the supreme law of Canada; </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">b) these genocidal conditions flow inexorably (and foreseeably for anyone with an IQ over that of a tomato and a semblance of a heart and a conscience) from the content and applications of the Indian Act and Treaty 7; </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">c) the Canadian and Alberta Governments have been well aware (and have been repeatedly made well aware)of these genocidal conditions and their effects and continue to refuse to ameliorate them and continue to attempt to cover them up; </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">d) in the context of extreme poverty, isolated reserves, no public transport and meager incomes given under the Indian Act, any Blackfoot obeying the requirement to possess highly expensive insurance as a condition of driving is in essence aiding and abetting his/her own extermination and that of his/her People; </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">e) by any test or criteria under international law that defines a nation, the same tests and criteria defining Canada as a nation, there survives and remains a Blackfoot Nation that has, as fundamental rights flowing from its status and reality as a nation, the rights to independence, sovereignty, self-determination, recognition and not to be exterminated or forcibly assimilated into another nation; </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">f) although we argue that Treaty 7 was never signed, and has been broken over and over by the Canadian and Alberta governments, nevertheless, the Canadian and Alberta governments have built up a whole system of property and purported property rights predicated on Treaty 7 and in doing so were bound to recognize not only the authority and standing of the Chiefs who allegedly signed Treaty 7, but also the traditional Blackfoot Ways and systems of government that selected these Chiefs as well as the existence and sovereignty of the Blackfoot Nation as only sovereign nations form and sign treaties and in doing so recognize treating partners and co-equals at least in terms of authority and standing to form and keep treaties; </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">g) Blackfoot may choose to become or recognized as Canadian citizens but no Blackfoot may be forced to assimilate or forced to take Canadian citizenship and undertake the obligations of Canadian citizenship as this amounts to forced assimilation, a form and tactic of genocide; </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">h) Blackfoot are rountinely subject to "racial targeting and profiling" by Lethbridge police and routinely have their vehicles seized and sold without due process such that they are deprived of mobility from--and are indeed locked into--conditions on Reserves that can only be properly described as genocidal.In addition to the paper by Tai Helton that I passed on to you, and in addition to the documents already submitted to the Court, we will be submitting copies of the diaries of Father Constantine Scullen, charged by The Crown with witnessing the signatures of the Blackfoot Chiefs who supposedly signed Treaty 7, in which he stated that none of the Chiefs would sign or even touch the pen used to sign; we will also be submitting some statistics, from Canadian Government sources, that document some of the genocidal conditions, realities and trends on the Blackfoot Reserves today.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">That is as much as I can give you at this moment. In the next couple of weeks I will be able to give you further elaboration on our proposed arguments and witnesses. If you wish further elaboration on some of our arguments, you can go to <a href="http://www.chgs.umn.edu/">http://www.chgs.umn.edu/</a> and under the section "Histories, Narratives and Documents" you will find some Blackfoot documents that will give you some of the types of arguments and supporting evidence we plan to introduce. I will also be asking about possible incomplete transcripts from previous Court sessions. For example, at the May 20th session, at which I was not in attendance, Bella represented to me that the Judge formally inquired of the police officers present where her van was and asked those police to advise her where the van was and its status. That discussion is not on the official transcript I have of that session. I am interested in that issue particularly in view of the testimony of the arresting officer that he could only "guess" that her van had been sold and that he had never explicitly told Bella that it had indeed been sold. Further, I was promised by Mr. Brooks, in a conversation with Bella present, when Bella asked the name of the person who had made the phone call that led to her being stopped, Mr. Brooks said that I must request that name and I have formally requested it previously and am now formally requesting it again. Further, I may have to call Mr. Scott as he was present in his office when that officer stated that the van had indeed been sold and made no mention of "guessing" that it had been sold. And yes, any assistance that you can give us in the spirit of being an "Officer of the Court" and in the interest of justice would be welcomed.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">I hope that this answers at least some of your questions. If you require any further elaboration please do not hestitate to contact me. For the record, although Blackfoot are generally poor, we are communalists and come to the assistance of each other as a matter of our Ways. If we could have found a lawyer to take this case we would have put out an appeal for money and would have gotten sufficent funds to hire a lwayer. We are not trying to do this "on the cheap." We do not practice, as is celebrated and taught in Canadian capitalism and society, rat-race individualism, dog-eat-dog competition, selfishness, etc. We approached lawyers who agreed that our constitutional arguments were compelling as a matter of evidence, reasoning and law but were afraid to advance them in a Canadian Court out of fear of retribution in future cases and legal practice in Alberta. Others feared they might be labelled "radicals" for any association with this case (the word "radical" as you know comes from the Latin root "radix" or root and we regard a radical as someone seeking to get to the "root" of the issues at hand).</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">And finally, and please pass this on to Judge Jacobson, he can instruct us and make rulings that we will obey, although we may make "exceptions" for the Court record, without resorting to abusive levels and tones of speech and continual references to supposed "incompetence" on my part. It is out of respect to the honorable actions and rulings on his part that I do not challenge his continuing to sit on this case for cause of demonstrated animus and disrespect in the last session. I am proud to be an "unpaid agent" of exposing genocide and genocide cover-up rather than a paid--and perhaps very "competent"--agent of genocide and its cover-up as some lawyers and judges have demonstrated themselves to be historically and in the present in Canada [and this is not necessarily an implied or covert reference to His Honor].</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Thanks for your consideration, patience and any assistance in the interest of justice.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Sincerely,James M. Craven; Blackfoot name: Omahkohkiaayo i' poyi</div><div align="justify">Acting as unpaid agent in the pro se defense of Balla Yellow Horn</div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">Cc. Judge Jacobson ; Mr. Falconer; Mr. Brooks; Mr. Lambrecht; Mr. Scott; Department of JusticeCanadaMinistère de la JusticeCanada Edmonton Regional Office211 Bank of Montreal Bldg10199 - 101 Street Edmonton, Alberta T5J 3Y4 Bureau régional d'EdmontonEdifice de la Banque de Montréal 211 rue 101 - 10199Edmonton, AlbertaT5J 3Y4Telephone: Facsimile:Internet:<a name="DOJPhoneNo"></a>780 495 2968<a name="DOJFaxNo"></a>780 495 5835<a name="InternetAddress"></a>kirk.lambrecht@justice.gc.caOur File:Notre dossier:<a name="DOJFileNo"></a>15-94081Your File:Votre dossier:<a name="Date"></a>September 23, 2003<a name="VIA"></a>By Fax <a name="ADDRESSEEFAX"></a>(360) 992-2863<a name="Address"></a></div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Clark College1800 East McLaughlin Blvd.Vancouver, Washington98663</div><div align="justify">Attention: <a name="AddresseeName"></a>James Craven<a name="Salutation"></a></div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Dear Sir:</div><div align="justify">RE: <a name="Subject"></a>R. v. Yellowhorn</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify"><a name="Body"></a>I wish to advise that the Attorney General of Canada does not intend to intervene at this stage of the proceedings. I would however like to be advised of the decision on that issue and to be served with notice of any appeal that is taken therefrom.</div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Yours truly,<a name="Sender"></a>Kirk N. Lambrecht Q.C.<a name="Title"></a>General Counsel Civil Litigation and Advisory Services</div><div align="justify">Cc: Alberta Attorney General (Via Fax 427-0401)Attention: Kurt SandstromCrown Prosecutor's Office (Via Fax 403-381-5760)</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Attention: Gordon Falconer</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Mr. Lambrecht</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Thank you for your patience and assistance. Part of the problem on our side is that since the Attorney General of Alberta has already stipulated to having received proper notice of intent to raise constitutional issues some time ago (April 8, 2003) and seems to be aware of the specific arguments to be advanced as well as the specific statutes, regulations, acts and treaty to which we take exception, it is difficult for a layperson to understand how and why the federal requirements for "proper notice" would/should be significantly different.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Thank you for your consideration and assistance in the interest of justice for all sides of this case.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">James M. Craven (Omahkohkiaayo i'poyi)</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Mr. Craven</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Thank you. I am considering the sufficiency of the notice i.e. whether it complies with the obligation to identify a statute or regulation which is alleged to be inoperative, inapplicable or invalid.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Mr. Lambrecht:</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">May I assume that this notice of receipt is also notice of having received proper service of intent to raise constitutional issues in the case of Bella Yellowhorn?Thank you again for your assistance and patience.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">James Craven (Omahkohkiaayo i'poyi)</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Mr. Craven</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Thank you. I have received this.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Kirk Lambrecht</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Dear Mr. Lambrecht:Thank you for your acknowledgment and request for further specifics in order that this notice be complete and comply with legal requirements for proper notice. Specifically we are arguing that the Indian Act is genocidal per se and presently, violates at least Articles II b,c, and e of the 1948 UN Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide ratified by Canada in 1953 and part of the Supreme Law of Canada; we will argue that any asserted obligations of Blackfoot under the Indian Act, or under Treaty 7, including obligations to obey the licensing and insurance requirements under the Alberta Motor Vehicles Act, amount to demanding that Blackfoot aid and abet ongoing genocide against the Blackfoot Nation collectively as well as against members individually.Further, we argue that forced assimilation and Canadian citizenship of Blackfoot, and associated forced obligations that go with forced assimilation and Canadian citizenship, are genocidal per se and violate the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide which is part of the Supreme Law of Canada. Further, we argue that Treaty 7 was never signed and/or never a full and binding Treaty and thus any purported obligations of Blackfoot under Treaty 7 to become "loyal subjects" of the Crown and bound by all Canadian laws do not exist as a matter of international law;Further, we argue that although Canada claims that Treaty 7 was properly signed and valid, although we dispute this claim with historical evidence, Canada has nonetheless built up whole system of material interests and purported property rights based upon the assumption of the validity of Treaty 7; under international law, specifically the Vienna Convention on Treaties, only nations sign, continue and enforce treaties and each treating partner when signing a treaty, recognizes the co-equal status and systems of government (producing the leadership having the standing and authority to sign a treaty and bind a whole population to its terms) of the other treating partner(s) and thus there is ample legal authority for the continued existence of the Blackfoot Nation with its own right to independence, self-determination, sovereignty and traditional government and mechanisms for selecting the composition of that government. Thus, Bella Yellow Horn, a member of a sovereign Blackfoot Nation, and all members of the Blackfoot Nation, may travel throughout Canadian lands with the same status and obligations (vis-a-vis licensing and insurance) as any other motorist from another sovereign nation. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">I hope that meets your requirements for proper notice and specificity in terms of what specific Acts or laws are being challenged; this is also notice of an affirmative defense in terms of an affirmative obligation not to obey Canadian laws that objectively promote de facto genocide against Blackfoot Peoples.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Sincerely,James M. Craven (Omahkohkiaayo i'poyi)</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Mr. Craven</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">I understand that the attached email is your Constitutional Notice under the Judicature Act of Alberta. I confirm I received it by email.The notice is required to identify the Act or Regulation which you say is invalid, inoperative or inapplicable. I do not see this here.I understand from your discussion with me that you intend to argue that those provisions of Treaty 7 and the Indian Act, which confirm an obligation to comply with provincial law, including the Alberta law which requires a person to obtain insurance before operating a motor vehicle, are somehow constitutionally invalid. I would ask you to confirm that this is, in fact, what you intend to argue.You will appreciate that the obligation to identify the Act or Regulation which you say is invalid, inoperative or inapplicable is on the litigant asserting the claim, not on the Government.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Thank you.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Kirk LambrechtCounsel</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Dear Mr. Sandstrom, Mr. Brooks and Judge Jacobsen:</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">I am sending this notice in care of Mr. Sandstrom to be cc'd also to Mr. Falconer, Mr. Brooks and Judge Jacobsen. I just sent to the web address given for the Attorney General of the Federal Government of Canada: </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">a) my letter dated April 12, 2003 written as official notice of intent to raise constitutional issues in the case of R. v Bella Yellow Horn, Provincial Court of Lethbridge, Alberta, s.71(1)(a) MVA; </div><div align="justify">b) the National Lawyer's Guild Letter of support and endorsement for some of our proposed constitutional arguments; </div><div align="justify">c) a copy of our Blackfoot Indictment of the Governments of Canada and the U.S. for Genocide (all accepted into the Court record in Lethbridge to the best of my knowledge). These were sent with a Return/Read function sent and the above are acknowledgments and receipts that they have been received by the Office of the Attorney General of Canada. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">When I receive acknowledgments that they have been read (or at least opened) I will send those receipts as well.Further, I am making inquiries to obtain the telephone records and/or receipts of transmissions from the fax machine at the Research Department of the Peigan Band Office on April 22, 2003 to attempt to document that official notice was indeed sent to the Attorney General of the Canadian Federal Government of intent to raise constitutional issues as was represented to me to have occurred by Bella Yellow Horn. I must also note that a finding that Bella Yellow Horn was indeed insured at the time she was stopped and subsequently charged with driving without insurance, does not, and should not, make her constitutional and other arguments "moot". We gave notice previously that this case would involve the legal existence and application of Blackfoot National Sovereignty, constitutional issues and applications of the 1948 UN Convention on the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide, ratified in 1953 by the Government of Canada and thus part of the Supreme Law of Canada; in a previous Court session on April 8, 2003 we noted that we would not be stipulating on the issue of whether or not Bella Yellow Horn was indeed "insured" as the burden of proof on that issue rests with the Crown. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Further, if Bella Yellowhorn represents to me, as she did, that she was indeed "insured" and believed herself to be insured (as a matter of personal choice and not as a matter of any obligations recognized by her under the Indian Act, Treaty 7 or summarily-imposed Canadian Citizenship), I am bound to raise that defense as well since not to do so would involve a form of fraud upon/misuse of the Court stipulating what Bella Yellow Horn considers to be untrue for the purposes of using the Court to raise other issues and defenses.Further, in a brief conversation with Mr. Brooks, Bella Yellow Horn asked for the name of the person who made the phone call to the Lethbridge Police that led to her being stopped for possible impaired driving. Mr. Brooks indicated that I must request that name and I am hereby formally doing so in this letter.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Next, in the Courts of Canada every day, attorneys with law degrees and considerable trial experience suffer sustained or overruled objections, and Judges are often reversed on appeal; this indicates that possession of a law degree and admission to the Alberta Bar is no guarantee that no mistakes are made by those trained in law. In a pro se defense, Judges can easily give guidance and make their rulings without shouting, anger and clearly abusive tones and content of speech--and without compromising the right of the Crown to a fair trial. Further, when I indicated to His Honor that we had tried to secure Counsel in Alberta and were unable to do so, as we were told by some attorneys that they feared being labeled "radicals" and being compromised to practice in future cases and/or were unwilling to raise Constitutional arguments, His Honor made the comment to the effect that to secure an attorney that attorney must be paid. We found this comment to be deeply offensive and troubling as well as beneath the obvious considerable learning and preparation of His Honor. Further, His Honor accused me of intentionally attempting to "cherry pick" favorable evidence and arguments while attempting to hide the unfavorable to our case. Although this is exactly what the Eurocentric Courts are all about--magnifying the positives while minimizing or hiding the negatives of one's own case while doing the reverse to the opposition or magnifying their negatives while hiding or suppressing their positives of their case (which I might add Mr. Brooks and Mr. Sandstrom did not attempt to do as they acted very honorably during the trial)--in Blackfoot terms this is a charge of acting dishonorably and deceptively and His Honor was purporting to be inside my head and "knowing" my subjective intentions. I should note that every single Blackfoot Elder present in Court was of the opinion that His Honor was intentionally trying to provoke me into getting a contempt citation that would result in my going to jail and/or being dropped for cause as the unpaid agent for Bella Yellow Horn's pro se defense; I noted to them that they cannot purport to "know" or even reasonably "infer" His Honor's subjective intentions without considerably more evidence. Indeed, His Honor acted properly and honorably when he asked that Bella Yellow Horn's Blackfoot Nation Identification, presented to the police officer at the time she was stopped, be entered as evidence; and His Honor acted honorably in allowing us to finally and fully document service of notice of intent to raise Constitutional issues to the Office of the Attorney General of Canada when we represented that we had come to Court believing that such had been done but without our having--as we should have--the requisite documentation.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">As Blackfoot, we have every reason to disrespect and distrust the Courts of Canada. It was not long ago, that in and through the Courts of Canada and Alberta, judges, with flowing robes, called "Your Honor", and attorneys with law degrees and the title "Queen's Counsel", gave legal authority and cover to, and/or helped to cover-up, the sterilizing of Native children, using Native children for medical experimentation and the kidnapping of Native children to be taken to Indian Residential Schools where they were subject to forced "de-Indianization", assimilation and other monstrous crimes. Yet we came and respected the decorum and procedures of the Lethbridge Court as well as the authority and rulings of His Honor. We ask only that we receive the same level of respect and not suffer abusive anger and tones of speech that frankly caused me to get thrown off in some of my direct and cross-examinations and worry about a possible contempt citation.I ask Mr. Sandstrom, as a Queen's Counsel and Officer of the Court, in the interest of justice and as I do not have the email addresses of the others, that you please forward this letter to the Presiding Judge, Mr. Falconer, Mr. Brooks and other concerned parties you deem necessary and give notice of intent to have this memorandum entered as part of the official record of the trial. We invite rebuttal of any and all points of view and issues raised in this letter and stipulate that any rebuttals should accompany this memorandum for the court record. This is not being sent to the Attorney General of Alberta as that office has already stipulated to having been given proper notice of intent to raise constitutional issues but this could be sent to that office as well.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Thank you for your consideration and assistance.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Sincerely,James M. Craven (Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo i'poyi)</div><div align="justify">(signed: call (360) 992-2283 if verification of source/signature is needed) </div><div align="justify">Acting as Unpaid Agent for the Pro Se Defense of Bella Yellow Horn</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">April 12, 2003</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Minister of Justice, Canada</div><div align="justify">Attorney General of Canada</div><div align="justify">Department of Justice, Canada Edmonton Regional Office211 Bank of Montreal Bldg.10199 101 Street,Edmonton, AlbertaT5J 3Y4Attorney General of Alberta208 Legislature Building10800 9th AvenueEdmonton, AlbertaT5K 2B6</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Dear Sir or Madame:I am writing as a Court-accepted unpaid agent of the pro se defense of Bella Yellow Horn in the case of Her Majesty the Queen versus Bella Yellow Horn in the Provincial Court of Alberta, Lethbridge, Alberta, R. v Yellow Horn, Bella s.71 (1)(a) MVA, Trial 03, 04, 08; 2:00 #1 pursuant to provisions of the Judicature Act, RSA. 2000, c. J-2, Section 24(1). This is not a notice of claim of no jurisdiction of the Provincial Court of Alberta, but rather notice of intent to raise constitutional issues in this case. Indeed, Bella Yellow Horn gave full and specific notice of the types of arguments to be raised in her case as can be seen from the attached letters and materials to the Presiding Magistrate of the Court (received by Mr Scott and Mr. Sandstrom well in advance of the case). Further, a letter of endorsement of our proposed arguments from the National Lawyer's Guild (see attached) was sent to the Presiding Magistrate to assure his honor that not only did we respect the jurisdiction of the Provincial Court, that also, we did not plan to advance arguments that were frivolous per se. The cited act being violated is the Alberta Motor Vehicles Act--driving without insurance.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">First of all, in writing this letter and giving this notice, we do not stipulate in any way that indeed proper notice under the Judicature Act has not been given. Further, since we gave specific arguments that we plan to advance in the Provincial Court at Lethbridge, none of which explicitly challenged the jurisdiction of that Court, how then can we be seen to be challenging the jurisdiction of that Provincial Court? Further, I refer you to the attached submission made by Bella Yellow Horn, dated December 5, 2002 which reads as follows:</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Bella Yellow HornP.O. Box 37Brocket, AlbertaTOK 0H0Telephone: 403-965-3175December 5, 2002Attorney General of Canada Attorney General of Alberta284 Wellington Street 208 Legislature BuildingOttawa, Ontario 10800 97 AvenueK1A 0H8 Edmonton, AlbertaT5K 2B6</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Dear Attorney General of Canada and Attorney General of Alberta:</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">My arguments are enclosed with this letter.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Yours truly,</div><div align="justify">Bella Yellow Horn(signature of Bella Yellow Horn)</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Enclosure ARGUMENTS Under the International Bill of Human Rights and Freedoms, "No nation shall interfere in the internal affairs of another nation."I am a member of the Blackfoot Nation recognized by the United Nations and the International Bill of Human Rights and Freedoms (world laws).I claim aboriginal title to my Homeland--Blackfoot Nation.Canadians are immigrants. I am NOT a Canadian. Freedom and liberty of expression is my reason to have my own license plate on my property.Canadian and Canada is a falsehood.Indian act is illegal and unfair.Constitutional and Declaration claim of sovereign nation, land, identity and property.Come clean, immigrants respect aboriginal nations.I have identified and claimed my Blackfoot Nation Sovereignty to the Canadian immigrants.I want compensation of $5 million for what has been done in damages to me and my van and my Blackfoot license plate.Other aboriginal nations have their own license plates, so the Blackfoot Nation can have their own too.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Attached photocopies of fax numbers to which this was sent (1-780-422-6621 on Dec. 5, 2002 at 12:29 pm; 1-613-954-0811 on Dec. 5, 2002 at 12:31 pm) attest that this was sent to and received by the proper authorities. Although this refers primarily to another charge, driving with an unauthorized license plate, for which Bella has already been convicted in absentia according to the Crown Prosecutor Mr. Scott in an ex parte conversation on April 7, 2003 (for failure to show up in court although Bella claims that she did and the courtroom was locked) this charge refers to driving without proper registration and insurance, it is clear, however, from this submission, that these arguments, and possibly others, having constitutional implications, would be advanced even if the charges were somehow separated into separate trials. Further, although Bella's submission is not as perhaps precise and "elegant" as some attorneys or Eurocentric types might prefer, Bella is the product of the infamous Canadian Indian Residential School system (virtually stipulated to be genocidal in its nature with the creation of the $350 million "Healing Fund" by the Canadian Government) that left her not only brutalized and poor, but also without the formal "education" or legal preparation to submit the types of formal and esoteric presentations that attorney's might find "consistent" with proper form of submission under the Judicature and other Canadian Acts. Still I would argue that her arguments are elegant and profound despite--or perhaps because of--their apparent simplicity.Also in his brief on the constitutional issues, which I obtained only on April 7th upon arriving at the Blackfoot Reservation at Brocket (a day before trial on April 8th) Mr. Kurt J.W. Sandstrom noted that:</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">"The Attorney General accepts the letter of February 2, 2003 from James M. Craven on Yellowhorn as notice of a challenge to the Court's jurisdiction under section 24(1) of the Judicature Act. Similarly, the letter of Mr. Many Bears, dated March 28, 2002 is accepted as similar notice. The Attorney General of Alberta will notify Canada to determine whether official notice will be required on these cases, and will provide copies of the aforementioned letters to Canada." </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Other than the fact that Mr. Sandstrom has mischaracterized Bella Yellow Horn's position with respect to jurisdiction of the Court, this seems to suggest that my letter, acting as an unpaid agent of the pro se defense of Bella Yellow Horn, was accepted as notice of intent to challenge Court jurisdiction, a mischaracterization, yet it also alludes to the specifics of my letter to the Court, plus our attached "Indictment of the U.S. and Canadian Governments for Genocide", giving notice that we would be advancing Constitutional arguments in a Court whose jurisdiction the prosecution has summarily claimed we have challenged or would challenge.Further, I must note for the record, that in an ex parte conversation with Mr. Sandstrom, during a Court recess, when I asked Mr. Sandstrom if he had read the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide to which Canada became a final signatory in 1953 (and thus it became part of the Supreme Law of Canada) he responded to my question: "some". When I asked if he had read our attached Indictment of the U.S. and Canadian Governments for Genocide, attached with the letter to the Presiding Magistrate in the case, Mr. Sandstrom also responded "some" and indicated he will read all of it and may have to make an amended brief. Yet Mr. Sandstrom came to Court, along with Mr. Scott, with a fully-prepared brief on constitutional issues while arguing that proper notice of potential constitutional issues to be raised was not given. In addition to the prejudicial effects of tying Mr. Many Bears' case with that of Bella Yellow Horn, we also asked that the cases not be tied together as Bella Yellow Horn was not advancing the same types of arguments that Mr. Many Bears appeared to be advancing with respect to jurisdiction of the court. Indeed we can imagine many circumstances in which Canadian courts have jurisdiction over Indigenous or foreign nationals residing in or committing offenses in Canadian territory.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">In any case, pursuant to, and out of respect for, the order and jurisdiction of the Provincial Court in Lethbridge, and the time allotted to make this submission, this is to be taken as formal notice of intent to raise constitutional issues in this case of Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Alberta v Bella Yellow Horn, s. 71(1)(a) MVA pursuant to provisions of the Judicature Act, R.S.A. 2000, c. J-2, Section 24(1) and any other required provisions relevant to this case and the advancement of constitutional issues in this case. The specific arguments to be advanced have already been presented and are presented in the attached materials with this letter. Some of the proposed arguments include--but are not limited to:</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">1) The Indian Act is genocidal per se and causes forced assimilation and other deleterious conditions and relationships that violate the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide and other Covenants and Treaties of International Law to which Canada is a signatory and are thus part of the Supreme Law of Canada under the Canadian Constitution; therefore any purported duties and obligations of Indigenous Peoples under the Indian Act are made illegal by those aspects of the Supreme Law of Canada with which they are in direct violation or contradiction; asking any First Nations person to recognize and submit to the Indian Act in Canada is precisely analogous to asking a Jewish person or persons from other targeted groups to recognize and submit to the infamous 1935 "Nuremberg Laws" of Nazi Germany in the opinion of many recognized scholars on First Nations issues in Canada;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">2) Mr. Sandstrom's brief notes that: "The Provincial Court clearly has jurisdiction over the accused. Aboriginal persons, like Canadian citizens, are bound by the laws of Canada. This is the case whether an individual is part of a group that has entered into a treaty with the Crown or not." and: "Aboriginal persons, like others residing in Canada, are entitled to the benefit and protection of Canadian law. They are at the same time expected to obey Canadian law." We know of many cases in which obedience to a lower-level law puts one in conflict with higher law: someone breaking speeding laws in order to stop a murder for example. In this case, we argue that Bella Yellow Horn was objectively acting as an agent and instrument to expose and stop genocide and thus cause obedience to the Supreme Law of Canada prohibiting the acts or cover-up associated with genocide. No person may be compelled to obey laws that are inherently discriminatory, that conflict with higher laws or that objectively promote their own extermination and that of their People;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">3) Any purported obligations of Blackfoot under Treaty 7 that serve to denationalize or cause Blackfoot to surrender to all laws and authority of the Crown are contradictory and in violation of international law and those aspects of the Canadian Constitution dealing with genocide. Only sovereign nations may sign treaties and according to the Vienna Convention on Treaties, which the U.S. and Canadian Supreme Courts have recognized as definitive international law on treaties, each treating partner recognizes--or at least does not call into question--the authority, co-equal status and systems for determining government/leadership of the other. The cited language of Treaty 7, dealing with Blackfoot allegedly agreeing to become loyal subjects of Her Majesty the Queen and all of her laws, if accepted, would mean that Blackfoot, as a sovereign nation, would be signing a treaty whose terms and language served to extinguish the very sovereign nation that had the authority and standing to sign--and continue--such a treaty; no nation, especially Blackfoot, would ever sign such a treaty that would be illegal and non-binding under international law and basic contract law. These asserted obligations under Treaty 7, along with Treaty 7 itself, are simply not valid under even Canadian Law. Further, Treaty 7 was not fully and finally ratified by the Crown in London as required prior to 1947. Further, according to the notes of Father Constantine Scullen, representative of the Crown to attest to the signatures of the Blackfoot Chiefs on Treaty 7, none of the Chiefs would make a mark with their own hand nor would they even touch the pen used to make the mark and therefore Treaty 7 and any purported allegiances or obligations of Indigenous Peoples under Treaty 7 would not exist, eventhough the Government of Canada has asserted Treaty 7 to be binding and has built a whole system of "private" property, interests and purported property rights under its provisions;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">4) The very same laws, including the Indian Act that have brought Blackfoot to conditions of abject poverty (average $229 Canadian per month in income)on wide-open Reserves, with no businesses or mass transportation systems, are also alleged to mandate that Blackfoot carry auto insurance often costing up to $1200 Canadian per year; in this context, carrying auto insurance is prohibitive and not driving means leaving oneself subject to conditions of life that violate Articles II (a),(b), (c), and (e) of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide--part of the Supreme Law of Canada. Bella Yellow Horn, like many First Nations persons, was therefore forced by Canada's own laws to violate lower-level laws in order to survive and in order to uphold higher laws.We trust that his shall constitute sufficient notice under the provisions of the Judicature Act as we have made a good-faith attempt to comply with its provisions and the order of the Provincial Court in Lethbridge, Alberta.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Sincerely yours,</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">James M. Craven (signed by representative)Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo i'poyiUnpaid agent for the pro se defense of Bella Yellow Horn </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Bella Yellow Horn</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Cc: Presiding Magistrate, Provincial Court of Alberta, Lethbridge, Alberta, case of Bella Yellow HornMr. Gordon K. Falconer, Crown ProsecutorMr. Peter Scott, Crown ProsecutorMr. Kurt Sandstrom, Crown Prosecutor</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">James Craven;Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi</div><div align="justify">Professor/Consultant,Economics;Business Division Chair</div><div align="justify">Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd.Vancouver, WA. USA 98663Tel: (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863<a href="http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5">http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5</a></div><div align="justify">Employer has no association with private/protected opinion"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." (George Orwell)"...every anticipation of results which are first to be proved seems disturbing to me...(Karl Marx, "Grundrisse")FREE LEONARD PELTIER!!</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD</div><div align="justify">Michigan Chapter Established - 1937 Ford Building, 615 Griswold, Suite 916, Detroit, Michigan 48226(313) 963-0843<a href="http://www.michigannlg.org/">http://www.michigannlg.org/</a>nlgorganizer@igc.org</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">March 19, 2003</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Presiding JudgeProvincial Court - Criminal Division Court House320 - 4 St.,S. Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada B T1J 4C7</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Re: Case of Bella Yellowhorn</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Dear Hon. Presiding Judge:</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">I am writing on behalf of the National Lawyers Guild - Michigan Chapter in the matter of Bella Yellowhorn and to respectfully urge her acquittal on the charges after an impartial review of the facts in her case.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">The National Lawyers Guild is a progressive legal organization working towards the end that "human rights shall be regarded as more sacred than property interests." We are the oldest integrated bar association in the United States and are affiliated with the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Our chapter is one of the oldest and largest chapters in the United States with over 300 members throughout Michigan.We have been informed of the facts of Bella Yellowhorn's case and believe that her good-faith beliefs are supported under international law. Specifically, we endorse and adopt the arguments of Professor Jim Craven, a recognized expert concerning the rights of Native Americans, summarized as follows:</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">a) The Blackfoot Nation is real and viable and still in existence despite past and present attempts at its extermination;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">b) Bella Yellowhorn is a member of the Blackfoot Nation;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">c) The existence or non-existence of any nation should not be found dependent upon recognition or non-recognition by other nations (particularly those such as Canada or the U.S. who have a long history of genocide and acting in denial of the sovereignty of First Nations);</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">d) The sovereignty of indigenous people's cannot be legitimately denied;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">e) The Government of Canada does assert Treaty 7, signed with Blackfoot chiefs, to be binding and has built a whole system of supposed property rights and material interests upon that and other Treaties.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">f) The 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, recognized by both the U.S. and Canadian Supreme Courts as the "definitive international law on treaties and treaty relations", only sovereign nations can sign treaties and in doing so, each party necessarily recognizes the other treating party as a co-equal and legitimate representative of a whole People being bound by that Treaty.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">g) Canada is not only bound by international law governing acceptance and recognition of treating partners as sovereign and co-equal nations, it is also bound by other specifics of the Vienna Convention on Treaties: e.g. Article 27 which stipulates that no nation may invoke provisions of its internal or national laws as a reason-or in order-not to abide by treaty specifics and obligations;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">h) Canada is also a signatory to the 1948 UN Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (ratified in 1953) which, in Article II(e), defines, as one form or instrument of genocide (NOTE: ANY of the five instruments of genocide mentioned in Article II constitute genocide in whole), the forcible transferring of children [or any persons] from one group to another group; this includes any form of forced assimilation including forced citizenship(also recognized as illegal in the Helsinki Accords on Human Rights to which Canada is also a signatory). According to the Constitution of Canada, these Conventions and Accords, having the status of treaties, constitute part of the "Supreme Law" of Canada (which is why the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide supercedes the more narrow law-and more narrow definition of genocide-in the Criminal Code of Canada dealing with genocide);</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">i) The Government of Canada, through the creation of the so-called "Healing Fund" for compensation of victims of the Canadian Residential Schools (instruments of forced assimilation, forced religious conversion, forced sterilization, deliberate inflicting of serious mental and bodily harm, sexual and physical abuse etc) has already stipulated to the reality and fact of ongoing genocide against First Nations Peoples-including Blackfoot-as defined in Articles II (b), (c), (d) and (e) of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide; these crimes occurred under and through the Indian Act and the non-Blackfoot political entities (Tribal Councils) imposed upon the Blackfoot by the Government of Canada;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">j) Any governmental or judicial decision predicated upon the assumptions of the non-existence of a Blackfoot Nation and the enforced Canadian citizenship (and citizenship obligations) of Blackfoot as mere "national minorities" involves, at least, complicity in genocide and/or cover-up of genocide (which itself is a form of complicity in genocide) and as such is in violation of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide and the Helsinki Accords and thus is in violation of the "Supreme Law" of Canada;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">k) Bella Yellowhorn, in her own mind, with some substantial legal scholarship supporting her beliefs, believed/believes that: a) There still survives a sovereign Blackfoot Nation with its own traditional laws, government and institutions and that she is a member of that Nation; b) Asserting the fact, existence and viability of the Blackfoot Nation-along with asserting the derivative rights of that Nation to sovereignty, independence, self-determination and freedom from extermination-is essential to preventing the total extermination of what is left of the Blackfoot Nation and therefore her intent and actions are consistent with Canada's treaty obligations to prevent and punish the crimes of genocide; c) Her status driving on non-Blackfoot lands, was no different (in international law and in intent) than someone from another nation or state of another nation (e.g. Montana) with non-Alberta license plates and/or non-Alberta insurance driving through Alberta or anywhere in Canada; d) She was fully insured in the only way that anyone is really insured-their honor and integrity; after 9-11 many insurance companies refused to pay-out on obligations such that the nominally "insured"-and any victims in need of compensation as a result of actions by the insured-were never really insured at all (and indeed many victims of the "insured" had more to fear from the insurance companies driven by profit motives than from those individuals whose actions required compensation for the victims); it is for these reasons that Blackfoot regard the integrity and honor of the person causing damages as the only real form of "insurance" one can carry and in that sense, Bella Yellowhorn was fully insured in Blackfoot terms;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Thank you for your consideration of these issues.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Sincerely,John C. Philo</div><div align="justify">Chapter President</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Dear Sisters and Brothers,</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">It is the tradition among Blackfoot to send an offering of tobacco, as it is tradition among some Indigenous Nations to send an eagle feather or other sacred items, as a call for all Warriors and People of Conscience to join us in a Just Cause. Our cause is to stop the ongoing extermination of Blackfoot and other Indigenous Peoples as we are at a critical crossroads of our history--literally between our survival and extinction. We do not seek assistance for narrow parochial interests. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">We stand with and ready to assist, to the best of our ability, any oppressed Peoples anywhere.We will be going to Court in Alberta on April 8, 2003. The case of Bella Yellowhorn, a member of the Blackfoot Nation and its Traditional Government, involves a charge of driving without Alberta insurance and driving with "Sovereign Blackfoot Nation" license plates on her van (now missing from impound). This case is really about the existence, sovereignty, survival, standing (under international law) and reality of the Blackfoot Nation standing against genocidal onslaughts, attempts at extermination, summary non-recognition (without authority in law) and statistical elimination (through non-Blackfoot impositions of their genocidal criteria of "official status" to determine who and what is a First Nations person as well as which are and which are not "recognized" First Nations).</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Those who have specialized or general expertise in the areas dealt with in the accompanying letter to the Provincial Court of Alberta or the Indictment of the Governments of the U.S. and Canada for Genocide Against Blackfoot Peoples (found at <a href="http://www.chgs.umn.edu/">http://www.chgs.umn.edu/</a> under the section "Histories, Narratives and Documents") are asked to please read both the letter and accompanying indictment, and, if anyone can so honestly attest, that the arguments and allegations contained in those documents are compelling (legally, logically, empirical support, morally etc) or at least serious and not frivolous and thus worthy of full consideration and examination of supporting evidence supporting them, please so attest and send letters to jcraven@clark.edu before April 1, 2003. Please also attach name, titles and positions (past and/or present) as these letters will be introduced in support of our case and Cause in the Alberta Court.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">We are headed for the Supreme Court of Canada and eventually to the International Court in the Hague and the U.N. to establish evidence and arguments related to the reality of ongoing genocide against Indigenous Peoples in many places and the reality--and basis in international law--of the existence of fully-sovereign Indigenous Nations and their derivative rights to freedom, independence, self-determination and freedom of extermination.Thank you all for any assistance. Time is of the essence so any and all submissions are appreciated and needed ASAP. Please also forward this request to others who might be of assistance.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Sincerely,James CravenOmahkohkiaayo-i-poyiMember and Designated Special Prosecutor and Solicitor General, Blackfoot Nation Professor of Economics</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Alberta JusticeCriminal Division 10 February 2003 JAMES CRAVENC/o CLARK COLLEGEProfessor of Economics1800 E. McLoughlin Boulevard VANCOUVER, Washington 98663</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Dear Sir:RE:R.V. YELLOW HORN, BellaS. 71(1)(a) MVATRIAL 03 04 08: 2:00; #1</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Your letter of February 3, 2003 addressed to the Presiding Majistrate was copied and provided by this court to Ms. Yellowhorn and to the Crown Prosecutor's Office. The trial of this matter is now scheduled for 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday, April 8th, 2003 in Courtroom #1 in Lethbridge, Alberta.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">From your covering letter, you indicated that you might be willing and able to travel to Lethbridge in order to assist Ms. Yellowhorn if the trial was after March 23rd. The trial date was set with that accomodation in mind. Please understand, however, that it is Ms. Yellowhorn, as opposed to the Crown or the Court that is seeking your assistance. Any expenses or costs associated with your travel to or attendance in Court in Lethbridge will not be the responsibility of Alberta Justice or the Provincial court of Alberta.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Yours sincerely,(signed) Gordon K. Falconer</div><div align="justify">Crown Prosecutor GKF:vle</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">This was the letter sent to the Presiding Magistrate:February 2, 2003</div><div align="justify">To: The Presiding Magistrate Re: Case of Bella Yellowhorn TheProvincial Court of Alberta Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Dear Your Honor:My name is James Michael Craven. I am a member of the Blackfoot Nation and a Professor of Economics and Chairman of the Business Division at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington, USA. I have been asked to testify by Bella Yellowhorn in her "pro se" defense in her case before your Court. First of all, I must note that Bella Yellowhorn has attempted to secure legal Counsel of her own choosing but has been unable to do so as various inquiries by her to secure legal Counsel have resulted in no one willing to take her case; perhaps they fear being "tainted" in future cases in Alberta as a result of taking her case and/or being associated with her apparent cause.I am an economist by training, with a focus on international economics, and my training has also involved formal and informal training in international law over some thirty years; I am not, however, an attorney. I have published extensively on issues in international law-particularly with reference to status and rights of Indian nations under international law-in peer-reviewed journals that included positive assessments by recognized professors of international law at various universities. My standing as an economist and educator is possibly reflected in my being invited into--which I never sought -- Marquis "Who's Who in: The World; America; the West; Science and Engineering; Finance and Industry"; I have been a biographical subject in these publications for many years.The possible probative value of my testimony has to do with the issue of "mens rea" and the mind-set and good-faith-based beliefs upon which Bella Yellowhorn was operating at the time of her alleged offenses. Specifically, Bella Yellowhorn operates-and was likely operating, at the time of her alleged offenses-with the following good-faith-based beliefs for which she has considerable support by recognized scholars of international law:</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">a)That there is indeed a real and viable Blackfoot Nation still in existence despite past and present attempts at its extermination or elimination and that Bella Yellowhorn is indeed a member of that Nation;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">b)That the existence or non-existence of any nation is not in any way dependent upon recognition or non-recognition by other recognized nations (particularly those such as Canada or the U.S. that have acquired and built material interests in denying the existence and legitimacy-and derivative rights of independence, self-determination and sovereignty-of First Nations and/or other nations; the existence, legitimacy-and derivative rights-of all nations are a matter of "facts on the ground" and international law as were it not so, any nation could summarily extinguish another nation (genocide) through simple non-recognition and applied power disparities;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">c) Of the 193 nations in the U.N. over 100 have been recognized as nations only since 1945 and out of the dissolution of the former USSR, for example, fifteen new nations have been recognized by Canada and the U.S.; these new nations did not "become" nations since the dissolution of the U.S.S.R , rather they simply became recognized as nations as the essential elements and requisites of their nationhood existed long before their recognition as nations by other nations (prior to their recognition as nations, they were summarily declared to be "national minorities" or "dependent captive quasi-nations" with "quasi-sovereignty" and having the same formal status as First Nations have been summarily declared to have in Canada and the U.S.);</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">d)Although some Blackfoot deny that Treaty 7 was actually signed by the principal chiefs of the Blackfoot, the Government of Canada does assert Treaty 7 to be binding and has built a whole system of supposed property rights and material interests upon that and other Treaties. According to the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, recognized by both the U.S. and Canadian Supreme Courts as the "definitive international law on treaties and treaty relations", only sovereign nations can sign treaties and in doing so, each party explicitly and tacitly recognizes the other treating party as a co-equal and legitimate representative of a whole People being bound by that Treaty. In recognizing the legitimacy of a treating party, each party is also tacitly, if not explicitly, recognizing-or not calling into question-the legitimacy of the mechanisms and institutions through which the representatives and government of the treating parties were selected and the traditional Blackfoot mechanisms and institutions through which the alleged Blackfoot Chiefs and signatories of Treaty 7 were selected remain in force among traditional Blackfoot despite any impositions of alternative political forms (Tribal Councils) under the Indian Act;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">e) Canada is not only bound by international law governing acceptance and recognition of treating partners as sovereign and co-equal nations, it is also bound by other specifics of the Vienna Convention on Treaties: e.g. Article 27 which stipulates that no nation may invoke provisions of its internal or national laws as a reason-or in order-not to abide by treaty specifics and obligations;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">f) Canada is also a signatory to the 1948 UN Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (ratified in 1953) which, in Article II</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">g), defines, as one form or instrument of genocide (NOTE: ANY of the five instruments of genocide mentioned in Article II constitute genocide in whole), the forcible transferring of children [or any persons] from one group to another group; this includes any form of forced assimilation including forced citizenship(also recognized as illegal in the Helsinki Accords on Human Rights to which Canada is also a signatory).;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">h) According to the Constitution of Canada, these Conventions and Accords, having the status of treaties, constitute part of the "Supreme Law" of Canada (which is why the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide supercedes the more narrow law-and more narrow definition of genocide-in the Criminal Code of Canada dealing with genocide);</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">i) The Government of Canada, through the creation of the so-called "Healing Fund" for compensation of victims of the Canadian Residential Schools (instruments of forced assimilation, forced religious conversion, forced sterilization, deliberate inflicting of serious mental and bodily harm, sexual and physical abuse etc) has already stipulated to the reality and fact of ongoing genocide against First Nations Peoples-including Blackfoot-as defined in Articles II (b), (c), (d) and (e) of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide; these crimes occurred under and through the Indian Act and the non-Blackfoot political entities (Tribal Councils) imposed upon the Blackfoot by the Government of Canada;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">j) Any governmental or judicial decision predicated upon the assumptions of the non-existence of a Blackfoot Nation and the enforced Canadian citizenship (and citizenship obligations) of Blackfoot as mere "national minorities" involves, at least, complicity in genocide and/or cover-up of genocide (which itself is a form of complicity in genocide) and as such is in violation of the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide and the Helsinki Accords and thus is in violation of the "Supreme Law" of Canada;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">k)If there is no Sovereign Blackfoot Nation, with its own traditional mechanisms and institutions for forming a government, determining its own internal affairs and relations with other nations then either: a) There is no binding Treaty 7 as those Blackfoot who ostensibly signed it had no standing or authority to do so; or, b) there was a Blackfoot Nation and traditional government that signed Treaty 7 but it no longer exists (then the Government and certain segments of the population of Canada are guilty of genocide); or, c) There is some kind of Blackfoot Nation sui generis that has limited sovereignty and imposed/non-Blackfoot governmental structures summarily imposed by a Canadian government and private interests having direct material interests-and no legal authority in international law-in doing so;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">l) Bella Yellowhorn, in her own mind, with some substantial legal scholarship supporting her beliefs, believed/believes that: a) There still survives a sovereign Blackfoot Nation with its own traditional laws, government and institutions and that she is a member of that Nation; b) Asserting the fact, existence and viability of the Blackfoot Nation-along with asserting the derivative rights of that Nation to sovereignty, independence, self-determination and freedom from extermination-is essential to preventing the total extermination of what is left of the Blackfoot Nation and therefore her intent and actions are consistent with Canada's treaty obligations to prevent and punish the crimes of genocide; c) Her status driving on non-Blackfoot lands, was no different (in international law and in intent) than someone from another nation or state of another nation (e.g. Montana) with non-Alberta license plates and/or non-Alberta insurance driving through Alberta or anywhere in Canada; d) She was fully insured in the only way that anyone is really insured-their honor and integrity; after 9-11 many insurance companies refused to pay-out on obligations such that the nominally "insured"-and any victims in need of compensation as a result of actions by the insured-were never really insured at all (and indeed many victims of the "insured" had more to fear from the insurance companies driven by profit motives than from those individuals whose actions required compensation for the victims); it is for these reasons that Blackfoot regard the integrity and honor of the person causing damages as the only real form of "insurance" one can carry and in that sense, Bella Yellowhorn was fully insured in Blackfoot terms;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">These are but some of the arguments that I was asked to advance. I respectfully ask Your Honor to please read the accompanying "Indictment of the U.S. and Canadian Governments for Genocide" for supporting authority in international law for some of the arguments advanced in this letter. As I am a teacher and it is difficult and costly for me to come to Alberta to testify or to assist Bella Yellowhorn in her pro se defense, I would ask that a firm date for trial be given and kept in the interest of justice. I am teaching until March 23 but can get off to travel with sufficient notice and a firm trial date.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Thank you for your consideration of these issues.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Sincerely,James M. CravenOmahkohkiaayo-i'poyi</div><div align="justify">Member, Blackfoot Nation,Professor of Economics and Business Division Chairman,Clark College</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Premises in Alberta Court Case</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Premise 1: Treaties are covenants between sovereign nations and only sovereign nations can ratify and keep treaty terms (Vienna Convention on Treaties, Articles 27 and 29);</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Premise 2: No nation may summarily and legitimately deny to another nation any of the same rights, principles and legal authorities that it asserts for itself to assert, defend and legitimate its own existence and derivative rights to sovereignty, freedom and self-determination (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; UN Charter)</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Premise 3: Each treating nation is recognizing--or at least not calling into question--the existence, sovereignty, government, systems of selecting members of government--and authority to bind whole populations to terms of the treaty--of the other treating partner when forming and ratifying a treaty;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Premise 4: No treaty is valid that contains within it, terms effectively abolishing the other treating partner as a sovereign nation--as national sovereignty, freedom, independence and self-determination are requisite to having legal authority and standing to ratify and keep treaties and treaty terms;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Premise 5: No nation may legally or legitimately contrive or invoke domestic laws to circumvent or breach treaty terms once ratified ( international canons of treaty construction on supremacy clauses designed to make treaty terms complied with and binding and not breachable through ruses and contrived domestic laws);</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Premise 6: The existence or non-existence of any group of people is strictly determined by facts on the ground and tests under international law and is in no way dependent upon recognition or non-recognition of existence by any other nation or entity; were it not so, one nation could simply abolish or exterminate another through redefinition and non-recognition;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Premise 7: Calculated breaches of treaty terms by one or more treating partners make a given treaty null and void;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Premise 8: No treaty may be considered legitimate without full, free and fully-informed consent on all aspects of the treaty on the part of the treating partners and without all treating partners being free of fraud, duress, unconscionability, threats and calculated deception;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Premise 9: No person may be deprived of nationality without legal cause nor may any person have nationality assigned without voluntary, free and informed consent of the person;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Premise 10: No nation may assert national laws/sovereignty to commit genocide or other breaches international law since domestic actions often have spillover effects on other nations as well as on human beings with fundamental rights under international law; for the same reasons that provincial laws trump municipal laws (to preserve cohesion and integrity of a whole province), and federal laws trump provincial laws (to preserve the cohesion and integrity of a federal union and system), so international law trumps federal law (to preserve the cohesion and integrity of a global community of nations and peoples).</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Premise 11: No need to cover-up what is clean only what is dirty; acts of cover-up may be used to legally infer and establish mens rea (criminal intent), existence of conspiracies and awareness of probable or inexorable effects of given policies, common plans and actions; court procedures and protocols may be used and are often used as instruments of genocide and cover-up of genocide;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Premise 12: As court systems and evolving law (statutes, administrative codes, case law and precedents) are often used to set up, carry out and cover-up genocide, they are also used to ratify and legitimate genocide such that they become tautological and abrogate or impeach themselves as legal instruments available to those who set them up and have been charged with genocide; e.g. would a Jew going to a nazi court expect anything else but that nazi laws and precedents had been consciously set up not only to facilitate and cover-up genocide, but to ratify and legitimate it when challenged?</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Premise 13: No government or entities set up by an illegal, occupying and genocidal power may ever be taken to be legal and legitimate representatives or legitimate governments of the occupied peoples and victims; for the same reasons under law and reason that the puppet Vichy Government set up by nazi occupation forces in France could have never been considered a legal and legitimate representative of the people of France, the Tribal Councils set up under the Indian Act can never be legally or legitimately taken to be representatives of the Blackfoot People and Nation;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Premise 14: The Indian Act and Treaty 7 are internally contradictory and self-impeaching: they set up supposed special powers for the "protections" of a delinated and special group (Indians) not set up for other groups, yet also set up powers from which this targeted group need protection for their continued existence and survival;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Premise 15: Intentions of persons or groups of persons may be legally inferred and established from the highly probable--or inexorable--and foreseeable effects (by a reasonable and prudent person free of bias, malice or conflict of interest) of given policies, laws and actions without necessary resort to tape recordings, insider documents, informants etc giving actual utterances revealing intentions;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Premise 16: No nation and treating partner may summarily, unilaterally, ex post facto and without the consent of the other treating partner(s), declare a treaty to be sui generis as a means to circumvent their own treaty responsibilities and the rights of the other treating partner and/or in order to inhibit or proscribe the coverage and rights under international law of other treating partner, or the treaty;</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Premise 17: No nation may summarily declare members of a nation to be citizens of another nation , or claim that imposed citizenship now renders a given a given group a "national minority" and not governed or protected by international law ; nor may any nation use forced citizenship as a means to claim the offending nation is not subject to international law or international conventions--especially those ratified by the offending nation.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Premise 18: Signing and ratifying a treaty signals intent to keep the terms of the treaty--and thus bind whole populations--into the future; keeping the terms of a treaty into the future, requires the continued existence, legitimacy (de facto and de jure) sovereignty, freedom, self-determination and nationhood of the treating partners and continued recognition--or at least not callling into question--of same by the treating partners;</div><div align="justify">Jim C.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">NOT YOUR AVERAGE LICENSE PLATE...</div><div align="justify">By Lisa DoerksenLethbridge Herald Friday, January 23, 2004</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">A Piikani reserve woman who believes she is not bound by Canadian law is fighting for the right to drive in the province without registering her vehicle.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Bella Yellowhorn has launched a constitutional challenge of the Indian Act and Treaty 7 in an effort to be recognized as part of a sovereign nation."I am a member of the sovereign Blackfoot Nation", said Yellowhorn. "I do not have to abide by the Canadian status laws and all they charge us for."Yellowhorn claims she is one of a growing number of natives who have rejected their status Indian cards from the government and are using their own Blackfoot Nation cards.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Yellowhorn and her representation--James Craven, a professor at Clark College in Washington--will argue their position this morning in Lethbridge provincial court.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Prosecutor Kurt Sandstrom, a specialist in constitutional and aboriginal law, is handling the case for the Crown.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">The issue stems back to May 1, 2001 when Yellowhorn was pulled over in Lethbridge for not having proper registration for her vehicle. Yellowhorn had outfitted her van with a homemade Blackfoot Nation license plate."This is traditional Blackfoot Nation territory", she said. "This is my homeland and I feel I have the right to use my own license plate in my home country."If her case is successful, Yellowhorn wants to be able to use her own license plate on all ancestral Blackfoot lands, which encompasses most of southern Alberta, stretching into Montana, Saskatchewan and B.C.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Craven, however, says the issue goes far beyond license plates."What this is about is genocide, pure and simple," he said. "It's about the right to be a free nation, free people. We have a right to remain as a nation and not be exterminated."Craven,, who also goes by his Blackfoot name Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi, said he plans to shed light on the Indian Act's purpose of forcing assimilation of Indians into Canadian life--what he calls genocide of the Blackfoot culture."If a (Blackfoot Indian) chooses also to be a Canadian that's fine but you can't force it on us," he said. "We're forcing Canada to look at itself and what's being done to Indians across the country."Craven said he'll take the issue to the Supreme Court of Canada or even the International Court in Hague or United Nations if necessary.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">LETHBRIDGE HERALD The Lethbridge Herald Saturday A, Saturday, January 24, 2004, p.a3[By Lisa Doerksen Lethbridge Herald</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Forcing Blackfoot Nations[sic] Natives to have Canadian insurance on their vehicles is akin to asking foreign travellers to buy Canadian insurance to visit here, says a professor helping]</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">By Lisa Doerksen,Lethbridge Herald</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Forcing Blackfoot Nations[sic] natives to have Canadian insurance on their vehicles is akin to asking foreign travellers to buy Canadian insurance to visit here, says a professor helping a native woman fight a charge of driving a motor vehicle without insurance."It's no different than a motorist from Montana driving onto Canadian lands," said James Craven, a professor at Washington's Clark College, on behalf of Bella Yellowhorn Friday at the Lethbridge provincial courthouse. "They're not required to have Canadian insurance as long as they have some kind of insurance."</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">The issue stems back to May 1, 2001 when Yellowhorn, a Piikani reserve resident, was pulled over in Lethbridge for not having proper registration for her vehicle. Yellowhorn had outfitted her van with a homemade Blackfoot Nation licence plate.She was later convicted of a charge of not having proper registration and the insurance charge went to trial this week.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Yellowhorn claimed in court she had insurance but could not prove it because she was unable to obtain documents from her van when it was seized and also could not locate the Fort Macleod office she purchased the insurance from.Prosecutor Eric Brooks, who is handling the criminal prosecution regarding the charge, noted the onus is on the accused to provide proof of insurance and Yellowhorn was allowed several adjournments to give her time to gather the information.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Judge Ron Jacobson will hand down his decision on Feb. 9.Yellowhorn said if the case is successful, she wants to be able to use her own licence plate on all ancestral Blackfoot lands, which encompasses most of southern Alberta, stretching into Montana, Saskatchewan and B.C.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">In addition to fighting the charge, Craven has launched a constitutional challenge of the Indian Act and Treaty 7 in an effort to have the Blackfoot people recognized as a sovereign nation.Craven told the court Friday the Blackfoot people meet all the tests for a nation under international law, including a stable population, identifiable land and their own identifiable governance.The Indian Act, he said, is little more than a document designed to force the assimilation of natives into Canadian culture--something he calls genocide of the Blackfoot culture."Bella believes that as a matter of her own personal survival she cannot and will not obey any of the (conditions) of the Indian Act," said Craven.He argued the Indian Act allows activity prohibited under international genocide laws, pointing to issues such as residential schools and the high rate of suicide on the reserve.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">However, Crown prosecutor Kurt Sandstrom argued that many of the issues raised by Craven have little to do with the matter before the court--a provincial statute requiring proper insurance to drive in Alberta.Alberta's provincial court is not the right place to launch arguments based on international law, said Sandstrom, a specialist in constitutional and aboriginal law handling the constitutional challenge. "This court does not have the authority to impose a remedy under the international forum."</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Reprinted under the FAIR USE Doctrine for educational purposes only and not to be used for any commercial uses.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Lethbridge Herald, Aug. 23, 2002 Log jam</div><div align="justify">By JANINE ECKLUND PORCUPINE HILLS --</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">The provincial government has ordered Merle Good Eye to quit harvesting trees from West Sharples Creek in the Porcupine Hills west of Claresholm.He maintains it is his right as a member of the Blackfoot Nation.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">And in spite of a stop-work order from Alberta Sustainable Resource Development and notices tacked to fallen logs indicating they are being seized by government, Good Eye says he plans to continue the harvest he started about two weeks ago."It is our right to take these logs," Good Eye said Thursday. "I have a permit from the proper authorities to harvest." </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">His permission comes, he says, from the hereditary chiefs of the Blackfoot Nation and from band council."I'm being told by my elders and proper authority that this is ours; we can't have foreigners coming onto Blackfoot territory and telling me what to do."The issue goes deeper than the argument over who can harvest timber on Crown land.It goes to the root of animosity between native people and government -- who determines land and access rights.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">James Craven, an economics professor from Clark College in Washington and a Blackfoot, said plans are in place to take legal action against the Canadian and U.S. governments for the commission of international crimes and crimes against Blackfoot law under the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide. Craven maintains the federal governments and their agents in Canada and the U.S. committed genocide by killing members of the First Nations, causing serious bodily and mental harm through daily assaults and the establishment of residential schools and unlawful sterilization of native people."The Blackfoot and other Treaty 7 Nations never surrendered their lands, and the governments and citizens of Canada and Alberta are currently illegally occupying Blackfoot territory," said Craven."We are going to stand. We do not seek anyone's permission to exist as a people. This is Blackfoot land and these are Blackfoot ways."</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Details of the legal action can be found on the Internet at <a href="http://www.chgs.umn.edu/">http://www.chgs.umn.edu/</a> under "Documents, Narratives and Histories".Good Eye and his employees risk fines and arrest if they continue to harvest timber after the stop-work order was issued.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">A spokesman with Sustainable Resource Development says an investigation is underway and if they refuse to stop, police may intervene and remove them from the area.Susan McManus says the proper process to obtain a logging permit is outlined in the Forest Act."There is an annual timber sale," said McManus. The sale is advertised, and the department contacts directly sawmills and reserves and communities throughout the province."They bid on an auction of land with a sealed tender. They also put in a damage deposit which can go up to as high as $2,000 which is returned if there is proper cleanup and reforestation."Good Eye didn't follow that process. He says he is a skilled logger and plans to clean up and collect cones from the area to grow into saplings for planting next spring"I've logged just about everywhere," said Good Eye."I've logged at Westcastle and Alison Creek and I've never had problems before."I don't know what the problem is. Maybe these logs are too good, maybe they're saving them for someone else."Good Eye said he's been logging since he was a child when he worked for his stepfather harvesting logs with horse-drawn equipment. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Good Eye said he plans to sell some of the logs and use the others to construct homes on the reserve where as many as five and six families are living together because of insufficient housing.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify"> <br />-</div><div align="justify">Monday, December 05, 2005</div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify">LEWIS AND CLARK TRIBUTES MUST TELL THE TRUTH LEWIS & CLARK -- ON THE TRAIL: LEWIS-CLARK TRIBUTES MUST TELL THE TRUTH, SAYS ANGRY BLACKFOOT -</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Friday, November 24, 2000</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">By DEAN BAKER, Columbian staff writer-</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">The rhetoric is still red-hot, even though two months have passed since Jim Craven fired the first verbal shots in an American Indian war of words in Clark County. -The skirmish caused Craven, a Blackfoot tribal judge, to leave a countywide committee that's planning a 200th anniversary for the Lewis and Clark expedition visit here. Now it threatens to grow into an American Indian protest in Vancouver.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">"The only thing I mind is lies and cover-ups," said Craven, 54, a Clark College economics professor and an expert and prolific writer on genocide of indigenous peoples. He either quit the committee or was fired by the mayor depending on whom you believe. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">"There will be a protest," said Craven, saying he expects 200 Indians to show up in Vancouver to protest mistreatment of the Blackfoot and other tribal people over the past 200 years. "I promise you that." He didn't say when they would come. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Craven left the 20-member Vancouver-Clark County Lewis and Clark Commemoration Committee after using explosive words such as "genocide" in a speech to the committee Sept. 14. He graphically described for the committee the rape and murder of American Indians that followed closely on the heels of Lewis and Clark's odyssey on the Missouri and Columbia rivers in 1803-1806. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">After he spoke, Craven said Vancouver Mayor Royce Pollard fired him from the committee, but Pollard said that isn't so. Pollard said he asked Craven in a private meeting to tone down his language or leave the group. It was Craven's decision, the mayor said. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Fired or not, Craven left. He said the coming of the 31 Lewis and Clark explorers marked the beginning of a campaign against his people. That's not something the Blackfoot celebrate or describe in a polite way, he said. But it wasn't what Craven said that was offensive, Pollard said. It was the way he said it.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">"He really had two options," said Pollard, 61. "He had to modify his behavior or he had to leave the committee." </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Craven said this week he's still upset, but not simply from being fired. "If they want to throw me off the committee, that's OK," he said. "I just don't like dishonesty. No one has told me specifically what I said that was offensive. They didn't have the guts. I heard they didn't like my tone. If they don't like my tone, too bad. I don't like their tone either, or their pomposity and arrogance. This is like a cross between Joseph McCarthy and Franz Kafka." </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">He said he's being accused of offenses that are unclear. Craven said he was under a directive from Blackfoot Confederacy Chief Sikapii to tell the Blackfoot story unequivocally and directly, and he did so. Sikapii (also known as White Horse, or George YellowHorn), 62, is a hereditary Blackfoot chief who lives in Fort Macleod, Alberta. He told The Columbian this week that he dispatched Craven to tell the story of the exploitation of his tribe, which followed the coming of Lewis and Clark. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">"Under the Bureau of Indian affairs, the U.S. and Canada are racist governments, white people saying we are their children, saying they are going to look after us while they steal our land and throw us scraps," he said. "The Blackfoot pushed Lewis and Clark off their land in present-day Montana", Sikapii said. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Pollard said he respected the grievances of the Blackfoot Confederacy but couldn't abide Craven's manner of speaking. He said it was he who asked Craven to join the committee in hope that he would bring a strong native voice. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">"But he didn't help," the mayor said. "These people on the committee were volunteers and they were uncomfortable."</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">The other American Indian on the committee, however, said he wasn't offended and understood both points of view. Honorary Chinook Chief Cliff Snider said he held a milder view himself and asked Craven to speak softer."I knew that he was rubbing some people wrong," said Snider, 74, who lives in Milwaukie, Ore. "He was coming on strong, and I told him afterwards, 'I think some people are taking offense to what you are saying.' I could see that in the crowd, and I told him, 'I know how you feel, and I know the outrage your tribe feels. I'm just asking you in these meetings to tone it down a little bit.'" </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Snider said he represents 52 tribes along the Lewis and Clark trail, and every one has its own way of viewing Lewis and Clark. Some will join in the commemoration while others may boycott, he said. "I know the Blackfoot still feel their tribe lost in its encounter with Lewis and Clark," he said. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Craven said he respected Snider's point of view, but he had to speak plainly, as a Blackfoot. "We are contemptuous of phony politeness ('smiling with the front teeth while grinding with the back teeth')," wrote Craven in an e-mail to editors of The Columbian. "[We don't believe in] schmoozing and networking, and we are mandated to tell the truth as we know it or believe it, and talk straight; this is often interpreted by those adept at schmoozing and phony politeness as being 'impolite' and 'uncivil.' Indeed history records hundreds of years of whites and sell-out Indians doing some very 'impolite' and very 'uncivil' acts of genocide, while hiding behind masks and postures of 'civility' and 'politeness.'" </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">One committee member, Gerard Smith, a Clark College English professor, said he heard Craven's presentation at an earlier meeting in August and wasn't offended. He said Craven "read from several historic documents which supported his assertion that 18th century U.S.policy included genocide for the American Indian." "I explained (to the mayor) his action was similar to asking a Jew not to speak about the inhumanity of the Nazis," Smith said in an e-mail to the Columbian. "Here's the crux of the matter," he added. "The crimes committed in the name of manifest destiny are no different than the crimes committed in the name of Aryan superiority. Is such language intense? Is such language harassment? The truth can be painful, but it must be spoken."