On February 21 this year, in a groundbreaking article, the Sunday Telegraph gave space to convicted fraudster Darius Guppy to vent his spleen against the corrupt debt-based money system. Herein he related how during his sojourn at Her Majesty’s Pleasure, the man in the next cell had been serving hard time for doing what the banks do legally.

As was customary among prisoners who became friends, Tommy allowed me to read his legal papers and I quickly became fascinated by the Judge’s sentencing speech, the gist of which was that Tommy’s activities had been parasitical. By creating money out of little more than thin air he had reduced the purchasing power of more deserving members of society. What would happen if everyone behaved like him?

Hopefully we can expect to see more articles of this sort in the near future, and maybe something of substance to follow, but one point that appears to have been missed by all and sundry is that undetected fake money is not just as good as the real thing, in times of austerity it is actually better!

Consider this, a businessman who borrows money from a bank – money which is created out of nothing – has to repay it with real money at interest. This leaves a continual shortage of purchasing power. But money that is created out of nothing and spent into circulation debt-free does not create such a shortage. One must add a big caveat to what the trial judge told Darius Guppy’s forger friend that he was reducing society’s purchasing power.

Obviously if a forger were to print a million pounds for every person in the country and either spend it into circulation or give it away, it would have a devastating effect on the economy, because there would then be so much money in circulation that no one would use it, prices would go through the roof, and many people would resort to barter. But that is clearly not the case now. There is a dearth of purchasing power, what little money is out there is in the possession of the banks, so these anonymous men in lock up garages minting illegal coins up and down the country are actually stimulating, and benefitting the economy rather than debasing the currency. The cost of minting these coins is not insubstantial – especially if they are caught doing it! – but this cost is a fraction of what it would cost if money were spent into circulation by irredeemable loans at interest from the banks.

There are more trailers and interviews with the public here.

Now, the focus is squarely on Greece, with the battle heating up in the national press of each country.

Germans are worried that they will be left holding the bag if and when the Greek state goes bankrupt.  The tabloid press in Germany has admonished the Greeks to wake up earlier and work harder.  Meanwhile, the Greek PM, in an interview with the Beeb, has complained about gold stolen from Greece during WW II.  Damage from WW II is also being blamed for the financial crisis by Greeks being brought on German radio and television.  The problem with this claim, though, is that Germany has already paid damages to Greece, and transferred billions to Greece through EU transfer payments.  I recently came across a graphic that nicely summarizes the transfer payments from 2008:

Here is the data, shown as a percentage of GDP:

Greece, it appears, has been doing pretty well.

For Germany, though, the costs of monetary union have been very high; by one estimate, 4 trillion Euros.

And so, the economic and political expansion of the European Union, led by Germany, towards the East will grind to a halt.  Some say that it was the delay to Operation Barbarossa caused by the invasion of Greece (and the Balkans) in spring of ‘41 that prevented the capture of Moscow that year, and the victory of NS Germany over the Soviet Union.  History, whether financial or military, has a funny way of repeating.

Here is a good article in the international edition of Der Spiegel on the Euro and the current fiscal crisis:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,682432,00.html

Perhaps the best thing would be to have their kid taken away from them.

Without fear of contradiction I can say there are no moral [big “A”] Absolutes – real ones. Opposition to paedophilia and rape are prohibitions against deviancy. They are moral absolutes, but they are not Absolutes per se. History and experience has proven ethics and monotheistic religion, which is big on ethics, is not acquainted with the Absolute so their prohibitions are petty in respect to a bigger/better ‘Idea’ that we could be mindful of. Christianity is an enthusiastic advocate of ethics, but after millennia it remains a received idea without any validation. The fact that people are leaving Christianity speaks against ethics. Ethics is abetted by dialectic, the only system of reasoning that we have. That is the main problem, but for now I will set dialectic aside to present replacement Absolutes.

Why make the point that there are no proven Absolutes? We live in exciting times and they are also intellectually momentous times. We are in the midst of the most exciting [non-] debate of our time: immigration/racism; it is emblematic of dualistic consciousness and if racism can present a rationale the consequences will be a change of rational consciousness. [As far as I am concerned global warming is not a debate, it is a certainty.] I could say, “Philosophically the clash over immigration/racism is bigger than ideology because one of the parties; the racist party, does not have recourse to ethics and is left with no alternative but to challenge the status of ethics. Political economy/ideology saw all points of view promulgate an ethic, but this time around the racist party cannot claim to be ethical. It has a reasonable argument and no alternative but to demolish ethics to gain respect for its point of view.” But the immigration/racism problem is a consequence of thinking dualistically and it has its solution lying in the outcome of the ideology contest.