</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">But it also stripped the committee of the Blackfoot Confederacy's point of view.</div><div align="justify">- </div><div align="justify">Lawyer challenges the legitimacy of Canadian law over First NationsSubmitted by <a title="View user profile." href="http://auto_sol.tao.ca/user/view/164?PHPSESSID=f43a4db98bb443016ae9214bddb7002f">eisengrimm</a> on Mon, 04/26/2004 - 23:18. <a href="http://auto_sol.tao.ca/taxonomy/page/or/9?PHPSESSID=f43a4db98bb443016ae9214bddb7002f">Canada</a> <a href="http://auto_sol.tao.ca/taxonomy/page/or/39?PHPSESSID=f43a4db98bb443016ae9214bddb7002f">Indigenous</a>Natives not bound by laws of Canada, lawyer argues </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">An Ottawa lawyer is challenging the authority of Canadian governments to apply laws to native people.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Jake Rupert, The Ottawa Citizen, April 25, 2004</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">A judge has agreed to hear a claim that sovereignty over Canadian lands was never fairly transferred in any of the ways recognized by international law. Jake Rupert reports on Michael Swinwood's effort to change Canadian history.It's an issue that has been debated for years in native and legal academic circles but hasn't been answered by Canadian courts, say aboriginal law experts.But it looks like the question will have to be answered soon, after lawyer Michael Swinwood, on behalf of two natives in North Bay charged with fraud, filed a constitutional challenge to the Crown's right to apply the Criminal Code, or any other law, to aboriginal people, and a judge agreed to hear it.Mr. Swinwood says aboriginal people never ceded sovereignty to British or Canadian governments in accordance with recognized international standards such as conquest or purchase.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">To have jurisdiction over people who occupied land first, according to law, sovereignty must be properly handed over, Mr. Swinwood says in documents filed in court. It wasn't, so Canadian governments have no right to enforce their laws on natives, the documents say."The federal government lacks proper legislative authority in the territory it is alleged these illegal acts took place," Mr. Swinwood argues."No treaty has been entered into ... therefore the federal government has no jurisdiction in the territory where these acts are alleged."Mr. Swinwood will ask a judge to "nullify the application" of Canadian laws against natives because, he says, according to the current state of the law, Canada's laws have "no force or effect as against these Indian persons or any other Indian person."</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Earlier this year in North Bay, Mr. Swinwood convinced Ontario Superior Court Justice J.S. O'Neill, himself an expert in native law, to hear the challenge and order the government to pay for it.Judge O'Neill found Mr. Swinwood raised "important" legal questions that need answering and ordered the provincial government to give Mr. Swinwood $35,000 in order to argue the case properly.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">"The issues raised ... are of sufficient merit that it would be contrary to the interests of justice for the opportunity to pursue these questions and these issues ... to be forfeited if legal funding is not provided," the judge wrote in his reasons for granting Mr. Swinwood the money."It is to be remembered that the legal community in Canada is only beginning to come to grips with issues involving aboriginal title and rights," Judge O'Neill said.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">After getting the funding order in March, Mr. Swinwood hoped to make his case this spring in front of Judge O'Neill, but the Crown appealed the judge's ruling on the funding application, arguing that the judge should not have granted the money because there is no merit to Mr. Swinwood's assertions.No date has been set for the appeal, but Mr. Swinwood has decided to press ahead with the constitutional challenge, which he'll pay for out of his own pocket and with money collected from native organizations.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">In other cases involving native clients charged with crimes, Mr. Swinwood tried and failed to have judges agree to hear the constitutional challenge.Now that a judge has agreed to hear it, the matter is just too important to walk away from over money, Mr. Swinwood said."Like Justice O'Neill said, it's been a long time coming, so it feels good that we're finally getting to table some of our issues," he said."The Indians got messed over here in this part of the world pretty badly, and it's time some one should speak for them. On this issue, it just happens to be me."Those who say that Canadian laws are applicable against Indians in this country don't know their history. We're just pointing this out."</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">If Mr. Swinwood's first argument fails, he has another, darker allegation that he says strips the Crown of its ability to apply its laws to natives.According to his application documents: "The legislature of Canada and Her majesty the Queen deprive themselves of legislative authority by being complicit in the crime of genocide against the Indian Nation ... and have acted and continue to act contrary to their international obligations codified in the convention for the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide."At the very least, he's asking the judge to find that a 1704 royal proclamation stating that any disputes between natives and government officials should be adjudicated by an agreed upon third party is still in effect.Mr. Swinwood says after exhaustive research and consultation, he has come to the conclusion that Canada simply has no jurisdiction over natives in this country.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">There's no legislation saying so. There's no case law saying so. In fact, the law says the opposite, Mr. Swinwood says."It's an interesting and important question that has not been answered by Canadian courts," said Kent McNeil, a law professor at Osgoode Hall in Toronto who specializes in aboriginal rights.He said there have been some cases in Canadian law, dating back as far as the 1800s, that touched on the issue, but that Mr. Swinwood is the first to take direct aim at the fundamental jurisdiction argument in court.Brad Morse, a University of Ottawa aboriginal law professor concurs."This really will be the first time that these issues are looked at in court, and I think it will be interesting to see what happens," Mr. Morse said.At the heart of Mr. Swinwood's argument is the issue of sovereignty. Under international law, sovereignty is generally gained under three conditions. A government can assume jurisdiction over unoccupied land simply by populating it. Sovereignty also can be formally handed from one government to another after a conquest. Or a government can gain the right to enforce its rules when occupiers of land sign a purchase agreement or treaty relinquishing jurisdiction to the newcomers.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Mr. Morse said Mr. Swinwood's challenge is legitimate because the first two conditions don't apply in Canada, and in the annals of history there is very little evidence of Indians surrendering sovereignty to Great Britain. Where there is evidence of jurisdictional surrender, there is much debate over whether native leaders understood what they were doing when they "signed" treaties and purchase agreements.Although this is the first time Canadian courts will be asked to deal with this issue, courts in other countries already have.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">In a landmark case, Australia's highest court found the Crown there has sovereignty over aboriginal people and land despite not having any of the three accepted conditions for jurisdictional transfer. The court found that over time control of the land and people simply eroded away from the country's first people into the hands of the newcomers and should remain there for the betterment of all.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Many years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court found differently. Judges there decided that the U.S. government didn't have sovereignty over natives or native land. However, it ruled that basic human law as defined by U.S. statue applied to all people regardless of their heritage.Some may look at Mr. Swinwood's position as preposterous, but he says without proper government mechanisms in place to address the gross injustices committed upon natives in Canada, he is simply doing the next best thing.He said in a prefect world, government officials would come to the conclusion that they've failed the natives of Canada, and that Canadian laws aren't helping the situation.They would say they're sorry for messing things up as badly as they have, cede sovereignty over vast tracts of Crown land, and let natives live in accordance with traditional spiritual, moral, and legal codes that were working just fine before the white man arrived."We have the law on our side," he said. "We have history on our side. We have morality on our side. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">What's happened hasn't worked. It's time to try something else.""The time has come," he said. "The government has had a lot of time to do this themselves, and they haven't, so we're going to try to force them to by using the courts. I see no reason why we should fail in this.</div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">© The Ottawa Citizen 2004<br /><br />Posted by Jim Craven (Omahkohkiaayo i'poyi) at <a title="permanent link" href="http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2005/01/ongoing-legal-case-in-alberta-most.html">4:48 PM</a> <a title="Email Post" href="http://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=7504250&postID=109270199187099645"></a><a title="Edit Post" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=7504250&postID=109270199187099645"></a><br /><a name="109683728024027144"></a></div><div align="justify"><a href="http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2005/01/papers-posted-at-center-for-holocaust.html">Papers Posted at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota; http://www.chgs.umn.edu</a><br /></div><div align="justify">Documents of the "Native American" GenocideJames Craven; Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo i'poyiProfessor and Consultant, Economics; Chairman, Business DivisionClark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd.Vancouver, WA. 98663(360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863<a href="mailto:992-2863jcraven@clark.edu">mailto:992-2863jcraven@clark.edu</a></div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Judicial Findings From the Inter-Tribal Tribunal on Residential Schools in Canada (Held June 12-14, 1998 in Vancouver, B.C.). Submitted by James M. Craven, Tribunal Judge (c Copyright July 16, 1998, All Rights Reserved).</div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"><a href="http://www.chgs.umn.edu/Histories__Narratives__Documen/Documents_on_Native_American_G/TRBFND1A.pdf">Part I - "You Can Recognize a Red Indian by His [or Her] Way of Life, Not by His [or Her] Blood Percentage." Chief Lame Deer, Lakota</a></div><div align="justify"><a href="http://www.chgs.umn.edu/Histories__Narratives__Documen/Documents_on_Native_American_G/TRBFND2.pdf">Part II - Mission of the Tribunal: My Understanding</a></div><div align="justify"><a href="http://www.chgs.umn.edu/Histories__Narratives__Documen/Documents_on_Native_American_G/TRBFND3.pdf">Part III - On the Issue of Ethnocide Versus Genocide</a></div><div align="justify"><a href="http://www.chgs.umn.edu/Histories__Narratives__Documen/Documents_on_Native_American_G/Revised_Apology.pdf">September '00: Indian Affairs Head Makes "Apology".</a> Comments by Eugene Johnson (Selitz) and Jim Craven (Blackfoot), from AP report by Matt Kelly.</div><div align="justify"><a href="http://www.chgs.umn.edu/Histories__Narratives__Documen/Documents_on_Native_American_G/Residential_Schools.pdf">Residential Schools—The Past is Present.</a> Radio program with James Craven on The United Church, May 2000. Transcription.</div><div align="justify"><a href="http://www.chgs.umn.edu/Histories__Narratives__Documen/Documents_on_Native_American_G/ChroniclesofEcoimperialism.pdf">Chronicles of Ecoimperialism: Real Whales, Real People </a>by James Michael Craven (Blackfoot Confederacy) (Click <a href="http://www.chgs.umn.edu/Histories__Narratives__Documen/Documents_on_Native_American_G/makahartcle1.htm">here</a> for HTML version)</div><div align="justify"><a href="http://www.chgs.umn.edu/Histories__Narratives__Documen/Documents_on_Native_American_G/BFPaper2.pdf">Paper on Blackfoot Nation</a><a href="http://www.chgs.umn.edu/Histories__Narratives__Documen/Documents_on_Native_American_G/IndictmentRev1.pdf">Indictment Of The Federal Government Of The United States Of America, The Federal Government Of Canada, Designated Agencies Of The Governments Of The United States Of America And Canada, Representatives Of The British Crown And Named Churches Resident In The United States Of America And Canada, For The Commission Of International Crimes And Crimes Against Blackfoot Law, And Petition For Orders Mandating The Proscription And Dissolution Of Named International Conspiracies And Their Organizations By James M. Craven, Member And Named Prosecutor, Sovereign Blackfoot Nation.</a><a href="http://www.chgs.umn.edu/Histories__Narratives__Documen/Documents_on_Native_American_G/BlackfootDraftConstitution.pdf">Draft Constitution of the Blackfoot (PIIKANI) Nation</a> </div><div align="justify"><br /><br /></div><div align="justify"></div></div>Omahkohkiaayo i'poyihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16061952911212543042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449323876485291163.post-9530703737516046992010-04-25T13:41:00.000-07:002010-06-11T16:36:32.384-07:00INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION AND IMPERIAL PENETRATION, COOPTATION AND CONTROL Presented in Beijing, China May 20-21, 2010<div align="center"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/S9Sp17ekV1I/AAAAAAAAA3I/lq2ONrNq8CQ/s1600/flagcorp.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 312px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 234px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5464178991871317842" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/S9Sp17ekV1I/AAAAAAAAA3I/lq2ONrNq8CQ/s400/flagcorp.jpg" /></a><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/S9Sp1s1OLdI/AAAAAAAAA3A/ghOmFH42-7I/s1600/crossflag.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 121px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 116px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5464178987939802578" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/S9Sp1s1OLdI/AAAAAAAAA3A/ghOmFH42-7I/s400/crossflag.jpg" /></a><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/S9Sp1fpAA_I/AAAAAAAAA24/GWF9xw-zSQc/s1600/bush_sheep.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 356px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5464178984398881778" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/S9Sp1fpAA_I/AAAAAAAAA24/GWF9xw-zSQc/s400/bush_sheep.jpg" /></a><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/S9Sp032MmzI/AAAAAAAAA2w/DoU43bPYQlE/s1600/1sheep.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 235px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5464178973716814642" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/S9Sp032MmzI/AAAAAAAAA2w/DoU43bPYQlE/s400/1sheep.jpg" /></a><br />-<br /><em><strong>International Education and Imperial Penetration, Co-optation and Control.<br /></strong></em></div><div align="center"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">By James Craven/Oomahkohkiaaiipooyii and Keith Chiefmoon/Onistaya Kopi</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Paper presented at the International Conference on "Migration in China and East Asia: Experience and Policy", May 20-21, 2010 at the Minzu University, Beijing, China, at the invitation of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences"<br />-<br />“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country…We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of…Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of their fellow members in the inner cabinet…in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics and business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by a relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental patterns and social processes of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces, and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world. (Edward Bernays) </div><div align="justify">-<br />“If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it? The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible, at least up to a certain point and within certain limits.” Edward Bernays </div><div align="justify">-<br />Introduction<br />-</div><div align="justify">The historically generated and globalized systems of colonialism and neo-colonialism, as in the cases of imperialism and neo-imperialism, carry common denominators (nouns colonialism and imperialism) because they have some fundamental features in common. They also have some features that are different—hence the adjective “neo” differentiating them from the classical forms. What they all have in common is that they are all systems that belong to specific historical periods, and, they all involve control, domination and exploitation of some regions, nations and peoples by others. Each type of system incorporates specific, historically determined, dynamic, formulae or algorithms, of direct and indirect, levels, structures and specific forms, of both hard and soft power . The strategic goals of colonial and imperial powers involve penetration, control, domination and exploitation of nations, regions and peoples of the “peripheries” for the benefit of the policies and expanded reproduction of the metropolitan colonizing or imperial power centers.<br />-</div><div align="justify">Classical colonialism and imperialism historically, have involved the more direct and physical penetration, taking, settling, holding and ongoing control of foreign territory through both distant and localized projections and transmissions of hard power; with some, but few, forms of soft power to follow. Generally neo-colonialism and neo-imperialism, involve projections of more indirect, and “softer” forms of power (economic, political, legal and cultural) from more distant bases transmitted through “dependent” and “captive” localized institutions and elites, with threats of hard power (overt military and covert operations) projections at the ready and certainly used when needed.<br />-<br />Even with decreasing costs of transport and communications globally, imperial powers prefer the more distant and softer forms of power (the “velvet glove”) over the more direct, localized and overtly brutal forms of hard power (the “iron fist”). This is not only due to the fact that imperial overreach and high costs of standing foreign bases and settlements overseas create fiscal and other crises within and throughout the metropolitan colonial and imperial centers, but, also, because the contradictions are more intense and naked, and the real exploitative nature and real winners and losers of imperial or colonial rule, are much clearer and naked with the more direct and brutal forms of hard power projections. The inevitable “collateral damage” on non-combatants that comes inexorably with hard power projections often serve to recruit rather than dampen, resistance to foreign domination and is not consistent with winning “hearts and minds” in the peripheries.<br />-</div><div align="justify">Another factor in the increasing use of “soft power”, with international education at the forefront, is that the technologies of more indirect, covert, subliminal and softer forms of coercion, influence, “education” and persuasion are increasingly sophisticated, harder to detect, and, more effective, as they allow and facilitate the exploited to more directly, and even “voluntarily”, participate in their own exploitation. As the martyred South African freedom fighter Steve Biko put it: “The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” And as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe put it: “None are more hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.”<br />-</div><div align="justify">At the core of the production functions of all social formations, and of both hard and soft power and the goals of their application, is education including international forms. Education provides the technical skills and personnel with expertise needed to develop the technologies of both hard and soft power as well as the most effective means for their global projections. Education sets the frames for what we are prepared to use our senses to discover (worthy versus unworthy topics) or even consider. Education shapes the prisms (paradigms) through which we use our senses, decide what of the data gathered by our senses we are likely to accept and reject, and, what sources and what “authorities” we are prepared to access, accept or reject. Education shapes how we see ourselves and our own socioeconomic and politico-legal systems relative to how we see others and their respective systems. Education shapes our views of what is sacred and what is taboo. Education shapes our views of history and which aspects of our own history or the histories of others are worthy of focus and consideration . Education shapes our view of what is science and scientific method and how they are conducted and applied. Education shapes what we take to be our dominant “culture”, values, and imperatives of survival and expanded reproduction of the systems we live under. Education provides the incomes for mass consumption as well as the tastes and preferences shaping what we consume; and what we choose or are induced and/or seduced to consume, both reflects and shapes, our dominant values as well as what we need to produce, how to produce it, and, for whom, production and resource allocations shall take place. Education teaches what words are worth knowing and using and which not; and education shapes what words mean or do not mean—including the concept of “education” itself.<br />-</div><div align="justify">According to the neoconservatives (NC) and neoliberals (NL) in the U.S. and elsewhere, World War IV, the global war against terrorism, has been underway for some time. That begs some fundamental questions: What was or is World War III? When did it begin? Is it still underway? How is “victory” defined? </div><div align="justify">-<br />Many of the neoconservatives, and neoliberals too, see World War III as a global war between systems and ideologies for “Hearts and Minds”; and, according to them, it has been underway since around 1980. According to these forces, socialism and communism are “existential threats” to capitalism and what they euphemistically call “democracy”. The neoconservatives and neoliberals too, see this global war between systems and their respective ideologies as a long and protracted one that will only end with the final and irreversible “triumph” of capitalism over socialism, and Western-style political pluralism, which they equate with “democracy” over single-party rule. They understand very well that the types of people, institutions, relations, and values necessary for socialist construction and its defense are very different than those necessary for the “social capital” and expanded reproduction of capitalism on a global scale (ultra-individualism, mass consumerism, selfishness, materialism, inability to delay gratification, get-rich-quick, etc).<br />-</div><div align="justify">International Education in History<br />-</div><div align="justify">The use of International education by colonial and imperial powers as an instrument of power projection and rule has a long history. Even in Roman times, colonial and imperial power projections and intentions not only often brought with them genocide, but followed the two fundamental phases of genocide outlined by the originator of the word “genocide”, Polish Jurist Raphael Lemkin: 1) destruction of the “national pattern” of the groups targeted for genocide and/or foreign control over; 2) imposition of the national pattern of the colonial or imperial power conducting the genocide and/or power projections.<br />-</div><div align="justify">Even today, some of the top universities specializing in geography, anthropology and foreign languages are found in Great Britain as the British colonial and imperial powers understood what the U.S. Imperium is only beginning to understand: that when you have direct rule and occupation of foreign territory by large numbers of well-armed foreigners, in fortified military bases with extra-territorial powers over indigenous peoples, it makes it very clear to the locals who are the rulers and who are the ruled. They also understood that overseas bases can be costly, can generate fiscal and other crises in the home metropolitan social formations, and, when surrounded by potentially hostile indigenous populations, are highly vulnerable to attack. So the British set up the “D.C” or “District Commissioner” system where only a relatively few highly trained colonial administrators ruled through networks of local elites (mostly mixed-race and lighter-skinned indigenous persons) recruited and trained in the universities of the colonial and imperial powers, trained and installed to rule and aid in the projections colonial and imperial power over “their own” people. The British, like the U.S. today, not only preached they were part of a global “civilizing mission”, but projected their own political, economic, cultural, legal and social institutions, values and systems as “universal templates”, that all nations must copy, if they were to have any hope of the levels, forms and rates of growth of “civilization” said to be modeled by the colonial and imperial powers.<br />-<br />Missionaries, then as today, operating under various covers and fronts , including as “international educators”, were sent in as subcontractors in genocide and front men (and women) for colonial and imperial power projections and control . They followed the typical pattern captured in the phrase common among Indigenous Peoples of the Americas: “The 3-B system” or “Bible, Buck (dollar) and Bullet”. First the Bible, accompanied or followed by commercial interests, followed by military presences (troops and support bases) to facilitate more penetration and protect that which has occurred. The British, like many of their missionaries, understood, like the Roman Emperor Constantine who established Christianity as the dominant religion of the Roman Empire at the Council of Nicaea in the early fourth century AD, that in destroying existing indigenous institutions (“national patterns”) and replacing them with others, starting with, and then gradually co-opting, the existing institutions, such as sacred pagan holidays and rituals, was far more effective in ultimately smashing them and replacing them with others than in putting them directly and openly under siege . This meant that those seeking to smash the indigenous “national patterns” had to understand them, as well as local indigenous languages and/or had to hire, indoctrinate and train locals to do their bidding for them under various fronts and disguises .<br />-</div><div align="justify">Like the British, the U.S. Imperium is looking to the future and to long-term power projections and more apparently indirect and covert rule. They have set up “educational exchanges”, bringing in selected elites and individuals with potential to become elites in their home countries or elsewhere, hungry for educational opportunities and statuses not available in their home countries, to be indoctrinated with world views, practical tools and paradigms consistent with colonial and imperial interests and their power projections. Many of these elites were specifically groomed and equipped with educational and other backgrounds that would not only allow them to capture and hold positions of power in nominally local, indigenous and “de-colonized” institutions, but also to act as educators, politicians, scientists, missionaries, carriers of culture and influence and intelligence agents against local populations, in service of foreign powers as well.<br />-</div><div align="justify">International Education Today<br />-</div><div align="justify">Foreign Language Studies and Exchanges<br />-</div><div align="justify">With the pace, scope and depth of globalization increasing daily, the imperative for international education is seen as more critical today than ever before. Increasingly, the most remote peoples, regions and social formations are being integrated and articulated within a dynamic global economy run in accordance with capitalist principles and imperatives. Not only are more non-English-speaking people under the imperative to learn English, but many English-speaking people are under the imperative to learn other emerging influential languages as well. All sorts of programs and exchanges are being set up, some actually doing what they openly claim to be doing, some not. These programs are not only about learning different languages, but are involved in cross-cultural awareness, establishing cross-border relationships and even obtaining work abroad when unemployment rates rise in some home economies.<br />-<br />Not all of the cultural and linguistic study and exchange programs are benign . In several of his books, former “economic hit man” (who worked for the U.S. National Security Agency helping to lure poor nations and despotic regimes into impossible-to-escape debt peonage) John Perkins discusses the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) now called SIL International, an ultra-conservative Christian evangelical group in the U.S. that specializes in the documentation, study of and training in rare and sometimes near-extinct Indigenous languages. They not only hold contracts to train Western intelligence services in these rare languages, they also allegedly train large transnational companies, like oil companies, to penetrate indigenous lands and cultures to force or co-opt them to turn over resource-rich lands and their resources to foreign companies by offering to move them to missionary reservations and to provide food, medicines and clothing in return for deeds to their lands. They are also involved in translations of the Bible into rare and near-extinct languages. Further, when one learns a new language, the specific constructs, terms, sources, vocabulary that one is exposed to and learns, along with those one is not exposed to and does not learn, serve to shape the paradigms, values, levels of useful knowledge and perspectives of that person learning with feedback effects on that person’s ideology, meanings of words and perspectives on various issues and interests even when operating in his or her own native language and in his or her own culture.<br />-</div><div align="justify">Foundations, Institutes and “Expertise”<br />-</div><div align="justify">There is a plethora of both established and new global foundations and institutes like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, etc., that organize international education exchanges, produce and distribute glossy publications, as well as operate as fronts (“think tanks”) for imperial interests and intentions. They have the capacity to give selected and favored academics and students forums and visibility for their academic publications, provide lucrative grants, provide research and teaching positions at prestigious schools and “think tanks”, and to establish all sorts of global working relationships and friendships that may be beneficial to imperial interests. They are presently looking to the future to find and cultivate young scholars and functionaries, potential future elites that can be recruited in the present to be placed in positions where they can rise in their respective countries and serve imperial interests in the future. Young academics are especially vulnerable to approach and manipulation in that as they are often young and have recent graduate degrees but little experience or publications, they can be given assistance with generating and publishing academic publications, in the right venues, that will fast-track them to upward mobility in academia at home and abroad. The young are often caught in a “Catch-22” trap where they cannot find employment or research opportunities because their resumes are light on experience or degrees from prestigious schools, and their resumes are light because they cannot find employment or research opportunities; these foundations offer them “Faustian Bargains” that allow them to instantly escape such traps or dilemmas. These foundations and institutes are also able to influence both foreign and domestic research directions, content and applications in service of imperial paradigms and interests and to shape perspectives on the debates and issues of the times.<br />-<br />Leading “experts” with big names from prestigious educational institutions in the West, are brought in to the peripheries and marketed as if they were like any other commodity. Often, when one examines their work, especially in the social sciences and arts, their work is really quite pedestrian and not at all “advanced” from what scholars in the peripheries are doing. But there is the power of branding and “brand names” (individuals and institutions) that allow them to be invited and to form relationships and associations to serve imperial interests well into the future. They also act as “attractors” to and “spotters”, and even “recruiters” of young scholars of the peripheries who have heard of them by reputation as authors of texts or touted research, or as individuals with impressive titles and credentials and who seek their patronage to secure their own futures, often in the imperial centers to which they hope to emigrate, work and where increasing percentages remain . They are agents of brain drains that loot some of the most skilled and talented to the metropolitan centers of the Imperium.<br />-</div><div align="justify">All sorts of Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs), more than 50,000 today, are involved in international education and exchanges. They are generally organized around specific single issues and are often titled to show their particular issues or areas of focus . Some not only act as fronts for various Western commercial and intelligence interests, but they help to dissipate or co-opt individuals with “progressive” or system-threatening ideologies and passions with forms and levels of “divide-and-rule”and illusions of effective action that often go with, and yet dissipate or mitigate or co-opt, political activism on single-issue causes or politics. They offer opportunities for travel, for global contacts, research and data bases , for internships, to embellish meager resumes, and, to give some comfort with the illusion of “doing something” about various global issues of the times. They recruit foreign students with specialized skills (foreign languages, mathematics, science, knowledge of foreign cultures and politics, computers, etc) in subjects that the educational systems of the West simply cannot or will not equip students from the Western nations to acquire and apply . They sometimes offer “in-house” and customized academic degrees and certificates that carry prestigious titles and are associated with prestigious educational, business and research institutions in the West and abroad. The give educational and politico-economic institutions in the periphery instant “credibility” and enhanced global standings with associations and exchange programs with prestigious institutions of the Western Imperium.<br />-</div><div align="justify">Textbooks, “Culture”, and Educational Hardware and Software<br />-</div><div align="justify">In the areas of exporting and adapting to local uses, textbooks, literature, music, fashion, movies, television programs and educational and other hardware and software, as forms of imperial soft and hard power projections, the U.S. and Western allies are making and stepping-up major innovations and campaigns. In all cases, major “discoveries” in brain science, cognitive psychology, anthropology, experimental psychology, economics, political science, pedagogy and other disciplines, associated with universal, as well as culturally-specific triggers, tactics and mechanisms of persuasion and the shaping of ideologies and agenda, are being incorporated. What is carefully, calculatingly and ideologically controlled in all these instruments of soft and hard power are the allowable versus non-allowable, content, scopes and depths of coverage .<br />-<br />This is especially fertile ground as many teachers and researchers are, or feel, overworked, and thus hardware and software, marketed as packaged, glossy, structured, “state-of-the-art”, prestigious “brand name”, “easy-to-use-and-apply”, “labor-saving” and comprehensive, plus from the West and thus supposedly “superior” and “advanced”, are easily induced to adopt and use these tools marketed as labor-saving but in essence carriers of imperial culture and interests. Young graduate students, with heavy workloads, often assigned to teach undergraduate and foundational courses in various academic disciplines, are especially targeted by these marketing approaches. Plus, built into some of the hardware and software being exported are “backdoors” that allow surveillance of computers and their connections and applications from a distance. In addition, one of the oldest tricks in marketing is to design and price hardware and software to as to cause dependence on critical supporting services and complementary inputs from abroad.<br />-</div><div align="justify">Fashion, music, literature, movies and television programs are also used as instruments of soft and hard power. Embodied in their calculated content, forms and applications are the central message that “foreign” means superior, to be emulated and preferred, and that which is part of the culture and history of the peoples of the “peripheries” is “inferior” and, even the major alleged “cause” of any alleged “backwardness” in the nations of the peripheries. Not only are very lucrative export and domestic markets created with these types of commodities, but, in addition, the values and priorities associated with capitalism and the mass consumerism pushed by the imperial powers, can and do create forms and levels of debt peonage, dependence and loss of autonomy. People in the nations targeted by imperial interests, are learning, as are the peoples of the metropolitan centers, that when one defines “personal freedom” and prosperity in terms of what and how much one “owns” and consumes, instead of a person owning things, the things, and those who sold and financed them, may well wind up owning that person. These instruments of soft power articulate with and reinforce the forms of soft power in education as many young students, for developmental and other reasons, are attracted to “exotic” or “foreign” fashions, music, literature, movies and television and they may devalue their own societies that perceive to have failed to value and provide these trappings of “civilization” and “progress”.<br />-</div><div align="justify">Exponentially increasing—in scope, depth and sophistication---innovations in optics, audio, graphics, film technique and genres, and, the like, applied to movies, television, music, literature, art and fashion, make the “suspension of disbelief” and escape from the realities of life easier and easier to effect on a mass level. Films and television get increasingly graphic and sensational with new and more intense levels of titillation (modern versions of the Roman “bread and circus”) are being demanded and those demands met. The same technologies employed to make masses “suspend disbelief” when they go to movies or watch television can be employed and are employed to create and nurture other kinds of beliefs in service of imperial interests. They are designed not only to indoctrinate, not only to draw in and titillate audiences with the “exotic” typically not found in local cultures, they are also designed to undermine and eventually destroy beyond recognition the indigenous cultures seen as obstacles to imperial expanded reproduction.<br />-<br />Conclusion<br />-</div><div align="justify">By all accounts, in the U.S. and its allies, are increasingly eschewing, if possible, forms of hard power and the actual taking and holding, physically, of foreign territory. When hard power projections are necessary, the U.S. Imperium is developing more agile, rapid, flexible, precise, “smart”, transitory and lethal weapons and deployment capabilities rather than physically occupying and holding large areas of foreign territories. They are focusing more and more on developing very sophisticated forms soft power and methods of soft power projections and their applications for the reasons that have been discussed previously along with other reasons. But imperial soft power projections are not really that “soft” and non-coercive. If we define “coercion” as the force of obtaining consent or causing someone to act according to the will of others without fully informed and voluntary consent, then forms of soft power, especially when developed and applied to have subliminal effects or to limit or shape information to cause someone to act in accordance with the will and interests of others, then such power is also very coercive with its true concealed coercive powers but another coercive instrument.<br />-</div><div align="justify">There is no doubt that international education offers many attractive and actual benefits for all involved and is imperative in a world of globalization and increasing interdependence, integration of nations, regions and peoples of the global economy. But the object of imperial soft power is to develop and assert the features, values, imperatives and interests of the imperial social formation as a universal template for all to emulate or to be in perpetual peril (subject to move overtly hard and coercive forms of power) with the failure to do so. With global crises and imperial powers increasingly cornered with mounting internal fiscal crises and socio-cultural-political decay, both the forms of soft and hard power projections are likely to be more reckless and desperate; the more one has and has acquired, the more one has to lose. Imperial power projections, like earthquakes and hurricanes, often with even more disastrous effects on both the victims and power projectors alike than those of hurricanes and earthquakes, cannot be stopped at present but can be understood. And it is in understanding their nature, origins, methods, instruments and intentions that those who are the objects and targets of these power projections can best protect themselves and their own sovereignty, self-determination, independence, cultures and socio-economic and politico-legal systems from gradual sabotage, erosion and eventual overthrow.<br />-</div><div align="justify">END NOTES</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">[1] The term “international education” is a general or all-inclusive term for the subjects, priorities, agenda, pedagogy, breadth, depth, relationships (“guanxi”) and physical/human/social “capital” associated with various educational programs.<br /><br />[2] Bernays, Edward, “Propaganda”, Ig Books, Brooklyn, NY, 1928 and 2005 pp. 37-38; Edward Bernays, along with Walter Lippman were “credited” with being the pioneers of and leading contributors to the “science” of techniques of modern propaganda, advertising and persuasion employed in modern international education. Bernays took the approach that the most effective persuasion and propaganda was that which created the set of values, beliefs and tastes that led a person to believe that his choices were his own and not influenced by others. Bernays sought to create advertising and other forms of propaganda and persuasion that would not cause a person to jump up and go to a store to buy a particular product or brand, but that would cause him to be in a situation that demanded a particular product that would lead that person to the product that would then recommend itself. Bernays never really addressed the naked contradictions in his own statement vis-à-vis having a protecting a “democratic society” on the one hand, and, or versus, the ongoing and conscious “manipulation” of the masses by hidden elites on the other hand.<br /><br />[3] “Hard Power” refers to instruments of covert and overt force and direct coercion. These may include war, military power, embargos, proxy military forces, denial of aid, sanctions, coercive diplomacy, bribery, debt peonage, alliances, and various kinds of covert operations. “Soft Power”, a term attributed to Joseph Nye of Harvard University, but actually originating with Chinese philosophers like Lao-tzu, refers to the power that comes from attraction and cooptation: the attractiveness of dominant economic, political, cultural, ideological and legal practices, relations, institutions and systems of one social formation acting to influence, draw in and co-opt the citizens, dynamics and trajectories of another targeted social formation. The new term “Smart Power” is now being touted by the Obama Administration to refer to the “optimum” combinations of hard and soft power that best achieve imperial strategic objectives which include the disguise of hard and soft power projections, their effects and in whose service (class interests) they are employed. Soft power can be and is used by non-imperial and socialist social formations powers such as China for ostensibly hegemonic purposes (see Kurlantzick, Joshua, “Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power is Transforming the World”, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2007 an. analysis of China's use of soft power to gain influence in the world's political arenas. and Young Nam Cho and Jong Ho Jeong, "China's Soft Power," Asia Survey,48,3,pp 453–72)<br /><br />[4] In the West, particularly in the U.S., all sorts of new approaches and frontiers of “Brain Science” are being explored (by neurobiologists, cognitive psychologists, experimental psychologists, anthropologists, economists and biochemists), with the intent of finding new, more effective and more subliminal neuro-physiological mechanisms that can be used for more effective persuasion, mind control, interrogation, indoctrination, propaganda, marketing, political campaigns and “manufactured consent”. They are looking for both the universal and culturally-specific neuro structures, connections (synapses) triggers and physiological responses associated with various stimuli (colors, patterns, words, ideas, images, humor, etc) as they typically, and often subliminally excite or inhibit various neuro structures, chemicals (e.g. nor epinephrine, dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine, histamine) , and processes associated with pleasure, pain, fear, familiarity, fight-or-flight, and other responses (e.g. cortico plasticity, neurogenesis, neural differentiation).Their work is increasingly being incorporated into marketing, design and content of educational hardware and software, textbooks, political campaigns. For an overview see: Gardner, Daniel “The Science of Fear: How the Culture of Fear Manipulates Your Brain”, Plume Books, N.Y. 2009; Shermer, Michael “The Mind of the Market: How Biology and Psychology Shape our Economic Lives”, Holt Books, N.Y. 2008 and “The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule”, Holt Books, N.Y. 2004; Ariely, Dan “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions; Revised Edition”, Harper Books, N.Y. 2009.<br /><br />[5] As Napoleon Bonaparte put it: “History is merely the fable that has been agreed upon”.<br /><br />[6] The term “World War III” was allegedly coined by Pak Bo Hi, formerly of the South Korean CIA (KCIA) and a close lieutenant of the cult leader Moon Sun Myung, head of the so-called Unification Church, a Theo-fascist cult with extensive resources and a global reach through various fronts, who characterized “World War III” as a global war, between systems and ideologies, socialism versus capitalism, as a protracted global war, for “hearts and minds”.<br /><br />[7] By “existential threat” it is meant that a certain system or ideology is deemed a strategic threat merely by its existence even without any covert or overt acts of aggression or threats by that system or ideology against others. Those who use this concept of “existential threat” understand, and intend, that when systems, values and institutions of one system outperform those of another in terms of what matters most to the masses, they can and do act as “attractors” (soft power) of people and allegiances to new systems away from others. They intend that capitalism, their versions of Western “culture” and nominal political pluralism (equated with “real democracy”), will act as attractors of the allegiances of peoples away from socialism or any forms of indigenous sovereignty, self-determination and independence. Even as China has been a leading creditor of the U.S., and even as China has not given signs of any hegemonic intentions or hostility against the U.S., even as China has been a victim of terrorism including by Al Qaeda, Bob Woodward, in his book “Plan of Attack”, Simon and Schuster, N.Y. 2004: “When all the intelligence was sorted, weighed and analyzed, Tenet [then head of CIA] and Pavitt agreed there were three major threats to American national security. One was Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terrorist network…A second major threat was the increasing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, WMD—chemical, biological and nuclear…The third was the rise of China, especially its military, but that problem was five to fifteen years away” (p. 12) It is quite clear that the policy makers in the centers of the U.S. Imperium do not believe in the peaceful competition yet coexistence of differing socioeconomic and politico-legal systems and regard the mere existence of socialism anywhere as a threat.<br /><br />[8] The term “social capital” has come back into new usage and meaning relative to its origins. Since in mainstream economics “capital” means anything that has been produced and used to produce something else, then physical capital refers to tools and the like, human capital to human skills, education and experience, and social capital refers to institutions that foster hope, trust, social cohesion, cooperation and buying into the dominant system and its core values and relationships. Among neoclassical economists they now use the term to refer to relationships of reciprocity (you do for me and I return the favor and we both maximize our individual utility functions by appearing to cooperate, yet we remain, it is alleged, “individualist maximizers”). Education is not only central to and part of the definition of human capital, it is essential to the development, content and protection of the social capital of systems as well.</div><div align="justify"><br />[9] Lemkin, Raphael, “Axis Control in Occupied Europe”, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, D.C. 1944; Genocide is defined as: ...any of the following acts committed with any intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. By “national pattern” it is meant the dominant institutions, cultures, relations, power structures, systems of governance and traditions of a given nation.</div><div align="justify"><br />[10] Freedom of religion is protected by the Constitution of China; but cult practices and intentions are not and for good reasons. Although some mainstream religions like Roman Catholicism have powerful cults like “Opus Dei” within them, mainstream religions can be differentiated from cults in that typically cults, unlike the mainstream religious denominations: a) have closed and layered dogma with followers allowed to know true dogma and intentions of the cult only in stages according to how trusted the followers are; b) covert, coercive and deceptive recruitment practices; c) internal controls for monitoring and deterring exits of members; d) various forms of calculated covert and overt mind control and programming; e) hegemonic intentions and intolerance for the very levels of diversity of thought and religious pluralism that they demand for themselves; f) coerced isolation from family members and friends not in the cult; g) covert rituals and practices and retribution against those who reveal them; h) hidden agenda and ultimate objectives known only to trusted insiders; i) a charismatic and autocratic leader with absolute, unquestioned and unquestionable authority. An example of covert intentions from one of the “sacred texts” of the Mormons:<br /><br />"You will see the constitution of the United States almost destroyed. It will hang like a thread...A terrible revolution will take place in the land of America...[T]he land will be left without a Supreme Government...[Mormonism] will have gathered strength, sending out Elders to gather the honest in heart...to stand by the Constitution of the United States...In these days...God will set up a Kingdom, never to be thrown down...[T]he whole of America will be made the Zion of God." (Joseph Smith, May, 6, 1843, founder of Mormonism, quoted in "One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church" by Richard Abanes, Four Walls Eight Windows Press, NY. 2002, p xvi)</div><div align="justify"><br />"Listeners of KSL Radio's "The Doug Wright Show" were surprised on November 9, 1999 when Wright's guest, Republican Senator Orrin Hatch (a devout Mormon) quoted the infamous "White Horse" prophecy. The prediction by Mormonism's founder, Joseph Smith, contains what has always been the Mormon American Dream--i.e. the transformation of the U.S. government into a Mormon-ruled theocracy divinely ordained 'not only to direct the political affairs of the Mormon community, but eventually those of the United States and ultimately the world." (Ibid.p.xvii)<br /><br />[11] This pattern continues today with many “mainstream” religious denominations and some cults as well, continue to offer educational exchanges and programs that act as fronts for economic, political, cultural, military and intelligence power projections from metropolitan centers of the Imperium to the targeted regions of the periphery. Their names often change as they are exposed, but some like the Mormons, Scientology, the Unification Church under Moon Sun Myung, Falun Gong, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Lyndon LaRouche, wealthy, virulently anti-communist, ultra-conservative, pro-capitalist, and often heavily connected with or used by Western intelligence services, retain their parent organizational names and operate through fronts with “high-sounding” names, to conceal their true origins and intentions. Some organizations like the Cult Awareness Network (CAN) have gone bankrupt and have been taken over by cults themselves (Scientology) but still give some useful lists of currently operating cults (their competitors) and others that have taken over what the Cult Awareness Network used to do before being taken over (International Cultic Studies Association or ICSA <a href="http://www.factnet.org/cris_org.htm).%20These">http://www.factnet.org/cris_org.htm).%20These</a> cults, along with “mainstream” religious denominations, mostly Protestant and Evangelical, are increasingly involved in teacher exchanges and “Teaching English Abroad” programs to nations hungry for mass education in English the lingua-franca of global politics, culture and economics; they not only raise money for their respective institutions, but act as spotters for local men and women to be recruited as local agents for them as well as to serve as agents for foreign intelligence services and commercial interests.<br /><br />[12] The exception to this pattern of practices was the British and U.S. systems of Indian Residential and Board Schools in the U.S. and Canada where they had a slogan that captured the two phases of genocide referred to by Lemkin: “Kill the Indian, Save the Man”. In these cases, “education” meant a direct, violent, overt and unapologetic assault on the “national patterns” of the Indigenous nations with only marginal or ersatz attempts to impose any “national pattern” or integrate Indigenous peoples into the dominant “national pattern” of the colonizing or imperial powers. See Churchill, Ward, “Kill the Indian, Save the Man: The Genocidal Impact of American Residential Schools”, City Lights Press, San Francisco, CA, 2004.<br /><br />[13] In the context of China, Martin Jacques reports: “Until 1900 the idea of reform was virtually always articulated within a Confucian framework—with an insistence on the distinction between Chinese ‘essence’ and Western ‘method’ (or, in the famous phrase of Zhang Zidong (1837-1909) ‘Chinese learning for the essential principles, Western learning for the practical applications.’) Jacques, Martin “When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order”, Penguin Press, N.Y. p.90; Among the foreign influenced uprisings in Chinese history, the Taiping Uprising (1850-64) that cost an estimated 20 to 40 million lives, was according to the historian Paul Cohen, guided by an ideology that was a ‘bizarre alchemy of evangelical Christianity, primitive communism, sexual Puritanism and Confucian utopianism’. (Quoted in Jacques, Martin, Ibid. p.87).<br /><br />[14] This was taken from the internal bbs system of one of the top universities of China in 2006 where significant changes were made after this message, from a former teacher of English left this message: From the bbs system at [deleted] University, China: </div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">Hi! How are you? I hope you are doing well in school and feeling happy. I am back in New York now and miss all my students at [deleted] very much. But there is another reason that I am writing to you. There is something I must tell you. Something very wrong and dangerous is going on in the foreign languages department at [deleted] University. What is going on at [deleted] University? Almost all the other foreign teachers at [deleted] University are members of a cult. What is a cult? A cult is a type of religion that is illegal in China and most of the world. A cult is a very dangerous thing. Why are cults so dangerous? A cult tricks you into joining it and then it slowly takes you away from your family, your friends, your career, your country, and your life. Almost all the other American teachers in the foreign languages department at [deleted] are members of a cult called “Mormonism. They are not at [deleted] to teach you. They have come to [deleted] as secret missionaries and want to try and make you become Mormons too. Why does [deleted] allow them to be here? [deleted] University doesn’t know that they are Mormons. They have found a corrupt person in the [deleted] department and have paid [this personj] a lot of money, and given [this person] many gifts, so that [this person] will lie to the department and tell them to hire Mormons to teach English at [deleted]. Why do the Mormons want to teach at [deleted]? Mormons believe that they must brainwash every person in every nation into becoming one of them. Maybe this sounds impossible, but they are very rich and powerful and are now the fastest growing religion in the world. Their members take orders from one man, one voice who can command them what to do and what to think. Now they have their eyes upon China, and that is why they have come to [deleted]. As you know, [deleted] is the [one of the] most famous universities in China…many famous political leaders all went to [deleted]. The Mormons know that [many of] the future leaders of China will likely come from [deleted]. They believe that if they can make the students at [deleted] into Mormons, then their church will control over China. If they are so dangerous, why let them teach here? As I said, they have found a corrupt administrator in the department of [deleted], and they have paid [this person] so much money that [this person] is willing to betray [this person’s] people and nation. The [deleted] English Summer Camp is completely run by the Mormons and taught by the Mormons. Starting next semester ALL of the English teachers at [deleted] University will be Mormons. What do they want to do to the students? They want to make you a Mormon. If you are a Mormon then you must obey the Mormon Church without question. You must give your money to the Mormon Church. If your families are not Mormons then you will be forced to leave your family and not see them again. If your friends are not Mormons then you will be forced to leave them and not see them again. How do I protect myself? These are the words that they use: Mormon, Mormonism, L.D.S. (acronym for Later Day Saints), BYU (acronym for Brigham Young University, a Mormon recruitment center, not a real school). If any of the foreign teachers at [deleted] say they are Mormon, LDS, Latter Day Saints, or if they say they went to BYU or Brigham Young University then BEWARE. What is BYU or Brigham Young University? BYU or Brigham Young University is a school in the United States. But its real goal is as a recruitment and training center for Mormons. Many [deleted] students have been tricked into attending BYU. They are told they can go to America and attend a famous school, and then they are trapped at BYU and brainwashed. Please be very careful. What can we do? The only thing you can do is to warn the other students so they know to protect themselves. A student who becomes a Mormon will soon be taken away from China and from their family and their lives. I love you all and it pains me that Americans are doing such terrible things in China. Not all Americans are like this. It is only a few, the ones we call Mormons. Please be careful of them and do not agree to become one of them.<br /><br />[15] Perkins, John “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”, Plume Books, N.Y. 2006, pp. 166-67, 183, 184;<br /><br />[16] Increasing percentages of foreign students in the West are choosing to remain to live and even state their original intention was to emigrate permanently from their countries of origin in seeking foreign studies opportunities. “After a Brief Decline, Foreign Ph.D. Graduates are Staying in the U.S. at Near-record Levels”, Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, February 3, 2010, <a href="http://orise.orau.gov/news/releases/2010/fy10-20.htm">http://orise.orau.gov/news/releases/2010/fy10-20.htm</a><br /><br />[17] NGOs are typically broken down into: BINGOS (Business-friendly International NGOs); CSOs (Civil Society); DONGOs (Donor-organized); ENGOs (Environmentalists); GONGOs (Government-operated); INGOs (International like Oxfam); QUANGOs (quasi-autonomous); TANGOs (technical assistance); GSOs (Grass-roots support); MANGOs (market advocacy); CHARDS (Community health and development); They are not subject to international law as are states and thus often act as proxies for governments.<br /><br />[18] These foundations, institutes and sources of “expertise” have a powerful influence in generating and maintaining libraries, data bases, metrics, categories and constructs, and research connections that are used by various governments and media. With the megaphone effect that comes from well-endowed patronage, they take on the aura of the only official and “reliable” data and research bases from which to draw. Their publications are typically glossy, rich in graphics and other visuals that sometimes hide meager content as well as rhetorical intentions, as they play their roles in generating the “acceptable” metrics (categories, indicators and methodologies) by which the respective and relative performances of competing systems, governments and their policies are measured and judged. Those who can set the systems of measurement not only affect what is or is not being measured, but also they affect the actual values of the measurements and outcomes of those measurements.<br /><br />[19] See “New Study Finds U.S. Math Students Consistently Behind Their Peers Around the World”, American Institutes of Research, November, 2005; <a href="http://www.air.org/news/documents/Release200511math.htm">http://www.air.org/news/documents/Release200511math.htm</a>; “U.S. Teens Trail Peers Around World on Math-Science Test”, by Maria Glod, Washington Post, December 5, 2007, <a href="http://www.air.org/news/documents/Release200511math.htm">http://www.air.org/news/documents/Release200511math.htm</a>; “International Test Scores: Poor U.S. Test Scores Tied to Weak Curriculum” by Pascal D. Forgione, <a href="http://4brevard.com/choice/international-test-scores.htm">http://4brevard.com/choice/international-test-scores.htm</a>; “Between 1980 and 2000, the percentage of Ph.D. scientists and engineers employed in the United States who were born abroad has increased from 24% to 37%. The current percentage of Ph.D. physicists is about 45%; for engineers, the figure is over 50%. One fourth of the engineering faculty members at U.S. universities were born abroad. Between 1990 and 2004, over one third of Nobel Prizes in the United States were awarded to foreign-born scientists. One third of all U.S. Ph.D.s in science and engineering are now awarded to foreign born graduate students.” Wulf, William A. “The Importance of Foreign-born Scientists and Engineers to the Security of the United States”, statement to the U.S. House of Representatives, September 15, 2005.<br /><br />[20] In my classes I do an exercise on the first day of class to illustrate ideological framing and manipulation. I ask my students, who are seeing their textbook for the first time, how, not knowing anything about the author of the text, they could judge the likely ideology and rhetorical intentions of the author. Usually I get answers like “from the preface” or “from the biography of the author.” I then ask them to look in the subject index of the text and given them a list of constructs to look for: imperialism, neo-imperialism, racism, sexism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, genocide, etc. I then ask the students if they can define these terms and if they have anything to do with economics. I then ask them that if they cannot yet define these terms, how will they ever learn them if they have been omitted from the text? Attitudes, agenda, expectations, values and allegiances can be as effectively shaped, perhaps more so, by what is carefully omitted from examination as what is examined even from an ideologically jaundiced perspective.<br /><br />[21] See: Soft Power and US Foreign Policy: Theoretical, Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Parmar, Inderjeet and Cox, Michael Routledge, 2010; Lukes, Steven "Power and the Battle for Hearts and Minds: on the Bluntness of Soft Power," in Berenskoetter, Felix and Williams, M.J. eds. Power in World Politics, Routledge, 2007; Mattern, Janice Bially "Why Soft Power Is Not So Soft," in Berenskoetter and Williams; Nye, Joseph “The Powers to Lead”, NY Oxford University Press, 2008; and “Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, N.Y.; Fraser, Matthew, “Weapons of Mass Distraction: Soft Power and American Empire”, St. Martin’s Press, N.Y. 2005).<br /><br />Bibliography<br /><br />1. Jacques, Martin “When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order”, Penguin Press, NY, 2010-<br />2. Harvey, David “The New Imperialism”, Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 2003<br />3. Shermer, Michael “The Science of Good and Evil”, Holt Books, NY, 2004 and “The Mind of the Market”, Holt, NY, 2008<br />4. Gardner, Daniel “The Science of Fear”, Plume Books, NY, 2009<br />5. Ariely, Dan, “Predictably Irrational: Revised and Expanded Edition”, Harper Books, NY, 2009<br />6. Pratkanis, Anthony and Aronson, Elliot “Age of Propaganda, Revised Edition”, W.H. Freeman, NY, 2000<br />7. Ostling, Richard and Joan, “Mormon America”, Harper Books, San Francisco, 1999<br />8. Sharlet, Jeff “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power”, Harper Perrenial, NY, 2008<br />9. Lakoff, George, “The Political Mind”, Penguin, NY, 2009<br />10. Westin, Drew “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation”, Public Affairs, NY, 2007<br />11. Brewer, Anthony, “Marxist Theories of Imperialism: A Critical Survey”, Routledge and Kegan Paul, NY, 1980<br />12. Chomsky, Noam et al “The Cold War and the University”, The New Press, NY, 1997<br />13. Simpson, Christopher (ed.) “Universities and Empire”, The New Press, NY, 1998<br />14. Perkins, John, “Confessions of an Economic Hitman”, Plume Books, NY, NY, 2004 and “The Secret History of the American Empire”, Dutton, NY, 2007<br />15. Hiatt, Steven, A Game as Old as Empire: The Secret World of Economic Hitmen and the Web of Global Corruption”, Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, 2007<br />16. Pilger, John “The New Rulers of the World, Updated”, Verso, London, 2003 and “Hidden Agendas”, The New Press, NY, 1998<br />17. Rampton Sheldon and Stauber, John “Weapons of Mass Deception”, Jeremy Tarcher/Penguin, NY, 2003<br />18. Churchill, Ward, “Kill the Indian, Save the Man”, City Lights, San Francisco, 2004<br />19. Kitty, Alexandra “Don’t Believe It: How Lies Become News”, Disinformation Press, NY, 2005<br />20. Weiner, Tim “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA”, Anchor Books, NY, 2008<br />21. Magdoff, Harry “Imperialism: From the Colonial Age to the Present”, Monthly Review Books, NY, 1978 and “The Age of Imperialism”, Monthly Review Books, NY, 1969<br />22. Amin, Samir et al “Dynamics of Global Crisis”, Monthly Review Books, NY, 1982 and Accumulation on a World Scale: A Critique of the Theory of Underdevelopment, Vols. I and II, Monthly Review Books, NY. 1974 and “Spectres of Capitalism”, Monthly Review Press, NY, 1998<br />23. Solomon, Norman and Cohen, Jeff “Wizards of Media Oz: Behind the Curtain of Mainstream News”, Common Courage Press, Monroe, ME, 1997<br />24. Deutsch, David, “The Fabric of Reality”, Penguin, NY, 1997<br />25. Zakaria, Fareed “The Post-American World”, W.W. Norton, NY. 2009<br />26. Szanto, Andras (ed) “What Orwell Didn’t Know: Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics”, Public Affairs Books, NY, 2007<br />27. Aronowitz, Stanley and Gautney, Heather (eds), “Implicating Empire: Globalization and Resistance in the 21st Century World Order”, Basic Books, NY, 2003)<br />28. Nye Joseph, “The Powers to Lead”, Oxford U. Press, Oxford, 2008 and “Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics”, Oxford U. Press, NY, 2009<br />29. Wilford, Will “The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America”, Harvard U. Press, Cambridge, 2008<br />30. Gorenfeld, John “Bad Moon Rising: How Reverend Moon Created the Washington Times, Seduced the Religious Right and Built an American Kingdom”, Poli Point Press, Sausalito, CA. 2008<br />31. Abanes, Richard, “One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church”, Four Walls Eight Windows Press, NY, 2002<br />32. Allman, T.D. “Rogue State: America at War with the World”, Nation Books, NY, 2004<br />33. Fraser, Matthew, “Weapons of Mass Distraction: Soft Power and American Empire”. St. Martin’s Press, NY, 2005<br />34. Parmar, Inderjeet and Cox, Michael (eds) “Soft Power and U.S. Foreign Policy: Theoretical, Historical and Contemporary Perspectives”, Michael Routledge, NY, 2010<br />35. Bamford, James “The Shadow Factory”, Doubleday, NY, 2008; “Body of Secrets”, Anchor Books, NY, 2002; “A Pretext for War”;<br />36. Winks, Robin “Cloak and Gown: Scholars in America’s Secret War”, Collins-Harvill, London, 1987;Bernays, Edward “Propaganda”, IgBooks, Brooklyn, NY, 1928 and 2005 </div><div align="justify"></div>Omahkohkiaayo i'poyihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16061952911212543042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449323876485291163.post-80225444976296535472010-04-25T13:12:00.000-07:002010-04-25T13:40:36.788-07:00MERC-MAIL REVEALS MERC MENTALITY<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/S9SjfEB59YI/AAAAAAAAA2o/PiUvIGyMUAc/s1600/democracy_democracydelivers.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 250px; height: 333px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/S9SjfEB59YI/AAAAAAAAA2o/PiUvIGyMUAc/s400/democracy_democracydelivers.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5464172001960260994" /></a><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/S9SjeguEHeI/AAAAAAAAA2g/2mv25l8c1lg/s1600/bilderbergfirst.gif"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 265px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/S9SjeguEHeI/AAAAAAAAA2g/2mv25l8c1lg/s400/bilderbergfirst.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5464171992481799650" /></a><br />-<br />Who are "they"--the MERCS? They are the ones who guard, or execute the war plans, covert operations and orders of the "Them"--the ones who run things, or place constraints on those who run things on a global level (e.g. like the Bilderberg Group). They are often former SEALS, SF, Delta, SAS, CIA and the like who hire out for a lot of money to do some of the more demanding and odious jobs, the kind that require "plausible deniability" for those who ordered them, that those in the military, when they do the same jobs, are paid a whole lot less.<br />-<br />The following is an email being circulated among the many contractors for the U.S. Government and its allies. It is very revealing not only about some of the tasks that MERCS do, but also about the mentality that leads them into MERC work and do do what they do when working. (Source: "Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror" by Robert Young Pelton, Three Rivers Press, NY, 2007)<br />-<br />FROM AN EMAIL CIRCULATED ON CONTRACTOR CHANNELS:<br />-<br />"I am a U.S. contractor. I look out for myself, the operators to my left and right, and no one else.<br />-<br />I will always take advantage of the fact that I can finally tell military officers to pound sand, and will do so at every opportunity.<br />-<br />I am my country's scapegoat, the 'plausible deniability' warrior, and I love it.<br />-<br />Less than $700 dollars[sic] a day is unacceptable.<br />-<br />I am trained to eat things that would make a bill goat puke, but will refuse anything less than 60 dollars a day per diem because I am greedy.<br />-<br />I care not for ribbons and awards for valor: I do this job for the opportunity to kill the enemies of my country, and to get that boat I have always wanted.<br />-<br />I will be in better shape than 99% of the active duty personnel, although this is not hard.<br />-<br />I will equip myself with the latest high speed gear; and will trick out my M4 until it weighs more than 24 lbs, not because it works better; but because it looks cool in the photographs.<br />-<br />I will carry more weapons, ammunition and implements of death on my person than an infantry fire team, and when engaged I will lay waste to everything around me. <br />-<br />In any combat zone, I will always locate the swimming pool, beer, and women, because I can.<br />-<br />I will deploy on my terms, and if it ever gets too stupid, I will simply find another company that pays me more."Omahkohkiaayo i'poyihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16061952911212543042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449323876485291163.post-90514317589088461852010-04-21T14:54:00.000-07:002010-04-21T16:11:15.247-07:00The Debunking of Economics: A Review of the Work of Steve Keen et al<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/S8-BtXnoiZI/AAAAAAAAA2Y/YLwzIAdULNI/s1600/capital-290.gif"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 290px; height: 350px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/S8-BtXnoiZI/AAAAAAAAA2Y/YLwzIAdULNI/s400/capital-290.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5462727489458047378" /></a><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/S8-BtNBxI7I/AAAAAAAAA2Q/dxk9vhp2dXc/s1600/capitalism.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 259px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/S8-BtNBxI7I/AAAAAAAAA2Q/dxk9vhp2dXc/s400/capitalism.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5462727486614873010" /></a><br /><em><strong>The Debunking of ‘Economics’ by Steve Keen: A Critical Review</strong></em>-<br /><br /><em><strong>By James M. Craven/Omahkohkiaaiipooyii</strong></em><br /><br /><em><strong><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">To be Presented at the World Association for Political Economy (WAPE) Conference, May 28-31, 2010, Suzhou, China</strong></em></div><div align="justify">-<br />Introduction<br />-</div><div align="justify">In a somewhat remarkable book, Steve Keen starts out right away to explain how he was led into his odyssey, and now mission, of “debunking Economics”. By the generic term “Economics” he means not only “mainstream” or neoclassical Economics, but also some of the writings labeled “heterodox” as well<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn1" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn1" name="_ednref1">[i]</a>. His quarrel is primarily with unchallenged dogma, “traditional habits of thought and expression”, and all conventional structures that act like straight-jackets. His target is also “how economics is taught” at the undergraduate level<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn2" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn2" name="_ednref2">[ii]</a>. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Keen notes that he was “schooled” (his word “indoctrinated”) in the traditions of the Keynesian-Neoclassical synthesis some thirty years ago. He also notes that as the global economy has moved more towards the textbook conditions assumed by neoclassical theory (relative to fifty years ago) with more deregulation, privatization, abolition of tariffs and quotas, more market-based exchange rates and reduced roles of governments, and, despite the dominance and applications of Neoclassical theory in neoliberal policies, the world has grown more, not less as the theory would predict, unequal, unstable and inefficient. His opening argument and attack goes like this:</div><div align="justify"><br />-<br />“Though economists have long believed that their theory constitutes ‘a body of generalizations whose substantial accuracy and importance are open to question only to the ignorant or the perverse’ (Robbins 1932), for over a century economists have shown that economic theory is replete with logical consistencies, specious assumptions, errant notions and predictions contrary to empirical data.…Virtually every aspect of conventional economic theory is unsound; virtually every economic policy recommendation is just as likely to do general harm as it is to lead to the general good. Far from holding the intellectual high ground, economics rests on foundations of quicksand. If economics were truly a science, then the dominant school of thought in economics would long ago have disappeared from view” <a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1">[1]</a><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn3" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn3" name="_ednref3">[iii]</a></div><div align="justify"><br />-<br />Keen says that the catalyst for him to begin to question the prevailing neoclassical dogma, and to see it as dangerous dogma and ideology, was a basic “logical” contradiction in microeconomic theory pointed out to him by a lecturer in a first-year Microeconomics course. That contradiction was simple yet glaring and unaddressed. Neoclassical theory says that combinations of any sort (unions, monopolies) reduce social welfare, and, that without them, people would be paid proportionately to their respective productive contributions (MRPs) to total output and society. But, if one simply abolished only one form of combination and not the other; the other would dominate government and society and reduce net social welfare. Thus a “paradox”: that only abolishing both, or retaining both (checks-and-balances), but not abolishing only one of the two, would add to net social welfare and markets doing what markets are supposed to do. No second-best or marginal improvement, solution<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn4" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn4" name="_ednref4">[iv]</a> would occur with the abolition of at least one but not both of these combination forms.<br />-<br />This statement by Steve Keen of what lead him to begin to question, and then later actively debunk, the economics<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn5" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn5" name="_ednref5">[v]</a> in which he had been schooled and has extensively taught, was for me revealing. It was a simple logical paradox, or internal contradiction, in the internal logic of the theory, not some fundamental and glaring contradictions between the predictions and palliatives of orthodox Neoclassical theory versus the ugly realities lived by the masses and covered-up by “mainstream” theory, that led Keen to begin to rebel. He has set about not to debate hard-core fundamentalists, the neoclassical and neoliberal “true believers” of academia and policy circles, but to offer alternative perspectives and paradigms on the issues that are typically problematic for the orthodoxy and that they refuse to hear, debate, question or open themselves to questions about. His focus, for non-economists as well as economists and political economists, is primarily on the internal contradictions in some of the core axioms, postulates, assumptions, hypotheses, mathematical expositions and even epistemology of Neoclassical orthodoxy. </div><div align="justify">-<br />Marxians and Marxists:</div><div align="justify"><br />-<br />Professor Keen’s analysis often appears to me, to be more “Marxian” than Marxist<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn6" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn6" name="_ednref6">[vi]</a>. His analytical scope and depth appears somewhat detached from grass-roots politics, struggles and issues. He is heavy on theory and light on real-world case studies; light on empirical data on real-world conditions; light on real-world lives and struggles in this book but not in other venues he writes on. Interestingly, there is not even mention of the word “imperialism” –not even listed in the index of the book. He goes into and has some attraction to, chaos-complexity theory attracted partly by the more realistic, non-linear and morphogenetic models, involving positive feedback loops and non-linear differential equations (as opposed to the first and second-order linear differential equations and morphostatic models of neoclassical economics that are often learned, in condensed and inadequate courses of mathematics for economists) that more realistically model real-world systems of natural as well as social phenomena.<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn7" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn7" name="_ednref7">[vii]</a><br />-</div><div align="justify">-<br />Why has Neoclassical Orthodoxy Survived Critique So Long?<br />-<br /></div><div align="justify">As to why this contradiction-riddled neoclassical orthodoxy has dominated and survived so long in academia, among economists who refuse to look into the bankrupt foundations of their dogma, Keen has not much to say. He says these academics are generally “well intentioned” and yet generally ignorant of any other paradigms along with much of the history of economic thought and analysis. He says that these academics, who are true believers in their dogma, typically blame alleged governmental misunderstandings and misapplications of their dogma in government policies, and not their own dogma and dogma-based advice, for present-day global crises. He does not use openly, but hints at, words or concepts like opportunism, cowardice, Faustian Bargains, careerism, willful blindness, depraved indifference, academic prostitution, or cognitive dissonance to explain why this mainstream neoclassical orthodoxy has survived so long and stayed relatively unchallenged by those trained in it and who carry it on uncritically. In short he has little to say about economics as rhetoric and ideology or class interests.<br />-</div><div align="justify">Keen wrote these essays, compiled together to form this book, for non-economists as well as economists. Throughout the book, he first presents the details of the conventional constructs of neoclassical theory before debunking them. Again, his focus, according to him, is on the internal contradictions, the logical disconnects or contradictions, that are internal to the theory. He does not spend much time on the rhetorical intentions and system-preserving roles of neoclassical economics. He does not spend much time on the predictions of neoclassical economics versus the ugly realities they are designed to avoid, obscure, cover-up or dress it up. Keen states explicitly that his book is not about “Left versus Right” but “Right versus Wrong” and states boldly:</div><div align="justify">-<br />“However the critiques of this book are not based on politics but on logic. No political position—left, right or middle—should be based on foundations which can be easily shown to be illogical. Yet much of conventional economic theory is illogical. Those who occupy the center stage of politics should find a firmer foundation for their politics than an illogical economic theory. The same comment, of course, applies to those at the left-wing end of the political spectrum, who base their support for radical change on conventional Marxian economics. As I argue in Chapter 13, conventional Marxism is replete with logical errors as is neoclassical economics.”<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn8" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn8" name="_ednref8">[viii]</a><br />-</div><div align="justify">Steve Keen’s Overall Approach to Critique of Neoclassical Economics<br />-</div><div align="justify">Keen picks apart aspects of neoclassical economics piece by piece in each chapter. He does not deal with neoclassical economics as a coherent meta-theory or meta-paradigm founded on core meta-postulates or axioms<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn9" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn9" name="_ednref9">[ix]</a>. He considers the theoretical edifice of neoclassical economics to be too riddled with internal contradictions and lack of overall coherence to constitute, as some have argued, a comprehensive and internally coherent whole, albeit bankrupt, theoretical system. He does note that neoclassical economics sets up this abstract, “ideal” and tautological world where “everything tends to the best in the best of all worlds”. Neoclassicals then, evaluates each set of policy prescriptions and effects not empirically, in terms of how closely, and with what consequences, they achieve their stated objectives, but how closely they move towards the abstract and ideals models of reality they so forcefully assert as the ideals to which policies should strive. He writes:<br />-</div><div align="justify">“Economists would contend that these changes have made the world a better place, not because some economists have verified that the changes have been beneficial, but because the changes have made the real world look more like the hypothetical world of the economic textbook…But this confidence in reform begs the question—is the hypothetical world of the text book ‘actually’ a better place than the real world with all its distortions? This is only possible if the economic theory that describes the economist’s ideal world is internally consistent. If the theory is internally inconsistent—if it requires impossible conditions to function—then the economic ideal may be an entirely useless guide to how the real world actually works, let alone to how it might be improved. Economic reform could produce a manifestly worse system than the one which it alters. “<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn10" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn10" name="_ednref10">[x]</a><br />-</div><div align="justify">Part One of this book is on the foundations of neoclassical economics that need to be explained to non-economists before being debunked. The first three chapters of Part One take on the traditional model, the “blades” (supply and demand) of the scissors” of Alfred Marshall and others. Chapter two, on the “Calculus of Hedonism” shows that individuals are far more than self-interested hedonists and ultra-individualists and that society is far more than the mere sum of the individuals in it as postulated by neoclassical theory and conservatives in general. Society, the macro, cannot be effectively modeled, understood or transformed in the aggregate by merely summing up or aggregating the micro behaviors of all the individuals that make up the macro. Different individuals, driven to maximize total utility from given resources, will evaluate the utility gained of say a banana, subjectively and differently. A change in the distribution of income that took income from one person and transferred it to another could result, in a different level of social welfare thus impairing the aggregation of various individual or interpersonal utility functions (to form market demand curves) without cornerstone assumptions that: a) all people have identical (homothetic) tastes; b) those tastes are affine and do not change as income changes. Thus a downward sloping demand curve for one person and one commodity only may be possible; but a market demand curve is extremely problematic (likely is jagged and slopes every which way). </div><div align="justify"><br />-<br />Keen also takes on the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham that is central to neoclassical economics: a) that all human behavior, ultimately, and subjectively for each unique individual, comes down to maximization of pleasure and minimization of pain; b) that there is no such thing as society or community—only aggregates or a simple sum of individuals that remain individuals—any “social interests” or social utility functions, are manifested by adding up individual interests and utility functions. These constructs undermine other constructs of neoclassical economics that are uncritically taught: supposed social indifference maps from individual indifference maps; Giffin goods<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn11" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn11" name="_ednref11">[xi]</a>; market demand curves as mere “horizontal summations” of individual demand curves; general equilibrium; budget constraint line (income) independent of tastes (indifference curves); contours of individual indifference curves cannot intersect (except supposed social indifference curves); human behavior driven by motives other than utility maximization and pain minimization<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn12" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn12" name="_ednref12">[xii]</a> ) Keen then takes on, the central postulates of consumer welfare theory.<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn13" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn13" name="_ednref13">[xiii]</a> He also shows how consumer theory and indifference maps are used to attempt to explain any aspect of human behavior related to consumption—“one-size-fits-all”. </div><div align="justify">-<br />Neoclassical Focus on Consumption and Exchange and not Production<br />-</div><div align="justify">Since its inception in the 1870s, neoclassical theory was founded on patently absurd postulates and axioms along with and necessary for, its shift in focus from trans-disciplinary political economy (contradictions and laws of motion of systems) to the isolated or atomistic “representative” individual as the focus of “pure economics”. When each has been shown to be absurd on its face, the response by neoclassical theory and theorists was not to look for a new theory modeling and predicting aspects of human behavior, but always the response is to search for even more restrictive conditions under which the established theory “might” hold: from perfect to bounded rationality; from perfect to bounded information; from maximization (of total utility and total profit) to satisficing; from unique individuals and their unique but given “homothetic” (identical) and “affine”(unchanging) preferences, to the “socially representative” individual standing in for “all” of society<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn14" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn14" name="_ednref14">[xiv]</a>. <br />-<br />And of course this “socially representative” individual, standing in for all individuals, has no history, context, social class, age, gender, ethnicity, religion or ideology to “clutter-up” the analysis. Keen also notes that if neoclassical theory were to incorporate social class, then at the first- approximation level, perhaps the assumption of the “representative individual” (of most people of a given social class) might be easier to take and work with as incomes and tastes, within social classes, vary much less than between social classes<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn15" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn15" name="_ednref15">[xv]</a>.</div><div align="justify">-<br />Keen shows how an indeterminate, non-continuous and jagged market demand curve, with portions showing a direct, rather than inverse, relationship between price per unit and quantity demanded per unit of time, can lead to multiple-point-intersections between market demand and the supply curves thus leading to multiple potential “equilibriums”. Other objections to neoclassical theory on consumer welfare include: non-evolutionary ways in which consumer behavior is handled; consumer split personalities (maximizing utility and also ethically obeying contracts); irrational definition of rational (takes extensive time and processing power of calculate comparative utilities among myriad combinations of two goods when it would be rational to simply follow habitual rules of thumb); ignorance of and ignoring ethical and other factors in complex human behavior and motives; refusal to consider how behaviors, welfare and peer pressures of others affect individual decisions and behaviors (examined in an area called network economics).</div><div align="justify">-<br />The Neoclassical “Law” of Supply: Sraffa Redux<br />-</div><div align="justify">Chapter Three, “The Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing” continues his critique of neoclassical supply and demand. Where Chapter Two showed that market demand curves cannot be derived from horizontally summing up individual demand curves, and that the market demand curves cannot, logically, be smooth, continuous, non-jagged and downward sloping functions consistently showing “The Law of Demand”(quantity demanded per unit of time as an inverse function of price per unit), the same applies with the neoclassical supply curves showing “The Law of Supply” (quantity supplied per unit of time as a consistent, smooth, continuous and non-jagged direct function of price per unit). Keen argues that in classical economics, in which price was a function of costs of production, a static version of which, yields a more accurate flat or even downward-sloping supply curve as in some cases unit costs fall with scale. Why? Because according to Keen, factories are designed, industrially engineered, to avoid some of the problems like diminishing returns, increasing marginal opportunity costs, diminishing marginal productivity, etc, that neoclassical economists assume must inexorably follow with increasing production. Keen argues that factories are routinely built with significant excess capacity and are designed for efficiencies at low or high rates of capacity utilization; only products like oil that are not produced (but are refined) in factories may obey the “law of diminishing marginal productivity”, the real focus, of pure economics<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn16" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn16" name="_ednref16">[xvi]</a>. </div><div align="justify"><br />-<br />Keen argues, employing the analysis of Sraffa that horizontally summing up upward-sloping marginal costs curves of individual firms to produce an upward-sloping market supply curve is as flawed as summing up individual demand curves to form a smooth downward-sloping demand curve.<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn17" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn17" name="_ednref17">[xvii]</a></div><div align="justify">-<br />Sraffa attacked two particular cornerstone axioms of neoclassical theory and showed that they were mutually contradictory: 1) in the short run, if at least one factor of production is “fixed” then supply and demand functions cannot be independent of each other and thus any notions of a predictable partial equilibrium are impossible as every point on the supply curve would be associated with a different demand curve; 2) on the other hand, under any circumstances in which supply and demand could be treated as independent of each other, it would be impossible for any factor of production to be fixed and hence marginal costs would be constant and average costs falling.<br />-</div><div align="justify">The theory of diminishing returns that the classical school presented was not a theory of price determination but that of determination of income distribution and rent based on progressive uses of poorer and poorer quality of fixed land. Keen argues that the classical notion of diminishing marginal returns was misapplied by the Neoclassicals. In their models based on a competitive economy, in which all inputs and outputs were homogeneous, and no firm was large enough to affect market price, the use of diminishing quality of inputs to explain diminishing returns, contradicted the assumption of homogeneous quality of inputs, and thus it was necessary, to postulate, that going beyond some optimal ratio of “variable” to “fixed” factors of production was the source of diminishing marginal returns.” According to Sraffa, only if an industry is treated in the broadest possible ways, say agriculture and the role of land, can some factor be treated as “fixed” in the short-run; but that would contradict the postulate of independence of (or no co-determinacy between) supply and demand or the postulate that static partial equilibrium, in separate and individual markets, in isolation from other markets, can be determined and predicted<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn18" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn18" name="_ednref18">[xviii]</a>. <br />-</div><div align="justify">There are other implications from Sraffa’s work. The majority of cases, where unused capacity is maintained and consolidated, to avoid the problem of a fixed factor of production being crowded by a variable one, and thus diminishing returns, the classical model of costs determining price and demand determining quantity sold is likely to be more accurate according to Keen and Sraffa. Also, the total profit maximizing level of output is no longer where MC = MR<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn19" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn19" name="_ednref19">[xix]</a>.<br />-<br />If internal rising marginal costs do not constrain the production and profitability of an individual firm as neoclassical economics suggests, what are the constraints on the individual firm? According to Keen, who is often almost channeling Sraffa, the major constraints are those which neoclassical economics simply assumes away as not relevant: costs of transportation, information, marketing (a cost of distribution not production as assumed to try to rescue the rising marginal cost curve) and access; plus, acceptable market price and creditworthiness. <br />-</div><div align="justify">If Sraffa’s critique holds true, the whole edifice of neoclassical economics collapses. In neoclassical theory, real wages are taken as given by market forces so firms hire up to where the real wage equals the marginal revenue product of labor. Due to diminishing marginal productivity, the MRP falls as more labor-power is hired with the last worker hired where w = MRP. Since employment determines output, thus the market-given real wage determines output with the real-wage itself determined by worker willingness to forego leisure for income. If society seeks higher levels of output then this is only possible according to the mainstream theory if real wages fall and/or MRPs (Demand for labor-power) increase. If the output to employment relationship is relatively constant, then the neoclassical theory of output and employment determination collapses<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn20" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn20" name="_ednref20">[xx]</a>.<br />-</div><div align="justify">The Neoclassical MC = MR Total Profit Maximization Rule<br />-</div><div align="justify">Keen also takes on the comparative statics and absence of time in the MC = MR total profit maximization rule. Costs and revenues vary over time as well as output levels changing at one point in time according to Keen<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn21" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn21" name="_ednref21">[xxi]</a>. The MC = MR rule holds time constant such that revenues and costs vary only with output levels and thus the gap between total revenue and costs is creates where MC = MR. But real business persons are interested in maximizing total profits over both time and quantity of output produced and sold; profit is both a function of quantity and the historical time during which it produces. Change in profit = (change in profit as a function of time x change in time) + (change in profit as a function of quantity x change in quantity).<br />-</div><div align="justify">Neoclassical theory deals only with a change in profit as a function of a change in quantity and thus the rule MC = MR and following the profit maximization rule, one would deliberately set this quantity to zero. Since one gets zero when multiplying any number by zero, this results in the second half of the overall profit formula (change in profit as a function of quantity x change in quantity) being zero. The neoclassical theory then, according to Keen, implies that profit will be maximized when the change in profit due to change in quantity is eliminated and change in profit due to changes in time is maximized. If the firm’s output is increasing over time, then the term change in quantity is positive, and then setting MC = MR results in zero multiplied by the positive change in quantity which is zero and a smaller increase in profit than if MR > MC. The economic rule of MC = MR is correct only if quantity never changes.<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn22" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn22" name="_ednref22">[xxii]</a> But the imperatives of effective competition, accumulation, market power and even survival of the firm dictate that the firm must grow and develop market power over time which means if it devotes all of its resources to maximizing total profits now, it will have no resources for investment for the future. Mainstream theory is trying to work out a profit maximization rule of ideal output for all time and no such rule is possible according to Keen. Where MC = MR or MC = Price, and where MC are constant, MC are well below average costs and thus losses are being sustained at MC = MR. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">In real-world surveys of managers, note constant or falling MC and no empirical support for firms setting prices where MC = MR in the real world. Where higher prices may be necessary to increase quantities supplied per unit of time, due to supply inflexibilities, diminishing returns is not cited as the real reason or any significant factor as central to neoclassical theory on both the demand (diminishing marginal utility) and supply (diminishing marginal productivity) sides. The notions of smooth downward-sloping demand curves, aggregates of similar individual demand curves, or smooth upward-sloping supply curves, aggregates of similar individual supply curves, or the notion of independent supply and demand curves setting one unique equilibrium price and quantity in a market, Keen shows to be pure fiction—and worse.<br />-</div><div align="justify">Neoclassical Theory of the Firm and Monopolies<br />-</div><div align="justify">Chapter Four deals with inconsistencies in the neoclassical theory of the firm vis-à-vis monopolies<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn23" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn23" name="_ednref23">[xxiii]</a>. Mainstream theory, among all of the possible objections to monopolies, focuses only on the size of the monopoly relative to the market and the inefficiencies of restricting output levels for P > MR where MC = MR thus causing over-pricing, less output, loss of consumer and producer surpluses (deadweight losses) all relative to perfect competition. These essential differences between monopoly and pure competition in neoclassical theory are treated as simply the result of a deeply downward-sloping, overall inelastic MR curve, separate but derived from a down-ward-sloping demand curve under monopoly, versus a flat and perfectly elastic demand—and not separate MR curve—under pure competition<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn24" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn24" name="_ednref24">[xxiv]</a>. The implications, according to neoclassical theory, are that ‘perfectly’ competitive firms maximize social welfare, produce more output and at a lower price due to the features, constraints and competitive/survival imperatives of perfect competitors vs. monopolies. Perfect competition is also preferred as the only market structure in which market output and price are set where market supply and demand curves intersect as opposed to monopoly where MC = MR but MR < P and at lower output than under perfect competition.<br />-</div><div align="justify">Again Keen focuses again on aggregation problems in his critique of neoclassical theory on monopoly. He notes, in a note on “calculus 101 for economists: infinitesimals ain’t zero”, that the central assumption of perfect competition, that gives rise to the flat, zero-sloped, infinitely elastic P = MR = Demand curve is that no firm is large enough to affect market supply, each firm is small and does not react to the behaviors of other firms, and thus must face or take a market determined price as “given”. But aggregating the flat P = MR = Demand curves of individual firms will mathematically yield only a larger flat market P = MR = Demand curve not a smooth, downward-sloping, one; which means, partly, that firms do react to the behavior of others for market price to react (otherwise increases in output by one would have to be offset by proportional decreases in output by others as the neoclassical model confuses very small quantities with zero). The individual and market levels of neoclassical models are inconsistent.<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn25" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn25" name="_ednref25">[xxv]</a> The monopoly has produced where MC = MR, but the perfectly competitive firms wind up producing higher output some of which, at the industry or firm level, must be sold at losses where MC > MR due to infinitesimally small quantities being treated as zeros. The individual demand curve has to be downward sloping or else the market demand curve has to be flat as well.<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn26" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn26" name="_ednref26">[xxvi]</a> If the assumption that the individual perfect competitor has no effect on market price is relaxed, then the price and output levels for a perfectly competitive industry will be the same as for a monopoly according to Keen<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn27" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn27" name="_ednref27">[xxvii]</a>. </div><div align="justify">-<br />Keen is well aware of the issue of economies of scale (present, according to Keen most in large firms or farms producing relatively homogenous products) and the issue of perfect competition being self-negating or self-imploding. No one goes into business to lose; they all dream of profits for power and power for profits. Big fish swallow small fish. Pure competition and its own survival imperatives dictate increasing product differentiation (real or imagined) leading to monopolistic competition and a slightly downward-sloping demand curve (some market power) and often, oligopoly and then monopoly—effective or actual. It is all very dialectical: negation of the negation, or, ultra-competition leads to anti-competition, which leads to more competition (among oligopolies) at higher levels with more at stake with more to lose. Size does matter, economies of scale do constitute serious barriers to entry and competition, the long-run supply curve assumes constant technology (a highly spurious assumption) and the only way that perfect competitors could exist in any long-run sense would be with an industry so huge that it could handle the huge number of very small firms that the perfect competition model requires. In answer to these reservations, the Neoclassicals retreat, again, to an attempted theory-saving assumption of constant returns to scale in which case size does not matter. According to Keen, when all these caveats are taken into account, the case for perfect competitors and against monopolies collapses with the exposed logical contradictions internal to the theory alone. But this should not be taken as an endorsement of monopolies, Keen notes, but each monopoly should be judged on a case-by-case basis he notes.<br />-<br />Neoclassical Marginal Productivity Theory<br />-</div><div align="justify">Keen finishes Part One, on the basics of neoclassical theory and its internal contradictions embodied in marginal productivity theory: “From each according to his contribution: why productivity doesn’t determine wages”<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn28" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn28" name="_ednref28">[xxviii]</a>. Keen takes exception—again—to the central notions of diminishing marginal productivity, smooth and continuous (downward-sloping) demand and (upward-sloping) supply curves horizontally summed from individual curves in his opening attack on neoclassical theory of labor-power markets. In neoclassical theory, “labor”, or actually “labor-power”, is treated as mere commodity, like an apple, subject to the same “laws”<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn29" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn29" name="_ednref29">[xxix]</a>, and curves, of supply and demand, as an apple. But in labor-power markets, unlike other commodities like an apple, supply decisions are made by households while demand decisions are made by firms. According to Keen, this fact alone vitiates the usefulness of neoclassical marginal productivity theory in explaining wage determination, quantities of labor-power hired etc in the real world.</div><div align="justify">-<br />For commodities other than labor-power, demand is determined by consumers (mostly from Households) on the basis of incomes and tastes, while supply is determined by costs of production. But labor-power is not strictly consumed but hired to produce other commodities for sale and labor-power is not supplied for “profit” or subject to diminishing returns. So in essence, the demand for labor-power is determined by producers while the supply of labor-power is determined by consumers of the commodities produced by labor (the utilization or consumption of labor-power in production). According to neoclassical theory, the supply of labor-power is determined by a trade-off between income and leisure coupled with an assumed disutility of all labor and progressive taxation effects.<br />-</div><div align="justify">Demand for labor-power, and the hiring of each marginal worker, is assumed to be a function of the contribution of that worker to total profits relative to the cost or wage of hiring that worker to produce. In a perfectly competitive labor-power market, each firm can hire as many workers as it wishes at a going real wage rate<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn30" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn30" name="_ednref30">[xxx]</a> and hires up to, but not beyond, the point where the wage paid is equal to the marginal revenue product or the market value of the output of that last worker when sold. But the “productive contributions” or marginal revenue products of successive workers hired fall due to diminishing marginal productivity and/times constant P = MR in perfect competition, and, more steeply in imperfect competition, due to diminishing marginal productivity of labor times diminishing marginal revenue of the increased output produced by increased labor-power hired. It is all nice and neat. Workers are paid according to their marginal contributions to production—no free ride but no exploitation. Inequalities in wages and salaries, and wealth, are simply due to inequalities in productive contributions to society that come from inequalities in skills, educations, experience and market values of commodities produced by different types of workers according to neoclassical theory. If workers want higher wages, they should find personal or individual ways (not through collective action) to increase their personal marginal productivities and/or find employment in industries that produce commodities that command higher marginal revenues.<br />-</div><div align="justify">With normal commodities, a budget constraint line can be drawn with just about any y-axis and x-axis intercepts as long as the slope of the line reflects relative price of the commodities represented by it. The point of optimality is where the budget constraint line is tangent to the highest indifference curve. But with labor-power, and the trade-off between income on the y-axis and leisure on the x-axis, the x-intercept is at 24 hours the maximum theoretical time available for leisure. Thus the maximum that the budget constraint line can do is pivot around the x-axis with steeper lines reflecting higher wages and higher y-axis intercepts or substitution effects of income substituted in lieu of leisure. Again individual supply curves are summed up to yield an upward-sloping labor-power supply curve showing wage rate (price per unit) on the y-axis and quantity of labor-power supplied per unit of time on the x-axis. This model is often employed to show the futility of minimum wage legislation, demand management or any forms of “interference” with supposed “free” markets for labor-power. Ultimately, “free markets” are supposed to set levels of unemployment, real wages, and distributions of income and will reflect both income-leisure preferences and productive contributions of individuals as well. </div><div align="justify">-<br />Here Keen notes four basic objections to the neoclassical theory. He argues that labor-power supply curves may well be 1) backward bending so that a fall in wage-rates may induce an increase in quantity supplied of labor-power; 2) when workers face powerful and organized employers, workers will not get fair wages unless they organize; 3) Sraffa’s problems with aggregation of individual supply and demand curves to form market curves apply even more to labor-power markets; 4) notions of workers “freely” choosing between work and leisure is fundamentally flawed.<br />-</div><div align="justify">The argument can be made that at low wage-rates, and thus at low income levels, the imperative to work, or to “substitute income for leisure” (substitution effect) is very high whereas it diminishes at higher wage rates where one can earn higher incomes and at reduced work hours, and, the disutility of labor and progressive taxation effects are likely to outweigh the substitution effects. Plus at low wage rates, the relatively shallow slope of the budget constraint line, is likely to be tangent to a lower level indifference curve at a point of low hours for leisure and relatively high hours to work, whereas at higher wage rates, the point of optimality is likely on a higher utility indifference curve at a point of higher leisure and relatively less work. All of these factors result in a labor-power supply curve that shows: a) substitution effect > income effect (upward-sloping) at low real wages; b) income, disutility of labor and progressive taxation effects > substitution effects (backward-bending) at high wages and salaries; c) indeterminate (relatively vertical) at medium wages and salaries. There is no notion of someone working hard just to accumulate money and power as the purpose of work is seen to acquire income that is to be used up in leisure which is equated with consumption of commodities. Again, with a non-linear, non-smooth, discontinuous and jagged supply curve of labor-power, even assuming a continuous, smooth and downward-sloping demand curve for labor-power, multiple intersections of demand and supply, and thus equilibrium wage rates, are possible. </div><br />-<br />The notion that workers receive wages proportional to their marginal revenue product contributions, assumes perfect competition in both output/product and input markets. Neoclassical theory admits that when the product and labor-power markets are not perfectly competitive, then incomes do not simply reflect relative MRP contributions but also relative bargaining powers of employers and employees. In cases where product markets are imperfect, and demand curves are downward sloping giving rise to separate and steeper MR curves, the worker’s marginal revenue product falls more rapidly than under perfect competition because both marginal physical product and MR fall as output increases from more workers being hired (unlike in perfect competition where falling MRP is a function of falling marginal physical product of labor x constant P =- MR). This can be used to argue for unions as workers would be “exploited” being paid wages less than the price (MR <><div align="justify">-<br />Sraffa had two basic critiques of horizontal summations/aggregations of individual supply and demand curves to form market supply and demand curves: one for a broad definition of an industry and one for a narrow definition. Labor-power markets behave like Sraffa’s broad industries. Movements along an upward sloping supply curve between particular wage-rate/quantity supplied points will have implications on income distributions and thus demand for products produced by labor and thus product prices and marginal revenues. This will mean a different demand curve for labor power (MRP) at each point along the upward-sloping supply curve of labor power and interdependence of supply and demand functions; and thus, multiple possible equilibrium wage rates and “perverse” outcomes and incentives. Finally, few forms of leisure other than sleep do not require income. But if the quantity supplied is a direct function of wage rate, then the lower the wage rate and thus income, the lower the quantity of labor supplied and the higher the supposed “choice” for leisure. In reality, people do not “choose” between work and leisure, not most people; most people simply work to survive and try to do what it takes (quantity, quality and duration of labor-power) to do so.</div><div align="justify">-<br />This concludes the main points in Part One of Keen’s book that deals with internal logical inconsistencies or contradictions in neoclassical theory. Part Two of the book deals with Keen’s suggestions for a new kind of economics curriculum that offers alternatives to neoclassical theory that is more than just a debate on the existing scope and depth of the typical undergraduate economics curriculum.<br />-</div><div align="justify">Keen’s Notions of a New Kind of Economics: the Cambridge Re-switching Debate<br />-</div><div align="justify">Keen suggests a need to focus on the Cambridge<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn31" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn31" name="_ednref31">[xxxi]</a> debate on the real nature, measurability, alleged homogeneity, “productivity” and role of “capital”, in theory versus in reality in undergraduate curricula. According to Keen, the term “capital” has two meanings in neoclassical theory: a sum of money and a stock or collection of machinery. They assume that the two terms can be used interchangeably with the money value of the machines used as a proxy variable for the physical quantities of very diverse machines. But machines are often specialized, complicated, made of sub-systems and parts, “lumpy” and not infinitely divisible, and thus diverse physical “units” of capital are difficult to qualify and quantify and thus aggregate either in monetary (money value of machines) or physical terms<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn32" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn32" name="_ednref32">[xxxii]</a>. This inability to define and measure a “unit” of “capital”, or aggregate “units” of “capital”, then UNDERMINES: a) any notion or measurement of the “marginal productivity of capital”; b) any notion of diminishing marginal productivity of capital; c) any notion that, as the neoclassical theory assumes, profit represents the return to the marginal productivity of capital; d) any notion of the rate of profit depending upon the ‘amount’ of capital rather than the actual case of the measured ‘amount’ of capital depending upon the rate of profit; e) the essential assumption of neoclassical theory that interdependence of industries can be ignored.<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn33" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn33" name="_ednref33">[xxxiii]</a> ; f) the traditional diagrams showing “households” supplying “factors of production” (labor and capital) to “business” that use them to produce the goods households buy with their earned incomes; g) the notion that “capital” is some kind of homogeneous substance and that what is capital-intensive depends upon the rate of profit; g) the notion that the rate of return on capital represented the marginal product of capital; h) that a particular production function that had lost its primacy to others at a given rate of profit could not regain its primacy at a higher rate of profit unless it benefited from increasing marginal product for a period of time; i) that capital demand could not be upward as well as downward-sloping and supply curves could not be downward as well as upward-sloping with no definable equilibrium position; j) that there is no consistent relationship between “factor incomes” and “factor productivity”; k) that the rate of profit is not a function of inter and intra-class balances of power; l) that “factor prices” determine the distribution of income rather than the distribution of income between wages and profits being necessary to determine factor prices; the distribution of income, independent of the productive processes and a politico-legal and socioeconomic phenomenon.</div><div align="justify">-<br />The Need for Epistemology and Scientific Method in Economics Curricula<br />-</div><div align="justify">In his essay on “There is Madness in Their Method”, Keen takes on, and suggests to be taught in undergraduate curricula, the question of “What is science and scientific method? Keen characterizes neoclassical theory, or “economics” as a “science” but a “pathological” one. He takes on the central axioms or postulates of Philosophical Positivism embodied in neoclassical theory: a) that theory cannot be judged by the soundness of its assumptions only the accuracy of its predictions; b) that predictive accuracy confirms the deductive validity as well as soundness of assumptions of syllogisms and hypotheses; c) that the more significant and all encompassing the theory the more abstract and unrealistic are its assumptions; d) negligibility can be mixed or not differentiated; e) the instrumentalist notion that theory is never an accurate or even a proximate description of reality, but is merely an instrument for predicting the future<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn34" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn34" name="_ednref34">[xxxiv]</a>; f) negligibility .assumptions (minor details may be ignored<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn35" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn35" name="_ednref35">[xxxv]</a>) domain assumptions (about the applicable range of conditions of a theory<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn36" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn36" name="_ednref36">[xxxvi]</a>) and heuristic assumptions (for expositional or analytical devices<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn37" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn37" name="_ednref37">[xxxvii]</a>)<br />-</div><div align="justify">In this discussion on scientific method, Keen relies on the taxonomies of assumptions and critiques of philosopher Alan Musgrave et al.<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn38" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn38" name="_ednref38">[xxxviii]</a> He notes that subsequent to the initial developments of macroeconomics, this sub-discipline has been under siege not from any asserted lack of, or concern for, the predictive validity of its models, but from a purported lack of correspondence between core assumptions of microeconomics (rationality, markets in equilibrium etc) to form the core assumptions (micro-foundations) of macroeconomics; assumptions do matter in neoclassical economics when convenient. Assumptions may be contradictory leading to internal incoherence (the object of Keen’s inquiry) in a theory. Each “science” is a society of practitioners as much as an intellectual discipline with shared mindsets and core postulates (cannot be challenged without challenging the very foundations of a paradigm) and ancillary ones (that serve, and can/will be modified, to protect the core ones) against attacks from other practitioners from other paradigms which will occur as powerful interests are threatened.<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn39" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn39" name="_ednref39">[xxxix]</a> </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Notions of the equivalence of “superpositionality” (“Schrodinger’s Cat”) found in Quantum Mechanics (different possible positions or aspects of the same phenomenon yielding different approaches or even “laws” having equal validity) or the Heisenberg Effect (phenomena influenced by observations and observers of them) are summarily and incorrectly rejected as impossible by mainstream economics. Core postulates in economics are held on to far longer and with greater zeal than in any other discipline Keen shows due to sociological and economic interests involved in economic constructs more than in the physical sciences. Popper’s Notion of a science being one that makes potentially falsifiable hypotheses, rather than a discipline that uses experimentation, makes no allowance for if or if not, and on what basis, a statement or hypothesis can in fact by falsified in practice. And the focus/obsession with equilibrium in neoclassical economics is both tautological and ideological dressed up as something else.<br />-</div><div align="justify">In this chapter on scientific method, Keen makes an amazing statement that parallels the “End of History” statement of neo-Hegelian Francis Fukiyama<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn40" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn40" name="_ednref40">[xl]</a> that Fukiyama has since repudiated:<br />-</div><div align="justify">“At the beginning of the third millennium, there is no competing social system against which capitalism must prove its superiority. Feudalism is long dead, and those socialist societies which remain are either socialist in name only, or bit players on the world stage.”<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn41" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn41" name="_ednref41">[xli]</a><br />-</div><div align="justify">Neoclassical Theory and Time<br />-</div><div align="justify">In his essay “Let’s Do the Time Warp Again: Why Economics Must Finally Treat Time Seriously” Keen basically rehashes the central points made elsewhere in other essays: a) analyses based on statics and comparative statics do not work well to illuminate or predict aspects of an inherently dynamic economy in which ongoing changes, that take time to occur are the norm; b) small deviations from some supposed equilibrium will not set up morphostatic processes to move the economy back to that equilibrium; c) conventional theory ignores the time-based process through which deviations from equilibrium trigger back-and-forth or negative (morphostatic) reactions leading to a new equilibrium or restoration of a previous one; d) at “higher” levels of analysis, neoclassical theory relaxes the partial equilibrium and “ceteris paribus” assumptions to deal with “all things interrelated”; but instead of a more dynamic and realistic narrative that allows for disequilibrium as well as equilibrium, students get a general equilibrium model purporting to show how all aspects of an economy can be simultaneously in equilibrium—yet they wind up showing that general equilibrium is unattainable within their own paradigm; e) change in price in one market will affect consumer demand (and thus trigger disequilibria) in other markets especially if trades occur, as they will in the real-world, at non-equilibrium prices<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn42" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn42" name="_ednref42">[xlii]</a>; e) Walras’ vision, solvable with simultaneous linear equations totally falls apart when non-linear difference or differential equations, plus abandonment of the fiction of everything happening at or tending towards equilibrium, are employed<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn43" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn43" name="_ednref43">[xliii]</a>; f) Debreu’s general equilibrium model, a parallel of the linear Leontief matrix is inherently unstable as the system cannot reproduce itself on a simple or expanded level (e.g. if the required inputs of iron for year 10 exceed the output of iron in year g) and because prices must be feasible in reality—e.g. non-negative prices; economics needs to focus on dynamics and not merely as processes between and tending to static equilibrium states; h) economic analysis should be concerned with rates of change not absolute levels of various variables; i) mathematically unstable systems do not merely cause fluctuations around equilibrium states, they may cause break downs and implosions or, they may simply produce chronic disequilibrium (cycles, Chaos Theory and weather/climate systems); j) more than two variables in a system of non-linear differential equations yields no possible analytic solution and simulations must be conducted to see what complexities may happen; k) butterfly effects (with merely three differential equations) in weather modeling yield order-out-of-chaos complexity with three equilibriums all diverging systems away from equilibrium with even small disturbances; l) if equilibria of a system are unstable, then neither the initial nor the final position of the model will be in equilibrium and thus the notion that dynamic analysis plots movements from one equilibrium to another is simply wrong and equilibrium tells you where the model never will be; m) static analysis cannot be used as a proxy for dynamic analysis; n) non-linear relationships in differential equations will lead to complex but bounded behavior.</div><div align="justify">-<br />Neoclassical Theory versus Institutionalists versus Marxism: Aggregation, Growth, Crises<br />-</div><div align="justify">Keen applies to Marx, the Goodwin model of cyclical economic growth first suggested by Marx. Marx noted that in a highly simplified economy made up of only capitalists and workers, there would be recurring cycles of income and employment shares. During high rates of economic growth, associated high levels of employment would lead to higher wage demands eating into profits, causing reduced investment and recessions, which would then produce the opposite conditions of higher unemployment, reduced wages, higher profit levels that would trigger new recovery of higher growth rates, employment levels and wage demands eating into profits… This model reduces down to two central equations: a) rate of change of workers’ share of output = workers’ wage demand minus (-) the rate of productivity growth; b) the rate of change of employment = rate of growth of output minus (-) population growth and technological change. <br />These two equations of Marx’s simplified model are linked as workers’ wage demands depend upon rate of employment while rate-of-growth determining investment depends upon income distribution (higher ratio of wages to output reduces profit and thus investment). These two equations yield cyclical patterns similar to that envisaged by Marx as workers’ share of output and rate of employment both cycle indefinitely and do not tend towards oscillate around some kind of equilibrium. When the variables debt-to-output ratio and government spending are added for more realism, cycles in all variables continue without any exogenous shocks being introduced.</div><div align="justify">-<br />In his essay on “The Sum of the Parts: Why Keynes’s Criticisms of Conventional Economics are Still Relevant Today”, Keen takes on the origins and history of macroeconomics<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn44" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn44" name="_ednref44">[xliv]</a> in overall conventional economics. Macroeconomics was criticized for a long time as a patchwork of ad hoc assumptions, some contradictory, about phenomena at the macro or aggregate level. It was accused of lacking the “logical rigor”, supposed tight foundations and internal coherence of microeconomics<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn45" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn45" name="_ednref45">[xlv]</a>. Since its foundation, macroeconomics has been under siege to more clearly and tightly build its analyses and models on the foundations of microeconomics (micro foundations of macro) no matter what the methodological problems in treating collective social welfare as the product of aggregating or summing of individual welfare situations. But problems of aggregation, along with some other methodological problems, led to the fiction of the supposed “single representative agent” or single producer/consumer as a model of the whole macro economy<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn46" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn46" name="_ednref46">[xlvi]</a>. Keynes’ and Marx’s critiques of conventional economics are still appropriate critiques of modern economics.<br />-</div><div align="justify">Neoclassicals, like political conservatives in general, see the whole or macro as, and equal to, a mere summation of its parts or micro elements. This stands in contrast to the Institutionalists, who see the whole as greater than the sum of its parts (due to synergy or the potential energy embodied in complementarity and synchronicity of parts of a system). Marxists and Marxians see systems as wholes that can be greater, or less, than the sums of their parts due to progressive and regressive roles and balances of contradictions within, defining and driving, all systems. Neoclassicals see “causality” as linear and unidirectional with ultimate independent (exogenous shocks) and dependent variables (final effects) with endogenous (internal) morphostatic (self-equilibrating) processes between causes and effects. Complexity theorists, Institutionalists and Marxists see “over-determination”, non-linearity, order in chaos and chaos in order, and chronic disequilibria of systems<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn47" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn47" name="_ednref47">[xlvii]</a>. Neoclassicals assume that the economy can be meaningfully analyzed as a separate sphere of society, without any reference to socioeconomic and politico-legal or environmental contexts or history, whereas Marxists and Institutionalists make no such assumptions. Neoclassical theory assumes a separate and “pure” science of “Economics” is possible and “scientifically” more useful than the approaches of “political economy”. The Neoclassicals assume an abstract model of universal humanity, Homo Oeconomicus, (free of gender, age, race, ethnicity, social class, educational background etc) or the “representative agent” that is used to predict human behavior. Institutionalists and Marxists assume many variables (some biological, social, historical, contextual and stochastic) govern and shape forms and content human behavior in diverse contexts. Neoclassicals see the test of the scientific worth and validity of all theory (including validity of the logic and assumptions of theory) is predictive validity. Marxists assume a dialectical unity of theory and praxis, each informing the other, with the purpose of theory not only to predict and guide action, but to explain the essences of things and to provide useable foundations for further theory and praxis. And where Neoclassicals claim their science to be “value-free”, Marxists openly proclaim their science to be developed and applied and “biased” in the service of the oppressed and against oppressors. In Neoclassical theory, the focus is on individuals, consumption, and exchange.</div><div align="justify">-<br />Say’s Principle or Walras’ Law: Marx vs Keynes<br />- </div><div align="justify">Say’s Law, sometimes called “Walras’ Law” or “Say’s Principle” is an example of a notion of the macroeconomy as morphostatic system where “Supply creates its own demand” or in modern terms “The Sum of all notional excess demands is zero.” It is based on the supposed “Income-Output Identity” that says since all expenditures are costs, and all that are costs for some, are also revenues incomes for someone else, thus the nominal money value of all costs of total output must equal the sum of the various forms of incomes earned producing those goods and services that make up total output, “therefore” Supply (output) will always create sufficient incomes to demand that which has been supplied and in the aggregate, there will always be sufficient demand to justify supply. This model assumes a highly competitive economy in which prices are as free to fall as to rise. Individual agents may be net buyers or sellers of various goods and services but in sum their excess demands will be zero carrying over to the whole economy when all agents are aggregated. All of this implies that intervention of any forms, in a supposed “self-regulating and self-equilibrating economy would lead to cures worse than the diseases they were intended to treat. Since prices (wages, interest rates, rents, product prices) were assumed to be perfectly flexible upwards and downwards, any short-run deviations or notional excess demands were assumed to be zero in the long-run. If Savings(S) > Investment(I), then supposedly, according to Neoclassical theory, interest rates were too high, they would fall, causing increased quantity demanded of loanable funds to be used for increased investment, and quantity supplied of loanable funds would fall until S = I. If demand for consumer goods fell (notational excess demand negative), demand for investment goods would supposedly rise (notational excess demand positive) and offset the fall in demand for consumer goods. If Tax revenue were greater than Government Spending, the economy would slow down, rising unemployment and falling incomes would cause both falling tax revenues and rising government expenditures on transfer payments, until T = G. If imports (M) > Exports(X) then net outflow of money supply would reduce the general price level (Quantity Theory of Money) which would then make exports cheaper and stimulate export demand, make imports relatively more expensive and reduce import demand, until, voila, M = X. And finally, if unemployment is on the rise, it “must mean” that real wages are too high and thus when wages fall and those unemployed are willing to worker harder for lower wages they will no longer be “voluntarily unemployed”. This was the narrative and vision of “Says Law” or “Walras Law”.</div><div align="justify">-<br />Here Keen first brings in the voice and critique of Say’s Law by Keynes who divided the economy into consumer goods and investment goods sectors. If for example, notional excess demands for consumer goods goes negative, then instead of notational excess demands for investment goods being positive to offset the rising surpluses of consumer goods as Say’s or Walras’ “Law” would predict, then, since investment is based on profit expectations, then a fall in demand for consumer goods and rising unemployment, more than likely, leads to general pessimism. The net result will more likely be more, not less, negative notational excess demands for investment goods as well as for consumer goods, and thus a cumulative-change-based downward and general slump of the whole economy.<br />-</div><div align="justify">Marx’s critique of Say’s Law was more penetrating than Keynes’ according to Keen. Marx took on the central implicit assumption of Say that commodities are sold to acquire money to be used to immediately purchase other commodities and none is used to accumulate wealth. But the central desire, and indeed systemic and contextual imperative of capitalists and thus capitalism, is to accumulate surplus-value, wealth and market power, and expanded reproduction of the system itself, at risk, of loss of market power and competitiveness, and thus of eventual failure of the business, for failure to do so relative to competitors. If every agent’s intended excess demand were zero, then capitalists, would not be able to produce surplus value.<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn48" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn48" name="_ednref48">[xlviii]</a> Say and Walras envisaged an economy with no production, only pre-existing commodities exchanged with each agent striving to covert commodities of “fair” and “equal” values. (C1 ----M-----C2) where C1 and C2 are commodities with different use values but equivalent exchange values and M = Money. But capitalists, according to Marx are governed by capital circulation circuits that violate Say’s/Walras’ ‘Law’: M----C----M’ where M is the money advanced to purchase commodities (C) labor-power and raw materials that produce value greater than the costs of the labor power and other inputs to be sold at a sum M’ > M. The capitalists are driven to supply more (product commodities) than they demand (input commodities) with the difference accumulated surplus-value, which means their excess demand is negative and the sum of all excess demands is negative not zero violating Say’s/Walras’ Law.<br />-</div><div align="justify">Further this is all happening over time ignored in the neoclassical analysis even with comparative statics. Economic growth requires sustained and rising aggregate demand to trigger and justify rising investment, employment, aggregate supply, incomes etc. This requires, according to Keen, citing Minsky that summed-up over all sectors, current spending plans be greater than current received income. This means that production, exchange, and credit, be seen as integrated and holistic aspects of all capitalist economies. <br />-</div><div align="justify">Several Neoclassical notions are taken on by Keen: a) of the rate of profit being driven down by competition to “normal profit”; b) the marginal product of capital (marginal contribution of capital to output and treated as a “cost” of capital or zero notation) taking profit (or even super-profit in the short-run) as a variable out of economic theory in the long-run; the notion of Walras’ Law on the sum of notational excess demands equal to zero providing a sort of center of gravity around which the economy and its sectors oscillate. Marx’s analysis and critique of Say’s Law was far more penetrating than was Keynes’ and Keynes actually embraced Marx’s critique after becoming aware of it. But Keynes did add to the discussion according to Keen with his introduction of the difference between uncertainty and risk in investment and the imperative for “rules of thumb” and heuristics in investment planning. We project our highly imperfect understanding of the present on to the future (e.g. liquidity preference) leading to highly volatile investment, employment and output structures and patterns. Keynes also took on the concept of marginal efficiency of capital (MEC or MEI = ratio of yield of capital to price of capital) as ‘indeterminate’ because of volatile asset prices and a different MEC for each asset price. Instead of the MEC being a determinant of investment, it may be better regarded as a by-product of investment and current expectations<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn49" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn49" name="_ednref49">[xlix]</a>. Thus, according to Keynes, because of risk versus uncertainty, expectations about the future based on the present, liquidity preference determining the rate of interest, speculative capital asset prices, Saving and Investment could well be out of balance for protracted periods<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn50" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn50" name="_ednref50">[l]</a>.<br />-</div><div align="justify">The demise of the IS-LM rendition of Keynes by Hicks led to other paradigms and models such as the “Rational Expectations” school and then the “representative agent” model of the macroeconomy. The Rational Expectations School was a reaction to the 1970s stagflation and the undermining of the so-called Phillips’ “trade-off between inflation rates and unemployment rates by both falling real output and rising unemployment (stagnation) and rising inflation rates.<br />-</div><div align="justify">The Phillips’ Trade-off: Unemployment or Inflation<br />-</div><div align="justify">The Phillips’ Trade-off between unemployment and inflation rates was partly based on the Classical assumption, embodied in the Quantity Theory of Money, that inflation was due to excess rates of growth of money supply and thus was demand-side based. To reduce unemployment required stimulating aggregate demand the price of which would be higher inflation. To reduce inflation meant reductions in aggregate demand the price of which would be higher unemployment. But how to explain both rising unemployment and inflation rates and save the cornerstones of Classical/Neo-classical theory? The “Rational Expectationists” (RE) argued that the predictions of all economic agents would correspond with the predictions of the IS-LM model and that those predictions would be correct. If not-expected, an increase in money supply would reduce unemployment with a lag in time until the inflation occurred. If the inflationary effects of an expansionary monetary policy were correctly predicted and anticipated, then according to the RE school, then they would raise prices immediately to get ahead of the predictable and predicted inflation, with the result that rising general costs with rising prices, would only cause decreases in aggregate supply, exacerbating inflation, and also mitigate any unemployment reducing effects of an expansionary monetary policy. This theory diminished in the 1980s with repeated demolition by empirical evidence; but it shows how traditional economics will attempt to rescue core postulates of a theory of a self-adjusting/equilibrating macroeconomy, when under assault by reality and empirical evidence, by creative “adjustments”, utilizing totally bogus ancillary and rescuing ad hoc assumptions.<br />-</div><div align="justify">Market Efficiency and Asset Pricing<br />-</div><div align="justify">Keen’s final chapter in Part II, the whole section of which is on complexities or issues that should be part of a sound education in economics, deals with market “efficiency” and asset pricing in financial markets: “The Price is not Right: Why Finance Markets Can Get the Price of Assets so Badly Wrong. Here Keen takes on the assumptions and “logic” of traditional theory on financial markets: 1) the assumption that all financial investors have identical expectations about all financial prospects of all companies; 2) that these identical expectations of all investors are correct; 3) that all investors have unlimited credit; 4) the markets clear with respect to every interval of time; 5) all debts must be paid. These core assumptions are employed to argue, or rather summarily assert<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn51" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn51" name="_ednref51">[li]</a>, that competitive financial markets will correctly (“efficiently”) price assets even with uncertain future earnings. <br />-</div><div align="justify">Keen then takes on the conventional theory with a critique of the work of Irving Fisher whose own failure to predict the 1929 stock market crash and later Great Depression led to his own personal financial ruin. Here some of Keen’s critiques are prophetic with respect to the current global financial crises and meltdown as he walks through Fisher’s 15 determinants of stock price levels and Fisher’s own failure to apply them, along with the failure of his own models, in the sudden evaporation of his wealth. Instead of being in or tending toward equilibrium, Fisher saw financial markets as deviating further from supposed equilibrium if disturbed, and even fully imploding depending upon debt loads, how many debtors were totally broken, over-investment, over-speculation, deflation, rising real value of debt, pessimism, hoarding, and reductions in the money supply set off chain reactions leading to the Great Depression and modifications of Fisher’s pre-Depression work. Keen critiques here of any notions of financial markets being inherently efficient and self-equilibrating. They are, he argues, inherently unstable, inefficient, highly speculative vehicles in an uncertain environment and volatile ‘fractal markets’ that overreact to good and bad news, generate cycles in asset prices and drive speculative booms and bubbles along with debt-driven busts and implosions.</div><div align="justify">-<br />Keen and Reforming Capitalism<br />-</div><div align="justify">Part Three of his book of essays ends with proposals for “Alternatives” to the menu typically served in most undergraduate programs in Economics. In his essay “Finance and Economic Breakdown: Why Stock Markets Crash, he suggests the need to explore some of the central constructs of Chaos Theory, the Fractal Markets Hypothesis<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn52" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn52" name="_ednref52">[lii]</a>, the Inefficient Markets Hypothesis (endogenous instability accounts for ¾ of all volatility with real impacts on the real economy in crowding out investment etc), the Financial Instability Hypothesis of Minsky (how finance interacts with the real economy to produce booms and busts via Ponzi schemes and deleterious debt-to-asset ratios) and proposals for regulatory reforms of financial markets. Here Keen notes that:<br />- </div><div align="justify">“ Reform, of course, cannot make capitalism stable; but it can remove the elements of our corporate system which contribute most strongly to instability.” <a style="mso-endnote-id: edn53" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn53" name="_ednref53">[liii]</a><br />-</div><div align="justify">Here Keen suggests exploring some proposed reforms to reduce the volatility and casino-like atmosphere of the stock markets and appears intent to show that such proposals<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn54" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn54" name="_ednref54">[liv]</a> are not that “radical”. Why he would avoid the use of the word radical or find radical solutions problematic we can only speculate if we dare.<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn55" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn55" name="_ednref55">[lv]</a> But I do find, in his general focus on internal logical inconsistencies of Neoclassical theory, an absence any discussion of the real world consequences, on real people, of the bankrupt and contrived assumptions of Neoclassical theory when they are taught, accepted, acted upon and embodied/applied in real-world policies. The words “imperialism”, “genocide” and “racism” are not even mentioned in the index to his book. </div><div align="justify">-<br />Keen, who describes himself as a “critic of neoclassical economics who likes mathematics”, provides an interesting discussion on the uses and misuses of mathematics in his essay “Don’t Shoot Me I am Only the Piano: Why Mathematics is not the Problem”. Complaints about the misuses of mathematics he argues, is like blaming the instrument (piano) for the discordant playing of the piano player. He argues that new approaches to the teaching of Economics should focus on math not only as a tool to illuminate reality, but also as a tool to identify, critique and expose the contradictions and misuses of mathematics in neoclassical theory. He explores “Bad Mathematics”<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn56" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn56" name="_ednref56">[lvi]</a>; “Limits to Mathematics”<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn57" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn57" name="_ednref57">[lvii]</a>; “The Recurring Nightmare of Straight [and smooth or continuous] Lines”<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn58" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn58" name="_ednref58">[lviii]</a> and a slight discussion on the future of mathematics . </div><div align="justify">-<br />Keen and His Views of Marxism<br />-</div><div align="justify">In turning to some alternatives to neoclassical economics, Keen makes the following statement:<br />-<br />“We now turn to some of the alternatives to conventional economics that do exist—warts and all. We begin with the most radical alternative—Marxian economics. You may, if you have typecast me as ‘left-wing’ expect me to praise Marxian analysis. If so, you are in for a surprise.”<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn59" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn59" name="_ednref59">[lix]</a> <br />-</div><div align="justify">Keen’s essay or chapter on “Marxian Economics” has the provocative title “Nothing to Lose but Their Minds: Why Most Marxists<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn60" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn60" name="_ednref60">[lx]</a> Are Irrelevant But Most of Marx is Not.” Here he argues against Marx’s theory of surplus value and the notion that it comes from labor alone and is the difference between the value of output created by activated labor-power (labor) and the commodity labor power (capacity to labor). Keen claims that Marx did not understand his own logic and had proposed a theory on the foundation of reasons that he himself had previous shown to be erroneous. He also argues that “Marxian economics” still remains a powerful tool for understanding the essence and dynamics of capitalism as long as one does not accept the inevitability of the demise of capitalism to due self-implosion from its own defining and internal contradictions. But Keen does argue that Marx was far more than as Samuelson characterized him: “a minor Post-Ricardian” and notes that Marx’s theory of value<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn61" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn61" name="_ednref61">[lxi]</a> actually liberates classical economics from the centrality of the labor theory of value providing a deep and critical understanding of capitalism. Here Keen goes through and dismisses the Physiocratic notion that “Land” (which existed/exists prior to and without Capital and Labor) is the source of “Value”. He dismisses Smith’s labor theory of value on the grounds that a theory or model of labor as a sole source of value, could not determine price, yet ratios of values (of only direct forms of labor) were supposed to determine exchange ratios and thus no allowance for profits and rent in pricing. Adam Smith was left with an adding-up (of “costs”) theory of price determination and thus no strict relationship between value and price.<br />-</div><div align="justify">Ricardo, who accepted Smith’s labor theory of value differentiated between “labor embodied” (direct labor time) and “labor commanded” (labor time plus profit and rent or both direct and indirect labor time) with embodied labor being less volatile than commanded labor in price determination. Ricardo, unlike Smith, argued that machinery created no net value or value in excess of its own value or the value lost in depreciation. <br />-<br />Marx critiqued Ricardo for understanding, on the one hand, that the value of labor-power (wages) is less than the value of output produced by that activated labor-power (labor) while on the other hand not asking why the difference that gives rise to surplus value. Marx rejected Smith’s notion of possible “productivity of capital” arguing that value ‘created’ equals value lost (depreciation) by capital. But Marx was careful to avoid any theory of surplus-value or profit that depended upon buying cheap and selling dear in exchange and assumed that on the average, commodities sell at their real values (socially necessary labor times) and profits are the result of selling them at real values (real values of output produced by labor and value of labor power or capacity to work that is utilized for labor) on the average.<br />-</div><div align="justify">Keen’s critique of Marx includes the so-called “Transformation Problem” (values into prices) which he treats relatively lightly.<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn62" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn62" name="_ednref62">[lxii]</a> He also takes on Marx’s “Labor Theory of Value and Surplus Value” with the claim that three of Marx’s central assumptions violate his own general approach to commodities: a) that with respect to means of production, purchasers make use of exchange but not use value; b) that their use-values cannot exceed their exchange values; c) that the use-values of commodity inputs (machinery, intermediate goods and raw materials) are transferred to the use-values of the commodities they create as long as they lose their exchange value. These assumptions, Keen argues violate Marx’s general approach to the analysis of the commodity<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn63" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn63" name="_ednref63">[lxiii]</a>. He argues that in attempting to rescue his theory of value and surplus-value from internal contradictions, Marx wound up in compromise with his own principles and postulates<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn64" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn64" name="_ednref64">[lxiv]</a>. Keen argues for an abandonment of the labor theory of value and the notion that only labor can create value or surplus-value. He also argues that the appreciation and usefulness of the full richness of Marx’s contributions, often misunderstood or caricatured by Marxists and Marxians themselves according to Keen, can only be restored by differentiating between Marxism and the works of many Marxists driven by ideology to rescue Marx from internal contradictions in the same fashion as neoclassicals are driven by ideology to attempt to rescue neoclassical economics from its own contradictions. Yet it was Marx himself, who urged in a letter to Arnold Ruge, not the utopian “construction of the future for all time”, but rather the “ruthless criticism of everything that exists; the criticism being ruthless in the sense that it neither fears its own results (even if in opposition to Marx’s results) nor fears conflict with the powers that be.”<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn65" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn65" name="_ednref65">[lxv]</a> </div><div align="justify">-<br />I fear that Keen, who decries some of the alleged inconsistencies Marx’s unfinished work, some of the alleged errors of applied Marxism and the alleged self-absorption of some Marxists, even Marxians, does not understand that Marxism represents far more than the unfinished manuscripts of Marx or many of the self-proclaimed Marxists and Marxians that inhabit the halls and journals of Western academia with which he is familiar.<br />-</div><div align="justify">Keen’s final essay/chapter is entitled “There are Alternatives: Why There is Still Hope for a Better Economics”. He gives a very brief overview supposed strengths and weaknesses of Austrians<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn66" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn66" name="_ednref66">[lxvi]</a>, Post-Keynesians<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn67" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn67" name="_ednref67">[lxvii]</a>, Sraffians<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn68" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn68" name="_ednref68">[lxviii]</a>, Chaos-Complexity theory<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn69" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn69" name="_ednref69">[lxix]</a> and Evolutionary economics<a style="mso-endnote-id: edn70" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_edn70" name="_ednref70">[lxx]</a> none of which he claims can take over as the dominant paradigm for the 21st century, which he said, in 2001, awaits a global crisis of capitalism.<br /> <br /><a style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1"></a><br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn1" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref1" name="_edn1">[i]</a>.Keen Steve Debunking Economics: The Naked Emperor of the Social Sciences. Zed Books, London, 2003; see his essay in this book entitled “Nothing to Lose But Their Minds: Why Marxists are Irrelevant But Most of Marx is Not” pp. 269-99; see also support for the book at <a href="http://www.debunking-economics.com/">http://www.debunking-economics.com</a> </div><div align="justify"><a href="http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2009/01/31/therovingcavaliersofcredit/">http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2009/01/31/therovingcavaliersofcredit/</a> www.stevekeen.net<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn2" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref2" name="_edn2">[ii]</a> Keen critiques what is typically taught at undergraduate levels not some sophisticated modifications of neoclassical theory taught in graduate schools.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn3" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref3" name="_edn3">[iii]</a> Keen Steve, Ibid Zed Books, London, 2003, p. 4<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn4" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref4" name="_edn4">[iv]</a> Keen, Steve, Ibid. cite of Lancaster, K and Lipsey, R.G. “The General Theory of the Second Best”, 1956, “Review of Economic Studies” Vol. 24: 11-3. The theory of second best notes: a single step to an ideal situation reduces net social welfare if two or more steps are required to move from a present to ideal situation—all or none ideal solution.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn5" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref5" name="_edn5">[v]</a> Keen notes in his opening essay “No More Mr. Nice Guy”: “Clearly then, my target in this book is not economics in general, but the dominant school of thought within economics.” Keen, Steve, op cit. p. 10 <br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn6" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref6" name="_edn6">[vi]</a> “Marxians” are typically academics who study and appeal to some of the core concepts of Marx, mostly on the basis of the superiority of Marx’s theories or theoretical system in terms of empirical support for core constructs and/or in explaining and predicting—more than in transforming—reality. Often their objections to the core postulates and axioms of neoclassical economics are as “a-priori” as are the postulates and axioms of the Neoclassicals to which they take exception; and they are often based on what is of particular interest intellectually to them personally, rather than on any documented practical utility (in concrete struggles, under concrete conditions, of concrete oppressed peoples), of the theories they develop. Marxists, on the other hand, are guided by the notions of unity of theory and praxis, seeking truth from facts, and Marx’s 11th Thesis on Feuerbach that is the inscription on his grave at Highgate cemetery in London: “The Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it”. Marxists are thus very concerned with how theory advances and is in turn tested by application in concrete praxis.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn7" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref7" name="_edn7">[vii]</a> Some of the American leftist academics have found themselves at places like the Santa Fe Institute doing work in non-linear dynamics, Chaos-Complexity theory, “ordinary differential equations” (e.g. third-order non-linear differential equations) applied to issues. Although Chaos-Complexity theory contains some parallels with core postulates and approaches of dialectical materialism (unstable equilibriums; perpetual change; cumulative change via positive feedback loops; morphogenetic instead of Newtonian-like and self-equilibrating morphostatic systems;“negation of the negation”; order underneath chaos and potential chaos in all order due to fundamental contradictions; non-linear change; etc), some call Chaos-Complexity theory “faux” or “mechanical” or “vulgar” or “academic” dialectics” because of an emphasis on a-priori model building and testing outside of real-world praxis to apply and test the theory. Keen himself calls Chaos theory and evolutionary economics “alternative religions”.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn8" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref8" name="_edn8">[viii]</a> Keen, Steve, op cit. p. 14<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn9" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref9" name="_edn9">[ix]</a> Some critics of neoclassical economics see it as an essentially coherent and internally consistent theoretical system founded on three basic meta-postulates, composed of several sub-postulates, that are fundamentally bankrupt: I Methodological Individualism; II Methodological Instrumentalism; III Methodological Equilibration Arnsperger, Christian and Varoufakis, Yanis, “What is Neoclassical Economics?”, Post-autistic Economics Review Issue 38, July 2009 cited in Craven, James in “Neoclassical Economics and Neo-liberalism as Neo-imperialism”, paper presented to The Academy of Marxism, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), August 11, 2009. Beijing, PRC.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn10" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref10" name="_edn10">[x]</a> Keen, Steve, Ibid. p. 8 Here Keen asserts that it is the lack of internal consistency in the neoclassical theories and neoliberal policy prescriptions, rather than the class-nature of the values, approaches and objectives of the theories and policies, that prevent their usefulness in illuminating, understanding and transforming the aspects of the real world that they model. He does not appear to allow for a logically internally consistent and coherent theoretical system that is totally bankrupt in its ability to understand or transform the real-world because the class it was designed to serve, against the interests of other classes, is a doomed class from its own internal contradictions, imperatives and balances of forces in the real world.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn11" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref11" name="_edn11">[xi]</a> Giffin goods are inferior goods whose actual consumption declines as income increases. Necessities are goods whose consumption as a share of income declines. Luxuries are those goods whose actual consumption and share of total income rise as income rises. Representative goods ate those whose share of income spent on them is constant regardless of level of income (do not exist). Engels curves, which map the changes in spending patterns as incomes change, can assume any shape. For Bentham’s postulate (the whole is a simple sum of its parts) to hold true, Engels curves would have to have a constant slope (fixed distribution of income which violates the assertion that relative incomes are determined by the price system) or, they must all have a constant slope (which means Engels curves must be linear straight lines and thus goods are neither necessities nor luxuries) and the same slope (all have identical tastes). These are known as ‘homothetic’ and ‘affine’ Engels curves (meaning that Bill Gates spends every dollar the same way as everyone else and no one’s structures of consumption vary as a function of age, income or other factors). These assumptions needed to derive social utility from the sum of the individual utilities—that all individuals are identical and unchanging, or, that society is made up of only one individual consuming one good, are absurd on their face yet are employed in neoclassical analysis which attempts to get around the absurdity with the construct of the “representative consumer” or ‘SMD conditions’, another absurdity).<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn12" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref12" name="_edn12">[xii]</a> According Stanley Jevons one of the founders of neoclassical economics, behavioral motives from compassion, conscience, religious or other sources, that cannot be simply reduced to utility maximization and pain avoidance, also play a role in human behavior but cannot be easily, if at all, mathematically modeled).<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn13" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref13" name="_edn13">[xiii]</a> Conventional consumer indifference curves assume: a) Completeness (various possible combinations of two goods, A and B, can be rationally, consistently ranked at the ordinal but not cardinal level (qualified as more, less, or equal but not quantified) in terms of utility they yield to a particular individual; b) Transivity (If A preferred to B and B to C then A to C preferred); c) Non-satiation (more preferred to less); d) Convexity (“Law” of Diminishing Marginal Utility gives rise to convex shape of indifference curves); e) All income is consumed in the present with saving simply treated as consumption of future goods; f) individual demand curves derived from individual indifference maps as budget constraint lines pivot with changes in relative prices with income constant, and uncritical parallel shifts with relative prices constant and income changing; g) labor supply is simply a choice between income and leisure with the slope of the budget constraint line equal to the real wage; h) choices between present and future consumption of goods are indifference curve maps with relative prices replaced with the rate of interest or rate of time preference. <br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn14" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref14" name="_edn14">[xiv]</a> This is analogous to someone with size-10 feet putting on a size-7 shoe and when the shoe does not fit, that person elects to amputate his toes to make the size-7 shoe fit rather than seek a properly-sized shoe.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn15" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref15" name="_edn15">[xv]</a> Keen, Steve, op cit, p. 52 cites the work of Alan Kirman on “collectively coherent” group behavior;<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn16" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref16" name="_edn16">[xvi]</a> Traditional neoclassical theory, which defines short-run as a time period in which at least one factor of production is fixed (say land or “capital”) while others vary (say “labor”) and “factor crowding” of the fixed factors; this leads to diminishing marginal productivity and thus rising marginal and average costs as output increases. This perspective tends to weigh the factor-crowding effects stronger than the offsetting, synergistic and cost-reducing effects of increasing specialization and division of labor coupled with the human capacity to learn and adapts to reverse emerging conditions like diminishing marginal productivity. Thus, in the real-world, unlike the textbook diagrams done by graphic artists for aesthetics, marginal and average cost curve are gentler, L-shaped rather than u-shaped, and less steeply rising; and thus supply curves may be flat or even downward sloping. The only way that the marginal cost curves could rise so slowly, while average costs curves rose so steeply, as neoclassical theory assumes and the textbook diagrams illustrate, is if only “trivially small” quantities of output were being produced.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn17" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref17" name="_edn17">[xvii]</a> Piero Sraffa argued, as early as 1926, that the so-called “law of diminishing marginal returns” will not apply in general to an industrial economy where constant marginal returns, and thus constant marginal costs and a flat market supply curve would likely prevail. This was a direct attack on neoclassical theory of production in which diminishing marginal returns is the central “law or axiom” to analysis of all of production. In the event of constant marginal returns being the norm, then both the output and total revenue functions would both be straight lines through the origin with the slope of the total revenue line being greater (hopefully for the producer) than the slope of the cost curve. Once fixed costs were covered, there would be additions to total profits with every unit sold with more output adding more profits to infinity. Mainstream economists when given the Sraffa critique respond with even if it works in practice, does it work in theory?” which is the opposite of what science asks: “Even if it works in theory, does it work in practice?”<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn18" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref18" name="_edn18">[xviii]</a> Sraffa, Piero, “The Law of Returns Under Competitive Conditions”; “Economic Journal”, 40: pp 538-550; “The Trees of the Forest: A Criticism”; “Economic Journal, 44: pp 89-92; cited in Keen, Steve, op cit. p 317. If, increasing supply in agriculture, relative prices of land and labor change, then this changes the distribution of income and thus demand curve with a different demand curve along each of the points of the supply curve and thus it is impossible to draw independent supply and demand curves that intersect at just one place.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn19" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref19" name="_edn19">[xix]</a> The notion of a smoothly falling demand curve and a smoothly rising supply curve intersecting to determine market price becomes an illusion. Where MC = MR, the MR of the last unit sold will be substantially greater than the MC of producing it and thus output is constrained not by MC but by costs of expanding sales at the expense of competitors. Instead, according to Sraffa, in the real-world, firms have a target output level they try to exceed and a target mark-up or profit margin they try to maintain with the size of the firm constrained by its market niche and access to favorable credit for expansion.