Since ethics contributed nothing to the identification and formulation of democratic capitalism as the politico-economic strategy of the West, it follows that there are more fundamental forces in our world. Furthermore, love it or leave it, democratic capitalism facilitates interaction which I am all for. We give primacy to ethics in human affairs and yet here the most essential issue of social organisation is decided without any influence from ethics. But mention the ill-effects of immigration and ethics asserts itself. There is something about ideology that has not been assimilated. Find it and we have the capability to crush ethics.

In addition, eclipsing ethics requires going back to ancient Greece, rethinking the nature of virtue, demonstrating that ethics is not absolute and finding alternative Absolutes.

To dwell for a moment on this point in philosophical time: beyond a shadow of a doubt we are witnessing “due process” for the last great moral absolute before it passes into history. Anti-racism will go the way of all moral absolutes because the racist side of the argument is non-ethical and is in fact greater than ethics. Ethics thinks it has cornered a rat when in fact it has cornered a tiger. Sadly, the tiger does not know it is a tiger.

An alternative set of Absolutes

For a guide to Absolutes I interpreted Absolute to mean spiritual. The best definition of spirituality that I have found is “the interconnectedness of all things”. It is attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas. As a simple definition it suffers from exceptions but this is not the time for exactitudes.

From the time of ancient Athens and with the collaboration of Christianity you have been told that goodness is paramount. Western civilisation could have come away from ancient Athens with a set of Absolute values focused on interaction, namely democracy, citizenship and environmentalism. Citizenship is implicit to being democratic so there is two-in-one. And Greece is not a fertile country so farming needed to be husbandry and therein is nascent environmentalism. So there are three values that could have come down to us as Absolutes. There is nothing sinister about these three values and I am aghast that they are not modern, absolute priorities – they are decent and proper ways of interacting. And I mention again, democratic capitalism is essentially about interactions.

To me the above three values are interactions which are beyond argument: Democracy accommodates argument; Race mixing has upset the natural order and created an argument over citizenship; Environmentalism is about survival. In ancient Athens the prize for what is most virtuous went to ethics and the dialectical method of determining it. And we have been wallowing in negativity and the particular ever since.

Fast-forward to modern Britain and a major immigrant problem. With the intellectual baggage we carry from Greece, abetted by Christianity, we have liberals who created the problem believing they have done no wrong. Indeed, they say evil resides with the racists. Here is Dot 8 because this an important point, “What is a racist?” — In the British context it is someone who holds citizenship to be an Absolute value. I say, without fear of contradiction, identity carries more consequence than ethics, e.g. Britishness means more than being politically correct; social cohesion/interaction is more desirable than political correctness after the fact of racially-based, social fragmentation. Interactive values are not strident like ethical values, but you have deep trouble if you abuse them.

The [non-] debate over immigration turns for the moment on the advantage for the Establishment of being ethical. Because ethics is an intellectual trollop it is not so much what you do, but what you say. So it does not matter that you let in a horde of ill-chosen immigrants and abuse the meaning of citizenship, the ethical thing is to scream “Racist!” – I can hear the dirty old slag saying, “Show them your principles dearie, they’ll like that. You must shout that word louder because that is all you’ve got”. Ethics can take advantage of a problem that ethics created. That is why she is a bitch like no other.

Non-dualism

Dialectic is reductive; it “does not do” interactions; it reduces interactions to the component parts. So dialectic has to be replaced. Non-dualistic philosophy is the opposite of reductive dialectic, which means it is syncretic. It is implicit that truth is relative because truths are what interact. Along with truth being relative, ethics is relative, and that is how ethics will be buried, while virtue becomes aligned with proper interactions.

The Teleology

To my mind the following three elements coalesce to promote a glorious outcome [D.].

A. Citizenship
At least three prominent theorists; Vico, von Herder and Hegel, have drawn attention to society expressing what is innate to our psyche, or in other words, society is the objectification of human nature. Hence citizenship is fundamental to our being and Hegel has said so quite eloquently for someone criticised for being obscure:
“Everything that man is, he owes to the state; only in it can he find his essence. All value that a man has, all spiritual reality, he has only through the state.”
Citizenship is a syncretic concept; it cannot be explicated by turning to reductive dialectic. We have two “truths”; the individual and society, and somehow they interact. Defining that connection is something philosophy is currently incapable of. The relationship between the individual and society is so fundamental it is spiritual. You would not learn this from Christianity, liberalism is in disbelief and ethics reckons it is spiritual.