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn20" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref20" name="_edn20">[xx]</a> With a flat production function, the MRP will be constant in pure competition (constant MPP x constant P = MR) and thus will never intersect the real wage and thus the firm’s output level cannot be explained by cost or real wage of employing labor-power.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn21" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref21" name="_edn21">[xxi]</a> Neoclassical theory has three notions of time: market period in which no factor of production can be varied; short-run with at least one factor of production constant so that increasing output is subject to diminishing returns; and long-run in which all inputs can be varied; this is still a comparative statics approach. <br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn22" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref22" name="_edn22">[xxii]</a> Keen, Steve op cit. p.80. Keen gives a useful metaphor to illustrate his point. If deriving a car over a given distance, to calculate optimum speed to maintain to achieve optimum fuel consumption over a given distance., One would need to know lowest gas consumption per unit of distance traveled per second because if you work out the optimum speed first, then the lowest gas consumption is at zero km per hour which means zero distance. Since time is an essential aspect of economic behavior as distance is an essential aspect of travel, both problems have to be worked out simultaneously. The economic analogy for finding total profit maximization is equivalent to finding first optimum speed for gas consumption then multiplying it by distance traveled which winds up saying that the cheapest way to get from point A to point B is at zero miles per hour.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn23" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref23" name="_edn23">[xxiii]</a> Problems in the neoclassical theory of monopolies are illustrated via a metaphor of trying to convince someone that the earth is flat starting from the premise that it is a sphere. A small plot of land on which someone is standing appears flat for all intents and purposes and any curvature is not noticeable and thus would be treated as zero curvature for all intents and purposes. When adjacent plots of land are brought into the discussion, larger segments also appear flat so that when all are aggregated, the earth appears flat. <br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn24" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref24" name="_edn24">[xxiv]</a> In neoclassical theory, as it is taught typically at the undergraduate levels, demand curves of monopolies and other imperfect competitors, are presented as linear, smooth and downward-sloping and thus, marginal revenue curves are also shown as linear, downward sloping, smooth, and intersecting the x-axis at half the distance from the origin to the x-intercept of the demand curve. <br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn25" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref25" name="_edn25">[xxv]</a> According to Keen if individual firms operate where MC = MR, then collectively, at the market level, the pure competitors will be operating where collective marginal costs exceed marginal revenue. Here Keen’s explanation of the rationale of the MC = MR rule in neoclassical economics needs further elaboration. The MC = MR rule is based on the notion that the central imperative for all capitalists is maximization of total profits (actually of real, after-tax, risk-adjusted total profits) not marginal profit or unit margin which would be where the MR > MC gap would be greatest. Thus up to but not beyond where MC = MR, although unit profit margins are falling with an increasing marginal cost curve and a flat MR curve, even the last unit of output before where MC = MR yields “infinitesimal” profit which “ain’t zero” (Keen’s point on aggregation problems) and thus adds to total profits just as minimizing losses, deductions from total profits, minimize reductions of total profits. This point is not made clear in treating MC = MR as a “term” of zero. <br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn26" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref26" name="_edn26">[xxvi]</a> Here the Neoclassicals may argue, as Sweezy argued with the kinked demand-curve of the individual oligopolist, that the demand curve of the individual perfect competitor is an expositional/pedagogical/heuristic model of likely behavioral reactions, imperatives, interests and constraints, not a model of market or individual price determination, under given market structures.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn27" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref27" name="_edn27">[xxvii]</a> Here there is a proverbial “chicken-and-egg” (cause and effect) problem. Which comes first: the intersection of market supply and demand setting price for the individual pure competitor, or, the individual competitors equating marginal costs to price? Why should a level of output which partly involves a loss according to Keen (the part where MC > MR) determine where the individual sees price as being set? In the case of monopoly, MC = MR determines output level and demand determines the maximum allowable price at that quantity (price and quantity are not determined by the intersection of market supply and demand curves as in the case of pure competition). Here it must be noted that the Neoclassicals do not assume the flat or horizontal demand curve of the individual pure competitor solely on the basis of the assumption of no individual firm large enough to affect market supply, they also assume homogenous products and freedom of entry and exit as responsible also. Keen goes on his website to show: in perfect competition: a) where MC = P = MR profits are not maximized; b) MC curves must be horizontal or constant for a definitive comparison of perfect competition and monopoly.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn28" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref28" name="_edn28">[xxviii]</a> In characterizing neoclassical theory, perhaps because of using shorthand notations Keen makes some mischaracterizations of the theory. For example he notes that as price rises demand falls when he means that quantity demanded falls not the whole demand function (at least not according to neoclassical theory) and he notes: “Here we will consider the argument that wages equal the marginal product of labor.”(Keen, Steve, op. cit. p. 110) Actually, the theory says that to maximize total profits in production, the firm should hire up to but not beyond where wage for labor-power equals the marginal revenue product of labor. The marginal revenue product is a result of both the marginal physical product of labor (amount of output or change in total output due to a marginal addition of one particular worker) times the marginal revenue (or price in the case of pure competition) that the output sells for. No one gets paid a wage greater than the market “value” of the output they produce. This was the central point made by Marx in explaining the origin and nature of surplus value except that Marx did not seen land or capital as “productive” but only as factors that may enhance or inhibit the productivity of labor. <br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn29" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref29" name="_edn29">[xxix]</a> Given that an attack on diminishing returns, diminishing marginal productivity, and fixed factors of production in the short-run are repeated over and over and central to Keen’s overall critique, I am surprised he missed one argument he could advance against the notion of fixed factors in the short run. Land and “capital”, like labor, have both quantitative and qualitative dimensions that are interdependent. The quantity and quality of some machine (noting that capital is a social relation not a stock of things) or of an acre of land is, in market terms, meaningless, if not turned on, used and maintained, by labor skilled in its use and maintenance, while the quantities and qualities of land and “capital”, (noting capital is a social relation and not a ‘stock’ of things) if activated, can augment the productivity of the quality and quantity of labor employed. Thus, application of the quantity and quality of labor, activates the qualities and quantities of land and capital (not productive in and of themselves as they are idle and commercially useless without labor) that may or may not (land and capital of certain quantities and qualities may actually sabotage rather than enhance productivity of labor) augment the productivity of labor. Thus the notion of “fixed” land and capital mixed with variable labor is highly problematic if not total nonsense.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn30" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref30" name="_edn30">[xxx]</a> Remember this notion was previously debunked: that a perfectly competitive supplier can sell more units without having to reduce price.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn31" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref31" name="_edn31">[xxxi]</a> This is a debate (“re-switching”) that has been raging between MIT economists at Cambridge, Massachusetts and economists at Cambridge University in England over some twenty years.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn32" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref32" name="_edn32">[xxxii]</a> The discussion of “capital” as an embodiment of social-power relations is not mentioned or discussed here. Keen brings in Sraffa’s vs. neoclassical theory’s treatment of aggregated capital. Socially necessary hours of labor can be aggregated after correcting for skilled labor as multiple of relatively ‘unskilled’ labor to reflect higher productivity; and acres of land can be aggregated after adjusting for acres of varying levels of fertility; but highly diverse, in many ways, machines, buildings, etc, have no common property except price, the yardstick used by mainstream theory to aggregate capital. But this involves meaningless circularity in aggregation, as the price of the machine is a function of the profit expected from it, yet the rate of profit, the ratio of profit to price, varies as prices change. Sraffa reduces value of “capital” to “building blocks” of dated (embodied direct and indirect) inputs of labor hours with/times wages rate (fraction of surplus) as an inverse linear function of rate of profit. The “Value” of a machine assumed to be value of inputs (machines and labor) times a rate of profit to reflect passage of time; this is applied repeatedly to all machines and labor inputs to produce their inputs, yielding a set of labor hour terms and declining but never zero residual of machinery inputs. Thus, Sraffa treats the “value of a machine” as the product of the sum of the labor inputs (direct and indirect, living and dead) to produce it with each sum representing the physical quantity of labor employed times terms for the wage (an inverse function of the rate of profit) and the accumulated impact of profits over time (a direct function of the rate of profit and raised to a power to reflect passage of time in years) yielding opposing effects as the value of an item of capital may rise as the rate of profit rises only to fall as the rate of profit rises further. <br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn33" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref33" name="_edn33">[xxxiii]</a> The assumption that changes in the output of industry A do not affect the costs of many other industries which in turn affected the costs of industry A and thus the conditions for any partial equilibrium that is the focus of neoclassical theory are gone.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn34" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref34" name="_edn34">[xxxiv]</a> This stands in contrast to ‘scientific realism’ that says theory must accurately represent, to some extent, reality in order to accurately predict and transform it.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn35" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref35" name="_edn35">[xxxv]</a> E.g. A falling ball, dropped near earth, behaves nearly as if dropped in a vacuum and thus the theory of gravity had great explanatory power, even assuming away as “negligible”, air resistance, with gravity constant and some simple calculus. This notion says that if a theory has great explanatory power with economy of effort (highly restrictive negligibility assumptions) it is to be preferred to one with marginally better explanatory powers but at significant more cost and elaboration or detail.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn36" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref36" name="_edn36">[xxxvi]</a> An example an erroneous domain assumption invalidating a theory according to Keen is the assumption that risk can stand in as a proxy variable for uncertainty. Risk applies to regularities of past events yielding probabilities of future ones whereas uncertainty applies with no regular guide from the past to probabilities in the future.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn37" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref37" name="_edn37">[xxxvii]</a> Heuristics are rules of thumb or expositional or analytical devices. A heuristic assumption is one known to be false but employed as part of simplifying and successive approximations as steps in the development of a more general theory. An example, according to Keen would be Newton’s model of the solar system with only the sun and earth followed by Poincare who developed formulae for planetary motion in systems with more than one planet. This was followed by Einstein who first stated openly, as unrealistic, his own heuristic assumptions only to openly abandon them later yielding more not less accurate theory.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn38" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref38" name="_edn38">[xxxviii]</a> Musgrave, Alan, “ ‘Unrealistic Assumptions’ in Economic Theory: The F-Twist Untwisted”, Kyklos, 34: 377-387, cited in Keen, Steve, op cit. p. 318<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn39" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref39" name="_edn39">[xxxix]</a> Keen mentions, in this sociological approach to science and what science does and why, alternatives such as: Marxism; Complexity-Chaos Theory; Evolutionary Economics; The Austrian School; Post-Keynesians; Sraffian Economics the purported strengths and weaknesses he explores in his essay on alternatives.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn40" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref40" name="_edn40">[xl]</a> Fukuyama, Francis, “The End of History and the Last Man”, 1992 This is the notion of the final “triumph” of and supposed proof of the superiority of capitalism over socialism.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn41" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref41" name="_edn41">[xli]</a> Keen, Steve, op cit. p. 162 This is a truly amazing and unsupported statement to make in an essay on science and scientific method. On what basis does he simply assert, for example, that say China and its CPC is either socialist in “name only” or a “bit player on the world stage.” This is a breathtaking statement from someone supposedly well-versed in Marx and Hegel as well as in scientific standards of definitions and “proof” in assertions made.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn42" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref42" name="_edn42">[xlii]</a> In an example of ancillary postulates created to protect core ones, Walras assumed that no trades occur until general equilibrium in all markets is achieved and/or that prices would tend toward equilibrium levels. Walras saw the economy as a giant auction house in which quantities of each commodity is fixed but demanders will offer to buy from zero up to all depending upon price. The auctioneer attempts to sell all commodities at once, and, rather than treating each commodity independently, he or she refuses to accept any price for any commodity until supply and demand for each and every commodity are in equilibrium. Through a process of “tatonnement” or groping, Walras argued that eventually a set of prices that balanced supply and demand in all markets would be found.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn43" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref43" name="_edn43">[xliii]</a> Debreu’s vision of general equilibrium, intended to rescue Walras from his own contradictions only made it worse. Debreu assumed: one “market” in which all commodities are exchanged for all of time in one instant; complete certainty out of any uncertainty, as to what input-output combinations of consumer and producer commodities will be possible in the future; consumption and production plans made for the whole future; possibility not stability of general equilibrium the issue; a set of positive prices equating quantities demanded and supplied for all commodities simultaneously can be determined;<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn44" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref44" name="_edn44">[xliv]</a> Keen dates the birth of macroeconomics as a sub-discipline with Keynes’ General Theory in 1936.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn45" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref45" name="_edn45">[xlv]</a> This brings to mind the famous quip or joke by Robert Heilbroner that “Mathematics has brought to economics rigor, and alas, also mortis.”<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn46" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref46" name="_edn46">[xlvi]</a> Among the Institutionalists, post-Keynesians, Complexity-Chaos theorists there are increasing demands to develop the “macro (contextual) foundations of micro” rather than the “Micro foundations of macro.”<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn47" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref47" name="_edn47">[xlvii]</a> Systems may be seen as “morphostatic” or “morphogenetic” or something in-between. A morphostatic system is subject to negative feedback effects (effects which work in directions opposite to the direction of movement of a system) such as a temperature thermostat which senses deviations of actual from set room temperature and shuts-off or turns on heat to maintain an equilibrium temperature. A morphogenetic system is subject to positive feedback effects which are involved in cumulative change where feedback effects continue and reinforce the direction of change of the system such as in the slogan of the Medici Family that ruled Florence: “Money to get power; power to get money.”<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn48" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref48" name="_edn48">[xlviii]</a> As Marx put it: “The industrial capitalist throws out less value in the form of money into the circulation than he draws out of it…Since he functions…as an industrial capitalist, his supply of commodity-value is always greater than his demand for it. If his supply and demand in this respect covered each other it would mean that his capital had not produced [sic] any surplus value… His aim is not to equalise his supply and demand, but to make the inequality between them… as great as possible.” (Marx, Karl, Capital, Vol II, Progress Publishers, cited in Keen, Steve, op cit. p. 194)<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn49" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref49" name="_edn49">[xlix]</a> According to John Hicks, three central assumptions formed the foundation of Classical (and Neoclassical) economics on the issues with which Say’s Law dealt: 1) Money supply determined output (seen as a constant times the money stock) determines output and employment; 2) level of investment = f (rate of interest); 3) Saving = f (rate of interest) and S = I Note Hicks also had saving depending upon the level of output. So if Saving increases, then so does investment via falling rates of interest. Higher money wages will reduce employment and thus real wages, while reducing money wages, increases employment and reduces real wages. Decreasing money supply decreases output and income and the main explanation for economic downturns according to Classical theory.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn50" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref50" name="_edn50">[l]</a> Hicks also reduced Keynes work with three highly simplified assumptions that made a caricature of the complexity of Keynes’ argument according to Keen: a) demand for money = f ( rate of interest) as opposed to affixed relationship between money and output in Classical theory; b) Investment = f ( rate of interest); c) Saving is a function of income. Missing are the central concepts of risk vs. uncertainty, expectations about the future from the present, liquidity preference motives (speculative, transactions and precautionary). Hicks claimed that Keynes ignored the impact of income on money demand and the role of transactions demand and that the demand for money should be seen as a function of both levels of income and interest rates. The downward sloping IS curve a product of Hicks’ equations on investment and savings relations; and his upward-sloping LM curve based on the notion of the money demand relation assuming the money supply determined exogenously by the monetary authority. The IS curve, based on level of investment as an inverse function of interest-rate, saving as a direct function of income and investment determining income with multiplier effects. Thus the IS curve, connects points showing various interest-rate and income level yielding equilibrium in the goods markets (S = I). The LM curve, based on the assumption that money supply was determined exogenously by the monetary authority while demand for money was a direct function of income and an inverse function of interest rate. The LM curve connects various points showing interest-rate and income levels leading to equilibria in money markets. Thus income and rate of interest are determined by the intersection of IS and LM curves just like price per unit and quantity demanded are determined by intersections of supply and demand curves in neoclassical theory. Hicks’ work led to the notion of a segmented LM curve with a Classical Region (full employment where attempts to increase output only increase interest and inflation rates and do not move real output) and Keynesian Region (liquidity trap where monetary policy was ineffective but fiscal policy was effective and without higher interest rates) and thus “reconcile” Keynes with the Classics. Hicks also proposed that all three variables (money demand, investment and savings) all be made functions of income and rate of interest but not of degrees of uncertainty or expectations. The Hicksian IS-LM analysis is seen by Keen not as a fair synopsis of Keynes’ General Theory, but rather an ideologically driven attempt to take Keynes back to Walras within his own General Theory or a caricature (minus central constructs expectations and uncertainty) of it. <br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn51" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref51" name="_edn51">[li]</a> The assertions of the “efficient markets hypothesis” are the usual of crude Philosophical Positivism: “One cannot judge a theory by purported empirical soundness or reasonableness of its assumptions”. Paradoxically, Irving Fisher founded not only the “efficient [rational] markets hypothesis” applied to financial markets, but also the Debt-Deflation Theory of Great Depressions focusing on often irrational speculative bubbles. Fischer argued that the rate of interest was simply a price in the exchange (time preference) between present and future consumption of goods (lender low time preference and borrower high time preference) and expectations of lenders and borrowers about future income. Usury did not mean charging interest, but charging interest without corresponding assumption of risk. Demand curves of loanable funds are downward-sloping and supply curves upward sloping. Loans, unlike goods bought and sold in the same time and place, take place over time (granted now, repaid later). Later the Efficient Markets Hypothesis (EMH) and Capital Assets Pricing Model (CAPM) were added to Fisher’s pre-Depression time-value-of-money theories assuming: 1) collective expectations of all stock investors are accurate predictions of the prospects of the companies; 2) share prices reflect all pertinent information pertinent to the future of the companies; 3) changes in share prices are entirely due to changes in information relevant to future prospects of companies and that information is sent/received in a random and unpredictable fashion (exogenous shocks); 4) stock prices take a ‘random walk’ so that past movements are no guide to future movements; 5) finance markets are in continual equilibrium.; 6) investor utility is a direct function of expected returns and an inverse function of risk or variability (standard deviation) of returns; 7) investment possibilities could all be specified into Investment Opportunity Clouds (IOCs).; 8) all investors borrow/lend at a common pure rate of interest; 9) all investors have homogeneous (agreement) expectations on all investments; 10) no feedback from market valuations to investor perceptions; 11) investors unconcerned with present or future actions of other investors. Here Keen explains and critiques, step-by-step, the work of W.F. Sharpe in “Portfolio theory and Capital Markets”, McGraw-Hill, NY, 1970. The theory of Sharpe totally falls apart when Sharpe’s assumptions (domain assumptions not negligibility or heuristic assumptions) meet the real world of differences in investor expectations, uncertain futures and credit rationing. <br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn52" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref52" name="_edn52">[lii]</a> A statistical interpretation of patterns of stock prices and not a model of how stock markets or investors actually behave. This hypothesis argues that stock prices do not display a “random walk pattern” of the EMH but that of a more complex pattern of a fractal. Fractals show “self-similarity”, according to Keen: they look the same regardless of time frames; each number of a series is a simple but non-linear function of previous numbers of the series whereas in a random generated series, each number is independent of all previous numbers. Keen, p. 247 <br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn53" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref53" name="_edn53">[liii]</a> Keen, Steve, op.cit p. 255<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn54" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref54" name="_edn54">[liv]</a> Proposals such as restricting access to the stock market with only one Walrasian auction per day to reduce volatility; stocks changed to being time-limited voting bonds; <br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn55" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref55" name="_edn55">[lv]</a> The word radical comes from the Latin root “radix” or “the root”; to be radical is to argue for getting to the root of that which must be understood/changed. In the West, to be known as an open Marxist or Communist, and to be doing “mass work” in the open, is to invite all sorts of possible retribution against oneself, one’s family and those with whom one works and thus many self-proclaimed Marxists, in The West and elsewhere, “hide in plain sight”, in various ‘mainstream’ political parties, under various cover labels, like “progressive”, “heterodox”, “Marxian” etc.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn56" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref56" name="_edn56">[lvi]</a> “Bad Mathematics” has four forms according to Keen: 1) Logical contradictions: theory is supposedly ‘saved’ by ancillary assumptions which contradict what the theory purports to show; 2) Omitted variables: essential aspect of reality assumed away to make the math run; 3) False Equalities: two different things treated as equal such as risk and uncertainty; 4) Unexplored conditions: some relations are assumed or assumed possible without the necessary conditions specified, present or possible. <br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn57" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref57" name="_edn57">[lvii]</a> Here Keen points to the work of Henri Poincare in 1899 on the many body problem of astrophysics that led to the proof of chaotic systems. He showed the impossibility of an accurate algorithm predicting the dynamics and trajectories of a model with three of more elements to it, especially utilizing non-linear differential equations, and showed that even any purported approximations would rapidly lose any accuracy. The future could only be mathematically predicted if the present were known and modeled with infinite accuracy which is impossible. In addition, there is Godel’s proof that all mathematical systems must take some external or imposed foundational axioms as articles of faith and thus none is “self-contained”.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn58" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref58" name="_edn58">[lviii]</a> This issue according to Keen arises from the central assumptions of neoclassical economics that: a) the whole is ‘no more’ than the simple sum of its parts; b) interactions between parts are zero or negligible; 3) no interactions with one variable multiplied by another variable (Total Revenue treated as P x Q only with P or Q situationally treated as a constant).<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn59" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref59" name="_edn59">[lix]</a> Keen, Steve, op. cit. 268.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn60" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref60" name="_edn60">[lx]</a> I find this sweeping assertion of the supposed “irrelevance of ‘most’ Marxists” to be as cavalier and even arrogant as the statement about there being no socialist [more than in name only] alternatives to capitalism. In the West, especially the U.S. Canada and even in Eurocentric Australia, if there is one national religion it is anti-Communism and thus anyone who self-defines or self-declares himself or herself to be a Marxist or a Communist is in essence self-declaring himself or herself to be an enemy of the capitalist State and inviting all sorts of repression. Further, if the person calls himself/herself a Marxist and not a Marxian, he or she is making a declaration of doing practical mass work in addition to scholarship in opposition to capitalism and the established order. This takes courage that should be respected even if one is not a self-declared Marxist or Marxian or even if one is in disagreement with the versions of Marxism being professed.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn61" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref61" name="_edn61">[lxi]</a> Marx’s work on value and price was unfinished. Marx clearly noted that his theory of value was a theory of the essential centers of gravity (value as embodied socially necessary labor time) around which prices may fluctuate for various reasons including subjective assessments of utility by buyers and sellers (especially in the cases of rarities) but he noted that the labor theory of value was not a theory of precise price determination.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn62" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref62" name="_edn62">[lxii]</a> In successive [heuristic] approximations Marx assumed a constant rate of surplus value (s/v) over all industries and time, that capitalists would substitute capital (c) for labor-power (v) when possible and thus the rate of profit (s/c + v) had a tendency to fall over time. Capitalists would respond by attempting to lower wages (v) to offset rising c and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Joan Robinson argued that a rise in c might well increase s/v and thus the rate of profit might not fall but rise. The “Transformation Problem” occurs when capitalists are driven by rate of profit and not rate of surplus value: if labor is the only source of surplus value, then industries with higher average ratios of labor to capital should have higher profit rates and in a competitive capitalist economy, this would mean firms moving out of capital-intensive to labor-intensive industries in search of higher rates of profit. How to reconcile an assumption of constant s/v over all industries and time with at least competitive equalization of rates of profit. Marx argued that capitalists recover profits proportional to their investments regardless of in labor-intensive or capital-intensive industries. In response, Keen brings out Sraffa’s scheme of “labor-value units” inspired by Marx and the critique of Steedman, I, “Questions for Kaleckians”, Review of Political Economy, 1992, 4: 125-151 The argument is that Marx converted outputs but not inputs into price terms and if this error is corrected non-sense violating assumptions of an equilibrium situation. Steedman argued that there is no need to convert physical quantities into values and then values into prices but can and must convert production data on physical quantities directly into prices with an “equilibrium assumption” of a uniform rate of profit. According to Keen, the supposed inconsistencies noted by Steedman undermined Marx’s notions of labor as the only source of value, value as the only source of surplus-value and profits and that value determines price. Arun Bose whose work (“Marx on Exploitation and Inequality”, Oxford U. Press, 1980, New Delhi) is alluded to by Keen, argued that there were two Marxs: one of the labor theory of value and one of Marx’s capital theory and that they can be reconciled to a degree with a concept of all direct and indirect labor inputs (capital) converted to dated and weighted labor units (commodity inputs of each given period are reduced to direct labor plus capital plus equilibrium rate of profit of the previous period still leaving some commodity residual ) leading to the conclusion that non-labor commodities plus labor are the basis of value. Marx, it should be noted, provided both negative proof of labor as the source of all value by eliminating any contenders but also did a positive proof of the labor origins of value and surplus value based on dialectical logic (unity and opposition of use and exchange value in overall value; here Marx contrasted the exchange-value of labor power or labor-time to produce means of subsistence, with its use-value or value greater than itself produced by embodied direct labor).<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn63" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref63" name="_edn63">[lxiii]</a> A) link of transfer of value of a machine to its depreciation incorrect; b) use-value of output of a machine (for consumers) not equal to use-value of machine (for producers) a notion of “abstract utility” more consistent with neoclassical economics; c) Which of two values (use or exchange) do machines “transfer”?; if use-value transfers, then Marx is consistent with his own analysis of commodities; but not consistent, if exchange-value, taken as equivalent to depreciation (but less than value-added when even , according to Keen, assumed so elsewhere by Marx in the “Grundrisse”) is being transferred to the product.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn64" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref64" name="_edn64">[lxiv]</a> Keen claims that the labor theory of value could only hold if the use-value and exchange-value of a machine were identical yet Marx assumed them to be “intrinsically incommensurable magnitudes.” He also makes the extraordinary claim that with the labor theory of value gone, so too the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is lost and thus or “therefore” the “inevitability” of the fall of capitalism and its replacement with socialism also falls. This is of course a caricature of what Marx actually argued with respect to the fundamental causes of the fall of capitalism.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn65" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref65" name="_edn65">[lxv]</a> Marx, Karl, Letter to Arnold Ruge, 1843<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn66" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref66" name="_edn66">[lxvi]</a> Austrians’ strengths: capitalism as an evolutionary system that best adapts to disequilibrium the normal state; deals with uncertainty not as equal to probabilistic risk; focus on dynamic entrepreneur gaining advantages from uncertainty and disequilibrium; weaknesses: close to neoclassical economics; central role of diminishing returns and accept marginal productivity theory but allow for super-normal profits; money supply erroneously treated as entirely exogenously determined by the State as they argue for endogenous money supply; fundamental problems with Hayek’s social theory of spontaneous vs. designed orders; assumption that the economy, although in disequilibrium, will oscillate around some kind of equilibrium state; irrational avoidance of mathematics in analysis.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn67" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref67" name="_edn67">[lxvii]</a> Post-Keynesians; strengths: focus on uncertainty not taken as equivalent to risk; no models of human behavior like the hedonistic calculus of the “Economic Man” model of the neoclassicals; more emphasis on roles of debt, credit and nature of money than by neoclassicals; argue for macroeconomic foundations of microeconomics rather than the reverse demanded by neoclassical economics; emphasis on monopoly and quasi-monopoly market power, economies of scale, mark-up pricing, competitive imperatives to hold excess capacity to avoid diminishing returns and the state of the macroeconomy as a factor in investment decisions. Weaknesses: no general theory of value; use of static logic and lack of dynamic analysis. Post-Keynesians said by Keen to be the most coherent of the alternative schools of thought today.<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn68" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref68" name="_edn68">[lxviii]</a> Sraffians; strengths: Sraffa’s “Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities” said by Keen to be” the most careful analysis of the mechanics of production and understanding of interrelations of production at the level of the individual commodity in the history of economics”; dependency of the ‘quantity of capital’ on the profit rate rather than the reverse; the phenomenon of re-switching; weaknesses: no use of time or dynamics (Steedman argued that comparative statics does allow for enough time for changes in prime costs and mark-ups to have full effects but this only works with one and only one stable equilibrium state of the economy); Sraffa only intended as a platform to critique other theory not a basis for itself an overall economic theory. <br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn69" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref69" name="_edn69">[lxix]</a> Chaos-Complexity Theory: strengths: work in this area stresses need for attention to dynamics, non-linearity of phenomena and disequilibria of chaotic systems; weaknesses: many models and experiments a-priori, hypothetico-deductivist and difficult to empirically verify or use empirical data in modeling<br /><a style="mso-endnote-id: edn70" title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3449323876485291163#_ednref70" name="_edn70">[lxx]</a> Evolutionary economics: strengths: not Social Darwinism but applies Darwin’s building-block concepts of diversity, differentiation, environmental adaptation, selection and replication to economic systems that are also evolutionary systems; weaknesses: everything in flux and economic systems do make “jumps” unlike Darwin’s central assumption they do not; still in its infancy as a school of thought.</div><div align="justify"> </div>Omahkohkiaayo i'poyihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16061952911212543042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449323876485291163.post-30841467582853812302009-11-08T06:54:00.000-08:002009-11-08T07:42:31.125-08:00Zionism and anti-Semitism<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SvbckrEH8CI/AAAAAAAAA2I/aGMJfgEmIfU/s1600-h/091103-kaminski.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 267px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5401747325670912034" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SvbckrEH8CI/AAAAAAAAA2I/aGMJfgEmIfU/s400/091103-kaminski.jpg" /></a><br /><div align="justify"><br />Israel's anti-Semitic friends Tony Greenstein, The Electronic Intifada, 3 November 2009<br /><br />Michal Kaminski, who opposes Poland apologizing for the massacre of hundreds of Jews in a Polish village in 1941, on a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. (ECR) </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">There can be few supporters of the Palestinians, still less anti-Zionists, who haven't, at some time or another, been accused of "anti-Semitism." Accusations that anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism have become little more than a ritual exercise in defamation. The danger in making such accusations is, to quote the former Director of the Institute of Jewish Policy Research, Antony Lerman, that it "drains the word antisemitism of any useful meaning." Moreover, its purpose is to discourage criticism of Israel and support of the Palestinians or risk being labeled as anti-Semitic. As I wrote two years ago, "If you cry wolf long and loud enough, when anti-Semitism does raise its head no one will bat an eyelid."</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">The European political establishment, like its American counterpart, has taken to the idea that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are indistinguishable. According to the European Union's Working Definition, anti-Semitism includes: denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination (e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor), drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis, and holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the State of Israel. It is ironic that the EU's definition of anti-Semitism is itself anti-Semitic! </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">But the idea that "Jewish people" wherever they live, form a nation separate from the people they live amongst, because that is the meaning of self-determination, is itself an anti-Semitic concept. What is really being stated is that Jews form a race, not a nation.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Moreover, if drawing comparisons between Israeli policies and the Nazis is anti-Semitic, then the late Marek Edelman, the Commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, must have been an anti-Semite. In 2002, Edelman stated publicly that Palestinian resistance fighters in the second intifada were the inheritors of the Jewish Fighting Organization of the Warsaw Ghetto.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Similarly, since holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the Israeli state is indeed anti-Semitic, what then is one to make of the actions of the Board of Deputies of British Jews? On 9 January 2009 the Board of Deputies held a rally under the title "Community to Show Support for Israel at Trafalgar Square Rally."</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Zionism held that Jews were strangers in other peoples' lands and that anti-Semitism was the natural, if not justifiable, reaction to an alien presence among them. It was but a short step from this to an acceptance that anti-Semitic characteristics and caricatures of Jews were essentially correct. Indeed, the conflation of anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism is yet another irony, as historically, it was non-Jewish support of Zionism that was seen by Jews as anti-Semitic. What anti-Semites and leading Zionists said about Jews were almost indistinguishable. As A.B. Yehoshua, one of Israel's foremost novelists, stated in a lecture to the Union of Jewish Students: "Even today, in a perverse way, a real anti-Semite must be a Zionist." And from Pinhas Felix Rosenbluth, a leading German Zionist, to Arthur Ruppin, head of the Jewish Agency, Zionists have not hesitated to employ anti-Semitic rhetoric to further their cause.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">This is not so strange, because what one is talking about are in reality two entirely different forms of political philosophy with the same name -- anti-Semitism. Contrary to received opinion, there is nothing in common between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Certainly the Zionist movement has deliberately confused the two, but the former is a form of anti-racism whereas the latter is a form of racism. There can be no blurring at the edges or overlap. One is either an anti-Semite or an anti-Zionist. One cannot be both.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Therefore, it is not surprising that today, with the growth of far right and neo-fascist parties in Europe, that almost without exception they are pro-Israel. Thus, the very people who criticize anti-Zionists and Palestinian supporters as anti-Semitic are rushing to hold the hands of Zionism's far-right supporters. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">For example Israeli Ambassador to the United Kingdom Ron Prossor was more than happy to share a platform at the Conservative Friends of Israel with Michal Kaminski of the Polish Justice and Freedom Party. Kaminski is notorious in Poland for openly opposing the call for an official apology for the 1941 massacre of hundreds of Jews in the Polish village of Jedwabne.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Last month, Israel's Ambassador to the European Union, Ran Curiel, paid the first visit by an ambassador to the Kaminski-chaired European Conservatives & Reform (ECR) Group in the European Parliament. As quoted in a 13 October news post on ECR's website, Curiel told the assembled audience that "'After years of "megaphone diplomacy" between Israel and Europe, an open dialogue is the best thing we can do now.'" Furthermore, "He highly appreciated the support of the ECR Group for the two-state solution to the 'peace process' which would fully ensure the security of the State of Israel and respect the border of national states."</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Curiel's visit followed an earlier visit by Kaminski to Israel with the European Friends of Israel organization. It was Kaminski's first visit to a non-EU country as Chairman of the ECR. According to a 25 September post on the Conservative Friends of Israel's website, at a dinner held by the organization Kaminski explained that Israel was deliberately chosen as his first trip so that he could "'deliver the message that there is a group in the European Parliament that will be a true friend of Israel.'"</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Similarly in the UK, Kaminski's Zionist allies rushed to his defense last month. As the Jewish Chronicle reported on 15 October, several members of the Jewish Leadership Council were outraged when Board of Deputies President Vivian Wineman wrote a letter to David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, questioning the Tory alliance with Kaminski and his far-right Justice and Freedom Party in the European Parliament. Andrew Gilbert, one of a number of deputies who believe the letter to Cameron ill-judged, stated that "'Nobody in the Jewish or political community did enough research either to say that Michal Kaminski or Roberts Zile have suspect views, which means we should shun them, or to clear them.'"</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Nor is the Conservative party alone in embracing Israel's fascist allies. The British National Party is a growing party, with more than 50 local councilors and two members of the European Parliament. On 22 October 2009, its leader, Nick Griffin, appeared on the BBC's premier program Question Time, to a wave of protests. How did he explain away his anti-Semitism and support for holocaust denial? By explaining that though he might not be too fond of Jews, he was a strong supporter of Israel, stating that "there are Nazis in Britain and they loathe me because I have brought the BNP from being frankly an anti-Semitic and racist organization into being the only political party which in the clashes between Israel and Gaza stood full-square behind Israel's right to deal with Hamas terrorists."</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">As the Guardian reported in April 2008, Board of Deputies spokesperson Ruth Smeed let readers know that "The BNP website is now one of the most Zionist on the web -- it goes further than any of the mainstream parties in its support of Israel."</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">But Kaminski and Roberts Zile, of the Waffen-SS supporting Latvian Freedom and Fatherland Party, are not the exceptions. Dutch far-right anti-Islam politician and Member of Parliament Geert Wilders is another figure who combines virulent racism with Zionism. As reported in the Israeli daily Haaretz on 18 June, Wilders claimed that "Israel is only the first line of defense for the West. Now it's Israel but we are next. That's why beyond solidarity, it is in Europe's interest to stand by Israel."</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Wilders is facing criminal charges for inciting hate by comparing the Quran to Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. After winning five seats in June parliamentary elections, Wilders's Party of Freedom is now the second largest political party in the country. Wilders has also found common cause with the right-wing openly racist political party of Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Of Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party, Wilders explained that "'Our parties may not be identical, but there are certainly more similarities than dissimilarities, and I am proud of that,'" (Haaretz, 18 June 2009). He added that "'Lieberman's an intelligent, strong and clever politician and I understand why his party grew in popularity.'"</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Indeed, the only far-right party that I could find whose anti-Semitism is disguised as anti-Zionism is Jobbik, the Movement for a Better Hungary, a descendant of the pro-Nazi Nyilas. During World War II, Nyilas was responsible for the deaths of some 50,000 mainly Budapest Jews. Leaders of the party were executed by the Hungarian state after liberation. This is the party that the BNP, which "opposes anti-Semitism," is joined with in the European Parliament.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Therefore, when Israel's Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz claims that Judge Richard Goldstone is an "anti-Semite" and that it is possible for a Jew to be an anti-Semite, he is right: the history of Zionism is indeed full of such examples!</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Tony Greenstein is a trade union activist, a member of UNISON, Brighton & Hove Trades Council and Secretary of Brighton & Hove Unemployed Workers Centre, where he works as an employment adviser. He runs a socialist, anti-Zionist blog, <a href="http://www.azvsas.blogspot.com/">http://www.azvsas.blogspot.com/</a>. 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href="http://lists.electronicintifada.net/mail.cgi?f=list&l=eimedia" target="_blank">Weekday Press Picks</a><br /><a style="TEXT-DECORATION: none" href="http://search.news.yahoo.com/search/news/?p=palestinian&c=news_photos&n=20" target="_blank">Wire Service Photos</a><br /><a style="TEXT-DECORATION: none" href="http://www.blogger.com/bytopic/219.shtml">Casualty Stats</a><br />-</div><div align="justify">In June of 1895, the first entry into his new journal on Zionism, Theodor Hertzl wrote: </div><div align="justify">- </div><div align="justify">"In Paris, as I have said, I achieved a freer attitude toward anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all, I recognized the emptiness and futility of trying to 'combat' anti-Semitism." </div><div align="justify">- </div><div align="justify">This is but one of the gems in a book entitled "Zionism In The Age of the Dictators: A Reappraisal" by Lenni Brenner, Lawrence Hill and Company, 1983. </div><div align="justify">- </div><div align="justify">From Brenner's book: </div><div align="justify">- </div><div align="justify">"To be a Good Zionist one must be Somewhat of an Anti-Semite: </div><div align="justify">- </div><div align="justify">Although blut was a recurrent theme in pre-Holocaust Zionist literature, it was not as central to its message as boden. As long as America's shores remained open, Europe's Jews asked: if anti-Semitism could not be fought on its home ground, why should they not just follow the crowd to America? The Zionist response was double-barrelled: anti-Semitism would accompany the Jews wherever they went and, what was more, it was the Jews who had created anti-Semitism by their own characteristics. The root cause of anti-Semitism, Zionists insisted, was the Jews' exile existence. Jews lived parasitically off their 'hosts'... </div><div align="justify">- </div><div align="justify">These tenets combined were known as 'shelilat ha'galut (the Negation of the Diaspora), and were held by the entire spectrum of Zionists who varied only on matters of detail. They were argued vigorously in the Zionist press, where the distinctive quality of many articles was their hostility to the entire Jewish people. Anyone reading these pieces without knowing their source would have automatically assumed that they came from the Anti-Semitic press. The Weltanschauung of the youth organization Hashomer Hatzair (Young Watchmen), originally composed in 1917, but republished again as late as 1936, was typical of these effusions: </div><div align="justify">- </div><div align="justify">The Jew is a caricature of a normal, natural human being, both pysically and spiritually. As an individual in society he revolts and throws off the harness of social obligations, knows no order nor discipline. (pp 22-23) </div><div align="justify">- </div><div align="justify">Similarly, in 1935 an American Ben Frommer, a writer for the ultra-right Zionist-Revisionists, could declare of no less than 16 million of his fellow Jews that: </div><div align="justify">- </div><div align="justify">The fact is undeniable that the Jews collectively are unhealthy and neurotic. Those professional Jews who, wounded to the quick, igdignantly deny this truth are the greatest enemies of their race, for they thereby lead them to search for false solutions, or at most palliatives." (p. 23) </div><div align="justify">- </div><div align="justify">And: </div><div align="justify">- </div><div align="justify">In 1925 the most vehement protagonist of total abstentionism, Jcob Klatzkin, the co-editor of the massive "Encyclopedia Judaica", laid down the full implications of the Zionist approach to anti-Semitism. </div><div align="justify">- </div><div align="justify">If we do not admit the rightfulness of antisemitism, we deny the rightfulness of our own nationalism. If our people is deserving and willing to live its own national life, then it is an alien body thrust into the nations among whom it lives, an alien body that insists on its own distinctive identity, reducing the domain of their life. It is right therefore, that they should fight against us for their national integrity...Instead of establishing societies for defense against antisemites, who want to reduce our rights, we should establish societies for defense against our friends who desire to defend our rights." (p. 30) </div><div align="justify">- </div><div align="justify">Zionism and Anti-Semitism I</div><div align="justify">- </div><div align="justify">From Tom Segev, "The Seventh Million: Israelis and the Holocaust" Hill and Wang, NY, 1993 </div><div align="justify">- </div><div align="justify">" On January 31, 1933, the day after Hitler became chancellor, the independent liberal daily 'Haaretz' decried this 'hugely negative historical event'. Ten days later it ran a headline that read, 'BLACK DAYS IN GERMANY.' The paper followed the ongoing 'anti-Semitic horror', but during those first weeks it, like the British press, generally aimed at reassuring its readers: 'One must suppose that Hitlerism will now renounce terrorist methods: government brings responsibility.' the right-wing 'Doar Hayom' agreed: 'There can be no doubt that Hitler the chancellor will be different from the Hitler of the public rallies.' But from the start, 'Davar'--the left-wing daily published by the Histadrut (Labor Federation)--was more pessimistic: 'It was a bitter and ill-fated day when the New Vandal came to power', the newspaper wrote the day after the change of government in Germany. It described Hitler as a man of hate and demagoguery who would 'tear Jews out by their roots.' " (p 17) </div><div align="justify">- </div><div align="justify">"More than anything else, though, the rise of the Nazis was seen as confirming the historical prognosis of Zionist ideology. 'Hapoel Hatsair' described the nazi persecution of the Jews as 'punishment for their having tried to integrate into German society instead of leaving for Palestine while it was still possible to do so.' Now they would have to run in a panic 'like mice in flight', the paper said. 'The Jews of Germany are being persecuted now not despite their efforts to be part of their country but because of those efforts.' The holocaust would later be the primary argument fro the establishment of the State of Israel and for its wars of survival." (p. 18)</div><div align="justify">- </div><div align="justify">"Ben-Gurion hoped that the Nazis victory would become 'a fertile force' for Zionism." (p. 18) "The 'haavara' ('transfer') agreement--the Hebrew term was used in the Nazi documents as well--was based on the complementary interests of the German government and the Zionist movement: the Nazis wanted the Jews out of Germany; the Zionists wanted them to come to Palestine. But there was no such mutuality of interests between the Zionists and German Jewry. Most German Jews would have preferred to stay in their country. The tension between the interests of the 'yishuv' [Jewish community in Palestine] (and, in time, the State of Israel) and those of world Jewry was to become a central motif in the story of the Israelis' attitude to the Holocaust." (p.20) </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">"The revisionist right, by contrast, had long been sympathetic to Benito Mussolini's Fascism and now and then even to Adolf Hitler's Naziism--except, of course, his anti-Semitism. Betar, Jabotinsky's youth movement, fostered classic Fascist ideas and forms. In 1928, Abba Ahimeir, a well-known Revisionist journalist, had a regular column, 'From the Notebook of a Fascist', in the newspaper 'Doar Hayom'. In anticipation of Jabotinsky's arrival in Palestine, he wrote an article titled 'On the Arrival of Our Duce' " (p. 23) </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">"Four years later, in early 1932, Ahimeir was among those brought to trial for disrupting a public lecvture at Hebrew University. The incident and the resulting trial are worthy of note only because of a declaration by defense attorney Zvi Eliahu Cohen in response to a speech by the prosecutor comparing the disruption of the lecture with the Nazi disturbances in Germany.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">'The comment on the Nazis', Cohen said, 'went too far. Were it not for Hitler's anti-Semitism, we would not oppose his ideology. Hitler saved Germany.' This was not an unconsidered outburst; the Revisionist paper 'Hazit Haam' praised Cohen's 'brilliant speech.' " (p. 23) </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">"...[from Hazit Haam] 'Social Democrats of all stripes believe that Hitler's movement is an empty shell.', the newspaper explained, but 'we believe that there is both a shell and a kernel. The anti-Semitic shell is to be discarded, but not the anti-Marxist kernel. The Revisionists, the newspaper wrote, would fight the Nazis only to the extent that they were anti-Semites." (p. 23) -</div><div align="justify">"The haavara agreement was a central issue in the elections in the summer of 1933 for representatives to the Eighteenth Zionist Congress. The Revisionists rejected [in a turnabout] any contact with Nazi Germany. It was inconsistent with the honor of the Jewish people, they said; Jabotinsky declared it 'ignoble, disgraceful and contemptible'. The Revisionist press now castigated the Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency as 'Hitler's allies', people 'who have trampled roughshod on Jewish honor, on Jewish conscience, and on Jewish ethics...dark characters who have come to trade on the troubles of the Jews and on the land of Israel...low types who have accepted the role of Hitler's agents in Palestine and in the entire Near East...traitors...deceivers who lust after Hitler's government.' " (p. 24) </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">"After reading the Nazi Party newspaper, Ben-Gurion wrote, it seemed to him that he was reading the words of Zeev Jabotinsky in Doar Hayom: 'the same thing, the same style, and the same spirit.' " (p. 24) </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">"In his impassioned speech, Ben-Gurion called for the rescue of German Jewry, 'a tribe of Israel', and their transfer to Palestine, rather than action against Hitler. ' I do not believe that we can oust him and I am not interested in anything other than saving these 500,000 Jews,' he said. Ben-Gurion saw the debate between rescue and boycott as a debate between Zionism and assimilation, between the nationalist interests of Jewish settlement in Palestine and the international war against anti-Semitism. The assumption imnplicit in his words was that the war against anti-Semitism was not a part of the Zionist mission." (pp. 24-25) </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">"To make his point, Ben-Gurion used harsh language that would in time be employed by anti-Zionists: 'If I knew that it was possible to save all the children in Germany by transporting them to England, but only half of them by transporting them to Palestine, I would choose the second--because we face not only the reckoning of those children, but the historical reckoning of the Jewish people.' In the wake of the Kristallnacht pogroms, Ben-Gurion commented that the 'human conscience' might bring various countries to open their doors to Jewish refugees from Germany. He saw this as a threat and warned: 'Zionism is in danger.' " (p 28) </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">"Nevertheless, the pragmatists were convinced that the boycott of Germany could not advance the interests of Palestine, that their ends could best be accomplished through contact with the Nazis. Thus the leaders sought to keep relations with Nazi Germany as normal as possible: Two months after Hitler came to power the Jewish Agency executive in Jerusalem had sent a telegram straight to the Fuhrer in Berlin, assuring him that the yishuv had not declared a boycott against his country; the telegram was sent at the request of German Jewry in the hope of halting their persecution, but it reflected the Jewish Agency's inclination to maintain correct relations with the Nazi Government. Many years later, Menachem Begin revealed that the Zionist Organization had sent Hitler a cable of condolence on the death of President Hindenburg." (p. 29) </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">"Traveling on to Cairo, he [Eichmann] summoned a Jew from Jerusalem, one Fiebl Folkes. A report from Eichmann wrote of his trip and the record of his interrogation by the Israeli police decades later indicate[s] that Folkes was a member of the Haganah--the clandestine Jewish defense force--and a Nazi agent. On one occasion he even met with Eichmann in Berlin. The Nazis paid him for his information, mostly rather general political and economic evaluations. Among other things, Eichmann quoted Folkes to the effect that Zionist leaders were pleased by the persecution of German Jewry, since it would encourage immigration to Palestine." (p. 30) </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">"Ironically the Revisionists also had fairly wide-ranging links with the Nazis. The Betar youth movement was active in Berlin and several other German cities. About half a year before the Nazis came to power, the movement's leadership distributed a memorandum to its members that was both commonsensical and cautious. The Nazis should be treated politely and with reserve, the memorandum instructed. Whenever Betar members were in public, they should remain quiet and refrain from vocal debates and critical comments. Under no circumstances should anyone say anything that could be interpreted as an insult to the German people, to its institutions, or to its prevailing ideology. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">The Nazis allowed Betar to continue its activities--meetings, conventions, summer camps hikes, sports, sailing, and agricultural training. Members were allowed to wear their uniforms, which included brown shirts, and they were allowed to publish mimeographed pamphlets, including Zionist articles in a nationalistic, para-Fascist tone, in the spirit of the times. The German Betar pamphlets focused on events in Palestine, and their exuberant nationalism targeted the British, the Arabs, and the Zionist left. The contained no references to the political situation in Germany. With this exception, they were similar to the nationalist German youth publications, including those published by the Nazis. Jabotinsky decried the influence Hitlerism was having on the members of Betar." (pp. 32) </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">In the second half of 1940, a few members of the Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization)--the anti-British terrorist group sponsored by the Revisionists and known by its acronym Etzel, and to the British simply as the Irgun--made contact with representatives of Fascist Italy, offering to cooperate against the British. Soon the Etzel split, and the group headed by Avraham "Yair" Stern formed itself into the Lehi (from the initials of its Hebrew name, Lohamei Herut Yisrael (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel), also known as the Stern Gang. A representative of this group met with a German foreign ministry official and offered to help Nazi Germany in its war against the British. The Germans understood that the group aimed to establish an independent state based on the totalitarian principles of the Fascist and Nazi regimes. Many years after he tried to forge this lik with Nazis, a former Lehi leader explained what had guided his men at the time: 'Our obligation was to fight the enemy. We were justified in taking aid from the Nazi oppressor, who was in this case the enemy of our enemy--the British.' " (p. 33) </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">"The question was what to do with those refugees who were neither Zionist nor fit to help build the new society in Palestine. 'Only God knows how the poor little land of Israel can take in this stream of people and emerge with a healthy social structure', Chaim Weizmann wrote. The German Immigrants Association complained that the Jewish Agency's representatives in Berlin were giving immigration certificates to invalids. ' The human material [direct quote and their words] coming from Germany is getting worse and worse', the association charged after almost a year of Nazi rule. 'They are not able and not willing to work, and they need social assistance.' A year later the association sent to Berlin a list of names of people who should not have been sent. Henrietta Szold, who headed the Jewish Agency's social-work division, also frequently protested about the sick and needy among the immigrants. From time to time Szold demanded that certain of such 'cases' be returned to Nazi Germany so that they would not be a burden on the yishuv." (p. 43)</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">"In 1937 the Joint Distribution Committee, an American organization that assisted needy Jews, negotiated with the German authorities for the release of 120 Jewish prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp. 'I am not so sure that from a political point of view it is desirable that all those released come to Palestine', a Jewish Agency official wrote to one of his colleagues. Most were not Zionists; and there may even have been Communists among them." (pp 43-44)</div><div align="justify">- </div><div align="justify">"Senator [Werner Senator of the Jewish Agency] who was active in bringing German Jews to Palestine, warned the Jewish Agency office in Berlin that if it did not improve the quality of the 'human material' it was sending, the agency was liable to cut back the number of certificates set aside for the German capital. The immigrants from Germany enjoyed all sorts of special benefits, Senator wrote. They received immigration certificates after only six months of agricultural training, while in other countries up to two years was required. Requests for family reunification from Germans with relatives in Palestine were also quickly approved. All this required special attention to the quality of immigrants, who should be true pioneers. Senator was not referring to occasional errors in judgment, he assured his colleagues; he was talking about a trend. More and more ' welfare cases' were arriving from Germany, as well as too many 'businessmen with children' rather than single men and women. At one point it was decided that candidates above the age of thirty-five would receive immigration certificates 'only if there is no reason to believe that they might become a burden here.' Accordingly they had to have a profession. 'Anyone who was a merchant', the decision stated, or of similar employment, will not receive a certificate under any circumstances, except in the case of veteran Zionists.' This was in 1935. ' In days of plenty, it was possible to handle this material [emphasis added]' , explained Yitzhak Gruenbaum. 'In days of shortages and unemployment, this material [emphasis added] will cause us many problems...We must be allowed to choose from among the refugees those worthy of immigration and not accept them all.' " </div><div align="justify">- </div><div align="justify">(p. 44) Footnote: "In 1939 the world press followed the drama of the St Louis, a boat carrying several hundred Jewish refugees from Germany. No country would give them asylum. The Joint Distribution Committee asked the Jewish Agency to allot the passengers several hundred immigration certificates from the quota. The Jewish Agency refused. In the end the refugees were allowed into Antwerp. [note where many were exterminated after the takeover of Belgium by the Nazis.]. (p. 44)</div><div align="justify">- </div><div align="justify">" German Jews who were given immigration permits 'merely as refugees' were also considered 'undesirable human material' by Eliahu Dobkin, a Mapai member of the Jewish Agency executive. 'I understand very well the special situation in which the overseas institutions dealing with German refugees find themselves, but I would like to believe that you would agree with me that we must approach this question not from a philanthropic point of view but from the point of view of the country's needs', Dobkin wrote to one of his colleagues. 'My opinion is that from among the refugees we must bring only those who meet this condition.' Leaders of the German immigrants agreed. 'As I see it, 90 percent of them are not indispensible here', one of them wrote to another." (pp 44-45) </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">"It was an incomparably cruel reality: every Jew who received an immigration certificate during those years lived in Palestine knowing that some other Jew who had not received that certificate had been murdered. This was the basis for the sense of guilt that would later trouble so many Israelis who escaped the Holocaust." (p 45) </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify"></div>Omahkohkiaayo i'poyihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16061952911212543042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449323876485291163.post-64927754967971582002009-09-14T06:45:00.000-07:002009-09-14T07:00:56.565-07:00Free Leonard Peltier! Now Barack Obama's Political Prisoner<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/Sq5JmBApIVI/AAAAAAAAA2A/VqtFsq8RcyA/s1600-h/leonard.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 300px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 202px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5381319522209309010" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/Sq5JmBApIVI/AAAAAAAAA2A/VqtFsq8RcyA/s400/leonard.jpg" /></a><br />-<br /><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">I Am Barack Obama's Political Prisoner. Now: If Only the Government Had Respected Its Own Laws...</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">By LEONARD PELTIER</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">The United States Department of Justice has once again made a mockery of its lofty and pretentious title. After releasing an original and continuing disciple of death cult leader Charles Manson (sic - Lynette Squeaky Fromme) who attempted to shoot President Gerald Ford, an admitted Croatian terrorist, and another attempted assassin of President Ford under the mandatory 30-year parole law, the U.S. Parole Commission deemed that my release would "promote disrespect for the law." If only the federal government would have respected its own laws, not to mention the treaties that are, under the U.S. Constitution, the supreme law of the land, I would never have been convicted nor forced to spend more than half my life in captivity. Not to mention the fact that every law in this country was created without the consent of Native peoples and is applied unequally at our expense. If nothing else, my experience should raise serious questions about the FBI's supposed jurisdiction in Indian Country. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">The parole commission's phrase was lifted from soon-to-be former U.S. Attorney Drew Wrigley, who apparently hopes to ride with the FBI cavalry into the office of North Dakota governor. In this Wrigley is following in the footsteps of William Janklow, who built his political career on his reputation as an Indian fighter, moving on up from tribal attorney (and alleged rapist of a Native minor) to state attorney general, South Dakota governor, and U.S. Congressman. Some might recall that Janklow claimed responsibility for dissuading President Clinton from pardoning me before he was convicted of manslaughter. Janklow's historical predecessor, George Armstrong Custer, similarly hoped that a glorious massacre of the Sioux would propel him to the White House, and we all know what happened to him.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Unlike the barbarians that bay for my blood in the corridors of power, however, Native people are true humanitarians who pray for our enemies. Yet we must be realistic enough to organize for our own freedom and equality as nations. We constitute 5% of the population of North Dakota and 10% of South Dakota and we could utilize that influence to promote our own power on the reservations, where our focus should be. If we organized as a voting bloc, we could defeat the entire premise of the competition between the Dakotas as to which is the most racist. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">In the 1970s we were forced to take up arms to affirm our right to survival and self-defense, but today the war is one of ideas. We must now stand up to armed oppression and colonization with our bodies and our minds. International law is on our side. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Given the complexion of the three recent federal parolees, it might seem that my greatest crime was being Indian. But the truth is that my gravest offense is my innocence. In Iran, political prisoners are occasionally released if they confess to the ridiculous charges on which they are dragged into court, in order to discredit and intimidate them and other like-minded citizens. The FBI and its mouthpieces have suggested the same, as did the parole commission in 1993, when it ruled that my refusal to confess was grounds for denial of parole.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">To claim innocence is to suggest that the government is wrong, if not guilty itself. The American judicial system is set up so that the defendant is not punished for the crime itself, but for refusing to accept whatever plea arrangement is offered and for daring to compel the judicial system to grant the accused the right to right to rebut the charges leveled by the state in an actual trial. Such insolence is punished invariably with prosecution requests for the steepest possible sentence, if not an upward departure from sentencing guidelines that are being gradually discarded, along with the possibility of parole.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">As much as non-Natives might hate Indians, we are all in the same boat. To attempt to emulate this system in tribal government is pitiful, to say the least. It was only this year, in the Troy Davis, case, that the U.S. Supreme Court recognized innocence as a legitimate legal defense. Like the witnesses that were coerced into testifying against me, those that testified against Davis renounced their statements, yet Davis was very nearly put to death. I might have been executed myself by now, had not the government of Canada required a waiver of the death penalty as a condition of extradition.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">The old order is aptly represented by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who stated in his dissenting opinion in the Davis case, "This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent. Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged 'actual innocence' is constitutionally cognizable."</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">The esteemed Senator from North Dakota, Byron Dorgan, who is now the chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, used much the same reasoning in writing that "our legal system has found Leonard Peltier guilty of the crime for which he was charged. I have reviewed the material from the trial, and I believe the verdict was fair and just." </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">It is a bizarre and incomprehensible statement to Natives, as well it should be, that innocence and guilt is a mere legal status, not necessarily rooted in material fact. It is a truism that all political prisoners were convicted of the crimes for which they were charged. The truth is the government wants me to falsely confess in order to validate a rather sloppy frame-up operation, one whose exposure would open the door to an investigation of the United States' role in training and equipping goon squads to suppress a grassroots movement on Pine Ridge against a puppet dictatorship.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">In America, there can by definition be no political prisoners, only those duly judged guilty in a court of law. It is deemed too controversial to even publicly contemplate that the federal government might fabricate and suppress evidence to defeat those deemed political enemies. But it is a demonstrable fact at every stage of my case. I am Barack Obama's political prisoner now, and I hope and pray that he will adhere to the ideals that impelled him to run for president.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">But as Obama himself would acknowledge, if we are expecting him to solve our problems, we missed the point of his campaign. Only by organizing in our own communities and pressuring our supposed leaders can we bring about the changes that we all so desperately need. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Please support the Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee in our effort to hold the United States government to its own words.I thank you all who have stood by me all these years, but to name anyone would be to exclude many more. We must never lose hope in our struggle for freedom. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">In the Spirit of Crazy Horse,Leonard PeltierLeonard Peltier #89637-132USP-LewisburgUS PenitentiaryPO Box 1000Lewisburg, PA 17837 </div>Omahkohkiaayo i'poyihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16061952911212543042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449323876485291163.post-53709136573554639182009-09-03T20:25:00.000-07:002009-09-03T20:37:38.015-07:00On Critical Thinking: Separating The Pepper From the Fly Excrement (click on each page for enlargement)<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SqCJiBgsdKI/AAAAAAAAA14/mvrSVH0gs2w/s1600-h/scan0116.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 291px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377449172694496418" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SqCJiBgsdKI/AAAAAAAAA14/mvrSVH0gs2w/s400/scan0116.jpg" /></a><br /><div><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SqCJhTclNQI/AAAAAAAAA1w/cy1kk-KxszI/s1600-h/scan0117.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 291px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377449160329213186" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SqCJhTclNQI/AAAAAAAAA1w/cy1kk-KxszI/s400/scan0117.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SqCJg4PlAZI/AAAAAAAAA1o/hbecycd2jac/s1600-h/scan0118.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 291px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377449153026916754" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SqCJg4PlAZI/AAAAAAAAA1o/hbecycd2jac/s400/scan0118.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><br /><div><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SqCJgJelaCI/AAAAAAAAA1g/dq3ky2cH7To/s1600-h/scan0119.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 291px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377449140473391138" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SqCJgJelaCI/AAAAAAAAA1g/dq3ky2cH7To/s400/scan0119.jpg" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><div></div></div></div></div>Omahkohkiaayo i'poyihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16061952911212543042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449323876485291163.post-50343259856296924312009-08-29T18:32:00.000-07:002009-09-02T09:20:09.307-07:00Some Lectures in China<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/Sp6bCX-SlfI/AAAAAAAAA1Y/6bz4olgAOw0/s1600-h/NoticeSocialismvCapitalism800%25.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 291px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5376905470224274930" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/Sp6bCX-SlfI/AAAAAAAAA1Y/6bz4olgAOw0/s400/NoticeSocialismvCapitalism800%25.jpg" /></a><br /><div align="center"><em><strong>Course to Graduate Students on Critiques of Neoclassical Economics </strong></em></div><br /><div align="center"><strong><em></em></strong></div><br /><div align="center"><em><strong>Tsinghua University,<br /></strong></em></div><br /><div align="center"><em><strong>Beijing, China</strong></em><br /><br /></div><br /><p><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SpnXGAH5v4I/AAAAAAAAA1A/3VGrbZByEb4/s1600-h/Tsinghuanotice800%25.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 291px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5375564128355729282" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SpnXGAH5v4I/AAAAAAAAA1A/3VGrbZByEb4/s400/Tsinghuanotice800%25.jpg" /></a> </p><br /><p align="center"><strong><em></em></strong></p><br /><p align="center"><strong><em>Lecture, Academy of Marxism; Chinese Academy of Social Sciences</em></strong></p><br /><p align="center"><strong><em>Beijing, China </em></strong></p><br /><p align="center"><strong><em>August 11, 2009</em></strong></p><br /><p align="center"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SpnXFsP7ySI/AAAAAAAAA04/uI2UHYxwyt0/s1600-h/CASSnotice.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 300px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5375564123020708130" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SpnXFsP7ySI/AAAAAAAAA04/uI2UHYxwyt0/s400/CASSnotice.jpg" /></a><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SpnmBeCaC0I/AAAAAAAAA1Q/znzVswhEWKA/s1600-h/LctAcadMxsmHdr800%25.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 291px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5375580543160814402" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SpnmBeCaC0I/AAAAAAAAA1Q/znzVswhEWKA/s400/LctAcadMxsmHdr800%25.jpg" /></a><br /></p>Omahkohkiaayo i'poyihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16061952911212543042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449323876485291163.post-74094813083036763542009-08-28T12:38:00.000-07:002009-08-28T12:47:01.320-07:00Spirals of Causality: Imperialism,<div align="center"><em><strong>The "Logic" of Capitalism and Imperialism</strong></em><br /><br /></div><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/Spgy4z6R3EI/AAAAAAAAA0w/M2iNWjBt4Pw/s1600-h/Picture1jpeg.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 236px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5375102106855398466" border="0" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/Spgy4z6R3EI/AAAAAAAAA0w/M2iNWjBt4Pw/s400/Picture1jpeg.jpg" /> <p align="center"></a><br /><br /><br /><strong><em>The Imperial Expansion Spiral<br /><br /><br /></em></strong></p><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/Spgy3XwW_RI/AAAAAAAAA0o/fBx1jjsO_9o/s1600-h/Picture2.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 236px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5375102082117729554" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/Spgy3XwW_RI/AAAAAAAAA0o/fBx1jjsO_9o/s400/Picture2.jpg" /> <p align="center"></a><br /><br /><br /><strong><em>The Imperial Decline Spiral<br /></em></strong><br /><br /></p><p><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/Spgy3MoP8mI/AAAAAAAAA0g/ksfoZ7kcgNY/s1600-h/Picture3.