B. Ideology
Democratic capitalism is about political and economic interactions. It is a phenomenon that resulted from ideological division but has achieved a working transcendence, removed from the crude ideologies/singular notions of truth that competed at the outset. Democratic capitalism is therefore a non-dualistic reality. It is an example that holds the key to what effects interaction.

C. Immigration/Racism
In modern immigration into Europe we have the historical event that provokes the division that generates intellectual growth from dualistic consciousness to syncretic consciousness. The advocates of ethics scream “Racist” and the advocates of citizenship philosophically say nothing because they have not got their act together, but they are not going to go away. Immigrants disrupt citizenship and natural social cohesion is destroyed. The outstanding feature is that the racist faction is denied any claim to ethics and ethical virtue. Accordingly it is necessary for the racists to produce a radically different philosophy.

D. “D” is the realisation of my conjecture in the form of a philosophy. Teleology is associated with determinism. Why should the above three points A, B, & C coalesce to form a deterministic progression? They need not but I see democratic capitalism as a prime exemplar for a philosophy that venerates interaction. Also the withering of ethics is inevitable in this and other social issues. The anti-racist stance is fundamentally weak. It asks so much of the racist reply that their position seems proper and sure, while I see it resting on nothing more than hollow tradition.

Reliance on a new philosophy extends to changing the image of the far right. The far right will remain the far right until it can capture the centre with a redefinition of virtue and values. Until ethics is proven to be a sandbar, the far right will live in the shadow of ethics’ pretence to be the high ground.

Summary

This is a small teleology dismissive of the intellectual strength of the Establishment, captivated by a finality implicit to the fact that racism cannot claim an ethical stance, [thank God, because ethics is a whore], while being laudatory of racism’s advocacy of citizenship. The glorious future it anticipates involves a major philosophical development arising from a study of ideology. Rather than just offer this as a lazy guess, I go the extra mile to elaborate on the required syncretic turn being aligning with at least three values which I am convinced are real Absolutes. We are overdue a good philosophy. It will be joy for some, fear for others and a lesson for all in how the West recalibrates life.

So what do you think: when it comes to fibs teleology is up there with the best, or it is clear thinking on the evolution of ideas?

After several heated bar-room debates he decided to put his points of view down on paper. He was fed up with the current system and the eternal whining. He says that he could see where the global economy and consumer hysteria was leading. The readers can interpret his book any which way they please.
The book does not have a bibliography, but a political historian will recognise the rough and ready quotations. Murros’ favourite classics are Mao, Lenin, and Stalin, but he has also used Niccolo Machiavelli and Karl von Clausewitz. Of the Finnish historians, Murros particularly admires Heikki Ylikangas.
The book can be read as a political paradox, a collection of aphorisms, a pamphlet, or political poetry. Murros has deliberately used the socialist prose of the seventies’ declamatory propagandists, now caught in the chokehold of their capital.
The red-covered book might be too much to take for a dour pragmatist, as the red-green revolution is victorious through the use of violence. Murros himself is opposed to violence, and prefers gardening.
He says that sometimes one has to be extremely radical in order to defend the traditional. He feels that the Nordic countries have the world’s most successful society.

Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 4.4.2001

Kai Murros’ website: http://www.kolumbus.fi/aquilon/intindex.htm

In 1997, during a sojourn in Brixton Prison I met a rather pathetic victim of this sort of entrapment. He was a not young but youngish black man who bore a slight facial resemblance to heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield, but that was where his good luck ended. He was a typical petty criminal, at the time living in a hostel, but expecting to be rehoused. One day someone walked up to him in the street – obviously knowing the sort of man he was – and asked him if he could supply some weed. When he offered to oblige, he was promptly arrested and charged with intent to supply. Even though he had no actual drugs on him. What was left of his life was in ruins.

Carty sounds like she was frying bigger fish – ie, setting up unfortunates for prison sentences which in the USA can be quite Draconian. Why should anyone sympathise with her for that?

In any case, according to the minutely detailed judgement of the United States Court of Appeals (Fifth Circuit) filed October 15, 2009, Carty became a snitch for anything but idealistic reasons – but more of that anon!

Reprieve carp on:

In 1988 Linda was raped in a University of Houston car park. The rape resulted in a pregnancy and Linda gave birth to a baby girl (born 23 June 1989) who was given up for adoption. Linda felt a deep sense of shame and concealed the rape and the pregnancy from her family. Two months prior to giving birth, Linda’s beloved father died, Linda was distraught. Later, she found herself in an abusive relationship and was a victim of domestic violence.

Firstly, Carty murdered Joana Rodriguez on May 16, 2001, so even if the rape story is true, it remains to be seen just how and why it is relevant as far as mitigation is concerned, although it may provide a motive, because the State’s case was that Carty wanted the victim’s baby, and had faked a pregnancy – presumably to cover for the sudden appearance of a little stranger. Carty had planned to cut the baby out of the victim – which necessitates murder – and would quite likely have killed the baby too – but by the time she was able to dupe her ad hoc gang into the actual kidnap, the child had been born. Stafford Smith calls this a “rather implausible theory”. Bizarre, sick, twisted, yes, but in view of the damning evidence, not implausible at all.

The claim about her finding herself in an abusive relationship is probably bunk; certainly she was not abused by the man she was living with at the time this sick idea entered her head, because he walked out on her, and in fact testified against her. One of the gripes fermented by Reprieve and Carty’s other supporters is that Juan Corona was not advised that he did not have to testify against her because of their relationship. That may be true, but why would she not want him to testify if she really is such a wonderful person and as innocent as her supporters claim? At any rate, by the time of her arrest he’d had enough of her lies, and had moved out.

Coming back to all the guff about rape and abuse, it might be argued that this should make her empathise with the likes of her victim.

Returning to the incompetent lawyer, one of the things he should have done, according to Reprieve, was visit St Kitts where Carty was born to ferret out information about what a wonderful person she was. Again, this sounds suspiciously like mitigation, and innocent people don’t need mitigation. In the second place, Carty had been domiciled in the United States for some two decades, so any such testimony was hardly relevant, and if she had presented evidence that she had been such a wonderful person, a dedicated schoolteacher and community spirit, might not the State present evidence to the contrary?

Writing in The Guardian of March 29, 2009, Duncan Campbell explains how Carty became a DEA informant:

In Houston, she was approached by the police because the man she was dating at that time was, unknown to her, a drug dealer. She became a confidential informant (CI), passing on information about dealers and occasionally making test purchases of drugs on behalf of the Drugs Enforcement Administration (DEA). As a result of this work, she claims, she inevitably made a number of enemies.

This sounds like excellent mitigation too, unfortunately, the Fifth Circuit has a slightly different – and undoubtedly more accurate - explanation for the genesis of her undercover work:

… in 1992, Carty was arrested for auto theft when she rented a car that she never paid for or returned. To rent the car, Carty identified herself as an FBI agent, so the FBI also investigated her for impersonating an officer. Carty pleaded guilty and was placed on a ten-year term of probation (she was still on probation when arrested for murdering Rodriguez). The state agreed to dismiss the auto theft charge if Carty would act as an informant. Although she provided information leading to two arrests, her supervising officer concluded that she was an uncontrollable informant. Her service came to an end when she was arrested on drug charges. Police officers had been observing a large drug transaction when Carty entered the house under observation with a package. When she left, the police followed her. She led them on a high-speed chase. During the chase, Carty attempted to run over an officer. The police eventually recovered two pistols, $3,900 in cash, and fifty pounds of marijuana from her car.

This is Saint Linda?

At the end of the aforementioned Guardian article, Stafford Smith is quoted “...her lawyer presented virtually no defence, and no court has since taken her case seriously.” Which begs the question, why does Reprieve?

Well, one reason could be that at the time of writing it is trying to raise fifteen grand for her defence, and maybe to pay for a working holiday or two.

Because the reader is told:

After Linda’s conviction, investigators from Reprieve visited St Kitts and learnt that she was still remembered as a passionate teacher who frequently held extra classes for children with special needs.

Nice work if you can get it, fly out to an island in the sun, interview the locals, and write a report while sipping a pina colada by the pool.

Carty has garnered a great deal of unwarranted support on Facebook too, where liberal morons with more humanity than common sense have actually been raising funds for her.

The really annoying thing about this worthless crusade though is that this and similar cases detract from the genuinely worthwhile work Reprieve does. At the time of writing they claim to be representing no less than thirty-three of the Guantánamo Bay detainees. Unlike Carty, whose guilt has been established in a properly legally constituted court, and affirmed, these men have now been held for nearly a decade without trial or even charge, denied all legal process as though Magna Carta had never been thought of.

By peddling propaganda and outright lies in order to save the neck of a lowlife who kidnaps a young woman and murders her to get her hands on her baby – and would have murdered two other people but for her co-accused – Reprieve undermines the credibility of all the cases it handles.