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 236px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5375102079130923618" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/Spgy3MoP8mI/AAAAAAAAA0g/ksfoZ7kcgNY/s400/Picture3.jpg" /></a> </p><p> </p>Omahkohkiaayo i'poyihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16061952911212543042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449323876485291163.post-52353837389135451732009-08-28T06:38:00.000-07:002009-09-03T20:56:41.597-07:00Indigenous Approaches to Economic Development: Lecture Given at Yunnan University, Kunming, China, July 25, 2009<div align="center"><strong><em>Indigenous Approaches to Economic Development and Sustainability<br /></em></strong>-<br /></div><div align="center"><strong><em>Lecture/Paper Delivered to the Faculty of Anthropology and </em></strong></div><div align="center"><strong><em>Ethnology, Yunnan University, Kunming, China, July 25, 2009<br /></div></em></strong><div align="center"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="center"><strong><em>-</em></strong></div><div align="center"><strong><em>By James M. Craven/Omahkohkiaayo I’poyi<br />-</div></em></strong><div align="center"><strong><em>Professor of Economics and Geography, Clark College, Vancouver, WA. USA<br /></div></em></strong><div align="center"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="center"><strong><em>-</em></strong></div><div align="center"><strong><em>Member, Blackfoot Nation</em></strong><br />-<br /><strong><em>Introduction </em></strong><br /></div><div align="justify"><br />I began my studies of Political Economy over 40 years ago. In my first classes in Economics, in 1965, economic growth (increases in real GDP per person) was considered as either equivalent to economic development (qualitative improvements of the overall quality of life for the average person) or at least the major necessary conditon of economic development. There was no notion that economic growth in the short-run, or of a certain nature involving certain types of “goods” and services, or of benefit only to a small group and not everyone, or that involved massive and unaccounted for negative externalities[1] , could potentially harm, not enhance, overall economic development (the overall quality of life faced by the average person). </div><div align="justify">-<br />As for the causes of economic growth, the models I was taught all noted that it takes inputs to produce output, and, that the major inputs were land, labor and capital. Of the major inputs, it was assumed that capital was the most decisive as it was said to be fundamental to augmenting and making operative the potentials, capabilities and productivity of the other inputs land and labor. And “capital” was defined as a physical capital or a “stock” [a fixed quantity in time and space] of “things” that had been produced specifically in order to produce something else for profitable exchange[2] . And finally, since physical capital was defined as the central ingredient of economic growth, which was seen as almost equivalent to economic development, obviously then, the owners and/or controllers of capital, capitalists and managers, were seen as central players or originators of economic growth and development. </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">When I asked some basic questions in class, I was often given a blank stare by the professors: What capital (machines, tools etc) can think or plan its own use or fix itself when it breaks down? If capital and land make operative and productive the capabilities and potential of labor, why is the reverse also not true—that labor makes operative and productive the capabilities and potential of capital and land? If a given machine is involved in production and productivity, why should the owners or controllers of that machine (who are often themselves deeply in debt and do not really own that machine free and clear) entitled to grossly disproportionate returns (profits) from the sales of what that machine produces relative to what labor (without which nothing could be produced by any machine and nothing produced by the machines could be bought on a mass level) has been paid? Are all commodities produced by economic growth really good for those who demand them and do they really improve rather than sabotage the quality of life for the average person? These were but some of the questions I posed and to which I still await answers from some of the esteemed professors.<br />-<br />Then came the 1970s and I was finishing graduate school and began teaching economics. Someone figured it out that no machine, without skilled labor that is able to effectively utilize all the capabilities of it, and, that is able to fix that machine when it breaks down, and, that has the right work ethic and attitudes, will produce much of anything. So this suggests that experience, skill, training and motivation by labor is a critical ingredient in economic growth. There was also now the suggestion that economic growth and development were not synonymous. But what about the central role of capital and the capitalist in economic growth and economic development? The answer was defintional and with some sleight of hand. Since “capital” is defined as any “thing” that is produced and used to produce something else, well, the skills, experience, education and even work attitudes are all “produced” by an educational system as well as family environment, and, they are used to produce something else, so we can just call all those produced and aquired skills, experience and attitudes of labor, all “human capital”; and so the textbooks now began to discuss “human capital” (not labor or skilled labor that had to make the conscious decision and effort to acquire or not acquire, and apply or not apply, those skills) as another critical “factor” in economic growth which was said to be a critical factor (a necessary if not sufficient condition) in overall economic development. The 1970s and 80s passed, as did my years of teaching Economics and other subjects, and then in the late 1980s the textbooks added something new again. Even if you have potentially productive machines and tools (physical capital), and even if you have highly skilled, experienced and motivated workers who know how to get the best out of those machines (human capital), what if those workers have no hope in the future and no reason to be motivated?; what if the workers feel they are being exploited by the system and those who run it?; what if the workers or the capitalists no longer accept the dominant values, beleifs, traditions and myths of the system that cause them to invest, save, get an education, take risks etc? That led to the concept of “social capital”[still barely mentioned in the texts] that refers to institutions that foster trust, hope, cohesion, cooperation, belief in the system, reciprocity, etc and cause people to sacrifice in the present for a possible future, take risks, save, invest and do all those activities critical to economic growth and development. </div><div align="justify">-<br />The term social capital was first coined in 1916 by L. Judson Hanifan[3] to refer to social networks and institutions/norms of reciprocity (goodwill, fellowship, sympathy and social intercourse) associated with them. Hanifan, by his own admission, employed the term “capital” (anything that has been produced and used to produce—for profitable exchange—something else) to catch the eye--and patronage--of the business community. Hanifan suggested that these social networks and institutions could, on micro as well as macro levels, enhance productivity, competitiveness, employment and income creation, etc. in some of the same ways that physical capital and human capital can, also, produce the same effects.<br />-<br />Subsequent to Hanifan’s apparent introduction of the term social capital, the term and concept was reintroduced—and partly redefined—at least six times up to the present: </div><div align="justify">-<br />1) in the 1950s by sociologist John Seeley[4] to refer to ‘memberships in clubs and associations’ that act just like negotiable securities in producing career advancement and tangible returns to individuals; </div><div align="justify">-<br />2) In the 1960s, by urban economist Jane Jacobs[5] to refer to the collective value and effects of informal neighborhood ties and associations;<br />- </div><div align="justify">3) in the 1970s by economist Glenn Loury[6] to refer to wider social ties lost by African Americans as one of the legacies of slavery;<br /></div><div align="center">-</div><div align="center">4) In the 1980s by social theorist Pierre Bourdieu[7] to refer to the actual or potential resources linked to durable networks of institutionalized relationships of mutual recognition and assistance;<br />-</div><div align="center"></div><div align="justify">5) In the mid-1980s by economist Ekkehart Schlicht[8] to refer to the economic value and productivity-enhancing effects of organizations, moral order, cooperation and cohesion;<br /></div><div align="center">-</div><div align="justify">6) in the late 1980s by James Coleman to refer, as Hanifan[9] had done, to the social arrangements, relationships and institutions creating and shaping the environment or social contexts of education.<br />-</div><div align="center"></div><div align="justify">The above-mentioned definitions of social capital are all closely related and narrow in their focus. They focus on immediate relationships—institutionalized or informal—and the networks, and norms of reciprocity that serve as tangible assets and have economic impacts not only on the micro level (personal career advancement, obtaining employment, political influence, personal safety etc) but also on the macro level in terms of enhancing productivity, reducing information and transactions costs, enhancing competitiveness, enhancing community safety and reducing crime, encouraging cooperation, limiting destructive forms/levels of competition. These definitions of social capital are designed to rescue neoclassical economics from the internal contradictions of methodological individualism in that they show how supposedly atomistic and individualistic utility and profit maximizing individuals might be acting cooperatively and obeying social norms and laws, appearing to be socially aware and consciousness individuals, while all the while, only appearing to be social, in order to maximize and attain individual utility and profitability imperatives and goals. It was in this area that John Walsh got the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in Game Theory showing how apparent social cooperation and social consciousness “versus” individual atomistic utility and profit maximization behaviors and activities might not be contradictory. </div><div align="justify">-<br />Again the focus is on a new form of “capital” as a central ingredient in economic growth and development. In Indigenous societies, social harmony, mutual respect, cooperation, respect for law as well as law worthy of respect, absence of alienation, social cohesion, are all considered essential for collective survival, economic growth and economic development. Reciprocity is considered a virtue on its own and not, as an instrument for or of, personal gain or maximization of individualism and individualistic preferences. </div><div align="justify">-<br />So the Eurocentric and capitalist-based models of economic growth gradually incorporated and refined five Basic ingredients to economic growth[10] but said little about the concept of sustainability: </div><div align="justify">-<br />1) Capital Accumulation;<br /></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="center">-</div><div align="justify">2) Available Resources;<br />-</div><div align="justify">3) Growth Compatible Institutions (Markets, Property Rights, Monetary Systems, Government Policies and “Proper” Roles of Government); </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">4) Technology;<br />-</div><div align="center"></div><div align="justify">5) Entrepreneurship<br />-<br />These Eurocentric and capitalist models of economic growth and development basically set up a tautology or circular argument. By defining the goals of economic growth and development as equivalent with those values and goals most common to capitalism (materialism, conspicuous consumption of expanding volumes of goods and services, etc.), by measuring economic growth and development in narrow monetized terms (real GDP per capita with no comment on the types of goods and services making up that GDP or on the social costs of producing and distributing them) and by making, as key ingredients to growth and development, those inputs that are central to capitalism as a system (monetary system, private property rights, markets, profit incentives), we wind up with a virtual tautological equivalence[11] between capitalism and economic growth and development. </div><div align="justify">-<br />So a society that produces, on the average or per capita (without any allowances for the fact that the de-jure or on paper statistical average per capita may well not represent the typical de-facto situation for the average person due to outliers and de facto asymmetric distributions of incomes, wealth and goods and services) more goods and services, even if those goods and services have corrupting influences as in the case of drugs, pornography, alcohol, tobacco etc, and even if producing those goods and services involves waste of non-renewable resources and massive negative externalities, such a society is said to be experiencing and promoting both economic growth and development according to the Eurocentric and capitalist-based models of growth and development. And this system is seen as a kind of perpetual motion machine with little or no friction: new spending creates new incomes which create new spending creating new incomes (multiplier effects); new incomes and consumption spending create new jobs, tax revenues, savings leading to new investment spending (multiplier and accelerator effects) leading to even more incomes and multiplier effects etc.; the so-called “Virtuous Upward Spiral”.<br />-<br />This is but one example of one of the new growth theories: </div><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 291px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5375014302489298946" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SpfjB7KEyAI/AAAAAAAAAzY/I2VQcKjqRuk/s400/GrwthPerpet800%25.jpg" />(From: Parkin, Michael, Macroeconomics 7th Edition, Pearson, Addison-Wesley, Instructor’s Resource Disk, Chapter 7, Reprinted Under Fair Use Doctrine for Educational and Scholarly Exchange purposes only.) <div align="justify">-<br />Now here are some other models that illustrate the typical Indigenous views of survival, development (seen to be about more than economics) and sustainability that differ markedly from those typical of Western, Eurocentric and in particular capitalist economies. The economy is seen as an inseparable part of the total society. Present-day activities are always with the Seventh future generation and sustainability in mind. Spirituality is seen as a key ingredient in both social stability and development. The types of goods and services and their impacts and implications on the survival of the culture, along with the true costs of producing and distributing them are considered critical factors in the basic decisions of What, How and For Whom to produce and distribute the means of subsistence.</div><div align="justify">- </div><div align="justify"></div><div align="center">Core Values</div><div align="center">-<br /></div><div align="justify">Western(Capitalist) vs. Indigenous[12]<br /></div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Competition vs. Harmony<br />Materialism vs. Prudence<br />Acquisition vs. Reciprocity<br />Accumulation vs. Distribution<br />Ownership vs. Kinship<br />Growth vs. Sustainability<br />Immediacy vs. Caring for Future Generations<br />-</div><div align="justify">These core values of course do not represent the values of all members of each group held and practiced respectively, but are meant to represent and convey fair generalizations of some of the different traditions and core values celebrated in the literature and traditions of the respective systems and cultures—Eurocentric and capitalist vs. Indigenous and communalist—that are typically presented and advocated by their advocates and adherents. It is very clear from the internal documents of the U.S. and Canadian Governments, as well as from the internal documents, diaries and memoirs of the missionaries and “Indian Agents”, that the core and defining values, institutions, practices, priorities, relationships and other dimensions of the culture of Indigenous nations, were not simply regarded and dismissed as “inferior” or backward; rather, they were first and foremost regarded as direct challenges (without any evangelical intentions by Indigenous Peoples to do so) to the core values, practices, relations, theologies and institutions—cultures—of capitalism and those of the settlers. Just as some capitalist nations have regarded the mere existence of socialism and socialist values as an existential threat, without any alleged overt or covert acts of aggression by socialist social formations like China, so Indigenous cultures and systems, with definite communalist and non-capitalist practices and values, were regarded as existential threats and banned. Even many Indigenous prayers, with communalist values, were seen as a threat to cultures—and interests—built on capitalism. Here are but two of many examples from the archives of the Department of Indian Affairs in Canada and the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the U.S. that show the real nature and intentions of their policies. For example, in many traditional societies, there is the sacred practice of “Potlatch” or “Give Aways” (Blackfoot) in which prized personal possessions are given away; they are not, by the way forms of “gambling” or “lotteries”. These ceremonies are designed to teach: the transient nature of all material possessions; not to become a slave to personal possessions; community spirit; compassion and that happiness of others is more important than individualistic and selfish desires and possessions. These traditional values are decidedly not consistent with market-based economies that are commonly based upon—often celebrated in elements of their social capital—greed, selfishness, ultra-individualism, competition, materialism, acquisitiveness, competition, narcissism and the logic of profits-for-power-and-power-for-profits. That the conflicting core values, relationships and institutions of traditional Indigenous societies were in direct conflict with—and seen not co-exist with—those of market-based societies was seen early on in U.S. and Canadian histories. For example:<br /></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR<br />Office of Indian Affairs-Washington<br />Supplement to Circular No. 1665 February 14, 1923<br />Indian Dancing<br />-<br />To Superintendents: </div><div align="justify">-<br />At a conference in October, 1922, of the missionaries of the several religious denominations represented in the Sioux country, the following recommendations were adopted and have been courteously submitted to this office:<br /></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">1. That the Indian form of gambling[sic] and lottery[sic] known as the "ituranpi" (translated "Give Away") be prohibited.<br />-</div><div align="justify">2. That the Indian dances be limited to one in each month in the daylight hours of one day in the midweek, and at one center in each district; the months of March and April, June, July, and August be excepted.<br /></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">3. That none take part in the dances or be present who are under 50 years of age.<br />-</div><div align="justify">4. That a careful propaganda be undertaken to educate public opinion against the dance and to provide a healthy substitute.<br /></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">5. That there be close cooperation between the Government employees and the missionaries in those matters which affect the moral welfare of Indians.<br />-</div><div align="justify">…After a conscientious study of the dance situation in his jurisdiction, the efforts of every superintendent must persistently encourage and emphasize the Indian's attention to these political, useful, thrifty, and orderly activities that are indispensable to his well-being and that underlie the preservation of his race in the midst of complex and highly competitive conditions. </div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">The instinct of individual enterprise and devotion to the posterity and elevation of family life should in some way be made paramount in every Indian household to the exclusion of idleness, waste of time at frequent gatherings of whatever nature, and the neglect of physical resources upon which depend food, clothings[sic] , shelter, and the very beginnings of progress. [13]<br />-</div><div align="justify">"It is readily acknowledged that Indian children lose their natural resistance to illness by habitating[sic] so closely in these schools, and that they die at a much higher rate than in their villages. But this alone does not justify a change in the policy of this Department, which is geared towards the FINAL SOLUTION OF OUR INDIAN PROBLEM." [14]<br />-<br />And it is more than irony that the term “Final Solution of ‘our’ the Indian Problem” in the DIA memo of D.C. Scott is the exactly language used by the Nazis as in “Final Solution to the Jewish Problem”. The Alberta Sterilization Act of 1928[15], and the Eugenics Laws of 27 states of the U.S. were specifically cited by the German Nazis as the direct “inspirations” for their own 1933 Race Hygiene Law and 1935 Nuremberg Race Laws.”[16] According to John Toland, biographer of Adolf Hitler: </div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Hitler's concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history. He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa And for the Indians in the Wild West; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America's extermination-by starvation and uneven combat-of the 'Red Savages' who could not be tamed by captivity.[17]<br /></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">And from an internal document of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs:<br />-</div><div align="justify">"Set the blood-quantum at one-quarter, hold to it as a rigid definition of Indians, let intermarriage proceed, and eventually Indians will be defined out of existence. When that happens, the federal government will finally be freed from its persistent Indian problem."[18]<br /></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">Thus it has been made clear by the U.S. and Canadian governments that Indigenous institutions, values and practices, Indigenous cultures and systems, are considered not only as “existential threats” to their own orders, institutions and values, but are considered fundamentally inconsistent with what they define as economic growth and development and the fundamental conditions and ingredients necessary for economic growth and overall development.<br />-</div><div align="justify">Now let’s explore the model of Indigenous development and sustainability given below. The first thing that must be noticed is the four points of the model that correspond with the four primary directions of the compass: North, or Control of Assets; East, or Spirituality; South, or Kinship; and West, or Personal Efficacy. These imperatives are considered fundamental to overall development and sustainability in Indigenous terms.<br />-<br /></div><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SpgA_EFFCDI/AAAAAAAAA0Y/ce0b4Og1mwY/s1600-h/FNDImaxenlarged.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 291px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5375047238693488690" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SpgA_EFFCDI/AAAAAAAAA0Y/ce0b4Og1mwY/s400/FNDImaxenlarged.jpg" /> <p align="justify"></a>(click on picture to enlarge)<br />-<br />Why are these four[19] core values and imperatives considered fundamental to development and sustainability in Indigenous terms? There is an old saying that sums it up: “It is better to know where to go and not know how, than to know how to go and not know where.” Technology, “Capital” even “land” and “Labor”, are part of the how to go and not where to go. Without Sovereignty and Control of Assets and critical resources, without Vision informed by Spirituality[20] , without Kinship and healthy families and Clans and Bands, without Personal Efficacy (health and viability) of individuals, no nation, especially one surrounded by hostile forces that consider its mere existence a “threat” of some sort, will grow, develop or even survive and be sustained. This is no different for China than it is for any Indigenous society and vice-versa. Since its inception in 1949, the People’s Republic of China, with its own sovereign and socialist institutions and roads to growth, development and sustainability with Chinese characteristics, has been: encircled; threatened with nuclear annihilation; attacked internally by secessionist and separatist forces acting as proxies for foreign powers; hit with repeated embargos and denials of critical technologies and goods and services; slandered, demonized and isolated among the community of nations . [21]</p><p align="justify">-<br />Social systems engineering, to which all Indigenous nations, along with socialist nations like China have been subject, involves putting targeted nations under such siege from external and internal pressures that have been manufactured and/or exacerbated, that the targeted nation winds up in a straight jacket, forced to divert precious scarce resources into defense and away from development and sustainability, that the targeted nation appears to “conform”, and thus the “proof” has been engineered, of the caricatures that have been made of that targeted nation: “backward”; “repressive”; “inefficient”; “undemocratic”; “stagnant”[22] etc. But in a fair fight, or peaceful competition between systems, socialism beats capitalism any day, even in terms of capitalism’s own definitions and measurements of “efficiency”, just as traditional Indigenous societies beat modern-day assimilated BIA-DIA controlled and capitalist influenced Indigenous societies, in terms of all the requisite ingredients to development and sustainability shown in the traditional Indigenous model of development and sustainability, any day. That is why they were put under siege with their core institutions and values slandered, demonized and marginalized historically and in the present: in a fair and peaceful competition between systems, socialism beats capitalism, as Traditional ways are far superior, even in terms of levels of science and technology, than what has become of Indigenous societies in North America and elsewhere under capitalism and “modernity.” [23]<br />-<br />This is why I have urged young Chinese students who ask me about getting to go to school in the West to consider that they have some very fine teachers and schools in China and I have urged them, as a foreigner, not to worship things foreign. I have given the metaphor that if I were given a basic test of Economics in Mandarin, which I do not read, write or speak, it would appear that I know nothing of economics even though I have taught it over thirty years. This is only because I have been given a test and criteria of “success” that were designed and intended for me to fail and thus my “failure” and “proof” of my lack of knowledge of economics were “engineered” by those with the power to do so. The same holds for Indigenous societies put under siege by colonial and imperial powers to engineer the “proof” of their supposed “backwardness”, “stagnation” lack of “civilization”, etc; and thus my advice to Indigenous students, who seek capitalist “civilization” and “progress” away from Traditional Ways, is the same as my advice to Chinese students seeking supposed “advanced education” in the West: perhaps take a good look at, and then appreciate, what you have right in front of you. </p><p align="justify">-<br />Notice in the Indigenous model of development and sustainability the focus is not on conquering or subduing nature but in working in harmony with nature. In Indigenous terms there is no such thing as Humankind versus Nature or the Environment as whenever humankind works against, or tries to conquer, the forces of that of which humankind is an integral part—“Nature”—then “Nature” is destined to win the battle as is evidenced by present-day global climate change and a whole host of threats to the planet that come from capitalist greed, myopia and disrespect for that—environment—of which humankind is an integral part of a delicate web of life froms and matter. Notice also that “Hope”, “Future Orientation”, “Cultural Integrity”, “Social Respect” and “Civic Participation”, all the elements of the overall construct of “social capital” to which modern-day Economics is only beginning to mention as critical to growth and devleopment, has been a part of Traditional Indigenous thinking for thousands of years. Notice in the Indigenous model, the focus on Health and Safety, on Vibrant Initiatives, and on individuals taking “Personal Responsibility” for the “Consequences” of their actions, in addition to “Incomes” (how they are earned and used), “Productivity” and “Trade” as critical to development and sustainability. The Indigenous model includes, holistically, factors that are clearly critical to development and sustainability and yet are nowhere to be found and/or are only newly-emerging, in the Western and capitalist-based models of growth, development and sustainability.</p><div align="justify">-<br />Here is another Indigenous model of development and sustainability that manifests the some of same concepts and constructs:<br />-<br /><div align="justify"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 343px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5375014311626618434" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SpfjCdMlNkI/AAAAAAAAAzg/LxmnHLmmOz8/s400/Sustainable_development_triangle.gif" /> -<br />(Source: Sustainomics and Sustainable Development—adapted from Munasinghe 1992, 1994 Reprinted under Fair Use for Educational and Academic Exchange Purposes Only)<br />-<br />The warning against abuse of Nature and all that humankind is an integral part of has come from Indigenous Peoples over many years. Chief Sealth, of the Dwamish and Suquamish nations gave the following warning to U.S. President Franklin Pierce in 1855: </div><div align="center">-<br /></div><div align="justify">" The Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. How can you buy or sell the sky--the warmth of the land. The idea is strange to us. Yet we do not own the freshness of the air or the sparkle of the water. How can you buy them from us. Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. </div><div align="justify">-<br />We know that the White Man does not understand our ways. One portion of the land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother but his enemy, and when he has conquered it he moves on. He leaves his father's graves and his children's birthright is forgotten.<br /></div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">There is no quiet place in the White Man's cities. No place to hear the leaves of spring or the rustle of insect wings. But perhaps because I am savage and do not understand--the clatter only seems to insult the ears. And what is there to life if a man[sic] cannot hear the lonely cry of the whippoorwill or the arguments of a frog around the pond at night.<br />-</div><div align="justify">The Whites too, shall pass--perhaps sooner than other tribes. Continue to contaminate your bed and you will one night suffocate in your own waste. When the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses tamed the secret corners of the forest heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires. Where is the thicket. Gone. Where is the eagle. Gone. And what is it to say goodbye to the swift and the hunt. The end of living and the beginning of survival. " [24]<br />-</div><div align="justify">Chief Sealth 1855<br /></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">I once gave a lecture at Tsinghua University entitled Socialism versus Capitalism: Which Will Win? I answered the central question of the lecture that I do not know which will win; but I do know which must win for the planet and humankind to survive: Socialism (and some Traditional Indigenous values that closely parallel socialist values). Capitalism, simply, has destroyed and will destroy this planet. </div><div align="justify"></div><div align="center"><strong><em></em></strong></div><div align="center"><strong><em>-</em></strong></div><div align="center"><strong><em>Footnotes</em></strong></div><div align="center"></div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">[1] Externalities are costs or benefits that accrue to society as a result of private or public transactions and activities by individuals or entities within that society. Environmental destruction, social alienation, citizen cynicism and distrust are all examples of negative externalities with social costs, that result and “spillover” on society from private or public activities. Externalities can also be positive such as the health benefits on many people from use of a public park or perhaps a private gymnasium. In “mainstream” neoclassical economic theory, without the very government intervention that they neoclassical economists often decry, there is a tendency for unregulated markets, coupled with greed and competitive imperatives, to cause less than all the true (private plus social) costs to be assessed and paid by those causing them and less than the true benefits (private plus social) to be assessed and paid by those receiving them. Thus unregulated markets tend to over-production and under-pricing when negative externalities are present, and under-production and under-pricing when positive externalities are present. </div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">[2] Capital is usually defined as any “thing” that has been produced specifically in order to produce something else. But capital is also a social relation in the sense that under capitalism and private property, those who own and/or control capital are, by virtue of their ownership and control, able to hire and fire and make basic decisions about the use or non-use, employment or non-employment of that capital while those who labor, who have nothing to sell but their labor power or capacity to work, are, by virtue of their lack of ownership and/or control of capital, the ones who are the hired and fired and the ones whose ability to sell their labor power is dependent upon the decisions of those who own and/or control the capital. Capital stands in relation to and is defined by Labor and vice-versa.</div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">[3] Hanifan, Lyda Judson, “The Rural School Community Center”, Annals of the American Academy of Political Science, 67 (1916): pp. 130-138. Note: An excellent overview of the development of the concept of social capital, for which I am indebted, can be found in: Putnam, Robert D. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Simon and Schuster, N.Y. 2000 and also in Putnam, Robert D (ed), Democracies in Flux: The Evolution of Social Capital in Contemporary Society, Oxford University Press, N.Y. 2002</div><div align="justify">-<br />[4] Seeley, John R, Sim, Alexander and Loosley, Elizabeth; Crestwood Heights: A Study of the Culture of Suburban Life, Basic Books, N.Y. 1956</div><div align="justify">-<br />[5] Jacobs, Jane, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Random House, N.Y. 1961</div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">[6] Loury, Glenn, “A Dynamic Theory of Racial Income Differences” in Women, Minorities and Employment Discrimination, Wallace, P.A. and LeMund, A (eds), Lexington Books, Lexington Mass. 1977<br />-</div><div align="justify">[7] Bourdieu, Pierre, “Forms of Capital” in Handbook of Theory and Research for The Sociology of Education Richardson, John (Ed), Greenwood Books, N.Y. 1983<br />-<br />[8] Schlicht, Ekkehart, “Cognitive Dissonance in Economics” in Normengeleitetes Verhalten in den Sozialwissenschaften, Duncker and Humblot, Berlin, 1984<br />-<br />[9] Coleman, James, “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital” in American Journal of Sociology, 94 (1988)</div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">[1o] See Colander, David, Economics 7th Edition, Power point slide 24-15, McGraw-Hill, N.Y. 2006; quote of Edward Denison who saw U.S. economic growth 1928-2005 as a function of 4 basic sources: Physical Capital 19%; Human Capital 13%; Labor 33% and Technology 35%</div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">[11] A Tautology is a circular argument or definition. Examples include “Science is what scientists do and scientists are those who do science.” Or, science is that which builds upon a foundation of what was generally regarded by a community of scientists as science.” Here by defining as economic growth and development what is in essence central to capitalism and its survival (conspicuous consumption of ever expanding material goods and services per capita) and by defining as essential to achieving economic growth and development that which is defining in capitalism (production of commodities by means of commodities, markets, property rights, wage labor) we wind up with a tautology that capitalism = economic growth and development and/or only capitalism can best and most efficiently promote and achieve economic growth and development.</div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">[12] Adapted from Seib, Rebecca, “Culturally Appropriate Community Economic Development: Aboriginal Land Development Conference”, June 22-25, 2004, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan under Fair Use Doctrine.</div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">[13] Long Standing Bear Chief, “Ni Kso Ko Wa: Blackfoot Traditions and Spirituality” pp. 8-9, Spirit Talk Press, Browning, Montana, 1992</div><div align="justify">-<br />[14] Department of Indian Affairs, Superintendent D.C. Scott to B.C. Indian Agent-General Major D. McKay, DIA Archives, RG-10 series, April 12, 1910 (emphasis added)</div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">[15] The 1948 UN Convention on Genocide, to which Canada became a signatory in 1953 and to which the U.S. still remains not a full signatory because of the Hatch, Helms and Lugar “Sovereignty Amendment of 1988, in Article II defines a five-part test, any one of which, not all required to constitutes genocide: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting upon a group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures designed to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of one group to another group.<br />-<br />[16] Black, Edwin, “War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race” Thunder’s Mouth Press N.Y. 2003; Alberta Sterilization Victims Also Used as Guinea Pigs Revelation Comes as 40 victims win $4M settlement; Marina Jimenez National Post 10/28/98 </div><div align="justify">-<br />[17] Toland, John, “Adolf Hitler”, Vol II, p. 802, Doubleday and Co. N.Y. 1976<br />-<br />[18] Limerick, Patricia Nelson, “The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of American West” WW. Norton and Co. N.Y. 1987 p. 338 </div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">[19] In most Indigenous cultures, the number four is not merely a quantity or cardinal magnitude, without quality or force as in many Eurocentric cultures (four of what?); it has its own power, symbolism and force giving it quality in addition to quantity. The number four stands for: the four principle directions of the compass (North, South, East and West); the four principle colors of the human family (Black White Red and Yellow); the four forms of balance that all humans must seek to survive and prosper (Physical, Emotional, Mental and Spiritual); the four basic elements of Nature (Wind, Fire, Earth and Water). In this model, there are four basic dimensions of development and sustainability that illustrate the dialectical unity of the macro and the micro levels of existence: control of assets and kinship (macro) and personal efficacy and spirituality (micro).</div><div align="justify">-<br />[20] In most Indigenous cultures, “Spirituality” (more an individual matter) is differentiated from religion which is about organized dogma and rituals shared by a community of the religious. “Spirituality” means being guided by the “spirit” of something transcendent and beyond oneself. When indigenous people refer to “spirit” they are referring to the potential energy (as specified in the four laws of thermodynamics) embodied in all things and thus one reason why Indigenous peoples do not differentiate “animate” and “inanimate” aspects of the cosmos.<br />-<br />[21] The so-called Republic of China or Taiwan is currently only recognized by 23 nation states including the Vatican, as the supposed “legitimate government” of all of China whereas up until the 1970s, the reality and legitimacy of the People’s Republic of China as the sole and legitimate government of all of China was denied except by a handful of nations yet the objective reality of and international law supporting, the PRC as the sole and legitimate representative of the whole nation of China was never in question by any honest and thinking person or government. </div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">[22] For example: "I don’ t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves." (Henry Kissinger); "Not a nut or bolt shall reach Chile under Allende. Once Allende comes to power we shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and all Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty." (Edward M. Korry, U.S. Ambassador to Chile, upon hearing of Allende"s election) "Make the economy scream [in Chile to] prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him"(Richard Nixon, orders to CIA director Richard Helms on September 15, 1970) "It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup. It would be much preferable to have this transpire prior to 24 October but efforts in this regard will continue vigorously beyond this date. We are to continue to generate maximum pressure toward this end, utilizing every appropriate resource. It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG and American hand be well hidden..." (A communiqué to the CIA base in Chile, issued on October 16, 1970.) Also quoted in :Neoclassical Economics and Neo-liberalism as Neo-Imperialism” by James Craven/Omahkohkiaayo I’poyi, Lecture to Academy of Marxism of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, August 11, 2009, Beijing, China.<br />-<br />[23] See: Weatherford, Jack, “Native Roots: How the Indians Enriched America”, Fawcett Columbine, N.Y. 1991;”Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World 1988; “Savages and Civilization: Who Will Survive?” 1994. Peat, F. David “Blackfoot Physics”, Weiser Books, Boston, 2002 pp 191, 193-96, 216</div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify">[24] This was based on a translation of a speech by Chief Sealth from Suquamish into Chinook jargon and then into English. Its authenticity has been questioned and that of Chief Sealth only on the basis that he sounded “too articulate” to be the real author and that “thus” it “must have been” written by a screenwriter.</div><div align="justify">-</div><div align="justify"></div></div>Omahkohkiaayo i'poyihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16061952911212543042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449323876485291163.post-43660137537915224142009-08-23T15:07:00.000-07:002009-08-23T18:07:39.697-07:00Indigenous Epistemology and Science: Some Parallels and Contrasts with Neoclassical Theory(NT), Chaos Theory(CT) and Dialectical-Materialism(DHM)<div align="justify"><em><strong>Indigenous Epistemology and Science: Some Parallels and Contrasts with Neoclassical Theory (NT), Chaos Theory (CT) and Dialectical-Historical Materialism (DHM)</strong></em><br /><br />Presented at the 16th Congress of the IUAES, Kunming, China July 26-31<br /><br />By James Craven/Omahkohkiaayo I’poyi<br /><br /><em><strong>"If the construction of the future and its completion for all time is not our task, all the more certain is what we must accomplish in the present; I mean, the ruthless criticism of everything that exists—the criticism being ruthless in the sense that it neither fears its own results nor fears conflict with the powers that be."<br /><br />(Karl Marx, from Letter to Arnold Ruge, 1843)</strong></em></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"><strong><em>Introduction</em></strong><br /><br />In his extensive treatise on “Native science” Gregory Cajete notes that in “all” Indigenous languages, there is no word for “science”:<br /><br />“In Native languages there is no word for ‘science’ nor for 'philiosophy', ‘psychology’ or any other foundational way of coming to know and understand the nature of life and our relationships therein. Not having, or more accurately, not needing, words for science, art, or psychology, did not diminish their importance in Native life. For Native people, ‘seeking life’ was the all encompassing task. While there were tribal specialists with particular knowledge of technologies and ritual, each member of the tribe in his or her own capacity was a scientist, an artist, a storyteller and a participant in the great web of life.”[1]<br /><br />That begs important questions for some, like Thomas S. Kuhn[2] , one of the most frequently consulted and cited authorities who wrote on the nature and history of science[3] : If certain cultures, say Indigenous cultures (not discussed by Kuhn) do not even have a word for science, how could it be possible, no matter what their purported achievements, that what they were doing that yielded those achievements, could be considered “science”? Can we arrive at a comprehensive and objective definition of “science” that transcends culture, who is doing the defining, his or her interests or motives in doing science, and the paradigm he or she employs in arriving at the definition? Or, are we stuck, like a blind person trying to define and give an image of the totality of an elephant in the abstract, by simply feeling and listing its separate parts or aspects?<br /><br />Albert Einstein noted that the business of science is reality. One definition of science has to do with the purported goals of science versus non-science. Science is that which seeks not simply facts or “knowledge” in some abstract sense, but seeks to discover of the essences under the surfaces of phenomena of an objective reality, and, the ultimate laws governing those phenomena and aspects of that reality. But that notion of what is science leaves us in a dilemma: Since old notions of the essences of and even laws governing, various phenomena, discovered in the past by what was then considered “science”, are often challenged, modified or even refuted by new notions about the essences of and laws governing those phenomena, then can we ever have “science” since one of the essential purposes of science is to continually challenge and test its own notions and conclusions to find new and more universally valid ones? Kuhn has an answer for that dilemma that is somewhat tautological. He notes that science is that which builds on a foundation of what was generally considered to be science that preceded it, and is not dependent upon how fixed and universal are its purported conclusions about phenomena, but on the methods, approaches, tools, standards, validity tests, and paradigms employed to arrive at those notions and conclusions. Indeed for Kuhn, the term “science” appears to be more of a noun [4] than a verb or adjective although at times he did recognize science as a process. Kuhn appears to see science more as a “constellation of facts, theories and methods collected in current texts”[5] ; and his views sometime border on pure tautology.[6]<br /><br />Yet Kuhn also went through a bit of a change between the first and third editions of his essay. In his original 1962 first edition, he makes the following remarkable statement:<br /><br />“But only the civilizations that descended from Hellenic Greece possessed more than the most rudimentary science”[7]<br /><br />I say that this statement of Kuhn is remarkable because his essay has nothing about views, approaches to or definitions of, science, not from the “Classical” or Eurocentric sources and perspectives. The closest he gets to exploring that non-Eurocentric approaches and discoveries might have also been “science” and possibly advanced over some contemporary Eurocentric contributions is in the following:<br /><br />“In recent years however, a few historians of science have been finding it more and more difficult to fullfil[sic] the functions that the concept of development-by-accumulation assigns to them. As chroniclers of an incremental process, they discover that additional research makes it harder, not easier, to answer questions like: When was oxygen discovered? Who first conceived of energy conservation? Increasingly, a few of them suspect that these are simply the wrong sorts of questions to ask. Perhaps science does not develop by accumulation of individual discoveries and inventions. Simultaneously, these same historians confront growing difficulties in distinguishing the ‘scientific’ component of past observation and belief from what their predecessors readily labeled ‘error’ and ‘superstition’. The more carefully they study, say, Aristotelian dynamics, phlogistic chemistry, or caloric thermodynamics, the more certain they feel that those once current views of nature were, as a whole, neither less scientific nor more the product of human idiosyncrasy than those current today. If these out-of-date beliefs are to be called myths, then myths can be produced by the same sorts of methods and held for the same sorts of reasons that now lead to scientific knowledge. If, on the other hand, they are to be called science, then science has included bodies of belief quite incompatible with the ones we hold today. Given these alternatives, the historian must choose the latter. Out-of-date theories are not in principle unscientific because they have been discarded. That choice however, makes it difficult to see scientific development as a process of accretion. The same historical research that displays the difficulties in isolating the individual inventions and discoveries gives ground for profound doubts about the cumulative process through which these individual contributions to science were thought to have been compounded.”[8]<br /><br />So we still have a ways to go to arrive at a generalized definition of science that allows us to proceed to determine if Indigenous cultures have indeed been doing and contributing to science and the parallels and contrasts with other paradigms purporting to be scientific. Samir Amin notes:<br /><br />“Scientific theory is, after all, not theory that merely takes account of facts, but theory that proceeds from facts in order to integrate them into a coherent system”<br />[9]<br /><br />That “coherent system” would have to include, as a key component, core principles and postulates of its own epistemology [10]; on what basis can we say we “know” something to be a fact before taking account of or proceeding from what we believe to be facts. That “coherent system” would have to include concrete approaches, criteria, methodologies, instruments, standards and tests for establishing the likely validity and reliability of facts, generalizations, theories, axioms and laws as well as criteria for selecting what to analyze in the first place. And that “coherent system” would have to have its own essential or foundational postulates and axioms about the essential nature of reality that must be accepted prior to any discussions about or approaches to understanding the essences of that reality. These foundational and guiding postulates may or may not be explicit but must be consistently applied. These “coherent systems” make up what Kuhn calls “paradigms” [11] and what others call schools of thought or “a science”. Since these paradigms include epistemologies, they should also contain postulates about the roles and limitations of human beings (biases, psychological filters, interests, constraints, physiology and contexts) involved in doing science and knowing as well.<br /><br /><em><strong>Classical and Neoclassical Paradigms of “Science”</strong></em><br /><br />Neoclassical approaches in Economics that have been increasingly applied in other social sciences such as Anthropology, Ethnology, Sociology, History and Political Science draw heavily from the basic postulates about reality and knowing that originate from the classical-Greek-based and Newtonian notions of science and reality. For example, in Newton’s Three Laws of Motion and in the four Laws of Thermodynamics, we can see the focus on closed systems, clock-like mechanics, on reductionism (the notion that the task of science is to reduce all phenomena to their “essential” elements and building blocks) but also other foci and postulates central to Classical and Neoclassical notions of “Science”[12]:<br /><br />1) Focus on equilibrium states--static or dynamic--disturbed only by Exogenous (external) forces followed by endogenous processes creating new equilibriums;<br /><br />2) Focus on ultimate Independent (Causal) and Dependent (Effect) variables in causality;<br /><br />3) Focus on systems as morphostatic or endogenously self-correcting and self-equilibrating systems.;<br /><br />4) Focus on unidirectional causality (X --> Y --> Z) and process;<br /><br />5) Focus on negative (equilibrating) feedback effects.<br /><br />6) Focus on closed systems;<br /><br />7) Focus on a-priori sources and indirect proofs of knowledge;<br /><br />8) The whole (macro) is merely the sum of its parts (micro) and the micro is a concentrated expression or microcosm of the whole;<br /><br />9) Phenomena may be experimentally isolated and analyzed independent of the contexts and interactions with other variables with which they interact in reality;<br /><br />10) Philosophical positivism: the only test of the validity hypotheses (including the validity of assumptions in hypotheses and deduction) is prediction (hypothetico deductivism);<br /><br />11) As there is an objective reality independent of subjective biases and their causes, so there can be scientific methods and tools that are objective and value-free of any interests or biases on the part of scientists using them;<br /><br />12) All hypotheses must be potentially falsifiable and all variables potentially measurable;<br /><br />13) Aspects of reality may be analytically separated and studied in specialized disciplines;<br /><br /></div><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SpHN5wchmEI/AAAAAAAAAyw/V-cWMPPUsQs/s1600-h/twoMajorTypesofCyberneticSystem_jpt.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 300px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5373302222570494018" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SpHN5wchmEI/AAAAAAAAAyw/V-cWMPPUsQs/s400/twoMajorTypesofCyberneticSystem_jpt.jpg" /> <p align="justify"></a><br /><br />(Source Henderson, Hazel, http://www.hazelhenderson.com/visual.html; reprinted under Fair Use Doctrine)<br /><br />Classical approaches to science have yielded impressive discoveries that have made both positive and negative impacts on the planet and on humankind. As prediction and application are concrete tests of the “science” that went into yielding the particular predictions and applications, then discoveries of new drugs to extend human life, sending people 246,000 miles to land on a particular spot on the moon and return, and many other such achievements are testimonies to the power and methodological approaches embodied in what is known as “normal” of Classical and Neoclassical “science”. But then again, we could also chronicle some of the achievements, many unknown until recently, of Indigenous Science. The concept of Zero was first developed and used by the Mayans, many centuries before its recognition and application in the Near East and Europe. [13] The uses of natural medicines like Quinine for Malaria and Tubocurarine used today in abdominal surgery are but two of many examples.[14] There are achievements like Machu Picchu that represent advanced and integrated applications of principles of architecture, engineering, physics and cosmology that could not be duplicated by “modern” or “normal” science today.[15] In his trilogy, Jack Weatherford documents Indigenous pioneering achievements, “discovered” only centuries later by “normal science” in the areas of constitutions and governance, military tactics, agriculture and agronomy, cosmology, long distance navigation, architecture, engineering, medicine including even neurosurgery, unified monetary systems for long distance trade, preservatives for foods, mathematics and symbolic logic, flora and fauna management and breeding, effective education and pedagogy, law and constitutions, meteorology, immunology, and the list goes on.[16]<br /><br />Theoretical physicist F. David Peat, who lived among the Blackfoot and studied Blackfoot ceremonies like the Sun Dance as well as symbols, allegories and even language structure, found evidence of very advanced constructs of Quantum Mechanics, some “discovered” only in the early 20th century by “normal science”. These include: Superpositionality; Subtle Energy and Matter; Electrons; Wave-Particle duality; Entanglement; Bose-Einstein Condensates; Mass-Energy Equivalence; Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle; Fractals; The Four Laws of Thermodynamics; Grassmann Algebra. [17] From his studies of both Indigenous and what Kuhn called “normal” science, Peat concludes:<br /><br />“During the first contact, Europeans were confident that they were the bearers of truth, truth about religion and government, truth about science and law. But today that confidence has been shaken. For some people, the truths of institutional religions are no longer self-evident, or even credible. And science, which has been through two great revolutions—quantum theory and relativity—is much less confident about the nature of objective truth.” [18]<br /><br />More and more Classical science’s own concrete tests of validity of theory, prediction and application, are calling into question, the fundamental and defining postulates or asserted axioms, along with the often myopic reductionism, of Classical science itself. The most obvious example is global climate change about which there is not only disagreement by normal science and its scientists, as to its dimensions, dynamics, impacts and causes, but one may easily argue, that global climate change, which threatens the planet itself, is itself partly, or even largely, the product of the ultra-reductionism, ultra-specialization, myopia and non-holistic nature of what passes as “normal science”—especially when coupled and driven by the short-run, profit, competitive-survival imperatives of capitalism. Some argue that the paradigm of Classical science, that includes the notion that the whole is simply the sum of its parts, coupled with ultra-reductionism and ultra-specialization among various academic disciplines, leads easily to the “Fallacy of Composition” (“What is true in the particular must be true in general”) and the “Tragedy of the Commons” (individuals acting competitively and individualistically in what they think is rational self-interest in the short-run, destroying scarce and vital common resources necessary for collective as well as individual survival in the long-run) are being manifested and played out on national, regional and global scales with potentially disastrous consequences.[19]<br /><br />In the social sciences, in attempts to gain legitimacy as “sciences”, there have been attempts to deal with some of the more glaring contradictions in neoclassical economics while preserving the essential postulates of the paradigm, and to extend Neoclassical constructs into other disciplines such as Sociology, History and even in Ethnology and Anthropology. Just like impersonal and “value-free” particles in perpetual motion in time-space, or the basic elements of all matter, of Physics and Chemistry, human beings are assumed to be “economic agents” or “Homo Oeconomicus” (Economic Man”)[20] driven by bundles of propensities that are part of some immutable iron-laws and eternal “Human Nature”, to engage in predictable behaviors with ultimate causes or independent variables for all behavior (e.g. maximization of utility). The behaviors of these human particles (agents) in time-space, are asserted to arise irrespective of such “fuzzy” and “immeasurable” (or not cardinally quantifiable) variables or factors such as historical context, type of socioeconomic system, personal histories, social class, race, ethnicity, religion, age, ideology, culture or any other real-world differences that are manifested among human beings. And since the social sciences are increasingly loaded with higher level mathematics to make them appear more scientific and rigorous[21], and since mathematics is assumed to be “value-free”, these disciplines increasingly argue that they only do “Positive” analysis (from Philosophical Positivism at the core of their epistemology: What is pure value-free cause and effect or how the world actually works) instead of “Normative” analysis (How the world “should” work).<br /><br />What is interesting about many scientists of the Classical and Neoclassical persuasions is the lack of interest they appear to have on evolving research on the biological, chemical, psychological and physiological mechanisms and factors that cause human perception and other senses to be as shaped by what they think (paradigms) as what they think is shaped by what they see, hear, smell, touch and taste. In other words not only “seeing is believing”, but “believing is seeing.”Indeed the different paradigms that shape even what we choose to study, along with the sources and methods we use and consider legitimate, not only “explain the world differently, but also induce us to see a different world to explain.”[22]<br /><br />These are issues dealing with limitations of the senses and roles of ideology in shaping perceptions and interests, not traditionally covered in epistemology, but certainly part of the problem of “knowing”, that are now being covered by some evolutionary biologists, cognitive psychologists and neurobiologists, that have long been incorporated into “Native Science” as well as more sophisticated versions of Dialectical-Historical Materialism. They have not been brought into the overall epistemologies of the Classical-Neoclassical or even Chaos-Complexity paradigms.<br /><br /><em><strong>Indigenous Science</strong></em><br /><br />When speaking about what some call “Native Science” and what others call “Indigenous Science we faced several limitations. First of all, different Indigenous nations are exactly that: different nations with different histories, land bases, cultures, languages, socioeconomic structures etc that have some things in common but also some forms and levels of diversity as well. Secondly, the accounts we have are for the most part from those who study Indigenous societies but are not from or a part of the objects (cultures and paradigms) of their research.[23]<br /><br />Is there some kind of evolving body or “coherent system”, of core principles and methods, tests of validity and reliability, procedures, axioms etc that would allow us to speak of Indigenous or Native “science” or a distinctive Native paradigm? We can list some of the core principles, axioms etc that form a coherent system that, as science is supposed to do, can be used not only to establish correlations and recurring patterns in aspects of reality, but also provide narratives and explanations as to why various predictable patterns and cycles occur with regularity in the cosmos on the one hand, versus highly conditional probabilities but not certainties on the quantum levels of reality.[24] In Native science, the supposed contradiction between mere probabilities at the quantum or sub-atomic level of reality, as studied by Quantum Mechanics, versus regular, predictable and certain patterns and cycles of celestial bodies at the level of General Relativity Theory, is no contradiction. In all of what appears to be “chaos” of multiple-dimensions and probabilities but no certainties at the quantum level, there is often embodied the potential for order; and in all of what appears to be predictable, certain and recurring “order” at the macro level, there are contradictions and delicate webs of interdependency with the potential for chaos and implosion. In this respect and in others we shall discuss, Native science has more in common with Chaos Theory and Dialectical-Historical Materialism, which is not to say that Native science rejects all of Classical science.[25]<br /><br /><em><strong>Some Principles and Approaches of Native Science</strong></em><br /><br />• The only constant is change (CT and DHM);<br /><br />• Mathematics important but not foundational; mathematics not value free (CT and DHM);<br /><br />• No ultimate independent (causal) or dependent (effect) variables (CT, DHM);<br /><br />• All phenomena in process; thus phenomenon A can both be and yet not be (CT, DHM);<br /><br />• All variables are endogenous (internal) depending upon scope/angle of analysis (CT, DHM);<br /><br />• Reality is non-linear, causality is multidirectional and multi-faceted, development is not unidirectional from lower to higher orders; (CT and DHM);<br /><br />• What Native People mean by “Spirit” is concentrated energy-matter, that is neither created nor destroyed but transformed from form to form and level to level in accordance with what amounts to the four Laws of Thermodynamics,[26];<br /><br />• There is an objective reality outside of our consciousness but the relationships between ontology (existence) and epistemology (knowing) or between being and consciousness, are dialectical two-way as part of any reality involves the perceptions and interactions of those immersed in that reality. (CT, DHM);<br /><br />• The notion that everything is interrelated, that there are no ultimate causes and effects of any phenomena, that all of the Cosmos involves extensive and delicate webs of interrelationships, actually aids rather than inhibits effective working models and narratives about how and why a particular phenomenon occurs, or why something works a certain way, or what will likely happen from given actions in Nature; (CT, DHM);<br /><br />• The purpose of science is not to attempt to conquer, subdue or mitigate the forces and interrelationships of nature, but to understand them and work in accordance with them to achieve survival and subsistence; (CT, DHM);<br /><br />• Phenomena may appear self-equilibrating and Morphostatically stable, but they are in reality, continually in motion, subject to negative and positive feedback effects, driven by internal contradictions and interrelationships, to produce morphogenetic systems and outcomes that often represent qualitative leaps or volatile changes from relatively small quantitative changes over time.[27](CT,DHM);<br /><br />• The context within which a given phenomenon being studied is never constant and can never realistically be treated as “a constant” or a “given” but it is an essential part of understanding what a given phenomenon within and part of—forming—that context is doing and why. (CT,DHM);<br /><br />• The task of science is not simply to establish correlations between apparent or surface phenomena, or even to posit cause and effect, but to explain, with various kinds of narratives, why, with what periodicity, patterns and effects these interrelationships occur and in what directions are they changing; (DHM some CT);<br /><br />• There is a dialectical unity between apparent Chaos and Order in that they are not only definitionally related, each defines the other, but are functionally related as in all apparent order is the potential for breakdown into chaos and in all apparent chaos there is underlying order to be discovered. (CT and DHM);<br /><br />• Constructs and distinctions between time and space, animate and non-animate, individual and society, dreams and visions, perception and reality, causality and synchronicity, and time and eternity are our own constructs, imposed on reality because of, and manifesting, our own epistemological and other limitations more than the intrinsic nature of the reality.[28];<br /><br />• The task of science is to discover both the implicate as well as explicate orders of reality [29];<br /><br />• The task of science is not to dismiss from analysis anomalies that occur outside of or in contradiction to validating or nullifying predictions of hypotheses, but to explain them also without fear or favor to their implications on established interests (DHM)[30];<br /><br />• Spirituality is not religion; it is being guided by the “spirit” (potential energy) of something beyond oneself and to understand the relationships of the phenomena of reality; part of scientific epistemology [31];<br /><br />• All equations and models are symbolic representations or symbolic narratives (stories) about aspects of reality as much as story narratives; story narratives may be expressed in forms of equations—and vice versa--and may well capture more of the totality and essence of an aspect of reality than mathematical equations. (CT and DHM);<br /><br />• True science must not merely be “interdisciplinary” but trans-disciplinary as reality is an indivisible totality and not simply social, economic, physical chemical or whatever.(DHM)[32];<br /><br />• “Nature “ is not simply a collection of objects, but rather a dynamic, ever-flowing river of creation inseparable from our own perceptions…the creative center from which we and everything else have come and to which we always return.”[33] (CT, DHM)<br /><br />• “As we experience the world, so are we also experienced by the world.”[34](CT, DHM)<br /><br />• In understanding phenomena, science can never effectively remain, or claim to remain, detached from that of which it is an integral part; total integrated immersion of the five senses plus cognition are required at all times; “controlled” experimentation, abstraction, simplification, instrumentation and the search for uniformity and “laws” are limited and said to be of limited value;<br /><br />• Stories, trans-cultural symbols, allegories, metaphors serve as the same functions as theories, models and equations in normal science; languages are verb rather than noun-based emphasizing science as process rather than as a body or stock of tools and approaches; (CT, DHM)<br /><br />• All of existence, including science, has purpose and the calling of science as with all activity, is to serve the community and its survival and sustainability. (DHM)<br /><br />• The question of who is to benefit and who is to lose—for whom—is a central question for all science (CT, DHM)<br /><br />These are but some of the core or foundational or defining ontological and epistemological principles of Indigenous science and how they parallel and/or contrast with Classical Science or what Kuhn calls “normal science” as well as with Chaos Theory and Dialectical-Historical Materialism as distinct paradigms. Of course in this exposition, some abstractions and simplifications have to be made for purposes of brevity and summarizing in a space-constrained exposition.<br /><br />It would be a mistake to simply and summarily dismiss, as mere superstition, folkways, myths, and metaphysics what is increasingly being recognized as a whole and coherent system that qualifies as Native science and that has indeed produced some achievements that “modern” and “normal science” have no existing means or technologies to duplicate. In the symbols, rituals and ceremonies, structures like the Medicine Wheel, and numbers like the Sacred “Number Four”[35] one can find, and many Indigenous people understand, complex algorithms about the order of the Cosmos that guide everyday events and practices. Applying the tests of prediction and application favored by “normal science”, then Native science can make every claim to be science and perhaps more so than Classical science. How many pharmaceuticals in use today were first developed and used by Indigenous cultures and were then only considered to have been “discovered”, like the “discoveries” of Columbus, when obtained by Eurocentric forces and cultures? How do we explain the precision of the Mayan Calendars if some kind of “science” was not going on? How do we explain the democratic institutions, agricultural practices, animal husbandry, cosmology, engineering of the likes of Macchu Pichu, and indeed warnings of the past that turned out to be very prophetic for the present and future that went unanswered and at our own peril [36]:<br /><br />Letter from Chief Sealth to President Franklin Pierce--1855<br /><br />" The Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. How can you buy or sell the sky--the warmth of the land. The idea is strange to us. Yet we do not own the freshness of the air or the sparkle of the water. How can you buy them from us. Every part of this earth is sacred to my people.<br /><br />We know that the White Man does not understand our ways. One portion of the land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother but his enemy, and when he has conquered it he moves on. He leaves his father's graves and his children's birthright is forgotten.<br /><br />There is no quiet place in the White Man's cities. No place to hear the leaves of spring or the rustle of insect wings. But perhaps because I am savage and do not understand--the clatter only seems to insult the ears. And what is there to life if a man[sic] cannot hear the lonely cry of the whippoorwill or the arguments of a frog around the pond at night.<br /><br />The Whites too, shall pass--perhaps sooner than other tribes. Continue to contaminate your bed and you will one night suffocate in your own waste. When the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses tamed the secret corners of the forest heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires. Where is the thicket. Gone. Where is the eagle. Gone. And what is it to say goodbye to the swift and the hunt. The end of living and the beginning of survival. "<br /><br />Chief Sealth 1855<br /><br />Just as with losses of all sorts of flora and fauna species due to global climate change and other factors is causing losses of potential medicines for present and emerging diseases [37], so losses of whole Indigenous cultures represent losses for all of humanity of knowledge, values, practices and approaches to science that have produced and are producing many achievements that attest to their worth. It is not only flora and fauna diversity that will save this planet, preservation of cultural diversity is a survival imperative for the planet and humanity.<br /><br />Where will the Classical Science take us? The answer is partly revealed in the products of the so-called “‘The’ [as if there were only one] “Scientific Method” (for good and bad) when coupled with the nature, logic and dynamics of various types of social systems that drive and utilize it.<br /><br /></p><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SpHNnxP7XfI/AAAAAAAAAyo/QFoo60IT6OE/s1600-h/Slide22_PNG.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 300px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5373301913548447218" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SpHNnxP7XfI/AAAAAAAAAyo/QFoo60IT6OE/s400/Slide22_PNG.jpg" /> <p align="justify"></a><br /><br />(Architects and Engineers for Truth Slideshow)<br /><br /><br /><em><strong>Footnotes</strong></em><br /><br />[1] Cajete, Gregory; “Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence”, Clear Light Publishers, Santa Fe, N.M. p.2<br /><br />[2] Kuhn, Thomas S. “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: Third Edition”, University of Chicago Press, 1996<br /><br />[3] Kuhn, Thomas Ibid. Kuhn wrote specifically on what he called “normal science” or a concept of science originating in Hellenic Greece and expressed in the foundations and traditions developed by Newton. Kuhn did not explore or even explicitly mention any non-Eurocentric notions or examples of science or scientific-like methods and approaches.<br /><br />[4] “English, and for that matter French, German, Italian and the other European languages are noun-oriented. They are employed to divide the world into physical objects (nouns) and thinking into separate concepts (again nouns). Many Native American languages do not work this way. They are verb-based. Thus, when in English we speak of “medicine” we automatically seek a referent, a substance, an object, something tangible, and something that can be conceptualized. But suppose we begin with something verbal, with activity, process, a movement of harmony and balance. Medicine could then be felt in the beating of the heart, sensed as a movement around the sacred circle, the wind blowing through the leaves of the tress, the growing of green plants, and the astronomical alignments of the medicine wheel.” Peat, F. David, “Blackfoot Physics” Weiser Books, Boston, MA. 2005, p. 128<br /><br />[5] Kuhn, Thomas S. op. cit. . p. 1<br /><br />[6] A Tautology is a circular argument or definition. Examples include “Science is what scientists do and scientists are those who do science.” Or, science is that which builds upon a foundation of what was generally regarded by a community of scientists as science.”<br /><br />[7] Kuhn, Thomas, op. cit, 1962 Edition, pp. 167-68<br /><br />[8] Kuhn, Thomas S. op cit, Third Edition, pp. 2-3<br /><br />[9] Amin, Samir, “Accumulation on a World Scale: A Critique of the Theory of Underdevelopment” Vol I, Monthly Review Press, N.Y. 1974 p. 2<br /><br />[10] Epistemology means a Theory of Knowledge (also a coherent system) from the Greek “episteme” meaning knowledge or science and “logos” meaning theory of. A branch of philosophy dealing with the scope, limitations and tests of knowledge. What is knowledge? How is knowledge acquired? ; What do people know? How do we know what we know? Why do we know what we know? “Propositional knowledge” or knowledge that is distinguished from knowledge how. Knowledge involves belief but knowledge about a belief does not endorse the truth or accuracy of the belief. According to Aristotle:"To say of something which is that it is not, or to say of something which is not that it is, is false. However, to say of something which is that it is, or of something which is not that it is not, is true." Socrates, via Plato defined “knowledge” as “true belief that has been given an account of.” Edmund Gettier proposed thought experiments (Gettier cases) to show that a given belief may be justified and true and yet not count as knowledge. Another doctrine is called “infallibilism” that says to qualify as knowledge, a belief must be not only true and justified, but that the justification for it must necessitate its truth. Another doctrine is that of “indefeasibility” employed in indirect proofs that says there must be no overriding or defeating truths against the reasons for the belief. “Reliabilism” is a doctrine that says a belief is justified only if it is established via a process that yields a sufficiently high ratio of true to false beliefs. Knowledge may be gained A-priori or outside of experience or A-posteriori via experience. Knowledge may be “analytic” or gained by knowledge of what terms mean in a proposition, or, may be “synthetic” or gained through propositions that have a distinct subject and predicate.<br /><br />[11] “The dramatic changes of thinking that happened in physics at the beginning of this century have been widely discussed by physicists and philosophers for more than fifty years. They led Thomas Kuhn to the notion of a scientific "paradigm," defined as "a constellation of achievements—concepts, values, techniques, etc.— shared by a scientific community and used by that community to define legitimate problems and solutions." Changes of paradigms, according to Kuhn, occur in discontinuous, revolutionary breaks called "paradigm shifts." Capra, Fritjof. The Web of Life. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, 1996. P. 5<br /><br />[12] Newton’s Three Laws of Motion: Law I: “Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.”; Law II: “F = ma” or Force equals mass times acceleration (acceleration and force are vectors and thus direction of the force vector is the same as the direction of the acceleration vector); Law III: “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” And the Four Laws of Thermodynamics: Zeroth Law: “If two thermodynamic systems are each in thermal equilibrium with a third, then they are in thermal equilibrium with each other”; First Law: “Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only change forms.”; Second Law: “Energy systems have a tendency to increase their entropy rather than decrease it."; Third Law: “As temperature approaches absolute zero, the entropy of a system approaches a constant minimum.”<br /><br />[13] Peat, F. David “Blackfoot Physics”, Weiser Books, Boston, 2002 pp 191, 193-96, 216<br /><br />[14] Restivo, Sal P. “Science Technology and Society: An Encyclopedia”, Oxford U Press, N.Y. 2005 pp 213-16<br /><br />[15] Wright, Kenneth and Alfredo Valencia, Machu Picchu: A Civil Engineering Marvel. ASCE Press, Reston. 2000<br /><br />[16 Weatherford, Jack, “Native Roots: How the Indians Enriched America”, Fawcett Columbine, N.Y. 1991;”Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World 1988; “Savages and Civilization: Who Will Survive?” 1994.<br /><br />[17] Peat, F. David, op cit. pp 45-46, 130-34, 157, 170-71, 175, 261, 265-68<br /><br />[18] Peat, F. David Ibid p. 45<br /><br />[19] Garrett Hardin, "The Tragedy of the Commons", Science, Vol. 162, No. 3859 (December 13, 1968), pp. 1243-1248.<br /><br />[20] “The concept of ‘economic man’ of the classical economists has long since been discarded as inadequate to reality—except by a few of the most ardent ‘welfare theorists’. Meanwhile, the ‘scientific man’ is not even defined. He exists only implicitly in the form of a virtual taboo on raising the psychological and sociological problems of how research activity is conditioned.” Myrdal, Gunnar, “Sociology and Psychology in Social Science” in “Against the Stream: Critical Essays on Economics” Pantheon Books, N.Y. 1973 p. 54<br /><br />[21] The economist Robert Heilbroner once quipped that “mathematics has brought to economics rigor—and alas, also mortis.”<br /><br />[22] Wolff, Richard and Resnick, Stephen A, Economics: Marxian Versus Neoclassical, Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1987 p. 18. Other works on this subject include: Ariely, Dan, “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions”, Expanded Edition, Harper Collins, 2009; Shermer, Michael “The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share and Follow the Golden Rule” Holt, N.Y. 2004 and “The Mind of the Market: How Biology and Psychology Shape Our Economic Lives”, Holt, N.Y. 2008; Deutsch, David, “The Fabric of Reality” Penguin, N.Y. 1997; Deloria, Vine, “Spirit and Reason”, Fulcrum Publishing, Golden, CO 1999; Myrdal, Gunnar, “Against the Stream” op cit; Westen, Drew, “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation”, Public Affairs, N.Y. 2008; Gardner, Daniel “The Science of Fear: How the Culture of Fear Manipulates Your Brain”, Plume Books, N.Y. 2008<br /><br />[23] Cajete, Gregory, op cit. p. 4 “As is true of all lenses, what we can see depends upon the clarity of the images made possible through the use of a particular lens. In the past five hundred years of contact with Western culture, Native traditions have been viewed and expressed largely through the lens of Western thought, language and perception. The Western lens reflects all other cultural traditions through the filters of the modern view of the world. Yet in order to understand Native cultures one must be able to see through their lenses and hear their stories in their voice through their experience. In other words to know the taste of a pear one must bite into it.<br /><br />[24] Peat, F. David, op cit p 157: “The ability to place an opening so that it will be aligned with the rising sun at the solstice or equinox, or with some other event, clearly implies the ability to predict and calculate the location of these events in the sky. Indeed, the design of a building represents a perfect integration of mathematics, astronomy, surveying and architecture.”<br /><br />[25] Cajete, Gregory, op cit. p.2: “Native science is a metaphor for a wide range of tribal processes of perceiving, thinking, acting and ‘coming to know’ that have evolved through human experience with the natural world. Native science is born of a lived and storied participation with the natural landscape. To gain a sense of Native science one must ‘participate’ with the natural world, to understand the foundations of Native science one must become open to the roles of sensation, perception, imagination, emotion, symbols, and spirit as well as that of concept, logic and rational empiricism.”<br /><br />[26] Little Bear, Leroy Into to Cajete, Gregory op. cit p. p. x; Deloria, Vine, “Spirit and Reason”, Fulcrum Books, Golden, Co 1999; Peat, F. David, op. cit<br /><br />[27] Symbolized by the famous “Trickster” in many Native stories of various nations. In Peat, David F. op cit: “The sacred figures of the People—Raven, Coyote, Napi, Nanabush and the rest—are all tricksters, beings who turn the world on its head. Even our own Western science has its trickster: entropy or disorder. ..In scientist’s terms the overall entropy of a system and its environment must increase or, to put it another way, if we insist upon generating order, this can only be done at the expense of creating disorder somewhere else.” P. 83<br /><br />[28] Peat, David F. Ibid p. 4<br /><br />[29] According to physicist David Bohm, the “implicate” or enfolded order is a deeper order in which the whole of a phenonmenon is enfolded or embodied in each part. (like the commodity was a concentrated expression or microcosm or the macrocosm of capitalism was for Karl Marx) while the explicate order is the surface immediately perceived by our senses. Bohm, David, “Wholeness and the Implicate Order”, Routledge and Kegan Paul, Boston, 1981<br /><br />[30] Kuhn, Thomas S. op cit. p. 6 “…normal science repeatedly goes astray…when it does—when, that is, the [scientific] profession can no longer evade anomalies that subvert the tradition of existing scientific practice…<br /><br />[31] Deloria, Vine, “Spirit and Reason” op cit. p. xiii<br /><br />[32] Amin, Samir, op cit p. 5<br /><br />[33] Cajete, Gregory, op cit pp 15-16<br /><br />[34] Cajete, Gregory, Ibid. p.20<br /><br />[35] In Blackfoot culture, as in most Indigenous cultures, the number four is not merely a quantity or cardinal magnitude, without quality or force as in many Eurocentric cultures (four of what?); it has its own power, symbolism and force giving it quality in addition to quantity. The number four stands for: the four principle directions of the compass (North, South, East and West); the four principle colors of the human family (Black White Red and Yellow); the four forms of balance that all humans must seek to survive and prosper (Physical, Emotional, Mental and Spiritual); the four basic elements of Nature (Wind, Fire, Earth and Water). In this model, there are four basic dimensions of development and sustainability that illustrate the dialectical unity of the macro and the micro levels of existence: control of assets and kinship (macro) and personal efficacy and spirituality (micro).<br /><br />[36] This was based on a translation of a speech by Chief Sealth from Suquamish into Chinook jargon and then into English. It’s authenticity has been questioned only on the basis that Chief Sealth sounded too articulate to be the real author and that it must have been written by a screenwriter.<br /><br />[37] Scientists estimate there are 10 to 30 million plant and animal species on the planet, most of them unidentified. Each year as many as 50,000 species disappear; Olson, Dan “Species Extinction Rate Speeding Up”, Minnesota Public Radio, Feb. 1, 2005 <a href="http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2005/01/31_olsond_biodiversity/">http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2005/01/31_olsond_biodiversity/</a></p><p align="justify"></p>Omahkohkiaayo i'poyihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16061952911212543042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449323876485291163.post-25833156883983571402009-08-22T19:29:00.000-07:002009-08-28T12:54:03.380-07:00Recent Papers in China: The Survival and Sustainability of the Blackfoot Nation and Culture; Presented at the 16th Congress of the IUAES, Kunming,<div align="justify"><em><strong>The Survival and Sustainability of the Blackfoot Nation and Culture</strong></em><br /><br />By James Craven/Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo i’poyi<br /><br />Professor of Economics and Geography, Clark College, Vancouver Washington<br /><br />Presented at the 16th Congress of the IUAES, Kunming, China July 26-31<br /><br /><br /><em><strong>The Past [is] Alive in the Present [and] Shaping the Future</strong></em><br /><br />“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” (George Orwell).<br /><br />When we speak of the survival and sustainability of Blackfoot “Culture”, we are speaking of more than the survival and sustainability of the Blackfoot Nation and people who are the primary creators, definers, carriers, learners, transmitters and expanded reproducers of that nation and culture. We are also speaking about the survival and sustainability of the potential energy and influences—even on other cultures—embodied in and transmitted by that culture. And since all culture is dynamic and never static, we are also speaking of the survival and sustainability of all that it takes for Blackfoot culture to grow, adapt to new challenges and new conditions, and, to continually challenge itself and its own traditions and sacred practices and assumptions, some of which are functional and worth keeping, and some dysfunctional and not worth keeping. That means that the survival and sustainability of what is left of the Blackfoot nation and culture, as with other Indigenous nations, nationalities and cultures also on the brink of total extinction, means dealing not only with conditions, practices, forces and interests nominally “endogenous” or internal to the Blackfoot nation and culture that may threaten it, but also it means dealing with those forces and interests, historical and present-day, that are nominally “exogenous” or external to the Blackfoot nation and culture, that have threatened, and still threaten to this day, its survival and sustainability.[1]<br /><br />As with any individual, so it is with any nation, that history is never really past and dead; it lives within, constrains and shapes, the present and thus also the future. This does not mean that individuals or whole nations cannot transcend the constraints of history, but they ignore them, or engage in historical revisionism, at their own peril. To understand and deal with the past, and the extent to which it is embodied in and thus constraining, the present and future, it is imperative that an honest examination and accounting, with no equivocation, and without fear or favor to anyone, of that past—and present shaped by that past—be done. Otherwise it is like someone going to see a physician or lawyer for help but not being honest and forthright about what practices in the past led them in the present to be in crisis and thus to need and seek help. That is partly, but only partly what George Orwell meant (he was also talking about historical revisionism as a tool of control in the present) when he noted:<br /><br />Historically, and it has been thoroughly documented in the present, Blackfoot and other Indigenous nations and their cultures in the Americas have been regarded by non-Indigenous settlers and the governments they have developed as existential threats. What that means is that the mere existence, even without any alleged aggressive acts or intentions on the part of those Indigenous nations and cultures, simply their mere existence, was regarded as a threat to the systems, values, interests, ambitions, power and control of those non-Indigenous nations and their governments. Why? It is recorded in their own internal documents and discussions; it is all very dialectical.<br /><br />As the “Tao Te Ching” of Lao Tzu puts it:<br /><br />We know beauty because there is ugly.<br />We know good because there is evil.<br />Being and not being,<br />having and not having,<br />create each other.<br /><br />Difficult and easy,<br />long and short,<br />high and low,<br />define each other,<br />just as before and after follow each other… [2]<br /><br />It is very clear from the internal documents of the U.S. and Canadian Governments, as well as from the internal documents, diaries and memoirs of the missionaries and “Indian Agents”, that the core and defining values, institutions, practices, priorities, relationships and other dimensions of the culture of the Blackfoot, with many aspects in common with the cultures of other Indigenous nations, were not simply regarded and dismissed as “inferior” or backward; rather, they were first and foremost regarded as direct challenges (without any evangelical intentions by Indigenous peoples to do so) to the core values, practices, relations, theologies and institutions—cultures—of capitalism and those of the settlers. Just as some capitalist nations have regarded the mere existence of socialism and socialist values as an existential threat, without any alleged overt or covert acts of aggression by socialist social formations like China, so Indigenous cultures and systems, with definite communalist and non-capitalist practices and values, were regarded as existential threats and banned. Even many Indigenous prayers, with communalist values, were seen as a threat to cultures—and interests—built on capitalism. Here are but two of many examples from the archives of the Department of Indian Affairs in Canada and the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the U.S. that show the real nature and intentions of their policies.<br /><br />For example, in many traditional societies, there is the sacred practice of “Potlatch” or “Give Aways” (Blackfoot) in which prized personal possessions are given away; they are not, by the way forms of “gambling” or “lotteries”. These ceremonies are designed to teach: the transient nature of all material possessions; not to become a slave to personal possessions; community spirit; compassion and that happiness of others is more important than individualistic and selfish desires and possessions. These traditional values are decidedly not consistent with market-based economies that are commonly based upon—often celebrated in elements of their social capital—greed, selfishness, ultra-individualism, competition, materialism, acquisitiveness, competition, narcissism and the logic of profits-for-power-and-power-for-profits. That the conflicting core values, relationships and institutions of traditional Indigenous societies were in direct conflict with—and seen not co-exist with—those of market-based societies was seen early on in U.S. and Canadian histories. For example:<br /><br />DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR<br />Office of Indian Affairs-Washington<br />Supplement to Circular No. 1665 February 14, 1923<br />Indian Dancing<br /><br />To Superintendents:<br /><br />At a conference in October, 1922, of the missionaries of the several religious denominations represented in the Sioux country, the following recommendations were adopted and have been courteously submitted to this office:<br /><br />1. That the Indian form of gambling[sic] and lottery[sic] known as the "ituranpi" (translated "Give Away") be prohibited.<br /><br />2. That the Indian dances be limited to one in each month in the daylight hours of one day in the midweek, and at one center in each district; the months of March and April, June, July, and August be excepted.<br /><br />3. That none take part in the dances or be present who are under 50 years of age.<br /><br />4. That a careful propaganda be undertaken to educate public opinion against the dance and to provide a healthy substitute.<br /><br />5. That there be close cooperation between the Government employees and the missionaries in those matters which affect the moral welfare of Indians.<br /><br />…After a conscientious study of the dance situation in his jurisdiction, the efforts of every superintendent must persistently encourage and emphasize the Indian's attention to these political, useful, thrifty, and orderly activities that are indispensable to his well-being and that underlie the preservation of his race in the midst of complex and highly competitive conditions. The instinct of individual enterprise and devotion to the posterity and elevation of family life should in some way be made paramount in every Indian household to the exclusion of idleness, waste of time at frequent gatherings of whatever nature, and the neglect of physical resources upon which depend food, clothings[sic] , shelter, and the very beginnings of progress." [3]<br /><br />"It is readily acknowledged that Indian children lose their natural resistance to illness by habitating[sic] so closely in these schools, and that they die at a much higher rate than in their villages. But this alone does not justify a change in the policy of this Department, which is geared towards the FINAL SOLUTION OF OUR INDIAN PROBLEM." [4]<br /><br />And it is more than irony that the term “Final Solution of ‘our’ the Indian Problem” in the DIA memo of D.C. Scott is the exactly language used by the Nazis as in “Final Solution to the Jewish Problem”. The Alberta Sterilization Act of 1928 [5], and the Eugenics Laws of 27 states of the U.S. were specifically cited by the German Nazis as the direct “inspirations” for their own 1933 Race Hygiene Law and 1935 Nuremberg Race Laws.” [6] According to John Toland, biographer of Adolf Hitler:<br /><br />Hitler's concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history. He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa And for the Indians in the Wild West; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America's extermination-by starvation and uneven combat-of the 'Red Savages' who could not be tamed by captivity. [7]<br /><br />And from an internal document of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs:<br /><br />"Set the blood-quantum at one-quarter, hold to it as a rigid definition of Indians, let intermarriage proceed, and eventually Indians will be defined out of existence. When that happens, the federal government will finally be freed from its persistent Indian problem." [8]<br /><br />Why are these ugly aspects of U.S. and Canadian history [9] introduced into this paper on the survival and sustainability of Blackfoot culture? Partly because they are legacies that remain within both Canadian and Blackfoot societies that have not yet been fully admitted, analyzed or repaired. And partly because some of the same forces and interests, both internal and external to the Blackfoot nation, that have destroyed traditional Blackfoot culture, brought it to the edge of extinction, and prevented its renewal and sustainability, are still alive, well, non-transparent and non-accountable to this very day. And it is perhaps true irony, that the most radical and advanced thinkers among Indigenous activists today, both in the U.S. and in Canada, are known as “Traditionalists”. And they argue, as modern-day sciences are increasingly confirming, that the Indigenous traditions, practices, science, and epistemology to which they wish to return, are not simply some mythical communalist and “primitive” past of some 200 years ago, but were and are, far in advance of where many crises-ridden non-Indigenous societies, paradigms, practices and systems are today. Among Blackfoot traditionalists, they argue that many dominant non-Indigenous cultures and their core defining notions, are threats not only to the very existence and survival of Blackfoot and other Indigenous peoples, but also to the very non-Indigenous societies and peoples pushing these notions themselves.<br /><br /><em><strong>Blackfoot Culture and Indigenous Science: Vision</strong></em><br /><br />Although there are many definitions of culture, all include language as absolutely central to the origination, learning, expression, adaptation, transmission and preservation of culture. In the language of Blackfoot or properly speaking “Niitsitapi” two words are employed: 1) “niitsitapia ‘ pii nin” and 2) “yaapiistotsimat” The first means to live in accordance with “Niitsitapi” Ways and the second means to be forced to live in accordance with White or non-Niitsitapi ways. These two words reflect profound differences between Eurocentric versus Indigenous languages, paradigms, epistemologies and even notions of what is “science”. The theoretical physicist F. David Peat who lived for a while among Blackfoot noted:<br /><br />“English, and for that matter French, German, Italian and the other European languages are noun-oriented. They are employed to divide the world into physical objects (nouns) and thinking into separate concepts (again nouns). Many Native American languages do not work this way. They are verb-based. Thus, when in English we speak of “medicine” we automatically seek a referent, a substance, an object, something tangible, and something that can be conceptualized. But suppose we begin with something verbal, with activity, process, a movement of harmony and balance. Medicine could then be felt in the beating of the heart, sensed as a movement around the sacred circle, the wind blowing through the leaves of the tress, the growing of green plants, and the astronomical alignments of the medicine wheel.” [10]<br /><br />From his study of Blackfoot Culture, with particular reference to the Sun Dance[11], Professor Peat came to some remarkable conclusions confirmed by other observers. He found for example, in the rituals, allegories, symbolism and values embodied in Blackfoot culture, not only evidence of very advanced “science” and scientific methods, but indeed “science” far in advance of where the Newtonian-based “science” and epistemology of Eurocentric cultures, increasingly under siege, are today. He found for example, concrete notions of key principles and concepts that today make up the versions of Quantum Mechanics “discovered” only in the early 20th century: Superpositionality; Wave/particle duality; Entanglement; Bose-Einstein condensates and mass-energy equivalence, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and the four basic laws of Thermodynamics.[12]<br /><br />Eurocentric “science”, reflected in the Eurocentric [13] languages and cultures, has been based upon (and under siege from Complexity or Chaos Theory and Dialectical-Historical Materialism for) its reliance on notions of: stasis; partial and general equilibria; linear and unidirectional causality; ultimate independent and dependent variables; ultra-reductionism; Morphostatic systems; a-contextualism and a-historicism; ultra-individualism; Newtonian clock-like or machine-like order[s]; the whole or macro being seen as nothing more than the sum of its parts or micro units; notions of culture and science themselves as a nouns or stocks of accumulated things rather than as processes; and hidden rhetorical and ideological intentions. All of these constructs and approaches of Newtonian-based “science” were, and are increasingly being put into question not only by Quantum Mechanics, Complexity or Chaos Theory, classical Taoism and more sophisticated versions of Dialectical-Historical Materialism, but, according to Peat and others, were anticipated long ago and embodied in Indigenous science and epistemology.<br /><br />Why do I mention subjects like “Blackfoot Physics” and principles, practices and epistemological approaches of Indigenous science in this paper? Because one question that may be posed here is a simple compound question: “Who cares, or should care--and why--about the imperative for survival and sustainability of Blackfoot and other Indigenous cultures?” This goes a way to help to answer that question. Survival of the Blackfoot and other Indigenous nations and cultures is an imperative for non-Indigenous peoples and cultures beyond the notion of “diversity is interesting and fun to watch”, or, in terms of the overworked metaphor of “The Canary in the Mine” (“Today it is us, tomorrow it is you”). It is increasingly evident in all the sciences, that often what is thought to be “new” is not true, and often what is true is not new. By any definition of culture, the Nazis sought to develop and did develop what they called “Nazi Culture”; but that is one form or type of culture, among others, that most decent people would not want to see survive and be sustained as it would mean, by definition, the destruction of other peoples and cultures. </div><div align="justify"><br />When we speak of Blackfoot Culture, as we speak of the Blackfoot Nation, we are not speaking of a fixed quantity or accumulated “stock” (as a noun typical of Eurocentric definitions of “culture”) of values, beliefs, symbols, language, arts, people, symbols, institutions, socioeconomic and politico-legal relationships, taboos, sacred constructs, traditions, artifacts, learned behaviors, rituals, myths etc. Culture, in Blackfoot and generally indigenous terms refers, rather, to dynamic processes. In Blackfoot terms, culture does not refer only to that which is created, learned, transmitted by and related to the concerns of humankind. In Blackfoot and Indigenous terms, culture also includes that of which humankind is an integral part whether created, recognized, seen, appropriated or even deemed “useful” by humankind.<br /><br />In most Indigenous languages, as in Blackfoot, there is no word for “science”[14], yet it is very clear that many Indigenous societies, Blackfoot included, were doing, no matter what culturally loaded definition of “science” is employed, real and very sophisticated science and scientific method. And when we speak of Indigenous science, as with culture, again we are not speaking of a noun of some accumulated body or “stock” of tools, techniques, methods for discovering the essences of and laws governing phenomena that make up an objective reality independent of our perceptions of that reality. We are not speaking of processes for merely discerning the salient or essential aspects of an objective reality outside of ourselves, but of processes that take into account our own roles in that reality, including, how our own perceptions, measurements and transformations of that reality become incorporated into and thus affect it. This is in line with some of the most recent discoveries in Quantum Mechanics, Chaos Theory and Dialectical-Historical Materialism and is not some kind of mysticism or metaphysics. Indigenous science does not seek to discover the essences and laws governing phenomena in order to simply get around, reverse or conquer them, but to work in accordance with them.<br /><br /></div><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SpG53g-IsRI/AAAAAAAAAyQ/24flolavRKo/s1600-h/FNModelDevel100%25.bmp"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 291px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5373280193824207122" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SpG53g-IsRI/AAAAAAAAAyQ/24flolavRKo/s400/FNModelDevel100%25.bmp" /> <p align="justify"></a><br /><br />Copyright 1991 by First Nations Development Institute (Reprinted Under Fair Use Doctrine)<br /><br />In Blackfoot culture, as in most Indigenous cultures, the number four is not merely a quantity or cardinal magnitude, without quality or force as in many Eurocentric cultures (four of what?); it has its own power, symbolism and force giving it quality in addition to quantity. The number four stands for: the four principle directions of the compass (North, South, East and West); the four principle colors of the human family (Black White Red and Yellow); the four forms of balance that all humans must seek to survive and prosper (Physical, Emotional, Mental and Spiritual); the four basic elements of Nature (Wind, Fire, Earth and Water). In this model, there are four basic dimensions of development and sustainability that illustrate the dialectical unity of the macro and the micro levels of existence: control of assets and kinship (macro) and personal efficacy and spirituality (micro).<br /><br />Blackfoot and Indigenous cultures (as do Chaos Theory and Dialectical-Historical Materialism) see systems and/as: totalities; wholes greater or lesser than the sums of their parts; continually in motion; as morphogenetic not morphostatic systems; driven by both external or exogenous, and internal or endogenous, shocks and processes on the verge of perpetual disequilibria. The more Eurocentric, Newtonian-based and clock-like or thermostat-like models, see only aggregates that are the sums of their parts, driven by external or exogenous shocks, and restored to, and moving between, punctuated equilibrium states by endogenous self-equilibrating processes. Needless to say, the present realities of the global economy as well as those realities of many national economies confirm the Blackfoot and Indigenous paradigms while refuting the classical or neoclassical paradigms. The existence of positive feedback loops (feedback effects that move a system in the same direction it was already moving instead of negative feedback loops that tend to reverse the direction of movement of a system) produce second-derivative (acceleration) and even third-derivative (differential acceleration or “jerks”) effects on phenomena and systems and lead to the process of “negation of the negation” or quantitative changes producing qualitative leaps.<br /><br />F. David Peat and others like Jack Weatherford in his trilogies [15] note that aspects of clashes of and between Indigenous and non-Indigenous nations and civilizations were related to clashes between fundamentally opposing paradigms and whole epistemologies. Not simply in terms of the morphostatic paradigm and systems of Newtonian clockwork and self-equilibrating systems of Eurocentric science versus the morphogenetic, self-negating, dialectical and chaotic systems of Indigenous science, Chaos Theory and Dialectical-Historical materialism, but in terms of fundamental values and views of the fundamental nature and roles of science itself.<br /><br /></p><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SpDLfLW68xI/AAAAAAAAAw4/LjO7ozdSlxU/s1600-h/twoMajorTypesofCyberneticSystem_jpt.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 300px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5373018091938312978" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SpDLfLW68xI/AAAAAAAAAw4/LjO7ozdSlxU/s400/twoMajorTypesofCyberneticSystem_jpt.jpg" /> <p align="justify"></a><br /><br />(Source Henderson, Hazel, http://www.hazelhenderson.com/visual.html; reprinted under Fair Use Doctrine)<br /><br /><em><strong>Hope, Trust and “Social Capital”</strong></em><br /><br />The notions of hope and trust are central in the Blackfoot/Indigenous model of survival and sustainability above. It is only recently that “mainstream” or “Neoclassical” theory in Economics has even paid any attention at all to the notion of “social capital” [16] (institutions that foster hope, trust, social cohesion and cooperation that cause/allow people to save, invest, sacrifice in the present for the future and for future generations and generally buy into the system and engage in “Political and Civic Participation”). Even now, the attention paid to social capital (with the focus on “capital” as also in human “capital”, with the construct of “capital” seen as the decisive dimension or force in productivity and “progress” being central) is on the level of reciprocity among individuals, not because of any assumed fundamental social nature or obligations of individuals to the collective, but in terms of the central Neoclassical construct of “methodological individualism”. Sociologists like Putnam’s notion of “social capital” as institutions of reciprocity, is that “you do for me and I do for you and we both gain individually as maximizing and atomistic individuals as we “appear” to be cooperating, and thus violating central assumptions of the Neoclassical paradigm, but actually, we remain atomistic and maximizing competitors —an attempt to rescue the Neoclassical paradigm from contradictions inherent in the central construct of “methodological individualism” [17]<br /><br />In Blackfoot culture, there is no notion of even the possibility of individuals within a collective being individually well off while within a sick and deteriorating collective. In traditional Blackfoot societies, the Chiefs ate last not first, no one ate unless all could eat, no one had shelter unless all had shelter and so on. Personal efficacy was intimately tied in with social efficacy. Lying was punished with death because a liar was seen as a threat to the whole collective not only as a potential collaborator with enemies, but as someone who would undermine social cohesion, cooperation and trust, and thus essential national security within and of the collective. Adultery was punished with loss of the nose for the woman and loss of the left braid of hair for the man. Banishment was seen as a punishment far worse than death because it meant loss of association for life with the community and one’s relations.[18]<br /><br />Attempts have been made to rebuild some of the essential dimensions of the overall traditional culture and values of the Blackfoot Nation, outside of the Indian Act and DIA Tribal Councils, in the Blackfoot Constitution which is being circulated, vetted, and altered with various submissions as it is being ratified at grass-roots levels.[19] This is not only being done outside of the Indian Act and DIA Tribal Councils but in direct challenge to them. Allegations and actual findings of serious corruption on the part of the Indian Act Tribal Councils, in every part of Blackfoot Country and in Indian Country in general, have undermined any confidence in them. Further, there are issues in international law as to how any nation can summarily declare another nation, that meets all the tests under international law to be considered a nation, as “sui generis” (of a special type) or as a “dependent nation”, and even declare who may or may not be considered members of that nation, as was and is being done by the governments of both the U.S. and Canada with respect to First Nations. Once any group of people meets the basic tests under international law qualifying them as a nation, then also under international law, that group has a fundamental right not to be exterminated or assimilated into another nation without the democratically-expressed consent of the peoples being assimilated, and, that group constituting a nation, has also fundamental rights associated with its survival: independence, self-determination, sovereignty, its own form of government and socioeconomic and politico-legal system. In fact, under the Vienna Convention on Treaties, which both the U.S. and Canadian Governments recognize as “the definitive international law on treaties”, since treaties are covenants between nations not individuals, then when treaties are signed, even if later broken over and over, as in the case of Treaty 7, which many Blackfoot contend, and have documentation to prove, was never signed or ratified by Blackfoot Chiefs in the first place, then each side is not only tacitly, but explicitly, recognizing: the other treating partner as a sovereign nation; as a co-equal; and its system of government, as having the sovereignty, authority and standing among its people to sign the treaty and hold a population to its terms into the future.<br /><br /><em><strong>“Control” of “Assets”</strong></em><br /><br />Central to the survival and sustainability of the Blackfoot Nation and culture is preservation of and control over what is left of the traditional Blackfoot land base. By “control” of the land, Blackfoot and most Indigenous people do not mean ownership, commoditization and “control” in the capitalist or Eurocentric sense, rather in the sense of stewardship to protect its viability and sustainability for future generations. The U.S. and Canadian governments have been caught in contradictions in their own capitalist property rights and values that have undermined both. Under capitalist law, land may be legally acquired and held in five basic ways: 1) sale (but no one can legally sell or keep stolen property even if bought innocently); 2) bequest (but no one can legally inherit stolen property even if innocently); 3) gift (but no one can give or accept stolen property even if innocently) 4) Just War (but the war must meet all the tests under international law of a Just War—must be in self-defense); 5) Discovery (but no one can “discover” lands with Indigenous peoples already on them). Thus, both the U.S. and Canadian governments know very well, that in their own terms, not Blackfoot or Indigenous terms alone, but in their own terms, and under the very same property rights they assert to defend their own private property, much of the historical acquisitions and losses of traditional Indigenous lands represented pure theft in addition to pure genocide. It is not enough to say that Indigenous nations had not concept of “private ownership” and commoditization of land and thus the lands were not stolen, the fact is that in terms of the existing international law at the time, law developed since the times of the Spanish Conquistadores in the 15th and 16th centuries, law that they invoked to legitimate their own properties, Indigenous lands were stolen and thus could not be sold, gifted, bequeathed or justified under laws of discovery or just war. That is why the present U.S. and Canadian governments are trying to define some Indian nations out of existence with blood-quantum criteria for Tribal recognition and membership and/or getting Indian Act Tribal Councils installed and maintained by those governments to sign bills of sale to legitimize past thefts and genocidal acquisitions of Indigenous lands. The map below illustrates the historical land base of the Blackfoot relative to what is recognized as Blackfoot lands today (some 2.6 million acres in both the U.S. and Canada contiguously) In fact, the Lame Bull Treaty or Treaty of Fort Benton of October 1855, one of the more problematic of the treaties signed by both the U.S. and Canadian governments, explicitly recognized the existence of a sovereign Blackfoot Nation made up of some various Bands or Tribes stretching over an area covering parts of Montana and the U.S. and Alberta in Canada contiguously. [20]<br /><br />The infamous Indian Residential School systems of Canada and the Indian Boarding Schools of the U.S. for which no real accounting or full apologies and restitutions have ever been made, were as much about breaking the connections of the Indigenous Nations with their land bases and traditional ways, by creating pools of unskilled and semi-skilled wage workers dependent upon sale of their labor power for survival, as with also breaking their connections with, and in turn undermining, their cultures, languages, spirituality and other dimensions of the Indigenous nations.[21]<br /><br /></p><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SpG6tFtItUI/AAAAAAAAAyY/fmZIhdKfOVo/s1600-h/BlackfootRegionalMap.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 327px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5373281114218083650" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SpG6tFtItUI/AAAAAAAAAyY/fmZIhdKfOVo/s400/BlackfootRegionalMap.jpg" /> </a><p align="justify"><br /><br />The map above shows the historical land base of the original Blackfoot Nation versus those lands recognized as Blackfoot Reserves today (some 2.6 million acres). If the claim is made that there is no more Blackfoot Nation, then when and under what conditions and authority did it cease to exist? If treaties still exist, and they do, and if each treating partner in signing a treaty both tacitly and explicitly recognizes the co-equal status, nationhood, sovereignty and system of government of the other, then when, and under what authority, did the traditional system of government of the Blackfoot cease to exist in lieu of the present Indian Act and DIA system of nominally elected but in reality appointed, DIA Tribal Councils? Are the governments of the U.S. and Canada admitting to genocide? What if the government of say Poland arrogated to presume to dictate criteria of who may or may not be considered a “real” American or Canadian? Or, perhaps another and more apt analogy, and the one actually used in Indian Country, might be the present-day Indian Act Tribal Councils, often riddled with corruption [22], being seen as having the standing and legitimacy under international law as say the Vichy Government installed by Nazi occupying France [23] or perhaps the standing and legitimacy of the government of the last Emperor Pu Yi installed by the Japanese Imperialists in China in an entity they created and what they named “Manchuko”[24].<br /><br />Further, the issue of loss of Blackfoot lands is not merely a matter of losses of critical resources for the survival and sustainability of the Blackfoot Nation. The connection to the land, in every possible way, is central to Blackfoot culture. As F. David Peat puts it:<br /><br />“Connection to the landscape is one of the most powerful things within an Indigenous society which explains the pain and anger The People experience when they see the land around them exploited and destroyed. The Native people I have spoken to refer to the land as their mother, and the Blackfoot say that to walk on the land is to walk on your own flesh. The memory of this landscape transcends anything we have in the West, for its trees, rocks, animals, and plants are all imbued with energies, powers and spirits. The whole of the land is alive and each person is related to it. The land sustains and, in turn, the ceremonies and sacrifices of The People aid in its renewal…I have heard many Native people say they have ‘a map in their head’. This map, I believe, is the relationship of the land to The People. Moreover, it transcends any mere geographical representation, for in it are enfolded the songs, ceremonies and histories of a people.”[25]<br /><br />The incentives to privatize, commoditize and expropriate what are left of Blackfoot lands have never been greater. Among the last sources of pristine fresh water are on what are now Blackfoot lands which are also rich in oil, ammonite, wind energy, grazing lands, uranium, timber, geothermal energy and other critical resources. This leads to the U.S. and Canadian Governments, along with private developers, finding the paths of least resistance and cheapest ways of acquiring access to and control over those resources, often with a few Tribal insiders selling out the resource bases and with disastrous consequences on the people of the various Reserves. This also undermines confidence in dealing with or forming partnerships with the U.S. and Canadian Governments on the part of Blackfoot and other Indigenous Nations because much of the corruption is seen as at least being tolerated by and beneficial to those governments and private interests that they clearly represent and protect[26] Indigenous activists can go on any Reserve or Reservation, even those of Nations and Tribes of which they are not members, and in ten minutes or less, they can find out, via the “Moccasin Telegraph Service” who is dealing drugs, who are doing illegal gambling, who are involved in prostitution, who are the aristocrats putting their relations and friends on the payrolls, and any and all other forms of corruption, They argue that RCMP and the FBI, charged with investigating and prosecuting such crimes on the Reserves and Reservations, could easily do the same and yet time after time, even when tipped off by Elders sick of corruption, do not. Why? Because corrupt Indians often sell-out cheap plus they are easier to control and manipulate as once anyone does any form of corruption, they are vulnerable to exposure and therefore also control.<br /><br /><em><strong>Education and Human Capital</strong></em><br /><br />When I first began to study Economics in the 1960s, the major textbooks equated economic growth with development and saw “physical capital” as central in the overall equations of factors critical to growth and development (the term sustainability was not even used) That view of growth and development, with physical capital as the key, of course conveniently also assigns a critical role to the capitalist who owns and/or controls that physical capital. Then came the 1970s, and someone got the bright idea that no matter how sophisticated the physical capital employed in economic growth and development, someone had to fix the machines, know when and where and how to use them and not use them, so along came the concept of “human capital” or knowledge, skill, experience, and presumably work ethic to be able to use the physical capital effectively; the textbooks got trendy and began to incorporate human capital as a key factor in economic growth no longer seen as synonymous with economic development, a much broader process. And only recently has the notion that workers and the population at large also in need of hope, trust, social cohesion, belief in the system to cause them to plan and work for the future that the notion of social capital beginning to show up in the textbooks. </p><p align="justify">-</p><p align="justify">Anyone who has been on the Reservations and Reserves of the Blackfoot, or on those of any Indigenous nations, has seen the tragedy of what passes for “education” and educational facilities.” The lack of infrastructure, qualified and motivated teachers, up-to-date curricula, advanced methods in pedagogy, internet access and library resources, mentors and many other resources critical to effective education and human capital formation are well known and have existed for a long time. But the problems for Indigenous education go far beyond what can be fixed with updating physical facilities and bringing in new technologies. They have to do with fundamental definitions of and approaches to what is real education, Indigenous or otherwise. There are scholars like Dr. Roland Chrisjohn of the Oneida Nation who have given serious thought to Indigenous education and how the Indian Residential School systems of Canada and the U.S. not only decimated Indigenous communities, but also never represented real and effective education or models for education even for non-Indigenous children.[27]<br /><br />Blackfoot language is being taught on all of the Reserves of the Blackfoot; but language is never sterile or value-free and it will always beg the questions of by whom, for whom, and for what purposes, are the language and also are traditional aspects of Blackfoot culture being taught. Many of the programs into which Blackfoot and other Indigenous children are channeled, by their own choices or by advisors, have to do with alcohol and substance abuse counseling or programs in “Native Studies” (often taught and using scholarship of by non-Indigenous academics that are virtually useless except for getting some kind of management job in the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the U.S. or the Department of Indian Affairs in Canada).<br /><br />The survival and sustainability of the Blackfoot and other Indigenous nations will require what other non-Indigenous nations will require in terms of educated—not just schooled which is not necessarily the same thing—workforce and leadership: real quality education that addresses the likely challenges and imperatives of survival and sustainability in the twenty-first century but, with due respect to the fact that that what is new may well not be true, and what is true may not be new.<br /><br /><em><strong>Conclusion</strong></em><br /><br />Blackfoot, like other Indigenous nations on the verge of extinction, are the proverbial and overworked “Canary in the Mine.” And as Albert Einstein once defined insanity as doing the same things over and over, in the same ways, with the same people and yet expecting different results. So it is, that Indigenous Peoples cannot continue, adopt or even allow, the very same forces, values, paradigms, institutions, paternalism, and whole socio-economic politico-legal systems (modes of production) that brought them to the verge of extinction, and that even threaten the non-Indigenous peoples who promote them as “civilization”, as well threatening the whole planet itself, to take them all the way to extinction as has happened to so many nations that no longer exist. For those who are not Indigenous and thus believe that the fate of Indigenous nations is of no concern however regrettable, perhaps give some thought to the fact that any society that tolerates and promotes the extinction of any national minority or nation within its borders is one that is capable of tolerating and promoting the extinction or any other group; and is not either sustainable or the kind of society or system worth preserving especially in today’s world with the means of mass destruction that exist today.[28]<br /><br />Blackfoot, like other Indigenous nations, are intimately bound up with Canada and indeed the world like it or not. The question, however, remains on what basis and with what consequences—for Canada as well as Indigenous nations—the present relations and institutions, that have brought Indigenous nations to the brink of extinction, could, should or would continue. Samir Amin notes:<br /><br />“Now the world capitalist system, cannot be reduced, even in abstraction, to the capitalist mode of production, and still less can it be analyzed as a mere juxtaposition of countries or sectors governed by the capitalist mode of production with others governed by precapitalist modes of production (the dualism thesis). Apart from a few ‘ethnographical reserves’, such as that of the Orinoco Indians, all contemporary societies are integrated into a world system. Not a single concrete socioeconomic formation of our time can be understood except as part of this world system… …Relations between the formations of the ‘developed’ or advanced world (the center) and those of the ‘underdeveloped’ world (the periphery) are affected by transfers of value, and these constitute the problem of accumulation on a world scale. Whenever the capitalist mode of production enters into relations with precapitalist modes of production, and subjects these to itself, transfers of value take place from the precapitalist to capitalist formations as a result of the mechanisms of ‘primitive accumulation’. These mechanisms do not belong only to the prehistory of capitalism; they are contemporary as well. It is these forms of primitive accumulation, modified but persistent, to the advantage of the center, that form the domain of the theory of accumulation on a world scale.” [29]<br /><br />In Blackfoot language “Ni Kso Ko Wa” means “We are all related” or “All my Relations”. So as we are all related as human beings, and indeed all human cultures share some common denominators, so are our fates, as individuals and whole cultures, interrelated. We are the proverbial “Canary in the Mine”.<br /><br /><em><em><strong>Footnotes</strong></em></em><br /><br />[1]Here the terms “exogenous” or external and “endogenous or “internal” are used nominally or in non-Indigenous terms as Blackfoot and other Indigenous groups see culture not only in terms of all that is created by humankind but also all that humankind is an integral part of and thus have different notions of what is external or internal to a given culture.<br /><br />[2] Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, translation by Dale, Ralph Verse 2 “Relativity”, p. 5 Barnes and Noble Books, N.Y. 2002<br /><br />[3] Long Standing Bear Chief, “Ni Kso Ko Wa: Blackfoot Traditions and Spirituality” pp. 8-9, Spirit Talk Press, Browning, Montana, 1992<br /><br />[4] Department of Indian Affairs, Superintendent D.C. Scott to B.C. Indian Agent-General Major D. McKay, DIA Archives, RG-10 series, April 12, 1910 (emphasis added)<br /><br />[5] The 1948 UN Convention on Genocide, to which Canada became a signatory in 1953 and to which the U.S. still remains not a full signatory because of the Hatch, Helms and Lugar “Sovereignty Amendment of 1988, in Article II defines a five-part test, any one of which, not all required to constitutes genocide: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting upon a group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures designed to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of one group to another group.<br /><br />[6] Black, Edwin, “War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race” Thunder’s Mouth Press N.Y. 2003; Alberta Sterilization Victims Also Used as Guinea Pigs Revelation Comes as 40 victims win $4M settlement; Marina Jimenez National Post 10/28/98<br /><br />[7] Toland, John, “Adolf Hitler”, Vol II, p. 802, Doubleday and Co. N.Y. 1976<br /><br />[8] Limerick, Patricia Nelson, “The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of American West” WW. Norton and Co. N.Y. 1987 p. 338<br /><br />[9] Poole, James “Hitler and His Secret Partners”, Pocket Books, NY 1997; “Having been a devoted reader of Karl May's books on the American West as a youth, Hitler frequently referred to the Russians as 'Redskins'. He saw a parallel between his effort to conquer and colonize land in Russia with the conquest of the American West by the white man and the subjugation of the Indians or 'Redskins'. 'I don't see why', he said, 'a German who eats a piece of bread should torment himself with the idea that the soil that produces this bread has been won by the sword. When we eat from Canada, we don't think about the despoiled Indians." (James Pool, Ibid, pp. 254-255)<br /><br />[10] Peat, F. David, “Blackfoot Physics” Weiser Books, Boston, MA. 2005, p. 128 see: http://books.google.com/books?id=rmxB4bau74QC&pg=PA24&lpg=PA24&dq=Corruption,+Blackfoot&source=bl&ots=ybsfW5JaRC&sig=iwdMWlIQ1UMiSB9gnVgTTgZ-r08&hl=en&ei=yEROSsymHITAsQPGq9mqDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9<br /><br />[11] http://www.utexas.edu/courses/wilson/ant304/projects/projects98/krochenskip/krochenskip.html<br /><br />[12] Gribbin, John “In Search of Schroedinger’s Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality”, Bantam Books, N.Y. 1984<br /><br />[13] By “Eurocentric” I mean in the sense used by Thomas Kuhn in his amazingly ignorant and arrogant statement: “But only the civilizations that descended from Hellenic Greece possessed more than the most rudimentary science” in Kuhn, Thomas, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, U of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1962, pp. 167-68<br /><br />[14] Cajete, Gregory, “Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence”, Clear Light Publishers, Santa Fe, 2000, p 2<br /><br />[15] Peat, F. David op. cit. pp 38-44. See also Weatherford Jack, “Indian Givers: How The Indians of the Americas Transformed The World” Fawcett Columbine, N.Y. 1988; “Native Roots: How The Indians Enriched America” Fawcett Columbine, N.Y.1991; “Savages and Civilization” Fawcett Columbine, N.Y. 1994 These authors among others demonstrate very advanced achievements in engineering, mathematics, cosmology and astronomy, medicine, architecture, law and constitutions, democracy and government, agriculture, resource management and sustainability and in many areas now being recognized that could only have been achieved with very advanced notions and techniques of science and scientific method.<br /><br />[16] Craven, James/Omahkohkiaayo I’poyi “The Evolving Concept of Social Capital, Markets, Market-Based Processes and Socialist Construction” paper delivered September 1-2, 2004 at The International Symposium for the Reform of Property Rights and Enterprise Development in Transitional Countries at Tsinghua University. See also Putnam, Robert D, “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community”, Simon and Schuster, N.Y. 2000<br /><br />[17] The notion that the whole or macro is nothing more than the sum of its parts. Individuals are said to be atomistic units assumed to be: rational, self-interested, competitive, informed, constrained and maximizers of utility—and that which yields—it and minimizers of pain and risk. There is no notion of a collective that acts as a collective or that is greater—or possibly lesser—than the sum of its parts. The model consists of a body of postulates about supposed “human nature”, irrespective of class, gender, age, ethnicity, race, religion, from which deductions are made, hypotheses are formed and predictions made about human behavior under assumed conditions and constraints (hypothetico-deductivism).<br /><br />[18] One of the most sacred of the Blackfoot Prayers (Nii-tsi-ta-piaa-tsi-mo-yii-kaan) sums up the traditional Blackfoot values considered most important (spelled out phonetically not in accordance with Franz-Russell conventions.)<br /><br />Ayo A’pis-to-too-ki (Creator)<br />Iss-Po-Mo-Kin-Naan (Help us)<br />Nah-Kay-Iss-Tsi-Sin-Naan (To listen)<br />Nah-Kai-Kim-Mo-Tsi-Sin-Naan (To be kind to one another)<br />Nah-Kay-ii-Ka’-Ki-Maa-Sin-Naan (To try hard)<br />Nah-Koh-Ko-Ka-Mo’-Toh-Sin-Naan (To be honest)<br />Nah-Ka-Wa-To-Yii-Tak-Sin-Naan (To be Spiritual)<br />Ooh-To-Kin-Naan, A’Pis-To-Too-Ki (Hear us, Creator)<br />Kim-Mis Ko-Ko-Siksi (Have pity on your children)<br />Ii-Ksi-Kim-Ma-Tap-Si-Ya (They are in need)<br />Kaa-Mo-Taa-Ni (Grant us safety)<br />Nii-Sta-Wa-Tsi-Maani (Help us to raise our families)<br />Naa-Piio’Siini (So that they may live long lives)<br /><br />[19] See “Draft Constitution of the Blackfoot Nation” and “Paper on the Blackfoot Nation” “Blackfoot Indictment.., at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota, Documents on Native American Genocide http://www.chgs.umn.edu/histories/victims/nativeAmerican/index.html and Helton, Taiawagi “Nation Building in Indian Country: The Blackfoot Constitutional Review” Paper Delivered at the Fifth Annual Tribal Law and Governance Conference, University of Kansas School of Law, October 2002 at http://wwwthesixthestate.blogspot.com/2007/11/nation-building-in-indian-country.html<br /><br />[20] For the actual text of the Treaty see http://www.ccrh.org/comm/river/treaties/blackfeet.htm<br /><br />[21] Chrisjohn, Roland et al “An Historic Non Apology, Completely and Utterly Not Accepted” Department of Native Studies, Fredericton, NB http://www.nativestudies.org/index1.html “An apology has at least three characteristics (some people will say there are more, some will list more specific traits… this doesn’t matter for present purposes). The absence of any of these three characteristics immediately disqualifies a statement as an apology: a sincere expression of remorse for the behavior, the promise never to repeat the behavior, and the undertaking to undo, as far as possible, the damage done by the behavior.”<br /><br />[22] See http://www.wole.org/corruption.htm; http://lakeconews.com/content/view/7220/764/<br /><br />[23] The term “Vichy Indians” has been used by scholars like Ward Churchill and others to denote BIA and DIA Tribal Councils (not an indictment of every one serving on them) as essentially like the puppet Vichy Government installed in France by occupying German Nazis. http://legendofpineridge.blogspot.com/2009/03/ward-churchill-denigrates-indians-he.html and http://aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/2006/01/abramoff-and-vichy-indians.html and http://www.touristclick.com/news/united%20states/means-delegation.html<br /><br />[24] See Aisin-Gioro Pu Yi “From Emperor to Citizen: The Autobiography of Pu Yi The Last Emperor of China” Oxford University Press, N.Y. 1987<br /><br />[25] Peat, F. David, op cit pp 85-86<br /><br />[26] http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:sBZag7ZxPvQJ:hrsbstaff.ednet.ns.ca/mckaysc/DIRT/Mi'kmaq/A%2520SEASON%2520OF%2520DEATHS.doc+Corruption,+Tribal+Councils,+Canada&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us; http://www.marxmail.org/archives/July99/clinton_visits_the_indian_reserv.htm http://www.leadershipforchange.org/insights/research/files/6.pdf<br /><br />[27] Chrisjohn, Roland “You Have to be Carefully Taught: Special Needs and First Nations Education”; “Genocide and Indian Residential Schooling: The Past is Present”; Retaining Indigenous Students in Post Secondary Programs: What Means For Whose Ends?” see http://www.nativestudies.org/works.html see also http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/AIER.html<br /><br />[28] A note here that the comments of this paper are directed only to the situation of Blackfoot and other Indigenous Nations in the Americas. No equivalence is intended or suggested between the situations, realities of or governmental policies vis-à-vis, national minorities, in other places like China; and the same with respect to First Nations in the Americas. The history of China relative to the histories of the nations of the Americas with Indigenous populations is very different. Various Indigenous groups, once meeting the tests of international law for being considered separate nations became integrated national minorities within a larger and contiguous nation of China long ago and since Liberation in 1949, the statuses and survival of the Indigenous minorities by the Government of China have been protected and assured far more than in the cases of the U.S. and Canada, and far more than if each national group had had its own traditional government along with its own land base, culture, language, common economic life, polity, history and criteria for membership of the group (the essential elements of a nation in international law) In the case of the Americas, not only were there treaties recognizing First Nations as Nations, although asserted to be “sui generis” or of a special type, or, as in the case of the U.S. and the Supreme court decisions of Marshall as “dependent nations”, the policies of the governments of the Americas were genocidal in intent and effect; Indigenous nations were never assimilated into the broader fabrics and governments of the nations of the Americas and were left isolated in many cases, not all, on their traditional lands thus retaining their status and realities as Indigenous nations. This became especially true when past Treaties were recognized and invoked ad hoc when in the interests of the colonizing governments of the Americas, and in doing so, they both tacitly and explicitly recognized the continued existence of Indigenous nations as nations. Since the rights of all nations under international law are equal, dependent upon law and facts on the ground and not on the size or perceived power of a nation, or, indeed if that group has been recognized as a nation, especially by colonizing forces intent on its extermination, then it follows that the Blackfoot Nation and other Indigenous nations that still meet the tests of international law to constitute nations remain so, with the rights under international law of all nations regardless of who does or does not recognize them as such. The so-called Republic of China or Taiwan is currently only recognized by 23 nation states including the Vatican, as the supposed “legitimate government” of all of China whereas up until the 1970s, the reality and legitimacy of the People’s Republic of China as the sole and legitimate government of all of China was denied except by a handful of nations yet the objective reality of and international law supporting, the PRC as the sole and legitimate representative of the whole nation of China was never in question by any honest and thinking person or government. There were 51 founding members of the UN and now 192 members with many nations recognized as nations and becoming nation states well after the formation of the UN.<br /><br />[29] Amin, Samir, “Accumulation on a World Scale: A Critique of the Theory of Underdevelopment, Vols I and II, Monthly Review Press, N.Y. 1974, pp2-3<br /><br /><em><strong>Conference Program</strong></em><br /><br />Managing Ethno-Cultural Diversity:<br />Comparisons of Approaches to Multicultural Diversity<br /><br />Canada-China Symposium<br /><br />IUAES2009<br /><br />中加民族文化多样性管理学术研讨会<br />•对文化多样性的比较研究•<br /><br />Preliminary Program<br />议程<br /><br /><br />July 28-29, 2009<br />Yunnan University, Kunming China<br /><br />2009年7月28-29日<br />云南大学•中国昆明<br /><br /><br />Managing Ethno-Cultural Diversity:<br />Comparisons of Approaches to Multicultural Diversity<br /><br />Canada-China Symposium<br /><br /><br />中加民族文化多样性管理学术研讨会<br />•对文化多样性的比较研究•<br /><br />Co-organizers<br />Jean L. Kunz, Policy Research Initiative Canada<br /><br />DU Fachun, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China<br /><br />会议组织:<br />中国社会科学院 杜发春<br />加拿大政策研究所 骆菁<br /><br />Supporter<br />Canadian Embassy in Beijing<br />协办:加拿大驻华大使馆<br /><br />Sponsor<br />Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada<br />赞助:加拿大外交与国际贸易部<br /><br />Canada-China Symposium on Managing Ethno-Cultural Diversity<br />中加民族文化多样性管理学术研讨会<br /><br />Draft Agenda<br /><br />议程草案<br /><br />July 28-29(Monday-Wednesday), 2009<br />2009年7月28-29日(周二、周三)<br /><br />Day 1 (July 27,Monday) ARRIVAL and REGISTRATION<br />第一天(2009年7月27日,周一) 报到注册<br /><br />Day 2 (July 28, Tuesday, Morning Sessions) OPENING CEREMONY and KEYNOTE SPEECHES<br />第二天(2009年7月28日,周二上午) 开幕式和主旨演讲<br /><br /> 8:30-9:00 Registration and Welcome 注册/报到<br /><br /> 9:00 - 9:40<br />Opening ceremony 开幕式<br />Moderators: Jean L. Kunz, Policy Research Initiative Canada<br />DU Fachun, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China<br />主持:骆菁(加拿大政策研究所), 杜发春(中国社会科学院)<br /><br />Remarks致辞:<br /><br /> HAO Shiyuan, Director of Academic Division of Law, Social and Political Studies at CASS Academician of CASS, Director of IEA/CASS<br />郝时远(中国社会科学院政法学部主任、民族所所长、学部委员)<br /><br /> Jeff Nankivell,Minister, Canadian Embassy in Beijing<br />南杰瑞(加拿大驻华大使馆公使、副馆长)<br /><br /> WU Jinguang, Vice Director-General, Bureau of International, State Commission of Ethnic Affairs PRC. Deputy Secretary-General, Organizing Committee of IUAES2009.<br />吴金光(国家民族事务委员会国际司副司长、人类学世界大会筹委会副秘书长)<br /><br /> ZHANG Youyun, Vice Director-General, Bureau of International Cooperation, CASS<br />张友云(中国社会科学院国际合作局副局长)<br /><br /> 9:40 – 10:00 Photo session and coffee/tea break 照相、茶休<br /><br /> 10:00 – 12:00<br /><br />Keynote speeches主旨演讲<br /><br />Moderator: Dr. WANG Bing (Liaoning Normal University, China)<br />主持:王昺(中国加拿大研究会副会长,辽宁师范大学教授)<br /><br />Keynote speakers and topics 主旨演讲人和题目<br /><br /> Dr. James Frideres(University of Calgary, Canada): “Ethnic Identity in the 21st Century”<br />傅里德斯 (加拿大卡尔加里大学,教授) :“21世纪的民族认同”<br /><br /> Dr. Peter S. Li(University of Saskatchewan, Canada): “Immigrant Integration in Canada”<br />李胜生(加拿大萨斯凯彻温大学,教授):“加拿大的移民融合”<br /><br /> Dr. Carlo J. Krieger (Luxembourg Scholar): “Cultural Intervention at Work: Two Examples from Native North America”<br />柯意赫(卢森堡学者):“从北美原住民的两个案例看文化干预”<br /><br /> Dr. Paul S. Maxim(Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada): “Aboriginal Education in Canada and China: A Comparative Study”<br />马克西姆(加拿大劳里埃大学,副校长): “加拿大和中国民族教育的比较研究”<br /><br /> Dr. Jean L. Kunz (Policy Research Initiative, Canada): Facilitating the Integration of Immigrant Students In Canada: Implications For Migrant Students In China<br />骆 菁(加拿大政策研究所,项目主任):“便利移民学生在加拿大的融入:对中国农民工学生的启示”<br /><br /> 12:00-13:00 Lunch 午餐<br /><br /><br />July 28(Afternoon Sessions), PRESENTATIONS 7月28日(周二)下午 ,会议代表发言<br /><br /> 1:30-3:00 pm<br /><br />Session 1 Governance of Diversity: Current Practices<br />Moderator: Dr. Paul Maxim(Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada)<br />Discussant: Dr. Carlo J. Krieger (Luxembourg Scholar)<br />分组1 多样性治理:当前实践<br />主 持:马克西姆(加拿大劳里埃大学,副校长)<br />评 议:柯意赫(卢森堡学者)<br /><br />Presenters(发言人):<br /><br /> Dr. Marie Louise LEVEBVRE (Universite du Quebec a Montreal, Canada) : Diversity of Issues, Responses and Policies Affecting Migrant Integration and Social Cohesion in Canada<br />玛丽露(加拿大魁北克大学蒙特利尔分校,教授):“多样性问题、回应和政策对加拿大移民整合和社会凝聚力的影响”<br /><br /> Dr. WANG Bing(Liaoning Normal University, China): “A Comparative Study of Canada’s Policy of Indian Education and China’s Policy of Mongolian Education”<br />王昺(辽宁师范大学教授,中国加拿大研究会副会长):“加拿大印第安人教育与中国蒙古族教育的比较研究”<br /><br /> Dr. WANG Chaohui(Minzu University of China):Indigenous Study: Aboriginal Language and Culture in Canada<br />王朝晖(中央民族大学,副教授):“加拿大原住民的语言和文化”<br /><br /> Dr. Isabella Calleja (University of Malta): Governance of Multicultural Diversity<br />伊莎贝尔(马耳他大学国际关系,系主任、教授):“文化多样性治理”<br /><br /> 3:00-3:10 pm Coffee/tea break茶休<br /><br /> 3:00-4:30 pm<br /><br />Session 2 Governance of Diversity: Future Considerations<br /><br />Moderator: Prof. LI Pengfei(Beijing Institute of Technology, China)<br />Discussant: Dr. Li Zong (University of Saskatchewan, Canada)<br />分组2 多样性治理:未来思考<br />主 持:李鹏飞(北京理工大学,教授)<br />评 议:宗 力(加拿大萨斯凯彻温大学社会学系,教授)<br /><br />Presenters:<br />发言人:<br /><br /> Dr. Denise Helly (Universite du Quebec, Canada): The Particular Treatment of Muslims in Canada<br />海雷(加拿大魁北克大学社会科学研究所,教授):“加拿大对穆斯林的特殊对待”<br /><br /> Dr. CHANG Shiyin (Tianjin Normal University, China): Reflection on Canadian Multiculturalism<br />常士訚(天津师范大学,政治学系主任、教授):“对加拿大多元文化主义的反思”<br /><br /> Dr. Olga Orlić(Institute for Anthropological Research, Croatia): Regional Multiculturalism in Istria and European Integration Processes<br />奥尔加(克罗地亚人类学研究所,教授):“伊斯塔利亚的区域多元文化主义及其在欧洲的整合进程”<br /><br /> Dr.Tereza Cristina Nascimenta Franca and Giordano Sousa de Almeida (Catholic University of Brasilia, Brazil): Comparison of Approaches on Intercultural Relations and Cultural Diversity: Protectionism or Liberalization?<br />特热扎和吉尔丹诺(巴西利亚天主教大学,教授):“内文化关系和文化多样性的比较方式:保护主义还是自由主义?”<br /><br /> 4:40-5:00 pm Coffee/tea break茶休<br /><br /> 5:00-6:30 pm<br /><br />Session 3: Social and Economic Integration of Migrants<br /><br />Moderator: Dr. Denise Helly (Universite du Quebec, Canada)<br />Discussant: Dr. Jean L.Kunz (Policy Research Initiative, Canada)<br />分组3:移民的社会和经济整合<br />主 持:海雷(魁北克大学社会科学研究所,教授)<br />评 议:骆菁(加拿大政策研究所,项目主任)<br /><br />Presenters<br />发言人:<br /><br /> Dr. Li Zong (University of Saskatchewan, Canada): Mainland Chinese Immigrants in Canada and Barriers to Integration in Multicultural Society<br />宗力(加拿大萨斯凯彻温大学社会学系,教授):“加拿大的中国大陆移民及其融入多元文化社会的障碍”<br /><br /> DU Qianping(Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China): Chinese Church and Political Choice in Chinese Community in Canada<br />杜倩萍(中国社会科学院民族所,助理研究员):“加拿大华人教会对华人社区政治取向的影响”<br /><br /> ZHANG Qinglai(Beijing Educational Examinations Authority, China): “Let the Boat flowing with the Mainstream” ---- The Policy Base of Right and Equity: Education of Multicultural Diversity for Immigrant’s Children<br />张庆来(北京教育考试研究院,副研究员):“权利的政策基础与公平:对移民孩子的文化多样性教育”<br /><br /> DU Fachun(Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China): Ecological Resettlement and Cultural Heritage: A Comparative Study in China and Canada<br />杜发春(中国社会科学院民族所,副研究员):“生态移民与文化遗产:中加比较研究”<br /><br /><br /> 6:30 pm Adjournment 休会<br /><br /><br /> 7:00-9:00 pm, Welcome Dinner晚7-9点,欢迎晚餐<br /><br /><br />Day 3 (July 29, Wednesday) , PRESENTATIONS 第三天(7月29日,周三),会议代表发言<br /><br /><br /> 8:00-9:30 am<br />Session 4: Education and Identity Formation<br /><br />Moderator: Dr. Jean L. Kunz (Policy Research Initiative, Canada)<br />Discussant: ZHANG Qinglai(Beijing Educational Examinations Authority, China):<br />分组4:教育与认同形成<br />主 持:骆 菁(加拿大政策研究所,项目主任)<br />评 议:张庆来(北京教育考试研究院副研究员,中华教育创新协会会长)<br /><br />Presenters:<br />发言人:<br /><br /> Christopher Anderson (Simon Fraser University, Canada): Education Through Assimilation: Applying Lessons from Canada’s Indian Residential School System to the Examination of China’s Minority Educational Policy<br />安德森(加拿大西蒙菲沙大学,法学研究顾问):“加拿大少数民族同化教育及其对中国民族教育的意义”<br /><br /> Dr. Stephanie Xiao Liang(Hunan Business College, China): Academic Adaptation: Mainland Chinese Students In Graduate Programs at a Canadian University<br />梁晓(湖南商学院讲师,卡尔加里大学博士):“学术适应:加拿大高校里中国大陆研究生教育”<br /><br /> Dr. Huhua Cao(University of Ottawa,Canada), Anwaer Maimaitiming(Xinjiang Normal University, China), MA Shengquan(Hainan Normal University, China):“Spatial Inequality in Children’s Schooling in China: Issue of Minority Regions”<br />曹沪华(加拿大渥太华大学,副教授), 安瓦尔•买买提明(新疆师范大学,副教授),马生全(海南师范大学,教授):“中国儿童教育空间的不平等:少数民族地区问题”<br /><br /> LI Qiang(Yunnan University for Nationalities): On The Policies of the Ethnic Minority's Foreign Language Education in Yunnan Against the Multi-ethnic Culture Background<br />李强(云南民族大学教授):“多元民族文化背景下的云南少数民族外语教育政策研究”<br /><br /> 9:30-9:40 pm Coffee/tea break茶休<br /><br /> 9:40-11:00 am<br /><br />Session 5: Ethnic Identity: Issues of Shifting Ethnic Identification<br /><br />Moderator: Dr. Carlo J. Krieger (Luxembourg Scholar)<br /><br />Discussant: Dr. James Frideres(University of Calgary, Canada)<br />分组5:变化的族群认同问题<br />主 持:柯意赫(卢森堡学者)<br />评 议:傅里德斯 (加拿大卡尔加里大学,教授)<br /><br />Presenters:<br />发言人:<br /><br /> Erin Williams (University of British Columbia, Canada): Patterns and Variation in the Local Application of the Indigenous Peoples Concept<br />爱琳(加拿大不列颠哥伦比亚大学,博士研究生):“原住民观念在地方性应用中的形式和变异”<br /><br /> James M. Craven(Clark College, USA): The Survival and Sustainability of the Blackfoot Nation and Culture in Canada and USA<br />柯瑞文(克拉克学院,教授):“北美黑脚族印第安人的文化生存和维系”<br /><br /> LI Pengfei(Beijing Institute of Technology, China):Towards a Better Understanding of the Needs of the North American Indians<br />李鹏飞(北京理工大学,教授):“北美印第安人的诉求”<br /><br /> WEI Li and LIU Zhongwen (Liaoning Police Academy, China): Preservation and Development of the Canadian Distinctive Aboriginal Cultures<br />魏莉、刘忠文(辽宁警官高等专科学校,副教授):“加拿大土著文化的保留和弘扬”<br /><br /> 11:00-11:10 am Coffee/tea break茶休<br /><br /> 11:10-12:40 am<br /><br />Session 6: Responding to Globalization: Intercultural Communication<br /><br />Moderator: Dr. Graham Johnson(University of British Columbia, Canada)<br />Discussant: Dr. Huhua Cao(University of Ottawa,Canada)<br />分组5:全球化回应:文化交流与教育思考<br />主 持:詹 森(不列颠哥伦比亚大学,教授)<br />评 议:曹沪华(加拿大渥太华大学,副教授)<br /><br />Presenters:<br />发言人:<br /><br /> Dr.ZHANG Yanqiu (Communication University of China, China): Media Literacy Education In China And Canada In The Context Of Cultural Diversity: Difference And Similarities<br />张艳秋(中国传媒大学,副教授):“文化多样性背景下的中加媒体教育比较研究”<br /><br /> LIAN Haiying(Nanjing University of Finance & Economics, China): Canadian Pluralism Education Under the Background of Globalization<br />练海英(南京财经大学,副教授):“全球化背景下的加拿大多元文化教育”<br /><br /> LI Liping and ZHANG Gaoyuan( Nanjing University of Finance & Economics,China): Reflection on Christmas Celebration in China<br />李丽萍、张高远(南京财经大学,副教授):“对中国过圣诞节的反思”<br /><br /> CAO Qian(Minzu University of China): The Adaptive Condition of College Students to Xinjiang in China<br />曹谦(中央民族大学,硕士研究生):“新疆大学生的适应状况调查”<br /><br /> 12:40-13:00 pm<br /><br />Closing Summary 会议总结<br /><br />Jean L.Kunz, Policy Research Initiative Canada<br /><br />DU Fachun, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China<br />杜发春(中国社会学科学院)<br />骆 菁(加拿大政策研究所)<br /><br /><br /> 13:00 Lunch 午餐<br /><br /><br />Day 4( July 30, Thursday) DEPARTURE 第4天(7月30日,周四),代表离会<br /><br />Thank you very much for your participation & cooperation! 衷心感谢您的支持和帮助</p><p align="justify"></p>Omahkohkiaayo i'poyihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16061952911212543042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449323876485291163.post-64069784420658366072009-05-15T09:15:00.000-07:002009-09-03T21:08:24.300-07:00Judicial Findings: Inter-Nation Tribunal on Indian Residential schools in Canada<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/Sg2WTmHUe8I/AAAAAAAAAwY/f6ISyOpx9t4/s1600-h/truthlie.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 355px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 319px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5336086396896836546" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/Sg2WTmHUe8I/AAAAAAAAAwY/f6ISyOpx9t4/s400/truthlie.jpg" /></a><br /><br />JUDICIAL FINDINGS FROM THE INTER-NATION TRIBUNAL ON RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS IN CANADA<br /><br />James Craven/Omahkohkiaayo i’poyi<br />Omahkohkiaayo @hotmail.com<br />July 14, 1998<br />Submitted by James M. Craven/Omahkohkiaayo i’poyi, Tribunal Judge<br />(Copyright James M. Craven July 14, 1998, All Rights Reserved)<br /><br />"You Can Recognize a Red Indian by His [or Her] Way of Life, Not by His [or Her] Blood Percentage."<br />- Chief Lame Deer, Lakota<br /><br />Part One: Some principles of aboriginal life and law guiding my inquiry and findings<br />Part Two: Mission of the Tribunal - My understanding<br />Part Three: On the Issue of Ethnocide versus Genocide<br />________________________________________<br />PART ONE: Some principles of aboriginal life and law guiding my inquiry and findings<br /><div align="justify">-<br />1. TRUTH, JUSTICE, HEALING, RECONCILIATION AND PREVENTION OF FUTURE ABUSES: THE FOCUS OF INQUIRY, JUDGMENT and DISPOSITION:<br /><br />Probably one of the most serious gaps in the system is the different perception of wrongdoing and how to treat it. In the non-Indian community, committing a crime seems to mean that the individual is a bad person and therefore must be punished...The Indian communities view a wrongdoing as a misbehavior which requires teaching or an illness which requires healing." (Justice proposal by Sandy Lake First Nation (Oji-Cree) quoted in Ross, 1996, p. 5)<br /><br />"Peacemaking is generally not as concerned with distributive justice or rough and wild justice (revenge, punishment, control, determining who is right) as it is with sacred justice. Sacred justice is that way of handling disagreements that helps mend relationships and provides solutions. It deals with the underlying causes of the disagreement...Sacred justice is found when the importance of restoring understanding and balance to relationships has been acknowledged. A peacemaking process tends to be viewed as a guiding process, relationship-healing journey to assist people in returning to harmony." (Quoted in Ross, 1996, p. 27)<br /><br />We recognize that eye-for-an-eye" "justice" may lead to the whole world going blind and we recognize that it is in everyone’s interest--including the accused--to focus on healing, rehabilitation, solving problems by understanding and removing the root causes of those problems--as opposed to a total and sole focus on "punishment". The real challenge is to pay due respect and sensitivity to the obvious pain, anguish and suffering of alleged victims making their accusations on the one hand while paying due respect to the imperative for due process for the accused on the other hand. It is a real challenge to shame and deter criminal acts while retaining respect for all people--creations of the Creator--and the potential for accused to turn their lives around. All people must be seen as many--sided and whole people, with mental, physical, emotional and spiritual dimensions and not to be reduced to being simply "offenders" and victims". On the other hand, we also recognize that the healing approaches may be misused to obstruct Truth and Justice. According to Rupert Ross:<br /><br />"Fourth, I don't mean to suggest that all Aboriginal leaders who now speak the language of healing are doing so out of an honest commitment to the betterment of...their communities. Sadly, there are many dysfunctional communities where the groups in power promote traditional healing programs for one reason only: to prevent their abusive friends from being truly called to account in anyone’s justice system, Western or Aboriginal. It is not the teachings themselves that are responsible for such abuse; it is their misuse by desperate people in desperately ill communities." (Ross, 1996, p. 15)<br /><br />2. WE ARE ALL RELATED:<br /><br />We are all related. For accusers and accused alike, allegations are serious. Accusers and accused alike are members of a Family, Clan, Tribe and Nation and what affects one affects all. As Susan Guyette put it:<br /><br />"Cultural preservation is not a romantic ideal, but rather a practical necessity. Traditional Cultures are tightly organized systems of belief and behavior, which nourish and protect social groups as well as the individuals who belong to them. The loss of traditional cultures places extreme social and psychological stress on tribal and rural peoples, exacerbating economic problems and creating additional social and health problems such as the lack of family cohesion and substance abuse." (Guyette, 1996, p. xiii)<br /><br />The processes of Aboriginal or Indigenous Justice must balance protection of the rights of the accused with the imperative of preservation of the whole society and of what is worth preserving of the whole society--which also protects the individual, including the accused. Forms of revenge, retribution, abuse, injustice, duplicity and failure to seek truth and justice -against the accused or his/her family--add to cumulative spirals of abuse and dysfunction that progressively damage and destroy the whole society including those practicing the forms of abuse, duplicity, retribution, revenge etc.<br /><br />3. TRUTH, JUSTICE, HEALING, RECONCILIATION AND PREVENTION OF FUTURE ABUSES ARE SACRED:<br /><br />We are human beings from different backgrounds, with some different interests and agenda. In Aboriginal Law there is a recognition that adversarial processes often and easily degenerate into an emphasis on winning and not on discovery of truth per se. There can be no stopping of further abuses, rehabilitation and/or restrictions of abusers, healing, just compensation for victims or proper lessons learned until that which needs to be stopped, corrected and healed is fully and fairly understood with all contending perspectives fully and fairly taken into account. Still, Truth, Justice, Healing, Reconciliation and Prevention of Future Abuses--the fundamental mandates and goals of Aboriginal Law--are often very illusive. An old Cree saying goes:<br /><br />"You cannot pass along what another person really told you; you can only pass along what you heard."<br /><br />And from Ohiyesa:<br /><br />"The worship of the Great Mystery is silent, solitary, and free from all self-seeking. It is silent, because all speech is of necessity feeble and imperfect; therefore the souls of our ancestors ascended to God in wordless adoration." (Ohiyesa, 1993, pp. 1-2)<br /><br />People will invariably react to what was said or done in very different ways and as Rupert Ross, a non-Indian observer of "Aboriginal Justice" put it:<br /><br />"Discussions become a celebration of the rich diversity of life rather than a contest between opposing views about what we ought to think and feel." (Ross, 1996, p. x)<br /><br />Still, however illusive, we believe that there are objective truths and standards of justice that transcend the myriad differences and subjective perceptions and opinions as to what was/is true or what was/is justice. We get closer to those objective truths and forms of justice by allowing a full--yet structured--interplay of diverse opinions, evidence etc.<br /><br />The search for Truth, Justice, Healing, Reconciliation and Prevention of Future Abuses are the sacred and the fundamental imperatives. Any attempts to block or thwart these imperatives, bring dishonor not only upon the person doing this, but also bring dishonor upon the family, clan, Tribe and Nation of that person. An Indian Trial or Tribunal is a sacred and a spiritual event as well as a secular one and calls for the triumph of the spiritual mind over the physical mind. According to Ohiyesa:<br /><br />"We Indian people have traditionally divided the mind into two parts--the spiritual mind and the physical mind. The first--the spiritual mind--is concerned only with the essence of things, and it is this we seek to strengthen by spiritual prayer, the second, or physical mind, is lower. It is concerned with all personal or selfish matters..." (Ohiyesa, 1993, pp. 7-8)<br /><br />And:<br /><br />"Before there were any cities on this continent, before there were bridges to span the Mississippi, before the great network of railroads was even dreamed of, we Indian people had councils which gave their decisions in accordance with the highest ideal of human justice. Though the occurrence of murder was rare, it was a grave offense, to be atoned for as the council might decree. Often it happened that the slayer was called upon to pay the penalty with his own life. In such cases, the murderer made no attempt to escape or evade justice. That the crime was committed in the depths of the forest or at dead of night, witnessed by no human eye, made no difference to his mind. He was thoroughly convinced that all is known to the Great Mystery, and hence did not hesitate to give himself up, to stand trial by the old and wise men of the victim’s clan.<br /><br />Even his own family and clan might by no means attempt to excuse or to defend him. But his judges took all the known circumstances into consideration, and if it appeared that he slew in self-defense, or that the provocation was severe, he might be set free after a thirty days period of mourning in solitude. The ceremonial mourning was a sign of reverence for the departed spirit." (Ohiyesa, 1993, pp. 23-34)<br /><br />And:<br /><br />"Such is the importance of our honor and our word that in the early days, lying was a capital offense. Because we believed that the deliberate liar is capable of committing any crime behind the screen of cowardly untruth and double dealing, the destroyer of mutual confidence was summarily put to death that the evil might go no further." (Ohiyesa, 1993, p. 26)<br /><br />4. FORM, PROTOCOL AND RITUAL MUST ASSIST AND BE SUBSERVIENT TO THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH, JUSTICE, HEALING, RECONCILIATION AND PREVENTION OF FUTURE ABUSES:<br /><br />Even the physical layout of the Aboriginal Court must be considered to facilitate the search for truth and justice. For example:<br /><br />"...putting those tables in a circle shape, hoping that this will reduce the adversarial nature of the process. Instead of having the accused and his lawyer sit directly opposite the Crown and the police like boxers on opposite sides of the ring, they are spread around the circle together with probation officers, translators, alcohol workers and anyone else who might have a contribution to make. My own impression is that such an arrangement does make people feel more comfortable and also contributes to fuller community participation. Perhaps people feel better joining as equals a group discussion aimed at finding solutions than they do making formal and solitary suggestions to an all-powerful judge." (Ross, 1996, P. 8)<br /><br />Many of the usual processes and tactics associated with the adversarial systems of non-Indian Courts often thwart rather than assist the causes of truth and justice. Such tactics as forum shopping, judge and jury shopping, contrived order of witnesses, rhetorical tricks designed to cast doubt on or prevent admission of credible evidence, abusing witnesses, ad hominem attacks with irrelevant opinion and evidence, ultra-formalism or ultra-ritualism, artificial distinctions between "non-argumentative" vs. "argumentative" phases of a trial or evidence (all speech is rhetoric in the classical sense--non-coercive forms of persuasion), obstruction of full discovery for any party, conscious introduction of contrived or partial evidence, rhetorical appeals to prejudices, deliberate refusal to pose relevant but uncomfortable questions, contrived highlighting of weak points and minimizing strong points of an opponents case while doing the reverse for ones own case, use of paid career experts, etc are to be avoided as they thwart rather than enhance "due process" and discovery of truth and justice--even for the accused.<br /><br />All parties having what they feel to be relevant evidence and opinion on a particular matter are urged to participate as a matter of duty--to the causes of Truth, Justice, Healing, Reconciliation and Prevention of Further Abuses. Further, the search for Truth, Justice, Healing, Reconciliation and Prevention of Future Abuses cannot be seen as a 3-to-5" matter and Judicial processes must be conducted when and for as long as necessary to serve these and other causes.<br /><br />All crimes involve multiple past, present and future spirals of cumulative causality, implications on relatives of the accused and accusers as well as on the whole society, multiple dimensions and therefore requirements of varied areas of expertise. Those participating in judicial processes must be selected on the basis of demonstrated integrity, commitment and expertise in areas bearing on the issues of the judicial processes. In any judicial process, not only the accused is being examined, also being examined, is the integrity and credibility of the processes themselves, the participants in the process, the community sanctioning the process as well as core and guiding principles of Indian life and law. There is no place for using sacred proceedings dealing with sacred issues for self-promotion, grandstanding, rewarding friends and relatives, forging businesses alliances, revenge or for any purpose other than the sacred search for Truth, Justice, Healing, Reconciliation and Prevention of Future Abuses.<br /><br />Compartmentation, hierarchies, models, rituals and organizations are all creations of human beings for various purposes and represent abstractions and conventions that can at best approximate or grasp small parts of the immense totality of all the interrelated creations of the Creator and creations of the creations of the Creator. The answer to the abuses of power and excesses of hierarchies is not more checks and balances, formalism, Compartmentation, strict rules and counter-rules within hierarchies, but rather elimination of essentially formalistic and dysfunctional hierarchies and hierarchical relations themselves. Leadership and authority arise from service, persuasion and skill and not from some fixed or inherited position.</div><div align="justify"><br />In the Western tradition, human beings stand just below God and the Angels but above all other forms of life and matter based on the passage on Creation from Genesis:<br /></div><div align="justify">"God said, Let us make man in our image and likeness to rule the fish in the sea, the birds of heaven, the cattle, all wild animals on earth, and all reptiles that crawl upon the earth...<br /><br />In the Ojibwa tradition for example, and quite typical of Indigenous thinking in general, any hierarchy is based upon function and dependence in the totality of the creation of the Creator. The Order of Creation would go: Mother Earth, the plant realm, the animal realm and the human realm because without Mother Earth and her waters, there would be no plant, animal or human life, and without plant life there would be no animal or human life, and without animal life there would be no human life and yet Mother Earth, plant life, animal life existed and can exist without human life. This alternative world view, the Indigenous world-view, which emphasizes "wholeness" in the human as well as natural world, which emphasizes complexity rather than ultra-reductionism, which emphasizes non-linearity rather than linear uni-directional cause and effect, which emphasizes disharmony as a social as well as individual pathogen, which emphasizes connectedness with other parts of creation rather than disconnectedness, which recognizes inevitable change in cycles, spirals or patterns, helps to keep in mind humility and helps to balance judicial processes in ways that help to better search for Truth, Justice, Healing, Reconciliation and Prevention of Further Abuses.<br /><br />Processes constructed and run on the basis of adversarial competition, ultra-formalism, ultra-reductionism, ultra-ritualism ultra-hierarchies, Compartmentation, linear thinking and modeling, punishment with no regard to the effects on those connected with the person being punished, punishment with no regard to healing or reconciliation will more often than not lead to more and not less future chains of abuse and dysfunction.<br /><br />Often we find that what superficially appeared to be a "minor" matter turned out quite significant or what appears to be a "major" matter turns out to be relatively insignificant--in the scheme and totality of things. In Aboriginal Law, the time allotted for investigation, inquiry, judgment and disposition is not based upon a preliminary and summary judgment about the alleged severity of particular acts of a crime. Often as much time or even more will be allotted in a judicial proceeding dealing with what many might consider a "minor" crime relative to what others might consider a "major" crime. Substantial time may be allotted to investigating what some consider to be a "minor" question with the result that substantial and pervasive probative evidence is discovered.<br /><br />Judgmental language and simplistic labels may often lead to preemptory conclusions, summary judgments, simplistic and reductionist thinking, obfuscation, hiding or failure to introduce significant evidence, failure to pose necessary questions and failure to generally pursue Truth, Justice, Healing, Reconciliation and Prevention of Future Abuse. As Rupert Ross puts it:<br /><br />"For one thing, English has an extraordinary number of adjectives that are not so much descriptions of things, as they are conclusions about things...adjectives like horrible, uplifting, disgusting, inspiring, delightful, and tedious and so on. When you really look at them, you discover that they don’t tell us much about things-in-themselves, but only about the judgments speakers have made about them--and want the rest of us to accept." (Ross, 1996, p. 102)<br /><br />"Put simply, I worry that our simplistic, punitive responses to simplistic, judgmental labels put us into blind canyons where we actually contribute to the development of those one-dimensional and dangerous people we are sworn to prosecute." (Ross, 1996, p. 106)<br /><br />Further, these summary-and-final-judgment nouns and adjectives affect not only the integrity and effectiveness of judicial proceedings and the name and reputation of the accused; they reflect upon and damage the family, clan, tribe and nation of the accused as well. In short, they lead to ongoing consequences and further victimization. Speech must be careful and focus on the act and its consequences rather than on judgments about the actor nature and character.<br /><br />5. FOCUS ON WHAT A PERSON SHOULD DO RATHER THAN ON WHAT A PERSON SHOULDN'T DO<br /><br />Indigenous judicial processes are concerned primarily with establishing what people should do--as members of a family, clan, tribe and nation--rather than focus on what people shouldn’t do. This may appear to be a distinction without a difference, but in fact it is a profound distinction.<br /><br />Instead of long lists of potential offenses (listed as "should not do") and an attempt to cover every possible negative act, with the implication that if a given act is not on the should not do list, it is at least not illegal if not permissible, Indigenous Law focuses on core principles and values to guide general conduct such that if one followed those principles, each situation or act can be properly evaluated as to its propriety and proper legality or illegality without having memorized the "should not do" list or in dealing with a potential act not covered on the list. There are many acts that are not illegal or even regarded as improper or immoral from an absolute sense but nonetheless might have negative consequences on an individual committing the act or on others in a particular context.<br /><br />Instead of something like the "Ten Commandments" with "Thou Shalt Not...", in Indian life and law there is more focus on "Thou Should...--as a family member, a clan member, a tribal member, a member of a nation, to live a happy life, to treat others as you want to be treated...<br /><br />Resources and Sources<br /><br />1. Chrisjohn, Roland et al. "The Circle Game: Shadows and Substance in the Indian Residential School Experience in Canada", Theytus Books, 1997, Penticton.<br /><br />2. Guyette, Susan "Planning for Balanced Development: A Guide for Native American and Rural Communities", Clear Light Books, 1996, Santa Fe.<br /><br />3. Nerburn, Kent (Ed) "The Soul of an Indian and Other Writings of Ohiyesa", New World Library, 1993.<br /><br />4. Ross, Rupert "Dancing With A Ghost", Octopus Publishing Group, Markham, ON, 1992<br /><br />5. Ross, Rupert, "Returning to the Teachings: Exploring Aboriginal Justice", Penguin, Toronto, 1996<br />_</div><div align="justify">_______________________________________<br /></div><div align="justify">PART TWO: Mission of the Tribunal - My understanding<br /><br />I can only report my understanding of the central mission of the Tribunal because the mission as I understood it--or any other mission understood by others--was not formally and fully articulated, generally understood or pursued through consistent, coherent and structured processes and lines of inquiry and document gathering. </div><div align="justify"><br />My understanding was that the overall mission of the Tribunal involved assisting local interests in Canada in obtaining data, testimony, supporting documentation and expert opinion on the alleged histories, causes, effects, intentions, interests, contending perspectives and opinions, legal judgments, ongoing chains and spirals of abuse and dysfunction in First Nations Communities, cover-ups and intimidation of/retribution against past and present victims and witnesses, compensations and actual distributions of compensations for alleged victims associated with Indian Residential Schools in Canada.<br /><br />I understood that we were to assist in the gathering, correlating, triangulating , interpreting and questioning of evidence related to allegations of criminal and/or ethnocidal and/or genocidal intentions, practices, effects and implications associated with the setting-up and alleged routine practices of the Indian Residential Schools and to do so in such ways and through such procedures as to assist in the discovering and establishing of Truth, Justice, Healing, Reconciliation and Prevention of Future Abuses for people, groups and institutions alleged and categorized to be "victims" and/or "victimizers"--alike.<br /><br />My understanding was that we were to conduct full, fair, open and honest--for all parties or potential parties concerned--inquiry and gathering, examination, interpretation and reporting of evidence and opinion. We were not there to question the socioeconomic-political system of Canada or the Sovereignty of the Government of Canada or of any of its Agencies. We were not there to intentionally and rhetorically exacerbate past or present wounds, feuds, differences or hostilities. We were not there to question the overall theologies or integrity of "institutions" such as the Anglican Church, United Church, Mormon Church, Catholic Church or other Churches associated with the Indian Residential Schools in Canada. We were not there to assist or support personal or wider agenda and activities, interests or the embarrassment/demonization of particular individuals, groups or political parties locally. We were not there to use our positions or status to forge deals or alliances not related to the issues with which the Tribunal was dealing or to engage in personal self-promotion, grandstanding, revenge or retribution, private business dealing or any other form of conduct that might bring discredit upon the Tribunal and its integrity and credibility, the issues and evidence with which the Tribunal was dealing or any organization associated with the Tribunal. We were not there to make statements or pre-judgments or pre-findings that might undermine the credibility and integrity of the Tribunal or its findings.<br /><br />My understanding based on reading background materials and with discussions with organizers of the Tribunal was that we would be dealing with and examining allegations, opinion and evidence related to damages against and destruction of First Nations Peoples --individually and collectively--and that the allegations would involve some or more than the following allegations of practices in individual cases and patterns of practices as well as possible implicit or explicit policies against First Nations Children in Residential Schools:<br /><br />1) sexual and physical torture;<br />2) murder;<br />3) coerced and/or deceptive medical experimentation;<br />4) forced de-Indianization and assimilation;<br />5) coerced and/or deceptive adoptions;<br />6) coerced and/or deceptive placements into Residential Schools;<br />7) coerced and/or deceptive takings of Indian Lands;<br />8) coerced and/or deceptive alienation of First Nations children from Traditional First Nations values, practices, dress, communities and support-systems, families and overall identity;<br />9) coerced non-Indian diets and food generally unfit for human consumption thus producing long-term deleterious effects in First Nations communities;<br />10) teaching and promotion of psychologically-destructive and vilifying racist myths, caricatures, false histories, "spiritual values" etc. to First Nations and non-First Nations children, adults and communities;<br />11) coerced and/or deceptive sterilization of First Nations children;<br />12) subjection of First Nations children to educational programs that were underfunded, staffed with incompetent and abusive individuals, geographically isolated and structured with programs to de-Indianize First Nations children and prepare them for life on the poorest and most isolated margins of Canadian society;<br />13) past and ongoing cover-ups and intimidation of witnesses and victims of crimes and abusive practices and policies;<br />14) general abuse and vilification of First Nations children for speaking Native languages and articulating or practicing Aboriginal spirituality;<br />15) arranging and coercing abortions of products of rape and sexual abuse of First Nations children by men in authority;<br />16) starvation, unprotected and extended exposure (to the natural elements) and forced labor under unsafe working conditions of First Nations children;<br />17) placing non-infected First Nations children with other children infected with TB and other communicable diseases;<br />18) covert practices and graveyards designed to conceal murder, neglect and effects of abortions;<br />19) organized, calculated, structured and pervasive programs and practices designed for mind programming and control;<br />20) inadequate, incompetent and brutal medical services and practices and withholding of medical services to children after brutal beatings, sometimes leading to death of First Nations children;<br />21) use of First Nations children as informants and bullies to enforce Residential School rules, regimens, value systems, prejudices, retribution and cover-ups;<br />22) physically and psychologically brutal shaming, vilification and beating of First Nations children in front of other children;<br />23) isolation and of First Nations children from their families and communities, through location of Residential Schools in geographically isolated areas (often on islands making escape difficult) and through withholding of personal property, letters, presents and other forms of communication between children and their families and communities;<br />24) forcing children to fight or engage in sexual activities for the voyeuristic pleasure of Residential School staff and authorities;<br />25) failure to bring incidences and evidence of abuse/criminal conduct to higher church, local, provincial and federal authorities;<br />26) failure to protect children from physical and sexual abuse and murder by school staff and other school residents;<br />27) failure to remove known and provably chronic physical and sexual abusers from positions of authority and control over children;<br />28) incompetence and neglect by Residential School officials relative to educational mandates;<br />29) failure of federal, provincial and local governmental authorities to maintain supervision over and to intervene in behalf of, First Nations children and wards of the State;<br />30) failure to adequately fund Residential Schools relative to mandates governing Church and Governmental authorities;<br />31) failure to maintain and/or respect processes for filing and investigating grievances by First Nations children;<br />32) firing and sanctions against people of conscience who sought to expose and correct alleged abuses of First Nations children;<br />33) failure to fully and fairly investigate Residential Schools and their aftermath effects on First Nations children, adults, communities and survivability--continues to today--and suggest and implement programs for mitigating and ameliorating damages;<br />34) failure to respect and live up to Treaties promising educational and other services to First Nations children and communities;<br />35) failure to seek, structure, ensure compliance and ensure delivery to actual victims, just and adequate compensation for abuses against First Nations Peoples that already have been stipulated and proved to have occurred;<br />36) all of the above-mentioned--and other not-mentioned--practices and policies carried out as part of overall, ongoing, forced, and intended marginalization, vilification, de-Indianization and assimilation of First Nations People--adding up cumulatively to extermination and extinction of First Nations Peoples as First Nations Peoples individually and collectively, and therefore "genocide", against First Nations Peoples under the articles of the UN Convention on Genocide, previous Tribunals on War Crimes and Genocide and other Authorities in International Law and Common Law of Nations;<br /><br />It was my understanding that: the allegations and supporting evidence and opinion would be quire serious for the accused as well as for the accusers; that allegations would not be taken as established facts even where similar allegations had been established and stipulated to as facts in other forums; that some in the community would regard the Tribunal as "trouble-making" outsiders with no real authority or standing to conduct the proceeding; that those against whom allegations had been made would be present and fully and freely able to respond to any allegations with which they might disagree and/or comment on or provide further evidence and opinion on those allegations with which they might agree; that the credibility and integrity of the Tribunal, its members and organizations with which it had some affiliation would be under scrutiny and subject to attack; that the causes of Truth, Justice, Healing, Reconciliation and Prevention of Future Abuses would be paramount in the mandate and focus of the Tribunal; that serious gathering investigation, weighing, evaluation and reporting of any relevant evidence and opinion would be undertaken. Further, given that evidence and opinion gathered previously on the Residential Schools in Canada were not properly included in the Royal Commission Report on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP), it was my understanding that this Tribunal would be seriously and properly set-up, structured, executed, concluded and reported upon to any authorities who might be able to assist in dealing with the relevant issues and mandates.<br /><br />In my opinion, the seriousness of the issues, the very real pain and anguish and suffering of the victims, the seriousness of the issues and allegations for the accusers and accused and probable impacts of any findings were not duly and properly considered. In my opinion the following errors were instrumental in severely limiting and compromising the work, content, scope of inquiry, quality of evidence, respect for accused and accusers, overall competence, integrity and overall credibility and acceptance of the Tribunal and any findings:<br /><br />1) From its inception, the Tribunal was severely underfunded which compromised duration, scope, content, credibility and integrity of evidence, opinion and any findings; (the search for Truth, Justice, Healing, Reconciliation and Prevention of Future Abuses is not a 9-to-5 proposition and there should be sufficient funding and competent logistics to ensure that all who want to bring relevant evidence and opinion may be able to do so;)<br /><br />2) In my opinion, some of the Tribunal Judges were clearly not selected and invited by the organizers of the Tribunal on the basis of demonstrated experience, interest, commitment, capabilities and expertise related to the probable issues with which the Tribunal would likely be dealing but rather on some other basis;<br /><br />3) The role, standing, authority and degree of participation of IHRAAM was misrepresented and used and promoted in ways that caused some threats to the credibility of IHRAAM as well as to the Tribunal;<br /><br />4) The Tribunal Judges were told to watch the nature and content of any conversations with the News Media and to avoid any appearance of pre-judgment, bias, hidden agenda or whatever; this advice was generally followed by the Tribunal Judges and yet not followed by some of the very same persons who had given such suggestions--the organizers of the Tribunal and their relatives--who gave the impression to some of using the News Media for personal self-aggrandizement and self-promotion;<br /><br />5) It is a fundamental principle of Indigenous Law that what may appear to be trivial may be quite significant and what may appear to be important may be relatively less-important in the scheme of things and therefore sufficient time and resources must be allotted to ensure full, fair and thorough inquiry. Due to lack of proper funding, inadequate specification, understanding and execution of the essential roles of the Tribunal officials and judges, and due to the summary, precipitous, disrespectful and not-explained removal of key Tribunal participants like Dr. Robert Ward, the designated prosecutor who had the best academic preparation and experience along with having conducted preliminary interviews for his role, insufficient time, scope and competent inquiry were given to key testimonies individually and to the testimonies collectively;<br /><br />6) Contending local groups and interests were not fully, fairly and evenly accepted by the Tribunal and some favoritism and granting of insider status compromised the overall fairness, objectivity, credibility and integrity of the Tribunal;<br /><br />7) Insufficient attention was paid to and mechanisms were not set up to handle, credible allegations of explicit and implicit forms of threats, intimidation and retribution against witnesses and their families--prior to, during and subsequent to the Tribunal inquiry;<br /><br />8) Insufficient attention was paid to and mechanism were not set up to ensure or at least persuasively argue for, attendance at the Tribunal by individuals and groups representing various sides and contending allegations related to the issues being dealt with by the Tribunal. Thirty-seven invited parties failed to show up at the Tribunal of whom only two gave notice that they would not be attending; this compromised the ability of the Tribunal to look at issues from contending perspectives;<br /><br />9) Witnesses are apparently sometimes chosen not on the basis of direct experience or plausible indirect experience--beyond hearsay--with the issues involved but rather on the basis of associations--in other domains--with the organizers or participants of the Tribunal; this left many people with possibly very revealing and probative evidence unable to testify and/or severely restricted in the scope and content of their testimony;<br /><br />10) Rifts and animosities between contending groups and personalities locally and among participants of the Tribunal--often nominally on the same side of the issues with which the Tribunal were dealing--were allowed to invade and to shape or limit some of the content, scope and actions of Tribunal inquiry;<br /><br />11) Insufficient time and resources were allotted for preliminary investigations and gathering of background information necessary to properly and fairly, examine, document and thoroughly test allegations, opinions, evidence being given by contending parties;<br /><br />12) Some Tribunal participants were precipitously and summarily demonized, marginalized or even removed without explanation or inquiry about their concerns with the result that the Tribunal lost potential contributions and expertise from those participants;<br /><br />13) Some of the Tribunal participants engaged in ultra-formalism, ultra-ritualism, ultra-hierarchicalism, verbosity, pontification, lecturing of witnesses, favoritism toward some witnesses that interfered with the full, free, fair and credible inquiry about relevant issues and the obtaining of real, substantive, verifiable and probative evidence or opinion leading to probative evidence;<br /><br />14) The physical arrangements of the furniture in the Tribunal were more in keeping with the hierarchical, adversarial, ultra-formalistic and ultra-ritualistic Tribunals of the non-Indian world and may have prevented or inhibited the full, free, fair and cooperative search for Truth, Justice, Healing, Reconciliation and Prevention of Future Abuses;<br /><br />15) Some of the witnesses preferred to testify 3in-camera2 for various reasons. Inadequate staffing and logistics made this difficult to accommodate or encourage those who really wished to do so--to get more complete and accurate evidence and opinion. In one case about which I know, "in-camera" testimony was probably or almost certainly revealed to one of the persons against whom the allegations of sexual and physical abuse had been made and this compromised the effectiveness and credibility of the Tribunal and possibly a witness who trusted us to keep her testimony confidential--especially from the alleged abuser;<br /><br />16) Poor funding and poor logistics, along with conflicting versions of events and allegations to contending parties resulted in alleged promises allegedly not being kept, Tribunal participants suffering unforeseen financial and personal hardships and rifts and feuds between contending groups and individuals exacerbated rather than healed. This compromised the overall effectiveness and credibility as well as the productivity and contributions of individual Tribunal participants. </div><div align="justify"><br />For these above-mentioned and some other reasons, I cannot in all honesty provide any of my own definitive "findings" or endorse any "findings" of this Tribunal; in my opinion is was seriously flawed in its origination, design, staffing, execution, structure, content and scope of inquiry. I found some serious very compelling testimony and documentation with some credible evidence, supporting opinion and consciousness-of-guilt-like machinations that supported all of the previously-mentioned 35 allegations to varying but not to any conclusive degrees. Those against whom many allegations had been made were not in attendance--for whatever reason. Without a competently designed, staffed, structured, executed and monitored process, accepted by contending parties as credible or intending to be credible, further evidence on the full scope, intentions, causes, effects and agents of the previously mentioned very serious alleged crimes when established to have occurred, will remain to be discovered and fully documented. And until that occurs, with real substantive revelations and real substantive accountability, there can be no real truth, justice, healing, reconciliation, prevention of future abuses and crimes or mitigating the damages of ongoing dynamic circles or spirals of abuse, neglect and dysfunction from past and present crimes.<br /><br />In the next section, I propose to discuss some suggestions for future lines of inquiry and probable constraints and obstacles.<br />________________________________________<br /></div><div align="justify">PART THREE: On the Issue of Ethnocide versus Genocide<br /><br />During the Tribunal, some of us were aware and all of us were made aware of the distinction between "ethnocide" and "genocide" in Law and convention. Consistent with the importance of "mens rea" (state of mind and intent) in Tort and Criminal Law as well as Common Law where degree of intent and calculation is critical in classifying the level of criminality or liability (e.g. First-degree versus Second-degree murder versus Manslaughter), so ethnocide (unintended and non-coerced assimilation of a minority group into a broader group leading to the progressive destruction of the national minority group as a separate and identifiable minority group) is distinguished from genocide (intended and coerced assimilation and/or outright extermination of a national minority as a separate and identifiable group).<br /><br />It is recognized in conventional economic theory that especially under national capitalism and capitalist-driven globalization, that processes of homogenization and equalization through mobility of capital and labor (equalization of wage rates and salaries, rents, interest rates and profits) take place daily. Labor migrates from areas of relatively low wage rates and high unemployment to areas of relatively low unemployment and expected higher relative wage rates, thus driving down some and raising other wage rates. Capital migrates from areas of high risk and/or relatively low rates of expected profitability to areas of lower risk and/or relatively higher rates of expected profitability thus driving down some and raising other rates of profitability. Financial capital migrates from areas of relatively high risk and/or low real interest rates to areas of relatively low estimated risk and/or higher real interest rates thus driving down some and raising other real interest rates.<br /><br />Further, not only people, capital and financial capital migrate, so do value systems, paradigms, power relations and structures, religious creeds and core principles of whole systems.<br /><br />Creating and expanding global markets or markets in other regions of a nation, and expanded reproduction of whole systems (power structures and relations, defining institutions, capital-labor relations, value systems, laws, rights, responsibilities, practices etc.) require conditioning and assimilating--through increasingly sophisticated technologies of mind control, persuasion and social systems engineering--minority nations and cultures to new values, tastes and preferences, lifestyles, religions and paradigms of the dominant and dominating classes and the systems they dominate. In other words, the core, inner and defining imperatives, institutions, power relations and structures, values and practices of capitalism, which make up the inner "logic" and shape the dynamics and trajectories of capitalism on the "micro" and "macro" levels, lead inexorably to more and more homogenization, assimilation and destruction of national groups as separate and identifiable national groups--one form of "Ethnocide."<br /><br />Personally, I feel that the reality of the inner and defining logic and dynamics of capitalism leading inexorably to increasing homogenization, assimilation and destruction of national groups and cultures as separate and identifiable groups and cultures is perhaps a major reason for the distinction between "ethnocide" and "genocide." When people "choose" or are "induced"--as opposed to having been clearly forced-- to opt into a new and dominating culture, even on the margins of that new dominating culture for career or other reasons, free of having been forced to assimilate, or when combatants are killed without the "intent" to kill them because they are members of a national group targeted for extermination but rather because they are combatants on the "other side" of a conflict, this is considered "ethnocide". Who wants to say that the inner "logic" and derivative/inexorable dynamics and trajectories of capitalism lead to genocide?<br /><br />I found it amazing that no one from the Canadian Government or any of the Churches bothered to challenge or repudiate the assertion that the practices and policies of the Residential Schools in Canada collectively and cumulatively constituted one of the instruments of Genocide against First Nations Peoples in Canada. I doubt, however, that this represents on their part, a fundamental stipulation to overwhelming and irrefutable evidence. In fact, in other forums and other periods of history, there have been clear attempts to spin various versions of the history of Residential Schools in Canada even to the point of asserting that assimilation, even if shown to be forced, would fall short constituting Genocide under the UN Convention on Genocide, International Law or other principles of Common Law of Nations.<br /><br />Both Canada and the United States (also in need of many Tribunals on Boarding Schools and other instruments of genocide) have consistently in the past and to this day resisted a full definition, examination and adjudication of the myriad dimensions, forms, crimes and effects of genocide. According to Chrisjohn et al.:<br /><br />"The draft Genocide Convention proposals included an explicit statement proscribing cultural genocide (destruction of the specific characteristics of a group) as well as biological genocide (restricting births, sterilization) and physical genocide (killing, whether quickly as by mass murder, or slowly as by economic strangulation). This proposal was immediately resisted by the United States (whose politicians were concerned that U.S. treatment of minorities would be in violation of such injunctions), and their efforts to derail those provisions were supported by Canada. As a result, the present version of the Convention is often taken as not dealing with cultural genocide." (Chrisjohn et. al, 1997, p 43)<br /><br />Chrisjohn et al. quoting from "Minorities and Human Rights Law" by Patrick Thornberry (London: The Minority Rights Group, 1991, pp. 13-14) note:<br /><br />"The classification of genocide here included physical and biological genocide; ...cultural genocide is not included except partially in the case of forced transfer of children. Existence is a somewhat circumscribed notion in this context. It is not genocide if a culture is destroyed but the carriers of culture are spared. A forcible assimilation is therefore not proscribed by this Convention: there is no such offense in international law. (Quoted in Chrisjohn, et al. Ibid. pp. 43 44)<br /><br />This interpretation of the UN Convention (which Thornberry does not endorse but merely reports), that there is no such thing as cultural genocide is absurd on the face of it. How can it be possible to forcibly remove children from their families and place and indoctrinate them into strange, isolated and foreign places without "inflicting serious mental harm on the members of a group?" (violation of Article II of the UN Convention on Genocide) even if not accompanied by sexual and physical torture, starvation, medical experimentation, vilification of the culture and families of those being abducted etc.? And what kind of simplistic reductionism separates the importance of physical and cultural dimensions of persons--"carriers of a culture"--such that total or even essential personhood or total or essential existence of an identifiable group is seen in terms of physical existence only? The originator of the term "genocide", Raphael Lemkin railed against this kind of reductionism in his original definition:<br /><br />"Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killing of all the members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aimed at the destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objective of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and the lives of individuals belonging to such groups. Genocide is the destruction of the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity but as members of the national group." (Raphael Lemkin, "Axis Rule in Occupied Europe", Concord, NH: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace/Rumford Press, 1944, p. 79; quoted in Churchill, 1994, pp.12-13)<br /><br />Lemkin observed two fundamental phases of genocide:<br /><br />"Genocide has two phases: one, destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed group: the other, the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor." (Lemkin, Ibid. p 79 quoted in Churchill, 1994, p. 14)<br /><br />How could phase two commence if genocide means only the destruction of the physical existence of members of the oppressed group as a means of destroying the physical existence of the whole group? Yet even part c of Article II of the UN Convention on Genocide--"Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated [the "mens rea" issue] to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part"--is but one of the means--and criteria--for determining if genocide is going on.<br /></div><div align="justify">Commenting on the lessons and implications of the Nazi Holocaust, Zygmunt Bauman wrote in "Modernity and the Holocaust" (p. 27):<br /><br />"Ordinarily genocide is rarely if at all, aimed at the total annihilation of the group; the purpose of the violence (if the violence is purposeful and planned) is to destroy the marked category (a nation, a tribe, a religious sect) as a viable community capable of self-perpetuation and defense of its own self-identity. If this is the case, the objective of the genocide is met once 1) the volume of violence has been large enough to undermine the will and resilience of the sufferers, and to terrorize them into surrender to the superior power and into acceptance of the order it imposed; and 2) the marked group has been deprived of resources necessary for the continuation of the struggle. With these two conditions fulfilled, the victims are at the mercy of their tormentors. They may be forced into protracted slavery, or offered a place in the new order on terms set by the victors--but which sequel is chosen depends fully on the conquerors whim. Whichever option has been selected, the perpetrators of genocide benefit. They extend and solidify their power and eradicate the roots of the opposition." (Quoted in Chrisjohn et. al, pp. 45-46)<br /><br />In 1947, the Lebanese delegate to the U.N. committee that produced the Draft Convention on Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide noted:<br /></div><div align="justify">"..what is at issue is the destruction of a [recognizably distinct] human group, even though the individual members survive." (UN Doc. E/A.C. 25/S.R. 1-28; Quoted in<br />Churchill, 1994, p. 13)<br /><br />This led to a formulation in the initial U.N. Draft Convention on Genocide which focused not only upon mass murder or calculated extermination campaigns, but upon actions and policies which brought about: disintegration of the political, social or economic structures of a group or nation and the systematic moral debasement of a group, people or nation. (Report of the United Nations Economic and Social Council, 1947, Part VI quoted by Churchill, 1994, pp. 13-14 from Robert Davis and Mark Zannis, "The Genocide Machine in Canada: The Pacification of the North, Montreal, Black Rose Books, 1973, p. 19)<br /><br />All of this led to the 1948 IV Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide which specified:<br /><br />a) Article I: Genocide is a crime under International Law whether committed during times of peace or war;<br /><br />b) Article II: Killing or causing serious bodily or mental harm or inflicting conditions calculated to bring about physical destruction or imposing measures to prevent births or forcibly transferring children--of an identifiable group targeted for elimination-- is genocide;<br /><br />c) Article III: That shall be punishable under the Convention would not only be genocide per se, but also conspiracy to commit, direct and public incitement of , attempt to commit, or complicity in, genocide;<br /><br />d) Article IV: anyone committing genocide (acts under Article II) or any of the acts under Article III, whether constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals shall be punished;<br /><br />e) Article V: Contracting parties undertake to enact, in accordance with their respective Constitutions, necessary legislation to give effect to the provisions of the Convention and provide effective penalties against persons guilty of genocide or Article III acts.<br /><br />[Note: does this mean that if the Constitution of a given country sanctions genocide or acts considered genocidal, that the Country would be unable to comply or reserve the right not to comply with Article V or other articles of the Convention, as it would not be consistent with that country's Constitution? Does this mean that genocidal acts or policies--a crime under International Law--might be seen as a matter of sovereign "internal affairs" of a given country and that domestic law would trump international law? This is the so-called "sovereignty" exception position taken by the United States Government when finally signing the UN Convention in 1988--40 years after it was drafted--and at present ( and was and is the position of the Nazis and a whole host of other genocidal forces];<br /><br />f) Article VI: Persons charged with genocide or Article III acts shall be tried by a "competent tribunal" of the State in the territory of which the act was committed, or by such international penal tribunal as may have jurisdiction with respect to those Contracting Parties which shall have accepted its jurisdiction.<br /><br />[Questions: What happens when one of those Contracting Parties whose "competent State tribunals or acceptance of jurisdiction of an international penal tribunal is one of the entities against which allegations of genocide or Article III acts is being made?; Which State, even a signatory to the Convention, allegedly guilty of genocide or acts under Article III, will likely provide its own Courts or accept the jurisdiction of other Courts to hear allegations of genocide against itself?]<br /><br />g) Article VII: Genocide and Article III crimes shall not be considered as "political crimes" for purposes of extradition and Contracting Parties pledge themselves to grant extradition in accordance with their laws and treaties in force.<br /><br />[Questions: What if the forces committing genocide are themselves "Contracting Parties" and effectively constitute a large section of whole State apparatus?; And in which case, how and to where or what venue will they be extradited?; What if domestic laws and treaties in force prevent extradition of parties who refuse to accept or define genocide as an international crime or if those domestic laws and treaties fail to include specific language allowing definition of genocide and Article III extraditable acts?; What if the demand is made to extradite from one Contracting Party engaging in genocide to the jurisdiction of another Contracting Party engaging in similar and even coordinated practices--e.g. U.S. and Canada?]<br /><br />h) Article VIII: "Any Contracting Party may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article III."<br /><br />[Questions: Again, what if the forces directing and carrying out genocide or any Article III acts represent a large section of the State of a Contracting Party Country?; Can the victims of genocide call upon the UN to intervene against the domestic State which may even be one of the "Contracting Parties"?; And if the victims can call for action against one of the Contracting Parties alleged to be conducting genocide or Article III acts, what mechanisms and venues exist for such allegations to be tried?];<br /><br />I) Article IX: Disputes between Contracting Parties relating to the interpretation, application or fulfillment of the Convention, including responsibility of a State for genocide or for any of the other Article III acts to be submitted to the International Court of Justice.<br /><br />[Questions: What if the State and Contracting party, alleged to be guilty of genocide or article III acts, summarily refuses, as does the United States on any matters other than commercial matters, to accept the authority and jurisdiction of the ICE?];<br /><br />j) Article XV: "If as a result of denunciations, the number of Parties to the present Convention should become less than sixteen; the Convention shall cease to be in force as from the date on which the last of these denunciations shall become effective."<br /><br />[Questions: What if one of the Contracting Parties is not only a genocidal State, but also a superpower powerful enough to apply political, economic, military and other sanctions to obtain enough denunciations to cause the Convention to cease to be in force? If genocide or Article III acts are crimes under International Law and Common Law of Nations, why should it take a minimum number of Contracting Parties to recognize that fact and to keep the Convention in force?]<br /><br />The point is that even in the UN Convention all sorts of dodges, tricks with language, procedural games, summary non-compliance--even by a "Contracting Party"--and other escapes from scrutiny and accountability are possible. This is especially true when one considers the extent of personal and systemic interests, mystifications, future interests and possibilities associated with genocide, past and present.<br /><br />The United States and Canada--said to be "Children of a Common Mother"--have striking parallels in their own histories in many ways including in the operations, crimes, policies, intentions and effects of their Boarding Schools and Residential Schools respectively. It is interesting to note that the United States, the leading force in the establishment and execution of the Nuremberg Tribunals and other War Crimes and Genocide Tribunals that were instrumental in the development of the UN Convention, declined to sign on to the Convention for 40 years after it had been established; Canada finally signed on in 1952. According to Ward Churchill's examination:<br /><br />"The reason for this extensive delay resides primarily, as is revealed in the records of Senate debates on the Genocide Convention since it was referred to that body by President Truman in 1950, in congressional concern that a broad range of federal policies vis-à-vis minority populations in the U.S. might be viewed as genocidally criminal under international law." (Lawrence J. LeBlanc, "The United States and the Genocide Convention", Durham, NC: Duke, University Press, 1991 cited in Churchill, 1994, p. 16)<br /><br />Finally in 1988, in the closing days of the 100th Congress, based on the growing disconnect or contradiction between presuming to lecture other countries all around the world about basic human rights on the one hand and not having ratified participation in the UN Convention on the other hand, the U.S. Government enacted the "Genocide Convention Implementation Act of 1988" (Title 18, Part I, USC) which contained language designed from its inception to provide language that would narrow the applicability of the Convention to the United States. Deposited with the U.N. Secretary General in 1988 along with the instrument of treaty ratification was a summarily asserted amendment called a "Resolution of Ratification" or the "Lugar-Helms-Hatch Sovereignty Package" which contained the following reservation Article I (2):<br /><br />[N]nothing in the Convention requires or authorizes legislation or other action by the United States of America prohibited by the Constitution of the United States as interpreted by the United States." (Quoted in Churchill, 1994, p. 17)<br /><br />Of course that is exactly the argument that the Nazis made at Nuremberg. "Nothing genocidal we did and no orders we followed were prohibited by our legal authorities as we interpreted them and we ruthlessly guarded the sovereignty of and compliance with our own legal authorities." In the U.S. Supreme Court decision in "Reid v Covert" (354, U.S. 1, 1957) ruled that any treaty provision that is inconsistent with the United States Constitution would simply be invalid under national law (Quoted in Churchill, 1994, p. 19) which was one of the authorities used in the so-called "Sovereignty Resolution".<br /><br />There is however, the matter of Article VI Section " of the U.S. Constitution that states that treaties are "the supreme law of the land, and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding." Further, there is the matter of Article 27 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (to which the United States is not a signatory but has recognized as the definitive promulgation of the Laws of Nations with regard to treaty relations--see Churchill, 1994, p.19 and 49) which notes that no country may invoke provisions of its domestic law as a reason for not abiding by its treaty obligations.<br /><br />I raise U.S. issues and laws not only because of the common sources of U.S. and Canadian law, or because of the parallels between the U.S. Boarding Schools and the Canadian Residential Schools, but also because some of the same summary exceptions and assertions of "right of non-interference in internal affairs"--including Genocide and Article III offenses have been raised by Canadian authorities as well by U.S. authorities. Through summary language, the intent, content and scope of the Convention can be circumvented. Effectively countries like the U.S. and Canada, under the banners of "sovereignty" and "right of non-interference in internal affairs," can seek:<br /><br />"To retain prerogatives to engage in or sanction policies and activities commonly understood as being genocidal, even while professing to condemn genocide." (Churchill, Ibid. p. 18)<br /><br />During the setting up of the Nuremberg Tribunal, when the U.S. and other allies were accused of applying "ex post facto" law (nullem crimen sine lege or nulla poena sine lege previa) and uncodified international legal principles to the Nazis, noted that although much of what needed to be examined at trial had never been formally codified in international law or officially accepted by Germany, nonetheless: </div><div align="justify"><br />"International law shall be taken to include the principles of the law of nations as they result from the usages established among civilized people, from the laws of humanity, and the dictates of public conscience." (Quoted in Churchill, 1994, p.22) </div><div align="justify"><br />Finally, there is the U.N. Charter to which the U.S. and Canada are signatories which asserts and is generally recognized that the U.N. may declare principles of international law binding on even non-member nations. Further:<br /><br />"The concept of offenses against the [customary] law of nations (delicti juris gentium) was recognized by the classical text writers on international law and has been employed in national constitutions and statutes. It was regarded as sufficiently tangible in the eighteenth century so that United States Federal Courts sustained indictments charging acts as an offense against the law of nations, even if there were no statutes defining the offense. Early in the nineteenth century it was held that criminal jurisdiction of federal courts rested only on statutes though the definition of crimes denounced by statutes might be left largely to international law. Thus piracy as defined by the law of nations is an indictable offense in federal courts and all offenses against the law of nations are indictable at common law in state courts." (Quincy Wright, "The Law of the Nuremburg Trial" in Jay w. Baird, ed. "From Nuremberg to My Lai, Lexington, MA. DC Heath and Co., 1972, p. "7, quoted in Churchill, 1994, p. 21)<br /><br />And yet as I write this, with one day left for the deadline for agreement of nations to form a standing World Court to deal with war crimes and genocide, the United States and some allies resist formation of such a court on the basis of summary assertions of "sovereignty" leaving the impression that war crimes and genocide might be a matter of "internal affairs" about which they have the "right" to demand non-interference from other nations, the U.N. and presumably from the victims themselves.<br /><br />On the question of "mens rea" or the requisite intent to forcibly assimilate and/or extinguish a whole people all sorts of deceptive arguments are made. One argument may be called the "Zeitgeist" argument which goes something like this: as all forms of life are in process and development, so it is with people and nations; we cannot judge the commonly-accepted standards, moral codes and practices of past periods of history, through the prism of today's standards, moral codes and acceptable practices. To this we have to ask by whom were these past standards, moral codes and practices accepted? Whose perspective are we adopting with this line of argument? In Nazi Germany, there were indeed large groups of people who did not "commonly accept" the prevailing moral codes, standards and practices: Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, Communists, Trade-Unionists, Peoples of Conquered Territories, Prisoners of War, etc. And does this then mean that all standards, morality and practices are essentially subjective--you like genocide and I don't, just like you like to have a blue car and I prefer red?<br /><br />Then there is the "perhaps-we-were-misguided-but-we-had-honest--as-opposed-to criminal-intent" argument. This is referred to as the "Standard Account" by Chrisjohn et al.:<br /><br />"Residential Schools were created out of the largesse of the federal government and the missionary imperatives of the major churches as a means of bringing the advantages of Christian civilization to Aboriginal populations. With the benefit of late-20th century hindsight, some of the means with which this task was undertaken may be seen to have been unfortunate, but it is important to understand that this work was undertaken with the best of humanitarian intentions. Now, in any large organization, isolated incidence of abuse may occur, and such abuses may have occurred in some Indian Residential Schools...In any event, individuals who attended Residential Schools now appear to be suffering low self-esteem, alcoholism, somatic disorders, violent tendencies, and other symptoms of psychological distress (called Residential School Syndrome.) While these symptoms seem endemic to Aboriginal Peoples in general (and not limited to those who attended Residential School), this is likely to have come about because successive generations of attendees passed along, as it were, their personal psychological problems to their home communities and, through factors such as inadequacy of parenting skills, perpetuated the symptomology, if not the syndrome. In order to heal the rift the Residential School experience may have created between Aboriginal Peoples and Canadian society at large, and in order to heal those individuals who still suffer the consequences of their school experiences, it is necessary and appropriate to establish formally the nature of Residential School Syndrome, causally link the condition to Residential School abuses (physical, sexual or emotional) determine the extent of its influence in Aboriginal populations, and suggest appropriate individual and community interventions that will bring about psychological and social health." (Chrisjohn et al, 1997, pp. 1-2)<br /><br />This “Standard Account" was found in many of the testimonies about Residential Schools in Canada (not part of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples) and in the "apologies" presented by some of the Churches and the Government of Canada. For some, I included, this appears to be another crime rather than any substantive act of contrition. Without full and competent inquiry, full discovery and accountability, willingness to disclose all, commitment to change and removal of systemic imperatives and interests that produced the Residential School experience and other horrors for Indigenous People, no real Truth, Justice, Healing, Reconciliation or Prevention of Future Abuses is possible.<br /><br />Chrisjohn, et al. (whose competent report was not included in the RCAP) give a "Non-Standard Account" which goes like this:<br /><br />"Residential Schools were one of many attempts at the genocide of the Aboriginal Peoples inhabiting the area now commonly called Canada. Initially, the goal of obliterating these peoples was connected with stealing what they owned (the land, the sky, the waters, and their lives, and all that these encompassed); and although this connection persists, present-day acts and policies of genocide are also connected with the hypocritical, legal and self-delusion need on the part of the perpetrators to conceal what they did and what they continue to do. A variety of rationalizations (social, legal, religious, political, and economic) arose to engage (in one way or another) all segments of Euro Canadian society in the task of genocide. For example, some were told (and told themselves) that their actions arose out of a Missionary Imperative to bring the benefits of the One True Belief to savage pagans; others considered themselves justified in land theft by declaring that the Aboriginal Peoples were not putting the land to "proper" use; and so on. The creation of the Indian Residential Schools followed a time-tested method of obliterating indigenous cultures, and the psychosocial consequences these schools would have on Aboriginal Peoples were well understood at the time of their formation. Present-day symptomology found in Aboriginal Peoples and societies does not constitute a distinct psychological condition, but is the well-known and long-studied response of human beings living under conditions of severe and prolonged oppression. Although there is no doubt that individuals who attended Residential Schools suffered, and continue to suffer, from the effects of their experiences, the tactic of pathologizing these individuals, studying their condition, and offering therapy to them and their communities must be seen as another rhetorical maneuver designed to obscure (to the world at large, to Aboriginal Peoples, and to Canadians themselves) the moral and financial accountability of Euro Canadian society in a continuing record of Crimes Against Humanity." (Chrisjohn, et. al, 1997, pp. 2-4)<br /><br />These are some future lines of inquiry I would propose for future Tribunals in other places. Out of the deepest and most profound respect for the victims I heard and all of those I did not get to hear, and out of respect for their anguish, pain and suffering, I beg that future Tribunals be thoroughly and competently designed, constructed, set-up, executed and followed-up upon. There is simply too much at stake. Out of respect for the victims and what is at stake, I cannot and will not endorse "fruits of an essentially poisoned tree"--which only serve those who wish to compound the past and present crimes with the further crimes of cover-up and false contrition.<br /><br />References:<br /><br />Chrisjohn, Roland, Young, Sherri and Michael Maraun, "The Circle Game: Shadows and Substance in the Indian Residential School Experience in Canada", Theytus Books Ltd, Penticton, 1997<br /><br />Churchill, Ward, "Indians Are Us?: Culture and Genocide in Native North America", Common Courage Press, Monroe, ME, 1994<br /><br />Churchill, Ward, "A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present", City Lights Press, Monroe, OR, 1997</div><div align="justify"> </div>Omahkohkiaayo i'poyihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16061952911212543042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449323876485291163.post-47079412129567332642009-04-04T10:03:00.000-07:002010-01-28T11:35:56.065-08:009-11 and the Mormon-Mossad-CIA Connection<div align="justify">Full at http://www.opednews.com/articles/9-11-AND-THE-MORMON-MOSSAD-by-Doug-Wallace-090330-647.html<br />-<br />REPRINTED UNDER FAIR-USE DOCTRINE FOR EDUCATIONAL AND NON-COMMERCIAL PURPOSES.<br />-<br /><em><strong>"Evil is no faceless stranger<br />living in a distant neighborhood.<br />Evil has a wholesome, hometown face,<br />with merry eyes and an open smile.<br />Evil walks among us,<br />wearing a mask which looks like all our faces. "<br />(The Book of Counted Sorrows)</strong></em><br />-<br /><em><strong>9-11 and the Mormon-Mossad-CIA Connection</strong></em><br />-<br />by Doug Wallace Page 1 of 3 page(s)<br />-<br />www.opednews.com<br />-<br />A recent Pentagon paper accidentally exposed the fact that Israel has a nuclear bomb. Truth is that they have an estimated sixty warheads. Israel is non signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty [NNPT] and behind that blanket of secrecy they have created a capacity to destroy their Arab cousins if push comes to shove. The fallout from such action would of course be self defeating both politically and radiation wise.<br />-<br />On the other hand Iran is signatory to NNPT and while they have openly discussed development of nuclear energy so as to not exhaust their oil reserves, they have been criticized with claims from the West that the real ambition is to develop a nuclear war head. At this point in time neither state has a known rocket delivery system capable of reaching the other. It would be foolish of the United States or Russia to furnish a delivery system to either.<br />-<br />Under terms of the NNPT, peaceful use of nuclear energy is OK. Iran has signed on but Israel has not. One has to ask why Israel offers no transparency while Iran is open to inspection.<br />-<br />With such now non-secrecy of possession of a nuke capacity by Israel, one could not blame Iran if it were in fact pursuing an offset to nuclear blackmail from Israel, i.e., mutually assured destruction [MAD].<br />-<br />The United States was at the fore-front of efforts to create the state of Israel and to defend it against its Arab neighbors. It took only 11 minutes for the US to ratify the UN resolution creating Israel in 1948. All this has to do with the Christian concept of a redeemable Israel for the death of Christ with an expectation of a nuclear holocaust in the Middle East ending in a rapture and second coming of Jesus, king of the Jews who are expected to finally accept him as their long awaited Shiloh/Redeemer/King.<br />-<br />Mormons are aligned in that concept with one slight deviation. They believe that Zion will be built upon the North American continent at a place specific in Missouri and that Mormon leaders will become vice Regents of Christ ruling earth [The law shall go forth from Zion (in America) and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem!]<br />-<br /><em><strong>"You will see the constitution of the United States almost destroyed. It will hang like a thread...A terrible revolution will take place in the land of America...[T]he land will be left without a Supreme Government...[Mormonism] will have gathered strength, sending out Elders to gather the honest in heart...to stand by the Constitution of the United States...In these days...God will set up a Kingdom, never to be thrown down...[T]he whole of America will be made the Zion of God." (Joseph Smith, May, 6, 1843, founder of Mormonism, quoted in "One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church" by Richard Abanes, Four Walls Eight Windows Press, NY. 2002, p xvi)</strong></em><br />-<br />SEE: http://wwwthesixthestate.blogspot.com/2009/02/mormonism-in-their-own-words.html<br />-<br />The church in fact has taken steps to implement that concept beginning as early as 1843 when it sent an emissary, Orson Hyde, to Palestine to dedicate the land for the return of Jews. Expecting it to happen soon thereafter, they were disappointed when it didn't, later sending emissaries several times to re-dedicate the land.<br />-<br />The biblical prophesies of such an event being fulfilled is central to Mormon doctrine and essential as a catalyst to propel it toward a delusional destiny of becoming the civil/theocratic world government.<br />-<br />The success of Jews returning to the Holy Land creating prophetic conflict with their Abrahamic cousins who were deceitfully deprived of the full inheritance of the estate of Abraham and promises of the Biblical God is an adventure of significant importance to Mormons but more importantly to their dictatorial leaders. It all has to do with unbridled ego and sense of importance. It is no wonder then that the secret order existing within the higher echelons of the church [ Danites/ Council of the Fifty] have worked hand in glove with Mossad.<br />-<br />The posture and thinking of Mormons toward Israel is well depicted by the narrative within W. Cleon Skousen's book, Fantastic Victory, published shortly after the 1967 six day war.<br />-<br />The establishment of a branch of Brigham Young University in Israel created a legitimate front for covert activities of the secret/CIA element of the church. It is from there that Mormon world political interests are promoted and pursued lobbying the Israeli government to pursue its unenlightened, inhuman activities under Mosaic Law of an eye for an eye philosophy against Arab states and the deprived Palestinian people.<br />-<br />The doctrine of pre-emptive strike as recently used by the US in Iraq is a reversal of that law in that in anticipation of the enemy striking, the retaliation is delivered first. We have seen justification for such criminal behavior uttered by the last Administration in regards to the attacks by Israel in preemptively destroying nuclear plants under construction in Iraq in the early 90's and in Syria as late as 2007.<br />-<br />The first public awareness of the nexus between Mossad and Mormon secret agents was published by Norman Mailer in A Harlot High and Low in the 60's when a reconditioned WWII Liberty ship was hijacked on the Thames River in London by Mossad. The ship had a cargo of uranium ore that had been originally mined in southern Utah. The details of that intrigue were published in an earlier article on OpedNews click here It involved the Utah Corporation which mines the surface of Australia as well as Chile.<br />-<br />I mentioned that Secret elements of the church conspired with the CIA to overthrow Democratically elected president Allende of Chile so that the business interests of the church could continue uninterrupted by the then recent action of Allende in nationalizing the mines in Chile.<br />-<br />The most recent exposure of that nexus came within the framework of the 9-11 event. Being pre-informed if not directly involved in the plans for destroying the Twin Towers as well as Building 7 on September 11, 2001 is demonstrated by official advice given to Mormons working in the World Trade Center to not show up for work that day.<br />-<br />All evidence indicates that 9-11 was a planned operation of Mossad utilizing all the intelligence it had in causing the pre-planting of explosives within all 3 buildings well in advance of that fateful day. Mossad agents were arrested after the event upon suspicions of citizens who watched them waiting with digital cameras on tripods aimed at the twin towers long before any aircraft struck them. The displayed actions of these Mossad agents was video taped by patriot observers especially when they jumped and shouted with joy at seeing the collapse of the towers and resulting deaths of 3,000 people.<br />-<br />These same Mossad agents were released under order of the Federal government and allowed to fly back to Israel thus implicating not only Mossad and Mormon agents but the Bush Administration as well. 9-11 was a well planned and choreographed false flag operation but not by some turbaned Arabs in a cave in Afghanistan!<br />-<br />The nexus between the church and the Bush Administration has been documented by the pressure placed on the church from a personal visit by Bush to church headquarters in Salt Lake City prior to the forced retirement of BYU physics professor Steven Jones in late 2006. Jones was/is in the forefront of scientifically establishing a conspiracy to destroy the World trade Center by pre planted explosives. He is just doing what church founder Smith predicted elders of the church would do in saving the Constitution.<br />-<br />Further nexus of the Bush administration lay in the fact that a very large victim's compensation fund was created immediately after 9-11 [ waiting in the wings for 9-11 to happen along with the Patriot Act] by which silence of those victims would be purchased by the government to quell legal claims for wrongful death. Victims failure to release all claims for wrongful death resulted in denial of payment from the fund.<br />-<br />If in fact the 9-11 attack was simply and solely an act of war by a foreign entity no victim's claims could be brought against the US government. So why insist on a stand down by victims unless there was complicity by the government [CIA] and other individuals and entities such as Israel's Mossad and the Mormon Church among them?<br />-<br />A few smart victims refused to be bought off and they stand to profit greatly when criminal conspiracy charges for murder are brought against the co-conspirators of 9-11.<br />-<br />Conviction will establish 9-11 to be an act of mass murder not an act of war. It will also open the window of the statute of limitations for actions for wrongful death. While the US government is basically bankrupt, Members of the Bush Administration are not nor is Israel or the Mormon Church.<br />-<br />I have been informed that very quietly, a team has been assembling evidence of this criminal conspiracy for presentation to a sympathetic Federal Prosecutor. Soon, very soon, a Federal Grand Jury will hear the evidence! After nearly eight years of lies, truth will finally emerge.<br />-<br />It is encouraging to see that Spain will likely prosecute members of the Bush Administration for torture as is noted in news headlines today. Hopefully all the links to the bogus war on terror will be exposed.<br />-<br />All you good but ignorant Mormon members who want to stand up and defend your leaders against these charges need to be silent for you will be entering an arena in which you have absolutely no knowledge. Indeed if you do, you will likely be guilty of being an accessory after the fact. A word to the wise is to keep your own counsel and let church leaders make their own defense after all they are big boys!<br />-<br />However, if you are in any way complicit in this tragic criminal conspiracy please do speak up it may get you some immunity.<br />-<br />MORMON HOPE<br />-<br />"O say what is truth?<br />-<br />Tis the fairest gem,<br />-<br />To which mortals and<br />-<br />Gods may aspire!"<br />-<br />But Mormon Church Leaders,<br />-<br />In all that they do,<br />-<br />Merely lie, cover-up and conspire.<br />-<br />For truth deals them out<br />-<br />With a sure deadly blow<br />-<br />So, retreat to the sanctuary of silence!<br />-<br />No answers may not come to the<br />-<br />Truth seeking soul,<br />-<br />For they're lost in a deep muddy mire!<br />-<br />Awake O you "saints" from your<br />-<br />Mind-numbing sleep.......<br />-<br />Take a good look at your hope!<br />-<br />You'll find that it's made out of<br />-<br />Fraud and deceit<br />-<br />Tied-up with some old rotten rope!<br />-<br />(Millennial Messenger March-April 1978)<br /><br />Author: Retired General Contractor and ATTORNEY AT LAW<br /><br />Credentials include pressuring the LDS church to accept racial equality with Black<br /><br />men some 30 years ago by public action.<br /><br />The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author<br /><br />and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.<br /><br />Contact Author Contact Editor View Authors' Articles</div>Omahkohkiaayo i'poyihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16061952911212543042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449323876485291163.post-69472271465597773062009-03-27T10:15:00.000-07:002010-01-28T10:42:18.803-08:00Seduced By Hitler: A Book Review<div align="justify"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/Sc0MOj1kBsI/AAAAAAAAAwQ/OJE1mqiD6SQ/s1600-h/bush_sheep.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 356px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5317920179272025794" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/Sc0MOj1kBsI/AAAAAAAAAwQ/OJE1mqiD6SQ/s400/bush_sheep.jpg" /></a><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/Sc0MOe4HxuI/AAAAAAAAAwI/KavnAEZlq9U/s1600-h/fighting101s.gif"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 152px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 160px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5317920177940580066" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/Sc0MOe4HxuI/AAAAAAAAAwI/KavnAEZlq9U/s400/fighting101s.gif" /></a><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/Sc0MOcHPZLI/AAAAAAAAAwA/hlT-m4AIPCM/s1600-h/150px-Eichmann.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 150px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 208px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5317920177198687410" border="0" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/Sc0MOcHPZLI/AAAAAAAAAwA/hlT-m4AIPCM/s400/150px-Eichmann.jpg" /></a><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/Sc0MNz6HC2I/AAAAAAAAAv4/NsQYf34pcq0/s1600-h/frogboillogo200x72pixel1.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 200px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 224px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5317920166406196066" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/Sc0MNz6HC2I/AAAAAAAAAv4/NsQYf34pcq0/s400/frogboillogo200x72pixel1.jpg" /></a><br />-<br /><em><strong>"Seduced by Hitler: The Choices of a Nation and the Ethics of Survival" by Adam LeBor and Roger Boyes, Barnes and Nobel Books, N.Y. 2000 and 2005.</strong></em><br />-<br />Reviewed by James M. Craven/Omahkohkiaayo i'poyi<br />-<br />This book gives clear examples and lessons of individuals, often basically decent until tested, participating in and fundamental to, their own repression, the repression of others along with the building and maintenance of the tyrannical orders and systems repressing them. It tells many stories of both various forms of "Faustian Bargains", as well as stories of courage and resistance in the face of tyrannical repression. The book also illustrates clearly the wisdom of the warning of Benjamin Franklin: Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759<br />-<br />Perhaps Ben Franklin should have added that those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, not only do not deserve, but also, they cannot and will never attain, real liberty and safety for themselves either. That lesson comes through over and over with vivid examples and the book spares no one from scrutiny. The authors are sensitive to the charge of judgmentalism by those judging responses to situations they have never faced and that are why they examine and contrast, the statements of those in the same circumstances in terms of the ultimate and very different choices--and consequences of those choices--they made.<br />-<br />The book examines various types of Faustian Bargains without fear or favor yet with some sensitivity. For example, the inmate Sonderkommandos in death camps, who sometimes deceived their own families into going into the gas chambers quietly, knowing what awaited them, in order to trade, for a few more days, weeks or sometimes months, the trust of their family members for their own lives and some special privileges. It examines the camp inmate Kapos or inmate overseers, who were often more brutal than the Nazis, to show their "bona fides", in order to stay alive with special privileges. It examines the Germans and peoples of Occupied Territories who both turned away, and others who risked their lives not to turn away, those fleeing Nazi terror and intentions to exterminate them. It examines the narrow selfishness and narcissism of groups obsessed with "identity politics", in which people, so proud of their group for no other reason than they were born or assimilated into it, caring nothing about the issues and threats faced by others; and yet, in the end, after all their indifference and selfishness, winding up begging of others, of the other groups about which they cared nothing, help to save themselves when they needed it.<br />-<br />This book illustrates the hypocrisy, hubris and elaborate rationales, of those, who themselves violated, and/ engaged in willful blindness and depraved indifference to the violations of others, of the very same laws and protections that they constantly demanded for themselves. It shows with vivid examples, the daily ethical choices one must make not only to survive or have security in terms of what each person personally defines as "survival" or "security" for oneself and one's loved ones, but also what happens to choices made when the terms and definitions of social and personal notions of what really constitutes "survival" and "security" are rapidly changing.<br />-<br />The Nazis, building on the work of Edward Bernays, the father of propaganda, spin and effective marketing, set up a vast and sophisticated system of propaganda and instruments of mass deception, distraction and seduction. They used branding and understood the maxim “If you brand it you own it.” They used television (first TV broadcasts in the world in 1935) films like Riefenstahl’s “Triumph of the Will”, free radios (to hear constant propaganda and Hitler speeches), Nazi “aesthetics” in art (free of “imperfections”), Greco-Roman styles in architecture (to convey permanence and tradition) and grandiose rallies with stunning visuals, backgrounds, symbolism and hundreds of thousands of participants (to convey the supposed omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence of the Nazi state).<br />-<br />The Nazis cynically used and misused, for purposes of propaganda and divide-and-rule, the construct of “nation”. A nation is, under international law, a grouping of people who share common: territory, history, language and culture, economic life, politico-legal institutions, mechanisms and criteria for determining membership of the group and a desire to remain as a nation. The Nazis summarily de-nationalized from the historical Nation as “non-Germans”, Jews and other targeted groups while summarily including in the nation, those of supposed German “blood” and requisite “blood-quantum”( a biologically bankrupt concept) no matter where they had lived or were living on the earth. It is an old device but the Nazis took it to a new level of sophistication: summarily declaring a contrived group to constitute a “Nation” and also declaring those as “chosen” to be within it, and thus those as “outcasts”, not included within or not-recognizing it.<br />-<br />The Nazis pioneered stunning visuals in film and art designed to demonstrate the omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence of—and thus futility and impossibility of resistance to---the State and Fuhrer. Riefenstahl’s “Triumph of the Will”, a film about the Nazi Party Congress September 4-10, 1934, opens with stunning visuals from inside Hitler’s aircraft (Hitler was the first to use aircraft to travel to and address diverse regions in short periods of time) descending through the clouds, over the spires of cathedrals, like a God or “Messiah” sent from the heavens to “liberate” the German People and Nation. Perhaps it is analogous to Mr. Bush’s majestic arrival and landing on the aircraft carrier to a sign reading “Mission Accomplished”?<br />-<br />The Nazis also pioneered the calculated uses of symbology and symbolism, mascots, appropriated significant dates in history, creations of revisionist histories, calculated myth and meme spreading and new calendars of significant dates. Like the Roman Emperor Constantine, who appropriated, co-opted and used traditional Roman Pagan holidays and festivals to create new Christian ones, the Nazis understood, that, from an effective propaganda and mass seduction point of view, it is far easier to appropriate and co-opt existing sacred dates, myths, symbols and festivals to new uses and interests, allowing the traditional ones to wither away with time, than to try to summarily abolish them altogether.<br />-<br />This book also shows the use of humor as a form of resistance to dictatorship as well as how lethal humor can be under tyrannical systems. On July 28, 1944, Father Josef Muller was hanged for telling the following joke: “A wounded soldier on his death bed, asked to see, for the last time, those for who he had laid down his life. The nurses brought a picture of Hitler and laid it on his right side and a picture of Reichsmarshall Goering and laid it on his left side. The soldier then said: ‘Now I can die like Jesus Christ, between two criminals’”<br />-<br />The authors also illustrate one of the few open acts of rebellion in Nazi Germany and how, for some, some forms of resistance were possible—and for narrow personal reasons. In February 1943, the Nazis launched a final roundup of Jews in Berlin to make Berlin “Judenrein” (free of Jews). Up to that point, and even up to the end of the war, many thousands of Jews lived underground (called “U-boats”) aided by non-Jews acting out of conscience at considerable risk to themselves. Some 2000 Jewish men, married to non-Jewish German women, were taken to Rossenstrasse 2-4 a welfare office for the Jewish community for deportation. Many of these men had highly-placed connections with German officials through marriage. The wives, unorganized, unarmed and not part of any resistance groups, conducted days of protests against the deportations of their husbands. Eventually, the Nazis had to back down out of fear of the secret of the “Final Solution” being exposed, as well as the damaging effects of killing women of “Aryan Blood”.<br />-<br />The case of Klaus Von Stauffenberg and others involved in the July 20, 1944 plot to kill Hitler was explored but not fully developed. The authors do note that the plotters were all approached to kill Hitler in 1941 but refused to do so because then, they thought, the war against "Bolshevism" [in the East] was going well and their common "anti-Bolshevism" trumped any concerns about the real nature and likely fate of Nazism and the Nazi empire. Only when it was all coming down for the supposed "1000-Year Reich", less than a year from the final end of the Nazi Order, did they attempt to kill Hitler. What is not explored by the authors, is that the plot to kill Hitler failed only because Von Stauffenberg used a timed fuse for a bomb placed next to Hitler [later moved away from him] with enough time for him to exit and take Hitler's life and those of others in the bunker while saving his own. Whatever one might think of the often caricatured "suicide bombers" in places like the Middle East, had Von Stauffenberg been willing to give his own life in order to make absolutely sure the job was done right, who knows how much earlier the war in Europe would have ended and how many lives would have been saved? But Von Stauffenberg, not only wound up dead shortly after, with Hitler still alive and even more vicious and reckless, but also, over 5,000 others, said to be part of the Plot to Kill Hitler, wound up also tortured and dead.<br />-<br />The book illustrates how cognitive dissonance both shapes and constrains the choices, and rationales for those choices made. Cognitive dissonance is about the dissonance and psychologically and physiologically damaging effects of contradictions between facts versus beliefs, beliefs versus emotions (interests) and emotions versus facts. How to reconcile, considering oneself say "a Good..." (insert faith or secular non-Nazi ideology of your choice) and yet daily participating in, or turning a blind eye to, horrible crimes and forms of brutality than can never be justified by any sane reading of the supposed sacred books and principles of that faith or ideology? When the Nazis were plundering and pillaging all over the world, they all wore belt buckles that said "Gott Mit Uns" (God with us) above the symbol of the swastika.<br />-<br />This belt buckle is dominated by the Nazi eagle perched on the swastika. The slogan which reads, "God is with us."<br />Photo: Phillip Drell<br /><br />(Reprinted under "FAIR USE" for educational purposes)<br />-<br />And some of the rationales were something else: "It is not a conflict with God's will, rather it is to carry out God's will, that those who do not believe and/or are like plague-infested vermin threatening the general Order and "God's Chosen", must be sacrificed in order for those doing God's will to survive and continue His plan." And it gives the story of a young girl in a concentration camp, about to be gassed, and knowing what fate awaited her, asking an inmate Sonderkommando trying to deceive her as to what fate awaited her, why, what was there about him, that was so special, that he would even be able and willing to trade the lives of others, even his own family members, in order that he could survive for a little while more, and with him knowing, that her fate, would ultimately, and soon, be his fate also? What about the rationales, if any, of those literally trading the lives of their own loved ones, informing on them or deceiving them, in return for their own momentary survival? What about those, in contrast, under similar circumstances, who did not trade their lives for those of others?<br />-<br />This book, like the warning of Benjamin Franklin, is prescient and applicable, perhaps urgent for our times. We all see and face ethical choices every day that have consequences on the lives of many others. What about those like the present Pope Benedict XVI, a member of the Hitler Youth as well as the Wermacht who finally and opportunistically deserted his post when the fog of war allowed it, who also had a choice, and duty, to seriously ponder, question and act, as others more threatened than he did, what being a "Team Player" in Nazi Germany and Occupied Territories really means? What does it mean and what does it lead to, when one does not even ask, or consider, or even care about asking questions like: "What is the real nature and are the intentions of "The Team" on which I am expected to be a "Player"? " "What kinds of games--or worse--am I expected to be a "Player" and/or supporter of? That is why I do not trust anyone with a resume that says "Team Player" without any notion, or caveat, that it depends, of course, upon the real nature of "The Team" and the "games"--and their consequences on others as well as oneself--in which one is expected to "play" and thus be complicit as a "Player".<br />-<br />This book also notes that out of a population of some 80 million People, the reach and wrath of the Gestapo (40,000 total) and supporting entities of the Nazi state apparatus, were over-stretched and highly reliant on everyday citizens informing on others. It also notes that more often than not, people would inform on others for revenge in personal matters, to acquire confiscated properties, because of romantic jealousies, because of narrow identity politics or just for kicks to feel better than others. The Nazi state apparatus was so overwhelmed with people using state resources for personal agenda, they had to issue warnings that anyone caught doing so, would face retribution themselves. This book illustrates over and over the wisdom of the maxim, stated via a character in Sean O' Casey's "The White Plague": "Nothing is so passionate as a vested interest disguised as an intellectual conviction."<br />-<br />What about the parallels--and lessons--of those who planned various Nazi invasions, and the recent Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, founded, they knew at the time, on a body of lies, cherry picked intelligence, violations of international and domestic laws and actually engineered or phony pretexts? Eleven Nazis were sentenced to be hanged at Nuremberg for five basic and interrelated crimes: Waging Illegal and Aggressive Wars; Conspiracy; Crimes Against Peace; Crimes Against Humanity; War Crimes. What are the precedents and present-day parallels of the crimes charged at Nuremberg? What is the difference, if any, between the Nazi concept of "Blitzkrieg" and the present-day Neocon construct of "Shock and Awe"? What is the difference, if any, between the Nazi concept of the 1000-Year Reich and the Neocon concept of a global and unipolar "Pax Americana" or "The American Century"?<br />-<br />Finally, the wisdom embodied in the metaphor of the "frog in the pan of water" is vividly illustrated over and over. When, the metaphor goes, one puts a frog in a pan of boiling water, the frog will thrash about and try desperately to escape. On the other hand, put the frog in cold water and very gradually turn up the heat, the frog will adapt to newer and higher temperatures and sit in the pan, without trying to escape, until it boils to death.<br />-<br />The Weimar Constitution was never formally repealed; there was no need to. Daily, Germans surrendered their most basic civil and human rights, supposedly guaranteed by a constitution far more democratic than the U.S. Constitution. With each increment in repeal of basic rights, German citizens accepted and facilitated their own further repression under the banners of "patriotism", "national security", "chosen People or Nation", counter "terrorism", be a "Team Player", or, the final standby" shut up or next it will be you". As Hermann Goering put it at Nuremberg:<br />-<br />"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."<br />-<br />The Nazis understood well the dialectical (two-way) unity between morale at home and morale of the troops at war. They understood that lots of body bags and protracted conflicts caused loss of support and morale at home that would be communicated through personal letters and visits on leave to troops in the field thus undermining their morale and fighting spirit... They also understood that losses of morale by troops in the field would be communicated to those at home and undermine their support at home for the wars. The Nazis therefore carefully sanitized and/or kept separate bad news at home from those troops in the field and vice versa.<br />-<br />The role of the intellectuals, not only as theoreticians and functionaries, but as outright street thugs of Nazism is also explored. The German Jewish diarist Victor Klemperer wrote in 1936:<br />-<br />“If the fate [of the Nazis] lay in my hands… I would have all the intellectuals strung up, and the professors three feet higher than the rest; they would be left hanging from the lamp-posts for as long as was compatible with hygiene.” (quoted in Himmler’s Crusade: The Nazi Expedition to Find the Origins of the Aryan Race” by Christopher Hale, Castle Books, Edison, N.J... 2003, p.1)<br />-<br />What comes through loud and clear is the construct developed by Hannah Arendt from her experiences at the Eichmann Trial in Tel Aviv: “The Banality of Evil”. Instead of finding the three-headed monster she expected, Arendt found instead a rather ordinary, even pathetic individual, who looked like a clerk, calmly and clinically describing how he just “followed orders” and was what every boss wants—“a real team player”—in the course of making sure that the transportation of genocide ran efficiently and on time. It was also the Eichmann Trial, and the construct of “The Banality of Evil” that led Yale Psychologist Stanley Milgram to conduct his famous studies on the willingness of “ordinary individuals” and even “refined intellectuals” to administer pain to total strangers on the basis of the most spurious rationales and authority. At the infamous Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942 to plan the logistics and legal rationale for "The Final Solution", of the 15 high-level Nazis present, nine held doctorates and eight were lawyers.<br />-<br />This is a book with many lessons about human behavior, treachery, heroism, mob psychology, and ethical choices under difficult and even fatal conditions. It is about how "good people can do and do bad things". It is about how sometimes, even, some apparently bad people can wind up doing some good things, often for conflicting reasons (like SS butcher Wilhelm Kube who thought German Jews deserved a better fate than Slavic ones because they after all spoke German and were more cultured). It is about how they go about rationalizing the choices they make and often not doing to or for others what they would clearly want--and often begged for under new circumstances--done to or for themselves.<br />-<br />This is also a book with some profound lessons and examples very applicable today in many venues. These lessons, paid for with a lot of blood and misery, we ignore at our own peril.<br />-</div>Omahkohkiaayo i'poyihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16061952911212543042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449323876485291163.post-47632963697263871492009-02-24T09:03:00.000-08:002009-02-28T12:03:09.671-08:00The Way of the General: Essay on Leadership by Zhuge Liang (Kongming)<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SaQs7WrwFwI/AAAAAAAAAvw/z3hCfGY8zg0/s1600-h/225px-Zhuge_Liang.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 225px; height: 329px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SaQs7WrwFwI/AAAAAAAAAvw/z3hCfGY8zg0/s400/225px-Zhuge_Liang.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5306415659162277634" /></a><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SaQs7PQT0MI/AAAAAAAAAvo/c66Lw9Q-j3Q/s1600-h/200px-DWZhugeLiang.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 267px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SaQs7PQT0MI/AAAAAAAAAvo/c66Lw9Q-j3Q/s400/200px-DWZhugeLiang.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5306415657168130242" /></a><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SaQr-NSvi4I/AAAAAAAAAvg/rWwQWfouo3s/s1600-h/crisis.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 292px; height: 150px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LbIlP2wfBuY/SaQr-NSvi4I/AAAAAAAAAvg/rWwQWfouo3s/s400/crisis.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5306414608669444994" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br />Translator’s Introduction<br /><br />Reprinted under FAIR USE DOCTRINE for educational and non-commercial purposes.<br /><br />Zhuge Liang, commonly known by his style, Kongming, was born around the year 180, the son of a provincial official in the later days of the Han dynasty. At that time, the dynasty was thoroughly decrepit, nearly four hundred years old and on the verge of collapse. For most of his adult life, Zhuge Liang was to play a major role in the power struggles and civil wars that followed the demise of the ancient Han.<br /><br />Orphaned at an early age, he and his younger brother were taken in by an uncle, a local governor in southern China. When this uncle was replaced with another officer, he and his charges went to join an old family friend, a member of the powerful Liu clan who was currently a governor in central China. The imperial house of Han was a branch of the greater Liu clan, which as a whole retained considerable wealth, prestige, and influence even after the passing of the Han dynasty itself.<br /><br />Zhuge Liang’s uncle died during his sojourn in central China. Then in his twenties, Zhuge stayed there, supporting himself by farming. According to Record of the Three Kingdoms, at this early age Zhuge Liang was aware of his own genius, but few took him seriously; he was, after all, an orphan and subsistence farmer. His fortunes took a turn, however, when the great warrior Liu Bei, founder of the kingdom of Shu in western China, garrisoned in the area where Zhuge Liang was living.<br /><br />A member of the influential Xu clan, which produced many outstanding Taoists of the early churches, recommended Zhuge to the warrior chief. According to Record of the Three Kingdoms, Zhuge’s friend said to Liu Bei, “Zhuge Kongming is a dragon in repose - would you want to meet him?”<br /><br />Liu Bei said, “You come with him.”<br /><br />The friend said, “It is possible to go see this man, but you cannot make him come to you. You, General, should go out of your way to look in on him.”<br /><br />The record states that Liu Bei finally went to see Zhuge Liang, adding that he had to go no fewer than three times before the young genius agreed to meet the warrior chieftain. When at length they were together, the record continues, Liu Bei dismissed everyone else so that he could be alone with Zhuge Liang. Then he said, “The house of Han is collapsing; treacherous officials are usurping authority; the emperor is blinded by the dust.” The warrior lord went on to solicit Zhuge’s advice.<br /><br />Zhuge Liang told Liu Bei: “Ever since the beginning of the current power struggle for what is left of the Han empire, many prefectures and districts have been taken over by such men. If you compare current contenders for national power, one of them - the notorious Cao Cao - was once an unknown with a small force, yet he was able to overcome another warlord with a much large following. The reason the weaker was able to prevail over the stronger is not simply a matter of celestial timing, but also of human planning. Cao Cao now has a million followers; he controls the emperor and gives orders to the lords - he can not really be opposed.”<br /><br />“Another warlord, in control of the area east of the river, is already the third generation hegemon there. The territory is rugged and the people are loyal to him; the intelligent and capable serve in his employ. He would be a suitable ally, but he cannot be counted on”<br /><br />“Here there is ease of communications and transport. It is a land suitable for military operations. If its ruler cannot keep it this would seem to be a boon to a general. Do you have any interest in it? To the southwest are precipitous natural barriers beyond which lie vast fertile plains. That land is called the heavenly precinct, and it is where the Han dynasty really began.”<br /><br />“Now the governor of that region is ignorant and weak. To the north is the stronghold of the independent Taoist cult of Celestial Masters. The people are robust and the land is rich, but they do not know how to take care of it. Men of knowledge and ability want to find an enlightened leader.”<br /><br />“General, you are a descendant of the imperial family, and are known everywhere for integrity and justice. You gather heroic men and eagerly seek the wise. If you occupy this whole region, guard the crags and defiles, establish good relations with the foreign tribes to the west and south, make friends with the warlord east of the river, and work to perfect internal organization, then when there is a upheaval in the total political situation and you mobilize your armies, the common people will surely welcome you with food and drink. If you can really do this, hegemony can be established, and the house of Han can be revived.”<br /><br />Liu Bei agreed, and it turned out as planned.<br /><br />Zhuge became one of his top strategists since then.<br /><br />The intrigues of the era of the Three Kingdoms are too complex to detail here; indeed, they fill the one hundred chapters of the massive neoclassic historical novel Tales of the Three Kingdom. Suffice it to say here that the time was one of constant turmoil, tension, and strife. In the midst of unending warfare among the three kingdoms, Zhuge Liang was appointed to positions of highest responsibility in both civil and military leadership.<br /><br />When Liu Bei died, his heir was still young, so Zhuge Liang also served as the de facto regent for the new king as well as a top general and strategist. He never fell in battle, but he did die on a campaign, garrisoned in the field. Carrying burdens enough to kill two men, Zhuge Liang succumbed to illness at the age of fifty-four. Immortalized in literature for his intelligence and humanity, he was greatly admired as a warrior and administrator. His last will and testament, addressed to the young ruler of Shu, illustrates the thought and character of this remarkable individual: “It seems to me that I am a simpleton by nature. Having run into the troubles of the times, I mobilized an army on an expedition north. Before being able to achieve complete success, I unexpectedly became mortally ill, and now I am on the brink of death.”<br /><br />“I humbly pray that the ruler will purify his heart, minimize his desires, restrain himself and love the common people, convey respect to the former ruler, spread humanness through the land, promote conscientious individualists in order to get wise and good people into position of responsibility, and throw out traitors and calumniators in order to make the manners of the people more substantial.”<br /><br />“I have eight hundred mulberry trees (MD: actually they are silkworm-feeding trees) and eight acres of thin fields, so my children and grandchildren are self-sufficient in food and clothing. I am abroad, without any particular accoutrements; I wear government-issue clothing and eat government-issue food, and do not have any other source of income for my personal use. When I die, do not let there be any extra cotton on the corpse, or any special burial objects, for which I would be indebted to the nation.”<br /><br />As this testament shows, there is a strong undercurrent of Taoist thought in Zhuge Liang’s attitude toward life and work. This undercurrent is even more evident in his letter of advice to his nephew and his son. To this nephew he wrote: “Aspirations should remain lofty and far-sighted. Look to the precedents of the wise. Detach from emotions and desires; get rid of any fixations. Elevate subtle feelings to presence of mind and sympathetic sense. Be patient in tight situations as well as easy one; eliminate all pettiness.”<br /><br />“Seek knowledge be questioning widely; set aside aversion and reluctance. What loss is there in dignity, what worry is there of failure?”<br /><br />“If your will is not strong, if your thought does not oppose injustice, you will fritter away your life stuck in the commonplace, silently submitting to the bonds of emotion, forever cowering before mediocrities, never escaping the downward flow.”<br /><br />To his son, he gave him this advice: “The practice of a cultivated man is to refine himself by quietude and develop virtue by frugality. With out detachment, there is no way to clarify the will; without serenity, there is no way to get far.”<br /><br />“Study requires calm, talent requires study. Without study there is no way to expand talent; without calm there is no way to accomplish study.”<br /><br />“If you are laze, you cannot do thorough research; if you are impulsive, you cannot govern your nature.”<br /><br />“The years run off with the hours, aspirations flee with the years. Eventually one ages and collapses. What good will it do to lament over poverty?”<br /><br />Finally, Zhuge’s own motto illustrates a central quality for which he is especially honored, the quality of sincerity. Zhuge’s honesty and integrity in public and private life are legendary, and his writings on social and political organization show that he considered sincerity fundamental to success in these domains. He formulated the rule of his life in this motto: “Opportunistic relationships can hardly be kept constant. The acquaintance of honorable people, even at a distance, does not add flowers in times of warmth and does not change its leaves in times of cold: it continues unfading through the four seasons, becomes increasingly stable as it passes through ease and danger.”<br /><br />The following essays on leadership and organization are taken from a collection of works by and about Zhuge Liang, Records of the Loyal Lord of Warriors, as preserved in the Taoist canon.<br /><br /><br /><br />The Way of the General<br />Essay on Leadership and Crisis Management<br /><br />Authored by Zhuge Liang (Kongming)<br />Translated by Thomas Cleary<br /><br />(Reprinted under FAIR USE DOCTRINE for educational and non-commercial purposes)<br />( Return to Translator’s Introduction )<br /><br />The Authority of the Military Leadership<br /><br />Military authority, directing the armed forces, is the matter of the authoritative power of the leading general. <br /><br />If the general can hold the authority of the military and operate its power, he oversees his subordinates like a fierce tiger with wings, flying over the four seas, going into action whenever there is an encounter.<br /><br />If the general loses his authority and cannot control the power, he is like a dragon cast into a lake, he may seek the freedom of the high sea, but how can he get there?<br /><br />Chasing Evils<br /><br />There are five types of harm in decadence among national armed forces.<br /> <br />First is the formation of factions that band together for character assassination, criticizing an vilifying the wise and the good. <br /><br />Second is luxury in uniforms. <br /><br />Third is wild tales and confabulations about the supernatural.<br /><br />Fourth is judgment based on private views, mobilizing groups for personal reasons. <br /><br />Fifth is making secret alliances with enemies, watching for where the advantage may lie.<br /><br />All people like this are treacherous and immoral. You should distance yourself from them and not associate with them.<br /><br />Knowing People<br /><br />Nothing is harder to see into people’s natures. Though good and bad are different, their conditions and appearances are not always uniform.<br /><br />There are some people who are nice enough but steal.<br /><br />Some people are outwardly respectful while inwardly making fools of everyone.<br /><br />Some people are brave on the outside yet cowardly on the inside.<br /><br />Some people do their best but are not loyal.<br /><br />Hard though it be to know people, there are ways.<br /><br />First is to question them concerning right and wrong, to observe their ideas.<br /><br />Second is to exhaust all their arguments, to see how they change.<br /><br />Third is to consult with them about strategy, to see how perceptive they are.<br /><br />Fourth is to announce that there is trouble, to see how brave they are.<br /><br />Sixth is to present them with the prospect of gain, to see how modest they are.<br /><br />Seventh is to give them a task to do within a specific time, to see how trustworthy they are.<br /><br />Types of Generals<br /><br />There are nine types of generals.<br /><br />Those who guide with virtue, who treat all equally with courtesy, who know when the troops are cold and hungry, and who notice when they are weary and pained, are called humanistic generals.<br /><br />Those who do not try to avoid any task, who are not influenced by profit, who would die with honor before living in disgrace, are called dutiful generals.<br /><br />Those who are not arrogant because of their high status, who do not make much of their victories, who are wise but can humble themselves, who are strong but can be tolerant, are called courteous generals.<br /><br />Those whose extraordinary shifts are unfathomable, whose movements and responses are multifaceted, who turn disaster into fortune and seize victory from the jaws of danger, are called clever generals.<br /><br />Those who give rich rewards for going ahead and have strict penalties for retreating, whose rewards are given right away and whose penalties are the same for all ranks, even the highest, are called trustworthy generals.<br /><br />Those who go on foot or on a warhorse, with the mettle to take on a hundred men, who are skilled in the use of close-range weapons, swords, and spears are called infantry generals.<br /><br />Those who face the dizzying heights and cross the dangerous defiles, who can shoot at a gallop as if in flight, who are in the vanguard when advancing and in the rear guard when withdrawing, are called cavalry generals.<br /><br />Those who mettle makes the armies tremble and whose determination makes light of powerful enemies, who are hesitant to engage in petty fights while courageous in the midst of major battles, are called fierce generals.<br /><br />Those who consider themselves lacking when they see the wise, who go along with good advice like following a current, who are magnanimous yet able to be firm, who are uncomplicated yet have many strategies, are called great generals.<br /><br />Capacities of Commanders<br /><br />The capacities of commanders are not the same; some are greater, some are lesser.<br /><br />One who spies out treachery and disaster, who wins the allegiance of others, is the leader of ten men.<br /><br />One who rises early in the morning and retires late at night, and whose words are discreet yet perceptive, is the leader of a hundred men.<br /><br />One who is direct yet circumspect, who is brave and can fight, is the leader of a thousand men.<br /><br />One of martial bearing and fierceness of heart, who knows the hardships of others and spares people from hunger and cold, is the leader of ten thousand men.<br /><br />One who associates with the wise and promotes the able, who is careful of how he spends each day, who is sincere, trustworthy, and magnanimous, and who is guarded in times of order as well as times of disturbance, is the leader of a hundred thousand men.<br /><br />One whose humanitarian care extends to all under his command, whose trustworthiness and justice win the allegiance of neighboring nations, who understands the signs of the sky above, the patterns of the earth below, and the affairs of humanity in between, and who regards all people as his family, is a world-class leader, one who cannot be opposed.<br /><br />Decadence in Generals<br /><br />There are eight kinds of decadence in generalship.<br /><br />First is to be insatiably greedy.<br /><br />Second is to be jealous and envious of the wise and able.<br /><br />Third is to believe slanders and make friends with the treacherous.<br /><br />Fourth is to assess others without assessing oneself.<br /><br />Fifth is to be hesitant and indecisive.<br /><br />Sixth is to be heavily addicted to wine and sex.<br /><br />Seventh is to be a malicious liar with a cowardly heart.<br /><br />Eighth is to talk wildly, without courtesy.<br /><br />Loyalty in Generals<br /><br />“Weapons are instruments of ill omen”; generalship is a dangerous job. Therefore if one is inflexible there will be breakdowns, and when the job is important there will be danger.<br /><br />This is why a good general does not rely or presume on strength or power. He is not pleased by favor and does not fear vilification. He does not crave whatever material goods he sees, and he does not rape whatever women he can. His only intention is to pursue the best interest of the country.<br /><br />Skills of Generals<br /><br />There are five skills and four desires involved in generalship.<br /><br />The five skills are:<br /><br />1. Skill in knowing the disposition and power of enemies,<br />2. Skill in knowing the ways to advance and withdraw,<br />3. Skill in knowing how empty or how full countries are,<br />4. Skill in knowing nature’s timing and human affairs,<br />5. And skill in knowing the features of terrain.<br /><br />The four desires are:<br /><br />1. Desire for the extraordinary and unexpected in strategy,<br />2. Desire for thoroughness in security,<br />3. Desire for calm among the masses,<br />4. And desire for unity of hearts and minds.<br /><br />Arrogance in Generals<br /><br />Generals should not be arrogant, for if they are arrogant they will become discourteous, and if they are discourteous people will become alienated from them. When people are alienated, they become rebellious.<br /><br />General should not be stingy, for if they are stingy they will not reward the trustworthy, and if they do not reward the trustworthy, the soldiers will not be dedicated., the armed forces are ineffective, and if the armed forces are ineffective, the nation is empty. When the nation is empty, its opponents are full.<br /><br />Confucius said, “People may have the finest talents, but if they are arrogant and stingy, their others qualities are not worthy of consideration.”<br /><br />Military Preparedness<br /><br />Military preparedness is the greatest task of the nation. A small mistake can make a huge difference. When the force of momentum by which soldiers are killed and generals are captured can move with sudden rapidity, should we not be wary?<br /><br />Therefore when a nation is in trouble, the ruler and ministers urgently work on strategy, selecting the wise and assessing the able to delegate responsibility to them.<br /><br />If you count on safety and do not think of danger, if you do not know enough to be wary when enemies arrive, this is called a sparrow nesting on a tent, a fish swimming in a cauldron - they won’t last the day.<br /><br />Traditions say, “Without preparation, military operation are unfeasible.”<br /><br />“Preparedness against the unexpected is a way of good government.”<br /><br />“Even bees have venom - how much the more do nations. If you are unprepared, even if there are many of you, mere numbers cannot be counted on.”<br /><br />A classic document says, “Only when we do our tasks are we prepared; when we are prepared, there is no trouble.”<br /><br />Therefore the action of the military forces must have preparation.<br /><br />Training<br /><br />Soldiers without training cannot stand up to one out of a hundred opponents, yet they are sent out against a hundred each. This is why Confucius said, “To send people to war without teaching them is called abandoning them." It is also said, "Teach the people for the seven year, and they too can go to war.”<br /><br />Therefore soldiers must be taught with out fail. First train them in conduct and duty, teach them to be loyal and trustworthy, instruct them in rules and penalties, awe them with rewards and punishments. When people know enough to follow along, then train them in maneuvers.<br /><br />One person can teach ten, ten people can teach a hundred, a hundred people can teach a thousand, a thousand can teach ten thousand, thus developing the armed forces. Train like this, and opponents will surely lose.<br /><br />Corruption in the Armed Forces<br /><br />In military operation it may happen the scouts are not careful of their signal fires or there may be mistakes in calculation and consequent delays, infractions of rules, failure to respond to the time and situation, disorder in the ranks, callous and unreasonable demand made by superiors on their subordinates, pursuit of self-interest, lack of concern for the hungry and cool, tall tales and fortune telling, rabble rousing, confusing the officers, refusal of the mettlesome to submit to authority, contempt of superiors, or using supplies for personal enjoyment. These things corrupt the armed forces. When they are present, there is certain to be defeat.<br /><br />Loyal Hearts<br /><br />Those who would be military leaders must have loyal hearts, eyes and ears, claws and fangs. Without people loyal to them, they are like someone walking at night, not knowing where to step. Without eyes and ears, they are as though in the dark, not knowing how to proceed. Without claws and fangs, they are like hungry men eating poisoned food, inevitably to die.<br /><br />Therefore good generals always have intelligent and learned associates for their advisors, thoughtful and careful associates for their eyes and ears, brave and formidable associates for their claws and fangs.<br /><br />Careful Watching<br /><br />The loss of an army is always caused by underestimating an opponent and thus bringing on disaster. Therefore an army goes out in an orderly manner. If order is lost, that bodes ill.<br /><br />There are fifteen avenues of order:<br /><br />1. Thoughtfulness, using secret agents for intelligence.<br />2. Organization, gathering news and watching carefully.<br />3. Courage, not being disturbed by the number of the enemy.<br />4. Modesty, thinking of justice and duty when seeing the opportunity for gain.<br />5. Impartiality, being egalitarian in matters of rewards and punishments.<br />6. Forbearance, being able to bear humiliation.<br />7. Magnanimity, being able to accept the masses.<br />8. Trustworthiness, so that there can be serious cooperation.<br />9. Respect, honoring the wise and able.<br />10. Clarity of mind, not listening to slander.<br />11. Reason, not forgetting past experience.<br />12. Human kindness, taking care of the soldiers.<br />13. Loyalty, devoting oneself to the nation.<br />14. Moderation, knowing to stop when you have enough of anything.<br />15. Planning, assessing yourself first, and then assessing others.<br /><br />Formation of Opportunity<br /><br />To overcome the intelligent by folly is contrary to the natural order of things; to overcome the foolish by intelligence is in accord with the natural order. To overcome the intelligent by intelligence, however, is a matter of opportunity<br /><br />There are three avenues of opportunity: events, trends, and conditions. When opportunities occur through events but you are unable to respond, you are not smart. When opportunities become active through a trend and yet you cannot make plans, you are not wise. When opportunities emerge through conditions but you cannot act on them, you are not bold.<br /><br />Those skilled in generalship always achieve their victories by taking advantage of opportunities.<br /><br />Good Generalship<br /><br />Good generals of ancient times had some overall principles:<br /><br />1. Show people when to proceed and when to withdraw, and people will learn regulation.<br />2. Array them on the lines rightly and justly, and people will be orderly.<br />3. Show respect for them by your judgment, and people will be enthusiastic.<br />4. Motivate them with rewards and penalties, and people will be trusting.<br />Regulation, order, enthusiasm, and trust are the overall principles of generals, by which they are able to ensure victory in battle.<br /><br />The mediocre are not like this: they cannot stop their troops when they retreat, they cannot control their troops when they advance, they mix up good and bad, the soldiers are not given instruction and encouragement, rewards and punishments are not fair. Because people are not trusting, the wise and the good withdraw, while flatterers are promoted. Such an army will therefore inevitably be defeated in war.<br /><br />Discerning Bases<br /><br />If you attack evils based on social trends, no one can rival you in dignity. If you settle victory based on the power of the people, no one can rival you in achievement.<br /><br />If you can accurately discern these bases of action, and add dignity and faith to them, you can take on the most formidable opponent and prevail over the most valiant adversary.<br /><br />Victory and Defeat<br /><br />When the wise and talented are in the higher positions and undesirables are in low positions, the armed forces are happy. When the soldiers are scared, if they talk to each other of valiant combat, look to each other on by rewards and penalties, these are signs of certain victory.<br /><br />When the armies have been shaken up several times, if the soldiers become lazy, insubordinate, untrustworthy, and unruly, if they scare each other with talk about the enemy, if they talk to each other about booty, make hints to each other of disaster and fortune, or confuse each other with weir talk, these are signs of certain defeat.<br /><br />Using Authority<br /><br />People’s lives depend on generals, as do success and failure, calamity and fortune, so if the rulership does not give them the power to reward and punish, this is like tying up a monkey and trying to make it cavort around, or like gluing someone’s eyes shut and asking him to distinguish colors.<br /><br />If rewards are up to powerful civilians and punishments do not come from the generals, people will seek personal profit - then who will have any interest in fighting? Even with superlative strategy and performance, self-defense would be impossible under these circumstances.<br /><br />Therefore Sun Tzu the Martialist said, “When a general is in the field, there are some orders he doesn’t accept from the civilian ruler.” It is also said, “In the army, you hear the orders of the generals, you don’t hear about command from the emperor.”<br /><br />Grieving for the Dead<br /><br />Good general of ancient times took care of their people as one might take care of a beloved child. When there was difficulty they would face it first themselves, and when something was achieved they would defer to others. They would tearfully console the wounded and sorrowfully mourn the dead. They would sacrifice themselves to feed the hungry and remove their own garments to clothe the cold. They honored the wise and provided for their living; they rewarded and encouraged the brave. If generals can be like this, they can take over anywhere they go.<br /><br />Allies<br /><br />To operate, the armed forces need allies as consultants and assistants to the leadership.<br /><br />Everyone looks up to those who are thoughtful and have unusual strategies beyond the ordinary ken, who are widely learned and have broad vision, and who have many skills and great talents. Such people can be made top allies.<br /><br />Those who are fierce, swift, firm, and sharp are heroes of an age. Such people can be made second-ranked allies.<br /><br />Those who talk a lot but not always to the point, who are slight in ability, with little that is extraordinary, are people with ordinary capabilities. They can be brought along as the lower class of allies.<br /><br />Responsiveness<br /><br />When you plan for difficulty in times of ease, when you do the great while it is still small, when you use rewards first and penalties later, this is refinement in use of the military.<br /><br />When the troops are already on the battlefield, the cavalries are charging each other, the catapults have been set in position, and the infantries meet at close range, if you can use awesome authoritativeness to convey a sense of trust such that opponents surrender, this is ability in use of the military.<br /><br />If you plunge into a half of arrows and rocks, facing off in a contest for victory, with winning and losing distinct, if your adversary is wounded but you die, this is inferiority in use of the military.<br /><br />Taking Opportunities<br /><br />The art of certain victory, the mode of harmonizing with charges, is a matter of opportunity. Who but the perspicacious can deal with it? And of all avenues of seeing opportunity, none is greater than the unexpected.<br /><br />Assessing Abilities<br /><br />Those who employed warriors skillfully in ancient times assessed their abilities in order to calculate the prospects of victory or defeat:<br /><br />Who has the wise ruler?<br />Who has the more intelligent generals?<br />Who has the more able officers?<br />Whose food supplies are most abundant?<br />Whose soldiers are better trained?<br />Whose legions are more orderly?<br />Whose warhorses are swifter?<br />Whose formation and situation are more dangerous?<br />Whose clients and allies are smarter?<br />Whose neighbors are more frightened?<br />Whose has more food and money?<br />Whose citizenry is calmer?<br /><br />When consider matters along these lines, structural strengths and weaknesses can be determined.<br /><br />Facilitating Battle<br /><br />A scorpion will sting because it has poison; a soldier can be brave when he can rely on his equipment. Therefore when their weapons are sharp and their armor is strong, people will readily do battle. If armor is not strong, it is the same as baring one’s shoulders. if a bow cannot shoot far, it is the same as a close-range weapon. If a shot cannot hit the mark, it is the same as having no weapon. If a scout is not careful, it is the same as having no eyes. If a general is not brave in battle, it is the same as having no military leadership.<br /><br />Striking Power<br /><br />Skilled warriors of ancient times first found out the condition of their enemies and then made plans to deal with them. There is no doubt of success when you strike enemies under the following conditions:<br /><br />Their fighting forces are stale.<br />Their supplies are exhausted.<br />Their populace is full of sorrow and bitterness.<br />Many people are physically ill.<br />They do not plan ahead.<br />Their equipment is in disrepair.<br />Their soldiers are not trained.<br />Reinforcement does not show up.<br />Night falls when they still have a long way to go.<br />Their soldiers are worn out.<br />Their generals are contemptuous and their officers are inconsiderate.<br />They neglect to make preparations.<br />They do not form battle lines as they advance.<br />When they do form battle lines, they are not stable.<br />They are disorderly when they travel over rough terrain.<br />There is discord between commanders and soldiers.<br />They become arrogant when they win a battle.<br />There is disorder in the ranks when they move their battle lines.<br />The soldiers are tired and prone to upset.<br />The army is supplied, but the people do not eat.<br />Each man moves on his own - some go ahead, some lag behind.<br />When opponents have the following qualities, however, withdraw and avoid them:<br />Superiors are considerate and subordinates are obedient.<br />Rewards are sure and punishments certain.<br />The forces are set out in an orderly fashion.<br />They give responsibility to the wise and employ the able.<br />The army is courteous and mannerly.<br />Their armor is strong and their weapons keen.<br />They have plenty of supplies and equipment.<br />Their government and education are substantial.<br />They are on good terms with all of their neighbors.<br />They are backed by great nations.<br /><br />Psychological Configurations<br /><br />Some generals are brave and think lightly of death. Some are hasty and impulsive. Some are greedy and materialistic. Some are humane but lack endurance. Some are intelligent but timid. Some are intelligent but easygoing at heart<br /><br />Those who are brave and think lightly of death are vulnerable to assault. Those who are hasty and impulsive are vulnerable to delay. Those who are greedy and materialistic are vulnerable to loss. Those who are humane but lack endurance are vulnerable to fatigue. Those who are intelligent but timid are vulnerable to pressure. Those who are intelligent but easygoing are vulnerable to sudden attack<br /><br />Orderly Troops<br /><br />In military operations, order leads to victory. If rewards and penalties are unclear, if rules and regulations are unreliable, and if signals are not followed, even if you have an army of a million strong it is of no practical benefit.<br /><br />An orderly army is one that is mannerly and dignified, one that cannot be withstood when it advances and cannot be pursued when it withdraws. Its movements are regulated and directed; this gives it security and presents no danger. The troops can be massed but not scattered, can be deployed but not worn out.<br /><br />Inspiring Soldiers<br /><br />Honor them with titles, present them with goods, and soldiers willingly come join you. Treat them courteously, inspire them with speeches, and soldiers willingly die. Give them nourishment and rest so that they do not become weary, make the code of rules uniform, and soldiers willingly obey. Lead them into battle personally, and soldiers will be brave. Record even a little good, reward even a little merit, and soldiers will be encouraged.<br /><br />Self-exertion<br /><br />Sages follow the rules of heaven; the wise obey the laws of earth; the intelligent follow precedent. Harm comes to the arrogant; calamity visits the proud. Few people trust those who talk too much; few people feel indebted to the self-serving. Rewarding the unworthy causes alienation; punishing the innocent causes resentment. Those whose appreciation or anger are unpredictable perish.<br /><br />Harmonizing People<br /><br />Harmonizing people is essential in military operations. When people are in harmony, they will fight on their own initiative, without exhortation. If the officers and the soldiers are suspicious of one another, them warriors will not join up. If no heed is paid to the strategies of loyal, the small-minded people will backbite. When the sprouts of hypocrisy arise, even if you have the wisdom of the great warrior-kings of old, you will not be able to prevail over an ordinary man, much less a whole group of them. Therefore tradition says, “A military operation is like fire; if it is not stopped, it burns itself out.”<br /><br />The Condition of a General<br /><br />According to the code of generalship, generals do not say they are thirsty before the soldiers have drawn from the well; generals do not say they are hungry before the soldiers’ food is cooked; generals do not say they are cold before the soldiers’ fire are kindled; generals do not say they are hot before the soldiers’ canopies are drawn. Generals do not use fans in summer, do not wear leather (or fur) in winter, do not use umbrella in the rain. They do as everyone does.<br /><br />Order and Disorder<br /><br />When a nation is perilous and disordered, and the people are not secure in their homes, this is because the ruler has made the mistake of neglecting to find wise people<br /><br />When the wise are disaffected, a nation is in peril; when the wise are employed, a nation is secure. When offices are chosen for persons, there is disorder; when persons are chosen for offices, there is order.<br /><br />Observant Government<br /><br />An observant and perceptive government is one that looks at subtle phenomena and listens to small voices. When phenomena are subtle they are not seen, and when voices are small they are not heard; therefore an enlightened leader looks closely at the subtle and listens for the importance of the small voice.<br /><br />This harmonizes the outside with the inside, and harmonizes the inside with the outside; so the Way of government involves the effort to see and hear much.<br /><br />Thus when you are alert to what the people in the lower echelons have to say, and take it into consideration, so that your plan include the rank and file, then all people are your eyes and a multitude of voices helps your ears. This is the reason for the classic saying, “A sage has no constant mind - the people are the sage’s mind.”<br /><br />Rulers and Ministers<br /><br />For rulers, generosity to subordinates is benevolence; for ministers, service of the government is duty. No one should serve the government with duplicity; ministers should not be given dubious policies.<br /><br />When both superiors and subordinates are given to courtesy, then the people are easy to employ. When superiors and subordinates are in harmony, then the Way of rulers and ministers is fulfilled: rulers employ their ministers courteously, while ministers work for the rulers loyally; rulers plan the government policies, while ministers plan their implantation.<br /><br />Knowledgeable Rule<br /><br />Rulers are considered knowledgeable according to how much they have seen, and are considered capable according to how much they have heard.<br /><br />Everyone knows the saying that an intelligent ruler is constant through the day and night, discharging the affairs of office by day and attending to personal matters at night. Yet there may be grievances that do not get a hearing, and there may be loyal people promoting good who are not trusted.<br /><br />If grievances are not heard, the best cannot be straightened. If promotion of good is not accepted, the loyal are not trusted and the treacherous enter with their schemes.<br /><br />This is the meaning of the proverb in the ancient “Classic of Documents”: “Heaven sees through the seeing of my people, heaven hears through the hearing of my people.”<br /><br />Not Knowing<br /><br />Confucius said that an enlightened ruler does not worry about people not knowing him, he worries about not knowing people. He worries not about outsiders not knowing insiders, but about insiders not knowing outsiders. He worries not about subordinates not knowing superiors, but about superiors not knowing subordinates. He worries not about the lower classes not knowing the upper classes, but about the upper classes not knowing the lower classes.<br /><br />Adjudication<br /><br />When rulers adjudicate criminal cases and execute punishments, they worry that they may be unclear. The innocent may be punished while the guilty may be released. The powerful may arrogate to themselves alone the right to speak, while the powerless may have their rights infringed upon by those who bear grudges against them. Honesty may be distorted; those who are wronged may not get a chance to express themselves. The trustworthy may be suspected; the loyal may be attacked. These are all perversions, problems causing disaster and violence, aberrations causing calamity and chaos.<br /><br />Disturbance and Security<br /><br />It is said that when official are severe in everything, no one knows where it will end. If they feed off the people so severely that people are hungry and impoverished, this produces disturbances and rebellion.<br /><br />Encourage people in productive work, don’t deprive them of their time. Lighten their taxes, don’t exhaust their resources. In this way the country is made wealthy and families secure.<br /><br />Appointments<br /><br />The official policy of making appointments should be to promote the upright and place them over the crooked. Governing a country is like governing the body,. The way to govern the body is to nurture the spirit; the way to govern a country is to promote the wise. Life is sought by nurturing the spirit; stability is sought by promoting the wise.<br /><br />So public servants are to a nation as pillars are to a house; the pillars should not be slender; public servants should not be weak. When the pillars are slender the house collapses; when the public servants are weak the nation crumbles. Therefore the way to govern a nation is to promote the upright over the crooked; then the nation is secure.<br /><br />Pillars of State<br /><br />For strong pillars you need straight trees; for wise public servants you need upright people. Straight trees are found in remote forests; upright people come from the humble masses. Therefore when rulers are going to make appointments they need to look in obscure places.<br /><br />Sometimes there are disenfranchised people with something of value in them; sometimes there are people with extraordinary talent who go unrecognized. Sometimes there are paragons of virtue who are not promoted by their hometown; sometimes there are people who live in obscurity on purpose.<br /><br />Sometimes there are people who are dutiful and righteous for purely philosophical or religious reasons. Sometimes there are loyal people who are straightforward with rulers but are slandered by cliques. Ancient kings are known to have hired unknowns and nobodies, finding in them the human qualities whereby they were able to bring peace.<br /><br />Evaluation and Dismissal<br /><br />The official policy of evaluation and dismissal should be to promote the good and dismiss the bad. An enlightened leadership is aware of good and bad throughout the realm. not daring to overlook even minor officials and commoners, employing the wise and good, and dismissing the greedy and weak-minded.<br /><br />With enlightened leadership and good citizens, projects get accomplished, the nation is orderly, and the wise gather like rain; this is the way to promote the good and dismiss the bad, setting forth what is acceptable and what is blameworthy. Therefore a policy of evaluation and dismissal means effort to know what hurts the people.<br /><br />What Hurts the People<br /><br />There are five things that hurt the people:<br /><br />1. There are local officials who use public office for personal benefit, taking improper advantage of their authority, holding weapons in one hand and people’s livelihood in the other, corrupting their offices, and bleeding the people.<br />2. There are cases where serious offenses are given light penalties; there is inequality before the law, and the innocents are subjected to punishment, even execution. Sometimes serious crimes are pardoned, the strong are supported, and the weak are oppressed. Harsh penalties are applied, unjustly torturing people to get at facts.<br />3. Sometimes there are officials who condone crime and vice, punishing those who protest against this, cutting off the avenue of appeal and hiding the truth, plundering and ruining lives, unjust and arbitrary.<br />4. Sometimes there are senior officials who repeatedly change department heads so as to monopolize the government administration, favoring their friends and relatives while treating those they dislike with unjust harshness, oppressive in their actions, prejudiced and unruly. They also use taxation to reap profit, enriching themselves and their families by exactions and fraud.<br />5. Sometimes local officials extensively tailor awards and fines, welfare projects, and general expenditures, arbitrarily determining prices and measures, with the result that people lose their jobs.<br /><br />These five things are harmful to the people, and anyone who does any of these should be dismissed from the office.<br /><br />Military Actions<br /><br />“Weapon are instruments of ill omen, to be used only when it is unavoidable.” The proper course of military action is to establish strategy first, and then carry it out. Monitor the environment, observe the minds of the masses, practice the use of military equipment, clarity the principles of reward and punishment, watch the schemes of enemies, note the perils of the roads, distinguish safe and dangerous places, find out the conditions of the parties involves, and recognize when to proceed and when to withdraw. Follow the timing of opportunities, set up preparations for defense, strengthen your striking power, improve the abilities of your soldiers, map out decisive strategies, and consider life and death issues. Only after doing appointing military leaders and extending the power to capture enemies. This is the overall scheme of things in military matters.<br /><br />Rewards and Penalties<br /><br />A policy of rewards and penalties means rewarding the good and penalizing wrongdoers. Rewarding the good is to promote achievement; penalizing wrongdoers is to prevent treachery.<br /><br />It is imperative that rewards and punishments be fair and impartial. When they know rewards are to be given, courageous warriors know what they are dying for; when they know penalties are to be applied, villains know what to fear.<br /><br />Therefore, rewards should not be given without reason, and penalties should not be applied arbitrary. If rewards are given for no reason, those who have worked hard in public service will be resentful; if penalties are applied arbitrary, upright people will be bitter.<br /><br />Clarity and Consistency<br /><br />Generals hold authority over life and death. If they allow those who should live to be killed, or allow those who should be killed to live, or if they get angry without discernible reason, or their punishments and rewards are not clear, or commands are inconsistent, or they carry their private over into public life, this is dangerous for the nation.<br /><br />If their punishment and rewards are not clear, their directives will not always be followed. If they allow those who should be killed to live, treachery will not be prevented. If they allow those who should live to be killed, soldiers will defect. If they get angry without discernible reason, their authority will not be effective. If their rewards and punishments are not clear, the lower echelons will not be encouraged to achieve. If politics are inappropriate, orders will not be obeyed. If private affairs are carried over into public life, people will be of two minds.<br /><br />If treachery is not prevented, it is impossible to last long. If soldiers defect, the ranks will be decimated. If authority is ineffective, the troops will not rise up in the face of the enemy. If the lower echelons are not encouraged to achieve, the upper echelons have no strong support. If orders are not obeyed, affairs will be chaotic. If people are of two minds, the country will be in danger.<br /><br />Pleasure and Displeasure<br /><br />Displeasure should not lead you to harm people who have done no wrong; pleasure should not lead you to go along with those who deserve to be executed.<br /><br />Pleasure should not induce you to forgive those who have done wrong; displeasure should not induce you to execute the innocent.<br /><br />Pleasure and displeasure should not be arbitrary; personal prejudices ignore worthy people. A general should not start a battle out of personal displeasure; it is imperative to go by the collective will. If he does go into battle because of personal displeasure, it will certainly result in defeat.<br /><br />Culture and the Military<br /><br />Culture takes precedence; the military comes after. If you put victory first, you will surely get beaten later; if you start out with anger, you will surely regret it later. One day’s anger can destroy your whole life. Therefore a superior man is stern but not ferocious; he may get angry, but not furious; he may worry, but does not fear; he may rejoice, but not overjoyed.<br /><br />Organization<br /><br />A policy to quell disorder involves minimizing offices and combining duties, getting rid of embellishment in favor of substance.<br /><br />First organize directives, then organize penalties. First organize the near at hand, then organize the far removed. First organize the inner, then organize the outer. First organize the basic, then organize the derivative. First organize the strong, then organize the weak. First organize the great, then organize the small. First organize yourself, then organize others.<br /><br />Instruction and Direction<br /><br />A policy of instruction and direction means those above educate those below, not saying anything that is unlawful and not doing anything that is immoral, for what is done by those above is observed by those below.<br /><br />To indulge oneself yet instruct others is contrary to proper government; to correct oneself and then teach others is in accord with proper government. Therefore true leaders first rectify themselves and only after that do they promulgate their directives. If they are not upright themselves, their directives will not be followed, resulting in disorder.<br /><br />Therefore the Way of leadership puts education and direction before punishment. To send people to war without education is tantamount to throwing them away.<br /><br />Thought and Consideration<br /><br />A policy of thought and consideration means giving thought to what is near at hand and considering what is remote. As it is said, “If people do not consider what is remote, they will have trouble near at hand.” Therefore “educated people think without leaving their positions.” Thinking means correct strategy, consideration mean thinking of plans for eventualities. One is not to plan policy when it is not one’s place to do so, or consider the scheme of things that are none of one’s business.<br /><br />Major affairs arise in difficulty, minor affairs arise in ease. Therefore if you want to think of the advantages in a situation, it is imperative to consider the harm; if you want to think about success, it is imperative to consider failure.<br /><br />Danger arises in safety, destruction arises in survival. Harm arises in advantage, chaos arises in order. Enlightened people know the obvious when they see the subtle, know the end when they see the beginning; thus there is no way for disaster to happen. This is due to thoughtful consideration.<br /><br />Strength in Generals<br /><br />Generals have five strengths and eight evils.<br />The five strengths are: noble behavior that can inspire the common people, social virtues that can elevate their reputations, trustworthiness and dutifulness in personal relationships, universal love encompassing all the people, and powerful action to succeed in their tasks.<br /><br />The eight evils are: inability to assess right and wrong when formulating strategy, inability to delegate authority to the wise and the goods in times of order, inability to mete out just punishments for incidents of disorder, inability to help the poor in times of plenty, insufficient intelligence to guard against threats before they have taken shape, insufficient thought to prevent subtle dangers, inability to express what is known intuitively, and inability to avoid criticism in defeat.<br /><br />Sending out the Armed Forces<br /><br />In ancient times, when a nation was in trouble, the ruler would select a wise man and have hime fast for three days in quiet seclusion before going to the gate of the national shrine, where he would stand facing south. He then took a high courtier to present a ceremonial axe to the ruler, who in turn would pass it by the handle to the general, saying:<br /><br />“The military leadership settles matters outside the borders,” and also directing him in these terms:<br /><br />“Where you see the enemy to be empty, proceed; where you see the enemy to be full, stop.<br /><br />“Do not look down on others because of your elevated rank.<br /><br />“Do not oppose the common consensus with personal opinions.<br /><br />“Do not turn from the loyal and trustworthy through the artifices of the skilled but treacherous.<br /><br />“Do not sit down before the soldiers sit; do not eat before the soldiers eat.<br /><br />“Bear the same cold and heat the soldiers do; share their toil as well as their case.<br /><br />“Experience sweetness and bitterness just as the soldiers do; take the same risks that they do.<br /><br />“Then the soldiers will exert themselves to the utmost, and it will be possible to destroy enemies.”<br /><br />Having accepted these words, the general led the armed forces out through the city’s gate of ill omen.<br /><br />The ruler, seeing the general off, knelt and said, “Advance and retreat are a matter of timing - military affairs are not directed by the ruler but by the general.” Therefore “There is no heaven above, no earth below, no adversary ahead, and no ruler behind.” Thus the intelligent think because of this; the mettlesome fight because of this.”<br /><br />Selection on Abilities<br /><br />In military action, there are men who like to fight and enjoy battle, single-handedly taking on powerful opponents; gather them into one squad and call them “the warriors who repay the nation.<br /><br />There are mettlesome men with ability and strength, courage and speed; gather them into a squad and call them “the warriors who crash the battle lines.”<br /><br />There are those who are light of foot, good walkers and runners; gather them into a squad called “the warriors who capture the flag.”<br /><br />There are those who can shoot on horseback, swift as flight, hitting the mark every times; gather them into one squad and call them “the galloping warriors.”<br /><br />There are archers whose aim is accurate and deadly; gather them into one squad and call them "the warriors of the fighting edge.”<br /><br />There are those who can shoot heavy crossbows and catapults accurately at great distances; gather them into one squad and call them “the warriors who crush the enemy’s edge.”<br /><br />These six kinds of skilled warriors should be employed according to their particular skills.<br /><br />The Use of Knowledge<br /><br />Generalship requires one to follow nature, depend on timing, and rely on people in order to achieve victory.<br /><br />Therefore, if nature works but the timing doesn’t work, and yet people act, this is called opposing the time.<br /><br />If the timing works but nature isn’t cooperating, and still people act, this is called opposing nature.<br /><br />If timing and nature both work, but people do not act, this is called opposing people.<br /><br />Those who know do not oppose nature, do not know oppose the time, and do not know oppose people.<br /><br />Not Setting Up Battle Lines<br /><br />In ancient times, those who governed well did not arm, and those who were armed well did not set up battle lines. Those who set up battle lines well did not fight, those who fought well did not lose, and those who lost well did not perish.<br /><br />The government of the sages of old was such that people were comfortable in their homes and enjoyed their works, living to old age without ever attacking one another. “Those who govern well do not arm.”<br /><br />When King Shun (reigned 2255-2207 BCE) organized rules and penalties for wrongdoing, he accordingly created knights, or warriors. But people did not violate the rules, and no penalties were enforced. “Those who arm well do not set up battle lines.”<br /><br />Later, King Yu (reigned 2205-2197 BCE) made a punitive expedition against the Miao tribes, but all he did was demonstrate the martial art and culture arts, and the Miao people became more civilized. “Those who set up battle lines well do not fight.”<br /><br />King Tang (reigned 1766-1753 BCE) and King Wu (reigned 1766-1753 BCE) and King Wu (reigned 1134-1115) pledged armies for one military operation, by which the whole land was decisively pacified. “Those who fight well do not lose.”<br /><br />When King Zhao and Chu (reigned 515-488) ran into the disaster, he fled to Qin for help and ultimately was able to get his kingdom back. “Those who lose well do not perish.”<br /><br />Sincerity in Generals<br /><br />An ancient document says: “Those who are contemptuous of cultured people have no way to win people’s hearts completely; those who are contemptuous of common people have no way to get people to work as hard as they can.”<br /><br />For military operations it is essential to strive to win the hearts of heroes, to make the rules of rewards and punishments strict, to include both cultural and martial arts, and to combine both hard and soft techniques.<br /><br />Enjoy the amenities and music; familiarize yourself with poetry and prose. Put humanity and justice before wit and bravery.<br /><br />In stillness be as quiet as a fish in the deep, in action be as swift as an otter. Dissolve enemies’ collusion; break down their strengths. Dazzle people with your banners; alert people with cymbals and drums.<br /><br />Withdraw like a mountain in movement, advance like a rainstorm. Strike and crush with shattering force; go into battle like a tiger.<br /><br />Press enemies and contain them; lure and entice them. Confuse them and seize them; be humble to make them proud. Be familiar yet distant; weaken them by lending strength.<br /><br />Give security to those in danger; gladden those in fear. If people oppose you, take what they say to heart; if people have grudges, let them express themselves.<br /><br />Restrain the strong, sustain the weak. Get to know those with plans; cover up any slander. When there is booty, distribute it.<br /><br />Do not count on your strength and take an opponent lightly. Do not be conceited about your abilities and think little of subordinates.<br /><br />Do not let personal favor congeal into authority.<br /><br />Plan before acting. Fight only when you know you can win.<br /><br />Do not keep the spoils of war for your own possession and use.<br /><br />If generals can be like this, people will be willing to fight when they give the orders, and the enemy will be defeated before any blood is shed.Omahkohkiaayo i'poyihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16061952911212543042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3449323876485291163.post-68746030189292545562009-02-12T05:38:00.000-08:002010-01-28T11:25:17.712-08:00Mormonism: In Their Own Words<div align="justify">Mormonism: A Cult of Deceit, Racism, Imperialism and Genocide<br />---<br />"Evil is no faceless stranger<br />living in a distant neighborhood.<br />Evil has a wholesome, hometown face,<br />with merry eyes and an open smile.<br />Evil walks among us,<br />wearing a mask which looks like all our faces. "<br />(The Book of Counted Sorrows)<br />---<br /><br />"You will see the constitution of the United States almost destroyed. It will hang like a thread...A terrible revolution will take place in the land of America...[T]he land will be left without a Supreme Government...[Mormonism] will have gathered strength, sending out Elders to gather the honest in heart...to stand by the Constitution of the United States...In these days...God will set up a Kingdom, never to be thrown down...[T]he whole of America will be made the Zion of God." (Joseph Smith, May, 6, 1843, founder of Mormonism, quoted in "One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church" by Richard Abanes, Four Walls Eight Windows Press, NY. 2002, p xvi)<br />---<br />"Listeners of KSL Radio's "The Doug Wright Show" were surprised on November 9, 1999 when Wright's guest, Republican Senator Orrin Hatch (a devout Mormon) quoted the infamous "White Horse" prophecy. The prediction by Mormonism's founder, Joseph Smith, contains what has always been the Mormon American Dream--i.e. the transformation of the U.S. government into a Mormon-ruled theocracy divinely ordained 'not only to direct the political affairs of the Mormon community, but eventually those of the United States and ultimately the world." (Ibid. p. xvii)<br />---<br />This lofty aspiration, which dates back to Mormonism's earliest years, continues to be a dominent element of the faith espoused by Joseph Smith's followers. Mormon journalist and University of Utah spokesperson, Fred Esplin, candidly explains:"Mormons believe that they have a divine commission to prepare the world for Christ's millennial [i.e. 1000-year] reign in which they will serve as the officers and administrators. The faithful Saint believes he is building the Kingdom of God. This is what motivates thirty-thousand full-time missionaries [60,000 as of 2002] to preach the gospel, and this is what keeps men in their eighties working at a pace that would pitch younger, less motivated men into their graves." (Abanes, Ibid, pp. xvii-xviii)<br />---<br />LESSONS FROM HISTORY<br />---<br />"Hitler had gone to the meeting with his mind made up on two objectives which he intended henceforth to pursue. One was to concentrate all power in his own hands. The other was to re-establish the Nazi Party as a political organization which would seek power exclusively through constitutional means. He had explained the new tactics to one of his henchmen Karl Ludeke, while still in prison: 'When I resume active work it will be necessaary to pursue a new policy. Instead of working to achieve power by armed coup, we shall have to hold our noses and enter the Reichstag against the Catholic and Marxist deputies. If outvoting them takes longer than outshooting them, at least the result will be guaranteed by their own constitution. Any lawful process is slow...Sooner or later we shall have the majority--and after that Germany.' On his release from Landsberg, he had assured the Bavarian Premier that the Nazi Party would henceforth act within the framework of the constitution.But he allowed himself to be carried away with the enthusiasm of the crowd in his appearance at the Buergerbraukeller on February 27. His threats against the State were scarcely veiled. The republican regime, as well as the Marxists and the Jews, was 'the enemy'. And in his peroration he had shouted: 'To this struggle of ours there are only two possible issues: either the enemy passes over our bodies or we pass over theirs!' " ("The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer, 30th Anniversary Edition, Fawcett-Cress Publishers, N.Y. 1992, pp 169-170)<br />---<br /><br />The New York Times, October 1, 1981, Thursday, Late City Final Edition<br />MORMONS ALTERING INDIAN PROPHECY SALT LAKE CITY, Sept. 30 -<br />------<br />The Mormon Church has altered the wording of a prophecy about Indians so that it no longer says native Americans will develop ''white'' skin if they join the religion. In a new edition of the Book of Mormon, a prophecy that had said Indians would become ''white and delightsome'' has been altered to read that they will become ''pure and delightsome.''<br />---<br />Church members accept the Book of Mormon as holy scripture equivalent to the Bible. . .<br />Church leaders, including Mr. Kimball, have said the curse of dark skin would be lifted from Indians who embraced the Mormon religion.<br />---<br />In 1960, before he was elevated to the presidency, Mr. Kimball said in a speech that Indian children living with Mormons had lighter skin than those who remained on reservations [and that even their DNA changed].<br />---<br />The church has a program of temporarily placing Indian children with Mormon families so the youngsters can attend non-Indian public schools.<br /><br />===<br />Los Angeles Times, September 2, 1989, Saturday, Home Edition<br />MORMONS EXCOMMUNICATE INDIAN LEADER<br />From Associated Press SALT LAKE CITY -<br />-----<br />George P. Lee, the first American Indian appointed to the Mormon Church hierarchy, was excommunicated Friday after telling the leadership that it is spiritually slaughtering his people.<br />---<br />The first excommunication of a major Mormon leader in 46 years was announced in a terse, one-paragraph statement from church headquarters here.<br />---<br />Lee, who was an elder of the church, was expelled for "apostasy and other conduct unbecoming a member of the church," the statement said. Lee, a Navajo and former president of the College of Ganado on the Navajo Reservation, was at the meeting when the decision was made, it said.<br />---<br />Church spokesman Don LeFevre said he could not elaborate on the statement on the instructions of church leaders. But Lee said the action stemmed from basic doctrinal disagreements with church leaders about the role of Indians in the religion and from his contention that the leadership is racist, materialistic and bent on changing the meaning of Mormon scripture.<br />---<br />"It got to the point where I had to follow them or Jesus Christ, and I chose to follow Jesus Christ," Lee said in an interview Friday afternoon. "I told them they are the ones that are apostatizing -- teaching false doctrine."<br />---<br />Lee, 46, was made a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy in 1975. The First Quorum of the Seventy is responsible for administering the affairs of the 6.7 million-member church under the direction of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and governing First Presidency.<br />---<br />Members of the three all-male bodies are known as general authorities. In an hourlong meeting with church President Ezra Taft Benson, Benson's two counselors and the Twelve, Lee read a 23-page, handwritten letter in which he accused his fellow churchmen of distorting doctrine to satisfy their own racial bias, relegating Indians to second-class status and denying them their rightful place in the faith's theology.<br />---<br />"You are slowly causing a silent subtle scriptural and spiritual slaughter of the Indians," the letter said. "While physical extermination may have been one of (the) federal government's policies long ago . . . your current scriptural and spiritual extermination . . . is the greater sin and great shall be your condemnation for this."<br />---<br />Lee's excommunication was particularly sensitive to a church that believes Indians in the Americas are descendants of ancient peoples described in the Book of Mormon, the faith's most cherished scripture. The Lamanites, as the Indian ancestors are known in the book, were themselves described as descendants of a prophet named Lehi who brought his family from Jerusalem to the New World about 600 BC.<br />---<br />Lee said prophesies in the Book of Mormon are clear in defining Indians and Jews as literal descendants of the House of Israel and all others as "Gentiles," or "adopted Israel."<br />---<br />From the bbs system at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China:<br />-----<br />Hi! How are you? I hope you are doing well in school and feeling happy. I am back in New York now and miss all my students at Tsinghua very much.<br />---<br />But there is another reason that I am writing to you. There is something I must tell you. Something very wrong and dangerous is going on in the foreign languages department at Tsinghua University.<br />---<br />What is going on at Tsinghua University? Almost all the other foreign teachers at Tsinghua University are members of a cult. What is a cult? A cult is a type of religion that is illegal in China and most of the world. A cult is a very dangerous thing.<br />---<br />Why are cults so dangerous? A cult tricks you into joining it and then it slowly takes you away from your family, your friends, your career, your country, and your life. Almost all the other American teachers in the foreign languages department at Tsinghua are members of a cult called “Mormonism.? They are not at Tsinghua to teach you. They have come to Tsinghua as secret missionaries and want to try and make you become Mormons too.<br />---<br />Why does Tsinghua allow them to be here? Tsinghua University doesn’t know that they are Mormons. They have found a corrupt person in the foreign languages department and have paid her a lot of money, and given her many gifts, so that she will lie to the department and tell them to hire Mormons to teach English at Tsinghua.<br />---<br />Why do the Mormons want to teach at Tsinghua? Mormons believe that they must brainwash every person in every nation into becoming one of them. Maybe this sounds impossible, but they are very rich and powerful and are now the fastest growing religion in the world. Their members take orders from one man, one voice who can command them what to do and what to think. Now they have their eyes upon China, and that is why they have come to Tsinghua.<br />---<br />As you know, Tsinghua is the most famous university in China. President Hu Jintao, as well as many famous political leaders all wentto Tsinghua. The Mormons know that the future leaders of China willlikely come from Tsinghua. They believe that if they can make the students at Tsinghua into Mormons, then their church will control over China.<br />---<br />If they are so dangerous, why let them teach here? As I said, they have found a corrupt administrator in the department offoreign languages, and they have paid her so much money that she iswilling to betray her people and her nation.<br />---<br />The Tsinghua English Summer Camp is completely run by the Mormons and taught by the Mormons.<br />---<br />Starting next semester ALL of the English teachers at Tsinghua University will be Mormons.<br />What do they want to do to the students? They want to make you a Mormon. If you are a Mormon then you must obey the Mormon Church without question. You must give your money to the Mormon Church. If your families are not Mormons then you will beforced to leave your family and not see them again. If your friends are not Mormons then you will be forced to leave them and not see them again.<br />---<br />How do I protect myself? These are the words that they use: Mormon, Mormonism, L.D.S. (acronym for Later Day Saints), BYU (acronym for Brigham Young University, a Mormon recruitment center, not a real school).<br />---<br />If any of the foreign teachers at Tsinghua say they are Mormon, LDS,Later Day Saints, or if they say they went to BYU or Brigham Young University then BEWARE.<br />---<br />What is BYU or Brigham Young University? BYU or Brigham Young University is a school in the United States. But its real goal is as a recruitment and training center for Mormons.Many Tsinghua students have been tricked into attending BYU. They are told they can go to America and attend a famous school, and then they are trapped at BYU and brainwashed. Please be very careful.<br />---<br />What can we do? The only thing you can do is to warn the other students so they know to protect themselves. A student who becomes a Mormon will soon be taken away from China and from their family and their lives.<br />---<br />I love you all and it pains me that Americans are doing such terrible things in China. Not all Americans are like this. It is only a few, the ones we call Mormons. Please be careful of them and do not agree to become one of them.<br /><br />---<br />Richard<br />---<br />Missing Mormon Children<br />----<br />Due to extensive media connections and ownership by Mormons, often when young Mormon women are kidnapped, particularly blond and blue-eyed young women, they not only get media attention that many non-white missing chilren and adults never get, but, also, the focus on the missing and their families is often used to showcase--and try to mainstream--Mormonism.<br />---<br />I for one was truly saddened at the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart and joyous at her return. Although from a very wealthy hard-core Mormon family, from a Cult that has kidnapped thousands upon thousands of Indian children since the mid-1800s, including in my own family, I nonetheless took no joy in this tragedy. Indeed this tragedy was used by some, to showcase Mormonism (a community of mutual support and faith, "nice-"clean-living," -"wholesome" -"family-values"-driven folks) much as the Olympics were used and clearly intended to be used, I thought she would be found brutalized and dead and was genuinely happy at her return alive--apparently brutalized however.<br />---<br />Now it turns out that she was allegedly kidnapped by a former fellow Mormon, excommunicated about four years ago for being an "extremist" who favored living, as did the venerated Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, in polygamy. The alleged kidnapper supposedly claimed and wrote--and preached on this street in front of the Mormon churches--that he had been given a "revelation from God" to "take" [which he interpreted literally] seven wives, the first of which (his partner didn't count apparently) was Elizabeth Smart. He was apparently lining up his next victim/"wife"--and elder cousin of Elizabeth--and had made a previous attempt at "taking" his next "wife" when he was caught.<br />---<br />Now I can just imagine this alleged kidnappers "defense" in Court. Imagine something like the following: "They--the 'mainstream' Mormons that excommunicated him--are the real blasphemers and hypocrites. All around us are statues of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young who lived in polygamy, as sanctioned in the Book of Mormon, more explicitly than now, before the multiple "revisions" (over 4,000--read addendum memos from God) of the supposed "Divine Revelation" to Joseph Smith in 1820 that the Book of Mormon is supposed to represent. "<br />---<br />Perhaps a famous quote from Brigham Young: "The only men who become Gods, even the sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy."(Brigham Young, August 19, 1866, in JOD, vol 11, p 269). And as to how Elizabeth might have been forcibly "taken" as a wife, it was exactly the method used by Joseph Smith and Brigham Young and others in "taking" some of "their wives."<br />---<br />According to the authoritative "The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith", he had 49 "plural wives" among whom 11 were married to other men when Smith took them, 8 of whom represented 4 pairs of sisters and 2 of whom represented a mother and daughter.<br />---<br />Many thousands of Indian children regarded as "Lamanites", who, according to the Book of Mormon and subsequent Mormon doctrine (over 60% of the Book of Mormon, this "Divine Revelation", was rewritten, to attempt to gloss over inherent contradictions in it, after Joseph Smith's death, according to "One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church" by Richard Abanes) Lamanites [Indians] are the descendants of one of the "Lost Tribes of Israel" [named after Laman, Nephi's brother] who were "rebellious" against the Nephites [read white colonizing settlers seen to be the faithful to the commandments of God named after their mightiest "prophet" Nephi] and, in order to prohibit racial intermarriage [still prohibited by Mormons] as well as "curse" them [Lamanites] "God" gave them and all their descendants "a skin of blackness so that they might not be enticing to the white and exceedingly fair and delightsome Nephites." (Book of Mormon, 1830 ed, 73 2 Nephi 5: 21, modern edition).<br />---<br />According to the Book of Mormon (BOM) the appearance of the Lamanites with their black skin was so repulsive that they became "loathsome" to look upon (BOM 1 Nephi, 12:23, modern edition), and they became "an idle people, full of mischief and subtlety" (BOM, 2 Nephi, 5: 24, modern edition). Supposedly "God" warned the Nephites: "Cursed shall be the seed of him that mixeth with their seed: for they shall be cursed even with the same cursing."(BOM, 2 Nephi, 5: 23, modern edition).<br />---<br />So why would Mormons be grabbing these thousands of "cursed", "loathsome", "evil", little "Lamanites"? Well God is also merciful and if these little Lamanites are converted and repentant, wanting to "join" and "be of service to" the Nephites, then "their curse was [to be] taken from them and their skin became white like unto the Nephites; And their young men and their daughters became exceedingly fair." (BOM, 3 Nephi 2:14-16, modern edition). And the "good news" is, this is not just some far away promise of Salvation and turning "white and delightsome"--changed to "pure and delightsome" in the 1981 edition of the BOM--for the little "Lamanites who convert and serve, no, according to former "Prophet/Seer/Revelator Spencer Kimball, little Lamanite children in Mormon custody see their "DNA change" and are progressively changing to "whiteness and delightsomeness" and joking that one elder and his companion "were donating blood regularly to the hospital in the hope that the process might be accelerated." (Spencer W. Kimball, "The Day of the Lamanites", The Improvement, Era, Dec. 1960, p. 923).<br />---<br />Indian children were grabbed by various means and used for various purposes. Mormons, unlike the United Church, Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians and others did not maintain "Residential Schools" for Indians only; rather the children were integrated into Mormon communities--always at the margins. Sometimes the children were adopted out to families in which the wife was "barren"--in those days seen not to be a "real woman"--and matched by phenotypes and skin shades so that the children could "pass" as the biological children of the adopters. Sometimes the children were used and farmed out as cheap labor for surrounding farms. Sometimes the lighter-skinned ones could be brought into the Mormon Church as tokens to draw others into the Church. In many cases Indian children were physically and sexually brutalized in Mormon "care.<br />---<br />" The Mormons often noted that there was a promise of something better for those little Lamanites who repented and served:"The day of the Lamanites is nigh. For years they have been growing delightsome, and they are now becoming white and delightsome, as they were promised. In this picture of the twenty Lamanite missionaries, fifteen of the twenty were as white as Anglos; five were darker but equally delightsome. The children in the home placement program in Utah are often lighter than their brothers and sisters in the hogans on the reservation." (Spencer W. Kimball, Ibid. p. 923)<br />--<br />Like African-Americans, "Lamanites" were never seen as "full members" of the Church. Unlike African-Americans, Indians have not got "new revelations" of a change in status like that "given to African-Americans when, in June 1978, after speaking with "The Heavenly Father" on the planet "Kolob", Spencer W. Kimball said that a change had come and now Blacks could become full participants of the Mormon Church if they are "worthy". Of course, it would be cynical to suppose that threatened loss of tax-exempt status by the U.S. Government for practicing racist exclusionism had nothing to do with Kimball hooking up with "The Lord" and getting but another addendum memo to the BOM eh?<br />---<br />Well I am truly glad that Elizabeth Smart made it home to her loved ones and I hope that her recovery is swift and extensive. Of course I cannot buy the proposition that the has been taken "back" from those intent on "brainwashing" her; rather, she was taken from one Cult of brainwashing (the whole LDS) to a smaller and more extreme variety of that from which she has now come "back" to more brainwashing from which she came.<br />---<br />Elizabeth has made it back home. My Mom and thousands like her never made it back and paid a horrible price. Maybe out of this tragedy this may cause an examination of the ugly history and doctrines of the Mormon Church; it is not just a matter of "better police work" and vigilence that will prevent such types of kidnappings in the future. It feels exactly the same for the "Lamanite" families losing their children to who knows what as it felt for the Smart family. I remember one of the Smart family agonizing "Why, Why, why did this happen to us?" Perhaps the "wheel of Karma"?<br />----<br />Former Mormon Testimonials and Revelations<br />---<br /><br />Hello,<br />--<br />I am new to the list. I joined in hopes that maybe I could help right some of the wrongs that I have done.<br />--<br />I officially left the Mormon Church aka LDS Church (officially known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) six years ago after having been most faithful in that organization my entire 47 year life span. I am just glad that I finally woke up before it was too late. I fulfilled a two year mission to Guatemala and El Salvador in the early 1970's where I taught the local indigenous people that they were descended from the jews of Jerusalem around 600 B.C. when a prophet there was commanded by God to sail to the Americas and populate that hemisphere. I also taught them that after those people arrived a few of them turned against Jehovah and that God cursed them with a dark skin, but that if their descendants repented in the last days, their skin would become white and delightsome.<br />---<br />This story is the foundation for the Book of Mormon, which mormons call scripture. I later became a professional social worker and spent about 3 years of my time on and off helping run a Native American Placement program within the LDS Church that took children from 8 to 18 years of age from off of the reservations in the South West of the United States and placed them in LDS homes in Utah for education and church training.<br />---<br />I deeply regret being so naive, misinformed and stupid for having bought into this heinous behavior, but at the time I felt I was doing God's work. I remember feeling sickened and nauseated while watching the movie, "The Emerald Forest" which depicts catholic fathers decimating an indigenous tribe with all their bull shit.<br />---<br />The mormons still preach this racists doctrine and place thousands of copies of the Book of Mormon each year. Unfortunately, the mormon are growing very rapidly in Mexico, Central and South America among the native people there. If you do not know this, I am posting here to warn you that this insidious practice continues and is gaining momentum.<br />---<br />I currently can not stomach being associated with or involved with any organized religions.<br />---<br />Steven aka Cricket<br />--<br />From the Los Angeles Times<br />COLUMN ONE<br />Bedrock of a Faith Is Jolted DNA tests contradict Mormon scripture.<br />The church says the studies are being twisted to attack its beliefs.<br />By William Lobdell, Times Staff Writer February 16, 2006<br />-<br />From the time he was a child in Peru, the Mormon Church instilled in Jose A. Loayza the conviction that he and millions of other Native Americans were descended from a lost tribe of Israel that reached the New World more than 2,000 years ago.<br />-<br />"We were taught all the blessings of that Hebrew lineage belonged to us and that we were special people," said Loayza, now a Salt Lake City attorney. "It not only made me feel special, but it gave me a sense of transcendental identity, an identity with God."<br />-<br />A few years ago, Loayza said, his faith was shaken and his identity stripped away by DNA evidence showing that the ancestors of American natives came from Asia, not the Middle East."I've gone through stages," he said. "Absolutely denial. Utter amazement and surprise. Anger and bitterness."<br />-<br />For Mormons, the lack of discernible Hebrew blood in Native Americans is no minor collision between faith and science. It burrows into the historical foundations of the Book of Mormon, a 175-year-old transcription that the church regards as literal and without error.<br />-<br />For those outside the faith, the depth of the church's dilemma can be explained this way: Imagine if DNA evidence revealed that the Pilgrims didn't sail from Europe to escape religious persecution but rather were part of a migration from Iceland — and that U.S. history books were wrong.<br />-<br />Critics want the church to admit its mistake and apologize to millions of Native Americans it converted. Church leaders have shown no inclination to do so. Indeed, they have dismissed as heresy any suggestion that Native American genetics undermine the Mormon creed.Yet at the same time, the church has subtly promoted a fresh interpretation of the Book of Mormon intended to reconcile the DNA findings with the scriptures.<br />-<br />This analysis is radically at odds with long-standing Mormon teachings.Some longtime observers believe that ultimately, the vast majority of Mormons will disregard the genetic research as an unworthy distraction from their faith."This may look like the crushing blow to Mormonism from the outside," said Jan Shipps, a professor emeritus of religious studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, who has studied the church for 40 years. "But religion ultimately does not rest on scientific evidence, but on mystical experiences.<br />-<br />There are different ways of looking at truth."According to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, an angel named Moroni led Joseph Smith in 1827 to a divine set of golden plates buried in a hillside near his New York home.God provided the 22-year-old Smith with a pair of glasses and seer stones that allowed him to translate the "Reformed Egyptian" writings on the golden plates into the "Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ."<br />-<br />Mormons believe these scriptures restored the church to God's original vision and left the rest of Christianity in a state of apostasy.The book's narrative focuses on a tribe of Jews who sailed from Jerusalem to the New World in 600 BC and split into two main warring factions. The God-fearing Nephites were "pure" (the word was officially changed from "white" in 1981) and "delightsome." The idol-worshiping Lamanites received the "curse of blackness," turning their skin dark.<br />-<br />According to the Book of Mormon, by 385 AD the dark-skinned Lamanites had wiped out other Hebrews. The Mormon church called the victors "the principal ancestors of the American Indians." If the Lamanites returned to the church, their skin could once again become white.<br />-<br />Over the years, church prophets — believed by Mormons to receive revelations from God — and missionaries have used the supposed ancestral link between the ancient Hebrews and Native Americans and later Polynesians as a prime conversion tool in Central and South America and the South Pacific.<br />-<br />"As I look into your faces, I think of Father Lehi [patriarch of the Lamanites], whose sons and daughters you are," church president and prophet Gordon B. Hinckley said in 1997 during a Mormon conference in Lima, Peru. "I think he must be shedding tears today, tears of love and gratitude…. This is but the beginning of the work in Peru.<br />-<br />"In recent decades, Mormonism has flourished in those regions, which now have nearly 4 million members — about a third of Mormon membership worldwide, according to church figures.<br />-<br />"That was the big sell," said Damon Kali, an attorney who practices law in Sunnyvale, Calif., and is descended from Pacific Islanders. "And quite frankly, that was the big sell for me. I was a Lamanite. I was told the day of the Lamanite will come."<br />-<br />A few months into his two-year mission in Peru, Kali stopped trying to convert the locals. Scientific articles about ancient migration patterns had made him doubt that he or anyone else was a Lamanite."<br />-<br />Once you do research and start getting other viewpoints, you're toast," said Kali, who said he was excommunicated in 1996 over issues unrelated to the Lamanite issue. "I could not do missionary work anymore."<br />-<br />Critics of the Book of Mormon have long cited anachronisms in its narrative to argue that it is not the work of God. For instance, the Mormon scriptures contain references to a seven-day week, domesticated horses, cows and sheep, silk, chariots and steel. None had been introduced in the Americas at the time of Christ.<br />-<br />In the 1990s, DNA studies gave Mormon detractors further ammunition and new allies such as Simon G. Southerton, a molecular biologist and former bishop in the church.Southerton, a senior research scientist with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia, said genetic research allowed him to test his religious views against his scientific training.<br />-<br />Genetic testing of Jews throughout the world had already shown that they shared common strains of DNA from the Middle East. Southerton examined studies of DNA lineages among Polynesians and indigenous peoples in North, Central and South America. One mapped maternal DNA lines from 7,300 Native Americans from 175 tribes.Southerton found no trace of Middle Eastern DNA in the genetic strands of today's American Indians and Pacific Islanders.<br />-<br />In "Losing a Lost Tribe," published in 2004, he concluded that Mormonism — his faith for 30 years — needed to be reevaluated in the face of these facts, even though it would shake the foundations of the faith.The problem is that Mormon leaders cannot acknowledge any factual errors in the Book of Mormon because the prophet Joseph Smith proclaimed it the "most correct of any book on Earth," Southerton said in an interview.<br />-<br />"They can't admit that it's not historical," Southerton said. "They would feel that there would be a loss of members and loss in confidence in Joseph Smith as a prophet."Officially, the Mormon Church says that nothing in the Mormon scriptures is incompatible with DNA evidence, and that the genetic studies are being twisted to attack the church.<br />-<br />"We would hope that church members would not simply buy into the latest DNA arguments being promulgated by those who oppose the church for some reason or other," said Michael Otterson, a Salt Lake City-based spokesman for the Mormon church. "The truth is, the Book of Mormon will never be proved or disproved by science," he said.<br />-<br />Unofficially, church leaders have tacitly approved an alternative interpretation of the Book of Mormon by church apologists — a term used for scholars who defend the faith.The apologists say Southerton and others are relying on a traditional reading of the Book of Mormon — that the Hebrews were the first and sole inhabitants of the New World and eventually populated the North and South American continents.The latest scholarship, they argue, shows that the text should be interpreted differently.<br />-<br />They say the events described in the Book of Mormon were confined to a small section of Central America, and that the Hebrew tribe was small enough that its DNA was swallowed up by the existing Native Americans.<br />-<br />"It would be a virtual certainly that their DNA would be swamped," said Daniel Peterson, a professor of Near Eastern studies at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, part of the worldwide Mormon educational system, and editor of a magazine devoted to Mormon apologetics. "And if that is the case, you couldn't tell who was a Lamanite descendant."<br />-<br />Southerton said the new interpretation was counter to both a plain reading of the text and the words of Mormon leaders."The apologists feel that they are almost above the prophets," Southerton said. "They have completely reinvented the narrative in a way that would be completely alien to members of the church and most of the prophets."The church has not formally endorsed the apologists' views, but the official website of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — http://www.lds.org/ — cites their work and provides links to it.<br />-<br />"They haven't made any explicit public declarations," said Armand L. Mauss, a church member and retired Washington State University professor who recently published a book on Mormon race and lineage. "But operationally, that is the current church's position."The DNA debate is largely limited to church leaders, academics and a relatively small circle of church critics.<br />-<br />Most Mormons, taught that obedience is a key value, take the Book of Mormon as God's unerring word."It's not that Mormons are not curious," Mauss said. "They just don't see the need to reconsider what has already been decided."<br />-<br />Critics contend that Mormon leaders are quick to stifle dissent. In 2002, church officials began an excommunication proceeding against Thomas W. Murphy, an anthropology professor at Edmonds Community College in Washington state.He was deemed a heretic for saying the Mormon scriptures should be considered inspired fiction in light of the DNA evidence.<br />-<br />After the controversy attracted national media coverage, with Murphy's supporters calling him the Galileo of Mormonism, church leaders halted the trial.Loayza, the Salt Lake City attorney, said the church should embrace the controversy."They should openly address it," he said.<br />-<br />"Often, the tack they adopt is to just ignore or refrain from any opinion. We should have the courage of our convictions. This [Lamanite issue] is potentially destructive to the faith."<br />-<br />Otterson, the church spokesman, said Mormon leaders would remain neutral. "Whether Book of Mormon geography is extensive or limited or how much today's Native Americans reflect the genetic makeup of the Book of Mormon peoples has absolutely no bearing on its central message as a testament of Jesus Christ," he said.<br />-<br />Mauss said the DNA studies haven't shaken his faith. "There's not very much in life — not only in religion or any field of inquiry — where you can feel you have all the answers," he said."I'm willing to live in ambiguity. I don't get that bothered by things I can't resolve in a week."<br />-<br />For others, living with ambiguity has been more difficult. Phil Ormsby, a Polynesian who lives in Brisbane, Australia, grew up believing he was a Hebrew."I visualized myself among the fighting Lamanites and lived out the fantasies of the [Book of Mormon] as I read it," Ormsby said. "It gave me great mana [prestige] to know that these were my true ancestors."<br />-<br />The DNA studies have altered his feelings completely."Some days I am angry, and some days I feel pity," he said. "I feel pity for my people who have become obsessed with something that is nothing but a hoax."<br />Copyright © 2006, The Los Angeles Times<br />-</div>Omahkohkiaayo i'poyihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16061952911212543042noreply@blogger.com